The Indebted Universe and the Gatekeepers with a Monthly Income of Twelve Thousand

No one knew exactly how the retired couple, surnamed Zhang, had accumulated that debt of one hundred and twenty million. Their residence, a three-bedroom apartment in an unremarkable old building on the city's edge, punctually received their monthly pension of twelve thousand yuan. This sum was as clearly discernible in the transaction records of their joint bank account as the rising and setting of the sun. However, in stark contrast to this steady trickle of income was the debt, which had swelled exponentially, eventually solidifying into an astronomical figure.

I first heard of this matter from a friend who worked in the tax department and, as a hobby, researched local gazetteers. When he mentioned the couple, his tone was filled with a metaphysical bewilderment rather than the usual detached, business-like indifference he displayed when handling cases. “It’s illogical,” he said, taking a sip of cheap instant coffee, his brow furrowed. “Their spending records are as blank as a white sheet of paper—no luxury goods, no failed investments, not even a decent trip. That money… it’s as if it materialized out of thin air.”

Driven by an inexplicable curiosity, I managed to visit Mr. and Mrs. Zhang. Mr. Zhang, with his graying hair and thick-lensed glasses for severe myopia, had a somewhat lost look in his eyes, as if he were always gazing at some distant point beyond our line of sight. Mrs. Zhang was taciturn, spending most of her time bustling in the kitchen, occasionally emerging with tea and a small plate of soda crackers. Their home was less a home and more an archive, a vast labyrinth dedicated to that debt.

The living room had been converted into a study. Bookshelves, reaching to the ceiling, lined the walls, but they held not books, but rows upon rows of thick ledgers wrapped in kraft paper. These ledgers had no uniform format; some were handwritten, the script neat and elegant like scriptures copied by medieval monks; others were typed on an old-fashioned typewriter, the ink varying in darkness; still others were merely loose sheets of paper, crudely bound with coarse hemp rope. The air was thick with the characteristic musty smell of old paper, a mixture of dust and time.

Mr. Zhang told me they hadn't voluntarily become heirs to this debt. It came from a distant, almost forgotten relative, a great-uncle said to have engaged in mysterious trade in some South American country. After the great-uncle passed away, through a series of convoluted legal documents and an equally convoluted silence, the debt, like an inescapable specter, latched onto them.

“We tried to resist at first,” Mr. Zhang’s voice was low and hoarse, as if he had recounted this story countless times. “We consulted lawyers, we appealed to the relevant authorities. But every effort was like tossing a stone into a bottomless dry well—only a faint echo, followed by a deeper silence.” The lawyers, poring over documents written in Spanish, Portuguese, and even some extinct indigenous languages, eventually shook their heads, admitting helplessness. Those documents, it was said, were contracts the great-uncle had signed with ‘some entity,’ their terms so bizarre they transcended the comprehension of modern law.

Gradually, they gave up resisting and instead began to ‘manage’ the debt. Their monthly income of twelve thousand yuan was not used to repay the principal—that was obviously a drop in the ocean—but to maintain the operation of this ‘debt universe’: buying new ledgers, ink, typewriter ribbons, and paying postage for letters that occasionally arrived from some corner of the world, requesting them to verify or supplement certain records.

Mrs. Zhang brought a cup of hot tea. Her fingers, roughened from years of handling paper, looked somewhat coarse. “We are archivists now,” she said calmly, her tone devoid of sadness or joy, only a numbness and acceptance born of long tribulation. “We record, we organize. Every newly accrued interest, every obscure footnote, must find its proper place.”

I asked them what exactly was recorded in these ledgers. Mr. Zhang pushed up his glasses and led me to a bookshelf in the corner. He struggled to pull out a heavy ledger, its cover so worn the writing was illegible. He opened it to a page where entries were made in a peculiar mix of strange symbols and brief Chinese: ‘Year of Dingyou, Rain Water, Thirteenth District, one thousand and one sighs.’ Another read: ‘Month of Gengzi, Awakening of Insects, Labyrinth Garden, lost key ring, three keys.’

“These are not ordinary financial records,” Mr. Zhang explained. “That great-uncle, it seems he wasn’t trading in goods or money, but… how should I put it… more like emotions, memories, even certain abstract concepts.” He pointed to another line: “A philosopher’s unwritten thought, value: one hundred ounces of silence.”

A wave of dizziness washed over me. This went beyond debt; it was more like a metaphysical curse, an endless inventory of existence itself. Were this couple to spend the rest of their lives amidst these unintelligible entries?

“We once tried to understand,” Mrs. Zhang chimed in, her voice as soft as a whisper. “We tried to find patterns, to predict the next ‘expenditure’ or ‘income.’ But this universe is too vast, too complex. We are merely gatekeepers, responsible for recording every trace of wind that blows across this wasteland.”

They told me that sometimes strangers would visit, with some vague commission, asking to find a forgotten memory or a lost promise. The Zhangs would then search through the ocean of ledgers, guided by an intuition they themselves couldn’t explain. Sometimes they found it, sometimes not. The visitors would leave some trivial remuneration, which would then be recorded in new ledgers, becoming new dust in this debt universe.

As I was leaving, I glanced back at the living room, submerged in ledgers. The twilight sun, filtering through the window, cast a golden sheen on the ancient papers. Mr. and Mrs. Zhang stood side by side before the bookshelves, their figures small and stooped. They didn’t seem to be managing a debt, but rather safeguarding an unknown universe composed of countless lost moments and unfulfilled desires. That one hundred and twenty million was perhaps not a monetary figure, but the sum total of all the fragments in this universe—an eternal, unpayable deficit.

Afterward, I never disturbed them again. My friend from the tax department told me that the Zhangs’ pension account still received twelve thousand yuan punctually each month, no more, no less. And that astronomical debt still hung there, like a silent galaxy, revolving slowly with its own incredible logic, outside the credit system of modern society.

I often think of them, of that room piled high with ledgers. In an era where everything is quantified, recorded, and traced, the very existence of the Zhangs is like a metaphor, an absurd allegory about memory, oblivion, and existence. They are the faithful scribes of this indebted universe, spending their lives transcribing an epic of the collective human unconscious that no one can comprehend. And perhaps each of us, unknowingly, contributes our own trivial ‘debt’ to this universe—a sigh, an unfulfilled dream, a love unspoken.