Border Town

by Shen CongWen

  Counting up all the bundles in the prow, Cuicui noticed that the wine gourd was missing. She snickered.

  “Grandfather, you’re so generous, letting all those soldiers and boatmen drink off you, you even let them swallow your gourd!”

  Smiling, Grandpa quickly put in:

  “No way, no way. Elder Brother Shunshun took it away from me. He saw me out on River Street inviting people to have a drink and said, ‘Hey there, Captain Zhang Heng of the ferrymen, we can’t have this. You don’t own a distillery! How can you go on like this? If you have to be a philanthropist, a real sport like the heroes of Mount Liang, then give it over, I’ll drink it up for you!’ That’s what he said, ‘I’ll drink it up for you!’ I put down my wine gourd. But I figure he was kidding me. Is there any lack of wine in his household? What do you think, Cuicui?”

  “Grandfather, do you really think it was about him having a drink, even if it was all in jest?”

  “What, then?”

  “Nothing to be upset over, he must have confiscated your gourd because you picked the wrong place to be serving all comers; he didn’t want you to end up with no liquor at all. He’ll send it back with one of his men in a little while. You still don’t get it! For Heaven’s sake!”

  “Do you really think he will?”

  By this time the boat had reached the shore. Cuicui hurried to help her grandpa gather up his bundles before he could pick them up, but all she got was a lone fish and the embroidered waist pouch. The money was already gone; in its place were a packet of white sugar and a box of sesame cakes.

  The two had just brought the new purchases into the house when someone hailed them for service from the other side of the stream. Asking Cuicui to keep an eye on the meat and vegetables lest a feral cat get them, Grandpa rushed ahead of her to the ferry. After a short time, he headed back home with the passenger, speaking loudly and excitedly. The visitor had indeed come to return the gourd. Grandpa said, “Cuicui, you guessed right! He really did bring it back!”

  Before Cuicui could escape into the kitchen, Grandpa entered the house with a young man. He was dark and broad-shouldered.

  Cuicui and the visitor smiled at each other, letting Grandpa talk on. The guest kept on looking and smiling at Cuicui, who seemed to realize what the staring meant. She began to grow a little embarrassed, so she went into the kitchen to light the fire in the stove. When yet another person came to the stream and hailed the ferry, she ran out the door to the boat and took him across. And just then there was another passenger. Though it was drizzling, there were far more people to serve than usual, requiring three trips. Once on board, as Cuicui tended the boat, she began thinking about her granddad’s happy mood. She sensed, somehow, that she knew this city fellow who’d been dispatched to return the wine gourd. But though he looked familiar, she didn’t know where she’d seen him before. She seemed unwilling to figure it all out and could not guess his identity.

  Grandpa hollered from the bluff: “Cuicui! Cuicui! Come up and sit awhile, keep our guest company!” She’d intended to go ashore and light the stove since no one needed ferrying, but now that her grandpa had called her, she didn’t.

  The visitor asked Grandpa, “Are you going to town to see the boats?” “I have to stay with my boat,” replied the old ferryman. The two continued talking about other things. Finally, the visitor came to the point:

  “Uncle, your Cuicui is grown up now. She’s very pretty!”

  The ferryman smiled. “He talks just like his elder brother—says exactly what’s on his mind,” he thought to himself. But he said, “No. 2, you’re the only one in these parts who deserves that praise. Everybody says you’re handsome! Folks have made up epithets to acclaim your virtues: the Leopard of Bamian Mountain, the Golden Pheasant of Didi Stream!”

  “What nonsense!”

  “They’ve really captured you! I heard some boatmen say that last time when you were piloting a boat and it wrecked up below the Three Gorges in the rapids at White Rooster Pass, you rescued three men from the dashing waves. They say you stayed overnight by the rapids, and when the village girls got a look at you, they crooned the night away with love songs outside your shack. Is it true?”

  “That wasn’t any serenading by young women, that was the howling of wolves! The place is famous for them, just looking for the chance to eat us! We kept a big campfire to scare them off—that’s the only way we escaped with our lives!”

  The old ferryman chuckled: “All the more! What they said about you was right! A wolf only picks out young maidens and children to eat—and handsome young seventeen-year-olds—never an old bones like me. It’d take one sniff at me and go away!”

  At that, No. 2 said, “Uncle, you’ve seen a lot of sunrises in this locale. Everybody says the excellent feng shui here, the geomancy, is propitious for the emergence of great men. I wonder why we haven’t had one so far?”

  “You mean the good feng shui should have given us someone with a big name? I don’t see anything so bad about not having such a person born in a little place like this. It’s enough that we have young people who are bright, honest, brave, and able to work hard. The men in your family, for instance, have brought this place a lot of glory!”

  “Uncle, you’re right, I was just thinking that. This place of ours produces good men, not bad men—men like you, Uncle. You may be old, but you’re still as strong as a nanmu tree, living a steady and stable life on this patch of earth—both decent and generous. There aren’t many like you.”

  “I’m an old man, what am I worth? I’ve had everything that was my lot in life: sun and rain, long journeys bearing heavy loads, living it up on food and liquor, then suffering hunger and cold—and pretty soon, I’ll be lying beneath the cold, cold earth, feeding the earthworms. There’s plenty waiting on this earth for you young folk. If you do your work well, it won’t let you down—just hold up your end of the bargain.”

  “Uncle, with your diligence setting the example, we young people dare not let you down!”

  They’d been talking for some time, so No. 2 was ready to go. The old ferryman stood outside his doorway and called for Cuicui to come into the house to boil water and cook a meal while he took her place on the boat. Cuicui didn’t want to come ashore, but the guest had already boarded the boat, so as she tugged the boat, Grandpa pretended to scold her:

  “Cuicui, aren’t you coming back? Surely you don’t expect me to be a housewife and do the cooking?”

  Throwing a sidelong glance at the visitor, Cuicui saw that he was staring at her. Turning her head away and pursing her lips, she smartly attended to her business pulling on the cable, until she’d slowly pulled the boat onto the shore. The visitor stood in the prow and said to Cuicui,

  “Cuicui, when you’ve eaten, won’t you come with your grandfather to our stilt house and watch the boat race?”

  At first too embarrassed to speak, Cuicui finally answered, “Grandfather says he’s not going, because then there’d be no one to tend the ferry!”

  “Won’t you come?”

  “If Grandfather won’t go, neither will I.”

  “Do you have to tend the boat, too?”

  “I want to be with Grandfather.”

  “What if I get someone to take your place on the boat?”

  The boat reached the shore with a thud as it bumped into a mound of earth. No. 2 jumped up on the bank and said, from the slope:

  “Cuicui, I’ve put you to trouble. When I get home, I’ll send someone to take the place of both of you. Eat your meal and hurry on over to my house to see the boats. A lot of people are there already, it’s very lively!”

  Misunderstanding the good intentions of this stranger, and why she had to go to his house to see the boats, Cuicui giggled between her little pursed lips and pulled the boat back to the other shore. When she got to the bank where her home was, the young man had reached the top of the hill on the other side. He was still there, as if waiting for something. Cuicui went home and lit the fire. She stuffed
some damp grasses into the stove and inquired of her grandpa, who was just then testing out the wine in the gourd returned by the visitor.

  “Grandfather, that fellow said he was going back to get someone to replace you, so the two of us can go see the races. Will you go?”

  “Would you like to?”

  “If we go together. I like that young man. He seems familiar. Who is he?”

  “Good, he likes you, too!” Grandpa thought to himself. He said, with a smile, “Cuicui, don’t you remember two years ago, you were on the big riverbank and someone said you might be eaten by a big fish?”

  Cuicui understood, but she pretended not to. She asked, “Who is he, then?”

  “Think, Cuicui. Take a guess.”

  “I couldn’t possibly guess who he is.”

  “He’s No. 2 of Fleetmaster Shunshun’s household. He remembered you, but you still don’t remember him!” He took a sip of wine and said, in a low voice, as if to praise the wine and a certain man at the same time: “Good, just right. You’re not this lucky very often!”

  People wanting the ferry hailed him from outside the door. The old grandpa reiterated, “Good, just right…” Then in a flash he was in the boat, getting down to work.

  CHAPTER TEN

  While they were eating, someone called for the ferry on the far bank. Cuicui rushed to the boat. When she got to the other shore, she saw that her passenger was the boatman sent by Fleetmaster Shunshun to take their place. He looked at Cuicui and said, “No. 2 wants you to come over when you finish eating. He’s already in his dragon boat.” He said the same thing when he saw Grandpa.

  Straining their ears, they could hear the faraway drumbeats picking up their pace, and from that they could picture the very slender boats dashing straight ahead across the Long Depths, their wakes leaving long and exquisitely beautiful lines in the water.

  Unwilling even to stop for tea, the newcomer took a position in the prow of the boat. Cuicui and Grandpa had invited him in during their meal, but he shook his head. Grandpa said,

  “Cuicui, I’m not going, why don’t you and the little dog go on without me?”

  “If you don’t go, I don’t want to, either!”

  “And if I do?”

  “I didn’t really want to, but I’d go with you.”

  Grandpa smiled: “All right, Cuicui, you come with me, keep me company!”

  By the time Grandpa and Cuicui got to the big river in the city, the banks had been crowded with spectators for some time. The drizzle had stopped, but the ground was still wet. Grandpa wanted Cuicui to go to the fleetmaster’s stilt house on River Street to watch the races, but something seemed to be weighing on her mind that made her afraid to go there; she preferred to stand by the riverbank. Though the two stayed in place there, it wasn’t long before Shunshun sent someone to invite them in. His house on stilts was already crowded. The upper-class country mother and daughter that had caught Cuicui’s eye when she ferried them that morning occupied the two best seats in the house, by the window. The daughter spotted Cuicui and said: “Come here, over here!” Cuicui went over, a little self-consciously, and sat on a bench behind them. Grandpa set off.

  Instead of watching the dragon boats race, Grandpa let an acquaintance lead him away to see the new grain mill and its water-powered stone roller a quarter-mile upstream. The old ferryman happened to be intensely interested in that mill. In a tiny thatched hut nestled between the mountain and the river was the round millstone, fixed vertically on a horizontal axle and resting at a tilt on top of a circular pathway of crushed stone along which it would make its revolutions. When the sluice gate was pulled up, water rushed down upon a concealed underground wheel, and the round millstone up above flew into action, rotating on its axle as it made its rounds over the circular pathway under it. The miller poured his unhusked rice into the groove of the stone circuit on the bottom. When the polished rice came out, he sifted away the powdery chaff in a rectangular bamboo sieve basket he kept in the corner of the hut. The floor was covered in this dust from the chaff, and so were the miller’s head and shoulders, from top to bottom, including the white cloth he wrapped around his head like a turban. In good weather he went out to the open spaces around the millhouse, where he planted turnips, cabbages, garlic, and scallions. When the millrace got damaged, he took off his trousers and went into the river to pile up rocks so as to plug the leak. Once his dikes were firmly built, he could build a net of branches across the millrace, like a bridge. When the waters rose, fish would swim right over the dike into it, without the miller’s having to lift a finger! Compared to running a ferry, running a mill was a more multifaceted and interesting job; that was clear at a glance. But it was wholly in vain for a ferryman to hope to have a mill someday. Mills all belonged to the local rich people. The old ferryman’s friend told him who the mill’s owner was. The two men looked over every corner of it as they chatted.

  The ferryman’s friend kicked the new millstone and said:

  “The people of Middle Stockade live up high in the mountains, but they like to buy property down here by the river; this mill belongs to Middle Stockade’s Militia Captain Wang. Cost him seven hundred strings of cash, a thousand coppers to a string!”

  The old ferryman rolled his small eyes and nodded, sizing up everything enviously and appreciatively, even offering fitting criticisms of every constituent part. Then the two men took a seat on a still-unfinished bench. The friend went on about this mill’s future—it probably would be the dowry of the militia captain’s daughter. Then he thought of Cuicui, and remembered something that Shunshun’s No. 1 had asked him to do for him. He inquired,

  “Uncle, how old is Cuicui now?”

  “Thirteen, going on fourteen.” Having said this, the old ferryman continued counting up the years and months to himself.

  “What a clever girl for a thirteen-year-old! Whoever gets matched to her will be a lucky fellow!”

  “How so? She doesn’t have any such mill for a dowry. She’ll go empty-handed.”

  “Don’t call her that, she’s a hard worker. Her two hands are worth more than five mills! Lu Ban built the bridge at Luoyang with his two hands!…” He went on, trying to refute the old ferryman, until he laughed at his own words.

  The old ferryman laughed too, thinking to himself: “Cuicui has two hands all right, but if she built a Luoyang Bridge, that would be a first!”

  The other man paused and then said:

  “Young men here in Chadong have good eyes and they’re very good at picking their wives. Uncle, if it wouldn’t offend you, I’d like to tell you a funny little story.”

  “What funny story?” asked the old ferryman.

  The other said, “Uncle, don’t be upset with me, but you can take this one seriously, if you want.”

  He went on to say how No. 1 in Shunshun’s family had praised Cuicui and sent him on an errand of inquiring about the old ferryman’s opinion. Finally he related another conversation he’d had. “I asked him, ‘No. 1, are you in earnest or are you playing with me?’ He replied, ‘Go sound out the old man for me, will you? I’m sweet on Cuicui, I long for her! I mean it!’ So I said, ‘I’m very blunt in expressing myself, and once I speak, I can’t take it back—just suppose, what if the old man slaps me one?’ He said, ‘If you’re afraid of his reaction, tell it first as something humorous. That’ll save you from any beating!’ So you see, Uncle, this funny story I told you is about something real. Think it over. When he comes to see me after he returns from Eastern Sichuan on the ninth of the month, what should I tell him?”

  The old ferryman recalled what No. 1 had said in his own words during his last visit. He knew that No. 1 had spoken frankly, and also that Shunshun liked Cuicui, so he was elated. But local custom said that No. 1 would have to come in person with gifts of cakes to Green Creek Hill and speak for himself to prove his seriousness. The old ferryman said, “When he gets home, you tell him that after hearing your funny story, the old codger told one of his own—‘In a
game of chess, the chariot—the rook—moves one way and the horseman—the knight—another. If No. 1 wants to make his move directly like a chariot, his father ought to ask a go-between and put the proposition to me in the proper way. If he wants to move like a horseman, hurdling all obstacles, it’s his play, to stand on the bluffs across the creek from the ferry and sing for Cuicui’s heart until he’s won her—for “three years and six months,” if that’s what it takes, as it says in the song.’”

  “Uncle, if singing to her for three years and six months can move her heart, I’ll start tomorrow and try to win her myself!”

  “If Cuicui were willing, do you think I could refuse?”

  “That’s not it. People think that if you make the decision, Cuicui can’t object.”

  “That’s not right. This is about her!”

  “Even if it is, the elder has to have the final say. People will still think that singing three years and six months, be it under sunlight or moonlight, is less important than a good word from you!”

  “In that case, let’s do it this way. When he returns home from Sichuan, have him talk it over with Shunshun. Meanwhile, I’ll ask Cuicui. If she prefers to follow a man who’s sung for her three years and six months, I’ll have to ask you to persuade No. 1 to choose that zigzag horseman’s move.”

  “Fine. When I see him, I’ll say: ‘No. 1, I told him the words in jest. As to the words in truth, that will depend on your fate.’ And so it will be, but I know that his fate still lies tightly within your grasp, old fellow.”