Toward the North

by Hua Laura Wu

  Zhongyue closed his eyes for a while, and then became aware of a dark cloud settling over his face. He opened his eyes and spotted the shadow of a black skirt nearby. Dawa was sitting on the tree stump next to him. She wore a pair of oversized sunglasses that covered nearly half of her face. He could see part of a bruise and a trace of tears. Shocked, Zhongyue jerked up. “What happened to you?”

  Dawa said she fell.

  Zhongyue pondered that for a while and then shouted, “He hit you, didn’t he? Don’t lie to me.”

  Dawa pulled a corner of her scarf to wipe her face. After a while she said, “Don’t make a fuss. Things here aren’t the same as in the city. You should mind your own business, not other people’s.”

  Zhongyue’s face darkened, and he said, “I’m not in charge, but the social services are.”

  Dawa’s face paled. When she spoke again, her voice cracked with emotion. “If they take Neil away, I’ll chop you up. I swear!”

  Zhongyue said with a sigh, “You’re talking nonsense. If people from the social services came, they would take Joy away. Why would they take Neil?”

  Calming down gradually, Dawa said, “Dr. Chen, don’t worry about me. I’m happy. I’ve never seen Neil laugh like this. I thought it wasn’t in his nature to laugh.”

  Zhongyue asked, “Is it worth your tears? If you love to see him laugh, you must find a way to make him laugh all the time.”

  Dawa hesitated for a second and said, “If Neil had met you earlier, he’d have been much better. Dr. Chen, do you have a child?” Dawa asked.

  Zhongyue thought he had left his worries behind in Toronto, and he hadn’t expected that one question to bring them back. His sunny mood suddenly became cloudy. “My daughter,” he sighed. “I’m not going to talk about her.”

  Neil got up from the ground and climbed on top of Dawa like a monkey. He rummaged through Dawa’s backpack to see what she’d bought. He found a lunchbox that sported a picture of Harry Potter, a pair of new sneakers, and several pencils with rubber heads in the shape of a basketball—they all were for school. Neil tried on the new shoes with joy and then handed them back reluctantly. Dawa’s eyes fixed on her child and asked him, “What did you learn from Dr. Chen?”

  Neil looked at Zhongyue, who said, “The kid will go to school tomorrow. He’ll be stressed out for a whole semester. It’d be better to let him play today. When school starts, I’ll go to Whitefish School every Monday afternoon to train the teachers there. After that I can stay to help Neil. Let him have fun today.”

  Neil seemed to understand, so he uttered some odd words to Zhongyue. He didn’t catch them, so he asked Neil to repeat what he’d said. Again, Zhongyue didn’t understand. Dawa laughed, saying that only she knew what her son’s words meant and she explained that Neil wanted to show Zhongyue some herbs.

  “Neil’s grandpa was a medicine man in the tribe—not a Western doctor, but an herbalist. First Nations people believe in using herbs for healing, except in the case of accidents or emergencies. The family were healers from generation to generation. When Neil was a baby, his grandpa took him to pick herbs.”

  “So Neil’s father is also a medicine man, too?”

  Dawa didn’t answer, but urged Neil to go ahead. After a few steps, Neil stopped and looked at Dawa. Whining and muttering, he refused to go further. Dawa scolded him as she ran to the car to get the new sneakers. After the boy put them on, the three started walking again.

  Down the slope, wild geese were flocked along the shores of Penguin Lake. Neil snapped a branch and whipped it left and right, playfully poking at all the creatures they walked by. Zhongyue laughed, saying that a benefit of being deaf was being unafraid of noise.

  The surface of the lake looked grey under the midday sun. Wherever the wind had blown past, there were fallen leaves. Some leaves flew in the soft wind and refused to land on the ground. Bending over, Dawa picked up what looked like a stone and put it in Zhongyue’s hand. He took a look at it, and it turned out to be a goose egg, much bigger than a chicken egg. The shell looked pinkish, and the egg felt warm to the touch—maybe it had just been laid. He asked if it was edible. Dawa said it tasted better than chicken eggs. Zhongyue said that he’d pick up a few. Dawa put her fingers between her lips and whistled loudly, calling Neil. She pulled off her scarf and knotted the four corners together to make an instant bag for Neil to hold the goose eggs.

  Soon, Neil had filled half of the pouch. Zhongyue said it was enough. He wanted to carry it himself. Dawa found a tree trunk that had a hole in it—perhaps birds had built a nest there. Dawa put the egg bag into the hole and surrounded the tree with some large pebbles. “We’ll take the same route back. We only need to remember this tree. Why should we carry such a heavy thing? There’s still a long way to walk.” Zhongyue laughed. I’ve lived in the city far too long, he thought.

  The road came to a fork. One branch ran along the lake; the other turned towards the woods. Dawa chose the one that angled towards the trees.

  “Herbs near the main road aren’t very good. The area is polluted by people and cars.”

  The road narrowed, gradually becoming a trail that snaked through the trees. Their steps on the fallen leaves from the previous year made hollow echoes. The trees became tall and dense. The branches crossed over each other and wrapped everything up. The sunlight looked like ribbons coming through the trees, hanging down between the branches and dappling the ground with yellow flecks. It seemed more like dusk than noon. Deep in the woods, a woodpecker pecked on a tree. A bird fluttered in the tree; the leaves rustled and fell onto the ground.

  Dawa and Neil stopped almost at the same time. They had found a fingernail-sized pink flower between two big fir trees. Its petals were short, but it’s stamen was large and dark brown with tiny thorns on it. Neil knelt down and pushed the surrounding weeds aside. The tall stem was revealed, and Neil found even more flowers.

  “These are dog rose berries, rich in vitamins. They can be made into tea and heal constipation. You must get rid of all the thorns though. Otherwise….” Dawa paused. Zhongyue asked her to continue. Dawa hesitated and said that it would be hard to remove them from the other end.

  Neil raised his bottom, pointed at it, and muttered, “Ass, block.”

  Dawa chuckled and said, “You little bug. You don’t hear what you ought to, but only what you shouldn’t listen to.”

  “He didn’t hear—he saw.” Zhongyue said. “Neil’s good at lip-reading. We should try to speak in front of his face and use fewer gestures.”

  Pinching a flower, Neil tried to pluck it, but Dawa stopped him. From her backpack, she removed a small pouch, took out a handful of tobacco shreds, and respectfully scattered them on the ground. Eyes closed and palms together, she quietly prayed. After opening her eyes, Dawa waved her hand and let Neil pick the flower.

  “The First Nations people respect Mother Earth and never desecrate the land. They only take a plant or a tree from the woods for a good reason. And they always offer some thank-you tobacco beforehand.”

  Zhongyue also took some tobacco shreds from Dawa’s pouch and scattered them. He murmured, “Earth Mother, you know everything. I can’t lie to you. I, a Han Chinese from a faraway place, am plucking a flower because of curiosity. I am not constipated now, but should I become constipated in the future, I’ll know what to do.”

  Dawa laughed and said, “Dr. Chen, you’re funny. Your wife must always be amused.”

  Neil collected a handful of dog rose berries. After throwing them into Dawa’s backpack, he walked ahead. Fifteen minutes or so later, he came back with a bunch of maiden ferns clutched in his hand. Dawa shook the soil off the roots and displayed them in her palm to show Zhongyue. The fern looked delicate and soft, its stem pinkish, trembling slightly in the wind. “This is called virgin hair. It is used to treat a cold and also kidney stones.”

  Zhongyue jumped back a bit. He said,
“The name makes me nervous. It reminds me of corruption among government officials.” Both of them burst into laughter.

  The three found more herbs and eventually reached an open field. The midday sunlight poured down on aged tree trunks that stood one by one, numerous charred scars crawling like serpents from the bottom to the top. The land was bumpy, and the exposed roots looked like dark blood vessels on a lifeless breast. Zhongyue guessed that the land had either been burned by lightning, or by a forest fire, some time earlier. From the green woods to the scorched earth, there was only one step, no transition. One step forward was green life, and one step back was barren death. Both shocked him.

  Looking up, Zhongyue thought that the blue sky was large and open well, a well so deep that it was out of reach. He seemed unable to reach the world beyond the well even if he tried all his life plus two more afterlives. He formed a trumpet with his hands and shouted into the sky, “Oh … Oh … Oh…!”

  After shouting, Zhongyue was embarrassed. He said, “My hometown is in the crowded south where people live close to one another. When we eat, we try to make less noise because we don’t want our neighbours to know what we’re eating. When we go to the toilet, we don’t want the next-door neighbours to be aware of what we’re doing. When we speak, we lower our voices, afraid that the neighbours might overhear. I suffered from this closeness during childhood. So when I’m here in this less populated north, I want to roar.”

  Dawa said, “You can roar as much as you want. It won’t harm deaf Neil. We Tibetans are fond of yelling. Let’s see who roars louder.”

  Zhongyue rounded his mouth again, but he couldn’t make sounds. It was as if he were a deflated tire. Dawa laughed until tears came. Zhongyue asked, “Why are you laughing? You should roar. Or sing a song. The song about the Tibetan Plateau sung by Li something is damn good.”

  Her mouth twisted, Dawa told him that Li sang in the style of Han Chinese. Real Tibetans didn’t sing that way. Zhongyue asked her to sing a song in the genuine Tibetan style.

  Dawa declined, saying that she hadn’t sung for a long time, but finally he persuaded her and she reluctantly agreed.

  Zhongyue didn’t understand Dawa’s song, since it was in Tibetan. He felt the tune, light and gentle like the water under small bridges in South China, instead of the loud Tibetan music that spoke of strong emotions. It was a stretch to say that Dawa was singing. In fact, she hummed, half through her throat and half through her nose. Zhongyue asked if it was a love song and if Dawa could translate it. Her face flushed, Dawa said it was hard to translate, but Zhongyue insisted that she at least give him a general idea.

  Dawa thought about it for awhile and then translated a few lines:

  If you don’t scoop the water right way,

  the stream will flow away.

  If you don’t pick the flower in time,

  the spring will be over

  If you don’t sing songs again, you’ll be old.1

  Zhongyue clapped his hands excitedly. If Dawa didn’t want to get old, she should sing another one using her loud, enjoyable voice, he said, just like the Tibetan singer Tseten Dolma.

  Dawa covered her face with her hands for a long while. Then she stood up suddenly and sang, shocking Zhongyue. The song was in Chinese, and its tune was as sharp as knives that seemed to pierce his eardrum and stab his heart. He felt as if his heart had been cut through and was suddenly full of holes.

  The eagle flies around the hilltop,

  Because it can’t find a cliff to land on.

  The cloud flows in the sky,

  Because it can’t find a place to drop its rain.

  The person rides on the back of a horse,

  Because he can’t find a way back home.

  It’s hard and bitter….

  Neil was standing motionless, staring at Dawa’s lips. The flowers in his hands dropped onto the ground. His eyes, on his clay-like face, looked like melting water from a thousand-year-old snow, clear and shiny, reflecting the sun, moon, and stars. Zhongyue knew that something had moved Neil for the first time.

  That thing was the soul.

  That night, after saying goodbye to Dawa and her son, Zhongyue couldn’t sleep. Moonlight, through the gaps of the bamboo blinds, caressed his eyelids, leaving a dappled white light over everything in the room. Closing his eyes, he saw the blue flagstone road in front of his childhood home, like a snake meandering toward the river. In his small southern town, the river was shallow and the water was brownish yellow. When motor boats passed by, bits of leaves, soil, and dead animals rolled in on the currents. During the summer, Zhongyue and his brothers, half-naked and in wooden slippers, ran into the river, climbed into any of the boats parked along the bank, and then jumped into the water. The water opened a hole and immediately swallowed up their bodies, which looked dark and smooth like the skin of a loach. Decades later, he clearly remembered the pattern and colour of the blue flagstone path, and the pounding sounds made by their wooden slippers.

  He knew that the horse in Dawa’s song had brought him back to his hometown, step by step.

  At dawn, a rustling sound on the roof woke Zhongyue up. He realized that he’d fallen asleep. He took an extra large flashlight and turned it toward the skylights. A dark shadow flashed by. He knew that it was a raccoon, which had a den on the roof. Before the winter I must get rid of that den, he thought.

  Xiaoyue,

  Neil has a great feeling for music. People with normal hearing rely on musical forms and patterns to access the core content, but Neil, skipping those things, directly enters the bone marrow of music—rhythm. I think Neil could be an outstanding drummer. The Aboriginal powwow drum follows the rhythm completely. But for the First Nations people, a person’s occupation is based on the family tradition. If Neil grows up and stays on the reserve, unlike many young people who leave for big cities, he will most likely become an herbalist, like his ancestors.

  Old Joy wasn’t old. He was only thirty-eight, but his name was already more than a decade old. Old Joy got his name for two reasons. First, it was because of his looks. Old Joy had started to go bald at the age of twenty-eight. When he was thirty-five, he was completely bald, with only a thin circle of yellow hair on his head.

  Second, it was because he had seniority when it came to prison terms. Old Joy had been imprisoned three times in total. The first time was for fighting, the second was for smashing a car window, and the third was for stealing a newspaper from a grocery store. Each time he had been released from probation after being in jail for a few days. He had a thick criminal records. In the words of a popular Chinese slang, Old Joy had been to the dark mountain.

  In fact, Old Joy had also been of course many other minor transgressions, mostly theft, but he was fortunate enough not to be caught. Occasionally he was involved in one or two shocking offences, each of which happened after he drank too much alcohol.

  More than a decade earlier, when Old Joy hadn’t been called Old Joy, he had been an ordinary and obedient young person, a little shy. At that time, he had seriously followed in the footsteps of his father, exploring the world of herbs. He had been ready to take over his father’s practice as the town herbalist. He would have trailed after his father, his grandfather, and his great grandfather, step by step, in the family tradition. But, as it happened, he missed one step and fell into a bottomless wine cellar. From that moment, his future had to be rewritten.

  Old Joy was born to a mixed-race family. Old Joy had ancestors of Irish, French, British, and Dutch derivation. So when Old Joy had still had hair, it was light brown. He had sharp features, pale blue eyes, and a straight nose. So when a Tibetan woman named Dawa first met him at Taer Temple in Qinghai Province, she was sure he was white. As for his slightly dark skin, she thought it was simply a tan.

  Dawa had been to Taer Temple countless times, and she was familiar with each building, each Buddha sculpture, even e
very stone step and threshold. Like a doe, she could scamper through the pebbled paths between temples and monasteries. She always found her way into the main hall; she would push open a side door at random and go through the narrow channels with the help of the light from the butter lamps.

  At the time, she had already been working as a tour guide for a couple of years after her graduation from tourism school. Taer Temple was the main attraction that she lead her tourists to. But on that autumn afternoon, she went as a visitor instead of a guide. Standing outside of a huge building with a gold-tiled roof, she looked up at the last warm sunshine before the advent of winter snow.

  From all appearance, she looked the same as any other Tibetan women her age. She had slightly high cheekbones and skin the colour of the sun on the plateau. She had a sprinkling of freckles on both sides of her nose. As she smiled, her pink gums were exposed. She wore a colourful Tibetan robe, and her long braid was decorated with silver jewellery that clanked when she moved. Only when she lifted the hem of her robe, crossed the high threshold of the gold-tiled hall, and knelt down before a statue of the Buddha, did she appear sorrowful—overcome by sadness that seemed much older than her.

  Dawa prostrated herself on the floor in a dark corner, instead of on the mat in the centre for tourists. The light from the butter lamps shone dimly and outlined her vague shadow on the wall, which looked like ancient dust. The hem of her robe stuck to a thin layer of dust and broken spider webs. Looking up at the Buddha, she couldn’t see his face, only his gold-coated plump toes. She counted Buddha’s toes and murmured two names over and over again: