The Girl with No Face

by M. H. Boroson

  She met my eyes for a moment, a gaze that made her look ancient as the cliffs. A second later, something softened in her face, and she looked away. “I do not mean to insult either your kind or your creed, so I apologize for that. It’s just that there are so many of the Han, so many Daoists, and I’m all alone. Nobody but me remembers my people, nobody knows the things I know. I wish I could share all this with you.”

  I gazed at her, assessing. Mrs. Wei had only the first whiteness blossoming in her hair, but life had left wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. She was so alone. Life manhandled us all, time bullied us, and the passing years built us into who we were. What’s past was past, no more than bones mouldering in a dry gulley; yet the past was the one thing we could never change. Our choices in the present determined who we would be tomorrow and where we would arrive ten years from now; but the past was final, and each of us had one. I asked myself once again, how to heal the wounds time leaves on us all? How to wash the blood of our loved ones away? Was it even possible? Time was not some kind of river we could swim upstream; the days gone by would remain gone, the people we loved and lost would not return to us. Not ever.

  “You want me to be a repository for lost knowledge,” I said.

  “Would that be such a terrible fate, Li-lin?”

  “It would be a heavy responsibility, Mrs. Wei. And I am already struggling under the weight of so many burdens.”

  “You came here today asking my help with something, Li-lin. And I am willing to offer you my help, if you accept this burden.”

  “Let me tell you why I came here today, Mrs. Wei. A girl has been murdered. I came to you to ask your help, so I can figure out who is responsible, and protect others from her killer.”

  “Murdered?” she said.

  I nodded. “Please, Mrs. Wei, help me understand what is happening here.”

  She stood up at the gaming table, unconsciously still holding a mah jongg tile. She slowly turned in place, absorbing this new information.

  “I will help you, Li-lin,” she said, “but only if you will let me teach you.”

  “Mrs. Wei, I don’t believe you are any more willing than I am to allow a girl’s murder to go unavenged.”

  Our eyes met and held for a long while, over the wooden table and the mah jongg tiles, in the room whose walls were lined by drawers filled with herbs. Eventually she looked away. “All right, Li-lin. Of course you’re right. I hope you’ll change your mind about learning from me, but first let’s go over what you need to know. What do you need help with?”

  I laughed, but there was no delight in it. “So much, Mrs. Wei. There are terrible plans in motion, in addition to the murdered girl, a girl without a face tried to sacrifice herself for me . . . .”

  “I have some time free, and even my husband knows better than to come into the gaming room while I’m scheduled for mah jongg. So take your time and tell me. One at a time.”

  I told her about Xu Shengdian and his wife, Anjing; about her missing soul; about the faceless girl who had been a paper offering created by my father.

  “He neglected to draw a face on the offering?” Mrs. Wei asked.

  “I do not believe it was neglect,” I said. “I think someone commissioned the figure from Papercrafter Yi and hired my father to make an offering of it. I believe he fulfilled the terms of the transaction. In his position, I also would have thought the request odd, but seen no harm in it.”

  She stayed silent. I continued.

  “I believe the hex that killed Xu Anjing was part of a larger-scale ritual, and I believe it was for that ritual that the faceless girl, Meimei, was created.”

  “‘Meimei’?” she asked. “Her name is ‘Little Sister’?”

  I flushed, embarrassed. “I named her.”

  “Interesting choice of name,” she said.

  “I did not put much thought into it,” I said.

  “The name makes sense, Li-lin,” she said. “Your father created both of you, he shaped you both and clothed you both and never gave either of you any face.”

  “Please do not speak ill of my father, Mrs. Wei,” I said, perhaps more sharply than I intended.

  I told her then about the Ghost Magistrate, the Investiture, and the vampire tree. She was quiet for a few moments, considering.

  “Do you have any petals from it, Li-lin?”

  I nodded and brought out the envelope holding the stem and petals. I watched her pick it up, examine it from multiple directions, hold it to the light, and sniff it.

  “I have never seen this before, Li-lin. Do you know anything more about it? I’ve never even heard of Xixuemo Shu.”

  “My father once encountered a kind of vampire tree that came from South America,” I said. “It grew inside a girl, made her go blind and deaf, and then it killed her.”

  “It seems like your father is the man with all the answers,” she said, “again. And once again, there is nothing I can offer you.”

  “There are other things I can show you. Here,” I said, removing the piece of paper Meimei dropped the previous night. I unfolded it and reached out to hand it to Mrs. Wei.

  She stood there, not taking the paper, looking at me strangely.

  “What is wrong, Mrs. Wei?”

  “Li-lin,” she said, “there is nothing in your hand.”

  “Oh!” I looked down at the spirit of a piece of paper only visible to those with yin eyes and snickered at myself. “Let me copy it over for you.”

  She gave me paper and ink, and waited as I transcribed the spirit writing. The rows and columns of numbers, the oddly paired words. She watched over my shoulder as I copied the information; her expression told me that she had no idea what the paper was about.

  She clucked her tongue. “I’m useless,” she said. “Just a useless old woman. I can’t do anything for you.”

  “There’s still one more thing,” I said. “Last night, I was attacked by undead cat skeletons. I think they were being animated and controlled by someone using Gong Tau.”

  “‘Gong Tau’ is a meaningless expression, Li-lin. You should know better.”

  “I know it’s a general expression, Mrs. Wei . . .”

  “For all forms of rituals that are practiced to the south or east of China,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, there are people from those regions who practice magic. But they’re not all the same thing. They’re different from each other.”

  “I understand, Mrs. Wei. But I believe someone used a hex from one of those regions to animate bones that tried to kill me in the night.”

  “You brought some of these bones with you?”

  I nodded. The bones had stopped squirming when the sun rose this morning. One by one, I withdrew them from my satchel and laid them on the mah jongg table, like playing tiles in the world’s most morbid game.

  Her expression changed. “Li-lin, is this some kind of a joke?”

  “Mrs. Wei?”

  “Are you teasing me? Mocking the ignorant tribeswoman? Because even I can look at this and tell you this isn’t really any kind of magic.”

  “Please explain?”

  “It’s just what I said, Li-lin. Look at these symbols. They’re nonsense. Gibberish, not even consistent with each other.”

  “I had a sense of that too, Mrs. Wei, but I did not understand what it means.”

  “It means these are fake spells, Li-lin. That term you use, ‘Gong Tau,’ it refers to all kinds of magic you Han Chinese consider barbaric. But the spells come from different places, they develop over time, and they bear the mark of whoever created them; there will be markings, patterns, a kind of uniqueness. But not this. This . . . is just nonsense.”

  I said nothing.

  “This is what a Han Chinese child would imagine ‘Gong Tau’ looks like. Full of fearful imaginings, scary stories, and spooky, meaningless symbols.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you seen snow, Li-lin?”

  “I have, Mrs. Wei. A long time ago.”

&nbs
p; “Well, suppose you want to describe snow to people who’ve never seen it. You might say it’s frozen rain, and they’d imagine something different from actual snow—an ice storm, perhaps, if they’ve seen ice. They imagine pellets of ice shaped like raindrops falling; but that isn’t what snow is. There is the description of snow, and there is the reality of it: two different things.

  “This magic is like that, Li-lin. There are traditions, and there are the descriptions of them; the descriptions don’t come close to the actual rituals. Whoever drew these symbols was basing them on the descriptions. They never set eyes on any tribe’s rituals. This was done by someone who was trying to imitate the Han Chinese description of Gong Tau, rather than someone who actually learned a tradition.”

  “Why would someone do this, Mrs. Wei? And how would these nonsense spells be able to animate dead bones?”

  She thought for a long moment. “Suppose,” she said at last, “someone encounters a tremendously powerful being. Suppose this person wants to draw on its power for luck, or for vengeance. He wants to ask this godlike entity for help.”

  “What kind of being are you thinking of, Mrs. Wei?”

  “You know how animals and objects grow power as they age,” she said.

  I nodded. Mao’er, the cat spirit with two tails, was somewhere between fifty and a hundred years old, and I also knew a tiger in human shape who was over two hundred years old, with three tails.

  “A thousand year old fox will grow nine tails, and have power greater than any ordinary deity,” she said. “A millennium snake, a ten thousand year tree . . . Suppose a man who wants to be a sorcerer makes contact with such an entity, but can’t communicate with it. Perhaps they don’t speak the same language. Or maybe it only recently became conscious. Suppose,” she said, “something ancient has recently awakened, found itself conscious and capable, and this person wants to offer it service in exchange for good luck or hexes.”

  “I see,” I said. “If this person has no way to communicate with the entity, but it gives him some reason to consider it demonic, then he might think the way to communicate with it is through Gong Tau.”

  “But knowing no actual rituals, he cobbles something together, a silly mishmash of what he thinks the hexes of dark-skinned people in the jungle would look like,” she said. “And suppose this entity is able to understand what goes on in his mind, and does what he asks it to . . .”

  “He might think his hexes were effective, when in fact this powerful being simply was moved by the intentions and the focus of the false spells and granted his wish. So what else might he do, Mrs. Wei?”

  “What do you mean, Li-lin?”

  “If someone believes he is performing Gong Tau rituals when he is actually just acting out the ignorant fantasies of frightened outsiders, then what other false beliefs is he likely to enact?”

  “You’re asking me about the bogus spells the Han Chinese imagine people from Southeast Asia perform? Li-lin, you, being Han, would know that better than I do.”

  “Mrs. Wei,” I said, “I think every time you’ve heard one of us tell tall tales about Gong Tau, you’ve scorned the falsehoods, but you’ve been listening nonetheless.”

  She snorted, but then she grew serious, and took a deep breath. “Horrible things,” she said. “There are rituals that no one from any tribe has ever practiced, but that the Han believe they perform. For instance, they say that a man who wants to master Gong Tau needs to murder his closest living male relative and . . .” She trailed off.

  “Please continue, Mrs. Wei?”

  “And eat him, Li-lin.” She paused, considering what to say next. “But these are just fictions, Li-lin. Scary stories men tell to give each other shivers.”

  “What else would tend to happen in these stories?”

  She shook her head. “The knife he used to chop his family member apart would have special powers. And he would use it to do things like cut off parts of his own body in sacrifice to the evil gods he supposedly worships.”

  “I cannot comprehend how someone could mutilate himself for power,” I said.

  “Can’t you, Li-lin? Your father did.”

  “Mrs. Wei?”

  “His eye, child.”

  I choked. “He did that, for me.”

  “Yet it is not so different. All of us have goals we are willing to make sacrifices for. Your father was willing to sacrifice his eye to save you. There’s no telling what people will do to get the things they want most.”

  “So this person would mutilate himself to increase his power. He’d murder people he cares about. He’d eat horrible things to fortify his abilities. What do you think it means that he used cat skeletons?”

  She thought for a few moments. “That there are too many stray cats in Chinatown.”

  “This has been helpful, Mrs. Wei.”

  She nodded, looked away, crossed her arms.

  I gazed at her for a few seconds, considering. “Mrs. Wei, how often do you play mah jongg?”

  “Once or twice a week, some other wives join me here.”

  “How often do you need a fourth player?”

  Her eyes widened. “Sometimes,” she said.

  “If your mah jongg table needs a fourth player, you may invite me,” I said. “As I am not a very good player, perhaps I could arrive early or stay after the others have left, so you could teach me.”

  “You want me to teach you about mah jongg.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Wei. And if the discussion strays to other subjects, like recipes or quilting, that would be all right.”

  She turned her face away from me, but her shoulders shook as if she was about to start sobbing. “Li-lin,” she said, but she said no more.

  “Mrs. Wei, what is your personal name?”

  “Xiu-Ying,” she said.

  “That’s a Han name. Were you born with a different name?”

  “Yes. Yes. It’s—” and then she said something whose syllables sounded completely foreign to my ear.

  I tried to repeat her name. “Mngkhiöixsgkhta?”

  Mrs. Wei’s laugh came from the throat and the heart, and it filled the room with warmth. “No, Li-lin, not even close. But I appreciate you trying.”

  SIXTEEN

  Where now, Li-lin?” Mr. Yanqiu asked. “And will there be tea?”

  “I am sorry, my friend,” I said, continuing to walk. “My father’s talismans shield all the buildings I need to see this afternoon; you will not be able to go inside with me.”

  He harrumphed on my shoulder, crossing his arms and sulking. “Why aren’t you going to see him right now, anyway? He seems to have information that will clarify many of your mysteries.”

  “My father has a unique gift when it comes to leaving me an infuriated, emotional mess, and that is not the state of mind I would choose to occupy at the moment. No, I think I must begin by speaking with Mr. Xu.”

  “The dead girl’s husband?”

  “That is correct, Mr. Yanqiu. He has always seemed a wonderful man, but I have questions. How did Anjing play music if she does not play an instrument? Is his childhood in Peru related to these vampire trees?”

  The eyeball nodded, and I walked. I did not know where Mr. Xu lived; he paid to be a member of both of Chinatown’s major tongs, and probably some of the smaller ones as well, so I could not be certain where his quarters were. Still, the “Gambling God” was known to while away his hours in the gaming halls, so that was where to start.

  “I am looking for Xu Shengdian,” I said at one hall, and at another parlor I said, “Have you seen Xu Shengdian?”

  At the fifth hall, I received a surprising response. “I saw him, he said he’s looking for you too.”

  The informant told me I’d find Mr. Xu dining at Hung Sing Restaurant, at the end of Bai Gui Jiang Lane. On the bottom floor of the three-story restaurant, in the back, the leader of the Ansheng tong held court. The Ansheng had once been my protectors, my extended family, but no longer, and now that I was in the employ of their mos
t bitter rival, the Xie Liang tong, the central headquarters of the Ansheng was not a place I felt welcome.

  Arriving at Bai Gui Jiang Lane, I searched out a place near the restaurant where I could leave Mr. Yanqiu for a while. Beneath a crudely painted sign that read WONG CHIN ARK LAUNDRY, I found steam escaping from a basement vent, and I plopped the little eyeball man down in the steam. He stretched his tiny arms and legs, rotating in place while the steam washed over him. “Invigorating!” he said, teetering on his toes to luxuriate in the blow of damp air.

  “I’ll be back before too long,” I said.

  I walked to the restaurant at the end. Pinned to its doors, paper posters printed with the images of the Door Gods had been left too long in humidity and sunlight; the center of each sheet buckled and its edges curled. So often, a practice started in respect will end in neglect. Yet protecting these doors and displaying their deities was my father’s responsibility. For a man of such fastidiousness and reverence, the poor condition of these posters showed me how much he was struggling. It affected him more than he’d admit, losing both his eye and his daughter. Looking at the crumbling posters, I ached for him and ached for us, ached for every crumbling thing.

  Moments later I entered Hung Sing, the restaurant-slash-rooming-house-slash-brothel-slash-gang-headquarters.

  The sharpness of the gazes around me was startling. I had not felt entirely welcome here even when I was my father’s daughter, protected by the brotherhood, but now, when I entered, men stopped eating and quietly placed their chopsticks on their plates. Silence followed. In the silence, I heard a man spitting into a pan.

  “Please may I see Xu Shengdian, the ‘Gambling God,’” I said, and men were quick to rush around me. Holding my arms, they conducted me through a doorway into a hall; from behind the doors in this hall, moans emitted, and the sounds of rocking back and forth, a rhythmic pumping. Sometimes it felt like half of the few women in Chinatown worked behind these red doors, sweating and grunting, to pay their keep.

  In the hallway, the men were so tightly wedged I could barely move. The cluster shifted around me, parting to admit an authoritative younger round-faced man who wore a pair of thick glasses. Strands of hair escaped his ill-kept queue, and sweat had pasted them to his stubbly forehead.