by Can Xue
“That’s the way it is on the surface. You’re the same. Behind his back, we say he’s a piece of old garbage. Everyone seems to ignore him. But do we truly ignore him? At the table, I’ve noticed your knees trembling.”
I threw his hand off and entered my room in one stride.
When we ate dinner, Nishu talked of the encephalitis that was rampant in other towns. She rapped her chopsticks on the table for emphasis. I sneaked a look at Father and saw that he was looking down wretchedly, preoccupied with his worries. After pushing a few bites of food into his mouth, he set his bowl down and stood up to leave.
“Papa didn’t eat a thing!” I said loudly. “Look, he hasn’t eaten anything for days!”
All of us put our chopsticks down and looked at Father in consternation.
Nishu seemed chagrined and said accusingly: “What’s wrong with you, Papa?”
Apparently his old self again, Father stared at everyone, and looking haughty, he held his head high and returned to his room.
Something was collapsing in my heart. I recalled the door that Father had quietly opened in his room, and I couldn’t help feeling misgivings. I thought that my colleagues’ rumors were connected with that door. Why? Because Father abhorred outsiders entering his room, and so twenty years ago he had sealed off the door that opened onto the courtyard. Previously, when he burrowed single-mindedly into the pile of old books, I didn’t have to worry. What kind of elderly person’s crazy idea had led him to take this step? It would be difficult to tell someone like Father to retreat entirely from life. He’d been quiet for years and hadn’t made any trouble. Now, when everyone was almost accustomed to this, this awkward situation had suddenly cropped up. Maybe we didn’t really understand Father. Perhaps, during these years, he’d been making preparations all along. Perhaps the inflated illusions in his head had caused him to lose his common sense.
My colleagues’ rumors didn’t subside. I felt pressure from all directions. With every passing day, this pressure made me feel more and more dread and disgust. I thought it over and made up my mind to confront Father. I would catch him off guard and see how he explained his behavior. I was vexed and unhappy. I couldn’t figure out why he had to cause so much trouble.
When it had just turned dark, I hid in the oleander grove in the courtyard. Father stood in front of the window, his shadow reflected on the curtains. His back was stooped. I thought of his face that had become increasingly thin, and I felt something that I couldn’t express. After a while, he bent his head, as if to cut his fingernails and also as if he was fiddling with his watch. About half an hour later, he covered the light with a newspaper. When I looked across, it was as if he’d blacked out the light and gone to sleep. I knew he wasn’t asleep, for I heard him sighing quietly. I sat on the small stool I’d brought and made up my mind to get to the bottom of this.
The moon was hidden in the clouds. Except for the bright light in my brother’s room, everything was dark. Just as I was about to doze, some odd sounds suddenly came from Father’s door. He walked toward it, as if he had noticed something. He stuck his head out a few times. The door was still half-open. I grew excited: sure enough, he was waiting for someone. It seemed I’d guessed right. Why did Father want to pour out his troubles to an outsider? Didn’t he know that whatever he said would be exaggerated in ugly rumors? It was also possible that he wouldn’t say anything bad about me to an outsider. Could it all be that third party’s imagination? Normally, the family members (especially I) treated him quite well. You could say that, compared with most elderly people, he had nothing to complain of. Then who could this malevolent, backbiting guy be? My impression was that Father had never gone out, and that all of his friends and relatives had broken off relations with him years ago. I thought hard, yet I couldn’t think of anyone who was still in contact with him. But Father had definitely met someone. It was this person who had spread gossip and slander among my colleagues.
I sat in the grove for a long time. Perhaps I fell asleep, or perhaps I dozed off from time to time. Anyhow, I didn’t see anyone go to Father’s room. The door was still half-open, letting out faint light from inside. After midnight, I saw Father walk to the door. He stood there talking with someone in the room as his broad back blocked the door. That person must have slipped in while I was dozing! I crept over to the window and kept close to the wall. Father’s voice was rather hoarse. I could tell that he was quite excited.
“. . . They’re all only too anxious for me to die soon. When I say ‘they,’ of course that includes Rushu. She’s still the main player. Whenever we eat, they’re all acting. Rushu comes to see me on a set schedule. Why? She and I both know, and so I cut those things into pieces and destroyed them. This way, I’m leaving no traces behind. Who could really figure me out? Recent occurrences have alarmed all of them, especially Rushu. It absolutely never occurs to her that someday the corpse in the corner will come back to life. It doesn’t occur to her, either, that some things that the outside world can never know will be exposed in this manner. The last two days, she has been distinctly haggard.”
The person was talking with him in quite a low, hesitant voice, as if his nose were stopped up by a cold. I didn’t get what he was saying, but he didn’t pause. Sometimes, he even blubbered like a child. While the person talked, Father was smirking. His laughter was larded with the cough of the aged.
The plan I had originally worked out in the grove called for me to confront this person, but the situation caught me by surprise, because the malevolence didn’t come from the outsider but from Father. I wasn’t sure of that person’s attitude, either. If I rushed in, I’d be on the horns of a dilemma. Father wasn’t easy to deal with. Now I had definitely learned my lesson. Formerly, I had been so remiss and reckless.
Just then, Father walked from the door to the window, and he was talking just above my head, his voice both urgent and focused and evidently accompanied by gestures. When his words grew heated, he stamped his feet.
“While I’m still alive, I still have to do some things that I want to do. No one can stop me! I sit in this forgotten corner, thoughts thronging my mind. I’ve sat here year after year, year after year. Great changes have occurred in the outside world! They’re busy with their own plans all day long. They all think I was done for long ago. Of course they can’t imagine! Actually, this has been taking place for a long time. They’re inwardly terrified. I know this just by looking at Rushu’s face. It’s so quiet at night: this is just about the best time . . .”
I stole back to my room. I wasn’t brave enough to continue eavesdropping. At dawn, I was still thinking. Had that person left? Had he left? This midnight visitor: When and how on earth had he and Father gotten mixed up together? People are so hard to fathom!
=
Day after day passed, and at last the rumors gradually subsided. Although my colleagues still looked at me the same annoying way at work, I’d grown accustomed to it and so I wasn’t as scared.
One day I was exhausted when I went home. As soon as I entered the door, my brother started in on the patriarchy thing again. He said that Father’s position in the family jeopardized his life. Whenever he braced himself to do something, he saw Father’s face floating before him. So he became dejected and didn’t want to do anything. This had been going on for a long time and he couldn’t bear it. Sometimes he even thought he might as well do something really outrageous and then “run off without further ado.”
Without the slightest hesitation, I said to him:
“Your absurd argument boggles my mind! That’s total nonsense. Father stays in his room, and you guys never visit him: Isn’t this the same as his not existing? Can’t you at least overlook his existence? Sure, he eats with us every day, but he eats fast and he never sticks around long. And especially recently, he eats hardly anything. He just sits there going through the motions and then he leaves. How can he affect you so much? I think you’re inwardly depressed and you can’t do anything, so you want to extric
ate yourself and you blame others for this. But whom do you blame? An old man approaching death, the least important person in the family, a loner who has never meddled . . .”
“Hold on!” my brother interrupted me, and staring me in the face, he said, “Do you really think—do you really think that’s what our father is like? You don’t need to act so arrogant. I can’t figure out what’s going on between you, but at meals, I see your knees trembling.”
“What have you heard?” I asked tensely.
“What could I have heard? None of this concerns me. The only reason for telling you what’s on my mind is for our mutual benefit. Why can’t you understand even this? Of course I don’t intend to plot anything. What can I do? To be precise, all I’m doing is grumbling about the status quo.” Moving closer, he whispered to me: “There were some suspicious sounds in his room just now.”
I shrugged my shoulders and glanced at him scornfully. All of a sudden he blushed, and his eyes opened wide. Pointing straight ahead, he shouted: “Look! Look!”
At the end of the dim hallway, Father—wearing gray underwear—was wobbling as he stood on a square stool. He was pounding a nail into the wall. His bare arm—only skin and bones—was extended from his unbuttoned sleeve, and he held a rusty hammer in his hand.
Faltering, Father got down from the stool and frowned as he said earnestly to me: “I want to hang a notebook here, or it could be called an account book, so that everyone will know where things stand. Rushu, you’re good at keeping accounts, so of course you know: I’ve been retired all these years and have turned over all of my money to you and your siblings, but how much have I actually spent? You’ve noticed that I never go out. Except for food, I have no expenses, and recently I’ve eaten very little. Yet you tell me that you can barely make ends meet. Where has my money gone? These clothes—” With that, he pulled at the front of his undershirt. “These are my best clothes. All of you figure that since I don’t go out, you don’t need to make outerwear for me. This never even crosses your minds. The two jackets I have were both made by your grandma fifteen years ago when she was still alive!” He almost shouted this last sentence.
I was totally defeated. I was looking frantically in all directions. I was looking for my brother, but this slippery fellow had glided away without a trace. Father was holding the hammer high, as if preparing to fight.
“Papa! Papa! What are you saying?” Tears were mixed with my shouting.
“Rushu, help me hang that account book on this nail.” His voice was composed and strong.
“No.” I retreated a few steps and glared at him in desperation. “Father, don’t force me. I can’t do it.”
“Okay. I’ll do it myself.”
He went back to his room and took the black notebook out of a cupboard. The book was fastened with fine hemp rope. As he entered his room, I noticed that all of the old books and letters had disappeared. The floor had been swept clean. Even the space under the bed was empty. When he walked out, he staggered again onto the square stool. The fine ropes on the book were tangled together, and it took him a long time to straighten them out and hang the notebook on a nail. While he was doing this, the stool kept swaying and creaking. I don’t know why he hadn’t steadied the stool before stepping onto it. His actions made me feel extremely tense, like an arrow held in a bowstring.
None of us knew what was recorded in the black notebook. We tacitly agreed that since Father had humiliated everyone in this despicable way, we’d better just ignore it. Would ignoring it put us at ease? I observed the four of them and found that didn’t seem to be the case. They were fretful and uneasy. Every noon when Father was with us, he staggered up on the square stool, took the black notebook down, and carried it back to his room. One of us could never keep from saying: “Look, he’s doing it again.” The person seemed to be speaking scornfully, yet his hands were shaking. After a while, all of us looked down, and one by one we slipped out.
=
One day I was asleep and having a long dream when Nishu knocked on my door. I looked at the clock: it was two in the morning. Nishu was pouting, and she was worriedly digging at her ear with her little finger. She hesitated a long time before saying:
“It was raining. I suddenly remembered the clothes hadn’t been brought in from the courtyard, so I ran out there. I saw a light on in Father’s room, and someone was standing in front of the window. It didn’t appear to be Father because he was much taller than Father. Who was it? Someone had actually come calling on Father at midnight: Wasn’t this frightening? The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I felt, so I ran into Father’s room. The door was unlocked; it opened with a slight push. The strange thing was that Father was the only one in the room! Really. I peered into every corner. Maybe he had run into the hallway through that door. I didn’t dare follow him into the hallway for fear that Father would get angry. In the incandescent light, Father’s face was quite frightening. He kept laughing. I wasn’t sure if he was angry or happy, so I retreated step by step all the way to the courtyard. By then the rain had stopped and the clothes were drenched so there was no point in bringing them in. I went back to my room. The more I thought about this, the more wrong I thought it was. So I came to find you. What do you think?”
After saying all of this in one breath, Nishu seemed very weary and couldn’t keep her eyes open. She fell onto my bed in confusion and covered herself with my quilt. Soon, she was asleep. Nishu’s news wasn’t anything new, but after listening to her, I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t a good idea to have the light on at midnight, so I turned it off and sat up in the dark. When I was half asleep, I seemed to hear the sound of something stirring in the hallway. As soon as I was more clear-headed, I realized that nothing was stirring. I was just hallucinating. That night, I opened the door twice and looked toward Father’s room at the end of the hall. I noticed that his light was out. Not until daybreak did Nishu awaken. Rubbing her eyes, she said:
“The old shark had gone so far as to come out with that. I was arguing with him in my dream about that lost letter. Are you listening? I shouted until I was hoarse. Now my throat is burning.” Nishu used to call Father “shark” behind his back.
“From now on, you mustn’t wander around at night. You overreacted when it was raining. It’s no big deal if laundry gets wet. Just leave it.”
“You’re talking nonsense again.” Laughing, she bent to tie her shoelaces. “I’ve tried not to meddle, but it didn’t work. While I was in bed, I thought and thought. I thought of Father as an old spider in this house. His webs are everywhere. You run into them when you lift your head or stretch your hand out.”
Then she finished lacing her shoes, leapt up, and ran out.
=
I did my best to recall what day it was that Father had assumed control over the family. It seemed it had begun not long before, but it also seemed a long time ago. Maybe it had begun when I was in the cradle. The more I thought about it, the more blurred that boundary line became. In the end, I couldn’t grasp it. On the surface, he had dropped out of life without our sensing it. Now it appeared that he had retreated in order to advance. I remembered going to his room one day when I had just become an adult, and saw him looking through a magnifying glass at traces of water at the foot of the wall. Arching his back, he was looking at it very earnestly.
“Rushu,” he said to me, “This old wall has experienced everything. I always want to find some clues in it. This isn’t asking too much, is it?”
“Of course—” I said hesitantly, “It doesn’t matter.”
“Good. Good girl. In times to come, you’ll complain. You pay too much attention to minutiae. There’s nothing I can hide from you.”
At the time, his words sounded a little unreasonable. Only now as I recalled them did I understand. But did I really know what his purpose was? It was very likely that he was setting off a smoke bomb to distract me. So it made more sense to take it as a permanent rejection. This would put an end to useless illusions. He h
ad said “There’s nothing I can hide from you.” Maybe this meant that he would hide everything from me. When he said “There’s nothing I can hide from you,” was it a way of ridiculing me? Or he might have had a longer-range plan and thus was scattering bait and waiting for the fish to take it? He had waited for so many years to pass: he was really patient. Now the fish had taken the bait and so he should feel gratified. But I noticed that in his excitement he grew thinner by the day. The gratification that he had fabricated for himself was poison to the nerves and gave him insomnia.
The other thing had occurred even earlier. I was about seven or eight at the time and had come back from playing outside when I heard him whispering with Grandmother. They were talking about a neighbor who had just died, and they were looking very serious.
“Rushu, if Grandma gets an infectious disease and the rest of you might catch it, what should be done?” Grandma asked.
I remember that she was reaching for me with her plump arms as she spoke in a kindly tone.
“Then we’d carry you out to the courtyard.” I rolled my eyes and thought myself clever.
They both began laughing.
“Rushu is really bright.” Father stood up excitedly and began pacing in the room.
Grandma’s face brimmed with warm smiles. She patted me on my little head and let me go. I shot out of there like a bullet and quickly forgot the episode.
Now, remembering incidents from my childhood, I also recalled that Father and Grandma often chatted with each other. Was it beginning at that time, while they were chatting, that they masterminded my future? When I was a child, Grandma told me the story of the souls’ night visits. Now, of course, I no longer believed those absurd tales, so who was the person Nishu saw?
I decided to ask Father directly.
When I went in, he was sitting with his eyes closed. In the shadows, his sunken cheeks made him look frightening.
