Village of Stone

by Xiaolu Guo

  At seven, all I felt was a profound sense of shame. Shame was something that I had never felt before. It robbed me of any ability to scream, run away or defend myself. From the depths of my shame, I suffered that arm reaching into my underpants, that hand touching me, those fingers slowly moving over my flesh. The crime took place in darkness and in silence. The only person talking, shouting, laughing, singing or screaming in the darkened hall was Meng Lijun, heroine of the silver screen.

  After I had escaped from the hall, I ran down to the beach. I knew that if the fishermen’s wives were still on the beach, the mute would not dare to come near me. He would affect a calm, collected air, as if he harboured not an evil thought in his mind, and stroll along the beach with both hands clasped behind his back.

  From then on, the mute haunted every corner of my world. Every time I went to the fried cake stall, the spun sugar stand or the grain store, I would see the mute making his way towards me, a phantom made material. His hands seemed to hold some sort of absolute authority over my tiny, frail body. These were the hands that grabbed me, that pushed their fingers into me, that seemed to have as their sole goal in life the small space beneath my underpants. The mute seemed to have a supernatural sense of hearing, like the ghosts in old Chinese legends that could hear the slightest sound carried upon the wind. It was as if he were listening to my every step, as if he could hear through doors and walls of stone, down the entire length of Pirate’s Alley.

  One afternoon, I slipped into the courtyard compound belonging to the village operatic troupe. I loved this courtyard because, when it was not raining, the young male and female singers came out into it to practise their roles. Another thing I liked about the courtyard was its props storeroom, which held a multitude of treasures. I longed to be able to steal a set of white silk sleeves embroidered with flowers, a fake broadsword made of shiny tinfoil or, even better, the pearl-encrusted phoenix headdress that the lovely Xue Baocha wore at her wedding to the dashing Jia Baoyu in Dream of Red Mansions. Everything in that courtyard was lovely, even the people, particularly the beautiful young actresses who sang the ingénue roles. That day, however, the courtyard seemed to be deserted, and there was not a person in sight. I supposed that perhaps the troupe had gone to another province to put on a performance. If so, the timing was perfect, for it meant that I could slip unseen into the storeroom and steal the phoenix headdress that I so coveted. But when I entered the storeroom, I found it empty. The rows of white silk sleeves that usually hung along the wall were gone, along with all the fake swords, red tassels and other props. I stared for a moment in surprise, and then began wandering about the dimly lit storeroom. The sunlight pouring through the cracks in the roof illuminated motes of dust floating through the air. Suddenly the storeroom felt stifling, and the clouds of dust were making it hard for me to breathe. As I turned to leave, I saw a shadow emerge from the darkness. It was the mute.

  There he stood, towering over me like the heavenly generals who descend from the skies in Chinese opera. He just stood there, grinning at me. I was so frightened that I began to tremble, for I knew that there was no one in the courtyard to help me. So I ran. I raced into the deserted cafeteria, the mute close on my heels. When I turned around to look behind me, I could see that he was swiftly gaining ground. His face was contorted and terrifying, like a hideous mask. Desperate now, I ran out of the cafeteria and bolted upstairs to the first floor, where I knew that some of the bit players occasionally slept. But as I rounded the first-floor landing, the mute, quicker and more nimble, caught up and grabbed me around the waist. Like a dog with an especially keen sense of hearing, he paused for a moment to listen and then, apparently satisfied that he had heard nothing, seemed to fly into a rage. This time, he did not content himself with touching me through my underpants. Instead, he abruptly yanked my trousers down, so that my lower body was completely exposed to his gaze. I was terror-stricken. In his clutches I was like a lamb to the slaughter, yet I didn’t dare scream. I was certain that if I did, he would kill me.

  At that moment, I heard footsteps on the staircase, as if someone were coming downstairs. The mute must have heard them, too, for he quickly pulled my trousers back up, wheeled around and made his escape down the stairs. Standing alone on the landing where the mute had left me, I caught sight of two grown-ups descending the staircase, and the flicker of a cigarette lighter. The men glanced briefly at my tearstained face as they passed, but took no further notice of me. I trailed down the staircase after them and, staying close on their heels, followed them out of the courtyard and all the way to the bus station on the outskirts of the village. As I watched the two men walk into the station ticket office, I finally mustered the courage to turn my head and look behind me. The mute was nowhere to be seen.

  I was afraid to leave the station right away because I thought that the mute might be waiting for me somewhere nearby. I paced around for a while, watching a tractor that had come to the village to pick up a shipment of fish. The tractor driver was obviously not from the Village of Stone. His face was not the face of a sea scavenger, and his skin was neither tanned brown from the sun nor chapped red by the wind. He was supervising two fishermen who were loading large wicker baskets into the passenger seat of his tractor. The baskets were filled with fish and squid. When the tractor was loaded full, the driver would drive back to where he had come from, but where that might be, I had no idea.

  The station was a very safe place because the stationmaster, whom everyone called ‘Old Crippled Son of the Sea’, was the nicest person in the village. I wasn’t sure why, but every time Old Crippled Son of the Sea saw the mute hanging around the station, he would scold him or issue a pointed reminder that he was keeping an eye on him. For this reason, the village mute never dared to go to the bus station.

  As I approached the ticket office, I could see Old Crippled Son of the Sea sitting at his desk, illuminated by the bare bulb overhead. His bifocals were perched on the bridge of his nose and he was busily stamping a long, narrow book of bus tickets with an official seal. I longed to have my own stamped and validated bus ticket so that I could get on a bus and ride away from the Village of Stone. I didn’t even care where the bus went, as long as it left the village.

  I leaned against the window of the ticket office and watched Old Crippled Son of the Sea at his work. I hoped that he would come outside and help me, but he seemed so terribly busy, bustling first to one task and then another. I don’t know how he got such a strange name. As long as I could remember, everyone in the village had called him Old Crippled Son of the Sea. Probably his parents gave him the name ‘Son of the Sea’, and then the villagers added the ‘Crippled’ after he injured his leg and the ‘Old’ with increasing age. Despite this rather odd name, he was a very powerful man in the Village of Stone. Since he was the only person working at the bus station, he was stationmaster, ticket seller, ticket puncher and, occasionally, even bus driver, all wrapped into one. Of all of the non-sea scavengers in the Village of Stone, he was the busiest. He was also the most selfless person in the village. I had heard people say that the stationmaster was a member of the Communist Party. At the time, I didn’t know what it meant to be a member of the Communist Party, but I gathered that it was no easy achievement. If a man as great as my neighbour the Sea Captain, Boy Waiting’s father, was not a member of the Communist Party, then Old Crippled Son of the Sea must be a very great man indeed.

  I once saw the stationmaster sell a whole busload of tickets. The passengers – young and old, male and female, some carrying fish or shouldering heavy coils of rope – were all standing waiting for a seat on a vomit-splattered long-distance bus. Even the stationmaster’s wife, a woman with a pockmarked face who worked in the seaweed beds along the shore, was at the station that day. She must have been planning to travel on the bus, for I noticed that she carried a bag with her and was waiting by the door of the bus. I guessed that she was allowed to get on first because she was the stationmaster’s wife. At last, the sta
tionmaster, carrying a set of keys, approached the bus. When he saw that the passengers were not queued up properly he began to bellow, ‘Line up! Line up!’ Then he picked up the whistle hanging around his neck and gave a sharp blow. At the sound of the whistle, everyone immediately queued up in a straight line. When everyone was lined up with military precision, the stationmaster inspected the queue from head to tail. Seeming to notice a problem, he rushed forward, grabbed his pockmarked wife by the shirtsleeve and transferred her from her position at the head of the queue to the very end. Even as he did this, he continued shouting for the passengers to line up. Judging from the expression on his wife’s face, she was extremely displeased at being forced to the back, but the stationmaster had the satisfied look of a good Communist who had followed Mao’s precept not to favour one’s family.

  Because Old Crippled Son of the Sea was in charge of selling tickets, anyone who wanted to buy a bus ticket had to answer all his questions about where they were going, and why, and how long they would be staying. All the villagers dutifully answered the stationmaster’s questions. He was very helpful as well, always quick to offer passengers advice about their planned destinations, things to be wary of and a variety of other useful information.

  I longed to ask the old stationmaster if I could buy a ticket, but, if I did, he would be certain to ask me where I wanted to go, and the only place I knew was the Village of Stone. And how could he possibly sell me a bus ticket? He would probably tell my grandparents, and I knew that my grandmother would never let me leave the village. Anyway, how could I think of leaving the Village of Stone? If I left, I was sure that I could never survive on my own.

  If only I had been able to tell the stationmaster about the mute. Yet for many years, an overwhelming shame and terror conspired to keep me silent. I was so enveloped by the enormity of my shame that I lost the courage to seek out the protection of other people. I didn’t dare speak to my grandmother because I knew that she herself was a person who had been consumed by shame her entire life. Our home at Number 13 Pirate’s Alley was a house of shame. Meanwhile Number 14, Boy Waiting’s house, was always filled with the sound of seven daughters laughing, squabbling, skipping or shelling shrimp. I envied them their days together. In our house, every day was spent in silence. My grandparents rarely spoke to me, nor did I speak to them. We were like a family of mutes who still retained the power of speech. I had no real friends and nobody to talk to. Everyone thought I was an odd child, even Boy Waiting, who had failed to bring her parents a baby brother, and Number Three, a little girl with an ugly swollen right cheek. Though I was as coarse and unruly as my childhood playmates, they never really considered me one of their gang.

  From the age of seven, I lived with the bleak expectation that the mute would be with me until the day I died. Or until the day he died. There was only one way to extricate myself from this shame and terror. One of us would have to die.

  I began to wish for death: either my death, or the mute’s. No matter which one of us died, it would be a good thing.

  7

  DEATH, WHEN IT did arrive, struck where it was least expected.

  The night Death cast its shadow on our house there were no typhoon winds or fierce rains; even the fishing boats had come home safely. Through the stone walls, I could hear the sound of their outboard motors chugging along the shore.

  My grandmother was already asleep when my grandfather descended the stairs. I was lying next to her beneath a home-made indigo-dyed quilt, my head resting on a pillow filled with husked rice that crackled each time I moved. I could hear my grandfather coming down the stairs as he usually did, making the turn at the first-floor landing without bothering to stop. When he reached the ground floor, he paused for a moment, as if he were looking for something. Then he opened the wooden front door, which creaked loudly on its hinges, and slipped outside, shutting the door quietly on his way out. I imagined that he was going out to buy liquor or some peanuts, as he often did when he could not sleep. He would go out for a drink or two, after which he would return home to bed. I thought I had guessed correctly, for I soon heard him come in again and close the door behind him. As he slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor, I could hear the clink of a bottle in his hand. My grandmother, lying on the cold bamboo bed, turned over softly in her sleep and sighed.

  My grandmother was always sighing. I think her sighs were an expression of her dissatisfaction with life and her inability to fight back, as if she were trying to grab hold of something with both hands tied behind her back. Every day of my grandmother’s life was a sigh. When my grandfather was younger, he often beat and cursed her violently, and treated her no better than he would a servant. When my grandparents grew older the beatings stopped, but the cursing and beating had been their only real form of interaction. When that ceased, my grandparents became strangers to each other. Even hatred has to age, I suppose. My grandparents had certainly aged. They had lost all their teeth, their backs had grown bent and now all they had left were their sighs. That evening, to the accompaniment of my grandmother’s mournful sighing, my grandfather climbed upstairs and went to bed, never to rise again.

  My grandfather committed suicide. He purchased a bottle of DDV, an extremely poisonous agricultural pesticide, and chased it down with a bottle of sorghum whisky and some salted peanuts.

  We did not discover his body until the middle of the following day.

  My grandmother did not seem particularly concerned when my grandfather did not rise from bed as usual that morning. She behaved just as she did every other morning. She trimmed the wicks, lit the stove, boiled some water in a pan and proceeded to heat up the scant remains of the previous day’s gruel. To the gruel she added a piece of brownish toffee we called Tangjiu toffee. The toffee was made from dough containing wheat flour and brown sugar, which was kneaded until it became firm and elastic. Afterwards the dough was pressed into a patterned wooden mould, cooked, and dried until it solidified. Tangjiu toffee was so hard that it took a very long time to soften in a bowl of gruel. I imagined that my grandfather would be out of bed by the time the toffee had softened. But there had still been no sign of movement from above when my grandmother lifted the lid of the pot to look inside and saw that the toffee had already softened so much that the pattern on its surface, two magpies perched on the branch of a tree, was blurred. She cocked her head towards the ceiling. She seemed mystified that my grandfather had done none of the things he normally did each morning. We had not heard him cough or seen him carrying his chamber pot downstairs to empty it. Still more strange, he had not gone to draw water from the well on the other side of the mountain. Perhaps he was sick. Still, my grandmother said nothing. She gave me some of the toffee and made herself a bowl of gruel with lobster paste. I sat on the threshold, gazing blankly across the street at the small hairdresser’s shop opposite and wondering whether the mute would appear that day. I nibbled at my toffee, taking one small bite after another, and listened as my grandmother finished her gruel and began reciting her second sutra of the day. Above the hearth, there was a white porcelain figure of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, to whom my grandmother addressed her daily prayers. My grandmother always prayed to Guanyin rather than to Mazu Niangniang, perhaps because she felt the Sea Goddess was too partial to the sea scavengers. Ten minutes later, my grandmother had finished reciting her second sutra and I had finished eating my toffee, and my grandfather still had not come downstairs. I left the house and made my way down the street and onto the beach, as I did every day. I was still too young to go to school and I would play on the beach all day long, until the sun had disappeared behind the hills and I could hear my grandmother’s old, mournful cries echoing down the beach: ‘Little Dog! Little Dog, get yourself home to eat!’

  When I reached the beach, I found that none of the fishermen had gone out to sea that day. Instead, the beach was filled with the clamour of voices and crowds of fishermen who were repairing their boats. The overturned boats, their white bellies faci
ng skyward, looked like upended turtles sprawled on the sand. Some of the fishermen had set up ladders so that they could crawl onto their boats to make repairs. Others carried cans of brightly coloured paint or were already busy covering the hulls of their boats with layer after layer of paint. I remembered that my grandfather had once told me that it was terribly important to paint the boats properly. You had to make sure that there were enough layers of paint, because the greater the number of layers, the greater a boat’s ability to ply through the waves. You also had to be careful about the way you painted the eyes. The eyes should be two colours, red and black. If the eyes were not well painted, the Sea Demon would be sure to capsize the boat. A boat with eyes could see its way through the typhoon waves and better scavenge the sea.

  I spent that morning, the morning before anyone in the village had any inkling of my grandfather’s suicide, standing idly in the sunshine and salt air, watching the fishermen. I did not suspect that this day would turn out to be different from any other. Whether the fishermen set out to sea or stayed in for repairs or painted eyes on their boats made no difference to my grandfather. He hadn’t been to sea for decades. These activities held no meaning or omens for him.

  I began to feel hungry. My belly had already digested the toffee I had eaten earlier that morning. The mute had not appeared, so I thought it was safe to go home and eat lunch. I didn’t care whether I ate my grandmother’s lunch of mushy gruel with shrimp paste or my grandfather’s lunch of pork. Either was fine with me.