by Mo Yan
The meditation room for the Bird Fairy was set up in a side room. With my fourth and fifth sisters in tow, Mother cleaned up the bits and pieces left behind by Sha Yueliang, swept the walls clean of cobwebs and the ceiling of dust, and then put fresh paper coverings in the windows. They put an incense table up against the northern wall and lit three sticks of sandalwood incense left over from that earlier year when Shangguan Lü had worshipped the Guanyin Bodhisattva. They ought to have put an image of a Bird Fairy up in front of the incense table, but they didn’t know what one looked like. So Mother asked Third Sister for instructions. “Fairy,” she said piously as she knelt on the floor, “where can I obtain the image of an idol for the incense table?” Third Sister sat primly in a chair, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, as if enjoying a wonderful erotic dream. Not daring to hurry or upset her, Mother asked again even more piously. My third sister opened her mouth in a wide yawn, her eyes still closed, and replied in a twittering voice somewhere between bird and human speech, making her words nearly impossible to understand, “There’ll be one tomorrow.”
The next morning, a hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed beggar came to our door. In his left hand he carried a dog-beating staff made of hollowed-out bamboo, while in his right he held a ceramic bowl with two deep chips on the rim. He was filthy, as if he’d just rolled in the dirt, or had completed a thousand-mile trudge; dirt filled his ears and was crusted in the corners of his eyes. Without a word, he walked into our parlor, freely and casually, as if it were his own home. He removed the lid from the pot on the stove, ladled out a bowlful of herbal soup, and began slurping it down. When he’d finished, he sat on the stove counter, again without a word, and scraped Mother’s face with his knifelike gaze. Despite the discomfort she felt inside, she put on a calm exterior. “Honored guest,” she said, “poor as we are, we have nothing for you. Please don’t be offended if I offer you this.” She handed him a clump of wild herbs. He refused the offer. Licking his chapped and bloody lips, he said, “Your son-in-law asked me to deliver two things to you.” But he took nothing out for us, and as we examined his thin, tattered clothes and the filthy, scaly gray skin showing through the many holes, we could not imagine where he could have hidden whatever it was he had brought for us. “Which son-in-law would that be?” Mother asked, clearly puzzled. The hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed man said, “Don’t ask me. All I know is that he’s a mute, that he can write, that he’s a wonderful swordsman, that he saved my life once, and that I repaid the favor. Neither of us is in debt to the other. And that is why no more than two minutes ago, I was wondering whether I should give you these two treasures or not. If, when I was ladling out a bowl of your soup, you, the lady of the house, had made a single rude or impertinent comment, I’d have kept them for myself. But not only did you say nothing rude or impertinent, you actually offered me a handful of wild herbs. So I have decided to give them to you.” With that, he stood up, laid his chipped bowl on the stove counter, and said, “This is a piece of fine ceramic, as rare as unicorns and phoenixes. It may be the only piece of its kind in the world. That mute son-in-law of yours did not know its value. All he knew was that it was part of the loot from one of his raids, and he wanted you to have it, maybe because it is so big. Then there is this.” He hit the floor with his bamboo staff, producing a hollow sound. “Do you have a knife?” Mother handed him her cleaver. He used it to cut almost invisible threads at each end, and the bamboo split into pieces, which opened up to let fall a painted scroll. He unrolled it, releasing the smell of mildew and decay. There in the middle of the yellowed silk was a painting of a large bird. We were stunned. The image was an exact replica of the big, incomparably delicious bird Third Sister had brought home that time. In the painting, it was standing straight, head up, looking contemptuously at us with lackluster eyes. The hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed man told us nothing about the scroll or the bird on it. Rather, he rolled it back up, laid it atop the ceramic bowl, turned, and walked out the door without a backward glance. His now freed hands hung loosely at his sides and moved stiffly in concert with his long strides.
Mother was rooted to the spot like a pine tree, and I was a knot on the trunk of that tree. Five of my sisters were like willow trees; the Sima boy an oak sapling. We stood there like a little wooded area in front of the mysterious ceramic bowl and bird scroll. If Third Sister hadn’t broken the silence with a mocking laugh, we might really have turned into trees.
Her prediction had come true. With extraordinary reverence, we carried the bird scroll into the meditation room and hung it in front of the incense table. And since the chipped ceramic bowl had such an extraordinary history, what mortal was worthy of using it? So Mother, feeling blessed by good fortune, placed it on the incense table and filled it with fresh water for the Bird Fairy.
Word that our family had produced a Bird Fairy quickly made the rounds in Northeast Gaomi and beyond. A steady stream of pilgrims seeking nostrums and predictions beat a path to our door, but the Bird Fairy saw no more than ten a day. They knelt on the ground outside the window of her meditation room, in which a tiny hole permitted her birdlike predictions for the curious and prescriptions for the infirm to filter through. The prescriptions Third Sister — I mean the Bird Fairy — dispensed were truly unique and filled with an aura of mischief. Here is what she prescribed for someone suffering from a stomach problem: A powdered mixture of seven bees, a pair of dung beetle’s excrement balls, an ounce of peach leaves, and half a catty of crushed eggshells, taken with water. And for someone in a rabbitskin cap who was afflicted with an eye disease: A paste made of seven locusts, a pair of crickets, five praying mantises, and four earthworms, spread on the palms of the hands. When the patient caught his prescription as it floated out from the hole in the window and read it, a look of irreverence appeared on his face, and we heard him grumble, “She’s a Bird Fairy, all right. Everything on this prescription is bird food.” He walked off, still grumbling, and we couldn’t help feeling ashamed of Third Sister. Locusts and crickets, they were all bird delicacies, so how were they supposed to cure human eye ailments? But while I was caught up in confusion, the man with the eye problem nearly flew down the road our way, fell to his knees beneath the window, banged his head on the ground as if he were mashing garlic stalks, and intoned repeatedly: “Great Fairy, forgive me, Great Fairy, forgive me …” His pleas for forgiveness drew mocking laughter from Third Sister inside the room. Eventually, we learned that when the garrulous man was on the road home, a hawk swooped down out of the sky and dug its talons into his head, before flying off with his cap in its clutches. Then there was a man with mischief on his mind who knelt outside the window pretending to be suffering from urethritis. The Bird Fairy asked through the window, “What ails you?” The man said, “When I urinate, it feels like I’m passing ice cubes.” Suddenly the room went silent, as if the Bird Fairy had left out of embarrassment. The lewd, daring man put his eye up to the hole in the window, but before he could see a thing, he shrieked in agony as a monstrous scorpion fell from the window onto his neck and stung him. His neck swelled up immediately, and then his face, until his eyes were mere slits, like those of a salamander.
The Bird Fairy had used her mystical powers to punish that terrible man, to the boisterous delight of the good people and the enhancement of her own reputation. In the days that followed, the pilgrims coming to be cured of ailments or have their fortunes told spoke with accents from far-off places. When Mother asked around, she learned that some had come from as far away as the Eastern Sea, and others from the Northern Sea. When she asked how they had heard about the mystical powers of the Bird Fairy, they stood there wide-eyed, not knowing what to say. They emitted a salty odor, which, Mother informed us, was the smell of the ocean. The pilgrims slept on the ground in our compound as they waited patiently. The Bird Fairy followed a schedule of her own devising: Once she had seen ten pilgrims, she retired for the day, bringing a deathly silence to the eastern side room. Mother sent Fourth Sister over with fresh water; when she e
ntered, Third Sister came out. Then Fifth Sister went in with food, and Fourth Sister came out. This stream of girls entering and leaving dazzled the eyes of the pilgrims, who could not tell which of the girls was the actual Bird Fairy.
When Third Sister separated herself from the Bird Fairy, she was just another girl, albeit one with a number of unusual expressions and movements. She seldom spoke, squinted most of the time, preferred squatting to standing, drank plain water and thrust out her neck with each swallow, just like a bird. She didn’t eat any sort of grain, but then, neither did we, since there wasn’t any. The pilgrims brought offerings suited to the habits of a bird: locusts, silkworm chrysalises, aphids, scarab beetles, and fireflies. Some also came with vegetarian fare, such as sesame seeds, pine nuts, and sunflower seeds. Of course, we gave it all to Third Sister; what she didn’t eat was divided up among Mother, my other sisters, and the little Sima heir. My sisters, wonderful daughters all, would get red in the face over trying to present their silkworm chrysalises to others. Mother’s supply of milk was decreasing, though the quality remained high. It was during those squawking days that Mother tried to wean me from breast-feeding, but she abandoned the idea when it became clear that I’d cry myself into the grave before I’d give it up.
To express their gratitude for the boiled water and other conveniences we supplied and, far more importantly, for the Bird Fairy’s successes in freeing them from their cares and worries, the pilgrims from the oceans left a burlap sack filled with dried fish for us upon their departure. We were moved more than words can say, and saw our visitors all the way to the river. It was then that we saw dozens of thick-masted fishing boats at anchor in the slow-flowing Flood Dragon River. In the long history of the Flood Dragon River, no more than a few wooden rafts had ever been seen on the river; they were used to cross the river when it flooded. But because of the Bird Fairy, the Flood Dragon River had become a branch of vast oceans. It was the early days of the tenth month, and strong northwestern winds sliced across the river. The seagoing people boarded their boats, raised their patched gray sails, and sailed out into the middle of the river. Their rudders stirred up so much mud that the water turned murky. Flocks of silvery gray gulls that had followed the fishing boats on their way over now followed them back the way they’d come. Their cries hung over the river as they skimmed the surface one minute and soared high above it the next. A few even entertained us by flying upside down or hovering in the air. Villagers had gathered on the riverbank, initially just to gawk; but they now added their voices to the grand send-off for pilgrims who had come so far. The boats’ sails billowed in the winds, their rudders began to move back and forth, and they headed slowly down the river. They would travel down the Flood Dragon River all the way to the Great Canal, and from there to the White Horse River, which would take them to the Bohai. The trip would take twenty-one days. This information was part of a geography lesson Birdman Han gave me some eighteen years later. The visit to Northeast Gaomi Township by these pilgrims from distant lands was a virtual reenactment of the sea voyages of Zheng He and Xu Fu centuries earlier, and constituted one of the most glorious chapters in the history of Northeast Gaomi Township. And all because of a Bird Fairy in the Shangguan family. The glory dispersed the clouds of gloom in Mother’s breast; maybe she was hoping that some other animal fairy would make an appearance in the house, a Fish Fairy, for instance. But then again, maybe she wasn’t.
After the fishermen were back on their boats, an eminent guest showed up. She arrived in a sleek, black Chevrolet sedan, with hulking bodyguards, armed with Mausers, standing on each running board. She was escorted by clouds of dust from the village’s dirt road. The poor bodyguards looked like donkeys that had been rolling in the dirt. The sedan pulled up to our doorway and stopped. One of the bodyguards opened the back door. First to appear was a pearl and jade head ornament, followed by a neck, and lastly a fat torso. Both in terms of figure and expression, the woman looked exactly like an oversized goose.
In strictest terms, a goose is also a bird. But however elevated her status, when she came calling on the Bird Fairy, courtesy and reverence were expected. Nothing escaped the Bird Fairy, who knew everything in advance, so no hypocrisy or arrogance could be tolerated. The woman knelt at the window, closed her eyes, and prayed softly. Her face was the color of rose petals, so she hadn’t come for relief of an illness; jewelry sparkled from head to toe, so she hadn’t come to seek riches. What could a woman like that be seeking from the Bird Fairy? A slip of white paper floated out through the hole in the window; when the woman opened it up and read it, her face turned as red as a rooster’s cockscomb. She tossed several silver dollars to the ground, stood up, and walked off. What was written on the slip of paper? Only the Bird Fairy and the woman knew.
Visitors continued to throng to our place for days, and then they stopped. By the time the cold winter set in, we had eaten all the dried fish in the burlap sack, and once again Mother’s milk carried the taste of grass and the bark of trees. On the seventh day of the twelfth month, we heard that the largest local Christian sect would be opening a soup kitchen in Northgate Cathedral. So Mother and we children, bowls and chopsticks in hand, walked all night with groups of starving villagers into the county seat. We left Third Sister and Shangguan Lü to watch the house; since one of them was more fairy than human and the other less human than demon, they were better prepared to put up with hunger. Before leaving, Mother tossed a handful of grass to Shangguan Lü. “Mother,” she said, “if you are able to die, do so quickly. Why suffer with us this way?”
It was the first time any of us had taken the road to the county seat. By “road” I mean only that we followed a little gray path formed by the footprints of man and beast. I couldn’t tell you how that rich woman’s car had made it to our village. We trudged along in cold starlight, me standing up on Mother’s back, the little Sima heir on the back of Fourth Sister, Eighth Sister on the back of Fifth Sister, my sixth and seventh sisters walking by themselves. As midnight came and went, we heard the intermittent cries of children in the wilderness all around us. Seventh Sister, Eighth Sister, and the little Sima heir also started to cry. Mother shouted her disapproval, but even she was crying, and so were Fourth Sister and Fifth Sister, both of whom suddenly tottered and fell to the ground. But as soon as Mother picked up one and went for the other, the first one fell again. And so it went, back and forth. Finally, Mother sat on the cold ground, along with all the others, huddling together to keep warm. She shifted me around to the front and put her cold hand under my nose to see if I was still breathing. She must have thought that either the cold or hunger had taken me from her. I breathed weakly to show her I was still alive. So she raised the curtain over her breasts and stuffed a cold nipple into my mouth. It felt like an ice cube slowly melting in my mouth and turning it numb. Mother’s breast had nothing to give; no matter how hard I sucked, all I managed to draw from it were a few wispy strands of blood. It was cold, so very cold! And in the midst of that cold, mirages floated in front of the eyes of the starving people around us: a blazing stove, a pot filled with steaming chicken and duck, plate after plate of meat-stuffed buns, all that and green grass and lovely flowers. In front of my eyes were two gourd-sized breasts, overflowing with rich liquid, lively as a pair of doves and sleek as porcelain bowls. They smelled wonderful and looked beautiful; slightly blue-tinged liquid, sweet as honey, gushed from them, filling my belly and drenching me from head to toe. I wrapped my arms around the breasts and swam in their fountains of liquid … overhead, millions and billions of stars swirled through the sky, round and round to form gigantic breasts: breasts on Sirius, the Dog Star; breasts on the Big Dipper; breasts on Orion the Hunter; breasts on Vega, the Girl Weaver; breasts on Altair, the Cowherd; breasts on Chang’e, the Beauty in the Moon, Mother’s breasts … I spat out Mother’s nipple and gazed up the road a ways. A man holding a tattered goatskin torch high over his head came bounding toward us. It was Third Master Fan. He was bare to the waist, an
d amid the acrid stench of burning animal skin and the glare of its light, he was yelling, “Fellow villagers — do not sit down, not under any circumstances. If you sit down, you will freeze to death — come, fellow villagers — keep moving forward — to keep moving is to live, to sit down is to die —”
Third Master Fan’s heartfelt exhortation brought many people up from the illusory huddled warmth, a sure path to death, and onto their feet, moving through the cold that was their only chance of survival. Mother stood up, shifted me around to the back, picked up the wretched little Sima heir and held him in her arms, then grabbed Eighth Sister by the arm and began kicking Fourth Sister and Fifth Sister and Sixth Sister and Seventh Sister to get them to their feet. We fell in behind Third Master Fan, who had used his own goatskin jacket as a torch to light our way. What carried us forward wasn’t our feet, but our willpower, our desire to reach the county seat, to reach Northgate Cathedral, to accept God’s mercy, to accept a bowl of twelfth-month gruel.
Dozens of corpses littered the roadside on this solemn and tragic procession. Some lay with their shirts open and a beatific expression on their faces, as if to warm their chests by the passing flame.
Third Master Fan died in the first glow of sunrise.
We all ate God’s twelfth-month gruel; mine came through my mother’s breasts. I’ll never forget the scene surrounding that meal. Magpies roosted on the cross beneath the high cathedral ceiling. A train panted its way along tracks outside. Steam rose from two huge cauldrons filled with beef stew. The black-cassocked priest stood beside the cauldrons and prayed as hundreds of starving peasants formed a queue behind him. Parishioners spooned gruel into bowls, one ladle-ful apiece, regardless of the size of the bowl. Loud slurping noises attended the consumption of the gruel, which was diluted by countless tears. Hundreds of pink tongues licked bowls clean, and then the queue formed again. Several burlap sacks of cracked rice and several buckets of water were dumped into the cauldrons; this time, as I could tell from the quality of the milk, the gruel consisted of cracked rice, moldy sorghum, half-rotten soybeans, and barley with chaff.