Peach Blossom Paradise

by Ge Fei

  Only then did Xiumi learn that her betrothed lived in Changzhou, and his surname was Hou. “No need to see him,” she told Mother from within her room, “as long as you think he looks all right. Have them send a palanquin over when the time comes and I’ll join him.”

  “How can you talk like that, daughter? Getting married isn’t some children’s game.”

  “Oh, please.” Xiumi sighed. “This body isn’t mine anyway. If he wants to spoil it, let him.”

  Her response made Mother wail loudly; Xiumi wept silently on the other side of the door. A shared secret hung unspoken between the two of them. Mother cried herself exhausted, then continued to beg: “Even if you don’t need to look at him, you can’t refuse to let him have a look at you, can you?”

  At this, Xiumi finally opened the door. She went to the upstairs railing and lackadaisically looked down into the courtyard, where an old woman and a man in a woven skullcap stood, their eyes raised to her. The man appeared neither young nor particularly old, and he seemed passably handsome. Xiumi had hoped he would be older or have some kind of noticeable flaw like baldness or pockmarks, to lend her marriage more tragedy. Over the past few days, she had become addicted to self-abasement; it felt like the only way to ease her rancor. The old lady grinned at Xiumi, while repeatedly asking the man beside her, “What do you think? Nice and pale?” The man mumbled, “Very pale, very pale. I like it, I like it.” The man kept giggling as he stared at her—a short, idiotic laugh that sounded like hiccups. He licked his upper lip several times, as if chewing on something tasty.

  Xiumi was truly indifferent about marriage. She had learned about “secret trysts” and the “pleasures of the bedroom” from Zhang Jiyuan’s diary, and much more besides. The night before the wedding party came for her, she lay in bed alone beside her lamp and flipped through the diary. She had never been so close to someone else’s naked soul. She fantasized that Zhang Jiyuan was sitting right next to her, talking and joking with her as if they were husband and wife. Even when she got to the salacious parts, she didn’t feel embarrassed or nervous, but simply snorted with childlike laughter.

  “Zhang Jiyuan, Zhang Jiyuan . . . you go on and on about revolution and unification, your worry for the world and the heat of your ambition, but all you really want is a piece of ass.”

  She giggled for a moment before her humor suddenly transformed into grief. She bit one end of her blanket and stared into space before tears welled up; she cried quietly, soaking both sides of the pillow. Then she let out a long, slow breath, and said to herself in her most determined tone: Marry. Just marry. Doesn’t matter who he is, as long as he wants it, I’ll marry him and let him do with me what he likes.

  2

  ONCE ABOARD her bridal palanquin, Xiumi drifted in and out of sleep. The bridal procession moved very slowly through the morning’s thick fog. The pitch and yaw of the river ferry and the grunts of the palanquin carriers repeatedly woke her up. Lifting the window blind revealed her new husband riding an emaciated donkey alongside her; he must have been grinning at her, though his features were indistinct. The matchmaker followed behind them, her smiling face powdered and rouged. A barely visible disk of pale yellow hung in the sky. The fog thickened, gluing Xiumi’s hair to her head; she could see no more than a few feet away. The clanking of the donkey’s bronze bell was the only sound that accompanied her.

  She thought of what Mother had said to her the night before: “When the bridal palanquin arrives tomorrow morning, just leave with them; you don’t have to say goodbye to me. And make sure not to drink any water before you go so you’re not too uncomfortable on the journey. Now, according to custom, a new bride returns to her parents three days after the wedding. But Changzhou is a long way away, and with all the trouble that’s happening, you shouldn’t try to come home.” Her pursed lips trembled as she held back tears. Xiumi had seen Magpie and Lilypad crouched by the courtyard wall, crying as she walked to the palanquin that morning. Baoshen and Tiger had been with them, but they did not look at her. Only Hua Erniang and Grandma Meng made a fuss over Xiumi, stumping around on their bound feet and shouting orders. Ding Shuze had sent a servant around a few days prior with a handwritten couplet for their doorway: the word for “happiness” written in sixteen different calligraphic styles. That morning he had stood by the village entrance, scratching his back with a wooden scepter as he watched the procession go by. To Xiumi, he had been little more than a shadow against the impenetrable fog.

  A new anxiety overwhelmed her: she suddenly had a feeling she would never see Mother again. When the palanquin lifted, her heart floated off its moorings. The fog separated her from Puji almost immediately. She worried about more than just Mother. The golden cicada in the embroidered box was still locked in her dresser upstairs. Three years had passed, and the six-fingered man Zhang Jiyuan had spoken of had yet to appear.

  •

  Soon after they crossed the river, Xiumi’s dreaming was interrupted by a commotion outside the palanquin. She figured that residents from the villages nearby must have discovered the wedding procession and come to cheer them on in the hopes of catching some wedding candy. The thought didn’t interest Xiumi at all, and she continued to doze. It seemed strange that the clash of metal blades and a woman’s screaming should suddenly pierce the general hubbub, but Xiumi didn’t pay much attention to it. Yet the palanquin began to pick up speed, until it became clear they were moving at a full gallop. The rush of wind and the bearers’ heavy panting filled her ears, and the palanquin jostled so violently she nearly vomited.

  She finally drew the window blind to discover that the red-cheeked matchmaker, her dowry train, and her ostensible husband and his donkey with the bell had all disappeared; all that was left of the procession was the four palanquin bearers, who now carried her as fast as they could along a rocky path. One of the bearers in the front turned to face her and yelled breathlessly, “Bandits, it’s bandits! Motherfucking bandits!”

  Xiumi heard the sound of horse hooves behind them and realized the severity of her predicament.

  Eventually, exhaustion overtook the four men carrying her; they dropped her on an outdoor threshing floor and ran for their lives. She watched them jump away and scamper across the wheat field, then vanish in the fog.

  Emerging from the palanquin, she found herself alone. One ramshackle hut stood unused at one end of the threshing area, its walls tilting precariously, the thatch of its roof already black with mold. A water buffalo lay asleep by the front door, while some white egrets perched across its back and along the hut’s roof. A dark shadow in the fog signified a grove of trees from which emerged the cry of a cuckoo.

  Xiumi watched a handful of men on horseback converge on her from several directions. Yet she didn’t feel the slightest bit afraid. These highwaymen, infamous for being green-skinned and sharp-toothed monsters, looked a lot like ordinary farmers.

  One of them, a middle-aged man with a bald head, sauntered up to Xiumi on a white horse and smiled as he reined in his mount. “Xiuxiu, do you remember me?”

  The question shocked her. How could this man know my nickname? She scrutinized him for a moment. He did look familiar, particularly the long scar across his face, but she couldn’t remember where she had seen him before.

  “I don’t know you,” she said.

  “What about me, then?” The question came from another one, a twentysomething young man riding a chestnut horse. He was broad shouldered and muscular, with a resonant voice. “Do you know me?”

  Xiumi shook her head.

  The two men looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

  “Well, that’s no surprise, after what, seven or eight years?” asked the middle-aged man.

  “A full six years,” replied the younger man.

  “How come it feels like seven to me?”

  “Nope, six years. Exactly six.”

  As the two riders argued, a young
man who looked like a stable boy walked over. “Boss, the fog is breaking up.”

  The middle-aged rider looked up at the sky and nodded, then turned back to Xiumi. “You’ll have to forgive us for this.”

  Before she could reply, a band of black cloth dropped over her eyes, while a salty wad of the same material was forced into her mouth. The men bound her hands securely and threw her back into the palanquin. Then they lifted the palanquin and continued on their way.

  •

  When the cloth over her eyes was finally lifted, Xiumi found herself seated in the cabin of a wooden boat. Everything in her field of vision was black: the cabin’s roof, the table, the reeds they passed, and the water flowing beneath them, everything black. She closed her eyes, leaned back against the rail, and tried moving her arms and legs. She realized her pants were wet with urine but couldn’t recall when that had happened. By this point, she no longer felt ashamed. She opened her eyes once more to examine the scene around her, a vague anxiety rising in her heart. Why did everything look black to her? She quickly found the answer: night had fallen.

  She saw a sliver of moon and many stars. The boat was moving across a wide marsh in the company of other boats—she counted seven in total—all linked together with iron cable. Her boat was last in line. Someone on her boat lit a lamp, and soon, seven points of golden light stretched out in a wide arc across the water’s surface, like a team of horsemen lighting their way along the road.

  Where am I? Where are they taking me?

  Only the wind replied, the creaking tiller, and the birds that cried as they skimmed the water. Two people sat across from her. She’d seen them both that morning in the threshing field. The bald, older man leaned against the rail, apparently fast asleep; the scar that crossed his face was deep, and so long it reached all the way from his cheek to his neck. He had propped up one leg on the table, his heel on top of her bag. He even knows my pet name, Xiumi thought. Where could I have seen him before?

  Close beside the sleeper sat the stable boy. He looked like a young man of seventeen or eighteen, with a clear and well-defined face, but of slim build. He kept stealing glances at Xiumi with a timid look in his eye. All Xiumi had to do was accidentally meet his gaze, and he would immediately blush, lower his eyes, and begin playing with the red tassel on the hilt of his machete. Somehow, his gaze made her think of Zhang Jiyuan. He had one foot propped on the table as well, but his cloth shoe had two holes in it that revealed his toes. A lit hurricane lantern sat in the center of the table next to a long tobacco pipe. The lake water lapped the sides of the boat as they sculled along; the night felt as cold as the water. You could smell its decaying dampness in the air. Xiumi laid one cheek along the wet gunwale and felt the cold plunge into her.

  What should I do?

  She thought about jumping in and drowning. The problem was that she didn’t want to die. And if they didn’t want her to die either, they’d just pull her out anyway. She tried to avoid thinking about what would come next, but the memory of Miss Sun was a problem. The moment she envisioned Miss Sun’s naked corpse as it had been described to her, her heart began beating out of control. Though she had no idea what kind of place this boat was taking her to, it seemed clear that her fate would not be much better than Miss Sun’s.

  She heard a heavy rustling as the boat slipped into a narrow lane of water between walls of river reeds that rose high above them. The reeds scraped the sides of the boat, and the noise of running water grew louder. The stable boy was still staring at her. He didn’t look like a bandit at all; his face was slightly pallid, and while he seemed shy, his eyes twinkled. Xiumi tried asking him where they were and where they were going, but he just bit his lip and said nothing.

  The middle-aged man suddenly stirred; he looked at Xiumi, then glared at the stable boy and said, “Pipe.”

  The frightened young man snatched the pipe from the table, filled the bowl with tobacco, and passed it with two hands to the other. Receiving the pipe, the middle-aged man commanded, “Fire.”

  The stable boy picked up the lamp and held it close enough for the other to light his pipe with the flame. The older man’s visage glowed. Xiumi saw the boy’s hands shake violently, and noticed the fine mustache around his lips. The older man sucked on the pipe, then turned to Xiumi and asked, “Do you really not remember me?”

  Xiumi did not reply.

  “Look closer and think again.”

  Xiumi instead cast her eyes down. After a pause, the man said, “I guess this means you really don’t remember us. Qingsheng has been worried about you, you know.”

  “Who’s Qingsheng?” Xiumi asked. Why did that name sound so familiar to her?

  “He has a nickname: ‘Listen.’ ” The older man chuckled. “How’s that, do you remember now? Six or seven years ago, your father’s studio caught on fire . . .”

  Xiumi suddenly remembered. After Father’s chambers burned down, Mother sent Baoshen out to hire a group of workmen; one of them was named Qingsheng, whom the others called Listen. She remembered seeing him on the day they all left, walking backward toward the village so he could keep his eyes on her until he finally walked into a tree.

  “You’re Qingsheng?”

  “Me? No,” the middle-aged man replied, “my name is Qingde. Qingsheng is in the boat ahead of us. You saw him this morning in the threshing field, riding a chestnut horse.”

  “But aren’t you all tradesmen, how could—”

  “How could we all turn into robbers, eh?” The man called Qingde laughed until tears came to his eyes. “Actually, to tell you the truth, we’ve been in this line of work all along.”

  Another pause, then he elaborated: “I am a tile roofer, and Qingsheng is a carpenter. We do work for hire, but that’s all a front. Our real business is trying to figure out how much the client is worth. We’re not interested in poor people; if we end up doing a job for somebody who turns out to be broke, we take our payment and call it bad luck and move on. In such situations, we really are tradesmen, and, generally speaking, we do decent work. But your house was different. After all those years working for the government in Yangzhou, your father had put together a small fortune in property alone.”

  As Qingde talked, the stable boy stared at Xiumi with a look in his eyes that said, You’re in for it now! Noticing that Qingde had finished his pipe, he took it and dutifully refilled the bowl.

  Qingde was in a talkative mood. He spoke slowly, with an air of world-weary arrogance. Taking a few hard drags on his pipe, he laughed again, and said, “But no matter if it’s kidnapping or roof tiling, it has to be done right. I plastered the walls of that studio myself; they’re as smooth as a mirror. I’ve never made prettier walls in my life. And I’ll do good work with you, too—you’ll see in a couple of days. Look at that, you’re blushing. I didn’t even say anything and your face is already red. I like girls that blush, they’re not like whores. The whores just pretend to be into it. But I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you that you’ve got real spirit. We picked you up, and you never cried or made a sound; I’ve never seen that before. Even after we stuffed your mouth, tied you up, and threw you in the carriage, you fell fast asleep. If that’s not a spitfire, I don’t know what is.” At that point, he turned and looked at the stable boy: “Hand.”

  The boy hesitated briefly, then offered him an upturned and trembling left hand, which Qingde rapped hard with the bowl of his pipe. A flaming ember fell out onto the young man’s palm and smoked as the stable boy jumped up and down in his seat in agony. Xiumi caught a sharp whiff of burning flesh.

  Qingde put a heavy palm on the attendant’s shoulder. “What are you jumping around for? Stop it. I didn’t drop it into your eye, what are you complaining about? Learn to control your eyes, so you won’t go looking at things you’re not supposed to look at.” Looking back at Xiumi, he asked, “Aren’t you going to go back to sleep? The boat won’t arrive until first
light tomorrow. Don’t you want to get some rest? I know I’m going to.”

  •

  Xiumi watched the night turn slowly into day.

  Through the morning fog, she could discern a dark outline of mountains coming into view beyond the borders of the lake. Their slopes, not particularly steep, were populated with white birches, which gave way to pine trees and naked juts of stone in the higher reaches. She could hear lake water lapping against the shore, and the cackling of chickens from a nearby village. We must be nearing shore, she thought. Just ahead of them stood a thick grove of mulberry trees. The boats glided around the edge of the grove for another hour before finally coming upon a tiny village curled into the elbow of the mountain, now bathed in red by the rising sun.

  3

  JULY 21, 1901

  LIGHT rain, clearing after noon. Zuyan went to Meicheng last night, but infantry lieutenant Li Daodeng refused to see him. Zuyan cursed his name all morning. The Mausers have made it as far as Zuyan’s uncle’s place in Xipu; storing them there for now. After dinner, Meiyun went to a neighbor’s house to play mahjong. I chatted with Xiumi and Lilypad for a while before heading upstairs to bed. Just as I’d drifted off, chaos erupted in the village, and I heard shouting and running footsteps, like some catastrophe had occurred. I dressed in a hurry and came downstairs. Turns out that Miss Sun, who lives at the far end of the village, had been raped and killed by bandits.

  The woman Sun was an amateur whore, and won’t be missed. Had the revolution already succeeded, hers would still be counted among the Ten Capital Crimes. Dapples, Dapples, didn’t you swear up and down that there were no robbers in Puji? What a load of shit. With the world falling apart, rebellion stirs in every breast. While outlaws may not lie as thickly on this side of the Yangtze as they do in Shandong and Henan, it’s not as if there are none at all. I almost fell victim to them once three years ago, while passing through Danyang. That’s why finding connections to local armed forces is of greatest importance. In this season of danger even the bandits may be of use to me. There will be plenty of time to get rid of them once the great project has been completed.