The Firefly is to me, as it is to all its patrons, more than a bar, and less than a home. It is guarded by twin yellow lanterns, like eyes slanted sideways; underneath, atop three small steps, curl a pair of stone lions, carved so skillfully that it is rumored that they were once real. Those who pass by the Firefly observe first the exceptional thickness of the red wooden doors. Here is a place too well fortified, some think, and carry on their way; others are struck by the notion that something of great value must be locked behind such doors. They dawdle, wondering what treasures might be hidden. Those who wait only for several seconds find no reward, but those who properly linger, who sacrifice some meaningful piece of their due time to treasure-dreaming, find that the doors swing open, as they did for me. Damn those doors, and the Firefly with them. Without them, I could have been happy.
I entered for the first time as the day was ending; the setting sun flooded the floor with bloody rays, and cast my shadow long and blue across the floor. The place was empty. In fact, had I not seen the thick curtain upon which the bar’s sign hung, I could have mistaken it for a rundown gallery, or the emptied quarters of some ailing grandfather. The air smelled strongly of medicinal alcohol, of the sort suitable for waving under the noses of fainted ladies, or rubbing on a hip bruised from a cavalry fall. As for the interior, I will admit that I had expected something more magnificent. Such doors would surely suit a stately courtyard, more brightly lacquered treasure-box than house, with gilded furniture and soft cushions, and rock-structures that towered to the heavens under the waving shadows sent down from some genial pine. But everything that I saw looked renovated almost beyond recognition. There were concrete floors and roughly hewn chairs. In the corner a single mahogany screen staggered up against the wall, its paper punched out like panels from the wing of a dragonfly after a great storm. It was a courtyard, I suppose, architecturally, but with all its former character slowly erased from the ground up. Only its roof still held a trace of its ancient origins, lined with beams hewn from trees so tall that they could have only existed in the forest kingdoms that rose and fell before the dawn of man.
The Firefly had only two bartenders. Each was always there, always working. One was slight, barely more than a girl. When she opened her mouth, she did so only to sigh. Then, in those moments, I could see the small gap between her front teeth, which made her every breath a hiss. She never looked at me, and only seemed to stare at her own hands, as if confused why God had deigned to give her such appendages. The drinks she made were overly sweet, and made me sad. The other bartender wore flamboyant silk shirts and wide hats. He was a lofty and jealous man who loved to eat bitter fruit and stare at his reflection in his silver cocktail-shaker. His drinks were sour, and the more I drank them, the more they leached into me, leaving me snapping like a dog at the hurried heels of fellow patrons.
Someone is joining you today, said the bartender. He cocked his head, as if surprised that I had friends at all. I gazed levelly back at him. I had no idea who he could be talking about, but I was unwilling to admit it, lest I prove his suspicions true.
O? I leaned back in my chair. When is he arriving?
It is two someones, in fact, said the bartender. Xiaoming and Xiaozhang.
My hand slipped on my drink; I barely managed to set it right in my shock. I had not seen them for a long time; they lived near me, and were twin creatures of habit, always seen together, except when matters of business pulled them apart. Xiaoming had been an office secretary, and spent her days in the dusty lower floors of a dingy skyscraper whose only shining point was its vanity spire, polished by the lonely wind’s touch. Hunched over an ancient computer, she lived away her life transcribing the words of others, and so, when she returned back to us in the alleys, she had no words of her own to speak. She worked hard, because she had to; she supported Xiaozhang. He was a wire-walker, and his face, like that of a sunflower, was so often turned towards the sky that it had taken on its somber color. I knew they lived together, but I cannot speak further on their relationship. It was the subject of much gossip. Some believed they were twins; yes, now that I recall their faces, there was definitely something similar in the spacing of their inky eyes, but only as much as a sculpture represents its model. One twin cannot be cast in the likeness of another, for one could not exist without the other; they spring from the same source, like branches from an ancestral trunk. Some thought them to be a long-married couple; when I knew them, they were certainly of that marriageable age, and there was a certain tenderness about the way they slouched together down the street that implied a romantic knot, albeit one a bit frayed by the years. And there were even some that whispered strange rumors that only flew in that narrow space between lips and hands: that at night Xiaoming and Xiaozhang slept in the same bed, and, under the wan moon, became the same person.
My neighbors are like that, incorrigible melon-eaters. I’m sure I have also been an ample target for their darts: married, my wife the breadwinner, always on business; no children, temples already dusted with gray. I work at the hospital as a pathologist. My life is not the stuff of legends; even the rumors that concern me are commonplace and banal. No fanciful fruit sprouts from the poor soil of my story.
Why on earth are they coming here? I asked the bartender, astonished. His eyes narrowed in pleasure at my confusion.
Ask them yourself, he said, and the door opened and they entered.
The two of them were sloven personified: Xiaoming, with her hair cut terribly short, draped in a sweatshirt so loose and large it obscured her frame completely. Her eyes stared blankly ahead; her hands curled at her sides like wilting flowers, her nails painted a chipped black. She looked like a military escapee hastily camouflaged into the urban jungle by a teenaged goth. Next to her winking spine, Xiaozhang seemed impossibly tall. His hair fell into his face as he stepped over the lintel; he pushed it behind his ear like a shy bride. His thin ankles showed below his black jeans. I could let down those hems, I thought to myself. I could fix those nails. They have such potential. If only they had a little more soul; if only they weren’t so starved.
Hello, I said to them.
Hello, they replied in unison, and took seats next to me, one on each side.
The sour bartender turned to them. Hello, he said.
Hello, they said again.
Hello, the bartender said to me.
I was already here, I told him.
Well, hello again then, he replied, and he put out two empty glasses.
How are you? Xiaoming asked me. Her pupils filled her eyes, and her eyes seemed to fill her entire face, like ripples that push back still water until the entire pond is troubled. In the very center of her gaze, a stone dropped and was ever dropping.
Fine, I replied, and busied myself with stirring my cup; I couldn’t bear to stare into those disquieted eyes. And you?
We’ve had the longest sleep, she said.
Were you sick?
O no, it was marvelous, she purred.
And we dreamed such dreams, you wouldn’t believe, said Xiaozhang.
Tell us, said the bartender, and reached to wipe a sticky glass.
✤ ✤ ✤
I am standing on a cool dune on a dusty plain. I think to myself, Am I in the desert? But no, it is not the desert; it is only a land that used to be flush with water—perhaps it was once a shallow sea—and now the water has faded, and left as its legacy only dry silt. Above me, the sky is red as military silk, and studded in it are many yellow stars. In the light of this red glow rises a city, but like no other I’ve ever seen. I walk into the city. It is filled with people, all with only one eye, right in the center of their foreheads. They can see no perspective; to them the world is a parade of paintings. They cannot judge distances: nothing seems too far to them, and their gaze is drawn to immediate richness. When they see a faraway door, no matter how ornately it may shimmer, it does not occur to them to approach it; to them it is small, a doorway for mice and birds, not for men of their stature.
They tell me this place is the richest city in the world. It towers; it bathes in luxury. The people lead me down the main street. Everything waves at me: the flags, the children’s fingers, the large lanterns. The stars dim in the brilliance of the street’s buildings. I have never seen such architecture before. Surely the greatest cities in the world could not compare with these brilliant facades: here is a building made from a thousand lightbulbs; here is a tower built like a lotus-plant, where beautiful women poke their heads from the seed-holes; here is one with steps made from solid gold, and columns, they tell me, that have been brought from Rome: a backbreaking trip, plodding steps; painful assembly; a parade of suffering capped with gleaming marble.
Have you been to Rome? they ask me.
No, I reply. I have never left my country.
You do not need to now, they tell me joyfully. Someone grabs my hand and presses it to the cool ruined column. On this building there is a column from every great church and monument in all of Europe. Looking upward, I see that the building bristles with columns; its body grows grotesque marble limbs. Columns are jammed into windows. The names are new lovers, exotic and a little awkward: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, composite, axial, foliated, reeded, palm-leaved, Gothic, Romanesque. Balustrades dribble down its front like melting frosting at the cheap patisseries where the foreigners gather like ants around plastic picnic tables. Every period is represented, every grand monument and temple: a hideous historical smorgasbord. Like the facetious schoolboy who pastes into his silly chapbook words snipped at random from the classics, the facade has become nothing more than a great manuscript of nonsense.
Look, look, the people say. They mean well, I am sure, but there are so many of them; one polite tug to catch my attention becomes a gruesome weight shredding my shirtsleeve; one whisper in my ear becomes deafening. There is a door at the end of all the columns, a gullet embedded in a mouth of long teeth; I run into it and fling it open, slam it behind me. The noise of the street is silenced at once. Wooden groans echo in the darkness, the creaking of ancient bones. What is this place? I think, and I blink quickly until my eyes adjust. All around me stand the slants of huge supports that hold up the stupendous facades of the street; without these beams, they would crumble under the weight of their own glamor.
There is no ceiling; if I look up towards the sky, I can see the tiniest pinpricks of stars above the city. It is strangely quiet here. It would almost be peaceful, if the wood weren’t bemoaning its servitude in such plaintive tones. I place a hand on one of the support’s sides. Splinters the size of my arm hang from it. Why are they hidden back here like a terrible secret? Surely no one believes that such structures as can be found on the street sprang from nothing. Suddenly, I see a haggard, waving light: a searching torch. The people are horrified. What are you doing back here? they ask, and their one surprised question, multiplied by a million, becomes accusatory.
I’m sorry, I stutter, but they begin to advance on me. I press a hand to my eyes—they want my eyes! I panic, they want to make me like them!—but no, they stop, and begin, as slowly and mechanically as robots, to hack away at the wood, pulling away the splinters. Don’t look at these ugly things, they apologize. Come back to the main street. There, we have a building that was flown in from America. We have a building made from custard. We have diamonds from Zanzibar.
No thank you, I say, and I back away. They call after me enticingly; their smiles are beautiful. They only want to be hospitable, I realize. They are offering me the best of what they have; they are embarrassed that I have seen behind them; they only want to rectify their mistake. As I duck under pillars and props, the echo of their plucking at the wood resonates through every beam. I must leave, I think, and I speed up, but it’s too late; one too many beams have been removed. The first facade blinks and begins to crumble, falling, falling; it hits its neighbor, which topples over to hit another. I crash through the undergrowth of the city. The beams fall around me like sword-strokes. The filthy silt fills my eyes. I think I am dying, until I stumble out of the choking chaos, and the air clears a little. The thunder is behind me. I flee up a dune, and only then, my chest heaving, do I dare to look back.
The people are cheering. They drag the wooden beams aside. But the city is tilted now. It is not the same city. The wind whistles past me, and sends a lick of sand up to one of the lightbulbs, now settled in the silt. As I watch, it flickers, and goes out.
✤ ✤ ✤
I am standing in a square, and around me children are playing. There is music; an old radio. The children are dancing. What beautiful children, I think to myself. What a beautiful future. They begin to sing, and as they sing, they use tiny plastic containers to water the flowers that bloom at the edge of the park. The flowers shoot up as if by magic. Huge camellias spin spirals of pink. Roses fill the air with heady sweetness. Luscious puffs of peonies erupt in magenta masses. My heart swells to see the pale cheeks of passersby blush with pleasure at this unexpected show. The children giggle and stand hushed with awe, their tiny fat fingers frozen on their watering cans. The flowers are in bloom now, as tall as my hip. Now they will stop growing, I think. Now they are full-grown. But they spring forth supernaturally; soon they are huge.
The scent, at first pleasant, now threatens to overwhelm; the forest of stems, as thick as my arm, casts shadowy bars over my face. The flowers block the afternoon sun; the day, at first golden, plunges into foreign shadows. At my feet lurks a rainbow blanket: what’s left of the sunlight above lies distorted in the dust by the colored petals, like the blurred images cast into darkened cloisters by stained glass. The air smells of earth, warm and wet, and a little rotten. The children’s laughter grows louder, bolder, rising like birds through the twisting flower-stems. Are those their little footsteps? I begin to walk towards the sound, a gentle pattering like rain; there she is, a small silent girl, with her hair tied in pigtails. From her pocket she pulls a penknife, and begins to slice at the flower; the stem falls like a tree, and the flower floats to earth, taller than I am. Another child, a boy this time, runs beside her lugging a picnic basket on wheels; the two of them pull up the flower roots together, expertly mince them into the basket, and pat the earth smooth again. It is like the flower has simply appeared, like it has never grown from the earth at all.
All around me the stained-glass petals begin to fall to the dust, and the children dart in and out behind petals like imps, dragging baskets of dirty roots. Where are they taking them? Up close, the flowers gape as maws do; the perfume from their breath is cloying. The petals are like a thousand thick walls; I am being buried alive in this labyrinth of beauty. The children’s laughter—God, what a devilish sound! How to escape this rootless hell? At first, I only walk quickly, I brush the flowers aside politely, but soon, I am sprinting, ripping through the flowers like tissue. I am ruining; I am bruising; I am sorry, I mumble, whether to the plants or children I cannot tell. I need to get out. This is not what I meant to do today; I am not sure how this is even happening. The children’s eyes well with tears when I see them, clutching sweet stamens for support, their shoulders and heads browned with rare pollen. They rush to sew up the ruined petals. I can see it in the way they cling to one another as I speed by: I am a monster. Faint, faint—I feel faint. The flowers sigh and weep with their tiny keepers. They wilt in the hot sun, and begin to die.
✤ ✤ ✤
The bartender had finished cleaning the glasses. The bar fell silent.
Isn’t that funny? Xiaozhang said after a minute, perched on his chair as he pecked at a dish of peanuts on the bar. We dreamed the same dream.
I suppose, I said, startled, disturbed by the tales. Xiaoming’s black eyes watered profusely; the two of them got up in a hurry, brushing their clothes off, and muttered their excuses: they had somewhere to be, something to give, someone to see. Goodbye, I told them, and I felt genuinely sorry to see them go. They were a strange pair. I pitied them; I wished they could stay longer, so that I could brighten their days a little, tell them something sweeter, and less strange. I could ground them a little, I thought. I could fill their pockets with pebbles, could let a little air out of their hearts. The bartender began to prepare his next order. As he worked, he chewed on the acrid rinds of grapefruits leftover from some foreign cocktail; crushed pulp lingered between his crowded teeth. Goodbye, the bartender sang after them; goodbye. Xiaoming and Xiaozhang reached the door. Then he turned to me, and his face split into a wicked grin. See you never, he called, and for a moment I saw Xiaoming turn, her eyes wide, her hand fluttering at her side as if daring to reach back. The doors closed. So intense was the shock and fear in her face that it seemed to shine a lurid green against the sudden blackness, like the afterimage impressed into the eye when it has gazed too long into the light.
Never will they come to this place again, hummed the bartender. They will not find the doors. And if they did, the doors would not open for them. O, how sad. I’m sad to death. Here, here, drink, quickly. He sloshed the liquor out for the two of us, and drained his cup at once.
They can’t come back?
No.
Why not?
Because you have arrived. There must be balance.
But there are two of them.
And so there are two of you, replied the bartender. I stared at him, confused.
Come on in, friend, said the bartender. And then he began to laugh. His laugh tickled the eaves, and set the glasses trembling; as he laughed, the door swung open, and the black light of night leapt in ahead of her. Finally, like the last lingering beam, she stepped in. Her hair was short, and she was beautiful.
Why are you laughing? she asked. She shone in the shadows.
The bartender reached a thin hand under his hat to wipe his hidden eyes. O, little lady, he said, it’s you. If only you knew who came just before you. Divinely amusing, he chuckled, sublimely confusing. That’s the stuff. He glanced at my drink, still untouched. He knocked it back.
The girl cocked her head. Who was it?
Who was it, indeed, giggled the bartender. It occurred to me that he might be drunk. They have something of yours, the bartender said. Something you’ve been missing.
But I haven’t been missing anything.
You are blind, moaned the bartender, and he slammed his glass down. Blind, blind, he sobbed, and his fingers wormed over the gloom of his face.
What is this place? she said, her eyebrows drawing together. Who are you?
No questions, whispered the bartender, his hands prison-bars through which his arrested gaze peered. They are arrows. I am already more hole than man. His hat drooping, he crawled onto his chair to lean over the counter, so close that the tip of his hat almost touched her perfect face. In his fist was still clutched an olive; its juice bled out onto the counter. What’s your name, little woman?
Songbird, she said, and she took her seat beside me.
Everything returned to as it had been. The crushed cedar chilled in the blue evening breeze. Time passed; others came to drink. I wandered back to lie on the reed-mats among these ghostly guests who traded tales in voices too low for ears to catch, and sipped on cups of pungent liquor. The primeval beams spread above me in a false canopy. A heaviness poured down with the cold wind from the open courtyard window. The weight accumulated until it solidified into a terrible trepidation. The dreams, at first as insubstantial as a bedtime story, grew heavier in my mind, like buckets into which water was poured, and was now overflowing. I felt those dreams like stones. The twin tales overwrote something deep within me. I could not say what the original story was. Nevertheless, I felt the loss keenly. It has never ceased, and never again have I been happy as I was that morning.
True to the bartender’s word, I did not see Xiaoming or Xiaozhang again, although my tenure on the Firefly’s list has lasted longer than most; but I saw more men and women like them. Indeed, I never saw a soul go through that doorway save for ones like them, and like Songbird, who was of their blood, and of their generation. What more can I speak of them? They, the young ones, are a cut above, to be sure. But they are also a cut below—to think of them, as I do now, pierces the wineskin of my spirit through both feet and crown, so that even as my gaze is trained upward, my soul is drained out, and, dreaming of wholeness, I remain empty. Such is my curse, and the curse of all seekers for whom the memory of doors that have opened are devoured before that of those which have not.
Francesca Violich Kennedy is a writer of literary fiction and a 2020 Hawthornden Writing Fellow. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2018 with a B.A. in History and Literature. Her work has been published by the Harvard Advocate, Oxford’s Isis Magazine, and the 2017 H. G. Wells International Short Story anthology. Born in Boston, she lived in Berlin and London before coming to Beijing to pursue her latest project, ‘Notes from the Yingyou Guesthouse’.
‘The Dream of Xiaoming and Xiaozhang’ is part of this forthcoming collection of magical realism, which draws not only from the genre as established in Latin America, but also from the far earlier Chinese literary traditions of the Weird Account (志怪) and the Strange Story (传奇).
Spittoon Monthly publishes one exceptional short story or set of poems on the first Monday of every month.