by Tong,, Su
The boundless plain made Binu lightheaded, and she lost all sense of direction. But what did that matter, since she was still chained to Qinsu’s coffin? They told her that Seven-Li Cave, the birthplace of Qinsu, was to the north, on the way to Great Swallow Mountain.
‘After we cross this plain,’ the driver said, ‘we’ll see mountains. Those are the northern mountains. When you see them, Great Swallow Mountain will be in sight and when you see Great Swallow Mountain, you’ll be able to see your man. You hitched a ride on the right cart this time, so no more suicide attempts. Be content with your lot.’
Binu watched the boy’s filthy face swaying on top of the coffin. He was no longer her gravedigger, no longer in the service of the Angel of Death. Instead he had taken on the loathsome mission of chaining her to a coffin and keeping her alive. He now had a firm grasp on the tail that was her life. She’d lost even the right to die when Hundred Springs Terrace married her off to a corpse. Hundred Springs Terrace was heaven on earth for so many people, but had become hell on earth for Binu. They had stolen her bundle, stolen her body, and finally stolen even her sorrow, her tears, and her right to die.
Binu looked down at the iron ring attached to the coffin, a great big hand that held her tightly and never loosened its grip. It was the man’s hand, the hand of a corpse, holding on to her, repeating a sorrowful command, filled with vanity, ‘Cry, oh cry, cry for me, cry louder!’
Binu related her tearful complaint to every person she met along the way, even to roadside chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep. ‘I am from Peach Village, the wife of Wan Qiliang.’ Her laments were interpreted by people as mourning for the dead. Throughout the trip, she wailed, crying for herself and for Qiliang. No sounds emerged, only tears, which flowed drop by drop in a stream in her wake, dampening the roadside. All the bright-eyed people who passed by the hearse regarded her as a grieving widow, not noticing the chain that was visible only beneath her white robe, choosing instead to comment animatedly on the panther flag and the cypress coffin, with its subtle fragrance. How they envied the man lying inside.
‘How splendid to be a retainer in Hundred Springs Terrace,’ they said, ‘even when you’re dead. They sleep in fine coffins and are accompanied by virtuous wives and filial sons. Ah, such good fortune!’
They had locked her up at the entrance to the cave of death, where, if you stood up, you lived, but if you jumped down, you died. Binu, however, could neither stand up nor jump down. She was forced to lean up against the coffin of a man she did not know and travel north, feeling that she was not a woman on an oxcart, but a gourd that was being taken northwards on an alien road, as if carried along by ocean waves.
‘Is it still death that you seek? Do you want to go to Great Swallow Mountain, or not?’
Repeated provocations by the driver and the boy had worn her out. They could not know that she had forsaken both life and death. In the mornings, the sun warmed her robe with a promise of life; but at night, the cart was swamped in darkness, and a chill spread across the coffin. The north became for her a curtain of black, and the road to Great Swallow Mountain seemed longer even than her own life.
The boy kept coming over to tug her hair. ‘Let’s hear you breathe,’ he said. ‘Stop pretending you’re dead. Let’s see you move. Say something.’
Binu shoved his hand away.
‘Is that all you can do?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t speak, you don’t eat, you don’t even pee. How am I supposed to know you’re alive? At most you’re half-dead.’
Binu looked down at the once-dry grass at the side of the road, which now glistened with crystal-like teardrops.
‘Child,’ she said, pointing at the damp grass, ‘I am still crying, and that proves that I am alive.’
They neared Fragrant Forest Station before nightfall.
A pair of grotesque young men came running out before the cart reached the station, their faces painted with anti-curse markings, their nostrils stuffed with grey-green mugwort, their hands wrapped in treated rags, for the plague had arrived already. They stood in the road to stop the cart and declared that coffins with corpses were forbidden from entering the station.
Since they were now in Pingyang Prefecture, Lord Hengming’s travel permit was of no use, so Wuzhang complained to the men, ‘This is no ordinary coffin. You can see for yourselves there’s a living person chained to it. What do we do about her if we cannot take the coffin in?’
The men walked up and saw that Binu’s ankle was in fact chained to the coffin. ‘What’s this all about?’ they exclaimed. ‘Do all Blue Cloud Prefecture coffins come equipped with iron rings, so you can chain the dead man’s wives to them?’
‘No,’ replied Wuzhang, ‘only this one, and this is the only woman chained to one.’
The men from the station suggested that Wuzhang unchain her. A long hesitation followed, before he turned to Binu and said, ‘If you swear an oath that you won’t try to run away or kill yourself, I’ll unlock the chain.’
With an indifferent look, she replied, ‘What sort of oath do you want, Elder Brother? Why would anyone who is not afraid to die worry about an oath?’
‘I know you’re not afraid to die,’ he said. ‘But you are still concerned that your husband might freeze to death on Great Swallow Mountain, so swear on the life of your husband, Qiliang.’
Binu shook her head. ‘Unchain me or not, it’s up to you, but I will not swear on the life of Qiliang.’
The men were confused.
‘She’s half-dead anyway, so let’s all pitch in and unload her along with the coffin,’ said Wuzhang.
It was a time-consuming affair, and night had fallen by the time Qinsu’s coffin was lying in a field of oats, the chained Binu bent over it. The oat field reached out its slender fingers to stroke the black lacquered coffin and Binu’s white robe, perhaps because the oat field had never received such exceptional visitors. Driven by curiosity, the oats took a coffin and a living woman generously to their bosom. In her white robe, she was like a cotton cloud settling over the field.
‘Go and watch over her,’ Wuzhang ordered the boy.
The boy bounded away from the driver. ‘I’m not going to sleep in the open air,’ he said. ‘I want to sleep in Fragrant Forest Station. Besides, I have to feed and water the oxen.’
‘Not today. I’ll do it.’ Wuzhang ran after the boy. ‘Don’t throw my kindness to the wind. Stay with her tonight, and I’ll make it up to you with a big chunk of flatbread tomorrow in Seven-Li Cave.’
The boy ran up to Binu, grabbed her arm and raised it, to force her to swear an oath to the driver. ‘Swear it!’ he yelled, giving her a shove. ‘How hard can that be? All you have to do is swear, and you won’t be chained to a coffin like a dog any more. Do that and we can all go into the station.’
Binu swayed under the assault of the boy’s violent shoves. ‘Stop that,’ she said. ‘I’d like to do what you want, and I don’t want to cause trouble, but I cannot risk Qiliang’s life in an oath.’
‘If you’re not thinking of dying and you aren’t going to run away, what’s the problem? Since you won’t swear it, I’ll do it for you: If I try to kill myself or run away, then let my husband Qiliang freeze to death in the snow or be crushed by rocks from the mountain!’
Binu shuddered and reached out to cover his mouth, but was too late. He ran out of the oat field and looked back to see her kneeling on the ground, her face bathed in tears.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘you win. Now that you’ve sworn on the name of Qiliang, I will not try to kill myself and I will not run away.’
That night in Fragrant Forest Station, Binu sat in an oat field in the company of a coffin.
When the dim candlelight from the station went out, total darkness enveloped her. Winds blew across the field, and the black coffin was swallowed up in the darkness, except for the gold inlays, which gave off a forbidding glare. At first she put as much distance between her and the coffin as she could, but after a while, either to seek shelt
er from the wind or for companionship, she slowly returned to it and so passed the night in yet another alien place. Terror that could not be overcome was now a part of the night. She was in the company of a dead man; he was her companion. Binu kept her eyes wide open, awaiting the arrival of the harvesting ghosts. She saw the hand of the wind as it invaded the oat field, which turned sideways to get away. She watched the moon’s hand stroke the oat field, the tips of the stalks giving out a sharp, silvery light. But she saw no scythe-wielding ghosts.
From Peach Village all the way to this plain in a foreign land, no one had been willing to listen to Binu, so she was prepared even to have a conversation with ghosts. But they did not come, and so she still had no one to talk to. She knocked on the coffin:
‘Big Brother, Big Brother, is your name Qinsu?’ she asked. ‘Qinsu, Qinsu, you were a thief, but I’m not afraid. I don’t have anything worth stealing. You are dead, and I’m still not afraid, because I’ve already died several times. I just need to ask you something: with all the women in the world you could have chained to your coffin, why did you choose me?’ The wind stopped while she was talking, and the oat stalks quit rustling. ‘Speak, speak, speak.’ She had no more to say. Now that she had said all she wanted to say, her tears flowed unchecked onto the coffin and slid down the four sides; the big black coffin was bathed in a shower of tears. At first it did not move, but gradually sounds of distress emerged from it, and Binu could feel it tremble under her hand. She could not keep it from moving. The wind got up, stirring the oat stalks so that they battered against the coffin. Binu heard the muffled sound of a man crying deep inside. It was Qinsu’s ghost. The sound carried feelings of remorse and obstinacy, as it released a steady, sorrowful refrain to Binu: ‘Seven-Li Cave, Seven-Li Cave, Seven-Li Cave!’
They were going to Seven-Li Cave, Qinsu’s birthplace. She was powerless to argue with a ghost. ‘I have come from Peach Village. I am the wife of Wan Qiliang.’
She had told so many people about her background, but the living ignored her, and now so did a ghost. The voice in the coffin was both sorrowful and determined, ‘Seven-Li Cave, Seven-Li Cave, Seven-Li Cave!’
‘I am not going to Seven-Li Cave, I am from Peach Village. I am the wife of Wan Qiliang,’ she shouted at the coffin. This had no effect the first time, so she shouted it over and over again, and the human voice finally overcame that of the ghost. She listened as the sound from inside the coffin began to sink, until it was no more than a thin sigh. The coffin stopped moving, and she sat down.
Cold late-autumn winds began to blow from the wildwoods. The night before, Binu had looked forward to dying; the night before, the chilled wind had been her Angel of Death. But this night was different. An oath uttered by the boy had changed everything. She could no longer look forward to dying; she had to live on for the sake of Qiliang. She covered herself with a blanket of fallen oat stalks, and the chilled winds stopped. For the first time in days, Binu felt hungry, so she picked several oats and put them in her mouth. As she chewed them she kept an eye on the coffin, but her eyelids got heavier and heavier and sleep was on its way. She was immediately visited by a dream in which the legendary ghostly harvesters, none of them familiar to her and all carrying scythes, floated up in the night. They were wearing Qiliang’s headdress and his coat, tied with his jade-inlaid belt. The sound of harvesting rose from the earth as all the harvesting ghosts turned into likenesses of Qiliang. She imagined that he was one of them, but even after she had shouted herself hoarse, the ghosts kept their silence. In the dream Binu wept, and the ghosts stopped what they were doing. One of them led the way to her, carrying a bundle of oat stalks.
‘I am not Qiliang,’ it said, ‘so don’t cry. Here, these oats are for you.’
All the other ghosts threw bundles of oats at her feet. ‘Qiliang is not here,’ they said, ‘so don’t cry, don’t cry; these oats are for you.’
The next morning, the carter and the boy picked Binu up out of stacked bundles of oat stalks.
‘I’ve never seen ghosts treat anyone this well in my life. Woman, you are pitied only by ghosts. Just look how many oat stalks they cut down for you!’
Standing in the morning sun in an oat field, a bundle of fresh oats in her arms, and amid the gleeful shouts of a boy, Binu looked down at Qinsu’s coffin and saw that it was framed by the fruits of a fine harvest. The night was over, and the coffin lid was covered by newly harvested oats on which translucent, crystalline dewdrops rested.
Seven-Li Cave
The hearse kept moving eastward, meandering its way out of the mist, passing a graveyard and a grove of trees before finding a village hidden beneath the ground. Swirls of kitchen smoke rose slowly from many caves, through whose openings children’s heads could be seen from time to time. Incense smoke rose from a giant cave, from which emerged the sounds of people chanting and praying.
‘We’ve arrived at Qinsu’s home,’ the carter said to his two passengers. ‘Bang on the coffin and wail. And hurry up.’
Knocking on the coffin, the boy looked at Binu and said, ‘She’s not wailing, and she’s the virtuous wife. A filial son isn’t supposed to cry before the virtuous wife, is he?’
Wuzhang glared at Binu, and from the indifferent look on her haggard face he knew that, even though her tears might be as free-flowing as the ocean, whether or not she made any noise was up to her. Her ankle chain had been removed, because he was confident he could control her feet. Her tears and sadness, on the other hand, were beyond his reach. So he shifted his focus from the virtuous wife to the filial son, and his demeanour. The broad smile on the boy’s face showed that this was all a game to him. With a mixture of anger and anxiety, the carter picked up his whip with his feet and raised a red welt on the boy’s face. The painful howls drew heads out from the caves, sallow faces materializing in the smoky mist.
The women and children timidly and curiously gazed at the oxcart from the protection of their caves, leaving it to the men to come out to greet the newcomers. Clutching stalks of wheat in their hands, they glared at the people on the cart until an old man broke the silence by telling them that their unannounced visit had ruined an auspicious day. The wails had interfered with the chanting of the wheat sutra, and that could augur badly for next year’s wheat harvest, and beyond.
‘We don’t care about wheat,’ said Wuzhang. ‘We’re delivering Qinsu’s coffin. Ask his family to come and claim it.’
No one stepped up. There was no interest in a woman and a boy in mourning garb. The luxurious coffin, on the other hand, aroused the curiosity of a few of the men. One old fellow came up and touched the black lacquer surface, even gouging out some gold powder and holding it up to the sun.
Another one, a pock-marked man, banged on the side of the coffin and bent his head to listen. ‘This must be a wooden rice bin,’ he said. ‘But why is there someone sleeping inside?’
‘It’s not a rice bin,’ shouted the disgruntled carter, ‘it’s a coffin. And that’s Qinsu sleeping in it. You remember Qinsu, don’t you? Well, here are his virtuous wife and filial son, who have escorted the coffin home. Where is the family? Which one of you is his mother? Come up here.’
Several old women clad in palm bark crawled out of the cave to watch. Bent over at the waist, their legs bare, they looked like scarecrows.
‘Whose son is Qinsu?’
There was no response from the women; clearly none of them was his mother.
Giving up on them, the carter shouted to the men, ‘Come and take a look at Qinsu’s hands.’
Signalling the boy to open the coffin, he said, ‘See, this is Qinsu of Seven-Li Cave. You may not recall his name, but you ought to recognize those hands.’
An old man with a wise face elbowed his way up and stared curiously at the writing on the dead man’s wrists. He asked the boy, ‘Is that a drawing of a horse or a fish on his hand?’
The boy laughed. ‘A horse or a fish, you say? They’re words.’
‘I know that,’ the old
man said. ‘I want to know what they mean.’
‘You don’t even recognize these two words? The one on the left means robber, and the one on the right means thief.’
One by one, the people circling the coffin backed away.
‘What? He’s a robber and a thief?’ The wise old man, the first among them to grasp the significance, was so outraged that his face reddened and his white goatee quivered. He grabbed hold of the carter’s belt. ‘How dare you send the coffin of a robber and a thief to Seven-Li Cave! This place is famous for its poverty, but no man in our lineage has ever been a thief, and no woman has ever been a prostitute. No robber or thief comes from here.’
Wuzhang hurriedly brushed the white silk covering from the dead man’s face with his elbow. ‘Is Qinsu’s family all dead?’ He jumped onto the cart and yelled, ‘Has his mother died? If his parents are dead, how about his siblings? They can’t all be dead too? If they are, there must be other relatives. Why doesn’t someone come forward to claim him? This is Qinsu, from Seven-Li Cave. Take a good look at his face. Someone help me out here and take the coffin away.’
A limping man in a coat of hemp cloth was leering at Binu. He walked up to the carter, who said, ‘Are you Qinsu’s brother? Or maybe his cousin? Come and take the coffin off my hands.’
‘I don’t want that coffin. I’d have to get help to bury it. But I’d be happy to take the living off your hands.’ He nudged the carter. ‘I could take the widow for a wife, and the boy as my son.’
‘I assumed you were all not quite right in the head,’ said Wuzhang, grimacing in anger as he realized the man’s intentions. ‘That shows how much I know. You’re smarter than I figured. No dead man for you, but you’d be willing to take on a wife and a son, all for free. Well, keep dreaming.’
By now most of the villagers had gathered round a few of the older, wiser men, talking things over as they sized up the hearse from a distance. Some stared at the people, while others focused on the two Blue Cloud oxen; some, who were more concerned with the coffin’s capacity, ran over to measure its length and height. ‘Three loads of wheat flour, no problem,’ they said.
