The Years of Rice and Salt

by Robinson, Kim Stanley

  Hands still shaking, Kang sipped some peach juice, nibbled on a plum. Her body too was trembling. 'I'm not sure 1 can do that any more,' she said, looking away. 'It's too much.'

  He nodded. They went into the compound garden, and sat in the cool of the night under the clouds, eating and drinking. They were hungry. The scent of jasmine filled the dark air. Though they did not speak, they seemed companionable.

  1 am older than China itself 1 walked in the jungle hunting for food Sailed the seas across the world Fought in the long war of the asuras. They cut me and I bled. Of course. Of course. No wonder my dreams are so wild, No wonder I feel so tired. No wonder 1 am always Angry. Clouds mass, concealing a thousand peaks; Winds sweep, colouring ten thousand trees. Come to me husband and let us live The next ten lives together.

  The next time Ibrahim visited, his face was solemn, and he was dressed more finely than they had seen before, in the garb of a Muslim cleric, it seemed.

  After the usual greetings when they were alone again in the garden, he stood and faced her. 'I must return to Gansu,' he said. 'I have family matters 1 must attend to. And my sufi master has need of me in his madressa. I've put it off as long as 1 could, but 1 have to go.'

  Kang looked aside. 'I will be sorry.'

  'Yes. 1 also. There is much still to discuss.'

  Silence.

  Then Ibrahim stirred and spoke again. 'I have thought of a way to solve this problem, this separation between us, so unwished for, which is that you should marry me ‑ accept my proposal of marriage and marry me, and bring you and your people with you out with me, to Gansu.'

  The widow Kang looked utterly astonished. Her mouth hung open.

  'Why ‑ 1 cannot marry. 1 am a widow.'

  Ibrahim said, 'But widows may remarry. 1 know the Qing try to discourage it, but Confucius says nothing at all against it. I have looked, and checked with the best experts. People do it.'

  'Not respectable people!'

  He narrowed his eyes, looking suddenly Chinese. 'Respect from whom?'

  She looked away. 'I cannot marry you. You are hui, and 1 am one who has not yet died.'

  'The Ming emperors ordered all hui to marry good Chinese women, so that their children would be Chinese. My mother was a Chinese woman.'

  She looked up, surprised again. Her face was flushed.

  'Please,' he said, hand out. 'I know it's a new idea. A shock. I'm sorry. Please think about it, before you make your final reply. Consider it.'

  She straightened up and faced him formally. 'I will consider it.'

  A flick of the hand indicated her desire to be left alone, and with a truncated farewell, ended by a phrase in another language, spoken most intently, he made his way out of the compound.

  After that, the widow Kang wandered through her household. Pao was out in the kitchen, ordering the girls about, and Kang asked ber to come and speak to her in the garden. Pao followed her out, and Kang told her what had happened, and Pao laughed.

  'Why do you laugh!,' Kang snapped. 'Do you think 1 care so much for a testimonial from a Qing Emperor! That 1 should‑lock myself in this box for the rest of my life, for the sake of a paper covered with vermilion ink?'

  Pao froze, first startled, then frightened. 'But, Mistress Kang Gansu . . .'

  'You know nothing about it. Leave me.'

  After that no one dared to speak to ber. She wandered the house like a hungry ghost, acknowledging no one. She scarcely spoke. She visited

  the shrine at the Temple of the Purple Bamboo Grove, and recited the Diamond Sutra five times, and went home with her knees hurting. The poem of Li Anzi, 'Sudden View of Years' came to her mind:

  Li Anzi: the mother of two successful officials, who reared them alone as a widow.

  Sometimes all the threads on the loom Suggest the carpet to come. Then we know that our children‑to‑be Hope for us in the bardo. For them we weave until our arms grow tired.

  She had the servants carry her to the magistrate's building, where she had them set down the sedan chair, and did not move for an hour. The men could just see her face behind the gauze of the window curtain. They took her home without her ever having emerged.

  The next day she had them carry her to the cemetery, though it was not a festival day, and under the empty sky she shuffled about with her peculiar gait, sweeping the graves of all the family ancestors, then sitting at the foot of her husband's grave, head in her hands.

  The next day she went down to the river on her own, walking the entire way, crimping along, looking at trees, ducks, the clouds in the sky. She sat on the riverbank, as still as if she were in one of the temples.

  Xinwu, was down there as he almost always was, trailing his fishing pole and bamboo basket. He brightened at the sight of her, showed her the fish he had caught. He sat by her, and they watched the great brown river flow past, glossy and compact. He fished, she sat and watched.

  'You're good at that,' she said, watching him flick the line out into the stream.

  'My father taught me.' After a time: 'I miss him.'

  'I do too.' Then: 'Do you think ... I wonder what he would think.'

  After another pause: 'If we move west, you must come with us.'

  She invited Ibrahim to return, and when he came, Pao led him into the reception hall, which Kang had ordered filled with flowers.

  He stood before ber, head bowed.

  'I am old,' she told him. 'I have passed through all the life stages. 1

  am one who has not yet died. 1 cannot go backwards. 1 cannot give you any sons.'

  The life stages: milk teeth, hair­pinned‑up, marriage, children, rice and salt, widowhood.

  'I understand,' he murmured. 'I too am

  old. Still ‑ 1 ask your hand in marriage. Not for sons, but for me.'

  She regarded him, her colour rising.

  'Then 1 accept your offer of marriage.'

  He smiled.

  After that the household was as if caught in a whirlwind. The servants, though highly critical of the match, nevertheless had to work all day every day to make the place ready in time for the fifteenth day of the sixth month, the midsummer time traditionally favoured for starting travel. Kang's elder sons disapproved of the match, of course, but made plans to attend the wedding anyway. The neighbours were scandalized, shocked beyond telling, but as they were not invited, there was no way for them to express this to the Kang household. The widow's sisters at the temple congratulated her and wished her well. 'You can bring the wisdom of the Buddha to the hui,' they told her. 'It will be very useful for all.'

  So they were married in a small ceremony attended by all Kang's sons, and only Shih was less than congratulatory, pouting most of the morning in his room, a fact Pao did not even report to Kang. After the ceremony, held in the garden, the party spread down to the river, and though small, it was determinedly cheery. After that the household was packed up, its furniture and goods loaded in carts either destined for their new home in the west, or else for the orphanage that Kang had helped establish in town, or for her elder sons.

  When all was ready, Kang took a last walk through the household, stopping to stare into the bare rooms, oddly small now.

  This square fathom has held my life. Now the goose flies away, Chased by a Phoenix from the west. How could one life encompass such change. Truly we live more lives than one.

  Soon she came out and climbed into the sedan chair. 'It is already gone,' she said to Ibrahim. He handed her a gift, an egg painted red: happiness in the new year. She bowed her head. He nodded, and directed their little train to begin the journey west.

  Three. Waves Slap Together

  The trip took over a month. The roads and tracks they followed were dry, and they made good time. Partly this was because Kang asked to ride in a cart rather than be carried in a palanquin or smaller chair. At first the servants were convinced this decision had caused some discord in the new couple, for Ibrahim took to riding in the covered cart with Kang, and they heard the arguing between t
hem go on sometimes for whole days on end. But Pao walked close enough one afternoon to catch the drift of what they were saying, and she came back to the others relieved. 'It's only religion they're debating. A real pair of intel‑ lectuals, those two.'

  So the servants travelled on, reassured. They went up to Kaifeng, stayed with some of Ibrahim's Muslim colleagues there, then followed the roads paralleling the Wei River, west to Xian in Shaanxi, then over hard passes in dry hills, to Lanzhou.

  By the time they arrived, Kang was amazed beyond amazement. 'I can't believe there is so much world,' she would say to Ibrahim. 'So much China! So many fields of rice and barley, so many mountains, so empty and wild. Surely we should have crossed the world by now.'

  'Scarcely a hundredth part of it, according to the sailors.'

  'This outlandish country is so cold and dry, so dusty and barren. How will we keep a house clean here, or warm? It's like trying to live in hell.'

  'Not that bad, surely.'

  'Is this really Lanzhou, the renowned city of the west? This little brown windblown mudbrick village?'

  'Yes. It's growing quite rapidly, actually.'

  'And we are to live here?'

  'Well, 1 have connections here, and in Xining, a bit farther to the west. We could settle in either place.'

  'Let me see Xining before we decide. it must be better than this.'

  Ibrahim said nothing, but ordered their little caravan on. More days of travel, as the seventh month passed, and storm clouds rolled overhead almost every day, never quite breaking on them. Under these low ceilings the sere broken hills looked even more inhospitable than before, and except in the irrigated, terraced central flats of the long narrow valleys, there was no more agriculture to be seen. 'How do people live here?' Kang asked. 'How do they eat?'

  'They herd sheep and goats,' Ibrahim said. 'Sometimes cattle. It's like this all over, west of here, all the way across the dry heart of the world.'

  'Astonishing. It's like travelling back in time.'

  Finally they came to Xining, another little walled mudbrick town, huddling under shattered mountainsides, in a high valley. A garrison of imperial solders manned the gates, and some new wooden barracks had been thrown up under the town walls. A big caravanserai stood empty, as it was too late in the year to start travelling. Beyond it several walled ironworks used what little power the river provided to run their stamps and forges.

  'Ugh!' Kang said. 'I did not think Lanzhou could be beaten for dust, but 1 was wrong.'

  'Wait for your decision,' Ibrahim requested. 'I want you to see Qinghai Lake. It's just a short journey farther.'

  'Surely we will fall off the edge of the world.'

  'Come see.'

  Kang agreed without argument; indeed, it seemed to Pao that she was actually enjoying these insanely dry and barbarous regions, or at least enjoying her complaining about them. The dustier the better, her face seemed to say, no matter what words she spoke.

  A few more days west on a bad road brought them through a draw to the shores of Qinghai Lake, the sight of which took speech away from all of them. By chance they had arrived on a day of wild, windy weather, with great white clouds floored by blue‑grey embroidery charging overhead, and these clouds were reflected in the lake's water, which in

  sunlight was just as blue‑green as the name of the lake would suggest. To the west the lake extended right off to the horizon; the curve of its visible shores was a bank of green hills. Out here in this brown desolation, it was like a miracle.

  Kang got out of the cart and walked slowly down to the pebbled shore, reciting the Lotus Sutra, and holding up her hands to feel the hard rush of the wind on her palms. Ibrahim gave her some time to herself, then joined her.

  'Why do you weep?' he inquired.

  ‑‑‑Sothis is the great lake,"' she recited,

  ‑‑‑NowI can at last comprehend The immensity of the universe; My life has gained new meaning! But think of all the women Who never leave their own courtyards, Who must spend their whole lives Without once enjoying a sight like this.‑­

  Ibrahim bowed. 'Indeed. Whose poem is this?'

  She shook her head, dashing the tears away. 'That was Yuen, the

  wife of Shen Fu, on seeing the T'ai Hu. The Great Lake! What would ‑

  she have thought if she saw this one! It is part of "Six Chapters from

  a Floating Life". Do you know it? No. Well. What can one say?'

  'Nothing.'

  'Indeed.' She turned to him, put her hands together. 'Thank you, husband, for showing me this great lake. It is truly magnificent. Now 1 can settle, let us live wherever you please. Xining, Lanzhou, the other side of the world, where once we met in a previous life ‑ wherever you like. It is all the same to me.' And she leaned weeping against his side.

  For the time being, Ibrahim decided to settle the household in Lanzhou. This gave him better access to the Gansu Corridor, and therefore the routes to the west, as well as the return routes to the Chinese interior. Also, the madressa he had had the closest contact with in his youth had moved to Lanzhou, forced there from Xining by pressure from newly arrived western Muslims.

  They set up their household in a new mudbrick compound by the banks of the Tao River, close to where it joined the Yellow River. The Yellow River's water was indeed yellow, a completely opaque sandy roiling yellow, precisely the colour of the hills to the west out of which it sprang. The Tao River was a bit clearer and more brown.

  The household was bigger than Kang's old place in Hangzhou, and she quickly set up the women's quarters in a back building, staking out a garden in the ground around it, and demanding potted trees to begin the process of landscaping. She also wanted a loom, but Ibrahim pointed out that silk thread would be unavailable here, as there were neither mulberry groves nor filatures. If she wanted to continue weaving, she would have to learn to work wool. With a sigh she agreed, and began the process on hand‑looms. Embroidering silk cloth that was already made also occupied them.

  Ibrahim meanwhile went to work meeting with his old associates in the Muslim schools and fellowships, and with the new Qing officials of the town, thereby beginning the process of sorting out and assisting the new political and religious situations in the area, which had changed, apparently, since he had last been home. In the evenings he would sit with Kang on the verandah overlooking the muddy yellow river and explain it to her, answering her endless questions.

  'To simplify slightly, ever since Ma Laichi came back from Yemen, bearing texts of religious renewal and rectification, there has been conflict within the Muslims of this part of the world. Understand that Muslims have lived here for centuries, almost since the beginning of Islam, and at this distance from Mecca and the other centres of Islamic learning, various beterodoxies and error were introduced. Ma Laichi wanted to reform these, but the old umma here brought suit against him in the Qing civil court, accusing him of huozhong.'

  Kang looked severe, no doubt remembering the effects of such delusion back in the inte‑ rior.

  Deluding the people, a serious offence anywhere in China.

  'Eventually the governor‑general out here, Paohang Guangsi, dismissed the suit. But that did not end matters. Ma Laichi proceeded to convert the Salars to Islam ‑they are a people out here who speak a Turkic language, and live on the roads. They are the ones you see in the white caps, who do not look Chinese.'

  'Who look like you.'

  Ibrahim frowned. 'A little, perhaps. Anyway, this made people nervous, as the Salars are considered dangerous people.'

  'I can see why ‑ they look like it.'

  'These people who look like me. But no matter. Anyway, there are many other forces in Islam, sometimes in conflict. A new sect called the Naqshabandis are trying to purify Islam by a return to more orthodox older ways, and in China they are led by Aziz Ma Mingxin, who, like Ma Laichi, spent many years in Yemen and Mecca, studying with Ibrahim ibn Hasa al‑Kurani, a very great shaikh whose teachings are spread now all over th
e Islamic world.

  'Now, these two great shaikhs came back here from Arabia with reforms in mind, after studying with the same people, but alas, they are different reforms. Ma Laichi believed in the silent recital of prayer, called dhikri, while Ma Mingxin, being younger, studied with teachers who believed prayers could be chanted aloud as well.'

  'This seems a minor difference to me.'

  'Yes.' When Ibrahim looked Chinese it meant he was amused by his wife.

  'In Buddhism we allow both.'

  'True. But they mark deeper divisions, as often happens. Anyway, Ma Mingxin practises jahr prayer, meaning spoken aloud. This Ma Laichi and his followers dislike, as it represents a new and even purer reli‑ gious revival coming to this area. But they can't stop them coming. Ma Mingxin has the support of the Black Mountain sufis who control both sides of the Pamirs, so more of them are coming in here all the time, escaping the battles between Iran and the Ottomans, and between the Ottomans and the Fulanis.'