Aygul had continued, “I’d do better to stand in your way than agree to help you. Listen to me, Dr. Liu. This isn’t a game. You’re working with devilry!”

Now, in the director’s office, the noise outside the window had grown louder. As the director stood up and went over to it, he said to Liu Xin, “Young man, I really hope that the sixty million the bureau is investing in this project could be put to better use. You can see there’s much that needs to be done. Until next time.”

Liu Xin followed the director out of the building, where the workers’ sit-in protest had grown larger, and a leader was shouting something he couldn’t make out to the crowd. His attention was drawn to a corner of the crowd, where he saw a group of people in wheelchairs. More were filing in, each one a miner who had lost a limb in a work accident.

Liu Xin felt like he couldn’t breathe. He loosened his tie, lowered his head, and passed quickly through the crowd before ducking into his car. He drove aimlessly, his mind blank, and after a while slammed on the brakes at the top of a hill. He used to come here as a kid. From here, there was a bird’s-eye view of the whole mine. He got out and stood motionless for a long time.

“What are you looking at?” a voice said. Liu Xin looked back and saw Li Minsheng, who had come up at some point to stand behind him.

“That’s our school,” Liu Xin said, pointing off at a large mining school that housed both primary and secondary classes. The athletic field on the campus was conspicuously large. It was there they had lain to rest their childhood and youth.

“Do you think you remember everything?” Li Minsheng said tiredly as he sat down on a nearby rock.

“I do.”

“That afternoon in late autumn, when the sun was hazy. We were playing football on the field, when the building’s loudspeaker came on … do you remember?”

“It was playing a dirge, and then Zhang Jianjun came running over barefoot to say that Chairman Mao had died …”

“We called him a counterrevolutionary, and walloped him, even as he was crying out that it was true, honest to Chairman Mao it was true. We didn’t believe him, though, and dragged him off to the police …”

“But we slowed down at the school gate, since the dirge was playing outside too, as if that dark music was filling the whole world …”

“That dirge has been playing in my mind for more than two decades. These days, when the music plays it’s Nietzsche who runs over barefoot and says, ‘God is dead.’” Li Minsheng barked out a laugh. “I believe it.”

Liu Xin stared at his childhood friend. “When did you turn into this? I hardly even recognize you.”