Not a word from him. Once he got onto the fields, he was totally absorbed, totally unwilling to join in with chatter that had no bearing on work efficiency.
"You've dropped some money behind you," I told him.
He turned back to look.
"There really is money, take a proper look."
"That'd be your little sister's savings, would it?" He concentrated on his digging.
It was only when he got thirsty and glanced over at my water flask that he started to get all chummy with me, giving a pretty fine imitation of the Educated Youth's barbarian accent: "I say, that flask of yours."
"If you want a drink, then drink-what are you going on about the flask for?"
"Heh-heh, what's eating you today?"
"So you'll only give me the time of day when you want something?"
"What? Have I got to kow-tow just for a gulp of your water?"
As he drank, he counted out loud without being aware of himself: one two, two two… Each second "two" meant two mouthfuls of water.
"If you're going to drink, just drink, why count the twos?" I said rather rudely.
"Just a habit of mine, no need for it." He laughed in embarrassment.
When he'd finished drinking, he became a little politer but remained rather vague about the business of having taken the grass sickle into the mountains: he didn't say it had happened, but neither did he say it hadn't happened. He emphasized indignantly that he'd had several dreams about this figure in white: once the figure had stolen his family's melons, once the family's chickens, another time he'd given his Kuiyuan a clip round the ears for no reason at all. What a nuisance, eh? His teeth ground as he posed the question. There was no answer I could give. From what I'd heard of what he said, those rumors about him snatching up the grass sickle and swearing to settle scores were probably all true.
It was a rum business. Why was this figure in white always barging into his dreams? How come he had so many strange dreams? I couldn't help feeling confused, as I took back the water flask.
That was the last time he borrowed my water flask. The afternoon of the following day, his wife came looking for a cadre, to report that Shortie Zhao hadn't come back home all last night and that she didn't know where he'd gone. Everyone looked everywhere, with growing looks of disquiet, as they remembered they hadn't seen him turn up for work that morning.
"Gone to Maoxing Pond, has he?" said Master Black, laughing.
"But how could he have been gone for so long?" His wife didn't understand what he was talking about.
"I was just… guessing…" Master Black dropped the subject.
"Maoxing Pond" was the name of place in a neighboring village, an isolated dwelling of no more than two households. Shortie Zhao had an old lover there, though who she actually was we had no idea. But whenever he went there to do any work, he'd gather a few branches and blades of grass from off the ground to symbolize grain and firewood, knot them into a wreath and snatch a moment to take it over to "Maoxing Pond" as a token of his affection. He'd then rush back to his work in the fields at incredible speed: nothing less than the wind itself could have moved quicker.
Fucha returned from Maoxing Pond that evening to report there was no Shortie Zhao there either, that absolutely no one had seen a trace of him. Only then did we feel things had started to get serious. Gathered round in whispering huddles, the villagers had identified one piece of news as supremely important. Someone from the lower village had just returned from Pingjiang, bearing a message from Zhihuang's former-pot wife: the dream-woman was reminding Zhaoqing to make sure he had his shoes on.
This was a common method used for warning people in Maqiao, a tip-off to those with "floating souls."
In Maqiao language, floating soul referred to an omen that occurred when people were close to death. After making some general inquiries, I found out there were mainly two sorts of situations involving floating souls:
1. Sometimes, if you saw someone walking along in front of you suddenly disappear, then reappear, you knew a hole had been made in this person's soul and they were going to scatter soon. If you were of a kindly disposition, you'd go and warn this floating soul, but you couldn't do so directly, you couldn't give it away, you'd have to ask something like, "You're running fast! Lost a pair of shoes?" and so on. Hearing this, the other person would've known the score and would rush back home to burn incense, make sacrifices, or ask a Daoist priest to come and drive out the spirits, would do his utmost to avert calamity.
2. Sometimes, while asleep or distracted, a person might dream he'd been dispatched by the King of Hell to fetch another person's soul-an acquaintance of his, perhaps. On waking, again bound by the same principle of discretion, he or she would have to find an ingenious means of giving warning to the other person. Not only were they not to give anything directly away, the two of them also had to be raised off the ground-by climbing up into a tree, for example, and whispering very quietly, to avoid Grandfather Earth hearing, then reporting to and thereby enraging the King of Hell. When the other person heard the warning, he would, of course, be full of thanks, not anger. But there could be no gift to express thanks, no clue that might risk detection by the King of Hell.
Now that the dream-woman Shuishui had mentioned shoes, the situation was of course extremely serious. But because Shuishui's family home was so far from Maqiao, by the time the bearer of the message had hurried back to Maqiao, it was too late and Zhaoqing had already disappeared before the message was delivered. While the village was sending search parties in all directions, someone remembered the business with the figure in white and sent people off to the mountain. Finally, hoarse wails from the cracked throat of Zhaoqing's wife floated in fragments on the wind down the mountain.
Zhaoqing's soul, it turned out, had already floated off. He died horrifically, facedown at the side of a stream, his severed head lying swollen about three meters away in the brook, bitten to pieces by a dense covering of ants. This violent murder sent Shockwaves through the commune and the county's Public Security, and several cadres came to conduct repeated investigations. The cadres' flame was high and they didn't believe in any floating-soul business, or in fate. Their first guess was that GMD spies had been dropped from the air onto the mountain, or that oxen-rustling bad elements from near Pingjiang were responsible. In order to calm the general public and stop the strange rumors flying around, the higher-ups made strenuous efforts to solve the case, carrying out mysterious surveys, taking fingerprints, struggling a few suspicious landlords and rich peasants here and there, panicking the chickens and the dogs half to death-but still no explanation was found. The commune even arranged for the People's Militia to take turns standing guard in the evenings, to guard against tragedy repeating itself.
Standing guard was a tough job. The evenings being cold and the urge to doze off very strong, I was propped up under the armpit by a spear, my feet like two blocks of ice, and needed to jump regularly up and down to restore sensation to my toes. I heard crunching footsteps on the road leading to Tianzi Peak: every tiny hair stood up on end as I listened out again-nothing. Despite hiding in a corner out of the wind, I couldn't control my intermittent shivers. After brief hesitation, I took another few steps back and retreated to the house: even though (just as a temporary expedient) I was surveying the night from behind a window, I was still fulfilling my duties, I reasoned. In the end, my legs tortured with cold and my eyes ever returning to my quilt, I couldn't stop myself burrowing in and (half-)lying on the bed. I still reckoned I was taking frequent sidelong glances outside, not failing to keep up my revolutionary vigilance.
I was worried a figure dressed in white would suddenly skim past outside.
Dazed and confused, I woke up to discover it was already very light; in a panic, I ran outside without glimpsing a soul. Some routine yells were coming from the ox-shed-someone preparing to let the oxen out. All was quiet and peaceful.
Since I couldn't spot anyone come to investigate where the sentry had g
one, I relaxed.
It was not until I was transferred to work in the county and bumped into Yanwu on a visit to the city to buy oil paint that I heard another theory concerning the strange death of Shortie Zhao. Yanwu said that at the time he'd told Public Security that Zhaoqing had definitely not been killed by a third party-it'd been suicide. Or, to be more precise, it was accidental death by suicide. Why did he die at the side of the stream? he mused. Why had there been no sign of a struggle on the scene? He must've found some fish or something else in the stream, hidden in the crack of a stone, and poked at it with the wooden handle on his grass knife. He must have poked a bit too violently, without noticing the sharp blade was pointed directly at his own neck: with one stab into the air, one pull of the knife, he lopped his own head off from behind.
This hypothesis was very daring. I've used a grass knife, sometimes called a dragon-horse knife: it's a knife with a very long wooden handle that enables you to slash cattail grass whilst standing upright, on which the blade and wooden handle are at right angles. When I thought about it, with Yanwu's deductions in mind, a chill ran right down the back of my neck.
Unfortunately, as Yanwu's class status was very poor at the time, the Public Security Bureau couldn't take any notice of what he said.
Besides, he didn't have any proof.
*Lax
: And so, amidst such confused circumstances, Zhaoqing's head fell off. While on sentry duty in the middle of the night, viewing Tianzi Peak suddenly loom closer, vaster in the moonlight, I got to thinking about his life. Because he was so low, so stingy, I'd never had a good word to say about him. Only after his death did I think back to that time when (under orders from above) I'd climbed up a wall to paint Chairman Mao quotations and the ladder had suddenly started sliding unstoppably downwards; I'd only saved myself from falling by grabbing onto a horizontal beam close at hand. Quite some distance off, Zhaoqing had seen all this happen, dropped a bowl of food from his hand to the ground with a clang and ran over yelling: "help-someone help-oh my-" He jumped up and down, producing cries of extreme anguish, jumped here and there till he was dizzy, then jumped back again without having accomplished anything much, wailing and weeping as he did so. Perhaps I wasn't in any great danger and he didn't need to wail or done anything to help me out. But out of all my friends and acquaintances present at that moment, not one was as terrified and panicked as he, not one shed tears involuntarily for me. I was grateful for his tears-though only for a very brief moment, though they quickly shrank back into a pair of small eyes to which I'd never be able to feel close. Later on, wherever I went, however many cities and villages I forgot, I couldn't wipe from my memory that brief glance downwards at a face below, just a face that, enlarged by perspective, had obliterated from view the scrawny body beneath, and that was showering down a noisy waterfall of yellow tears for me.
I wanted to say something to thank him, to pay him back somehow, a few yuan, a piece of soda, say, but he wouldn't have it.
I carried a bedful of cotton blankets over to his house and asked his wife to use them to cushion Zhaoqing's coffin. All his life he'd slept on carrying poles; from now on he should be allowed to sleep well. He'd been busy all his life; from now on he should be allowed to be lax.
To be "lax," in Maqiao dialect, means to "relax."
*Yellow-Grass Miasma
: When I was in Maqiao, Zhaoqing told me more than once that I shouldn't go up into the mountains early in the morning, that I should wait at least until the sun had come out. He also pointed out to me something densely blue in among the scattered trees on the mountain, that floated in and out of view, hanging like threads, like bands on the branches and leaves, slowly drifting away in smoky rings: miasma, this was called. There were several different sorts of miasma: in spring there was spring-grass miasma, in summer there was yellow-plum miasma, in autumn there was yellow-grass miasma- all were highly poisonous. If people blundered into it, their skin would inevitably come out in ulcers, their faces go blue-yellow, their fingers black. It could even kill them. He also said that you couldn't be too careful even when you went up into the mountains in daytime. The night before you went up, you couldn't eat tiny scraps of things and you definitely couldn't sleep with a woman, definitely had to give up temptations and lusts. Before going up into the mountains, you'd best drink a mouthful of rice wine to warm the body too, to strengthen the yang.
This was what Zhaoqing said.
It was he who told me. I remember.
*Pressing Names
: I didn't recognize Kuiyuan when I bumped into him again all those years later. Both he and his Adam's apple had grown, along with a little beard; he wore a suit with rolled edges, walked around in eye-catching leather shoes, wafted fragrant breezes from his washed hair and carried a black leather bag that wouldn't zip up. He was Kuiyuan, Ma Zhaoqing's youngest, he said: Don't you recognize me, Uncle Shaogong? What a memory you have, ha-ha-ha! I had to puzzle away for ages before I finally dredged up a child's face from long, long ago, and drew one or two points of corroborating resemblance between it and the unfamiliar face before me. I also recognized a letter he produced, written by me, true enough, to Fucha a few years ago, discussing some language-related question.
He said he'd been missing me and that he'd come to the city especially to see me. I asked him, wonderingly, how he'd managed to find me. Don't ask, he said, he'd had a devil of a time finding the way. When he'd been set down on the quay, he'd asked everywhere where I lived, but no one he'd asked had known. In the end, he'd asked where the municipal government was-still no one knew. Losing his temper, he asked where the county government was, and someone finally pointed him in some sort of a direction. I thought you were looking for me, I laughed, what did you want with the municipal and county governments? He said he had a couple of outings every year, he'd been to Wuhan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, all sorts of places. He knew how to get about. This seemed to serve as his answer to my question.
He didn't say whether he'd actually found the government offices. But he complained about how my phone must be broken and how he hadn't been able to get through, however hard he tried. I later discovered that he hadn't in fact had my telephone number at all, so heaven only knew what number he'd been calling.
In the end, he got in a taxi and spent fifty yuan-almost all the money he'd had left on him-before finding out what university I was at. Not knowing what taxis cost here, he'd been ripped off by a crooked driver, no doubt about it.
This, of course, was no cause for worry-he'd always felt pretty detached about money matters. To sum up, he contacted the government, made a phone call, took a taxi, did everything an important visitor should, before he finally chanced across an acquaintance of mine who took him to where I lived. He'd never believed he wouldn't find me, he said, and everything had, as expected, come out in the wash: without any undue exertion, he'd miraculously pulled off a long-distance raid on my home, bringing along for good measure another young man I didn't know. Now he was home and dry, everything was fine and dandy; he took off his coat and watch, his shoes and socks, and rubbed the sweat and mud from his feet. Casting his eyes about the place, he was amazed to see I didn't have a real leather sofa, or a big, right-angled wide-screen color TV, or color-sprayed vinyl walls and mood lighting and laser-sound stereo karaoke-he knew a lot more about city life than I did. I said laser-sound stereo karaoke cost too much, forty, maybe fifty yuan for one disc. He corrected my mistake: what are you talking about, he said, a good disc would cost one, two hundred at least. Has the price gone up? I asked. It's never been less, he said. Unwilling to concede the point, I said that a friend of mine a couple of days ago had bought one at this price, a genuine, nonpirated disc. He said that wouldn't have been DDD, it wouldn't have been digital; no one serious about singing would've wanted anything to do with it.
Not understanding DDDs, I didn't dare take the matter any further and merely absorbed his instruction in silence.
After he'd washed, he put on some of my c
lothes and said with a smile he'd known all along he wouldn't need to bring a change of clothing: What sort of a person d'you think Uncle Shaogong is? he'd said to the folks back home. When I get to his place, there'll be clothes to wear, food to eat, work to do, no fear! When at home, rely on parents, away from home, you rely on friends… He slapped me affectionately on the back as he told me this.
I removed his hand.
Things weren't that simple, I said, but let's get you settled, and then we'll see.
I took them to a hotel. When they were registering, I discovered he was no longer surnamed Ma: the surname on his ID. card had been changed to Hu. That was how I found out that after his dad died, his mother hadn't been able to bring up all the kids and had given him away to someone else, along with an elder brother and elder sister given away elsewhere. I also found out that where they came from, adopted children had no inheritance rights before they'd "pressed names."
Pressing names was a ritual carried out to formalize entry to a clan, conducted after the funeral of the adoptive father, in which the clan elders sang the name of the adoptive father, the name of the adoptive grandfather, the name of the father of the adoptive grandfather, the name of the grandfather of the adoptive grandfather, the name of the father of the grandfather of the adoptive grandfather… of the person entering the clan. They sang the names of all the fathers they could possibly trace back to ensure that the person being adopted would inherit the ancestors' property and trade, and to prevent him from taking the property or land back to his original family later on. As they saw it, names were sacred and the names of the dead wielded an additionally mysterious kind of power, capable of defeating demons and punishing the unfilial. Kuiyuan said that the Hu family weren't short of property- the house was their own-but unfortunately the old man was long-lived, could still go out to work in the fields even at the age of eighty-seven. Last year he'd spend three months ill in bed, coughing up phlegm and blood, and it'd looked as if his number was pretty much up. No one had expected that, after all this time spent dying, he'd come back to life again… What on earth was he meant to do? Kuiyuan's eyes widened in astonished bemusement. What he meant was that he hadn't yet been rewarded for his pains, he hadn't yet pressed names and so didn't yet have rights of ownership over the house.
Shaogong, han - A Dictionary of Maqiao.html Page 38
