“Listen! Just listen; what’s that old madman singing? His voice has shaken the tiles off of the walls.”
Mrs. Li was scolding, and it was not the first time. The problem was that Li Shisan’s singing was intoxicating. His voice flowed out through the door and windows of his house into his neighbors’ houses and out into the streets and lanes. People dared not enter his yard for fear of interrupting his work; however, his singing was so irresistible to one and all—grown men and women, lads and lasses—that they quietly climbed up the wall around his yard and elbowed for space, their heads appearing along the gray tiles. When Li’s wife scolded, their heads would disappear down the other side of the wall; when she went back inside to her spinning and weaving, the heads would reappear.
Li Shisan’s wife often decreed that he could write operas at will, but had better not sing or murmur while writing. Each time, he would promise not to sing ecstatically again—but once he started writing, he couldn’t help himself. A few pieces of tile lost could not stop him. Even if the wall toppled over, he would never quit.
He mimicked a woman’s soft voice: “Son . . .” Now he took on a husky male voice: “Mother . . .”
He sang out the lines about the mother’s and son’s deaths, unaware that his wife had barged in. Suddenly he heard her angry chiding: “Damn your singing!”
Li Shisan turned back to stare at his wife’s unpredictable face. It took a while for him to drag his attention from the world of his opera. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “What happened?”
“Do you want to eat lunch?”
“Of course!”
“What do you want to eat?”
She was a genial and prudent wife. When she’d married Li Shisan, she had started consulting her mother-in-law for advice on cooking every meal. After the death of her parents-in-law, naturally she turned to her husband for help.
Out of habit, Li blurted out distractedly, “A bowl of dry noodles.”
“You can’t eat dry noodles.”
“Then noodles in soup.”
“Can’t do that either.”
“Why not?”
“No flour.”
“Oh. Then boil a bowl of millet porridge.”
“No millet, either.”
Then Li Shisan came to realize the seriousness of the situation. He grew entirely clearheaded, and his thoughts snapped from the scene of that mother’s and son’s deaths and separation, in their house in the opera, to the scene there in Li Shisan’s own house.
While he considered their plight, his wife said, “Only a basin of grits left—but your stomach can’t take them anymore.”
Indeed, he could no longer eat grits porridge. He had eaten it almost all his life; his stomach couldn’t bear it anymore. Less than half an hour after eating it, he would vomit acidic bile, regurgitating into his mouth and suffering terrible stomach pains. Thinking of the grits, he said angrily, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner that we’re out of flour?”
“I told you three days ago, the day before yesterday, and even yesterday. I asked you to borrow wheat to grind. You forgot—and now you cast the blame on me.”
Li Shisan backed down. “Now,” he said, “you go and borrow a bowl of flour from our neighbors.”
“I’ve already borrowed three bowls from three of our neighbors.”
“Borrow one more time—and be embarrassed just one more time.”
Displeasure flickered across Mrs. Li’s face, but she didn’t reply. As she turned to go, they both heard a clangorous yelling outside.
“Elder Brother Shisan!”
No other voice was so familiar and so melodious; no other voice could make people feel so happy from top to toe. It was Tian Shewa! At that discouraging moment, hearing Tian Shewa’s voice not only recovered his happiness, but also made Li Shisan forget about lunch.
Tian Shewa was the famous master of several shadow-play troupes in the area north of the Weihe River. His theatrical company was known as the Double Excellent Troupe: excellent in singing and excellent in shadow puppetry. So whenever a new opera script was finished, Li Shisan always gave it first to Tian’s troupe to be rehearsed and performed. As soon as rehearsals began, he would stay with Tian Shewa and several others in the troupe to help them get to know the characters and the intricate relationships among them, as well as the lightness and heaviness of gong, drum, and cymbal. Li Shisan would not allow the company to bring the performance to the stage until he felt satisfied with the rehearsal. In front of an audience, Tian Shewa took the characters from Li Shisan’s bald writing brush and turned them into living people. He held an important position in Li Shisan’s heart.
“Shewa! Come in here!”
While Li Shisan stood shouting, Tian Shewa had already come into the room, almost running into Li Shisan’s wife. Oof! Mrs. Li staggered but steadied her feet; Tian Shewa lost his balance and fell down heavily on the wood threshold. Coming over quickly to help Tian Shewa up, Li Shisan saw a cloth bag fall to the floor with a resonant, heavy sound. He asked, “What is that bag?”
“I brought two dous of wheat for you,” Tian Shewa said, patting the dust off his coat and trouser legs.
“That you come to my home is fine, because I have missed you! But why do you bring me wheat?” asked Li Shisan.
“For you to eat!”
“But I have food! We have plenty of wheat, peas, millet, and corn.”
Tian Shewa didn’t want to talk about the grain; his expression changed to one of both sympathy and reproach. “Alas, my elder brother! I fell head over heels at the door. Won’t you invite me to sit down?”
Li Shisan hurriedly brought a stool. When Tian Shewa sat down, Mrs. Li placed a bowl of cool, boiled water into his hands. Tian Shewa dramatically sighed, “Ah! Sister Li treats me well—she knows that I am thirsty after walking so long a distance.”
Li Shisan turned to his wife. “Hurry up! Make noodles now! Shewa must be hungry after walking several dozen lis. This afternoon we’ll eat dry noodles.”
Mrs. Li turned and left the study. She had been sure she’d have to borrow flour from the neighbors once again. Now she felt relieved by Tian Shewa’s two dous of wheat; after grinding it into flour, she’d be able to pay back the many bowls of flour borrowed from neighbors in recent days.
“Brother Li,” Tian Shewa asked, “what new play are you planning?”
Li Shisan answered, “You know I’m never idle. I am planning something, but nothing is definite yet.”
“Please recite a scene or sing a few lines. Let my ears enjoy it first,” urged Tian Shewa.
“Sorry, I can’t. An unfinished opera mustn’t be sung to others,” Li Shisan replied. “If you lift the lid from the pot and let the steam out before the buns are done, the buns will be cooked into stiff paste.”
Tian Shewa knew well Li Shisan’s habit of secrecy while writing operas, and he knew the answer even before he asked—but he needed something to chat about to keep Li Shisan from returning to the topic of the wheat.
“Brother Li,” Tian Shewa said happily, “these days the theater’s business is going very well. My throat can hardly bear it—but I can’t rest. We haven’t seen business like this for many years; we have performances almost every night! Only when there are operas to sing can we carry wheat home and have dry noodles in our bowls.”
Li Shisan enjoyed Tian Shewa’s cheerful laughter. It was the carefree time of year when the wheat had been harvested, the seeds hoed, and the autumn seedlings fertilized; all along the Weihe River on the central Shaanxi plain, every large town and tiny village would be holding “work is done” festivals. Families and friends would be coming together to celebrate the bumper harvest and relax after the summer’s busy harvest season. A shadow-play troupe would be invited to each village to perform; each family of the village would contribute a liter or half liter of wheat as payment. This time of year offered even more work for the acting troupes than during the Spring Festival.
As soon as Tian Shewa stopped lau
ghing, Li Shisan’s brows wrinkled and his eyes focused. He said, “But the drought has lasted a long time this year. It hasn’t rained a drop in the area north of the Weihe River, and the wheat crops are poor. How is your theater still doing so well?”
“The performances are good! Our acting is marvelous, and your plays are so well written! The Match of Spring and Autumn and A Flame-Foal have been shown in one village after another. The villagers aren’t satisfied seeing them eight or ten times in their own villages—they hurry to see them in the neighboring towns as well!”
“Oh!” His brow smooth again, Li Shisan felt gratified.
“Tell you what, my brother Shisan: your Huang Guiying, the heroine of A Flame-Foal, has fascinated all the country folk, rich and poor, old and young, men and women. Someone even wrote a folk song about her: ‘Even if you haven’t got a lit’ of wheat, seeing Huang Guiying is a special treat.’ It seems that people care less about their crops than about getting a chance to enjoy the play!”
While the two men talked cheerfully, Mrs. Li came in and asked for help. “Have you finished your conversation? I’ve rolled out the dough into sheets. Shall I cut and cook them right now?”
“Yes, do it now,” said Li Shisan.
“Cook the noodles only for my brother,” said Tian Shewa. “I already ate before coming here.” He stood up, lifted the bag he had brought, and asked, “Where’s the grain vat? Let me pour this wheat into it.”
Dragging Tian Shewa by the arm, Li Shisan insisted on his staying until after the meal; Mrs. Li also muttered a request for him to stay. With a strong and healthy body, Tian Shewa was at his prime. But Li Shisan had already suffered from chronic stomachaches and now was hit again with shortness of breath from his asthma. Thus, after pulling on his friend to entreat him to stay, Li Shisan was out of breath and coughed severely.
Tian Shewa brought the bag into the next room, lifted the wooden lid of a chest-high porcelain urn, and was shocked. It was empty! He lifted the bag onto his shoulder and unfastened the rope. Crash! Two dous of wheat poured into the urn. He turned to the couple behind him and dropped onto his knees before them.
“My brother! I should have come earlier! It never occurred to me that you might already have run out of food. Yesterday I heard from a traveler who’d come through your village that your life was very hard, so today I brought the two dous of wheat to see if . . .” Tears began rolling down his cheeks.
Moved and ashamed, Li Shisan helped Tian Shewa up. “It is because I am not good at farmwork, and there is a shortage of rain this year, so my wheat seedlings are as thin as a monkey’s hairs. The stone roller has got nothing to grind, and the wheat has all been eaten . . .” He shrugged and laughed uneasily at himself.
Mrs. Li defended her husband: “Shewa, why are you crying? Your brother is singing and happy all day without the slightest worry about his situation.”
Tian Shewa wiped tears from his face. With wide-open eyes, he said resolutely, “As long as I, the obscure actor, have something to eat, I will not let my brother, the great playwright, go hungry! If I have dry noodles to eat, I will not let you eat noodles in soup.” Turning to Mrs. Li, he added: “Sister Li, you let my brother decide whether to eat dry noodles or noodle soup. I will bring some more wheat in a few days.”
With his hands cupped, Tian Shewa bowed three times and then smiled. “Brother, I have to go. I have a performance tonight.” He headed to the yard and then turned back again. “Brother Li, I know you’ve been planning a new play. I’ll be waiting for it!”
“I’ll tell you as soon as it’s finished,” Li Shisan promised. Speaking of the play helped him forget his troubles. “Having wheat, I have nothing to worry about.”
Li Shisan and his wife toiled away at the grinding. Two millstones, each more than a foot thick, were fit tightly together. There was a drilled hole as big as a child’s fist in the upper piece, into which the grains of wheat were poured. The wheat was ground over and over again between the rotating millstones; finally the flour flew out through the mouth.
To rotate the millstones, a thick wooden rod was fastened to the upper stone and usually tied with a rope to livestock. Wealthy families often used a mule or horse to drag the millstone; those animals moved with the greatest speed. In families of commoners, domestic cows or bulls were a practical choice; their strength made the work easy. But the families too poor to afford even a dog had to drive the family members themselves to work the millstone. Then the millstone was pushed rather than pulled. It was often said that the three hardest kinds of farmwork were drawing a plow, striking adobe, and pushing a millstone. Only the strongest men were capable of doing it. And only those who were too poor to keep cattle or hire assistants found themselves forced to exert all their bodily strength just to sustain their families.
Sixty-two years old, Li Shisan now held the rod to his chest, both hands grasping the end of the stick from below. He positioned it between his chest and belly and leaned forward, feet pressing down on the ground. In this way he could gather enough strength and momentum to rotate the heavy millstone, which weighed several hundred jin. Li stood by the harness at the outer end of the rod—the part that would be fastened to a bull or horse, if he had one. His wife stood close to the inside end, next to the millstones. She, too, held the rod at the place between her chest and belly, but she held it against her with her right hand, while with the other hand she continually poked the grains of wheat into the hole. When the crushed fragments flew out and gathered on top of the millstone, she swept them with a small dustpan. Then, leaving the grinding, she took the crushed grains to a nearby shelf, where she opened the lid of a yellow wicker basket and poured the particles inside. When she shook the grinding handle to settle the grains, the wicker basket rattled loudly; it was the habitual sound of grinding wheat.
“You’d better have a rest,” said Mrs. Li.
At her loving words, Li glanced at his wife; she was shaking the handle, her slim shoulder swaying slightly. He raised his arm to wipe his sweaty face with his sleeve. He didn’t stop his work, but hummed, “Mother’s . . . son . . .” Halfway through the sentence, he seemed to be stifled and couldn’t utter another word. Panting huskily, he pushed the mill slowly and began mocking himself. “Alas, my wife! I should have become a county magistrate. Why, now I’m reduced to working like livestock at a millstone. I’m a horse—and not even a swift one. I can’t even match a crippled cow. Alas, my ancestors must have put the incense in the wrong censer.”
“It is what we call Destiny,” his wife replied. She stopped shaking the handle, fetched the wicker basket, and poured the wheat bran in. Returning to the millstone, she grasped the rod and again murmured, “Destiny.”
Reluctantly Li muttered, “Right, it is Destiny.”
Li Shisan continued to push the millstone. To grind a dou of wheat, he had to turn the millstone thousands of times; he thought of the saying, “The road ahead will be long.”
Li’s civil-service career had been as tortuous as the grinding work. At the young age of nineteen he had passed the county level of the imperial examinations and become a xiucai—a scholar-official—to the joy of his family and the admiration of his neighbors. He passed the provincial exam and became a juren two decades later at thirty-nine; he’d scored in the top twenty among all who took the exam in Shaanxi Province.
Beijing seemed within easy reach; after working hard for another thirteen years, he advanced to the capital to take the triennial general examination, traveling with food on the back of a mule. After a certain number of top scorers were recruited, another sixty-four examinees were kept in reserve as official candidates. Li Shisan’s name was on that list. These candidates were allowed to take the title of the county official, but without salary; it was only an honorary title. One had to wait a long time to take a real position—there was no telling exactly how long. When finally there was a vacancy and it was your turn, then you might assume the post and get the salary of a county official.
L
i knew how the bureaucracy worked. During that period of tedious waiting for his turn, he felt a tremendous fear; anxiety and disappointment enveloped him, and eventually his long-held desire for an official post vanished. That was when he made the most crucial decision of his life. Li believed that the glorious official title should be attained through learning and ability. Paired with money, the title would add no glory but only humiliation to his ancestors’ reputations.
He began to write plays. He started out by imitating the musical scores of Wanwan Tone, local plays that had been popular in Weibei Plateau. Li’s first play, The Match of Spring and Autumn, was performed by Tian Shewa’s shadow-play troupe. With Tian’s good voice and ingenious ability at “stringing the shadow,” the play was an immediate success and was performed in all the villages north of the Weihe River.
From that point on, Li Shisan was immersed in the great joy of composing plays. He wrote eight plays and two playlets, all of which were performed by the shadow-play troupes.
And yet, here were the playwright and his wife, laboring to turn the millstone and grind the wheat that Tian Shewa had brought the day before. Once the wheat was ground into flour, they would no longer have to worry about conjuring up meals with no noodles to cook.
“Brother Shisan!” a voice yelled.
It was Tian Shewa. Why was he here again today? He burst into the mill breathlessly even before his hasty shout had faded away. He stopped abruptly, face-to-face with Li Shisan, who had just turned from the grinding to greet him. Panic and terror hung on Tian’s face. “My brother,” he said, “things look pretty bad.”
Panting heavily from his labors, Li Shisan didn’t ask. It never occurred to him that disaster could befall him in his own house. The millstone could not be pushed out of its track by any means. For an instant, Li even considered that Tian might be bluffing on purpose. After all, storytelling and exaggerating were the professional habits of these shadow players.
“My brother,” Tian Shewa shouted, “the emperor has given an order to arrest you!”
Old Land, New Tales: Twenty Short Stories by Writers of the Shaanxi Region in China Page 3