He had a feeling that Mother was going to die tonight.
   At dinner time, Mother shook her head and pushed away the bowl of rice porridge she had only half finished. He looked into her eyes with apprehension. Mother behaved like a timid child; she turned the other way and looked in silence toward the window on the other side of the room, avoiding him.
   “Don’t want to eat any more?”
   She shook her head, still not looking back.
   “Then go to bed early. Oh yes . . . it’s been quite a while
since your toenails were cut. I’ll wash your feet and cut your
toenails, and then you can go to bed.”
   This time Mother turned around, wearing an expression
which showed that she indeed wished me to cut her toenails.
   This made him even more convinced that Mother was going to die. Mother has often said that when she dies, she wants to be neat and clean, that she will not leave this world with anything dirty on her—including, of course, dirty toenails.
   In the afternoon, the lady upstairs came knocking at our door to remind us to vote for a new head of the neighborhood tomorrow. “ . . . be sure not to vote for the guy named Cheng. You see, he has been elected twice, but the high tension wire is still there at the entrance to our neighborhood. Incompetent, just plain incompetent! My daughter has been complaining about headache all the time recently. It must have been the high tension wire that caused it. Not just headache, one also becomes retarded! This has been reported on TV, right?”
   He knows the lady upstairs is the vote broker of a certain political party, and that he himself and Mother all fall within her “responsibility district.” The lady upstairs knows and trusts that I will docilely follow her instructions. Indeed, I will vote according to her instructions, for I don’t care a bit about such matter.
   But the lady upstairs is a bit worried about bedridden Mother. She knows Mother always has her own opinion, and no one can sway her.
   “Has Auntie felt better? Can she get up . . . tomorrow and go to vote? You know, if the weather is fine, I’ll go borrow a wheelchair and will personally . . . personally wheel Auntie to the voting booth. Anyway, this will be a good occasion to go out for a breath of fresh air; it is not good to be cooped up all day long. And who knows, maybe a reporter will catch sight of you and write a story. This will make you and your mother really famous! Wouldn’t that be great?”
   He said, we’ll see tomorrow, we’ll see tomorrow, and closed the door.
   While cutting her toenails, he was also thinking whether or not to mention this matter to her. Suddenly, Mother uttered a cry of pain. In a lapse of attention he cut too close to the quick. Mother’s toenails were difficult to trim. Because of her advanced age, the toenails were all drawn together and you have to spread them out one by one. Besides, she was also suffering from ring worms of the nails, and every nail was seriously calcified, thick, hard and very difficult to cut. When you cut, white powdery stuff fell off, flying all over.
   When Mother reached a certain age, she insisted that only he could cut her nails. Mother’s excuse was that, unlike other people who always got to her quick, he was very careful. In reality, however, she enjoyed the intimacy of mother and son being together. Nevertheless, every time he cut Mother’s nails, he had to be careful not only not to cause her pain, but to watch out for the powdery nails flying all over, for he was afraid that he might get hard, thick and ugly nails too from the same ring worms.
   “Mom . . . ,” he wanted to ask Mother whether she was really dying today. He knew that Mother knew very well the order in which things such as these were arranged, it was only that she didn’t want to tell him or anybody else.
   “Mom . . . ,” he tried a second time. The way Mother looked at him made him see that Mother didn’t want to answer such a question, so he said, instead:
   “The lady upstairs came this afternoon to ask whether she should take you to the polling station in a wheelchair tomorrow. She said this would be a good chance to breathe some fresh air, and at the same time do what a good citizen should do.”
   Mother didn’t say anything. He knew this meant that Mother wouldn’t go vote tomorrow. Does her unwillingness to commit herself to things tomorrow mean Mother was about to die? Should I call Wife to come over to wait and take care of this matter together with me? Although we were divorced a year ago, Wife and Mother still maintain a friendly and amiable relationship. Wife also maintains a matter-of-factly, neither-warmnor- cold attitude toward me, though we are no longer husband and wife. Of course, when they pick a fight, it is still fierce and frightening, but when the relationship is chummy, Wife will go so far as to hint, like she did over the phone last time, that she would help find someone for him to marry again and form a new family: “Your mother is going to be gone sooner or later, it’s better for you to find some other woman to take care of you, so that you won’t become a pitiable lonely old man.”
   But what if Wife asks later how do I know Mother will be gone today? He won’t be able to give a satisfactory answer. In fact, Mother is not suffering from any specific illness, she just lies there in bed, nothing wrong with her, so you can’t send her to the hospital. It is just that she is old, worn, no longer nimble, and in a state where she may die any time. Then Wife is sure to shoot back, she has been in such a state for a long time, how do you know it’ll be today? The point is, he knows for sure it’ll be today, so does Mother. They both know. But such a feeling between mother and son cannot be conveyed to others, be they wives or friends or neighbors. Completely impossible. No one who hears it will ever believe, just like Wife has never ever believed that such a tacit,....