His first thought had naturally been to ask for assistance from the city’s emergency relief agencies. He dialed 119. A sweet young woman’s voice answered him, in contrast to his image of tall, strapping men in their fluorescent safety helmets and heavy, bear-like waterproof and fireproof coats. He told the girl that he had the corpse of someone who had just passed away, and he wished to donate her corneas and kidneys. (Or perhaps there were other organs that could be donated?)
  The girl patiently explained that the transportation of corpses (or the donation of remains) did not seem to fall under the purview of 119 emergency relief; he should probably contact the hospital to which he wished to donate the remains directly and arrange for them to send an ambulance.
  Oh, okay, I see. Thank you. He said.
  The girl said, perhaps I can help you contact the hospital you’re thinking of donating the remains to. . . .
  No, that’s not necessary, I understand what I need to do now. Thanks for your help. He stammered, hanging up the phone.
  He lifted his mother into the wheelchair. Her body was smaller and lighter than he expected. Just before his mother’s death, when she had given up the will to live, she had silently and obediently allowed him to arrange her body as he wished; she seemed like that now. There doesn’t seem to be a clear demarcation between life and death. He thought wearily.
  He put a wool knit cap on the corpse and wrapped a scarf around its neck, then draped her dark grey, open-collar woolen sweater over its shoulders.
  He recalled the last time he brought his mother back from the hospital on the Mass Rapid Transit. When his mother saw her own reflection in the window of the automatic closing doors of the train she seemed to have received a shock:
  “How have I become this thin?”
  She muttered to herself over and over. She looked like a regular skeleton.
  Now he was wheeling his mother’s corpse out the door. His mother’s grey eyes were wide open and staring as if she were alive, looking as if she had gotten a fright.
  Later, he recalled that it was the last MRT of the night. The deserted entrance hall’s four gleaming metallic walls exuded the desolate atmosphere of a science-fiction movie as he pushed his mother into the cold, vast subway station.
  The temperature that night was cold, cold enough that when you breathed on the glass of the window next to your seat within the train, a white mist obscured your own reflection. Despite fact that he knew he wasn’t pushing a slab of frozen pork, he couldn’t help thinking about things like the corpse thawing out, giving off a stench and watery blood. He didn’t take the regular escalator down to the platform; instead, he took an elevator reserved specially for the handicapped or those in wheelchairs. As his mother was being pushed into the elevator, she suddenly opened her mouth, giving him a real fright—perhaps caused by the wheelchair going over the gap between the floor and the elevator? She wouldn’t stick her tongue out after they got on the train, would she? He wondered. Thereupon he used a wool blanket (which had been stuck in a pocket hanging behind the wheelchair) to cover his mother’s upturned face and slightly open mouth in the elevator.
  As the elevator doors opened, he heard a loud piercing whistle, the final warning sound that the subway car’s doors were about to close. He rushed madly, pushing the wheelchair through the automatic doors a split second before they closed. Under cover of the woolen blanket, he saw his mother’s head shaking forward and back, and then the train started off.
  It was at this moment that he realized that this was the last train.
  Luckily he had made it. He realized sadly that, although he and his mother together had completed the journey rushing from the elevator across the platform to the train seemingly non-stop, leaping across in an instant, at this moment only he was panting for breath (feeling lucky and relieved).
  What if he hadn’t made it?
  At worst, it would have meant not donating the remains. Those parts of this body in front of him worth plucking or cutting off, such as the corneas and kidneys, would be like a saranwrapped package of cut fruit which has passed its expiration date—one sniff and into the trash bin with it. He’d just have to push his mother’s corpse out of the subway station and back to her apartment.
  If that were to have happened, he damn well would have had a good, long sleep (he hadn’t closed his eyes for ages). Put the corpse to one side, have a good sleep first, and then figure out what to do next.
  But anyway, he’d managed to catch the last train.
  The train rocked side to side. He felt that the rocking motion seemed to shake the car’s fluorescent light, . . . .