by Su Tong
The girl stood on the bridge. She didn’t want to go home yet. A boy with mumps wearing a striped sailor shirt ran up; he lived above the general store at the base of the bridge and the girl knew him. He covered his cheeks, which were coated with medicinal herbs. ‘What’s that in your hand? Show it to me,’ he said. The girl knew he meant the glass prism, but she clutched both hands behind her back and fixed him with a bold stare.
‘I won’t,’ she said, but suddenly held the glass prism up in one hand. ‘Don’t touch it. It’s for shining on the water demon.’
The boy, who had intended to plunder some treasure, drew his hand back. ‘Liar,’ he said. ‘What water demon? Where is it then?’
The girl pointed at the river beneath. ‘He’s in the water now.’ She indicated the trail of oil, which had not yet dissipated. ‘You can’t see it, but I can.’
‘You’re lying. Tell me where he’s gone.’
A mysterious smile appeared on the girl’s face. She tucked the prism away. ‘I’ve found out where the water demon lives, but I would never tell you where.’ She began to walk down the bridge, then suddenly turned back to say, ‘You all think he lives in the water, but that’s not true. You’re all wrong.’
As she left the bridge, she could still see the boy standing there, covering his cheeks and staring vacantly. He didn’t know a thing. And even though he could see the distant tower, he would still never guess its secret.
A young man slid into the water with frog-like hops while another young man followed behind, using a kind of doggy-paddle. Maybe it was because they couldn’t go any further, or maybe they had got to where they wanted to be, but suddenly they stopped beneath the bridge and hauled themselves out of the water to sit on the rocks beneath the arch.
The girl opened her nylon parasol and, standing on the bridge, watched for them to come out from under the bridge. She’d assumed they would keep on swimming, but now that they had stopped under the bridge, she couldn’t see them. They were talking loudly.
‘That water’s disgusting. Shit, man, did you see the dead cat? I nearly threw up.’ The other boy caught his breath, and said, ‘Yeah, I saw it. Sort of tawny. It probably ate rat poison.’
The girl attempted to bend over the railing so she could see the faces of the two young men. Instead, she could see only a leg with a very dark tan. There was a dense mass of hair on his calf and it looked like he had recently cut the back of his foot; there were obvious traces of antiseptic left on the skin.
‘A dead cat! That’s nothing!’ said the girl, breaking into the conversation from above. ‘A few days ago I saw a dead boy! He looked just like a rabbit.’
‘Who’s talking up there?’ one of them asked.
‘It’s got to be that stupid Deng girl,’ the other one answered. ‘She’s got a screw loose. Ignore her.’
She drew back her head, then stuck it back out over the railing to spit, ‘You’re the stupid one!’
After delivering this furious retort she went back to playing with her glass prism, making shapes on the water. The only target she could find was the dark, hairy leg. Then she heard someone below say, ‘Don’t pay any attention to her.’
The girl said, ‘No one’s paying any attention to you, anyway.’ She heard her own voice amplified by the arch. It sounded clear and sweet. She began to twirl the nylon umbrella one way and then the other.
‘Cross my heart and hope to die, a dead boy floated past a couple days ago. He was swimming too, like you, but then the water demon grabbed his foot and dragged him down to the riverbed!’
The two youths under the bridge chuckled, then one of them flopped into the water and started yelling, ‘Oh no! Help! The demon! The water demon! He’s got me!’ While the other youth laughed even harder.
The girl watched them toss up riverweed from the water with their horseplay. ‘Don’t be so noisy,’ she said. ‘The water demon’s away right now, but if you make him angry he’ll swim through the water and grab you.’
‘He’s here!’ The youth somersaulted in the water and cried out, ‘My leg! The water demon’s got my leg! Somebody! Help! Help!’
The girl knew they were just playing around and ignoring her warnings. It made her a little angry, so she picked up a shard of glass lying on the bridge and threw it into the river. ‘Fine. Go on playing your stupid games; carry on swimming if you can. Why don’t you swim all the way to the tower, because that’s where the water demon lives.’
Her mother did not allow her to go out by herself. One day her mother dyed her nails with jewel-weed, saying, ‘We agreed, didn’t we? If I dye your nails, then you won’t go and do those foolish things. Today you’re going to stay at home and do your schoolwork.’ Her mother saw that the girl was sitting by the door, carefully examining her ten peach-red nails. ‘The sun’s fierce today. If you go fooling around outside again, everyone will think you’re a dimwit.’ The girl held her ten fingers up for the sun to shine on them. She saw that they had become like ten jewel-weed petals, sparkling and transparent.
‘I’m telling you, the sun’s really fierce today,’ her mother said. ‘If you go outside today, the sun will definitely scorch you. If you sneak out again the sun’s sure to burn you to death!’
Outside, the sun seemed to be boiling. Barely visible white smoke was rising from the concrete road. A woman was hawking cold water somewhere in the distance. The schoolteacher from across the road, Ms Song, hurried off with a jug and a nylon parasol in hand to go and buy some.
‘Other people are going outside,’ the girl mumbled. ‘Who says no one’s going outside? As long as you have a parasol it’s fine.’
She looked back and forth, searching for something. Her mother knew what it was already and said, ‘Don’t bother looking. I’ve put your parasol away. You don’t take good enough care of your things. With such a fierce sun, you’ll ruin it if you take it out.’
Her mother sat in the bamboo chair and seemed to doze off. She could vaguely feel her empty hand where the palm-leaf fan had been, but she didn’t open her eyes; it had probably fallen on the floor.
The girl had sneaked off again with her mother’s palm-leaf fan. The girl was standing on the bridge using the fan to keep off the afternoon sun. Nobody noticed her newly-dyed fingernails or, for that matter, the girl herself.
Just as she was walking onto the bridge, a man walked off in her direction with a plank on his shoulder. He almost swept her off as he passed, and she called out, ‘Watch out!’ The flustered man turned around. He was a stranger, a farmer or something like that. The girl saw that his wife-beater and trousers were wet and dripping as he walked past. The girl laughed and asked, ‘What are you doing?’
For a moment, he seemed not to understand her question, but then he asked back, ‘What do you mean, what am I doing?’
‘Why are you so wet? Are you the water demon?’
The man shifted the plank from the left to right shoulder. ‘The water demon? What water demon?’
He looked at the girl in puzzlement, but after a moment seemed to understand and chortled. He pointed to an embankment not far from the bridge and said, ‘No, I’m not the water demon. See? We’re working in the water.’
The girl’s eyes followed the direction of his finger. Labourers were assembled on the embankment by the factory. They were all bare-chested, some standing on the embankment and some of them in the water making a terrible noise. The girl hung on the railing and said, ‘I want to see.’ She turned back towards him and repeated, ‘I want to see.’
The labourer squinted at the girl, then laughed, revealing his yellow teeth. The girl watched as he walked off the bridge with his plank. She noticed the sturdy, protruding veins on his legs, like so many worms. His shins and ankles were stained all over with yellow mud.
That summer a gang of labourers constructed a small pier for the chemical factory. The girl stood on the bridge and patiently observed the entire process: how they drove in the piles, built the retaining walls and pumped out the w
ater. At the beginning, no one noticed the girl on the bridge. She just stood there, holding a palm-leaf fan to keep off the afternoon sun. No one knew what she was doing or what had provoked her interest; she just stood and watched. Sometimes she adjusted the fan’s position in her hand, so that it was still covering half of her face, then she carried on watching. Once she called out, ‘Here comes the water demon!’ At first she called out tentatively, feeling a little bad about frightening them, but later it seemed as though she wanted to provoke their enmity, as she called out loudly, ‘The water demon! He’s here! Quick! Get out of the water or the demon will get you by the feet!’ Often the labourers would stop what they were doing and stare angrily at the girl on the bridge. Each time the girl would run away, tearing down the bridge with only a few strides. Then in the blink of an eye, she was gone.
The labourers started talking about the girl on the bridge; they all thought there must be something wrong with her. Fortunately the girl had made no impact on the progress of their work. They had planned eight days to build the pier, but it was complete after only seven. The day they finished work, they kept looking up at the bridge, but they saw no trace of the girl. They didn’t know why she wasn’t there that day, just as they had no idea why she had been there on every other day previously. Without the girl, the bridge seemed very empty.
The labourers did not know she was away, visiting her aunt.
On the seventh day, the girl had crossed the city to visit her aunt. She returned home only at dusk, and cried out in surprise when they crossed the bridge. Her mother had been dragging her along by the hand, but now she dropped it. ‘What did you do that for?’ her mother asked, ‘You scared me half to death. There’s nothing the matter. Why did you scream like that?’ The girl stood on the bridge, looking at the new pier not far away. She wanted to stay there, standing on the bridge, but her mother dragged her away roughly with her powerful grip ‘You shouldn’t be standing there like a halfwit. Do you know that’s what everyone thinks you are? Standing all day on the bridge in the heat. If you’re not a little dim-witted, I don’t know what you are.’
As the girl was being dragged off the bridge, she said, ‘Don’t pull so hard. You’re going to pull my hand off!’
But her mother replied furiously, ‘If I don’t drag you home, you’ll just stand on the bridge for everyone to laugh at.’
The girl struggled to free herself, ‘Don’t drag me! You’re as bad as the water demon!’ She looked at her mother pleadingly and suddenly the girl screamed, ‘I can see the water demon! You‘re the water demon!’
Her mother raised her hand and slapped the girl in the face. ‘It’s just non-stop nonsense with you, isn’t it? One day I really will tell the water demon to drag you down to where the Dragon King lives!’
On the night of the seventh day, the girl sneaked out of the house, right under her mother’s nose. She had never gone out at night before, so when her mother spotted her walking around the bamboo chair and going out with something like a flashlight in her hand, it didn’t occur to her that it might actually be a flashlight. And that was how the girl sneaked out, right under her mother’s nose.
On both sides of the concrete road there were people who had come out to cool down in the night air. A few of them looked over at the girl and called her name: ‘Where are you going so late?’ they asked.
The girl said, ‘I’m going down to the bridge to cool down.’
‘Smart girl. It’s windy on the bridge; good place to cool down.’
The girl walked towards the bridge, where a few young men there leaned on the railing with their cigarettes. When they saw the girl, they stopped talking and turned to look at her. Someone started chortling, saying, ‘It’s her again! The Deng family dumbo, standing all day on the bridge.’
She swept over them with disdainful eyes and said, ‘You’re the dumbos. You’re the ones standing on the bridge all day.’
She leaned on the railing on the other side, wearing an expression that said as far as she was concerned they should just stay out of each other’s business. She shone the flashlight on the riverbank below the bridge, then turned it off again. What she had wanted to see was the new pier; the new pier that been raised above from the waters. The newly poured cement diffused an indistinct white light under the moonbeams. The girl stood there and felt strangely hurt, yearning as she did to go down to the pier. She had kept watch for six days, seeing every detail of the labourers’ work, missing only the process of raising the structure out of the water. She wanted to have a thorough look at it, but the horrid young men behind her were talking, laughing in a peculiar way that made her feel uncomfortable.
Suddenly she decided to leave the bridge. She began walking away and headed in the direction of the riverbank. The young men on the bridge yelled after her, ‘Hey, dumbo, where are you going?’ but she ignored them.
To herself, she said, ‘If they want to monopolize the bridge, then let them, it’s not like I can’t go whenever I want to.’ She turned the flashlight on and began to walk towards the new pier. She saw the river water rushing underneath the bridge, and in the darkness the water looked thicker and darker than the night itself.
A large block of cement ground lay bare in the moonlight, emitting its naturally fishy smell, welcoming her. She carefully stretched out one of her feet to test the firmness of the cement. It wasn’t yet completely set, and in the flashlight’s beam, the girl could see her sandalprints in it, clearly marked.
The building shed had not been taken down. It was very dark inside and there was no movement. She shone inside it with her flashlight. The beam hit a straw mat and next to it was an enamel washbasin and a mess tin. This told the girl that there was still someone guarding the pier, but though she shone all around with her flashlight, she saw nothing and no one besides the large wooden cases and discarded machinery the chemical factory left there all year. A little further away, in a spot where the river was suddenly hidden from sight, the tower was bathed in moonlight, giving off a somewhat reddish glow. The discharge culvert wasn’t visible at all. The girl listened carefully to the sounds of the flowing river, her ears filling with the sound of the river talking to itself. Suddenly, coming from the tower she heard the unfamiliar sound of something smacking the surface of the water, getting closer and closer. With her eyes almost popping out of her skull, she stared at the surface of the water but saw nothing. There was no one swimming. But there was the sound of something striking the water, becoming ever clearer, and ever closer. She began to feel quite frightened and looked towards the bridge in the distance. The young men were still there.
‘The water demon! The water demon’s coming,’ she shouted.
Although the shadows on the bridge swayed a little, no one responded. The girl began to be really afraid and started to bolt back along the bank. The flashlight in her hand swung wildly back and forth, and as she ran she saw the river running silently beneath her feet. The water in the darkness was darker and deeper than the night as she carried on running across the newly built pier. She could hear the sound of her rapid breathing, but she could hear the breathing of the water demon, too. It was there! Her sandals were suddenly held down by something. She screamed and looked down at her feet, but it was only the drying cement; her sandals had got stuck. At the same time she heard a burst of jumbled noises from the water and caught sight of a shape emerging from the dark water, dripping with glistening algae. The girl gave another piercing scream as she saw the labourer with the plank who she had seen on the bridge.
‘The demon! The water demon! The water demon!’ she screamed.
The man was holding something in his hands.
‘The demon! The water demon! The demon!’
If the young men on the bridge had believed in the legend of the water demon, they might have testified to the Deng girl’s story, but they did not. That was what made the account, which was at first only a few sentences from the girl, into a real story.
On that night, at
about nine o’clock, they had dimly heard sounds coming from the new pier. One of them had wanted to go and see what was happening, but was prevented from doing so by one of his friends, who had said, ‘What water demon? Don’t pay any attention to that stupid girl. She’s just screaming for the sake of it.’
So they stayed on the bridge smoking and shooting the breeze. Later, at about ten o’clock, they saw the girl coming towards them. They didn’t know what had happened, but they did notice that she was totally wet and that she held something cupped in her hands. None of them had wanted to acknowledge her, but she seemed to be crying. The youths on the bridge ran over to her. She looked as though she’d only just got out of the water. She was crying as she approached them on the bridge, and in her hands was a lotus flower. A very large, red lotus flower. At first they were all quite baffled by the flower. The young men surrounded her to look at it. It was a real lotus flower, not plastic, and there were still drops of water on its petals. All talking at the same time, they asked her where she had got it. The girl was still crying, crying as if she were in some kind of dream. She cupped the flower tightly with her hand, and between her pale fingers, drops of water fell, glistening. One of the young men said, ‘Let’s not get overexcited about something like this. It must have floated to the bank from the lotus pond in the park.’
The others looked questioningly at the girl, ‘Is that right? Did it float there?’
The girl said nothing, but clung to the flower and walked towards the road. The youths walked behind her and someone else said, ‘You stupid girl! Did you really jump into the river to dredge out lotus flowers? Aren’t you afraid of drowning?’
That was when the girl turned suddenly around, her voice hoarse and unsettling. ‘The water demon gave me the lotus flower,’ she said. ‘I met the water demon.’
This story circulated all summer. If she were to relate it herself it would be incomprehensible, so it’s better if I summarize it. In fact, it was a very simple story: the Deng girl had met the water demon. Not only that, he had even given her a red lotus flower.