Mo Du (默读) - Silent Reading

Humbert Humbert XXV

Luo Wenzhou in fact had a private office, but perhaps for the sake of more convenient communication, or because the chatterbox didn’t want to be on his own, his office was open to the outside. Though there was a door in between, it hadn’t been closed in donkey’s years; it had been flattened against the wall by a heap of odds and ends others had put there, no different than if it hadn’t been there at all.

The vegetation in the room was painstakingly cared for. The flowers and plants by the windowsill appeared to be flourishing. The ones that liked light were placed on the outer layer, and the ones that liked shade were in the corner, all picturesquely arranged. Only the two potted money plants by the door were living eventful lives, getting watered every morning with the remains of tea from the night before by his lazy bum coworkers until they were on their last gasps, the dregs in the flowerpots on the point of turning toxic.

Luo Wenzhou’s wallet and keys had been carelessly thrown onto the desk, with no fear of anyone taking them—though as far as Fei Du could see, there really wasn’t anything worth taking.

Fei Du obediently sat waiting in his office for a while until he got bored. The surrounding smells really were hard to bear. He had a foreboding that Luo Wenzhou wouldn’t be back soon, so he sent him a message: “Do you need me to feed your cat?”

Among his multitude of cares, Luo Wenzhou responded with a period. Presumably he was too busy to take time to answer. Fei Du took this as tacit acknowledgement, picked up his keys, and left.

Luo Wenzhou’s house wasn’t far from the City Bureau, close enough to ride a bike. Taking a taxi barely went over the minimum fare. Fei Du had learned from experience; as soon as he opened the door a small crack, a ball of fur impatiently stuck out its head. The next instant, the fur ball noticed this was the wrong person, slipped back in, and flashed under the couch, extending its neck to look anxiously out.

The night before, the two of them had gotten halfway through the meal before being called out by Tao Ran and hadn’t had time to clean the room. Luo Wenzhou, as if facing a surprise inspection in a university dorm, had cleared away the plates and bowls from the table and crammed them into the fridge. Because he hadn’t allocated the space properly, there’d been no place to put the last plate of croquettes. He’d had to temporarily shelve it on top of the 1.8-meter-high fridge—relying a great deal on luck when it came to a cat’s ability to climb to high places.

Evidently, luck was all that would have done.

Shards of porcelain were scattered “like stars across the sky” in a trail from the dining room to the living room. The corpses of croquettes littered the ground, each bearing toothmarks. Comrade Luo Yiguo’s scientific method was unsurpassed; only after exhaustive testing had it reached the conclusion that none of this suited its taste.

The cat’s food bowl was empty, faintly glimmering under the lights; perhaps the cat itself had licked it.

Fei Du poured out dry cat food like Luo Wenzhou had, thought about it, then also opened two cans and put them next to the bowl.

Luo Yiguo, hungry enough to lick its bowl, couldn’t resist this temptation. It quietly stuck out its little head, immediately met Fei Du’s gaze, and tremblingly withdrew once again.

Fei Du ignored it. He washed his hands twice before feeling they had been washed clean of cat food smell, then took a broom from the kitchen and tried to sweep the mess covering the floor into a pile—he really didn’t have the makings of doing this kind of labor. After a while, he still hadn’t gotten the hang of it.

President Fei, one arm hoisted up, stood to one side leaning on the broom, objectively evaluating the fruits of his labor. He felt his sweeping had produced an oil slick, by a different path reaching the same result as the City Bureau’s dining hall’s greasy floor.