Free The Weight of Memories by Cixin Liu

 
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    First published in Chinese in Sea of Dreams , 2015, a collection of Liu Cixin’s short fiction.
    Mother: Baby, can you hear me?
    Fetus: Where am I?
    Mother: Oh, good! You can hear me. I’m your mother.
    Fetus: Mama! Am I really in your belly? I’m floating in water …
    Mother: That’s called the ami—ani—amniotic fluid. Hard word, I know. I just learned it today, too.
    Fetus: What is this sound? It’s like thunder far away.
    Mother: That’s my heartbeat. You’re inside me, remember?
    Fetus: I like this place; I want to stay here forever.
    Mother: Ha, you can’t do that! You’ve got to be born.
    Fetus: No! It’s scary out there.
    Mother: Oh … we’ll talk more about that later.
    Fetus: What’s this line connected to my tummy, Mama?
    Mother: That’s your umbilical cord. When you’re inside mommy, you need it to stay alive.
    Fetus: Hmmm. Mama, you’ve never been where I am, have you?
    Mother: I have! Before I was born, I was inside my mother, too. Except I don’t remember what it was like there, and that’s why you can’t remember, either. Baby, is it dark inside mommy? Can you see anything?
    Fetus: There’s a faint light coming from outside. It’s a reddish-orange glow, like the color of the sky when the sun is just setting behind the mountain at Xitao Village.
    Mother: You remember Xitao? That’s where I was born! Then you must remember what mommy looks like?
    Fetus: I do know what you look like. I even know what you looked like when you were a child. Mama, do you remember the first time you saw yourself?
    Mother: Oh, I don’t remember that. I guess it must have been in a mirror? Your grandfather had an old mirror broken into three pieces that he patched back together—
    Fetus: No, not that, Mama. You saw yourself for the first time reflected in water.
    Mother: Ha-ha … I don’t think so. Xitao is in Gansu, land of the Gobi Desert. We were always short of water, and the air was full of dust whipped up by the wind.
    Fetus: That’s right. Grandma and Grandpa had to walk kilometers every day to fetch water. One day, just after you turned five, you went with Grandma to the well. On the way back, the sun was high in the sky, and the heat was almost unbearable. You were so thirsty, but you didn’t dare ask for a drink from Grandma’s bucket because you were afraid that she was going to yell at you for not getting enough to drink at the well. But so many villagers had been lined up at the well that a little kid like you couldn’t get past them. It was a drought year, and most of the wells had gone dry. People from all three nearby villages came to that one deep well for their water.… Anyway, when Grandma took a break on the way home, you leaned over the side of the bucket to smell the cool water, to feel the moisture against your dry face …
    Mother: Yes, baby, now I remember!
    Fetus: … and you saw your reflection in the bucket: your face under a coat of dust, full of sweat streaks like the gullies worn into the loess by rain.… That was your first memory of seeing yourself.
    Mother: But how can you remember that better than I do?
    Fetus: You do remember, Mama; you just can’t call up the memory anymore. But in my mind, all your memories are clear, as clear as though they happened yesterday.
    Mother: I don’t know what to say.…
    Fetus: Mama, I sense someone else out there with you.
    Mother: Oh, yes, that’s Dr. Ying. She designed this machine that allows us to talk to each other, even though you can’t really speak while floating in amniotic fluid.
    Fetus: I know her! She’s a little bit older than you. She wears glasses and a long white coat.
    Mother: Dr. Ying is an amazing person and full of wisdom. She’s a scientist .
    Dr. Ying: Hello there!
    Fetus: Hello? Um … I think you study brains?
    Dr. Ying: That’s right.