A Conversation

When I was hospitalized at the Sixth Hospital of Peking University, I met a patient suspected of having schizophrenia. We shared the same room—and the same bed.

His imagination was extraordinarily rich. He spoke in vivid imagery and used all sorts of rhetorical devices. Most of the topics he brought up were genuinely interesting. He seemed pleased that I could follow his train of thought, and I was more than willing to catch a glimpse of the strange world he inhabited. We got along surprisingly well.

One day he asked me, “Do you know what a person sees right before they die?”

I said, “I haven’t tried it.”

“I have—once.”

“Well, it’s lucky you made it back alive.”

“Guess what I saw.”

“No idea,” I said. “Maybe your life flashing before your eyes, like in the movies?”

“No. I saw an evening back in third grade. I was on cleaning duty that day, along with another classmate. Everyone else had placed their stools on top of their desks before leaving. Outside the window, there were green-colored sunset clouds.”

“What was special about it? Besides the green, I mean.”

“Nothing.”

At the brink of death—assuming he was telling the truth—the final image his mind seized wasn’t from college entrance exams, marriage, the birth of his son, or the death of his father. It was a moment so ordinary, so long forgotten, that it could hardly have meant anything at all: a child, on cleaning duty, after school.

To be honest, I found that strangely believable. The discrepancy gave the moment an inexplicable sense of authenticity.

“So why was it green?”

“It was a static yet gradually shifting color—orange tinged with yellow, yellow laced with a faint trace of green. I may not be describing it precisely, but I know clearly what I saw was green. The sky didn’t look like the usual sky either—it had the rough, flowing texture of sand painting.”

“Maybe it was a kind of psychological suggestion—motion within stillness. Like: ‘Mountain blossoms bloom like brocade / The stream glistens blue and deep.’”

“Mm,” he understood the poetic reference. “That scene was frozen in my mind with a few clear keywords: ‘third grade,’ ‘cleaning duty,’ ‘scene outside the window.’ But at the same time, I could still think about other things, and I could understand everything. If, as you said, it was some cryptic metaphor, then maybe it could only be understood in that exact moment. How did Borges put it again? ‘In a period of uncertain time…’”

“‘I felt I had grasped the world in the abstract.’”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. Knowledge? It lost all meaning. Desire? It reached a void beyond fulfillment. Faith? It felt more like a cheap form of self-pity.”

That made sense to me. “Maybe it was a state of saturation—of life reaching its full capacity. In that brief moment, time stretched infinitely. Let me indulge in a few lines I wrote before I met you.”

“Go ahead.”

“‘Your thoughts reach beyond the universe / Facing the sea / Is no different from facing death / Or from facing the water in a glass.’”

He fell silent for a while.

Then I added, “And beyond that… is death.”

“I don’t really see a difference between that state and death either,” I continued. “It doesn’t feel like a transition. More like a natural transcendence—or a quiet continuation.”

We both went quiet for a moment.

Then he asked me suddenly, “Do you have an ultimate goal in life?”

I thought for a while. “I think so—two, actually.”

“Let’s hear the first.”

“Can I start with the second?”

“Sure.”

“I want to leave behind some writing. I hope that many years from now, those words can live on in my place.”

“And the first?”

“To make more money. Take care of my mom.”

He went silent again.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

He hugged his knees and looked at me helplessly. His gaze had an unsettling intensity, as though it could pierce straight through and pass judgment on my soul. I felt afraid. I remembered he was a psychiatric patient, and I no longer had the courage to continue the conversation.

Soon after, I recovered and was discharged. I never saw him again.