by Zhang Ling
Tonight. It’s tonight, I told myself. I used the dagger I always carried with me to cut the rope on the bamboo curtain. That would be the only memento to commemorate my escape. I counted each knot several times. There were ten. I had only stayed in my room for ten days, but it felt like ten years. I couldn’t stay any longer. I had to go immediately. As I sat on the bed waiting for the moon to drop closer to the horizon, I heard a soft knock on the window. Knock . . . knock-knock. One hard, two soft. It was Ah Yan.
Surprised, I opened the window, and Ah Yan started handing me something through it.
“Didn’t you want to see her? Once she fell asleep, I brought her over.”
It was Ah May.
I took Ah May with one hand, and with the other I grabbed Ah Yan’s arm. I pulled her up over the windowsill, and in the darkness, led her to the bed.
The bamboo curtain wasn’t closed all the way, allowing a pale strip of moonlight to tear a hole in the greasy darkness. The dim light of night became daylight for us. In the darkness, Ah Yan was just a vague shadow. Ah May too was a shadow, but she wasn’t vague. It wasn’t the faint light that illuminated Ah May, but the thousand eyes that I’d grown that sensed her. Her little bald head leaned back, resting in the crook of my arm, and the roundness of her bottom nestled between my legs. Her tiny hand clasped my clothing, as if she were afraid I would disappear at any moment. She slept soundly, a soft snore escaping from her like bubbles in a boiling broth. Those warm bubbles pierced countless holes in my body. I found that my bones were gone, my flesh was gone, my skin was gone, and all that was left behind was a pool of water.
Later, when I thought about it, I realized what had really made me forget about the shameful circumstances of Ah May’s life was not someone else. It was Ah May herself. What really bridged the ravine of grievances between Ah Yan and me was not the kindness we extended or sacrifices we made on one another’s behalf. Those things could only generate gratitude or guilt. What closed the gap was this child with eyes as bright as the sea. With her little hand, she had led me. I was not yet a husband, but she’d taught me to be a father.
“She’s heavy,” I said.
Ah Yan didn’t answer. It took a while to realize the reason for her silence. She didn’t want to lie to me. Ah May was actually three years old. In fact, the way villagers in Sishiyi Bu would say it, she was riding on the head of four years. She wasn’t two, like Ah Yan had told the women in the village.
“Are you planning to leave?” Ah Yan asked suddenly.
I was surprised. She always seemed to see through me and read my mind—often even when my thoughts were still clouded. I couldn’t say anything.
“I went to Hawk’s place yesterday to get medicine. He said things are pretty chaotic out there. The Communist Party is in secret negotiations with the defense force, but the defense force may not be able to hold,” she said.
Hawk was a pirate who operated in the area and an old friend of Pastor Billy’s.
Though I had no access to a newspaper or radio and was completely isolated from the outside world, I could still guess what had happened after the fall of Nanjing. I just hadn’t expected the Communist force to make it so far south so fast.
“Is the information reliable?” I asked.
“Hawk’s men rowed sampans and ferried people from both sides when they met at the Qianyun Temple on Jiangxin Island,” she said. “Once the situation clears up, your desertion won’t be considered a crime. You may even gain honor. You can wait until then to leave.”
I was pleased I hadn’t managed to implement my foolish escape plan.
“Do you think you should let Ah May’s hair grow? Girls look nice with long hair,” I said, just to change the subject.
Ah Yan smiled and said, “I’m too lazy to care for long hair. Wait till she’s a little older, and we’ll see.”
We sat for a while in silence, listening to the insects chirp outside the window and smelling the faint scent of flowers blown in by the breeze. After a while, it struck me that the floral scent wasn’t coming from outside, it was beside me. It was the smell of a jasmine flower Ah Yan had pinned on her blouse. I’d seen her like this before, before all the crime, filth, and pain had intruded. The Ah Yan of the past was a pure, clean girl with a pure, clean jasmine flower pinned on her blouse.
“Ah Yan, you must think me such a bastard,” I said hoarsely.
She didn’t say anything for a while, then sighed softly.
“It doesn’t matter. Any man in the same situation would respond just as you did,” she said.
There was no reproach in her voice, not at all, but it sounded harsh in my ear. I wanted to jump up and shout, “I’m not just ‘any man.’” But I didn’t. I knew I was guilty as charged.
Ah May twitched gently in my arms. I didn’t know what sort of dreams she was having this time. I pulled her closer, rubbing my unshaven chin gently against her smooth forehead. She didn’t wake, but she chuckled and snuggled her head against my heart.
“It’ll be light soon. We’ll have trouble if she wakes up here. I should take her,” Ah Yan said.
“It’ll be good if she wakes,” I said. “I want to talk to her.”
I felt a tingle of pain on my face. It was Ah Yan’s gaze.
“You will leave, sooner or later. Don’t let her get attached. Save . . .”
I immediately knew what she had been about to say.
“I don’t have to leave. There are things I can do in Sishiyi Bu,” I said.
Ah Yan stood up very quickly. Her voice growing louder, she said, “Do you know what you’re saying? Are you even using your head?”
She wasn’t wrong. Much of what I said that night went straight from my heart to my tongue, bypassing not only my brain, but even my throat. Only after traveling some distance did they turn back to slowly find their way to my brain.
Ah Yan took Ah May from my arms. I couldn’t stop her, so I helped her out the window. The night had grown thin, and there was a small dent in the dark sky. I smelled fresh chicken droppings. The hens had already begun stirring in the cage.
“I brought you a book. It’s on your bed. That should help relieve your boredom. I’ll try to get more news from Hawk tomorrow,” she said.
In the predawn light, I saw that the book Ah Yan had brought was Yan Fu’s translated copy of Evolution and Ethics. This book had been a gift from my Chinese teacher, and I’d given it to Ah Yan before leaving for Yan’an. I hadn’t expected to see this book again. I flipped through and noticed that there were words written in nearly all the margins on every page in the book. Some were in my handwriting, but many were in Ah Yan’s. Mine were my reflections, but Ah Yan’s were annotations of new words she had looked up and learned as she read. Most of my thoughts at the time were tragic, sorrowful sentiments. They all seemed superficial to me now, as if it were me in a past life. The present and the past collided, and they stood facing one another, each feeling the other vaguely familiar, though ultimately, they were strangers. This wasn’t this book’s final destination. Later, it traveled farther, when Ah Yan sent it to me in a package of daily necessities during my days working in the pitch-black coal mines. A few years later, I carried it with me back to Sishiyi Bu. When illness took me by the throat and eventually killed me, the book was one of the two items buried with me. The other was a box containing a lock of Ah May’s hair.
The next morning, the order of sounds arranged neatly in my mind in recent days was thrown into confusion. Before I heard the sound of Ah Yan dressing that morning, I suddenly heard a burst of Ah May’s cries. It was the frustration of being wakened suddenly. I didn’t hear the splash of the chamber pot or the blowing of the bellows. All I heard was the clang of the padlock after the squeak of the opening door, followed by the creak of the old rusty bicycle and the clink of its tires on the mud road. Without eating breakfast, Ah Yan had gone out with Ah May. She was going in search of more news from Hawk. She’d seen through my irritability and was afraid I would do something
desperate.
At least half a day was required for the round trip between Sishiyi Bu and Hawk’s place, but even before the wobbling clank of the bicycle’s wheels had fully faded from my ear, I was already anticipating Ah Yan’s return. I was gradually becoming accustomed to waiting. By this time, I’d learned to cut an infinite wait into smaller pieces, like the time between the first crowing of the cock and the first lazy stirring of the dogs, or from the beginning of the spider’s spinning on the left side of the bed to the time it climbed along the silk thread to the right end of my bed and to the time it had completed a web for itself, or from the time Ah Yan sang the lullaby “The Moon Shines” to Ah May to the sound of the child’s ragged snoring. When I cut the endless wait into smaller pieces, it suddenly had borders, allowing me to finish nibbling on one, then consume another. These tangible borders gave me tiny bits of hope, making me feel that when I reached a certain boundary, I might find an exit there.
I didn’t know what sort of news I should expect from Ah Yan. I only hoped that whatever the news was, it would lift the barricade of the bamboo curtain, window, and iron lock, allowing me to say goodbye to the moon and embrace the sun. I even thought about what I would do when I got out. Of course, first I’d go see my mother and tell her with the pleasure of a well-played prank about how I’d been hiding under her nose for so long. Then, I’d run through the open field where the forty-one steps started, spreading my arms and letting the sun wash over my every pore straight into my marrow, until I was burned. I would tell Ah May that the execution blade would never fall on my neck, not even in her dreams. She could call me as loudly as she wanted. And what would I do after all that? I really had no plan beyond that. The future was something only a free person could think about. For someone trapped in a dark cage, to hope for something so distant was absurd. The only viable plan was to become free.
But what if the news Ah Yan brought back wasn’t what I was hoping for? My heart suddenly sank at the thought, falling into the core of the earth. I couldn’t imagine being a prisoner waiting in an endless line for freedom, then, just as he hears the jangling of the keys, he’s told to go to the back of the line and start all over. My patience was already a wrinkled old man. My legs wouldn’t hold up for another long wait. Ah Yan was right. I was indeed prepared to make a desperate attempt. Finally, I fell into a drowsy sleep.
Later, I was awakened by a clicking sound. It was a soft sound, quiet enough to elude the ear. It was my nerves that caught it. There were burrs on this sound, each one hooking into my nerves and pulling me awake. By the light streaming in through the bamboo curtain, I saw a black scorpion crawling on the wall a few inches away from my head. It looked strange, like its head was several times larger than its body. All the eyes that my body had grown slammed open, like turning on thousands of searchlights. I realized that there was a huge cockroach between the scorpion’s jaws. Most of its body was still free, and what the scorpion had in its jaws was actually just about half its head. The scorpion had clamped the roach’s body in its claw. The sound I’d heard was the body of the roach being crushed. The cockroach fought desperately, and the scorpion was almost overcome. Finally growing irritated, the scorpion raised its tail and plunged the poisoned needle into the cockroach’s back, once, twice, three times. The cockroach twitched for some time, then gradually, its strength was exhausted. Only its legs continued to move slightly. Then the scorpion began a process like that of a snake swallowing an elephant, chewing the cockroach and slowly savoring the corpse of its opponent. The last long leg of the cockroach remained between the scorpion’s jaws for a long time. When only fragments of the cockroach were left, the scorpion waddled unsteadily away.
That was an ill omen, I said to myself with trepidation.
Bored, I fell asleep again. What awakened me next was the sound of the rain hitting the window frame. That year’s weather was chaotic, and it had been an uncommonly dry rainy season. This was the first rain I’d heard since coming into this dark room. I wasn’t sure if Ah Yan had taken a raincoat with her. If the rain didn’t stop, she might not make it back that day. I suddenly realized that it wasn’t the sound of the rain that had awakened me, but another sound riding on the rain.
Bitter, oh so bitter
A star has fallen from the sky
And someone has left the earth
It was the sound of mourning. It seemed someone in the village had died. In my memory, every time there was a funeral in Sishiyi Bu, it rained, as if heaven saved its tears for the dead.
Traveling alone, sent off by friends from a hundred homes
You pass on today, to be born again tomorrow
The tail of the voice was raised very high and sharp, almost like a gibbon’s howling. It was Scabby’s voice.
After I’d given Scabby a good beating all those years earlier, he’d been confined to bed for several days, unable to move. Later, unable to stay in the village, he had no choice but to return to the mountains to live off his mother. When his mother saw him idling all day, she sold a few silver pieces of jewelry and used the money as a bride-price for him to marry a girl blind in one eye, hoping that settling down would keep him at home and out of trouble. He hadn’t returned to Sishiyi Bu, so the family of the deceased must have brought him back for the funeral.
The voice like the howl of a gibbon sent a chill up my back. The scorpion put a knot in my heart. This added another one. I predicted that the news Ah Yan brought home would be fatal.
It was dusk when Ah Yan got home. I heard the lock being opened and people coming into the courtyard, followed by that of someone lifting the lid off the cistern to scoop water, which was in turn followed by sounds like a pair of donkeys drinking water, one loud and one soft.
“I’m hungry, Mommy,” Ah May said, and I could hear the unswallowed water in her voice.
“I’ll start the fire soon,” Ah Yan said.
“But I’m hungry now,” Ah May said, swallowing the water as her voice became louder.
“Yes, my ancestor, I’ll serve you right away, all right?” Ah Yan said.
Ah Yan’s footsteps rang back and forth in the kitchen, probably indicating things such as washing rice, adding wood to the fire, and stoking it. The bellows started panting laboriously, and the flames sizzled and licked the sides of the pot.
I wanted to take some clue of the news from the tone of her voice, but her tone was flat, without the faintest wrinkle or ripple. She didn’t immediately come to my room. Was that because this was the hour when every house was cooking dinner and she didn’t want to attract attention by closing the door? Or was it because she hadn’t figured out how to convey bad news to me? I felt that the fire fanned by the bellows wasn’t just cooking the rice but also my patience. I was burning with anxiety.
At that moment, the eyes that had sprouted up in my ears weren’t working at all. I didn’t even notice that someone had walked through Ah Yan’s door. Actually, “walked” isn’t quite right. I didn’t hear footsteps. It was more like a shadow had quietly floated into the room. Judging from the order of the sounds I heard now, he must be standing behind Ah Yan. Or, that is to say, in front of Ah May.
“You’re Ah May? The old saying is true. A child without a father is a rare beauty,” the person said.
The voice was like peppers hanging high up under the eaves to dry. Compared to a man’s voice, it was more like a woman’s, but compared to a woman’s voice, it was more like a monkey’s. I immediately recognized it as belonging to Scabby.
“What are you doing here?” Ah Yan was as shocked as if she’d seen a ghost.
“I brought this for Ah May. A big cricket in a cage. It’s rare. You’ll only see a purple one like this every eight or ten years. Hang it on the bed. When the moonlight is just right, it will sing for you all night,” he said.
Ah May must have reached for it, but her mother shouted to stop her. Scabby’s tone turned awkward.
“Ah Yan, dear, actually I just came to explain to you what happened
back then.” His tone finally dropped from the tenor of funeral music, thudding to the ground. “I’m sorry. I did you wrong. I’d never touched a woman before. I . . . I was in too much of a hurry.”
Ah Yan didn’t say anything.
“I violated you, but I never actually got to taste the fruit. That damned Liu Zhaohu was too fierce that day. My foot still hurts every time it touches the ground. Let’s settle accounts, call it even. Don’t resent me anymore,” Scabby said.
Ah Yan still didn’t answer. I only heard the gasp of the bellows. The rice bubbled, and the smell of cooked rice filled the air. My stomach growled, and I was sure the entire courtyard could hear it.
“Fine. I don’t resent you. Now go back to the mountains,” she said at last.
“Back to the mountains?” Scabby laughed. “What sort of place is that for a man to live? The dog days of summer can melt lard, and the winter days freeze my balls off. Eventually, I’m coming back to Sishiyi Bu.”
The sound of the bellows stopped. I could almost hear the hair rising into needles all over Ah Yan’s body.
“You can go wherever you want, but you stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours,” Ah Yan said coldly.
There was suddenly a clip-clop sound, as if someone was dragging a stool by the leg. When Scabby spoke again, his voice sounded lower. He was probably sitting next to Ah Yan now.
“You still resent me. Your words show it. But in Sishiyi Bu, among all the women and girls, I only had eyes for you. Back then, your family was in a good situation. You were the moon goddess, and I was just a worm in the latrine, so you thought your shit was too good even for my bowl. I’ll tell you the truth now, damn it. When I heard that the Japanese had violated you, I was secretly glad. At last, you were at the same level as me. You’d become disgusting leftover goods too, so I didn’t need to fear coming to you then.”
Ah Yan pulled herself up very quickly, shouting as she overturned the stool beneath her.