Zhang promises that he’ll go again to Pillar’s in Little Clear Creek. Now that the matter is out in the open, he believes it wise to keep the couple involved—to nudge them a little bit more to his side and to secure their support.
Without wasting another second, Zhang heads off.
Plantain is waiting in front of the guesthouse, her child by her side, when Duckweed arrives.
She’s still puzzled. Seeing that city woman walking toward her—who is she?—Plantain is not yet convinced that the woman known to her as “legs in flood, lips in blood” will turn out to be Qiong Qiong’s grandmother. It’s just too unbelievable!
The drama of city life, so remote until now, has suddenly become part of their everyday lives. Is it a mistake or a misfortune?
“Grandma!” Qiong Qiong shouts and tries to run to Nan.
Oh, let there be mercy on her—this lonely city figure in the village, Plantain thinks. She looks older these days in this small town. Her shining face is no longer shining, and wrinkles have begun to spread around her eyes. Her hair, once styled and flattering, is now covered in dust, turning gray and thinning.
“Grandma!” Qiong Qiong shouts again, and this time she is released to run from one mother to the other.
Nan picks the child up and steps forward to utter a greeting: “Plantain.”
Plantain avoids Nan’s eye contact. Looking down at her toes, she confesses quietly, “I’m not yet used to calling a stranger ‘Mother.’ May I call you ‘Auntie’? Perhaps that will change sometime in the future. OK?”
“Anything is OK.” Duckweed accepts without delay. She adds, “Plantain, I fell ill with a puerperal fever while giving birth to you. Now I’m unable to have any more children. But now that I’ve found my only daughter, I can never be lonely.”
Sincerity begets sincerity. Duckweed’s confession has a great effect on Plantain. She tells Duckweed that her father and mother have come, by her request, and that they are waiting in Nan’s room, ready to talk with her.
“Where is your husband?” Duckweed asks.
“He’s away in the army.”
“Tell your father and mother that whatever they need, they should just tell me. And you, too—you should never hesitate to ask me for anything. You’ve suffered so much already, my dear child—”
“I’m OK,” Plantain cuts in. “I have plenty of food and clothes; there’s nothing else that I need. And my parents are very proud and self-reliant, so they’d never accept your offer of help, I’m afraid.”
“Then will you consider leaving with me?”
“How could I, when I’m a housewife here?”
Duckweed pauses. “Would you consent to let me take Qiong Qiong with me back to Beijing?”
“Let me think it over.”
“If I take Qiong Qiong to raise her, I can promise her a bright future. It’s time for her to go to kindergarten. An education is so important.”
Even for Good Luck Town, which has been the backdrop for many notable events, the story of Duckweed Nan and Asiatic Plantain is especially moving and unique.
Literate Li refers to it as “a trip for love.” It is perhaps the most beautiful story we have ever heard.
The next day, after the Midautumn Festival, Duckweed Nan, together with her granddaughter, Qiong Qiong, prepares to leave this small town.
Around noon, the sun is shining in the bright autumn sky. A bus comes from the north, from the grassland. It stops at the town exactly where Nan got off the day she arrived.
Among the people who have come to see Duckweed Nan off are Pillar and his wife and Plantain, their daughter, in whose arms her little Qiong Qiong still rests.
Hillock Zhang, the chief mediator, is also present; under his order, his mediators stand in a ceremonious line along the road.
The bus stops. It is time to go.
Pillar lifts the big trunk and loads it onto the bus.
Wrapping her arms around Plantain’s shoulders, Duckweed cannot bear to tear herself away.
The bus sounds the horn, urging the party to conclude.
“Pillar, Pillar’s Wife—my brother and sister, I am grateful to you for your efforts in raising Plantain. I promise to come and see all of you often—and especially to see Plantain, my dear child.”
With these words, Duckweed takes Qiong Qiong from Plantain’s hands and climbs the steps onto the bus.
The bus moves forward. Plantain follows alongside it for as long as she can.
Nan waves from inside, shouting, “Plantain, believe me. I will treat Qiong Qiong as a princess for the whole world to admire. I promise you!”
A gust of wind carries her voice across the distance.
Half an hour later, when Duckweed’s voice has trailed away, when the people have returned to their homes and jobs, when here again is an empty place where nothing seems to happen, two figures stand high on the terrace before the mediator’s office. They are Hillock Zhang and Literate Li. The former turns to the latter.
“Now, about the age of that city woman over there, can you tell?”
Translated by Wang Hongyin
Li Tianfang
Li Tianfang is one of China’s most popular authors. She is the former vice-chair of the Shaanxi Federation of Literary and Art Circles, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, the State Council allowance expert, and a part-time professor at Brown University.
Li’s first publication was in People’s Literature magazine in 1964. She has published ten collections of works that include prose, novels, short stories, essays, and journalism. She is best known for her major novel Moon’s Crater, the prose collection Secret, the short story collections Love’s Unknown Number and Accidentally, and the collections Li Tianfang’s Prose Selections, Plant a Land of Sun Flowers, Green Wine Glass, Mountain after Mountain, The Yan’an Essays, and Wild Goose Flying South. She has won more than twenty prizes for her writing. Many of her works have been selected as required texts by primary schools, secondary schools, and universities in China, and they appear in several anthologies.
7
LI TIANFANG
Love’s Unknown Variable
He drifted away and back, away and back, but still he avoided falling into that bottomless, dark abyss.
He had been in this kind of coma several times before—the kind that seemed just like death—but each time he had managed to come to instead of passing away. Each time, just like now, he had lain in the hospital bed unconscious for several days. Each time he would eventually return to consciousness, would eventually stand up and return to the school, to his blackboard, and explain dual linear equations and factorization.
But this time, he worried that he would not stand up again. An exhausted and weary feeling pressed tightly on every part of his body. His left leg was numb and heavy. His left arm was numb and heavy. It seemed like these things were not his anymore. They were out of sorts, clumsy, refusing to obey their master’s orders.
Ever since regaining consciousness, he had somehow known that the life in his body was coming to an end. Doctors’ whispers, along with his wife’s and son’s sad expressions, confirmed his premonition. But even without these clues, he understood well that at his age, with his history of heart trouble and this latest stroke, it was unlikely that he’d have a full recovery. He didn’t need a stethoscope to sense that his heartbeats were weak and powerless, his heart an aged, rusty clock whose pendulum was growing loose and slow.
Why didn’t it stop swinging altogether? Why hadn’t he died that morning, right after class, when he’d fallen in front of his alarmed students? Many stroke patients died that way, without much pain. So why did he, after lying motionless in the hospital bed for several days, stroll back into life? What was he still worried about? What did he have left to do? Was there something he didn’t want to leave behind?
Doctors urged him to keep absolutely calm, urged him not to worry, not to get excited, not even to think about anything. But after returning from unconsciousness, it was hard to follow such order
s. These days he couldn’t help but think of long-past times.
Was he afraid to leave behind his wooden triangle ruler, his compasses, his little chalk box? It would be only natural for someone who’d devoted forty years of life to a single occupation—interesting or monotonous—to have difficulty tearing himself away from it.
Zhao Yiru was nostalgic about everything related to the school. Beginning as a village teacher when he was twenty years old, he had traveled down a long road. Though he could not say that he was proud of every step on the road, overall those steps were solid. Now, throughout the town he enjoyed a great reputation as the founder of a new way of teaching mathematics. His teaching and his scholarly research were respected by his colleagues. The year before last, at a celebration of his fortieth teaching anniversary as well as his sixtieth birthday, the education bureau chief had spoken words of high praise, saying he hoped that young teachers would follow in Zhao Yiru’s footsteps, devoting love and dedication to their teaching careers.
He could be proud of some parts of his life and content with others. As an ordinary person, his upright character and diligent work had earned him honest respect and fair judgments. Weren’t these good enough to comfort his old heart? Looking back, he found nothing to be ashamed of.
As for his family, he believed he had treated them well. When he was nineteen he had married a woman two years older than himself. It was not until he was forty-five that he brought his wife from their hometown to visit the school where he taught. By then she already looked like an old woman. The students were surprised. Why, they wondered, had their handsome and dignified teacher married an old village woman, one who looked like she could be his older sister?
But soon they changed their attitudes. They saw how much this elderly couple respected and loved each other. From then on, each time the school showed a movie or held a New Year’s celebration or other social event, the teacher showed up with his wife; like any young couple, they sat shoulder to shoulder as they watched the movie or performance.
Their son was their true comfort. The boy’s facial structure took nothing from his mother but much from his father. He had his father’s long, rectangular face, deep-set eyes, and straight nose. Whenever father and son were together, other teachers would exclaim, “Look, a pair of matching figures!” Some people simply called them “Big Algebra” and “Little Algebra.” The son was his father’s shadow. Zhao Yiru knew that after he left this world, he would live on through his son.
He had raised his son to be an independent man. He was confident that his son would do fine in this world after the father had departed. So why did Zhao Yiru feel so worried and anxious as he lay on the hospital bed?
His eyelids were heavy; he opened his eyes with great difficulty. He gazed kindly at his son, wanting to say something; he moved his lips, but no sound came out.
Sitting by the bed, the son saw that his father was awake. He bent down hastily. “Daddy, want some water?”
Slowly his father shook his chin, which jutted out from the quilt.
“Want some medicine?”
The old man shook his head again. Water and medicine did not concern him. The expression on his face showed an inner struggle. Finally he made a decision. He gazed at his son again and said, “Write . . . write a letter for Daddy. Do you . . . do you have some paper?”
His clumsy tongue made his words sound stiff, and his voice was unclear, but his son understood. The youth pulled out a notebook from his pocket and waited for his father’s words.
“No. Send . . . send a telegram. A letter . . . too slow.” His lips started to tremble. He tried hard to still them, shutting his eyes slightly for a moment, and then continued. “You write. Write, ‘Time is up. Eager to see you . . .’”
The pen in his son’s hand stopped in midair. He looked at his father, surprised. All the family members were there in the room. Whom was this telegram for?
Zhao Yiru was silent. His face had turned red; he avoided his son’s gaze. Instead he looked out the hospital window, staring at a remote place. After a long time, he turned his head and answered his son’s unspoken question. “To . . . to your aunt.”
The son looked puzzled. As far as he knew, he didn’t have an aunt. But Zhao Yiru ignored his son’s confusion. He muttered the recipient’s name and address, one word after another, with much difficulty. They were in his memory, the name and the address, and he could recite them without thinking, as if he used them every day. The son recorded the father’s words with great care. Still, Zhao Yiru was afraid that his son would make a mistake. He asked him to read the telegram aloud, word for word. Then, with relief, he urged his son to send it out quickly.
Afterward, Zhao Yiru felt even weaker. He was tired and uncomfortable. He didn’t speak or ask for anything. If someone gave him water, he drank; if someone gave him food, he ate. Other than that, he lay in bed with his eyes closed and his body still, as if he had fallen into a deep sleep. But in fact, he did not sleep at all. He opened his eyes every time there was a sound at the ward door. He stared at whoever entered. Sometimes it was his wife, sometimes his son, or sometimes just visitors to other patients in the ward. When he’d identified the visitor, he closed his eyes at once, leaving deep disappointment on his face.
On the third day after the telegram, when it was almost dark, a cool breeze blew into the ward, bringing with it the fragrance of the big mimosa tree that grew outside. Zhao Yiru, who had spent another day in despair, was extremely exhausted and had just fallen into a sound sleep.
At that moment, an old woman walked into the ward. From her expression and attire, one could see at once that she was a dignified country doctor or a country teacher. She wore clean, simple clothes, and her white hair was bound neatly at the back of her head, leaving her face looking pale and sad. She stepped into the ward without greeting anyone. She stopped just inside the door as her eyes searched the room, moving from one bed to the next until, as they settled on the corner bed, the sleeping Zhao Yiru suddenly, magically awoke. When his eyes met the woman’s, he immediately sat up straight, as if he’d been electrified.
This sudden burst of life startled his son and his wife, as well as the other patients in the ward, but the old man didn’t notice. Surprised and excited, he stared at the woman walking toward him. Two streams of tears ran down his face. The old woman hastened her steps. When she reached Zhao’s bed, her face was also full of tears. In front of all the other patients, the two white-haired people stared at each other, shedding silent tears. They did not move for a long time.
Finally, Zhao Yiru could not hold on any longer. His body shook. He fell stiffly back onto the bed. The old woman seized his hand. She firmly held his head and slowly lowered it onto the pillow like a loving mother gently putting down her sleeping baby. With tears still on his face, Zhao Yiru fell soundly asleep. His face looked serene and satisfied. He never woke again.
The old woman looked at Zhao Yiru’s face for the last time and gently covered his body with the quilt. Straightening up, she wiped her tears away, smoothed her hair, and thanked the relatives for sending her Zhao Yiru’s telegram.
Then, ignoring the curious looks from Zhao Yiru’s family, the old woman silently opened her cloth bundle and took out an embroidered pillow made of white satin. Carefully she put it under the head of the dead man. The snow-white pillow and the scarlet embroidery somehow bespoke a fiery youth, a pure and innocent childhood, and a binding love.
Zhao Yiru’s son, both terribly sad and wholly confused, felt that he should stop this woman who was behaving so eccentrically. He looked at his mother with a question in his eyes, silently asking, do you know who this woman is?
His mother shook her head. She didn’t know who the old woman was or why she had appeared at her husband’s deathbed. Yet she had made a promise to her husband on one of his last nights, when all was quiet and everyone else was asleep. The old man had asked her to sit down beside him and had looked at her steadily for a long time. Then he’d said
to her, “For my sake, please excuse whatever unexpected things happen at my death.”
She had asked him what he meant, but the old man had offered no explanation. He had never used such an urgent tone of voice with her before, nor had he ever looked at her in such a grave way. Quietly she had promised to do as he wished; she would excuse him for whatever might happen.
The appearance of the old woman, who seemed to be about the wife’s own age, shocked her and made her sad. Her heart told her to reject the old woman. Still, she felt sure that in forty years of marriage, her husband had never been unfaithful. Even at this moment she could not find fault with him. She resolved to honor her dead husband’s last wish. A kind and generous woman, she accepted and forgave what was happening before her.
The old woman from afar asked that the embroidered white-satin pillow be cremated with the old man. She participated in the entire funeral and watched as Zhao Yiru’s lanky figure became ashes and was put into a small, delicate case. Then, without any explanation, she quietly left.
Naturally everyone was curious. The townspeople kept talking about this rare story, speculating about what might have occurred between the two. Gradually they came to a conclusion: there must have been a grand and unusual love between Zhao Yiru and the white-haired woman. It must have begun when they were very young and been interrupted for some unknown reason. But neither time nor distance had truly separated them; an invisible thread had linked them together till the ends of their lives.
Some imagined the story in even greater detail. They hypothesized that when the love affair had ended, the two lovers had made a promise that they would see each other one more time at the very last moment of their lives. They vowed that when the first one died, the other would attend the funeral and reveal their love to family of the deceased.
This seemed far-fetched—but since no facts were forthcoming, the townspeople had only their imaginations to explain the strange events.
Many folks were upset by this rumor; they thought it showed disrespect to the dead. Besides, the story was hard to believe in light of the evidence. Everyone knew well that the math teacher, who’d been reserved and unsociable, had lived an upright life. A strict, straightforward life; even a boring one. His days had centered entirely on home and school, linking the two places as if they were points on a single line, a line that he’d traveled every day of his adult life. How could he possibly have been a participant in such a romantic story? How could such a great love have been hidden beneath such a nondescript life, only to be revealed at the very end?
Old Land, New Tales: Twenty Short Stories by Writers of the Shaanxi Region in China Page 17
