Old Land, New Tales: Twenty Short Stories by Writers of the Shaanxi Region in China

by Chen Zhongshi

  2

  Engrossed in my painting, I suddenly heard a heavy cough from below the beacon tower. I stopped and looked down. At first I saw the back of a figure in a faded black shirt, emerging from the grass. His form appeared beside the collapsed part of the Wall and then headed in my direction. Finally, he turned onto the Great Wall and I saw that he was an old, bent man.

  A straw rope hung from his waist, and though it was July and a warm day, he wore a coarse cotton undercoat. In his hand he carried a small stick to round up the donkeys. Although his mustache was white, his face and the patch of bare chest that showed from his open collar were red with health. He smiled in a kindly way and his eyes glittered from his rugged, weather-beaten face.

  Naturally the sight of the old herdsman of the northern frontier inspired me and became part of my canvas. I greeted him while returning to my painting. “Hello! What are you doing?”

  “I’m a donkey herder.” He smiled as he removed a plastic tarp from his pack and then sat down on the ground. The plastic served him as a rain jacket and ground cloth. His posture was fantastic against the splendid backdrop of the sunset, the rolling profile of the Wall, and the vast expanse of desert.

  He was cheerful. Years of herding donkeys along the Great Wall had given him few chances to meet strangers. On meeting me, he poured out his warmth as if I were an old friend. He asked me with interest, “Where are you from?”

  “Guanzhong.”

  “Ah, yes; your accent tells me you’re from Huazhou.” He chuckled. “Why, I’ve been to Huazhou once. Years ago there was an uprising there and it was a tough fight. In those days I was with the revolutionary Liu Zhidan. Your land is level and flat and the noodles you eat are long and wide. Huazhou has lots of white flour and red-bean gruel, isn’t that so?”

  Incredible! I was awestruck by this old donkey herder. Had he been part of the Weihua uprising? I asked, “Were you in the Red Army?”

  “Oh my, that was forty years ago—when I was your age. I was fearless and daring. Traveled north and south as if nothing could harm me. The uprising failed. I rode around attacking the Japanese devils and chasing the Dazui bandits around Mount Tian in Xinjiang. I got wounded in the leg and then I retired.”

  I learned that he was sixty-eight and that his wife was dead. She’d left behind a daughter of nineteen.

  “Aren’t Red Army veterans supported with food, clothing, fuel, and education?” I asked. “I thought the Five Guarantee Policy ordered local governments to take care of that.”

  He shook his head. “I can still move around and don’t need that relief. Years ago, I was given a subsidy of twenty-five yuan a month. But during the Cultural Revolution, they said I was a fraud. They couldn’t find the papers to prove my Party membership or that I belonged to the Red Army. So they took my name off the relief roll and took away the payments.” He heaved a sigh. “In those days, we rushed about here and there fighting in battles all the time. How could a ‘file’ be kept?”

  “Oh, it’s too bad that that happened.”

  He smiled cheerfully. “I can still move around. Even if I can’t do heavy work, I can look after the donkeys. But I do have difficulty walking now. My daughter pitied me and dropped out of school; now she tends the donkeys with me. She runs fast, so I don’t have to worry about the donkeys chewing on trees or eating the crops.”

  I was overcome with emotion. “You shed blood for the country and have nothing left. Don’t you want some help?”

  “No, no.” The old man shook his head. “The leader of the commune is very kind, and he wrote an affidavit for me. The county government asked me to find a witness, but all the witnesses are dead. No one can provide proof. I’m just a little drop of dew. I’m a nobody.”

  I suddenly heard a rustling behind me. As nimble as a little lamb, a young girl jumped out in front of us. She was not very tall and yet she was smartly turned out, wearing a blue blouse and a pair of green trousers that were patched at the knee. Her bare brown ankles were visible above a pair of grass-green rubber shoes. On her back she carried a load of hay that was dotted with red, purple, blue, and white wildflowers. Concealed among the flowers, her pretty oval face had the flush of dawn. A beam of light danced from a pair of charming eyes. At the corner of her small and exquisite mouth she held a sprig of red lao’an flower. She impressed me as a lively and mischievous girl.

  She didn’t say a word—just inclined her head, watching me paint. She couldn’t conceal her delight at seeing me sketching her father, the old Red Army man. Eventually she jumped behind her father and shook his shoulder: “It’s getting cold. Let’s go home, Dad.” She spoke with a sweet, girlish voice.

  At that moment I heard the jingling of the bells and felt something warm by my side. I was surprised to see that the black donkeys had climbed onto the battlement with the girl and seemed to be giving my picture a stolid look.

  “My daughter’s name is Liuhua—she’s named for the lao’an flower. She tends the donkeys with me every day.”

  I said, “She’s still young; she should go to school.”

  The old man replied, “In recent years, it was a mess here in the dust bowl region. No food could be found, and so most men migrated to other places—and that left no one to herd the donkeys. We can’t just let the commune break down, can we? So Liuhua quit school.”

  Liuhua lowered her head and kicked a clod of earth.

  As they prepared to leave, I colored in the sketch of the old Red Army man and presented it to him. He shook my hand joyfully. “Comrade, please come to our village and drop in sometime when you’re free. There’ll be food in the fall, and Liuhua will make sweet glutinous millet cake and stewed mutton for you.”

  Liuhua was silent. She took her father’s arm and led him down from the beacon tower. I gazed at the back of the old Red Army man and his daughter as they faded into the wilderness, barely visible through the evening mist. Suddenly, loneliness filled my heart as if I had lost something.

  After a long while I could still hear the jingle of the bells. Their sound rang out merrily, like hundreds of birds singing in unison or a brook rippling through a forest. The sound echoed over the expanse of the Great Wall, and all at once I saw Liuhua jump onto the back of a donkey and wave at me with a bunch of wildflowers in her hand. The jingle of the donkey bells rushed into my soul like a song from the bottom of a maiden’s heart.

  3

  Two years later, I returned to the border town.

  The lao’an trees were in bloom. The thickets of lao’an blossoms were like the red glow of dawn that set off the ancient Great Wall, extending far into the distance. Beyond the Great Wall lay an expanse of grass and myriads of flowers. As before, it was the springtime of July in the region.

  I lodged in the primary school of a village along the Wall. To my surprise, classes were already suspended. The head of the commune who escorted me there told me that the schoolteacher, Wang Junhai, had recently been promoted to clerk for the local Chinese Youth League at a nearby commune named Gaojia. No one had yet been found to take his place, and so the school was closed.

  Wang Junhai was apparently a versatile young man. When he was in the village, he painted, sang, and played musical instruments all by himself. In the clay cottage where I stayed, I saw remnants of a musical score on the wall and a pile of discarded music books at the end of the kang.

  As usual, I walked along the Great Wall. It had just rained and the air was particularly fresh and clean. Around spots that had been sand heaps a few years back, some groves of elms and acacia had been planted. A sand road bearing tractor-tire marks wound into the heart of the woods. A small canal of silicate bricks passed among the trees. The ancient Great Wall was tinged pale green; it looked almost alive as it stretched into the desert and off again to the horizon. There was a profound serenity here.

  Having feasted my eyes on the beautiful scenery of the borderland, I returned to the primary school. I heard something stirring in the kitchen; the smell of tasty food f
illed the air. Then a figure in a red shirt flashed past the doorway.

  “It’s time for lunch, Comrade!”

  It was a girl’s voice outside the door—and when I looked up I was speechless. Liuhua! It was indeed the girl I’d encountered on the Great Wall two years before. She was taller now and more slender. She wore a red shirt of homespun plaid, and her braid was hidden under a blue cotton school cap. Her eyes seemed bigger and darker, and they glistened unfathomably.

  “Liuhua!”

  “You are . . . ?”

  “I drew a picture for your father at the Great Wall near the border town, one summer.”

  Her dark eyes twinkled and a faint smile emerged at the corners of her mouth. She didn’t say anything, but she lowered her head.

  Little had I imagined that she lived in this village and was called upon to cook for me! I chatted with her and learned that she was still herding the donkeys with her father. But the old man was sick these days and couldn’t stir when the weather changed.

  A bowl of white rice and a porcelain dish of mutton were served. I was amazed that they had such fine rice in this poor, remote area of the northern frontier.

  “We grew some rice in the river bend,” she said, sitting opposite me without eating. She spoke softly; it was obvious that she was now grown-up and shy.

  I took a swallow of the rice and asked, “How much rice do you reap in a year? And how much can be rationed to the commune members?”

  She gave a strained smile. “There are only some dozens of acres of farmland. Rice is for the visiting cadres. Sometimes it’s ordered when a commune meeting is held. We get a small amount rationed to us during the Spring Festival.”

  She said nothing further. Yet there was something in her eyes that looked too much like a deep, tranquil lake.

  One evening after supper, I said, “Let’s go to your home. I want to see your father.”

  Liuhua was agitated and shook her head, saying, “No, no!” She looked distressed. At last she said, “Dad is sick and the room is dirty.”

  She lowered her head and was choked with sobs.

  We walked along the winding sand road. In the summer night the sky was all the more blue above the frontier fort. The light of the moon touched the Great Wall and formed a silver line.

  When we passed through a lao’an grove, I saw lamplight coming from the donkey shed and heard the jingle of the donkey bells. How familiar and genial were those little bells. Yet it looked dreary in the silence of the night.

  Neither of us uttered a sound. The small yard of the donkey shed was fenced with a mud wall. The lamplight came from a side room of the hut. I entered; this was her home. In the light of a small oil lamp, the old Red Army man was lying on his side on the mud-brick kang. He coughed repeatedly; his bare, brown back was bent. When he saw me he continued to cough, but his eyes lit up with joy.

  He rose and spoke happily into my ear: “It has been two years. You still remember me.”

  I held his hot hands and said loudly, “I came here to draw a picture of the Great Wall and see you, too.”

  “Ho!” He smiled merrily. “The Great Wall! You must do it well. When you finish it would you give me one?”

  Liuhua quietly left the room while we chatted about the old days. I asked him about the relief payment.

  “The allowance was finally granted. But Director Wang of our commune said that once the county government implements the policy for me, then Liuhua might be given a job in the county seat.” He seemed upset. His white mustache fluttered. “We don’t like that idea. If everyone leaves the village, then who will grow the crops? We shouldn’t give trouble to the Party as some people did. Once they got promoted to high positions, they began using their power for their own benefit, planning the future for their own children. I’ve hated that all my life.”

  He fumbled for some tobacco leaves in a shallow basket and packed them into a sheep-bone pipe. He drew on the pipe and then passed it to me. He seemed to pout a bit beneath his mustache and said with a heavy heart, “In recent years I haven’t been feeling well, but I’m not giving up easily. There is one thing that troubles me, though, and that is Liuhua’s marriage. I just can’t let go!”

  He sighed and then continued. “A few years ago, Junhai, the local schoolteacher, fell in love with Liuhua. The lad is clever and honey-mouthed, and he kept writing her love letters. He even wrote her poems that I couldn’t understand. Liuhua is unsophisticated. Soon they were engaged. Who would have known? Then Junhai left the village and got established as the Youth League secretary of the commune and never came back. Liuhua’s engagement was put aside. My daughter was heartbroken; I was seized with regret and fell ill. What can I do?”

  The old man lay down on his stomach on the rim of the kang and coughed incessantly. I patted his back and tried to comfort him, but I was too indignant to speak.

  It was late at night when I left the mud hut. A curve of crescent light hung at the zenith of the sapphire sky. Sitting on a tree trunk in the middle of the yard, Liuhua was bathed in the soft moonlight as though coated with frost. Silent and motionless, she sat there like a jade statue.

  I lay wide-awake that night in the room of the primary school. That July evening in the north by the Great Wall was fresh and cool. Now and then a dog barked and the wind murmured. The night wind blew on the paper windowpane. The jingling of donkey bells echoed in my ear. The sound, mellow and clear, reverberated in the cool night air.

  4

  I made a special trip to the commune seat for the sake of Liuhua. It turned out that it was Director Wang of the commune who had escorted me to the village when I’d first arrived.

  Wang heaved a sigh and said, “Alas, there’s little that can be done to save Liuhua’s engagement. I went to talk to Junhai, but he said his mother wouldn’t consent. Junhai has been promoted and now has a permanent urban residency, while Liuhua is just a peasant. I’m am afraid it wouldn’t work.”

  Nevertheless, Wang did offer some hope. He told me that he’d reported Liuhua’s situation to the county government, and the replacement policy suggested that it might be possible to find Liuhua another job. Wang smiled and added, “If she has a job, then there will be hope for a marriage.”

  It was almost lunchtime when I returned to the village. The sun shone high over the vast expanse of grassland. The line of the Great Wall faded into the endless sea of sand. The desert was still except for an occasional bird’s cry; it was almost soundless.

  As soon as I climbed up onto the Great Wall battlement, I heard the familiar jingle of donkey bells resounding from beyond the grass pool. Soon I saw those black, antlike donkeys faintly in the grass.

  I looked far into the distance; the bells rang merrily. Ah, Liuhua—it must be she tending the donkeys. I ran toward the other side of the grass pool, shouting, “Liuhua, Liuhua . . .”

  But there was no answer. Not until I reached the donkeys did I discern, immersed in the waist-deep grass, the back of a twisting and turning figure wearing a patched, dark-blue shirt. Now I could see clearly that it was the Red Army man, stooped in the grass, using a scythe to cut fodder. His back shook with the labor.

  He was clearly very ill—but what sustained him was grazing the donkeys. I tried to call to him, but the words caught in my throat.

  The old man turned and, wiping the sweat off his forehead, shouted at me, “Hurry back for lunch. It has already passed dinnertime. You must be starving.”

  Suddenly he collapsed onto the grass, still smiling at me. His gaunt, sallow face and naked chest streamed with sweat.

  “You’re sick,” I said in a pained voice. “You need to rest. It is such a hot day, you—”

  He interrupted: “Work is a cure for all kinds of illnesses. I work, I sweat, and the illness is gone. Besides, Liu’er, my little Liuhua, does all the cooking, so I just need to ‘cook’ for the donkeys.” He laughed good-naturedly. When he untied his haying band, a few potatoes were revealed.

  I said, “You go back to e
at something warm. I’ll look after the donkeys for you.”

  The old Red Army man said, “These potatoes are cooked and they’re tasty.” He blew the dust off the potatoes and began eating.

  “Let me have one.”

  “No, not for you.” He pulled a long face. “You’re an artist and your stomach is delicate. We have white rice for you. These are not good enough to feed the donkeys.”

  He would not give me a potato, but stuffed one big lump into the mouth of a small, grayish donkey crouched at his feet, coaxing, “Come on, you greedy little girl, here’s something tasty for you.”

  He soon ate up the potatoes and wiped his mouth. Then he stood with a bent back and walked slowly to a small stream. He shouted, “Are you thirsty? Here’s sweet springwater.”

  “What? Sweet water? In this desolate desert?”

  “Ho, ho, you’ve never had it before? The springwater in the desert is sweeter than sugar.”

  The old Red Army man bowed down over the edge of the pond and gulped down several mouthfuls of fresh water. He wiped the beads of water off his mustache and slurped, “Great! Fantastic! How sweet!”

  He pulled out a hollow grass stem and handed it to me. “You suck it with the stem. It’s cool and nice.”

  I thrust the stem into the water and began to drink. He was right. “How sweet and cool. I’ve never had such delicious springwater before.”

  Seeing me so content, the old man said to me with a smile, “Young man, you should know that the reason the people here on the northern frontier are so healthy and robust is the sweet springwater!” He laughed heartily again, which induced the donkeys to cluster around and jingle their bells with a merry sound.

  At noon the next day, Liuhua rushed into my room. Eyes wide, she asked me, “Comrade, do you have the commune’s official seal?”

  “What is it?” I asked. I noticed that she carried a sack of food on her back.

  “It’s my dad. He had a fever when he came home late last night, and he also has diarrhea. Actually, he’s been sick for some time, but I did not think that today . . .”