Chen had been the sound recordist on the shoot. It was his first job out of film school, a school that had since been demolished to make way for a shopping mall. He remembered the weight of the Nagra III on his shoulder, the smell of cigarette smoke and sweat in the gymnasium, the particular thwock of a celluloid ball against a blade of rubber and wood. He had captured that sound. It was, he sometimes thought, the only perfect thing he had ever made.
He sent the folder to his son. “This is from 1986,” he wrote. “I was the sound man.” His son replied three days later: “Cool. Do you want me to send you some money for a storage unit?” film pingpong
That girl’s name was Li Jie. She had been the star of the club, a left-handed looper with a ferocious backhand. In the film’s final scene, she lost the provincial championship to a taller, older girl from the city. She cried in the locker room, then stopped, wiped her face with a towel, and walked out to the bus. Lin had wanted to end on the crying. Chen had argued for the walk. He had won. It was the last argument he ever won. Chen had been the sound recordist on the shoot
He did not burn the film. He did not bury it. He simply held it up, one hand on each side of the reel, and let the wind take it. The acetate unspooled in a long, curling ribbon, catching the low autumn sun, flapping like a wounded bird. Frames flashed past: the bounce, the arc, the girl’s face. Then the strip snapped, and the pieces scattered over the valley, some caught in trees, some carried south toward the sea. He had captured that sound
He took the canister to a coffee shop where, he had heard, young people sometimes projected old films for “nostalgia nights.” The barista, a girl with green hair and a nose ring, looked at him like he had brought her a fossil. “We only have digital, uncle,” she said. “HDMI. You know?” He did not know. He went home.
Chen hung up. He made tea. He sat by the window. Outside, the city was tearing down another building to put up another tower. Somewhere in the valley, frames of Pingpong were bleaching in the sun. And somewhere else, a twelve-year-old girl was still walking to the bus, her face set against the future, not knowing she had already become a ghost.