Daughter of the Bamboo Forest

by Sheng-Shih Lin;Julia Lin

  “Come, Little Jade. Come here, come.” Little Jade looked up and saw her step-grandfather beckoning at her by the kitchen door, whispering loudly. “Come, I want to show you something.” She followed him into the main room.

  He pointed to a dozen or so snowballs on the dining table and said, “Look here, look at these eggs.”

  Little Jade looked at him with alarm and said hesitantly, “Grandpa, they are snowballs, not eggs...”

  “Sh-h-h-h, not so loud.” The step-grandfather smiled conspiratorially and checked to make sure the door was locked. He came close and whispered into Little Jade’s ear. “They are phoenix eggs.”

  Little Jade felt a claw grasp her heart as the old man’s wet beard brushed her ear and neck. His breath was short and shallow and he said, “These eggs are treasures and will turn into magnificent phoenixes when spring comes. Only I know the secret of turning them into phoenixes.”

  He held up a snow egg in front of Little Jade’s eyes. It was shining, translucent and beautiful. She reached out, wanting to touch it. But the old man put it back on the table and said, “Don’t tell anyone. This is a secret from up there.” He pointed skyward. Little Jade watched him turn around and arrange the snow eggs carefully on the table, piling them up into a small mound. She could only think of the chickens he had killed and burned on the evening of the bloody sunset. The black smoke that had rushed toward heaven had carried with it the scattered spirits of the dead birds. Now, she thought, they had been reincarnated into these magical eggs and would be reborn when spring came.

  ***

  An Ling slowed down the mule cart as he approached the village in the waning evening light. The village was so quiet that he was sure he would have missed it if he had arrived during the night. He could not see any cooking smoke rising above the snow-covered rooftops. There were no signs of life. The evening light was fading, but the windows of the houses were not lit up into warm patches of yellow and orange glow.

  It was too late to turn back. He had come so far. An Ling drove the mule cart forward and entered the village. There was not even a barking dog to welcome him. He was weary from the long journey, and in his weariness he was not sure whether this was the village he was seeking. He had passed through many, and all were desolate like this one. For all he knew, this was the wrong village, and when he would knock on the door the little girl who answered would not be his daughter.

  As An Ling drove down the main street, he could see that the shops were closed, abandoned. All that remained of the flag in front of the wine shop was a few shreds of string hanging in the still air. When he looked closer, he realized that the doors of most store-fronts were missing. The wind must have blown the snow and dust into the shops which had accumulated on shelves and counters. There was once a wine shop, a pawnshop, an incense shop, a grain shop and a tea parlor--all were empty. The shops lined the roadside, decaying in the harsh wind and weather, inhabited by insects.

  At last, he found his in-laws’ house. The door was shut tight. He hesitated for a moment, then knocked on the door and called, “Open up!”

  Between the cracks of the wood panels, An Ling saw light inside the house, moving toward the door. “Who is it?” an old man’s voice asked.

  “It’s Little Jade’s father,” he answered.

  The door opened a crack, and An Ling saw his father-in-law holding a candle, squinting and smiling at him. The old man said, “Come in, come in. It’s An Ling. Little Jade, it’s your father! An Ling, it’s so good to see you. We weren’t expecting you at all. Have you eaten? We have already eaten. What an old fool I am! You couldn’t have eaten. You’ve been traveling. You must be hungry. Come, sit down. I’ll make you some tea.”

  In a daze, An Ling followed the old man into the house and sat down on a chair. The old man lit a candle on the table and went into the kitchen to make tea. Little Jade hadn’t made a sound since his arrival. Her face was a gray shadow moving about in the darkness of the room. Her eyes followed her father like the eyes of a small creature that comes out only during the night.

  Finally, Little Jade approached his chair. Her face entered the range of light cast by the single candle in the room, a short stub of red wax burning in a small white china dish. An Ling smiled at his daughter and said gently, “Come here, Little Jade. Let me look at you. I haven’t seen you for so long. Don’t be afraid. I’m here to take you home.”

  He heard a few loud rasping sounds from the kitchen, but ignored them. He looked at his daughter as her face became fully visible in the candlelight.

  Little Jade’s face was skinny and dirty, but her eyes shone at him happily. “When are we leaving?” she asked in a strangely clear voice that sounded, to An Ling, like bells from a faraway temple.

  “Soon,” An Ling answered enthusiastically, cheered by her smile.

  She looked at him deeply again and disappeared into the darkness.

  The old man came into view and gave him a steaming teacup from a tray. An Ling looked into the teacup and saw no tealeaves. The old man grinned at him and said, “Have some tea. I’m making dinner for you. You must be hungry after all the traveling. It’s good to see you. This is a surprise. This is a pleasant surprise.”

  An Ling interrupted the old man. “Listen to me!” he said, urgently. “It’s not safe to stay here anymore. I’m taking you with me. We’re going to join Silver Pearl and her mother in the city. They’re safe and living in a rented house. You don’t know how dangerous it is to travel.” An Ling’s voice echoed in the quiet room. “I have been extremely lucky that I wasn’t killed by the bandits or the soldiers. We must leave soon. There is no need to cook me dinner. I have dry food in the mule cart. We can eat while we travel. There’s no time to lose”

  The old man smiled vacantly as he sipped his water carefully and blowing the steam away from his teacup.

  “Father,” said Little Jade in a small voice, “you said that you have food in the mule cart?”

  “Yes.” An Ling turned to look at Little Jade, who was carrying a bundle in her arms, ready to leave.

  “Can we have some of the food?” Her voice was weaker now. “We haven’t eaten for a long time.”

  An Ling looked at the old man, who was smiling blankly, and realized that the rasping noise he’d heard earlier was the sound of a bowl scraping against the bottom of the urn for storing grain. They must have been hungry for days, or even longer. He was afraid to think any further. He got up in haste and took the candle to get the food from the mule cart.

  An Ling took the candle and made his way to the kitchen. In the darkness, he saw a pot slowly boiling on the stove. A few grains of barley and strands of wild vegetable leaves were floating on the surface of a thin soup. The candle flickered, about to die. He pushed the short wick with his fingers, maneuvering the yellow flame, but the melted wax burned his fingers and finally drowned the flame. He stood still in the darkness, feeling his eyes stung with tears, but he was unable to cry. With his eyes closed, he could clearly see a thin blue strand of cooking smoke rising straight upward from this tiny kitchen to the heaven above—a tenuous signal of the fragile and stubborn existence of the lives below.

  ***

  An Ling turned uneasily on the filthy bed. He had not slept on a bed for many days. He was exhausted but could not fall asleep. He had not eaten tonight, but he felt full with something warm and sore, brimming in his eyes, at his throat. He knew that he had to rest so that he could get up early tomorrow morning. That was what he told Little Jade when he sent her to bed.

  He had stumbled out of the kitchen and back into the reach of the single candle on the dining table. He had sat down wordlessly next to the dining table to be with his daughter. Little Jade came to An Ling shyly for a piece of bread. She stood in front of him, and he pulled her close to him, lifting her slight figure gently and placing her on his lap. She leaned against his chest weakly. She held a piece of bread with both hands and ate silently. An Ling sat there feeling relieved and ashamed at the same time
. He sensed the smallest movements of his daughter, a lift of her elbow and an adjustment of her leg, as he listened to the tiny sound of her chewing and swallowing the bread.

  The old man sat across from them and ate slowly, dipping the bread gingerly into the cup of water and then biting off a small piece at a time, as if he wanted the meal to last forever. He looked up at them from time to time. Each time he was surprised to see the two of them sitting across the dinner table. He asked if they had eaten, and offered them his bread. They looked at each other knowingly and said yes, they had eaten, and please grandfather, please go on eating. The old man looked relieved and went on eating his bread.

  The candle was burning low when the old man finally finished. He smacked his lips and drank what was left of the water in his teacup. He seemed happy. He nodded at them good-naturedly and went over to open the front door. The moon was already visible in the night sky, a silver sickle hanging from the tree. The sky was blue and clear, the shadows of the world below were mere residue settled at the bottom—impurities to be discarded.

  An Ling pulled his daughter tighter into his arms. He had a thousand questions he was afraid to ask. Even simple questions like “How are you, and how have you been?” He didn’t want to know the answers to his questions. Suddenly the old man stood up and walked towards the door. They watched as he went outside, walking noiselessly in the snow, dragging the dirty red blanket with his left hand and holding a spoon in his right hand. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and squatted on the snowy ground. He started to dig in the snow with the spoon.

  Little Jade called out to the old man, “Grandpa, look at me, I am Little Jade. Grandpa, please don’t stay out all night digging in the snow. Your feet are covered with frostbite and your toenails are falling off.” Little Jade gently helped the old man stand up and cleared away the icicles on his eyebrows and beard.

  An Ling turned to look at Little Jade, but before he could ask, she said, “Don’t worry, father. Grandpa is only making snowballs that he thinks are eggs. I thought he wouldn’t do this tonight because he had food to eat. I thought the food in his stomach would wake him from his dream of phoenixes. But don’t worry, he’s been like this ever since the snow.”

  An Ling looked at his daughter desperately under the flickering candlelight, the flame was slowly drowning in its own puddle of wax tears. She looked back at him unblinking, her eyes large in her small pointed face. An Ling looked away. He could not look back at eyes that seemed to be hiding nothing and demanding everything. A gust of wind came through the door and blew out the flame. Blinded by the sudden darkness, he tried to get up but his legs were numb. He mumbled, “It’s time to sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow morning.” He tried to lift Little Jade off his lap. Even in the darkness, he could feel her eyes staring hotly at him. Clumsily, he got up on his feet, holding the back of a chair, and found his way into the bedroom.

  An Ling lay on the bed half-dreaming and half-waking. He imagined that the house was shrinking around him, into a coffin, a tomb. Little Jade and the old man were spirits transformed into shapes to fool him, to trap him. Silver Pearl was right. Little Jade was dead and so was the old man. This was just an illusion, to punish him for his neglect of his daughter. People who died unnaturally turned into vicious ghosts, especially the starved ones. They had no family to burn incense and paper money for them. They were not properly buried and therefore could not reincarnate. They lingered between the world of the living and the world of the dead, forever wandering, looking to avenge their anger. In his half-conscious state, An Ling listened to the house, to the footsteps shuffling in the main room next to the dinner table.

  Something warm and sore burst in An Ling’s chest, flowing free over the dam that had contained it. He shed tears silently in the darkness, relaxing and clenching his fists in turn.

  ***

  Little Jade had gone to sleep that night singing a song in a tiny voice only she could hear. She was happy and had thought that she would stay awake all night, but she fell asleep listening to her step-grandfather walk about the house. The next morning when An Ling and Little Jade woke, the old man was gone. The only thing he had taken with him was a bamboo basket, and he left the dinner table covered with snow eggs. They looked for him all over the village, calling out for him from house to house. Little Jade called him until her voice became hoarse and she started to cry, stamping her feet in the middle of the empty street. She cried and cried as An Ling led her back to the house. He sat her down and tried to calm her. The old man had simply disappeared.

  An Ling told Little Jade they must leave quickly and return to the rented house in Tianjin. There was no point staying in this village of the dead. They must leave even if they could not find the old man. But Little Jade sat on her step-grandfather’s chair covering her face, crying, refusing to go. She didn’t want to leave the house she had thought she would die in. She didn’t want to leave the village that stank of death. She had hated the house, and she had wished ten thousand times for her father to return and take her away from this dusty, narrow house. This house of shattered windows and lives, of the strangling and burning of chickens and souls, the house of prolonged hunger and diminished hopes. But she didn’t want to leave without her step-grandfather. The red-paper gods on the walls stared down at her, expressionless and helpless.

  She was certain that the old man had just gone out to look for food. When he went to find food, he always carried that bamboo basket. He would come back with his new finds for their soup, the soup that tasted of unbearable sadness. But he did not return. An Ling said they could not wait any longer because they were running out of food. They waited until they could not wait anymore. Finally, they left for the rented house in the city.

  They set the front door ajar so the old man wouldn’t be locked out of his own house if he returned. Little Jade left him her glass box with the dancing lady. She placed it on top of the mound of snow eggs, now frozen together. She wound up the key before she walked out the door. The sun was bright and the snow was melting on the ground. On the dinner table, the mountain of snow eggs glistened like giant pearls in the early morning sun. The warmth of the sun was causing the snow eggs to melt. Water was dripping down the corner of the table—one drop, another drop, counting time for a world that had been abandoned.

  “Ding ding ding dong, ding dong dong dong...” The snow-covered ground was so bright that Little Jade had to wince. Sitting on the mule cart she looked back at the open door of the house. “Ding ding dong dong, ding ding dong dong...” The melody played on in her mind.

  Little Jade was quiet on her way to the city. She had imagined countless times how happy she would be traveling with her father, just the two of them sitting side by side. How she had anticipated his arm brushing accidentally against her shoulder. She wanted to tell him how much she missed him, how she waited for him until she gave up all hope and was ready to die in her bed inside the mosquito netting.

  She had looked forward to death, believing that her grandmother would be waiting for her. She had been weary of staying alive, the days and nights following each other in an endless tedium while her hair matted together and her nails grew long like vultures’ claws. She hadn’t taken a bath in a long time. Her teeth were turning green and she smelled like a stray dog. The step-grandfather had made snow eggs every day piling them up high on the dinner table. She sometimes tried to talk to him, but he only looked back at her blankly.

  An Ling never asked his daughter what happened to the village, and a strange pride prevented Little Jade from telling him. Had he asked, she would have told him about the poisonous sun, the dust, and the wind. She would have told him about the plague and the death, the hunger and the fear of being the last one to die. But maybe Little Jade would just tell him how she missed him—how the thought of him encouraged her to want to live so that he could come rescue her in time.

  Chapter 12: The Rented House

  They traveled all night to arrive at daybreak in f
ront of a faded red door. A few branches of bamboo from the yard reached beyond the wall extending a welcoming gesture. An Ling stopped the mule cart and climbed off. He knocked on the door with his fist. The mule was heaving, its breath labored. White foam dripped from its mouth. Little Jade sat on the cart, smelling the odor of the mule and listening to the dull, tired knocks. The air was chilly and still like a block of ice, freezing everything into an endless moment. It was New Year’s Eve, and no one was expecting them.

  The door opened with a moan. Through the crack, an old woman’s surprised look turned into an exaggerated smile. She turned and called, “Silver Pearl, Silver Pearl, the master is home! Silver Pearl!” Her voice rose high from the small yard. A few blocks away, roosters were crowing, answering her. Silver Pearl appeared at the front door of the house, wearing a creased black and gold embroidered gown. Her face was blank as her hands reached behind her neck, attempting to hurriedly tie her hair into a knot. She looked at the door and her fingers turned numb, letting go of her hair. Her hands rested on her neck, fingers extending, touching her chin and the one of her earlobes. An Ling walked toward her, raising his right hand as if wanting to embrace her, but instead he merely tapped her shoulder, ever so lightly. She looked for his eyes and saw that he was looking away.

  “Come, Little Jade,” he said.

  The room smelled of mothballs and wet dust. The windows were closed and the curtains were drawn. Unopened newspapers were piled thickly on the coffee table. The old woman said, “We will have to clean up the house. Tomorrow is the New Year, and it will be a new beginning for our family. Aiya, the family is finally together!” She stopped abruptly and asked An Ling, “Where is the old man? Is he still in the mule cart?” She went toward the door and said, “I’ll get him.”

  Little Jade lowered her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands as An Ling explained with great difficulty that the old man had disappeared and that they looked everywhere for him and waited for him until they had to leave. The old woman sat on the floor and wept. Silver Pearl was expressionless as she tried to help her mother up. She refused. Finally she rose on her own and went to boil bath water for An Ling.