Peach Blossom Paradise

by Ge Fei

  Still no word from Dapples.

  Tonight a night of enchanting moonlight and perfect cold. As I stood in the courtyard, my heart wandered far from me, as if missing something. Seeing Xiumi washing her hair in the kitchen, I went in to talk to her. Water dripped down to her shoulders, and I could see the embroidered flowers on her dress in the moonlight. Her neck is so slender and so pale. As we chatted, I wondered what would happen if I simply walked over and embraced her. Perhaps she might have yielded to me. Zuyan is a sharp observer of the human heart; after seeing her in Xia village for the first time a few days ago, he said to me that even though the girl might be cold and aloof, she could still be brought easily in hand. He exhorted me to be bold. But would it really be feasible? What should I do? What should I do? No—I must hold back, must show restraint.

  After lying awake for many hours, I sat up for a while, wrapped in my clothes, and composed a poem:

  Peach blossoms in hand are seeds of endless trouble;

  Breeze stirs my curtains in a long note of worry.

  A new moon knows nothing of the heart’s old secrets;

  Yet it sends a pale face to visit the bedside.

  • • •

  They had brought Xiumi to a place called Huajiashe. That evening they took her out to a small island in the lake just opposite the village. The island was not more than an acre in total, and it stood only a short arrow’s flight away from the village proper. The two had once been connected by a wooden bridge, which for reasons unstated was later torn down. A regular line of black wooden posts still poked through the water’s surface, now serving as a resting place for birds.

  The handful of structures on the island were old, their walls conquered by ivy and morning glory vines. The living quarters had a small front courtyard, enclosed by a hedge, as well as a garden. A number of peach and pear trees that stood before the house had already lost their blooms. The island lay very low, which kept the soil wet and allowed all kinds of scrub trees and climbing flora to flourish. On days of heavy wind and rain, the lake water sometimes advanced as far as the walls of the house.

  The lonely house was home to a single human inhabitant. Her head was shaved, and you could tell from the firmness of her breasts that she was a still a young woman, maybe between thirty and forty. Her name was Han Liu. She had been kidnapped from a Buddhist nunnery almost seven years earlier, and had even had a child, who died in its first month. Long years of solitude had given her the need to talk to herself constantly. Xiumi’s arrival excited her somewhat. Yet she took pains to conceal her enthusiasm. Xiumi pretended not to notice, each woman cautious and guarded toward the other.

  Strangely, once the bandits left her on the island, they appeared to forget about her entirely. No one crossed the water for a full two weeks. One day at noon, when Xiumi saw a small boat making its way toward the island, she felt vaguely excited. Yet the boat merely circled around to the south end of the island and stopped. Xiumi watched the boatman cast his nets into the water. She spent the days walking aimlessly around the banks of the island; when she got tired, she would sit underneath a tree and stare at the clouds.

  She had read Zhang Jiyuan’s diary several times already. Even though she knew that every reading of it was an exercise in self-torture, she was still able to glean new information. For instance, she only now learned Mother’s given name: Meiyun. She attempted to connect the name to her mental image of Mother, which made her think of Puji. Less than a month had passed since she left, yet it felt to her like decades. It was hard to be sure that it hadn’t all been a dream.

  Xiumi could see the whole of Huajiashe across the mirror surface of the lake, and could even hear the laughter of small children on the other side. It surprised her to discover that every house built on that gentle mountain slope looked exactly alike: the same whitewashed walls with a black tile roof, same wooden doors and ornamentally carved windows. Each house possessed a hedged courtyard of exactly the same size and layout. One narrow lane paved with cobblestones ran straight up the mountain, splitting the town into eastern and western halves. A fleet of boats of various sizes floated at their moorings in the cove before the village, their unadorned masts like a forest of bare trees in winter.

  One morning, Xiumi and Han Liu were playing with a nest of newborn chickens. Nearly freshly hatched, the chicks could walk only a few paces before tumbling to the ground. Han Liu minced vegetable leaves to feed to them, and crouched on the ground before the chicks, talking to them and calling them her babies. When Xiumi asked her why no one had come out to the island after all this time, Han Liu simply smiled.

  “They’ll come eventually.” Han Liu scooped a chick into her palm and stroked the fuzz on its back. “They’re probably out calling your number right now.”

  “Calling my number?”

  “It means negotiating ransom money with your family,” Han Liu explained. “Once your parents pay, they’ll send you back.”

  “What happens if they can’t agree on a price?”

  “Oh, they will—they never ask for an impossible amount. Unless your family truly wants you dead.”

  “But what happens if they really can’t agree?”

  “Then they’ll snip your ticket,” replied Han Liu without a second thought. “Cut off one of your ears, or maybe a finger, and send that to your family. If your mom and dad still won’t pay the ransom, then they’ll tear your ticket accordingly. But they almost never do that. I’ve been here for seven years, and I’ve only seen them kill one person. She was the daughter of a rich family.”

  “Why did they kill her?”

  “That one had an awfully fiery disposition. The moment they brought her to the island she tried to drown herself—tried to three times, then tried to kill herself by bashing her head into the wall. When they realized they were going to lose their mark no matter what, they killed her. Of course they gave her to the boys first for some fun, and after they’d had their way with her, they cut off her head and boiled it. Once the flesh boiled off the bone, they cleaned the skull and sent it to Number Two’s house as a trophy. They hate suicides more than anything, and can you blame them? They spend all that time and energy choosing their mark, and let me tell you, it’s not easy. From the scouting and the planning all the way to ransom and release takes them well over half a year. And when the mark dies, they get nothing for it, but you still have to pay the government its share.”

  “Why would they need to pay the government?”

  “Governments and criminals have always been one family.” Han Liu sighed. “Not only do you have to pay them, they take a full two-thirds of the ransom. It used to be half, but now it’s forty-sixty. That is, sixty percent of the ransom ends up in the government’s hands. Without their protection, they couldn’t stay in business. And the minute they don’t pay, the magistrate immediately sends the garrison after them, so there’s no messing around. In the past, they only took one mark a year, usually sometime between the first frost and New Year’s. Now, they have to go after at least five marks a year, mostly rocks and flowerpots—‘flowerpots’ being young ladies. Kidnapping children they call ‘picking rocks.’ ”

  Once Han Liu’s mouth opened, it did not close easily. She said that the village was just like any other, for the most part. The people tilled the fields and fished the lake, and every spring, the men went out to work on houses. But the trade work was really a front; their purpose was to scout out rich households with good targets. They called the process “drawing lots.” They maintained the utmost secrecy, and almost never tipped their hand.

  Xiumi asked if she knew of a man named Qingsheng.

  “He’s Number Six,” Han Liu replied. “The bosses here are split into two generations. The lower four are Qings: Qingfu, Qingshou, Qingde, Qingsheng. Qingsheng’s the baby. The Boss and Number Two are Guans.”

  Han Liu looked closely at Xiumi, then smiled and continued, “From
the looks of your clothing, your family isn’t penniless. But don’t worry. They’re very good about following their own rules; as long as your family pays the ransom, they won’t harm a hair on you. Think of it as being on vacation. Though to be honest I can’t say that every negotiation has gone smoothly. For the children, they have a professional who takes them far away to be sold. For a young lady, especially a pretty one, things are more difficult. They’ll want to ‘loosen you up’ first, then send you to the brothel.”

  “What does ‘loosen up’ mean?”

  Han Liu said nothing at first, merely bit her lip and looked thoughtful. After a long moment, she sighed again, and explained, “They also refer to it as ‘breaking fast.’ Three of the brothers take turns coming to the island, and you do as they tell you. Once they’ve worked you hard enough, they’ll sell you to the brothel. If it comes to that, it will be a hard thing for you; they know all kinds of tricks for tormenting women—who knows where they learned that from.”

  “But didn’t you say there were six of them?”

  “Numbers Two and Four never showed any interest. They say Number Two prefers men and won’t touch women, though I can’t say for sure. The Boss has been sick for the past few years, and he doesn’t pay much attention to what happens in town. Some people even—” Here she broke off, then continued, “Some even say that Wang Guancheng is no longer with us.”

  4

  WHEN XIUMI first set foot on the island a month earlier, the scene before her—the dilapidated house and garden, the flowers and trees, the clouds rolling unimpeded across the sky—inspired an unexpected sense of familiarity. She felt she must have been here before, as the whole scene, even the swallow nests in the eaves above, aligned perfectly with some part of her memory.

  One evening, as Han Liu was ladling water out of the basin for dishwashing, the wooden ladle tapped the basin’s lip and made a ringing sound that spread outward like ripples across a lake. Xiumi suddenly remembered the bowl in Father’s chambers, and how Zhang Jiyuan had made that same metallic sound by tapping his finger against it the night before he left. She had felt weightless, as if she had been picked up by the breeze and carried over mountains, streams, and rivers toward a nameless place.

  So this was where she had come to . . .

  In that first vision, she had vaguely sensed an abandoned tomb on the island. To disprove this ridiculous idea, she hesitantly asked Han Liu if there happened to be an old tomb nearby, to which Han Liu offhandedly replied, “Sure, in the grove on the west side of the house. Why do you ask?”

  The blood drained completely from Xiumi’s face. She stood absolutely still, her eyes wide open. When Han Liu noticed her staring blankly beside the stove, transformed by fear, she hurried over and helped her into a chair. That enamel basin really was a treasure; could an object Father had bought from a beggar have some connection to the person buried out there in the woods? She didn’t dare pursue the idea further. Han Liu tried her best to bring Xiumi back from her stupor, but Xiumi simply sat in silence, her eyes fixed ahead of her. When she explained everything moments later, Han Liu laughed and said, “So that’s all it is! I couldn’t imagine what could have scared you so much. That’s just the shadow of your old incarnations—Buddha talks about this. What’s so strange about you having been here in a past life?”

  Xiumi begged Han Liu to take her to see the tomb, persisting until the other relented. Han Liu took off her apron, lifted a lamp from beside the stove, and led Xiumi out of the house.

  A shadowy, secluded grove of trees stood near the western end of the house. The trees concealed a small vegetable garden that was strewn with yellow rapeseed petals; in the center of the garden was a tomb. Moss and vines had penetrated every crevice of its black brick walls; the fence around it had long ago fallen apart and was now replaced with reeds that rose taller than a person. Han Liu told her that this was the resting place of Jiao Xian, the Ming dynasty hermit, according to the black headstone she had read who knows how many times out of boredom. Xiumi snatched the lantern from Han Liu’s hands and approached the headstone for a closer look. After brushing away a layer of dust, she saw that the engraved characters were still clearly visible:

  Jiao Xian, courtesy name Xiaoqian. Originally from Jiangyin, became a recluse after the fall of the Ming. Built his hut from reeds and grasses on an abandoned island in the lake. His body, exposed to all the elements, became caked with dirt. When fire destroyed his hut, he slept outside; when people saw him lying naked in the snow, they thought him dead, but approaching, discovered he was alive. A man of expansive mind, Xian accepted earth and sky for his floor and ceiling. In perfect seclusion, he made himself one with the cusp of the Truest Way, passed through the facade of superficial difference, and entered the primal solitude of creation. Braving the elements did not injure his spirit, living in the wilderness did not torment his body, and meeting catastrophe did not quicken his anxiety. He escaped earthly cares, unburdening his mind, and renounced all beautiful sights and sounds, unfilling his eyes and ears. He was the only such man since the first Creator.

  The signature on the bottom left corner read: “Wang Guancheng, the Dead Man Walking.” So it was the Boss who wrote this epitaph. But why did he sign it “Dead Man Walking”?

  Han Liu told Xiumi that Wang Guancheng had found this tiny island while searching for Jiao Xian’s remains. He had passed the provincial service examination in 1867 and was selected for the Imperial Academy. They made him a senior minister and imperial overseer of Fujian Province, then sent him north to Ji’an, in Jiangxi. When he reached middle age, he developed a taste for Taoism, and decided to become a hermit. So he abandoned his wife and children and gave himself to the elements.

  If his dream had been to become a hermit, then how did he end up the head of a gang of robbers? Xiumi thought.

  The wind picked up. Xiumi sat on the stone steps of the mausoleum and listened to it rush through the trees. For some reason, she thought of her father. She had no idea if he was still alive or not.

  Waves from the lake chased each other onto the bank, sending their white froth onto the land before retreating again in quick succession. The sky darkened fast, and heavy clouds rolled in with the sound of thunder. Rain followed soon after, pelting down until the whole lake boiled and bubbled like congee. A thickening mist obscured the mountain range in the distance; even the village disappeared in the rain. The sound of falling water surrounded them.

  That evening, Xiumi went to bed early and slept more soundly than she had in many years. She woke up once, when Han Liu entered the room to make sure the window was securely closed, and sat up in bed and mumbled, “Today is the twenty-seventh of May.”

  Han Liu thought she was talking in her sleep; she smiled and closed the door on her way out. Xiumi drifted off again. But even asleep, she could feel the waves of cold that pressed inward through the cracks in the window and could smell the weight of the water.

  •

  Of course, she could not have known that at that same moment, a black-roofed fishing boat was moving through the rough water under cover of night toward the island. Its first several attempts at landing were rebuffed by the south wind. The sailors carried no lanterns.

  When Xiumi woke again, her lamp was still lit. She could hear the rain falling thick and fast against the eaves outside. A person sat in the wooden chair opposite her. He was soaking wet; both feet were propped up on a square stool, and he held a nickel-plated water pipe in one hand, which made a gurgling sound as he smoked, like an obstructed stream. This wiry older man was none other than Fifth Brother Qingde. Lamplight shone off his oily pate, and his face was covered with wrinkles, like a dried apricot. His unbuttoned black silk jacket revealed the loose skin of his gut, which draped in folds over his belt.

  “You’re awake?” Qingde asked. He leaned forward to light a match by the lamp, then sat back and continued smoking.

  Xiumi sat up quickly,
grabbing a pillow and clutching it to her breast in terror.

  “I’ve been here for a while, but I saw you were sleeping and couldn’t bear to wake you.” He jiggled his legs and did not look at her.

  Xiumi sensed that the night she had imagined with dread so many times before had finally arrived. With no experience at her disposal, her mind went completely blank, and she forgot to be afraid. She twined her fingers nervously. The only other thing she could do was breathe hard. She felt her own chest rise and fall, and the skin on one side of her temple began to twitch.

  “You! You, you . . .” She repeated “you” seven or eight times without knowing what she wanted to say next. Her breathing intensified.

  “The man we sent to Puji just got back yesterday.” The old man put his pipe down on the table, picked up a comb, and gently played over the teeth with his fingernails. “And guess what? Your mother won’t pay up. Didn’t expect that, did you? Not even I expected it.

  “She said that marrying a daughter’s like tossing a pail of water; since you’re already married, you belong to your husband’s family, not hers. So by rights, your husband’s family ought to be the ones paying. She had a very good point, and our people had nothing else to say to her. So they spent a lot of time and money looking up your husband’s house in Changzhou, but it turned out they didn’t want to pay either. Your mother-in-law said that since the new bride had been snatched up before she even crossed their threshold, then her family ought to pay the ransom. And besides, they had already found a new bride closer to home, and the wedding was set to happen in a month. They wouldn’t pay us anything. So your mother-in-law had a good point, too. It seems like our side remains the pointless one. When we took you, we thought we had a nice fat hen, but now it’s like scooping water with a sieve—you’re left with nothing. As we can’t pay our bill to the government, we’re going to have to pay with you.