Peach Blossom Paradise

by Ge Fei

  Xiumi found a seat while the woman brewed her a cup of tea, a broad smile on her face. With a folded fan in his hand, Qingshou addressed Xiumi: “Young miss, we’ve invited you here today for the sole reason of asking you a few questions. By my honor I should have taken a boat to the island to visit you, but as you know, that place is so filthy I can’t bear to set foot on it. Having thought it over, I decided to ask my lady to write a letter of invitation to you, that you would grant us the honor of your company over tea. I hope you will forgive the abruptness of my actions.”

  Hearing this, Xiumi figured the woman in white must be his wife. Qingshou spoke in a deep voice, with a slow, measured tone that revealed an inner fortitude. The sight of his slightly furrowed brow and upright demeanor, which suggested that he was not a deceitful man, relaxed Xiumi further.

  When Qingshou saw Xiumi would not raise her eyes or speak, he pushed a teacup toward her with his fan, and invited her to “please take tea” in a cold, affectless voice.

  An attendant stumbled through the front door, then stood in the middle of the room to report, “This evening makes seven days since Number Five’s wake. His people sent someone inviting the master to drink with them tonight.”

  Qingshou waved his fan at the attendant and frowned. “I won’t go.”

  The attendant did not leave, but asked nervously, “Then what will I tell them?”

  “No need to tell them anything. Just say I’m not going.”

  As the attendant turned to go, the woman in white stopped him. After pausing briefly to think, she ordered, “You can tell them that your master has caught a fever and has a toothache, and can’t drink.”

  After the servant left, Qingshou said to Xiumi, “In the two months since you arrived at Huajiashe, our little village has been the scene of many strange events, to the point of bad news cropping up every hour. I’m sure you’ve heard much about this. First, our chief met his end when someone struck him down in his own home. Number Two was poisoned soon after, and exactly one week ago, Qingde was murdered in the livestock pen—”

  “He’s dead too?” Xiumi interjected.

  Qingshou and the woman in white shot each other a glance, as if to say, She’s finally opened her mouth.

  “He and two goats were chopped into pieces.” Qingshou chuckled, and went on: “His servants tried to collect his body, but how could they in that condition? In the end, they had to shovel everything into a coffin, goat manure and all, just so they could have the ceremony and get him in the ground. Even an idiot could see by now that there’s more than one killer, and each one of them is merciless.

  “Had we not reached this state of emergency, I would not be so rude as to disturb your seclusion. I must admit that ever since the head man was killed, I have been trying to draw my own conclusions, yet I have been proved wrong every time. In the end, I feel like I’m trapped in a dream; I have strained my brain nearly to bursting in my search for answers, yet come up with nothing.

  “When the chief died, my thoughts turned first to Number Two. It’s long been an open secret that he coveted the chief’s position. Wang Guancheng first took to his bed with an illness a full six years ago, and it looked like he would die quickly. Who could have imagined that he would hold on for six more years, and just last winter, even recover enough to walk around? In early spring, just after the last ice on the lake had melted, we found him swimming in the frigid water. Later, he was heard several times in the village saying that his Peach Blossom Spring on earth had become a putrid whorehouse, and that some even had the gall to kidnap nuns. Since heaven had decided to cure him overnight, he was going to rectify the social contract. No wonder Number Two got nervous. He had been the de facto leader ever since Wang fell ill and couldn’t possibly avoid responsibility for what Huajiashe had become. Besides, he was only four years younger than Wang Guancheng, so he knew he didn’t have time to wait. So after he was killed, my wife and I were sure Number Two must have been the murderer.

  “Who would believe that only days later, Number Two himself would die of poisoning. That checked him off our list. With him gone, we figured that among those remaining, Qingde was the most likely suspect. He used to be the Boss’s military second-in-command, and while he was a lecherous man with an indiscriminate appetite, Wang never hesitated to punish him severely for his behavior. But back in the early days, when they were going after bandits in Fujian, he once saved Wang’s life. Here at Huajiashe, he was the only one of us who could go in and out of the chief’s home as he pleased, so taking the old man’s life would have been particularly easy. I also heard that on the night of the chief’s death, he braved a storm to visit the island in secret. A highly unusual act . . .”

  The mention of that turbulent evening invoked a rush of shame and embarrassment for Xiumi; her gaze became more evasive, and she bent her head lower. The woman in white noticed all this, and hurriedly interrupted her husband’s train of thought.

  “We don’t have to talk about that. Five is dead now, too, so he couldn’t have been the killer.”

  “Yes, of course.” Qingshou’s grave countenance betrayed a total absorption in his own thoughts, and he occasionally prodded his forehead with the end of his fan. “But besides me, that leaves only Qingfu and young Number Six, Qingsheng, who are still alive. Recently, we had come to believe that the situation was gradually becoming clearer, since only two possibilities in our mind remained: either one of them was the killer, or both of them were—that is, they had banded together to exterminate the rest of us. Whatever the case, as you can see, I am next in line for the knife. If we do nothing but stand by and watch, we might not live through the summer. So instead, I have decided to strike first.”

  Having made this announcement, Qingshou fished a pipe from his pocket and put it in his mouth. Two female attendants each carried in a bowl of evening snacks: carefully prepared slices of steamed lotus root filled with sweet rice. The woman in white offered them twice before Xiumi could bring herself to try a bite.

  “We’ve heard that aside from Number Five, Number Three also visited the island two or three weeks ago,” the woman said. “I’m sure you’re not eager to remember that moment, much less talk about it. And if you can’t bear to talk at all, we won’t force you. But the coup that’s happening now threatens everyone in this village. And if you’re willing to help us, we’d like to know what the two of them said when they were with you. Did they do anything out of the ordinary? Please, if you feel up to it, give us the whole story, beginning to end, without leaving out a single detail, particularly anything related to Qingfu. If we can safely eliminate him as a suspect, then we can focus on dealing with Little Six.”

  Xiumi contemplated the situation for a moment. Then she sighed, and was preparing to speak when a boy in shepherd’s clothes and a straw hat barreled into the room as if bearing urgent news. Qingshou implored Xiumi with a “just a brief moment” and hurried over to the boy. Xiumi watched the shepherd boy stand on tiptoe so he could whisper in Qingshou’s ear as he gestured outside with his crook.

  After passing along his news, the shepherd boy left. Qingshou returned to the table, his expression impassive, and said to Xiumi, “Please continue, young miss.”

  Xiumi recounted everything that had happened to her on the island. When she described hearing someone laugh outside the hut’s door as Qingfu was molesting his maid, Qingshou jerked so hard he spilled tea all over himself and made Xiumi jump. His face turned as white as a plaster mask.

  “Who was laughing outside your door?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Xiumi said. “Qingfu rushed out with his cook to look, but they searched everywhere and found nothing. But I don’t think the person was actually outside the door.”

  “Where was he, then?”

  “On the roof. I feel like he must have been on the roof.”

  “Number Three must have been scared to death, no?” the woman in wh
ite asked.

  “He seemed to recognize the voice.” Xiumi’s gaze grew confused. “He kept saying, ‘How could it be him?’ As if he knew who it was but didn’t want to believe it himself.”

  Qingshou and the woman in white once more exchanged a look as they said simultaneously, “Qingsheng?”

  “I haven’t seen him since I was brought here,” Xiumi told them.

  “Yes, we know,” Qingshou replied. He had not yet recovered his composure. “Little Six was Number Two’s own protégé, and a close confidant. He has brute strength but doesn’t appear to have much for brains. If he really is the culprit, then how do you explain Number Two’s death? ‘Big trees give the best shade,’ as the saying goes. He would never cut the very tree down that provided shade for himself while he still needed it. Besides, taking on five leaders on his own doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Little Six could do . . . Curious, this is very curious!”

  “Why don’t we ask Carefree?” the woman asked facetiously, looking up at the parrot in the cage. “See what he thinks.”

  The parrot obviously could understand when it was being addressed. It lazily shook its feathers, then looked straight at its owner for a moment as if also deliberating the situation. Finally, it squawked out a quote from the ancient histories: “While the Qing brothers live, the city isn’t safe.”

  “He’s not wrong. Number Three and Number Six are both ‘Qing brothers,’ ” Qingshou said with a bitter smile.

  He and the woman in white shared a brief moment of laughter before worry spread across her face again. She reminded him, “Could it have just been a smoke screen? Qingfu pretending to be stalked by a killer so we wouldn’t suspect him? He may act like an idiot, reciting poetry and quoting classical literature all day, but he has a clever mind. He has plenty of schemes behind those beady little eyes.”

  “I always used to suspect him,” Qingshou replied gravely, as he stroked his beard, “but the scout told me just now that the ingrate has run away.”

  “Run away?”

  “Away, away . . .” Qingshou nodded. “He took Crimson and Turquoise and left by the back road on a donkey. I expect he’s crossed Phoenix Ridge by now.”

  “He got scared.”

  “Not just scared, he completely lost his nerve.” Qingshou snorted derisively before resuming his somber expression.

  “Could it really be Qingsheng?”

  “If not him, do you expect it’s me?” Qingshou asked from between clenched teeth. After a pause, he continued, “It’s him, it’s got to be him. He’s the one who kidnapped her, and the smell of a woman drives him crazy anyway. I wonder why he never visited the island? Nor have we seen hide nor hair of him in the village these last few days. And how could he not know that Qingde and Qingfu already visited the island weeks ago? And why would he hold back for so long? It’s him, it’s him . . . The kid almost tricked me, too.”

  Qingfu’s escape clarified the situation almost instantaneously and brought Little Six, Qingsheng, directly into Qingshou’s line of sight. Like the island reappearing on the lake after the fog lifted, all obstacles had suddenly disappeared.

  “I must be off.” Qingshou tossed a quick glance at both women, stood up, and turned to leave.

  “Qingshou!” the woman in white cried out anxiously after him.

  “Qingshou!” the parrot in the cage called out.

  Qingshou took down the birdcage and opened a small door; the parrot immediately jumped onto his shoulder and started nibbling his face. Qingshou gently caressed the parrot’s feathers as he mumbled, “Carefree, Carefree, we once thought that escaping to Huajiashe would leave us safe and carefree. Games of go by day and books every evening. Who would have thought that even when you hide in your own bedroom, disaster comes looking for you?”

  “If you ask me, I think we need to think about this for a minute,” his wife declared.

  “What’s left to think about now?” Qingshou sighed. “If we don’t kill him, he will inevitably come to kill us.”

  “Qingshou,” his wife called to him with tears in her eyes, “why can’t we be like Qingfu, and just fly away from here?”

  “Fly away?” Qingshou turned to stare at her, then began laughing hysterically. He laughed so hard he had to bend over, tears flowing from his eyes as many months of repressed anxiety, suspicion, and terror poured out. “How can you say that? Even Little Six would feel let down. But if you really want to leave, you should take Carefree and go.”

  “When do you plan to do it?” asked the woman in white.

  “This evening.”

  8

  BY THE time Xiumi returned to the island, night had fallen.

  Han Liu was waiting by the lamp with two bowls of pumpkin congee she had just cooked. She said she had spent the whole afternoon worried she would never see Xiumi again. “And there’s also almost no rice left,” she added, “though at least we have plenty of salt.”

  “What do we do once we eat all the rice?” Xiumi asked.

  Han Liu assured her that there were still plenty of vegetables in the garden, plus the gourds hanging from the ceiling. She knew of several kinds of green plants on the island that were edible, and if things got really bad, they could slaughter the chickens.

  Han Liu felt embarrassed saying this. She knew that taking life violated the laws of Buddhism, and she had always loved the chickens like her own children. Talking to them and playing with them had been her greatest pleasure when she was alone on the island. She had given each of them a name, all surnamed Han. And yet, as each new clutch of chicks hatched, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill and eat them before they fully matured.

  “It is sinful, it is sinful,” she sighed. “But chicken soup is so tasty.”

  This latest brood of chicks had already started to lose their down, and their skinny bodies looked mottled and mangy. Tired from hunger, they strutted and shook themselves unsteadily beneath the table.

  Xiumi described her trip to Huajiashe. The two remaining leaders would be at each other’s throats that night, though there was no telling who would come away victorious.

  “Do you know who the woman in white really is?” Han Liu asked, after scraping up some pumpkin congee with her fingers and putting it into her mouth.

  “No, who?”

  “Qingshou’s aunt, his mother’s younger sister. Heaven knows what kind of bad karma their ancestors handed down to them. She and Qingshou are close in age and used to play together when they were young. Then, when she turned sixteen, they slept together—and his parents caught them. He eloped with her, but their elder brothers from both sides, along with an uncle, chased them for years in hopes of bringing their heads back to placate the ancestors. Wang Guancheng not only took Qingshou in, he gave him the fourth seat at the table.”

  “And that didn’t offend the villagers?”

  “They say that in Huajiashe a man can openly marry his own daughter. Whether or not that’s true I have no idea. The village is so remote that there’s little communication with the outside world. For something like that to happen wouldn’t be strange at all.”

  “There’s still one thing I don’t understand,” Xiumi said. “If Wang Guancheng originally gave up his position to become a hermit so he could purify his mind and escape worldly suffering, how did he end up turning into a bandit?”

  Han Liu chuckled bitterly and tapped her own chest. “He got trapped by his own idea,” she sighed.

  “What idea?”

  “He wanted to build a heavenly paradise on earth,” Han Liu explained. “The human heart is like a lily. It has as many divisions as the flower has petals, but as you pull the petals away one by one, you find a center hidden beneath them. That’s what we mean when we say ‘The human heart is hard to plumb.’ Seeing through the illusion of birth and death isn’t that difficult, the cycle of existence being beyond human control. But to see through t
he illusion of fame and fortune, and thus cast aside your desires, is much harder.

  “Wang Guancheng desired nothing but to live purely among nature, with the dome of the sky as his roof, clothed in the stars, fed by the wind and rain, so he built a hut on an island. But his mind gradually changed. He decided he would make Huajiashe a place without hunger or poverty, where the people had no need to be selfish, lock their doors, or take what wasn’t theirs. But fame and fortune still spoke to him. Wang Guancheng himself could lead an extremely abstemious lifestyle—bread and water and one set of clothes were all he needed, and he didn’t care about money—but he was driven by the desire to win the respect of the three hundred–plus villagers in Huajiashe and build a reputation that would live on for generations after him.

  “A village this far into the mountains doesn’t have much arable land. Wang Guancheng wanted to build houses, dig aqueducts, and build his covered walkway, but he didn’t have the money for it. As an ex-minister with experience leading military campaigns, the idea of stealing from the others naturally came to mind. But they only stole from rich merchants, never touched peasants, nor did they ever kill anyone. It worked out well in the beginning; clothing and jewelry were split evenly between all the residents, and fish from the lake were piled on the shore every day so people could take what they needed. Rural society here was simple enough to begin with, and Wang Guancheng’s moral education really did make the people polite, productive, and altruistic. They greeted each other respectfully, fathers and sons loved and honored each other, husbands and wives worked as a team. People competed for the most worthless items from the raids so they could leave the good stuff for their neighbors, and they only took the smallest fish for themselves. The largest fish would remain on the shore in the sun and rot.

  “But robbery isn’t an easy task, and many of the larger villas they targeted had armed attendants, so success wasn’t assured if a fight broke out. One year, they tried to rob a rich merchant in Qinggang, and not only did they return almost empty handed, they lost two good men. So Wang Guancheng thought of his old subordinates. Number Two was once the head of a provincial militia, Number Three was a garrison leader, and Number Five was a naval battalion commander. Of course, all three brought their own people. As imperial soldiers, they had to accept military rules and discipline, but then they became bandit kings. And while they may have shown some respect to the Boss at first, as time went on, how could Wang Guancheng control them? And then, of course, overwork took its toll on him, and once he became bedridden, inches away from death, he had to let them do as they pleased.”