by Can Xue
“Daisy, are you okay now?” Dad asked sternly.
“I’m terribly sleepy. It’s so light over there, and I couldn’t sleep . . . ,” she said vaguely.
“Did you get a good look, Daisy? What I saw was merely a dark blur. The moon had risen, but it didn’t light up anything. What were you looking for in the house?”
“A rat. Let me rest my head on the table and take a nap.”
She closed her eyes and still didn’t fall asleep. She was dispirited, yet also excited. Indistinctly, she heard her mother calling her in the kitchen.
“Daisy, Daisy, it’s here!”
Daisy sprang up and dashed to the kitchen.
“Where? Where?” she asked.
Mama pointed with the tip of her foot to a newly shaved-out little hole.
“It ran out quickly,” Mama said dejectedly. “Just like a bullet! Snowfall is good for this kind of animal. They can sneak off in the snow in the blink of an eye, and leave no trace.”
“Was it the kind with thin legs?” Daisy asked.
“Yes. They’re the outsiders’ pets. They eat the outsiders’ corpses until only the skeletons remain.”
“It’s so light out . . . ,” Daisy said, yawning.
“As light as a mirror!” Mama took over the topic excitedly. “Snow fell again just now. That boy from Mosquito Village circled our house many times. As he walked, from time to time he bent over and buried something in the snow. He stared at our house. I could see that he was the child of those outsiders!”
“What’s wrong with the outsiders’ children?”
“Why don’t you believe me, Daisy? It isn’t good for you.”
“What’s the matter with the outsiders’ children?” Daisy doggedly raised the same question.
“Outsiders have no homes. They wander around all night in the wilderness.”
“I see. Mama, are they like those rats?”
“You’re a bright child, Daisy.”
“I’m terribly sleepy.”
At last, Daisy fell asleep.
In her dreams, many people called her. She heard them all. She wanted to answer, but couldn’t make a sound. Dad called her to breakfast, Mama called her to lunch, Auntie called her to dinner, the boy from Mosquito Village called her to go fishing, Little Wan asked if she could borrow some thread for embroidery.
She ran about in the villages that she frequently dreamed of. She knew that she had never been to these villages, but the moment she fell asleep, they entered her dreams. The villages were covered by snow, and the huge weeping willow branches were swathed in ice. The sky darkened. No one was visible in the entire region. Her steps were light, too light to be real. She stopped for an instant and touched a willow branch. A thought flashed through her mind: It’s going to be dark soon. The popsicle-like branches caused her to tremble, and she let go of the branch. She occupied herself for a while under the tree, scraping away at the snow until muddy earth was revealed. She made a mark, intending to return the next day.
It was the next morning when she smelled smoke and suddenly woke up. She saw Mama’s face above her. Mama was smiling as she watched her.
“Yesterday, your dad and I went to that home again.”
“What home?”
“The one in Mosquito Village. He told your dad that because you had discovered their secret, the villagers had all moved away. Now his family is the only one left there. How did you happen upon such a place?”
“So you and Dad have known about this place for a long time?”
“Yes. Your dad was a short-term laborer there for years. Sometimes he stayed overnight. He went there with the Mosquito villagers at night. But each time he lost his courage on the way and returned by himself. He has regretted this for years. He felt disgraced.”
“Have all of them moved? Is that one family still there?”
“Now that family has also left. Naturally, the rat still lives there.”
“Oh, my poor dad,” Daisy sighed.
At breakfast, she didn’t dare look at Dad. She ate with her head down.
When she finished and looked up, she realized Dad had already left the table.
“Your dad decided to go out by himself. Staying at home in such snowy weather makes him uneasy.”
“Where did he go?”
“The place where you went,” Mama said with a smile.
Daisy jumped up, rushed to her room and put on boots, and then chased after him.
Dad had reached the other end of the village. His silhouette was a tiny black dot.
“Dad! DAD!” she shouted through tears.
Dad stopped and waited for her.
“Why are you crying? Why are you crying?” he asked absentmindedly.
“Where are you going?”
“Mosquito Village.”
He shrugged his shoulders. Daisy walked in silence with him.
When they reached Mosquito Village’s tall old willow tree, Dad suddenly said, “Daisy, do you still remember the road you took?”
“Road? I didn’t pay any attention. I was just walking. Everywhere, everything was white . . . Let me think. Oh yes—smoke! Someone was burning hell money.”
“You have a good memory. It’s helpful.”
While they were talking, they came to a courtyard. Last time, Dad had stood at this door eating corn on the cob. But now the doors and windows were tightly closed. No one was here. The odd thing was that under the eaves were two benches. “Someone knew we would be coming,” Dad said as he sat down.
“Who?” Daisy sat down, too.
“I don’t know. But this is the way things always are in Mosquito Village. The moment you enter this village, you’re being watched. This time, they’re all gone. Even this family has left.”
“But you say that someone is watching us. Who’s watching now?”
Dad didn’t reply. He was listening closely. Daisy pricked up her ears. But she quickly wearied of listening, because there was nothing to hear except for the monotonous sound of the wind.
Daisy stood up; she wanted to look all around. When she walked to the wall, she saw the boy. He was running south, leaping like a goat.
“Hey, hey!” Daisy shouted.
The wind broke her voice up. The boy didn’t hear her. She turned around to look; her father was no longer under the eaves of the house. He was walking to the back. Daisy followed him, an ominous premonition rising in her mind. She saw a beam of white light shining on the dog shed behind the house.
The dog shed was large. Two old dogs were inside. One was missing its right ear. They snuggled up to each other, fearfully watching the two people. They were shaking.
“They’re cold,” Daisy said. She thought she was going to cry.
As Daisy and Dad crouched at the door of the dog shed, the wind gradually strengthened. The dog shed shook, as if it would be blown away. The whirlwind carried snowflakes with it; they struck Daisy and her father. In a second, everything was dark.
“Dad, let’s get out of here! Let’s go! Now!”
Just as they dodged aside, a huge pile of snow slammed onto the dog shed. The shed collapsed. The two old dogs didn’t run away. Without uttering a bark, they were buried under the snow. Daisy kept asking herself, “What just happened?”
“Let’s go back,” Dad said.
“It’s better to stay beneath the eaves, Dad. The wind is too strong. We can’t see anything. Something could go wrong.”
As Daisy implored him, Dad, to her surprise, started laughing.
“You worry too much. What could go wrong?”
They walked into the gale. Sometimes the snow blown by the whirlwind toppled them, and they were almost buried. Daisy and Dad did all they could to dig out of the snow and extricate themselves. They walked and stopped, walked and stopped. Daisy’s face was so frozen that it was numb. She couldn’t see anything. She just followed Dad. Only one thought remained in her confused brain: “That boy actually can live in the wilderness in such snowy weather . . .”
“They’re outsiders!” By the time Dad said this, they were home again. “Outsiders aren’t the same as us. If they want to leave, they just leave. If they want to stay, they just stay.”
“Then what about the dogs?” Fear showed in Mama’s eyes.
“They should be all right,” Dad asserted.
Daisy remembered the expression in the eyes of the old dog that was missing an ear, and she twisted uneasily in her chair. The people had gone, but they’d left the dogs behind; they must have hearts of steel. Someone whispered to Daisy, “It’s because you discovered us that we moved away . . .” She was stunned, and shifted her gaze to her dad. Dad was smoking: the smoke he exhaled formed a white mushroom cloud that covered his face.
After tidying the kitchen, Daisy went back to her bedroom. The bedroom was small, with a narrow window facing the backyard. Daisy walked to the window. She simply couldn’t believe her eyes.
The boy was sitting on a pile of snow. He was naked, resting his head on one hand as if asleep. He must have been exhausted from running.
Some people were entering from the gate in the backyard: their faces were familiar. They were all squinting at the dazzling white sky. Daisy heard them enter the house with slow, heavy steps. The building creaked with each step they took. Daisy fancied that they were old elephants emerging from the forest.
Mama stood at the door and said to Daisy, “The outsiders have arrived.”
THE QUEEN
1.
People in Wang Village had a great hobby—watching the queen walk along the flagstone roads through their village. The queen was returning to her home, a deserted wilderness north of the plains. That rather large wooden house had been built when the old king was young. After years of being battered by wind and rain, the wood had darkened, but it hadn’t yet rotted. It was still strong. The old king and his queen had long since died; the elders in the village could still dimly remember them. After the old king and his queen died, the Wang villagers quite naturally began calling the couple’s only child Queen. No one knew how old she was—a person’s age was the last thing that the villagers cared about. Their impression was that the queen wasn’t yet old, nor was she young. It was best to say she was ageless. Everyone knew the queen was arrogant, for she lived alone in an old house in the wilderness, unwilling to move to the village. If she had wished to move to the village everyone would have welcomed her. She lived in the old house. Every day she went to the market to buy groceries and incidentals. She drew water with a wooden bucket from the well at the gate of her house. A mischievous boy from Wang Village called the queen a drone to her face. He was later twig-whipped fiercely by his parents, who were deeply ashamed of his ill-bred behavior. But he was only a little kid: he would learn from this lesson and grow up. The villagers thought that each person should understand the hidden meaning in the word queen and behave accordingly.
What did the queen think of the villagers? Hard to say. Everyone knew she was amiable and polite. She greeted people when she saw them, and she was happy to help others (this seldom happened, though, because she lacked opportunities to help). Yet when she went through the village, she never stopped to chat with the people she encountered. She apparently was always busy, and her thoughts were elsewhere. One could see this from the vague expression in her eyes. The queen had never locked her door. One day, unable to contain his curiosity, a young man slipped into her spacious living room. At the time, the queen was at the market. What happened after that? Nothing. The young man stayed in the house fewer than five minutes and then came out, his face deathly pale. The villagers said, “This is the boundary that the queen has set. How can someone simply walk into the queen’s residence of his own accord?” This young man had to suffer the consequences.
The villagers certainly didn’t know what the queen was thinking, much less what she thought of them, but they had been born with a strict sense of propriety. This led them to maintain a respectful distance from the queen. Perhaps this awareness arose from communication between the two sides? Or perhaps from certain age-old regulations for interpersonal relationships? The young man later told people that the queen’s home was spotless. Hanging on one wall was the old king’s crown. Although the furniture and utensils were old, they twinkled with an imposing radiance in the gloominess. The king’s throne was on the living-room carpet. In the dining room, an enormous coal lamp sat on the long table. As soon as he entered, he felt he was suffocating. In a few short minutes, he thought he would soon faint. And so he groped his way out. “So scary. Scary,” he said. Although the villagers had not burst recklessly into the queen’s home, as he had, they nodded in unison upon hearing his vague narrative: in their imagination, the queen’s home was just like this. The queen seemed to be hardworking—at daybreak, someone had seen her draw water from the well; someone else had seen her carrying a lantern at midnight looking for herbs in the wilderness. The villagers inferred that she must be working to maintain the tidiness of the “imperial palace,” and of course she also cooked her own meals. On windy days, ash and sand blew in, so the rooms had to be swept every day. Keeping the house spotless was no easy task. Speaking of cooking, the villagers thought that the queen was probably careful about what she ate. They guessed this because she looked spirited and energetic, and because she loved to buy food. Sharp-eyed people noticed that her favorite foods were mushrooms, celery, wild boar, mustard greens, and roasted peanuts. People said admiringly, “What simple preferences!” She apparently valued the flavor as well as nutrition. Good smells always wafted from her kitchen. The villagers wanted the queen to eat well and rest well. They loved her cleaning and her skills in the kitchen. They thought these were the source of their fascination with her charm. As for the queen herself, of course she ate well every day and rested well. And she did like cleaning and cooking, but not in order to be fascinating. Then for what? This is a riddle.
As for time, the queen had two contradictory attitudes: one was extremely befuddled—she couldn’t figure out which day it was. Was it Tuesday or Thursday? Was it the third day of the month or the eighth day? Sometimes she got the month wrong. The other was extremely meticulous. For example, what would she do at particular hours of the day? And for how long? How would she schedule her activities over the next seven days? How often would she go away each month? She had to abide meticulously by her own regulations. She connected her daily activities like notes in a melody, and she would say rather contentedly, “Look at me—like a fish in water.” The villagers didn’t care (perhaps they didn’t know) about her confusion over time, but they appreciated her strictness with time. They thought this was noble. When the market was about to close, they gathered on both sides of the road. They would look at their watches and say, “The queen will arrive in eight minutes.” “Still seven more minutes . . .” “Four more minutes . . . ,” and so forth. This was the moment they waited for excitedly. It was a stately moment. The queen arrived and greeted the villagers. She walked like the wind and soon disappeared from their sight. She had to hurry home to peel potatoes, shuck broad beans, and light the fire to cook her meal. After eating, clearing the table, and tidying the kitchen, she had to sit down and write her daily work diary.
The “work diary” was actually simply a record of her day’s activities, as well as some accounts. Writing her work diary gave the queen her greatest joy and satisfaction. Afterward, she felt relaxed and reinvigorated. Because this activity was so absorbing, the queen sometimes deliberately broke away from her writing and stood outside for a while and looked at the sky. Then she returned to her desk and continued with her record and her accounts. Once when she was looking at the sky, a little black bird fell onto her shoe, pecked at her shoelace, and flew away. In that split second, she felt overwhelmed by this great favor. As she deliberately prolonged her happiness, heaven once more generously gave her greater happiness. The contradictory thing was that her palace had no calendar; she had never bought one in the market. She had a radio; with it, she recei
ved messages from the world. This little box could tell the queen the date and the year. The queen would listen half-heartedly. After a few minutes, she would forget it all. Perhaps she had too much to fill her time, and she was too busy to pay attention to extraneous things. After writing in her diary, she had to sweep the carpet—such a pleasurable activity. Cleaning the coal lamp was enjoyable, too. Each time, she polished its glass cover until it reflected her face as clearly as a mirror. She looked into the glass cover and said softly, “I’m getting old . . .” She felt an inner joy that was incomprehensible to others. Why was she happy about growing old? Because it meant she was becoming more and more experienced and determined. It also meant that she was drawing closer and closer to her parents, the old king and queen.
People believed that the old king was originally from Wang Village. Someone even said that he used to be a knife sharpener. Later, he increased the distance between the villagers and himself by building a big house in the wilderness and calling himself king. He married a young woman from another place. Folks said that the couple went away for half a year and came back rich. But the villagers didn’t know how they had done this. In fact, no one cared how they became rich. Everyone deeply venerated the old king. “He’s our king.” People were often near tears when they said this. Their faith was not inspired by any oracle; it came from their innermost beings. And because of this simple feeling, when the old king and his queen died in quick succession, everyone quite naturally called their daughter queen. This queen was much like her father! Although she lacked her father’s skill at sharpening kitchen knives, in her imposing manner and with her omniscient vision she proved even more a monarch than her father. A queen who kept the palace neat and tidy, who was unruffled in everything she did, who strove for self-improvement was surely worthy of the villagers’ veneration. Someone noted that they revered her more than they had the old king! It was only because of this queen that this transcendental palace also carried a sense of the mundane. Anyone walking past the wooden house could tell what the queen was eating that day. The aroma of the food made the villagers hungry. They couldn’t imagine what the palace would be like if the queen were not there. The queen should live in the palace forever. Was this the difference between her and the old king? The villagers didn’t want to probe this question. They venerated their queen, loved their queen (of course, she was their queen!): this was enough. Hey! Just look at the queen’s nimble footsteps: Wasn’t it like flying?
