Five days ago I’d been told to report to an office. On the way back, I’d stumbled on the edge of a ditch. I wondered how he, who lived thirty li away, had heard about this accident.
He must have sensed my curiosity because he said, “I know everything you’ve done. Everyone else knows, too. I know you stumbled and fell on some vegetable crops and propped them back up even though you couldn’t get yourself to your feet. I also know who put you on his back and carried you home. Nowadays, from the commune all through the district to the county, no official makes a speech without starting with, ‘The situation is very good and is getting better and better.’ But you never said that. What you say is that the common people haven’t got enough to fill their stomachs and they work too hard. You don’t think I know about this? Of course I know!”
Solemnly he handed me the walking stick. “From now on,” he said, “lean on this walking stick whenever you go out. It was made of milkwood. It may not look good, but it’s very solid. I cut and dried it last night. Now try it out to see if the height is right.”
I took the walking stick from him. It had the pure smell of new wood. It was made of a whole young milkwood tree, from both the trunk and the root. Tiny plum blossoms were carved on its reddish handle. When I looked closely, I saw that at the tip of the reddish part was a tiny, red, five-pointed star. The star, though irregular, obviously had been carved with great care. Holding the walking stick in my hand, I could imagine the old man, my year mate, holding a small knife and carving solemnly in the dim light of an oil lamp with a flame no bigger than a bean. Cutting one stroke after another, the old man would narrow his eyes into two thin slits and puff out his toothless mouth to blow off the sawdust . . . As I looked at the red star, it seemed that suddenly a sparkle burst forth, triggering my memories of the past, thoughts of the present, and premonitions of the future.
The old man took the walking stick from me and ran his rough hands over it as if rubbing it with sandpaper. He handed it back to me. The walking stick seemed to glow as if it were a holy object. I leaned on it. Its height was just right. It fit perfectly in my hand. Strangely, I felt a surge of strength rushing through the walking stick directly from the earth, helping me stand firm and steady.
As time passed, the walking stick became my best friend. I never went out without it. When I was feeling weak, it gave me strength and courage. When my spirits were low, it gave me support and consolation. When I was again summoned to make a report, I was stronger because of the support of this very cane, the sight of those tiny plum blossoms on its handle and that red star at its tip. I felt I was a powerhouse, full of strength all over.
The old man came every ten days, rain or shine, frigid cold or sweltering heat. His comings were as precise as the phases of the moon: he arrived with the first quarter moon, the full moon, and the last quarter moon. Every time he would make the same remarks and would cut the firewood he’d brought: thick sticks into thin pieces and long sticks into short pieces. Every time he would ask for a bowl of hot water to soak his pancake pieces in until they were soft enough to eat. Every time he would accept only the “old” price of two yuan, not a single fen more. Every time he would tell about something that had happened in his production team and would follow up the story with his comments and judgments. And every time, he would offer some commonsense advice, like “Persimmon vinegar is tastier when warm” or “Celery boiled in water helps reduce high blood pressure.” When these things were all done, he would graciously refuse my offer of a meal, hoist his pole on his shoulder, and set off for home.
It was hard to see a man who was as old as I was traveling such a long distance to deliver a heavy load of firewood. Nor could I endure the idea of him worrying about me. But he always came punctually, never missing a single time. I wanted to give him something—money or old clothes or the like—but he always stubbornly turned and left abruptly. At mealtime, I would often think about the firewood in my kitchen and the old man who had labored so conscientiously to bring it. He seemed like a member of my family, an eccentric elder.
One pleasant winter day in 1976, the wind was gently blowing and the warm sun was shining. The old man came with a heavier load of wood than usual. After putting down his load, he unfastened the old cloth bag from the pole as he’d done every visit. I poured him the customary bowl of hot water. However, this time he didn’t set about eating his sopped cake, but instead took five cakes from his bag and handed them to me. The cakes were reddish and disk shaped. With an apologetic smile, he said, “Here are some persimmon cakes. Don’t you look down on them! They are for your granddaughter. She may never have eaten anything like them. Rough and coarse though they look, they taste sweet.”
I didn’t refuse. I took them. I asked him to sit down, but he went to find the ax and set about chopping the firewood. He turned his head from time to time and laughed in my direction. I was quite baffled at all of this. After chopping for a long time, he finally stopped laughing and told me this story:
Pursued by Han Dynasty leader Wang Mang, Liu Xiu had no food to eat, no water to drink. Suffering from hunger and thirst, and without the slightest bit of strength left in him, Liu Xiu lay beside a road like a dead man. Just then a girl named Yin Pearblossom passed by. She was from a common family and was carrying a pot full of wheat gruel to her family doing heavy work in the farm field.
The famished Liu Xiu lifted the lid of the pot and poured the whole meal—enough for two farmers—into his own stomach. He thanked the girl over and over for saving his life.
Later, Liu Xiu ascended to the throne, sitting high on the dragon seat. Every day dozens of cooks prepared food for him. But none of their delicacies from land or sea could satisfy his cravings. He began to suspect that his cooks were not doing their best to serve him, their monarch. After all, he reasoned, their food was not as tasty as the simple gruel he’d eaten from Pearblossom’s pot while running for his life. So he decided to execute one cook after each meal.
Seeing their colleagues being killed off, the remaining cooks fell into a great panic. If the executions went on day after day, how many more cooks would be killed and where would it end? After discussing the problem, the cooks sent out a great many people to find that village girl somewhere along the route Liu Xiu had taken years before in his distress.
Fortunately, their efforts were rewarded. The girl was found, and Maid Pearblossom set about cooking her wheat gruel for the emperor.
When the gruel was done, the emperor was served. He looked at the gruel, sniffed it, and flew into a rage. He shouted furiously to have the cook’s head cut off. At this, the attendants on the scene knelt down and begged, “No, Your Majesty! Don’t do that! Please don’t do that!”
The emperor asked angrily, “Why not?”
“The gruel was made by Maid Pearblossom, whom you met when you were in distress,” replied the attendants.
Hearing this, the emperor commanded that Pearblossom be brought before him.
The cooks were all seized with fear for Pearblossom. How evil it would be to execute such a lovely young woman!
But Maid Pearblossom went to the palace confidently.
After performing the ritual kowtow before the emperor, Maid Pearblossom rose to her feet and stood, waiting to see how the emperor would deal with her. The emperor approached the maiden, asking questions and eyeing her from head to foot. At length he was convinced that he was not being made a fool, and that the girl before him really was Yin Pearblossom who had once saved his life. Still, he couldn’t understand why the same person couldn’t make an equally tasty meal!
“Emperor,” Maid Pearblossom patiently replied, “the meal you ate that day was made with coarse wheat grits, yet you thought it was delicious. The meal you ate today was made of fine wheat grits that I hand selected, grit by grit. Yet you said it was not delicious. It is not that today’s meal was not delicious, but that Your Majesty’s stomach, which was empty then, is now already filled with rich food. Let us wait three days. During t
hose three days you shall not eat any food. After three days, your humble servant will cook a meal for you to eat. If you still think my food is not delicious, you can execute me or even have me cut into a thousand pieces. Your humble servant will not utter even a single complaint against you.”
The emperor thought for a moment. He realized he had done something terrible in having those innocent cooks executed, and he regretted it deeply. Immediately he ordered that, as a sign of his repentance, a payment of one hundred liang of silver be given to each executed cook’s family.
Having finished the story, the old man laughed at me once more as his eyes shrunk into two narrow slits. He picked up the walking stick from beside me and examined it from different angles. He ran his hand up and down the handle as if he were sanding a piece of furniture. Then he put the stick back down gently and took his two yuan. Carrying his pole on his shoulder, he walked away.
His story set me to thinking. Why had he told me that story at that particular time?
Ten days passed in the blink of an eye. It was again time for the old man to replenish the supply of firewood. I waited as usual, but he did not come. It was as if the waxing and waning of the moon were no longer governed by the same natural laws. Surely something was terribly wrong.
The next morning, as I was about to set off to town to order a pole load of firewood, a young man entered my courtyard carrying two bundles of wood, one on each end of his pole. He told me that the old man, my year mate, was unable to come because he had hurt his back while cutting firewood on the mountain. The young man had been asked to bring the wood.
I inquired anxiously how badly the old man was hurt, and felt relieved to hear that the injury was not very serious. The young commune member also told me that the old man’s hometown had been a stronghold of the Communist Party guerrilla forces during the war. The old man’s father, at the age of seventy, had been shot by the Kuomintang, and his head had been hung above the town gate for ten days. The old man himself used to carry messages in those days and had had a reputation as a fleet-footed runner. One time, while he was escorting several leader-comrades across a mountain, his group encountered Kuomintang troops. He drew the enemy soldiers away from his comrades and as a result was captured. When interrogated, he insisted he had been on the mountain to collect medicinal herbs. The enemy troops couldn’t find any proof against him, but they still put a bullet through his left leg. Even with the wounded leg, he crawled away to find his lost comrades.
I missed the old man, my year mate, more and more. Frequently I had the urge to pay him a visit, but I never went for fear that my visit might bring him trouble.
I didn’t see the old man for several months, which felt like years. During that time, the young woodsman kept me abreast of the old man’s condition and sent him my greetings. I earnestly hoped he would recover quickly and looked forward to seeing him again soon.
One day I received a notice telling me to return to Beijing as soon as possible. I spent a few days gathering up and packing my things, hoping for the return of the old woodsman, wishing to see him once more before my departure.
And then there he was, leaning on his staff before me! A lingering illness had made his thin figure even more emaciated. Ignoring my inquiries about his health, as if he had never been injured, he went straight into my kitchen. Surveying my stock of firewood and my walking stick, he sat down. He smiled at me and pulled out of his wicker basket more than a dozen red persimmons.
“I haven’t got anything to give you except these persimmons,” he said. “What do you think they look like? Do they look like the hearts of oxen? Exactly. They are called ox-heart persimmons. The ox heart . . . have you ever seen an ox heart? An ox heart’s tip points straight downward, straighter than the hearts of some humans.”
I gazed for a long while at the rows of persimmons. What he said was true—these persimmons did look like ox hearts. Nothing less than ox hearts!
I wanted to give him money and clothes so that he’d be able to take better care of himself, but I feared my offer might insult him. Shortly before my departure for Beijing, I entrusted my neighbor—an official who’d been reinstated by the local government to a leadership position—with some gifts to pass along to him. I said to myself, this time he will not turn down my gifts.
It has been two months since I returned to Beijing, where meals are not cooked over smoking firewood. Once I returned here, I no longer thought about how meals were cooked. I was always busy with my work. My memory of the old man gradually began to fade away.
Today I happened to see the walking stick, and it reminded me of the old man and of my gifts to him. Snatching the stick from my grandson’s hand, I stroked it gently as if I were stroking a child who had been naughty. I saw the tiny red star and shook the dust off it. It gleamed brightly once more, like a blazing fire. The plum blossoms were distinct on that handle with the smooth reddish surface—still warm from the stroke of the old man’s rough hands.
No sooner had I scattered the playing children and lost myself in thought—standing alone in the courtyard in the evening sun with the walking stick in my hand—than my grandson flew back to me like a little bird, with a package in his arms.
“Grandpa, here’s something mailed from our hometown!” He happily called the small county where we had spent four years “our hometown.” In his arms was a parcel sent from that small county. A warm feeling of nostalgia swept over me.
Without wasting a second, I took the package from my grandson and opened it to find the things I had given to the old man. They were being returned along with a letter from my neighbor, whom I’d asked to deliver the gifts to the woodsman.
The letter said that the old man, my year mate, had adamantly refused to accept my gifts and had reacted with great anger. My former neighbor had no choice but to send the money and other gifts back to me. He tactfully related what the old man had said:
“There are hundreds and thousands of old farmers like me in China. The farmers in our country far outnumber the old folks. Can he give every one of them these things and this much money? Now he’s in office in Beijing, shouldering an important responsibility. If he would only keep us farmers in his heart, it would be more precious than any gift of gold or silver.”
Having read the letter, I had to ask myself, are you close to the people?
I couldn’t say no, but neither could I say yes. The judgment could only be passed by people like the woodsman. His image appeared once more before my eyes: his skinny figure, his tattered clothes, his wrinkled face, his slightly hunched back, his load of firewood carried on the ends of the carrying pole, the way he leaned on his walking stick . . . He didn’t know how to make flattering, insincere remarks. A bowlful of sopped cakes in hot water could make him feel content.
Yet all that time, he had placed my family in his heart and cared about every necessity of our lives. He was even concerned about our ailments. He was as simple and unsophisticated as the earth. His heart was as clear and pure as the sky. It is the thousands and millions of people like him and their descendents who make up the majority of our civilized, modern nation. It is they who prop up our country with their bony bodies and rough hands. Throughout times of difficulties and hardships and brutal wars, it was they who dauntlessly and unselfishly protected us, raised and nurtured us, shared our anxieties, and gave us encouragement.
If we were separated from them, it would be as though we holders of high positions, along with our revolution, were cut off from the sunshine and the air. As though our feet were not touching the solid earth beneath.
I find I am pressing the walking stick close to my chest. But I have no idea when I began doing so.
Translated by Du Lixia
Gao Jianqun
Gao Jianqun, a contemporary Chinese novelist and a native of Xi’an, was born in 1953. He entered China’s literary scene in 1976 with On the Frontier, and later published A Remote White House. In 1993 his masterpiece The Last Xiongnu was released, which even
tually led to the so-called Eastward Expedition of the Shaanxi Writers Group. Now he has published five novels, some twenty novellas, and eight collections of essays. The excerpt here, “A Trip for Love,” is taken from The Last Countryside, one part of his Trilogy of the Northwest. Gao is now also a vice-director of the Shaanxi Writers Association and of the Shaanxi Confederation of Literature Circles.
6
GAO JIANQUN
A Trip for Love: The Story of an Unmarried Mother
Good Luck Town—in Chinese we call it “Double Six” to mean good luck—is a remote and secluded place, far away from the outside world. Not because the world turns away from it and its nearby satellite villages, nor because it is slow in responding to the pace of the outside world, but simply because of its isolated location. The Creator, alas, is not quite generous, for He creates some places rich, flourishing with gold and silver, and others simply, with bare and barren land and poor people.
But the seclusion of Good Luck Town is mitigated by the highway, and also the traffic, and especially the bus that carries people to and from this place.
Should a bus happen to stop and stay for a while here in the small town—even if it’s a short stay—it may leave a story. Perhaps a long story.
And you see—even now, while we are talking, here comes a bus ready to stop at the south end of the town, near the mediator’s office managed by Hillock Zhang. Obviously, after the long, hard journey, the vehicle is exhausted, covered with dust all over and sagging under a mountain of luggage on its roof. It is simply out of breath!
A short while ago, just before the bus came to a stop, a fashionable woman of unknown age was looking excitedly out from the bus window, pointing to each village and naming it as the bus passed: “Jia Terrace . . . Feng Terrace . . .” and so on.
Old Land, New Tales: Twenty Short Stories by Writers of the Shaanxi Region in China Page 13
