Father on the Twenty-Eighth Floor

That autumn, Father brought Grandfather up from his village in the north of Anhui to the provincial city.

Father worked as a renovation hand in the city. After more than ten years of saving, he had at last bought a two-room flat in the development zone, on the twenty-eighth floor. He told everyone he met: my old man worked hard all his life; now it is time he came to the city to enjoy his years. It was not an empty boast. In the village Grandfather had been one of the few who could read and write. In his youth he had written letters for the whole village, read out telegrams, reckoned the work-points; whenever a family drew up a contract or divided its land, they called him in to set his mark. But by Father's generation the young had all gone — south, and farther still — leaving behind only the old and the dogs. And Grandfather's usefulness dried up, like the well at the village mouth.

I remember as a child, Grandfather would lead me beneath the old locust tree at the village edge to learn my characters. In those days he read aloud to the widows the letters their sons sent from the south: the wage had come, the body was well — and as he read, the tears would fall. Even when the letter said nothing of the sort, he would sigh along with them and say, the half a letter leaves out, that is the true day. I did not understand then; I do now. The old men carried off to the high buildings, their letters too say the body is well, say they are enjoying their years — only no one reads aloud the half that was left unwritten.

The day he was brought to the city, Grandfather wore the blue cloth jacket he kept at the bottom of the chest, and sat stiffly in the passenger seat, saying nothing, watching the overpasses and billboards slide past the window. Father said, look, Father, how fine the city is. Grandfather nodded. Fine, he said. Fine.

It was only once they had settled in that he found this "fine" belonged to other people.

The twenty-eighth floor was too high; Grandfather dared not ride the elevator alone. The first time, the doors closed, the light dimmed, and he beat at the panel in panic until Father, seeing him on his phone, laughed and came down to fetch him. After that he stopped going down. All day he kept to the south-facing window, watching the traffic below like a river that would not move. The people of the building came and went, and none of them knew him. In the elevator he would now and then meet a neighbor, who gave a faint nod at most, and he would shrink hurriedly into the corner. Once he stood a long while in the corridor gripping the rail, meaning to press the button that led down, but in the end dared not. He called Father and said, I will go down and walk a bit. Father laughed on the other end: Father, just stay home, there are too many cars out there, you would be hard to find if you were lost. So he spoke of it no more.

Father and Mother left for work before dawn and left him alone in the rooms. There were no neighbors to speak with, no ground to tend, not even a sparrow could find its way in. Once he did try to go down. He stepped out of the building and was stopped by the wide road and the traffic lights; he stood at the curb a long while, then turned and went back up in the elevator.

So he took to growing flowers on the sill. The management forbade it, and Mother minded the dirt, so he hid the pots in a corner of the balcony and watered them drop by drop from empty plastic bottles. Father said, Father, do not bother with that, tell me if you need anything. Grandfather said, I need nothing. Nothing.

At the new year Father took him to a park. Grandfather saw old men by the lake writing characters with big brushes dipped in water on the pavement — Tang poems. He stood a long while, his hands moving faintly inside his sleeves, as if he had gone back to the old locust tree, teaching a row of children stroke by stroke. Back home he took out the smartphone Father had bought him and fumbled with it half the afternoon, but never learned in the end. The phone lay in a drawer afterward, its screen never lit again.

The next spring Grandfather fell ill. Nothing grave — only he could not eat, could not sleep, and thinned day by day. The hospital found nothing to name. Father sighed: the old man is homesick for his soil; it is only age. But Grandfather grew quieter by the day, sitting often at the window, gazing into the distance — the direction of home, a thousand miles and twenty-eight floors away.

One night Father was hunting a screwdriver in the drawer and turned up a small cloth bundle. Inside were bus tickets, a thick stack of them, all from the coach station, city to county seat, one after another. Some were for the going, some for the return; most were blank ones, the date never dared upon. Father stood a long time. Father, he said, what is this — Grandfather lowered his head. Nothing, he said. Just something to keep.

Later Father told me that only then did he understand: Grandfather had not come to enjoy his years. He had come to serve a sentence.

But what good is understanding. Father still left at dawn and came home at dark, and still told everyone he met: my old man lives in an elevator building, enjoying his years. And Grandfather still kept to his window, tending his flowers well, and holding that stack of tickets tighter.

In early summer Grandfather left. He left lightly, as if afraid to disturb anyone. Father wept, held the funeral, went back to the village and hired the trumpet players, and lined half the street with wreaths. The villagers said Old Fu had earned his fortune after all — a son who had made something of himself, and a fine send-off at the end. Father, red-eyed, said: in his whole life, my old man at last got to live in an elevator building.

I stood at that twenty-eighth-floor window and watched the traffic below. The flowers Grandfather grew were still in the balcony corner, a nameless grass with tiny yellow blooms. I remembered his last words to me, spoken when we were alone. He said: child, when you are grown, do not bring your parents up to a place so high.

It came to me then that Grandfather had said he had never in his life been farther than the county seat. Father had carried him up to the twenty-eighth floor — a thousand times higher than the county seat, and a thousand times farther. Height, it turns out, is a strange sort of thing: it brings you nearer the sky, but farther from the earth, and farther still from those households whose chimneys still send up their smoke.

I did not answer. Because I had suddenly understood that Father too will grow old one day, and then I will move into which floor, and keep Father at the window, like a pot of nameless grass.

The river below flows on without a sound. The "place so high" Grandfather spoke of was never the building. It is the kind of height from which you can see the sky, but can no longer find your way home.