Shaogong, han - A Dictionary of Maqiao.html

by A Dictionary of Maqiao (lit)

  I didn't know who was yelling in the distance, neither did I have any idea what was being yelled. It was only a long time after the event that I figured out this person was yelling at me to hurry up and pull out the ploughshare.

  It was already too late. The ploughshare, stuck in the seam of rock, broke with a clang, and the entire plough frame twisted off into pieces.

  The rope halter also snapped. Awash with the excitement of winning freedom, powered by a vast, unstoppable force, Three-Hairs headed bellowing for the mountains, its stride often lapsing into lop-sided leaps, surging with a never-before-experienced happiness.

  That day, its nose was ripped through and it almost hacked off its own leg. In addition to breaking a plough, it also mowed down a telegraph pole, flattened a low wall, stamped to pieces a large bamboo basket, and barged over a manure shed in the village as it was being repaired-if the two people putting up the shed hadn't dodged quickly out of the way, they might not have escaped with their lives.

  After this, I no longer dared use this ox. When the team leader decided to sell it, I gave my enthusiastic approval.

  Zhihuang didn't agree the ox should be sold. His reasoning was somewhat singular: he'd fed this ox grass and water, he said, he'd got the doctor over to give it medicine when it was ill, if he said not to sell it, who had the right to sell it? The cadres said, you use the ox but you can't then say the ox's yours, you need to distinguish clearly between public and private. The ox was bought with the team leader's money. Zhihuang said, the landlord's fields were bought with money, but after land reform, weren't the landlord's fields all divided up? The fields went to whoever used them-wasn't this the same principle?

  Everyone felt there was nothing much wrong with his reasoning.

  "Accidents will happen. When Guan Yunchang threw Jingzhou away, did Zhu Geliang kill him, or sell him?" Even after everyone had finished talking and dispersed, Zhihuang was still wandering along making new points to himself.

  Three-Hairs wasn't sold, but died at the hands of Zhihuang, in a finale that no one would have predicted. He staked his own honor on Three-Hairs: if this beast injured anyone again, he declared, he'd take the axe to it himself. He couldn't go back on what he'd said. One spring day, when everything in the world was sprouting back to life, sounds and colors shifting under the warm sunlight, a secret disquiet pervaded the air. Just as Zhihuang was driving Three-Hairs down the field, suddenly the animal's whole body shuddered, its eyes fixed straight ahead, and with a yank of the ploughshare it charged forward insanely, tramping the mud, smack-smack-splatter, into a rising and falling curtain of water.

  Caught unawares, Zhihuang eventually identified Three-Hairs' target: a red dot at the side of the road. It was only afterwards that he found out it'd been a woman passing by from a neighboring village wearing a jacket with red flowers on it.

  Oxen are particularly sensitive to the color red and often react to it aggressively-nothing strange about that. What was strange was that Three-Hairs, who'd always been led by the nose by Zhihuang, went mad like it did that day, became deaf, oblivious to the shouts and screams of its master. Not long after, a woman's high-pitched scream carried over.

  In the evening, definite news came back from the commune clinic to Maqiao: the woman's star must have been in the ascendant, as she'd hung onto her life, but Three-Hairs had tossed her up into the air, smashing a bone in her right leg, and her fall to the ground had left her with a concussion.

  Zhihuang hadn't gone to the clinic; dazed, alone, he sat at the side of the road fingering a half-length of ox rope. Three-Hairs was not far off, timidly eating grass.

  When he returned to the village at dusk, he set Three-Hairs under the maple tree at the mouth of the village and searched out half a bowl of yellow beans to stuff into Three-Hairs' mouth. Three-Hairs probably sensed something was up and kneeled down before him, murky tears dropping from its eyes. He'd picked out a thick, coarse hemp rope and knotted it into a noose, looped round each of the beast's four legs. A good, long axe was grasped in his hand.

  The village herd of oxen produced an anxious lowing chorus that merged into wave upon wave of echoes, swirling round the mountains and valleys. The setting sun sank, all of a sudden, into gloom.

  He kept watch in front of Three-Hairs, waiting and waiting for it to finish eating the yellow beans. A few women thronged round, Fucha's mother, Zhaoqing's mother, Zhongqi's wife, wiping their noses, their eyes reddened. They said to Zhihuang, he's got himself into trouble, you know, you're sparing him, really, by settling things now. They then turned to Three-Hairs: it's no one's fault but your own things have turned out like this. Weren't you in the wrong, X number of years ago, when you hurt that ox in Zhangjia District? D'you admit you did wrong, Y number of years back, when you killed that ox from Longjia Sands? There was that time you almost kicked Wanyu's boy to death, you should've been killed long ago. That other time, though, that got people really mad, when you ate the yellow beans, you ate the eggs, and still you wouldn't stir yourself, wouldn't take the plough, then finally when it was on, you wouldn't move a muscle, even with four or five people beating you, and we nearly had to lift you onto a sedan chair-people don't forget these things, you know.

  One by one they enumerated the black marks on Three-Hairs' history; finally they said, your sufferings are all over, go in peace, don't go blaming us Maqiao people for being cruel, our hands are tied, y'know.

  Her eyes moist, Fucha's mother said everyone's got to go, sooner or later-don't you remember how Boss Hong suffered much more than you, he even died with the plough still on.

  Three-Hairs was still shedding tears.

  Zhihuang, his face totally expressionless, finally picked up the axe and walked over-

  A dull thump.

  The ox's head split into a rivulet of blood, followed by a second, a third… Even when the fountain of blood had spurted a foot high, the ox still put up no resistance, didn't even call out, still kept its kneeling position. Finally, it swayed briefly, leaned to one side, then collapsed heavily, like a mud wall splaying over the ground. Its legs flexed weakly a few times, while its body lay straight and stiff over the ground, looking as if it had been stretched much longer than normal. The light grey skin covering its stomach, which you couldn't usually see that much of, lay completely exposed. The blood-red head twitched violently in repeated convulsions, the shiny black eyes wide open, fixed on the onlookers, fixed on Zhihuang, who stood before it covered in blood.

  Fucha's mother told Zhihuang, "It's going; call out to it."

  Zhihuang called out: "Three-Hairs."

  The ox's gaze flickered.

  Zhihuang shouted again: "Three-Hairs."

  The ox's broad eyelids finally fell shut; its body slowly stopped twitching.

  All night long, Zhihuang sat before those eyes which would never reopen.

  *Born-to-the-Pen

  : Each of Maqiao's oxen had its own name. People had lots of different words for oxen: for example, there were oxen that "understood," meaning oxen with intelligence; there were oxen "born-to-the-pen," meaning oxen that had been brought up like family, oxen that ox-rustlers found hard to steal away. Although Three-Hairs had something of a foul temper, it was still an ox born-to-the-pen. Two months before it died, nothing had been seen of it for two days, the team leader had sent people searching everywhere with no result, and everyone thought it'd never be found again, that it'd already been slaughtered or sold by ox-rustlers. But on the evening of the third day, while I was playing chess at Zhihuang's, Zhihuang unexpectedly turned back from relieving himself and said his ox whip was twitching on the wall, there was definitely something up, definitely. Maybe Three-Hairs had come back. No sooner were we out of the door than we heard Three-Hairs' lows and saw a familiar black shadow in front of the oxpen. Right at that moment it was butting the wooden oxpen with its horns-clunk, clunk, clunk-wanting to get inside. Half a length of ox rope was hanging from its nose, its tail had been cut to half its length for some unknown reaso
n, its whole body was covered with dozens of bloody scars, its whiskers were in a real state and it had clearly lost a lot of weight. After escaping from the ox-rustlers it must have meandered all over the mountains on its long, long tramp home.

  *Qingming Rain

  : There was nothing I could say-seeing wave upon wave of misty rain sweep toward me over the fields on the mountainside, dousing the mud wall of the cow pen, wrinkling the surface water on the fields into wind-driven concertinas, dying away in round after round among the clumps of reeds on the ridge opposite, out of which two or three mute wild ducks would then flap furiously. The harmonies from the brook grew ever louder, ever more fragmented, until there was no way of differentiating precisely between each of the various original noises; nor did you know where they came from, there remained nothing but the vast expanse between heaven and earth that had converged into a roaring whole so turbulent that the very surface of the earth seemed to tremble. I saw in a doorway a dog soaked through, howling in wide-eyed terror at the storm. Under the eaves of every house dripped a column of stagnant water, overflowing under the gaze of those avoiding the rain with nowhere to shelter themselves, overflowing with the bitter waiting of the Qingming season, in early April.

  Every leaf on the mountain was being pattered to pieces.

  Spring rain is enthusiastic, self-confident, it rushes and flows, it gushes from deep, long-held stores. Summer rain, in comparison, is more like an occasional absent-minded splatter, while autumn rain is an occasional, distracted about-face, and winter rain is simply indifferent. I reckon it'd be hard to find anyone who looked forward to rain as much as Educated Youth did, who knew so well the sound and smell of each type of rain and the temperature it left the skin. Because it was only on rainy days that we could haul our weary, aching bodies inside our houses, draw breath, and enjoy this precious opportunity for rest.

  My daughter has never liked the rain. For her, spring rain means inconvenience, slippery roads, the terror of thunder and lightning, and the cancellation of sports matches or excursions. She'll never understand my feeling of uncontrollable excitement at the sound of rain, she'll never understand why it's bucketing down in every single one of my dreams about my time in the countryside. She has missed out on a decade of longing for the sound of rain.

  Maybe I should rejoice at this.

  It's started raining again, now. The sound of the rain always gives me a certain feeling: over there in the rain, way, way over there in the rain, there's still a trail of muddy footprints left by me, that floats up on rainy days, sinking into a dazzling white abyss on a mountain path rocked by the waves of rainfall,

  *Rude

  :The first time I heard this word was when crossing the Luo River in flood season, when the river was a few times wider than usual. On the same boat were two unfamiliar women, probably from distant regions, who covered their faces with bamboo hats once they'd boarded the boat, exposing no more than a pair of eyes. The boatman sized them up briefly, then waved at them to get off. The two women had no choice but to get off and smear their faces with mud till they looked like painted actors; doubling up with laughter at the sight of each other, they finally got back on the boat, still convulsed with giggles. I was quite amazed: why did they have to paint these funny faces?

  "Even ten Chairman Mao's can't control Sixth Master Dragon and his floods," said the boatman. "I can't be held responsible for the lives of a boatload of people, now can I?"

  People on the boat immediately concurred: that's right, that's right, floods and fire take no prisoners, best be careful. They started talking about some time back in the past, when some woman had been so rude the boat capsized, the people fell in the water and couldn't reach the bank however hard they swam-must've been demons at work.

  It was only afterwards that I found out "rude" meant "pretty." A very particular rule held on this crossing: in times of high winds or turbulent waters, women who weren't ugly weren't allowed to cross. Legend had it that a very long time ago an ugly woman from around here who could never get married had ended up throwing herself to her death off this pier into the river. The ugly woman's soul didn't then scatter: she only had to spot an attractive woman on a boat to whip the wind into jealous waves, causing endless accidents in which boats were destroyed and lives lost. Any remotely good-looking female on the crossing could only avoid bringing disaster on the whole boat by dirtying her face.

  I don't pay much heed to or have much faith in this sort of legend, neither have I done any concrete research on the links between beauty and catastrophe: for example, does beauty tend to make people lose their minds, drive them wild, deranged, or crazy? Does it easily lead people into carelessness, into abandoning responsibilities? It's this word "rude" that I'm interested in. It conceals within an assumption that provokes an involuntary shiver: beauty is a form of evil, good is a form of danger, beautiful and good things will always bring disunity, instability, dissatisfaction, disputes, and animosity-rudeness. A "precious jade" (a beautiful woman) once provoked the State of Zhao to go to war with the State of Qin, Greece embarked on a ten-year war with Troy because of a beautiful woman called Helen-probably a useful footnote to all this. Ordinary people can only drift with the tide, turn to dust in the sunlight, stick to the bottom of the pile, and smear mud over their faces to maintain peace on earth.

  "Rude" in Maqiao language was also widely used to mean excellence, to tower above others, to stand out from your peers, surpass the norm, and so on. Given that this word was used to describe Benyi's young wife Tiexiang, readers from outside Maqiao should now break into a cold sweat at the very mention of her.

  *Spirit

  : Maqiao people believed that pretty women had a particular kind of smell-a fragrant but harmful kind of smell. When Benyi's wife Tiexiang came over from Changle to be married in Maqiao she brought this smell with her. Two months after her arrival, every single one of Maqiao's daylilies were dead. You could pick flower after dazzling gold flower into your basket, but before you got them back home they'd have collapsed into soggy black blobs which refused to respond to any amount of primping. The old people said this was why Maqiao people would never grow daylilies again, why they could only grow malformed melons, eggplants, bitter gourds, pumpkins, walnuts, and so on. Tiexiang's smell also disturbed all sorts of farm animals. The moment it saw Tiexiang, Fucha's family dog went mad-there was no choice but to shoot it. Zhongqi used to have a "foot-pig" (or breeding pig): from the moment it saw Tiexiang, it just couldn't be kept quiet anymore and had to be castrated; it was later slaughtered for its meat. Some people's chickens and ducks were struck down by epidemics, which their owners all blamed on Tiexiang's influence. In the end, even Three-Hairs the ox charged at Tiexiang while under Zhihuang's supervision. She screamed in terror, and if it hadn't been for Zhihuang's sharp eyes and quick hands pulling its halter up smartly, she might have been butted all the way down the hillside.

  The women were all rather sniffy about Tiexiang, but Benyi's face as Party Secretary stopped them from coming straight out with it. Some of them weren't so easily put off and would search out some needling comment as soon as they saw her. They'd go on about how extravagant, how elaborate their obeisance ceremonies or pot-placing had been when they'd arrived in their husband's house in Maqiao, how everything had been just so. Of course there'd been First Uncle carrying the dowry, Second Uncle blowing the trumpet, Third Uncle firing the blunderbuss, Fourth Uncle holding up the red parasol-and so on and so forth went the exaggerations. There were bales of Hangzhou silk brocade, hundreds of Japanese mandarin jackets, the bracelets on wrists were this big, the rings on ears were this shiny-as they never tired of saying.

  Tiexiang's face turned livid as she listened to all this.

  Once, one of them feigned surprise: "Aiya, all you grand ladies, all so lucky, you just make me want to die of shame. When I was left in this rotten dump, I was carrying nothing but a parasol, just a lump of flesh I was, dressed in a mandarin jacket!"

  Everyone la
ughed.

  This woman was obviously referring to how poor Tiexiang had been when she first arrived. Unable to bear it, Tiexiang fled back home to have a good cry and pummel her pillow and quilt.

  In fact, Tiexiang had grown up in a wealthy household, a house with nursemaids and servants, where food would always be accompanied by soy sauce, aniseed, or sesame oil; she knew what biscuits and cakes were, not like Maqiao people, who called everything "candy." But when she arrived in Maqiao, her father had died in prison and the family finances were in decline. When she scurried across Benyi's threshold, she really was carrying nothing but a parasol.

  Aged sixteen at the time, with a bit of rouge smeared on, a big stomach sticking out in front, she'd rushed alone into Maqiao in a great fluster and asked who the Party member was around here. People eyed her curiously and finally gave her a couple of names only after repeated questioning on her part. She then asked who, out of these Party members, was still a bachelor. Benyi, people said. She asked for directions to Benyi's home, walked straight up to the thatched hut, and quickly sized up house and man: