by Tong,, Su
Her mind cleared into the realisation that she had not even managed to leave Blue Cloud Prefecture, and now she was going to die. She recalled the prediction of the sorceresses in Kindling Village. They had said she would die on the road, and she had been prepared for that. ‘If that is the case, so be it! I am bound to meet up with a decent person sooner or later, and I will beg that person to deliver my bundle to Qiliang,’ she had said, thinking that then she would die happy. But seeing Death so early in her travels had caught her by surprise and made her wonder if she would die at the hands of these boys. She looked up at the stars. A few of the boys’ heads bent down over her, blocking out most of the sky, and she could feel their hot breath on her face. She heard them cheer.
‘She’s awake. The weeper is awake!’
Binu detected the gamey odour of deer. Death had placed itself among these boys, and she struggled to recognize it through the barrier of her dream. Who had been holding the gourd in the dream? Starlight danced on the boys’ faces. Which one of them was Death?
‘I am going to die soon, so untie me and find me a gravesite facing the sun, where you can bury me,’ she begged them. ‘I’m better off that way, since I can no longer continue on this tortuous road. Plant a gourd vine over my grave. When Qiliang sees it on his way home, he’ll know it is me. And, even if he does not see it at first, the vine will spread out across the road and trip him up. Then he will know.’
The deer-boys stared down at the tied-up Binu and cried, ‘No one is going to bury you. You’re a weeper.’ But her eager acceptance of death puzzled them, so they talked among themselves again, trying to decide if she was mad. All of a sudden, Chancellor Deer shouted across the moat, ‘The weeper is dying. If you don’t hurry up and lower the drawbridge, you’ll miss your chance to see her tears.’ That shout elicited no response. The deer-boys cast their eyes towards the drawbridge, their patience exhausted. It was not coming down.
‘Open your eyes and see where you are. This is Hundred Springs Terrace,’ General Deer yelled at Binu, ‘not a place where you can dig a grave wherever you please. Lord Hengming rides his horse past this spot every day.’
‘Then carry me over to the moat. Lord Hengming rides on a road, but surely he cannot ride on water. Throw me into the water and watch me sink below the surface. If a gourd rises to the surface, then I will be dead. That will make things easy on you and on me.’
‘Who would dare throw you into the water? That moat belongs to Lord Hengming, it is Hundred Springs Terrace’s royal canal, and corpses are not allowed in it. Cleanliness is essential to Lord Hengming. Did you notice that not even a dead chicken or rat floats in that water? A human corpse would be unthinkable!’
‘Then carry me over to the road, find a spot where the dirt is loose, and I will bury myself.’
‘You are not an earthworm that can wriggle its way underground. You cannot bury yourself.’
‘You offer me neither a road to life nor a path to death. What are you going to do with me?’
The deer-boys were at a loss as to what to do with their catch. They put their heads together for a long time, until General Deer solemnly announced to Binu where she would spend the night. ‘Lord Hengming will not take you, so we will carry you to our Deer King. Hundred Springs Terrace may not want you, but our Deer King will, for certain!’
The Deer King’s Grave
They carried Binu deep into the forest, where, apparently, the Deer King lived.
Binu begged them to let her down off the wooden plank. ‘I won’t cause any trouble, and I won’t try to run away,’ she said. ‘After all, I’m going to die whatever I do. Please put me down and let me walk. The only things that are tied up like this are beasts on their way to the slaughterhouse.’
There was a moment’s silence, then a chorus of, ‘No, you are a sacrificial offering, and they are always tied to a board.’
Soon they arrived at a little earthen mound: Deer King’s grave. Sacrificial offerings were piled in front: an ox bone, a brass lock, a seashell, a slingshot and some dried-up dead birds. A tall scarecrow wearing a cloak of tattered palm-bark stood at an angle beside the mound, an arrow in its hand. Apparently, it was the keeper of the grave. But now that they had Binu, the scarecrow was knocked to the ground, where General Deer stamped on it, saying, ‘You failed to watch over the Deer King’s grave. See how birds have eaten the grass around it?’
General Deer took out a chain and told the deer-boys to release Binu from the wooden plank. Before she could even move her legs, one of the deer-boys roughly wrapped the chain around them and chained her to a tree. General Deer heard her cry out. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘This chain allows you to walk ten paces, enough to reach the edge of the forest to pick wild fruit. Don’t use Deer King’s grave as a toilet. Use the forest. Chancellor Deer will be nearby to help you. There are wild boars in the forest. Don’t let them root around the grave, don’t let birds land on it, and don’t eat all the wild fruit you pick; leave some as sacrificial offerings.’
So this was the place the boys had picked for her. She was afraid, not of dying, but of this bizarre spot. She began to scream and struggled madly against the chain that bound her. But she was quickly surrounded by the deer-boys, who pinned her down with their thin but powerful legs and stopped her struggling.
It occurred to Binu that they weren’t children after all, but a real herd of deer. Or if they weren’t deer, then they had the hearts of deer. She was frightened, not of deer, but of their deer hearts. A human heart can move a human heart, but how was she to move the hearts of a herd of deer? She shouted loudly, calling out Qiliang’s name. The mournful sound sent evening dew falling to the ground. Her cries made the leaves and branches fall and curl, but the boys’ callous hearts remained unmoved.
General Deer gave her a disdainful look. ‘Is Qiliang your husband?’ he asked. ‘What good can calling his name do? If he came, we’d chain him to the tree next to you.’
Binu stubbornly continued to call out Qiliang’s name, and she heard the old elm tree behind her shout, ‘Qiliang! Qiliang! Qiliang!’ Then a crisp sound resounded in the night air: the branch of the elm tree snapped in two and crashed down on top of General Deer.
With a convulsive shudder, he threw off the offending branch and cried out in alarm, ‘What is this woman shouting?’ he demanded. ‘Her shouts have snapped a branch!’
Chancellor Deer picked up the branch and examined the dewdrops that covered it. ‘Shouting didn’t break it, crying did. Her tears are all over this branch.’
At that moment, the boys were plunged into inexplicable terror, from which emerged the certainty that they must stop the woman from shouting. Her shouts were so shrill that they swirled around the forest, just as their mothers’ cries had when they were calling their sick children’s spirits back from the mountain. Binu’s shouts had opened the door of their memories; they found themselves thinking back to their mothers, wherever they were, and that led to thoughts of their homes, and from there to those wretched virtues they detested – conscience, filial piety, moral integrity, all things that were anathema to free-ranging deer-boys. To stop those memories, they had to stop Binu shouting.
Chancellor Deer picked a strip of hemp from the grave and stuffed it in Binu’s mouth. ‘Go ahead, shout,’ he said. ‘I’ll just stuff the hemp in tighter.’ Dew from the elm tree rained down on Chancellor Deer, who complained loudly that his deer horns hurt terribly and were about to fall off. General Deer stepped away from the tree, protesting that when he had stepped on a fallen leaf, sharp pains had shot up his leg, and that several months of practising how to leap like a deer were about to be cancelled out in a single day. The other deer-boys had suffered a variety of uncomfortable reactions. The hand of one still meandered about his own chest, as if seeking the location of his heart; a tear had appeared in the corner of another’s eye.
Now that they had silenced Binu, the boys appeared to recover and bounded away. They stopped after a few leaps, turned and s
tudied her face closely, anxiously waiting for something to happen. With her voice stilled, her eyes became a latent danger. They were opened as wide as they would go, the pupils reflecting the semidarkness of the pre-dawn morning, empty, it seemed, of all traces of resentment or anger. They reminded the boys of their mothers’ eyes, although Binu’s eyes radiated a watery light, an obvious sign that tears were about to spill from them. Tears from her breasts, the palms of her hands and her toes had surprised and delighted the boys, but tears from her eyes threw them into a panic.
‘Tears! Tears! There are tears in her eyes! Don’t let her look at us. Cover her eyes!’
They rushed up, tore off Binu’s sash, and wrapped it around her eyes, but that had no effect on her tears, which flowed down her cheeks like a river, crystal-clear drops that splashed lightly onto the boys’ faces. Troubled by a nagging premonition that Binu’s tears were imbued with evil curses, the boys tried to get out of the way, leaping and screaming and wiping the tears off, but it was too late. They all experienced an attack of sadness, accompanied by powerful feelings of homesickness – a faraway village, a dog, a pair of goats, three pigs, crops in the field, the indistinct faces of father and mother, sister and brother. All these thoughts made noisy incursions into their storehouse of memories. The horns on their heads fell away. They held their noses and covered their eyes, but it was too late: a rainstorm of tears burst uncontrollably from each of them. Binu was forgotten, and they began to wail piteously.
General Deer bent low at the waist and cried at the riverbank as thoughts of another river took shape in his mind. The thatched hut he called home was on a riverbank. His father fished off the opposite bank, while his mother washed clothes on this side. And he cried and he cried, until he heard his sister calling his name from the hut. ‘The sweet potatoes are cooked. Go home and eat.’
Chancellor Deer wept at some wild chrysanthemums and watched as they turned into speckled bamboo, out of which a turtledove flew. He chased after it, and ended up with a handful of wild chrysanthemum petals. Opening his hand, he cried out, ‘Turtledove, where is my Turtledove?’
Another boy wept at a tree and thought back to the time when he was apprenticed to a blacksmith. After his master had produced a hoe, a rake or a scythe, it was his responsibility to saw the proper length of wood and affix it as a handle. He had been well fed back then, but his belly wasn’t as big as it was now.
The last deer-boy was the one with a gourd hanging from his neck, and he cried at their bound captive, who reminded him of his mother, then of his grandmother and his elder sister. As he cried, he called out, ‘Mother! Grandmother! Sister!’ Binu, who was still gagged, did not respond, and the boy anxiously tore the gag from her mouth and cried out again, ‘Mum!’
Three of the boys suddenly recalled the road back home. One said he wanted to head east, home to his sweet potatoes. One said he wanted to go through Blue Cloud Pass, back to his mountain hut. The third said he wanted to go back to the Cotton City blacksmith to fix handles to hoes. Before the sun came up, they hurriedly left the forest. Only the boy with the gourd remained to watch over Binu. He was too young to recall the road home, so he removed the sash that covered her eyes, broke the chain with a rock, and said to her, ‘Get up, you can get up. You might as well go home too.’
Binu’s face, bathed in tears, was illuminated by the white light of suffering, which stung her eyes. She looked up at the limbs of the old elm tree and asked the boy, ‘What is on my face? Is it dew that has dropped from the tree?’
‘What do you mean, dew?’ he said. ‘Those are tears from your own eyes.’
‘What made you boys anger my tears like that? When tears flow from someone’s eyes in Peach Village, that person’s death is not far off. Child, your elder sister here is about to die!’ She looked at the gourd hanging from his neck, and her eyes brightened, but only briefly. She reached out and pinched his cheek; he knocked her hand away. She stared at him, a sad smile appearing at the corners of her mouth. ‘It’s you,’ she said. ‘No wonder you stayed behind with me. And no wonder you carry a gourd with you. Child, I’ve seen you in a dream. You will put me in the ground and you will cover my grave, for you are my gravedigger.’
‘What do you mean, cover your grave?’ The boy was dumbstruck. ‘You are very much alive,’ he said. ‘How can I be your gravedigger? Do you want to be buried alive?’
‘Death itself has sent you to be with me, child,’ said Binu. ‘It is here. Now that I’ve entered the forest, I shall never get to Great Swallow Mountain. And what good would come of it, even if I did, since my bundle is gone and my heart is broken. What can I give Qiliang if I do see him? You, child, are my gravedigger. Go to the tool shed and bring a shovel back with you. And a hoe.’
Gravedigging
Dawn was on its way. Binu sat under the tree waiting for Death. The dark outlines of ancient trees were sketched against the blue sky, and a subtle, pungent odour of moss and vines spread through the air. The sky, fractured by random tree branches, sent light down to some spots, but kept others in dark seclusion. As she sat under the tree, Binu recalled again with resentment the prediction of the Kindling Village sorceresses. Why hadn’t they told her that Death would come for her so soon, before she had even left Blue Cloud Prefecture, before she had even a glimpse of Great Swallow Mountain, and, worst of all, before she had a chance to see Qiliang? On her journey, she had heard warnings about wolf packs, poisonous snakes and bearded men, but not a word about children, terrifying children, half-human and half-deer. The children had awakened Binu’s lachrymal glands by means of a demonic childish innocence. Her star had fallen. Every resident of Peach Village knew that when tears emerge from your eyes, those eyes will soon close for all eternity.
A herd of grey deer emerged from the shadows cast by the trees and circled the Deer King’s grave. They studied the woman under the tree with a watchful eye. One of the deer, apparently the leader, came up and examined the broken chains, quickly discerning that they were not a weapon. It butted Binu gently with its horn. When it butted her a second time, it was clear that the deer regarded her as an intruder and wanted to drive her out of their territory.
Once she saw that this was a real deer, she said, ‘Deer, where would you have me go? Let me sit here for a little while. I won’t be here for long before Death comes to claim me.’
Dawn was about to break, and human sounds emerged from beyond the edge of the forest where the residents of Hundred Springs Terrace were getting out of bed, but Binu closed her eyes with exhaustion; it had become a habit to clutch her bundle to her before going to sleep, but now there was nothing to hold. She groped the ground around her with both hands and touched the loose chains lying beside her. She picked them up and heard the grass at the Deer King’s gravesite swish back and forth, making her wonder if an unknown ghost was hidden in the grass. She dimly saw the wind blow up motes of dust, followed by puffs of blue smoke, as a child with horns on his head rose out of the grave. He had the limpid eyes and downy skin of a deer. He pointed to the gravesite and said to Binu, ‘Stop grumbling and come with me into my grave.’
The only kindness Binu had been offered in the forest came from a graveside apparition. It frightened her enough to make her turn and run towards the deer shed, where the sound of boys skipping around the forest had already started up. She wondered if the gourd boy had forgotten about getting the shovel and the hoe. He was her gravedigger, he would cover her grave, and she knew she had to find him. She ran as the first rays of morning sun reached her through the trees overhead, weeping into the hands that covered her face. A storm of tears sprang up on the forest floor, pools of water were left on the ground where the hem of her dress brushed past, and all the dead leaves and branches, all the withered ivy and wild mushrooms, were touched by the sorrow of the young woman from the south.
Soon she caught sight of her gravedigger, carrying a hoe and a spade over his shoulder as he walked through the forest in search of her. ‘It’s almost light ou
t,’ said the boy, handing her the hoe. ‘Why didn’t you take advantage of the dark to die? Now that the sun’s coming out, they’ll all be up, and they’ll see you, no matter where you dig.’
Human footprints and deer hoofprints were visible all over the muddy ground; there were signs of digging next to a layer of fallen leaves. She stopped – she couldn’t help herself – and began scraping at the ground with her hoe. She guessed what the deer-boys had buried there, and a sliver of hope, however illusory, rose in her: perhaps she could retrieve some of Qiliang’s winter clothing, even a single sandal would do.
‘I thought you said you wanted to die,’ the boy remarked. ‘So what are you doing, scraping the ground like that? I think you don’t want to die at all, and you lied when you said you had to die because of a few tears. All along you wanted me to get you a hoe and a shovel so you could dig for your bundle.’
‘I wasn’t lying. I would just like to see some of Qiliang’s things before I die,’ Binu said. ‘I cannot accept the way things have turned out. I didn’t lose sight of my bundle all the time I was on the road, avoiding bandits and highwaymen. But I couldn’t avoid you boys.’
‘Don’t blame us. We didn’t ask you to come into our forest.’ Innocence shone in his eyes. ‘You’re not going to find anything down there. The stuff in that bundle of yours is scattered all over the place. Each one of us hid what he took.’
‘Child, you could keep the sabre coins, I wouldn’t mind. But you shouldn’t have taken all of Qiliang’s winter clothing. He’s a grown adult, so his clothes will not even fit you.’
