In the Lap of the Gods
Page 32
Beneath his rain-swollen hands Liu could feel the current of old sorrows that seized her bosom. At Liu’s prompting, his daughter sidled close to her.
“Po Po, don’t cry.”
The woman seemed far away, and in the throes of her weeping, none of it seemed real to Liu. The rain did not strike ground and the river did not rise, the skeletons of demolished houses did not succumb to greater designs, and the dead did not haunt those who lived on.
The old woman rocked back on her haunches, patted the child’s head with a faltering hand. “Child, you do not know an old woman’s sorrows. You are young. The gods spare no one.”
Liu leaned in where the air rose in a thick, gray column from the sheltered stove. The soot clogged his lungs, but he forced himself to speak.
“This child, she was a foundling.... I came across her by the river. And the river would have claimed her if I hadn’t.”
She said nothing, and Liu wondered if his revelation was made in vain. He watched as the rain crept steadily up the riverbank, consuming the heads of cabbages and tender stalks of xiang cai in the summer tempest. He wondered if the gods were angered by human impudence. But it didn’t seem fair that only the weak would be punished.
By late afternoon, the storm had given way to fitful gusts of wind and torrential rain that refused to let up. And still they sat. Mr. Wu had retreated in irritation to his boat, promising he wouldn’t leave without them. The waters crept higher, the greedy tentacles clawing their way up the terraced land. It seemed as if the river and sky had melded into one, and the meager patch of land beneath them could persist no more than the ethereal outlines of clouds above.
Huddled beneath her cape, in the cave of her father’s chest, Rose soothed herself with little games, counting fingers, toes, stools, sticks, Ba Ba’s ribs. She giggled when her father recoiled from the touch, fell into the old woman’s bosom and stared up at her with mirthful eyes. She seemed as oblivious as their troubled hostess was to the rising river below them.
The old woman parted her lips. “One, two, three. Three teeth,” Rose counted. “I have more teeth than you, Po Po.”
“Ba Ba!” Rose cried. “Look how many teeth I have.” How at ease Rose seemed in the old lady’s bosom, whose ampleness was reassuring even if her mind had been spirited away with grief.
Lightning flashed across a darkened sky, illuminating yellow teeth and white, bloodshot eyes, the bundles of salvaged wood still to be hauled away, the fallen totems of stone that surrounded the fields. Rose leapt from the old woman’s lap into her father’s arms. In her frenzy she scratched the woman’s wrist, but elicited no reaction. Only the little girl’s screeches, and the ensuing peals of thunder, upset the rat-tat-tat of rain against the plastic tarp.
The floodwaters curled around Liu’s feet. In a decisive moment, he declared, “Lao tai tai! We must go. You cannot stay here.”
Liu tugged at the woman’s wrists, Rose joining in the entreaties. “Po Po! Quai! Quai!” Hurry, hurry.
The water poured through the sieve of plywood in the rear of the shack. It coated the mud floor with a gray froth upon which dead insects floated. It amputated the short-legged chairs, consumed the old woman’s calves and thighs, and raged through the front opening to pour down the banks into the massive, roiling stream below.
The torrent and sizzle of lightning ignited some vanquished fire in the taciturn woman. A strange light shone in her eyes. “I’m not going! You . . . you have family. I have nothing. My husband needs me. He is coming back, and I must wait.”
“He is not coming back here!” Liu cried. “You cannot save him now.You must save yourself.”
“No!” She pursed her lips, squirmed until her stool gave way, sinking her waist deep in the mire of floating debris.
The planks of her dwelling creaked, threatening to give way. The spent coals sputtered, their small offering of warmth no match for the frigid tide that seized the encampment. Exasperated, Liu rose to his feet with Rose slung across his shoulders. “I could not save my wife, and I can’t save you now. But this child, I will not let her die because of a foolish woman’s will.”
His shoes sank in the yielding mud. He pushed forward, sank again on the next step. It was all too familiar, this flight from rising water. The gods had put him to the test again, but with the greater burden of years, an older Rose, a loss of not one wife but two, and now, a bereaved woman who stood her ground in vain.
Along the river the rains crashed undaunted against the waves, and on the flooded land the trees groaned with the weight of grasses, shrubs, and summer crops tossed around their trunks. A sharp crack resounded, like the breaking of bone. As Liu turned around he saw the shack crumbling to the ground, its tarp engulfing the old woman. Amidst the rattle of rain-spattered pots and stools, a thin voice croaked. “Don’t go.”
Liu wrenched his feet out of the thick mud and made his way back to the woman. He yanked her out from the mass of fallen tarp, an apparition of silver hair and yellow teeth. Lowering Rose, he hoisted the woman on his back and wrapped her arms around his neck. He scooped up his little girl and stumbled, relentless as the tumbling rain, across the hillside toward the waiting boat.
“Mr. Wu!” Liu shouted. “I’ve returned. With your mother.”
The door to the cabin unlatched in hasty clicks, and a grateful Mr. Wu ushered the soaked man, woman, and child inside. The old woman was lowered onto a flimsy assemblage of lifejackets, where she fell into a delirious sleep.
Liu smoothed back the rivulets of hair streaming from under Rose’s hood and kissed her forehead. The boatman grinned, slapping Liu on the arm. “You pulled her out. You old bastard. You did it.”
“No, she found her way out,” said Liu. “When there’s nothing left to hold you back, you can only move forward.”
ABOVE THE SANDSTONE BLUFFS OF QUTANG GORGE, THE FRONDS of willow trees swayed in lazy arcs, beckoning like sirens to the passing ferry. On their way back from Wushan, Liu and Rose disembarked at Baidicheng, where the Yangtze flowed past eroded banks. Enshrouding the ancient temple was the dust of moving earth and construction cranes that loomed overhead.
Liu approached one of the workers and asked what they were building. “A bridge to the other side,” the man replied. “What you’re standing on here is going under water.”
A nameless anxiety seized Liu. Grabbing Rose’s hand, he hurried up the long flight of steps to the temple’s entrance.
Inside the shrine, Liu burned five joss sticks for Fei Fei and kowtowed with Rose, who stood alongside, mimicking his gestures. He declined the monk’s invitation to linger; there was one more offering to make. He swept little Rose into his arms, and they descended the multitude of steps, then skirted around the temple compound to the river’s edge. Here a pair of mandarin ducks scudded through the water, a trail of froth falling off their wingtips.
Rose turned her dimpled cheeks into the breeze, and his nose followed hers to the scent of blooming shrubs nearby. She squirmed, her bony frame chafing against his hands. The calluses had grown thick again from his ministrations to leather. Inky patches covered his fingers and thumbs where shoe dyes had been etched indelibly.
Liu released his daughter, and she ran toward the water’s edge, where the small waves curled in ribbons and licked at their feet. Reaching into his bag, Liu removed an old wool sweater with both hands, and held it in the crook of his elbows, as if it were the robe of a venerable monk. It was only a sweater, moth-eaten and disintegrating, but it had once sheltered his daughter from the winds raging against a deserted village.That layer of warmth had helped to save Rose’s life. Along with other benevolent acts, it must have been an afterthought, hastily carried out by a mother in flight.
Liu Renfu lifted the little girl with the steady crane of his arm. With his other hand, he tossed the dark, woolen mass into the river. The fabric swelled, like a small forest of kelp, almost purple against the gray of sky and water, and sank in two slow breaths beneath the surface.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In my travels to the Three Gorges, I met people in Chongqing, Wanxian, old Fengdu, and Wushan whose stories have contributed to this work of fiction. Having done fruitless searches on Google and in libraries, I am grateful to Xiang Chun for his agricultural expertise and knowledge of the region’s flora and fauna. Lin Gu provided his insights while he was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. He Qinglian and her husband Chen Xiao Nong helped me to understand the inner workings of Chinese government in the developments of big dam projects. Fang Xin and Pauline Shu shared their knowledge of Chongqing and the region’s architecture. The nonprofit International Rivers provided me with a constant stream of news about dams and ecological issues in China that hadn’t been covered by the mainstream press. Dr. Steven Younger answered my questions about medical conditions that I inflicted on the characters.
It’s been a pleasure to work with my editor, Lisa Graziano, and the folks at Leapfrog Press. A heartfelt thanks to my agent, Joe Veltre, and the others who have gone to bat for this novel, including Jana Robbins, Dawn Yun, and the dozens of folks who read the first three chapters. Gina Davis, Kim Wyatt and others at Squaw Valley Writers Workshop helped to strengthen the early drafts of the book. My husband, Andrew Lovett, has been a staunch supporter throughout it all.
THE AUTHOR
Li Miao Lovett is an award-winning writer whose essays and stories have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Stanford Magazine,Earth Island Journal, and on KQED public radio. She has organized events for Words Without Borders showcasing the works of dissidents and censored writers. In the Lap of the Gods was a top-four finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Li Miao lives in San Francisco.
About the Type
This book was set in Bembo®, a typeface based on the types of one of the most famous printers of the Renaissance, Aldus Manutius. In 1496 Manutius used a new weight of a roman face, formed by Francesco Griffo da Bologna, to print the short piece De Aetna, by Pietro Bembo.
The Monotype Corporation in London used this roman face as the model for a 1929 project of Stanley Morison which resulted in a font called Bembo. Morison made a number of changes to the 15th century forms. Because Manutius did not originally cut an italic for the font, Morrison used that from a sample book written in 1524 by Giovanni Tagliente in Venice. Italic capitals came from the roman forms.
Designed by John Taylor-Convery
Composed at JTC Imagineering, Santa Maria,CA
In the Lap of the Gods © 2010 by Li Miao Lovett All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data base or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A LeapLit Book
Leapfrog Literature
Published in 2010 in the United States by
Leapfrog Press LLC
PO Box 2110
Teaticket, MA 02536
www.leapfrogpress.com
Distributed in the United States by
Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
St. Paul, Minnesota 55114
www.cbsd.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lovett, Li Miao.
p. cm.
“A LeapLit book.”
eISBN : 978-1-935-24800-2
1. China--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.O867I5 2010
813’.6--dc22
2010028866