by Su Tong
This time I replied, ‘It doesn’t pay either way. Far better to have neither burnt.’
He looked stunned for a moment, then waved at me contemptuously. ‘Stupid. What do you know? The right hand’s way more important than the left. You need your right hand to eat and work and everything, don’t you?’
After Tan Feng came home, we didn’t play together any more. My mother forbade it, and the blacksmith and his wife wouldn’t allow me to play with him, either – they were now both of the opinion that I was the devious kind. I didn’t care what they thought of me, but I did listen carefully to the goings-on in their house, since I was anxious to know whether Tan Feng had been to the kiln yet, and whether he suspected me of taking the little red train.
That day finally came. We had already gone back to school when Tan Feng blocked my way in front of the gates. He looked distracted, and the expression in his eyes as he studied me was almost pleading. ‘Did you take it or not?’
I had prepared myself mentally for such a challenge; you wouldn’t believe how calm and streetwise I sounded. ‘Take what?’
Tan Feng answered quietly, ‘The train.’
I said, ‘What train? The train you stole?’
And Tan Feng replied, ‘I can’t find it. But I hid it so well, why can’t I find it?’
I urged myself to stay calm and not to mention the word kiln. ‘Didn’t you hide it in Mr Zhang’s pigsty?’ Tan Fang rolled his eyes at me, and after that he didn’t ask me any more questions. He took a few steps back, towards the sports grounds, his eyes fixed on me in confusion. I looked steadily back into his eyes and started walking in the same direction. You would never believe the way I acted that day, that an eight-year-old child could put on such a mature and composed manner. It wasn’t in my nature; it was all because of the little red train.
From then on Tan Feng and I went our separate ways. We were neighbours, but after that whenever we ran into each other, we would turn the other way. On my part, it was because of my guilty secret; on his the result of a deep wound. Because I believe Tan Feng’s heart was hurt as badly as his hand, and I have to take responsibility for both. I remember very clearly how, a few months later, he was brushing his teeth outside his home. I heard him call out my name and I ran out. Though he was still calling to me, he didn’t even glance my way. Instead he seemed to be talking to himself, saying, ‘Yu Yong, Yu Yong, I know what you are.’ I turned a deep red. He had obviously fathomed my secret. What puzzled me about it though was that ever since Tan Feng had returned from hospital, I had kept the toy train hidden away in the pressure cooker. Even my mother had failed to discover it, so how could Tan Feng know? Had he perhaps also relied on inspiration to guide him?
It sounds ridiculous, but after I got my hands on that train I rarely had a chance to play with it, let alone experience the joy of making it go. Only occasionally, when I was sure it was completely safe, did I take the lid off the pressure cooker and sneak a little look at it – only a look. What are you laughing at? At a thief ‘s guilty conscience? I did have a guilty conscience – actually it was more painful and complicated than that – I even saw the train a few times in my dreams, and in the dream it was always blowing its steam whistle. Then Tan Feng and the kids from town would come running to hear it and I would wake up quickly from fright. I knew that the steam whistle in my dream actually came from the Baocheng railway two kilometres away, but still I woke up in a cold sweat. You ask why I didn’t give the train back to Tan Feng, but that would have made no sense. Reason dictated I should give it back to the Chengdu girl, the real owner. The idea had occurred to me, and one day I even went up to the commune clinic’s door. I saw the girl in the courtyard playing Chinese skipping, happy as anything. She had forgotten all about the train a long time ago. Well, I thought, if she’s forgotten about it, what’s the point of doing a good deed and giving it back to her? And in an epithet I had learnt from Tan Feng, I swore at her, ‘Porkhead.’
Was I very bad? Yes, when I was a child, I was pretty bad: I went so far as to misappropriate stolen goods. But, in fact, that’s not the right question to ask. The real question is, with a secret like that – put yourself in my shoes – how could I surrender the train? And then, very soon, it was the winter holidays, and in the winter of that year my father was released from military service and we moved to Wuhan – our whole family moving here from our little town in Sichuan. This news made me extremely excited, not only because Wuhan is a big city but because it gave me the opportunity to put all the trouble with the train behind me. I looked forward more each day to our move; I looked forward to leaving Tan Feng and the town behind.
On the day we left, cold, heavy rain was falling. I was waiting with my family at the long-distance bus station when I saw somebody’s head appear and disappear outside the waiting-room window, then, after a moment, it appeared again. It was Tan Feng. I recognized him but decided to ignore him. It was my mother who had to tell me to go and say goodbye. ‘Tan Feng wants to say goodbye to you. You used to be good friends, how can you ignore him?’ And so I had to walk outside and go over to him. His clothes were soaked from the rain and he used his maimed hand to wipe away the water dripping from his hair; his eyes too were wet. He seemed to want to say something, but he didn’t open his mouth to speak. I grew impatient and turned away. He gripped one of my hands and I felt him slip something into it. Then he ran off, so fast he was almost flying.
As you will all have guessed, it was the key. The key to wind up the little red train! I remember that it was very wet, though whether from sweat or the rain I couldn’t say. I was very surprised; I hadn’t expected things to end like that. Even now I feel surprised by the way it ended. I wonder what Tan Feng meant by it?
None of the man’s friends seemed willing to answer the question. They were silent for a moment, and then someone asked Yu Yong, ‘Do you still have the train?’
He said, ‘No, not for a long time now. On the third day after we got to Wuhan, my parents packed it up in a box and sent it back to Dr He.’
Someone said awkwardly, ‘That’s really too bad.’
Yu Yong laughed and replied, ‘Yes, I suppose. But you have to consider it from my parents’ point of view. How could they have agreed to conceal stolen goods? How could they have let me become a thief?’
How the Ceremony Ends
It was last winter that the folklorist paid his visit to the village of Eight Pines. Carrying his rucksack by the straps, he jumped off the public bus from the city and started walking north-east. The road was covered in a thin layer of fine snow which, from afar, assumed a light-blue tint; shadows from the winding lines of high-voltage wires and telephone poles chequered the surface evenly. Occasionally, flocks of birds passed over the man’s head: sudden, but orderly nonetheless. The folklorist walked towards Eight Pines. By now, he too has become part of the landscape of my memory.
By the entrance to the village, an old man sat on the ground mending a large ceramic urn, his kit bag lying to one side. A tiny, dark red flame licked at a piece of melting tin; the smell of it crept through the air, which otherwise held only the crispness that comes after snowfall. The old man grasped a tin clamp with his tongs and squatted to examine the urn for cracks, but hearing the crunch of footsteps in the snow, he interrupted his work and glanced behind him. He saw a stranger walking towards Eight Pines, then turning back to the task in hand, he took no further notice of him. Spitting on a crack in the urn, he exerted all his strength to force the clamp inside; it held for only a moment before falling into the fire. The old man frowned, and as he did so he discovered the stranger was now standing behind him, gazing intently at the urn.
‘I held it in too long, now it’s gone too soft,’ the old man explained.
‘What period is it from?’ asked the folklorist.
‘What?’ said the old man.
‘The urn.’ The folklorist flicked the side of it with his index finger and a clear ringing resounded from it. Then he observed, ‘Dragon-a
nd-phoenix pattern. Longfeng. Qing Dynasty.’
The old man picked up another clamp with his tongs, and this time it fitted easily into the crack, filling it. He grinned at the folklorist and said, ‘There! That’s the way to do it! I’ve been mending pottery for fifty years now all around these parts. Where are you from?’
‘The city. Is this Eight Pines?’
‘More or less. What brings you here?’
‘I collect folk stories.’ The academic had hesitated before answering, thinking that an old man from the countryside might not understand what he meant by that.
‘Then you’ll need to find a storyteller. Who do you have in mind?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anyone here yet.’
‘You should look for Wulin.’ The old man grinned again. Then he bent over to blow out the fire and repeated, ‘Go and look for Wulin. He has stories coming out of his ears.’
The folklorist rested one hand on the urn and gazed around at the village in winter. The sun shone dimly on the paddies which were turning dry and white. The trees, scattered among the graves and ditches, had all let their leaves fall, and there was nothing to be seen of the pines he had envisaged. The most striking thing about the scene was a solitary scarecrow among the paddies, blackening with age, wearing a straw hat, in whose brim an intrepid bird had pecked holes.
Apparently the folklorist stayed in a classroom at the primary school. There are no hostels of any kind in Eight Pines, so that’s where outsiders are generally housed. You can sleep on the desks free of charge, but you have to be out by the time the morning bell rings. So in the mornings, the folklorist put on his rucksack and set out from the primary school. He demonstrated a particular interest in the village’s recessed doorways, walking in and out, examining them. His face was very pale and his upper lip clean-shaven; this, along with his beige anorak and the rucksack, made a deep impression on all the locals.
Before long, some of the older villagers of Eight Pines were relating what they knew of the area’s remaining customs while the folklorist took notes. They would sit in front of the village tavern’s stove, eating meat and drinking rice wine. By paying for everything, the folklorist was able to reap a new harvest every day. Once, remembering what the old man on the edge of the village had told him about Wulin, he asked the old people, ‘Which one of you is Wulin?’ The strange thing was that none of them could recall any such person, but then one of the old men, looking startled, called out, ‘I remember! Wulin . . . Wulin the ghost! But he’s been dead almost sixty years. He’s the one who drew the ghost, back when they used to cast lots for them.’
That was how the folklorist discovered that Eight Pines had once had a custom of casting ingot-shaped lots to designate a ‘man-ghost’. Immediately he sensed that this was likely to be the most valuable find of his research. He told the old people to take their time and give him a complete account of the practice, but they were all over eighty and expressed themselves so vaguely that he was only able to note down these brief impressions:
Notes
The custom of ghost-casting in Eight Pines was passed down from ancient times until the thirteenth year of the Republic5. The ceremony, held once every three years, consisted of choosing a human sacrifice from among the living in deference to the dead ancestors of the clan. All the people of the village gathered for the ceremony at the clan hall. Small ingots made of tinfoil were placed on the altar and unwrapped, one by one, by an elder. A single ingot was marked with the outline of a ghost, and the villager who drew this became the man-ghost. The man-ghost was then wrapped in white cloth, thrown into the large longfeng urn and beaten to death with sticks.
The folklorist was not particularly satisfied with these sketchy notes. Never in his entire career had he encountered such an appalling custom. In the heat of the tavern stove, his thoughts began to race feverishly, and finally it occurred to him that the ideal way of recording this custom for posterity would be to recreate it. Turning to a white-haired old man, he asked, ‘Do you recall how the ceremony used to be performed?’
The old man replied, ‘I remember it very clearly. No way of forgetting.’
‘Well then, why don’t we cast lots for a ghost, just so I can get a sense of it?’ said the folklorist.
The old man laughed merrily. ‘You can’t cast lots for ghosts any more.’
But the folklorist bought more bottles of rice wine and meat dishes and placed them in front of the old people, saying, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll do it just for fun. But I need you to help me a little, all right?’
From what I hear they were quick to consent, setting the winter solstice as the date and the elementary school as the location for the ceremony’s re-enactment. The arrangements were made in accordance with their recollections: they said that ghost-casting had always been conducted on the winter solstice, and that the school had been constructed on the grounds of what had once been the clan temple.
The weather preceding the solstice was chill but humid, and as the thin layer of snow melted into the black mud, the village recovered its former austere appearance. With the snow gone, barefoot farmers began to venture out into the paddies. They gathered the dried rice straw that had fallen throughout the autumn, and hurried home with it. Only the scarecrow stood still, watching over the frozen endless lands.
At the edge of the village, the folklorist saw the urn once again. It was listing slightly and an inch of water had accumulated in the base – melted snow, he presumed. He bent over to feel the moulded longfeng pattern of dragons and phoenixes, and then, giving it a few raps, said to himself, ‘This must have been the urn.’ The cracks had now all been filled by teeth-like tin clamps sunk solidly into the fissures. He nearly burnt his fingers on them, they were still scalding hot. He looked around and glimpsed the old pottery-mender with his kit bag, passing behind a grave mound and gradually disappearing from view.
‘Wulin,’ murmured the folklorist, remembering the ghost of sixty years ago. Then he couldn’t stop himself from laughing out loud. He walked around the urn once more; it was like walking into an older era in village life. It seemed as if the urn, which had once held corpses, was revolving on its base behind him. The fantastic customs of this village were provoking his imagination to greater and greater heights.
‘Wulin.’ Now he stretched his hand into the urn and felt the imaginary outline of Wulin’s wrecked skull. It was a mixture of blood and flesh, like jellyfish floating on the surface of the water. Removing his hand from the urn, he shook it to rid himself of the sensation, but nothing came off. Of course there was nothing in the urn but an inch of melted snow, and beneath that grey-brown moss. Nothing else. He hadn’t even really believed the illusion. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but wonder about the old man who had given him that useless, even malicious piece of advice to look for Wulin, a dead man, and ask him to tell stories.
The folklorist examined the fingers he had put in the urn, but there was nothing unusual about them except for their bloodless pallor; the result of the weather and his own anaemia.
At the winter solstice, the ghost-casting ceremony was re-enacted at Eight Pines. Some of the participants were old people who had come spontaneously, and through the help of the village council, the folklorist had managed to assemble even more of the local people. The folklorist wanted the ceremony to be as realistic as possible, saying that for him the best thing would have been to go back in time sixty years.
The altar was formed by pushing together school desks in a long line on the dirt floor. The villagers lit several candles and set these on the altar, along with offerings of meat, fish and dried fruits. More troublesome was the question of the foil ingots. Since there were approximately three hundred villagers, it was necessary to make that many ingots to put on the altar. The folklorist helped the old people as they rolled the foil into shape. Finally, on the paper lining of one of the sheets of foil, he sketched the outline of a ghost in red ink. This he gave to the venerable white-haired old man w
ho rolled the foil into an ordinary-looking ingot and threw it on the pile. Next, four people standing with their backs to the table mixed up the shimmering pile of ingots. Numbering over three hundred by now, these were arranged in a single long line, which wound from one end of the altar to the other, ceremonially confronting the villagers.
The villagers waiting to draw ingots stood solemnly in a similar winding line and filed gradually towards the altar. One after another, each of the villagers took an ingot and gave it to the old man. He unfolded each in turn, spreading it out on his palm. It was a long and solemn procedure and the villagers kept their eyes fixed on the old man, waiting for him to raise one of the pieces of foil above his head and say, ‘The ghost. This one’s the ghost.’
The folklorist’s place was towards the end of the line, and while he proceeded towards the altar he paid close attention to the events unfolding ahead. The villagers were passing one by one through the old man’s hands; the ghost was proving slow to appear. A thought occurred to the folklorist, but he dismissed it as too improbable. Shaking his head, he continued shuffling slowly towards the altar. Reaching it, he took one of the ingots, just like all the villagers had: there weren’t many left, but he had to choose one of them. As he walked up to the old man, he saw that there were thin white streaks of light, like snow, shining in his long beard, and as the old man held out his hand to take the ingot, it too was streaked with grey-white rays of light. The eerie sight made the folklorist shudder. Giving the old man the ingot he had selected, he thought, That’s not possible. It would be too theatrical. But he saw that the same light was now shining from the old man’s eyes too. He opened the ingot and raised it slowly above his head. Then the folklorist clearly heard the old man’s voice, brimming with emotion.
