by A. Yi
Grandpa had once been a cadre in charge of 40.47 square meters of land. As his subordinates righteously examined the itinerant quacks whose eyes and words wavered, he, driven by curiosity, leafed through the seized books. To them his attitude was contemptuous. Just like years later, I, already a middle school student, treated Grandpa who took notes on the hand-copied fortune-telling book, with contempt. I looked sideways at the relative who was lost forever in the wrong, felt loathing and sympathy. Reproaching him always made me unbearably tired. “Don’t you know this is just a trick?” I said. To this day I still believe fortune-telling is a magic trick, it goes against honesty. According to an article, the key to magic is to direct the audience’s attention away, then use their ‘inattentional blindness’ to do tricks. The fortune-telling book is a distraction technique, a magician’s fairy dust, what’s real are the six techniques: observe, probe, attack, fool, praise, sell; it’s the crazy stealing of your secrets and privacy. But my grandpa had been immersed in the study of fortune books, unable to extricate himself, till finally, others couldn’t stand his pestering, said: “This is just fraud, all the techniques are fraud.” Astonished, he said angrily, “Fine if you don’t want to tell me, no need to say that.” Cut things off himself. Grandpa went insane because of obsession and died of mania. Because of his tragic life and the corresponding changes in our lives (following him, we went from a city household into a rural household), we believed people from the mystical societies had set him up, made painstaking efforts, moved carefully every step, after doing a lot of groundwork, used Zuo Zongtang’s warcraft of ‘Move slow, fight fast’, in one breath, seized Grandpa.
“How could this be a trick?” Grandpa defended himself, embarrassed. “This can’t be explained by coincidence.”
That day what felt like caterpillars crawling all over me was that very sentence. I had imagined a fortune-teller’s hunt and kill, thought it would be like a bullfight, with a long process (entice, pierce, thrust the dart, and so on), confident that I could pull myself away in time. But right in the moment of natural relaxation, he suddenly turned up, nailed me in one go, pierced my neck with the sharp, hooked sword. I couldn’t help but shake from its startling precision. When the minibus reached the village where graves seemed to flicker in faint flames, and broke down, I took the suitcase, stumbled out the minibus, turning back every three steps as I headed home. I was afraid Mr. Fish would turn up in cloth shoes behind me (in his world there was neither light nor darkness, perhaps in our darkness he could actually fly). Before closing the door, I looked silently into the empty darkness for a long time, until I was convinced there was nothing. Mother found a dry towel, stuffed it on my soaked back. “So big already, still can’t take care of yourself,” she said. Her frame was still so short and small, her movements still so rough, powerful. But I knew, on her face, rotting spots like an orange peel’s had long appeared.
For a few hours, I fell into a terrible mania. The more I knew its harm – my grandpa, from overthinking, had long suffered from insomnia and often like an uncontrollable tap, spurted food on the bed and eventually died of cerebral hemorrhaging – the more I couldn’t help but fall into it. I seemed to be very close to the answer, just had to find the right stem that could poke through the layer of window paper, but in the end got nothing. Why, I sat up in the middle of the dark night, wanting to look for that person in town, grab his neck, demand him to say why. My brain was crammed with tangled iron wires. In the end I fell asleep by giving myself harsh orders. Do not become a victim of magic, I said, Do not.
Very early in the morning, I found the driver and the cousin who had reminded me the day before to catch the bus early. They both denied knowing Mr. Fish. But just then I thought things couldn’t be simpler. As if once the radiance of the sun came to the fields people’s minds and rationality recovered, the things and sounds that had been pounding my body the whole night – those bluffing things – didn’t exist anymore, and he became an old man, tricks exposed, huddled and shaking in the corner. “One sentence is enough,” my uncle Ai Hongren said. He taught math at the village primary school, when it was closed, he transferred to the town’s central primary school, then when it was reopened, came back. He searched out the county chronicle published in 1989. On page 446, there was a list of dialect zones in the county:
The Official Language Zone of the County Seats: Pencheng, Guilin
The Official Language Zone of the Villages: The Eight Villages of the Northern District – Wujiao, Baiyang, Liuzhuang, Matou, Nanyang, Xiafan, Henglishan, Huangjin; The Nine Villages of the Western District – Gaofeng, Hongxia, Dadeshan, Hongling, Jiuyuan, Fanzhen, Qingshan, Henggang, Emei
The North-western Gan Language Zone: Huayuan, Zhaochen, Hongyi
The South-western Gan Language Zone: Heping, Leyuan, Nanyi
Back then, I walked from north to south through East Street. Those who moved in packs at 5 p.m. could only be the returning travelers. Just like those who went north through the street at 8, 9 a.m. were mostly town-goers. That’s why East Street was built up into a marketplace for farmers going to town. For the townspeople (including the villagers and merchants living in Luohu Village on the outskirts of town), they would rather walk another one or two miles than take this shortcut. At the end of East Street, open like a pocket, was the mire-like Luohu Parking Lot. It was responsible for parking buses coming from those villages:
The Official Language Zone of the County Seats: Pencheng, Guilin
The Official Language Zone of the Villages: The Eight Villages of the Northern District – Wujiao, Baiyang, Liuzhuang, Matou, Nanyang, Xiafan, Henglishan, Huangjin; The Nine Villages of the Western District – Gaofeng, Hongxia, Dadeshan, Hongling, Jiuyuan, Fanzhen, Qingshan, Henggang, Emei
The North-western Gan Language Zone: Huayuan, Zhaochen, Hongyi
The South-western Gan Language Zone: Heping, Leyuan, Nanyi
The guy said: “What you staying here for?”
I said: “Staying to listen a bit.”
This sentence was enough to narrow the range in half. We were a county where talking to each other was difficult. The north-western Gan Language Zone was very much influenced by the Gan dialect spoken in south-east Hubei the south-western Gan Language Zone was influenced by the Gan dialect of the Changjing subgroup, which was entirely different from the Official language. ‘Stay here’ was a common phrase, whose pronunciations were respectively:
The North-western Gan Language Zone: dē gé biān
The South-western Gan Language Zone: dē gé dá
The Official Language Zone: dē dǎ lǐ
Therefore:
The Official Language Zone of the County Seats: Pencheng, Guilin
The Official Language Zone of the Villages: The Eight Villages of the Northern District – Wujiao, Baiyang, Liuzhuang, Matou, Nanyang, Xiafan, Henglishan, Huangjin;The Nine Villages of the Western District – Gaofeng, Hongxia, Dadeshan, Hongling, Jiuyuan, Fanzhen, Qingshan, Henggang, Emei
The North-western Gan Language Zone: Huayuan, Zhaochen, Hongyi
The South-western Gan Language Zone: Heping, Leyuan, Nanyi.
Even in the Official Language Zone, there were many nuances. Like for ‘doing what’, some places said ‘do what thing’, some places said ‘for what thing’. The ‘for what’ places can be eliminated:
The Official Language Zone of the County Seats: Pencheng, Guilin.
The Official Language Zone of the Villages: The Eight Villages of the Northern District – Wujiao, Baiyang, Liuzhuang, Matou, Nanyang, Xiafan, Henglishan, Huangjin; The Nine Villages of the Western District – Gaofeng, Hongxia, Dadeshan, Hongling, Jiuyuan, Fanzhen, Qingshan, Henggang, Emei
The North-western Gan Language Zone: Huayuan, Zhaochen, Hongyi
The South-western Gan Language Zone: Heping, Leyuan, Nanyi
In the end there were only four villages left. Among them, Hongxia and Fanzhen were big villages,
with one bus per hour on average, the last bus departed as late as 8 p.m. Hongling was the place en route to the other three places. Therefore, the passenger who said “Don’t be late” at 5 p.m. could only have come from: Jiuyuan Village.
There were two buses to Jiuyuan:
one went up, after passing Fanzhen and Zhaoao, the route was Zhuba–Luojia–Xilong–Lifan–Zhongyuan–Shangyuan. The two drivers were master Zhang Jizhao, apprentice Zhang Jisong; the other went down, after passing Fanzhen and Zhaoao, the route was Baiyanglong–Liai–Zhangjiawan–Lifan–Zhongyuan–Shangyuan. The driver was Ai Xiaomao.
As for the last buses departing from the county seats, Zhang’s departed at 17:20 (adjusted for summer, as below). The route was as above, and in the end it returned empty to Zhangjiawan; Ai’s bus departed at 17:45, only got to Liai – Ai Xiaomao’s and my birthplace – and broke down. “Because this son of mine’s very lazy,” Ai Hongren said. “He said at this hour there wouldn’t be passengers from Zhongyuan and Shangyuan taking his bus, he didn’t drive so of course there wouldn’t be, whatever he says happens, whatever he wants he does.”
Bayanglong had no people. Yuanjialong, tucked away in the depths of the thick woods (which could be reached from Baiyanglong by climbing miles of mountain path), had four or five households before. Then one day, all that was left were four or five abandoned houses. So when Ai Xiaomao started the bus from the county seat in the late afternoon, those who rushed to catch the bus could only be people from Liai. Liai was made up of Lijiawan and Aijiawan. Out of a kind of pride, the Lis, since the year before, had decided to ride Zhang’s bus only. The several miles between the village and Zhaao were done by walking – though Ai Hongren had been to every Li household, given out cigarettes to apologize, in the end it didn’t change their minds. Whoever rushed to catch the bus at 17:30 could only be: an Ai.
Mr. Fish knew this very well. It was just common knowledge. The common knowledge all the locals knew, the thieves messing around in the parking lot knew, the merchants on East Street knew – they always went out several times at dusk, targeting the passersby rushing to catch the bus, shouting about discounts. Only I who had been away for years didn’t know. You don’t have to know. When Uncle Ai Hongren looked at me, his eyes were full of understanding, also a tentative blame. In comparison you’re the one who’s blind. I was thinking about Mr. Fish. He always sat in the dark Research and Analysis Center, opened all his sensing organs – like a fierce dragon hunting for food in the dark night secretly beating its giant wings – to catch the information coming and going, sometimes this information required no fishing from him, like drizzle it floated into the room, fell naturally upon him. He was interested in transportation, weather, human affairs, public order, policy, conscription, business openings, exams, recruitment, loans, epidemic prevention, funerals, and other local information, was most interested in the information about people: as soon as someone entered the Research and Analysis Center, he could establish their relationship with many other people (women marrying here and there in the hundred-mile area were like flying threads that bound nearly all the local families together. Like Dong Jiahong and Dong Jiayuan’s younger sister, Dong Chunmei, who married Zhu Zhizhong, and Zhu Zhifen and Zhu Zhihua’s elder brother Zhu Zhiliang; Zhu Zhihua was the manager of the motor repair shop opened by the family of his classmate Wu Xiaoming; Zhu Zhifen was Wu Xiaoming’s elder brother’s ex-wife; the Wu’s fourth daughter Wu Aiwu married Chen Xuping from Henglishan, gave birth to Chen Gang, Chen Yong, Chen Li, Chen Qiang; Chen Yong went to China University of Political Science and Law and after graduation was assigned to the prefecture’s intermediate court, married the younger Zhou’s only daughter Zhou Haiyan. Everyone was related to everyone else. Everyone was like a descendent of a close relative, had some incestuous debauchery). He always started the gears in his brain, calculating those relationships, late at night, would also lick his fingers, slowly leaf though the ledger in his mind that recorded their entire lives, compare and check. It was a huge ledger. When the weather was fine and clear, he would, as in his youth, roam in the countryside, like a census official, from house to house, knock open the doors of their hearts with a bamboo pole. This ledger was his entire property, he possessed everyone – without the memory of them, he would be like duckweed, going with the tides, getting lost in the land of ignorance, he wouldn’t be severed from society by people, but would be exiled from the human world by himself.
In fact we were a pair of memory’s giant beasts. We had the same worries. After age 40, we could remember more than one thousand local people and more than 10,000 relationships between them. Mr. Fish was famous in society, also for his three marriages, the start and end of each, was initiated by him.
Aijiawan had 50 or so households in the past. After the living in the city trend, only 30 households remained.
My voice was the voice of a middle-aged man: between 35 and 38. That’s what others heard, more or less. There were three people from families who hadn’t left Aijiawan: Ai Shijun, Ai Shiquan, Ai Shikun (Ai Guozhu). Due to a car accident a few years ago, Ai Shijun was in a grave. Ai Shiquan first fed free-range chickens in Baiyanglong, then fed free-range pigs. The last was the legendary idiot who gave up public office, went out to work, Ai Guozhu, for 11 years, body carrying the smells of instant noodles, perfume, blended cigarettes, perm solution, and the foul smell of not showering for days. The leather shoes he wore gave off the smell of fresh leather. You could even tell from the strange smell that it was a pair of brown leather shoes.
Aijiawan’s three previous generation names were Zheng, Hong, Shi. The Zheng generation had seven people, the Hong generation had 21 people, the Shi generation had nearly 70 people. Like a big tree, branches grew from the knots, the branches flourished, the leaves thrived. As far as this generation of grandchildren, there were a lot, I’m not sure I can remember clearly, but as for the Zheng generation, I can remember, Mr. Fish thought, I could ask him, Is your grandpa Ai Zhengjia?
2
What made me, after returning to my hometown, pay a special visit to fortune-tellers (I passed nearly 10 fortune-tellers on East Street, saw only Mr. Fish’s still had business) is a story. That story gave me a profound understanding of all women on earth. It happened in Laoyangshu Town, a small town 36 kilometers from the city where I worked. Every week I went to the city to work three days, then came back to the town and rested for four days. (Ten years ago, by the old poplar tree, next to the auditorium, there had been a few roadside shops, old tires hanging outside the windows, tap water always spilling out of the red plastic tubs, washing feathers and scales to the ground. A paved road black as the pond water ran to the horizon. Now it has three or four million people. Every day, dozens of planes quietly rise from behind the buildings, their silver-gray bodies leave giant shadows on the ground.) At first, the townspeople, Zhangsan or Lisi, each possessed a fraction of the story, after someone started, they couldn’t wait to piece it together into a whole, like weaving a giant and incredible tapestry together. In the end, they all felt that they had absolute private ownership over the story. They said more and more, to the point that the content had long outstripped the original facts, but they still found it far from enough. “This really is a very shocking incident,” they said. As if seeing the cloth-like blood once again splash onto the front window of the white truck (the car body, after braking sharply, leaned forward then finally settled back). The driver Anfang was wide-eyed, tongue-tied. He dared not handle it with the wipers or a rag, until the dry air turned the bloodstains into shiny rouge chips, naturally falling off. The half-life of this story’s circulation was so long that I, after going in and out of town numerous times, inevitably heard talk of it:
Junfeng’s mom,
or, Chen Zonghuo’s woman
a fifty-going-on-sixty widow
without any great experience worth mentioning
without even the tiniest scandal or travesty – with just a little
self-importance, human beings easily end up with a tacky or splendid tragedy, don’t they – she wore
dark-blue or indigo garments (sometimes a robe dyed with ladybug-like dots),
a camouflaged animal like the dead-leaf butterfly or geometer moth,
making herself invisible before people’s eyes
time slipping away again and again from the walls and the crevices in the walls
Death, like the safest ship, coming slowly
Her – when people finally remembered her because of a certain incident, they had to think a long, long time before scraping together a conclusion
only mission in this world, was constantly worrying about one of her two sons
like a girl at the edge of a cliff, palms together, head bowed, trembling
worrying about the lover walking on the tightrope
Thursday afternoon, after calling him
she felt a flurry of panic
* * *
It was an overly accurate panic given the logic of the conversation. The woman, from her son’s response, sensed the patience the spies would show when passing a sentry, they would light a long cigar, wave their hat, act very co-operatively, as if willing to stay there the whole afternoon. That was a bit unusual. Usually, he would irritably say, “That’s it,” and hang up. Sometimes, she could tell he had pressed the speaker button, his person walking back and forth, always long after she spoke, after a scary silence, he realized he had an obligation to fulfill, and so answered: “Oh.” Once, while waiting for his response, she watched one of the country’s rockets take off on TV, after rising, almost still, for a long time, it quietly disappeared into space. He was so reluctant to speak to her. At first they talked over the phone three times a week, then it was down to twice, once. All were calls from her. “Once a week, call at this hour, understand?” he said.