Ball Lightning

Wearing that charming smile, she started the car. A small ornament hanging from the windshield caught my interest: it was a piece of bamboo. Two segments, finger-thick, with a length of leaves attached. Quite a fascinating shape. What intrigued me was that the segments and leaves had yellowed, and there were several splits in the bamboo from the dry northern air. Evidently it was quite old, but she kept it hanging in such a prominent position that there must be some story in the bamboo. I reached out to take it for a closer look, but she caught my wrist, her slender white hands surprisingly strong, a strength that disappeared once my hand was pressed back down, leaving only a soft warmth that set my heart beating.

“That’s a land mine,” she said calmly.

I looked at her in surprise, then looked at the seemingly harmless bamboo in disbelief.

“It’s an anti-personnel mine. The structure is simple: the lower segment contains the explosive, and the upper section contains the fuse, which is a flexible striker and a length of rubber band. The bamboo deforms when stepped on, and the striker bends down.”

“Er… where did it come from?”

“It was seized on the front line in Guangxi in the early eighties. It’s a classic design that costs as little as a two-bang firecracker, but it’s highly destructive, and since it contains little metal, ordinary mine detectors won’t notice it. It’s a real headache for engineers, since its exterior is subtle enough that it doesn’t need to be buried. Just scattering them on the ground is enough. The Vietnamese spread tens of thousands of them.”

“It’s hard to believe that something so small can kill someone.”

“It won’t usually kill, but the explosion can easily take off half a foot or a leg, and a wounding weapon like this can sap the enemy’s combat strength far more efficiently than lethal weapons.”

It gave me a funny feeling that the first woman I felt something for talked so calmly of bloodshed and death like other women her age talked of makeup. But who could say for certain whether this was an indispensable part of what had attracted me to her?

“Can it still explode?” I asked, pointing to the bamboo.

“Probably. But the striker’s rubber bands may have decayed after so many years.”

“What? You’re saying it’s… it can still…”

“That’s right. It’s still set, and the striker’s taut, so don’t touch.”

“That’s… far too dangerous!” I said, staring in horror at the bamboo as it swung beneath the window glass.

She calmly looked straight ahead. It was quite some time before she said in a soft voice, “I like the feeling.”

Then, perhaps to break the awkward silence, she asked me, “Are you interested in weapons?”

“I was when I was a kid. My eyes would light up when I saw a weapon. Most boys are like that… but let’s not talk so much about weapons. Do you know what it feels like for a man to seek information about weapons from a woman?”

“Don’t you think they have a transcendent beauty?” She pointed at the mine. “What an exquisite piece of art.”

“I’ll admit that weapons do possess an indescribable allure, but it’s built on top of murder. If this bamboo were just bamboo, that beauty would no longer exist.”

“Have you ever thought about why such a brutal thing as murder can bring with it such beauty?”

“A profound question indeed. I’m not much for that kind of thinking.”

The car turned onto a narrow road. Lin Yun continued: “The beauty of an object can be completely separated from its practical function. Like a stamp: its actual function is irrelevant in a collector’s eyes.”

“So then, to you, is weapons research motivated by beauty, or by functionality?”

As soon as the words left my mouth I felt the question too impertinent. But again, she smiled in place of an answer. So many things about her were a mystery.

“You’re the sort of person whose entire life is occupied by one thing,” she said.

“And you’re not?”

“Hmm. Yes, I am.”

Then we were both silent.

* * *

The car stopped just beyond an orchard, where the mountains that had seemed so distant now appeared right in front of us. A fenced-off area at the foot of the mountains contained mostly weed-covered ground, with a small cluster of buildings in one corner comprising a wide-slung warehouse-like structure and three other four-story buildings. Two military helicopters were parked out front. I realized that this was where the video of the ball lightning eyewitness had been shot. This must be the weapons testing grounds. In stark contrast to the New Concept center, it was heavily guarded. Inside one of the buildings we met the man in charge of the base, an air force colonel named Xu Wencheng, who had an honest face. When Lin Yun introduced him, I realized he was one of the country’s specialists in lightning research. I had often seen his papers in domestic and international academic journals, so his name was familiar, but I had never met him in the flesh, much less been aware he was a soldier.