Peach Blossom Paradise

by Ge Fei

  “I dreamed about your mother . . .” Tiger started to say, unsure of whether or not to tell him the rest of it.

  “Who cares?” Little Thing snorted. “I dream about her every night.”

  “Well, that’s just from looking at your little photograph of her.”

  Little Thing owned a single rare object that was his most prized possession: a small photograph of his mother, taken in Japan. It was so valuable to him he didn’t know where best to keep it; sometimes he put it in his undershirt pocket, so that he could look at it whenever he wanted to, and sometimes he stored it under his pillow. Once, Magpie almost destroyed it when she washed his clothes, soaking it in water, pounding it with the pestle, and wringing it out with her hands. By the time Little Thing fished the photo out, it had been reduced to a hard nub of paper. Little Thing attacked Magpie, biting and kicking like he’d gone mad, until Madame Lu found a solution: she soaked it in water again until it opened up, then patted it flat and left it to dry by the hearth. Though the face in the picture was now impossible to recognize, Little Thing still valued it with his life, and he no longer dared to carry it around with him. Any mention of the event made the old woman sniffle mournfully. “The poor baby almost never says anything when you mention his mother. I thought he didn’t miss her, but what child doesn’t miss his mama?” She repeated those same words over and over again whenever the incident came up.

  Tiger led the horse to the fishpond for water, then back to the stable. Little Thing had already thrown an armful of hay into the feeding trough. The two boys scraped the horse manure off the soles of their shoes onto the edge of the wooden threshold, then closed the stable door. Night had fallen.

  “What do you think ‘revolution’ means?” Little Thing suddenly asked on their way home.

  Tiger considered it for a moment, then responded sincerely, “Revolution is really just doing whatever you want to do—hit whomever you want to hit, sleep with whomever you want to sleep with.”

  He stopped, turned to Little Thing with a mischievous excitement in his gaze, and asked in a quavering voice, “Tell me: Whom do you want to sleep with most?”

  He figured Little Thing would automatically say “Mama.” Instead, Little Thing looked at him with deep suspicion, thought for a moment, and said, “Nobody. I sleep by myself.”

  Approaching the village entrance, they saw the blacksmith brothers Wang Qidan and Wang Badan, hands on their swords, interrogating a traveler. They shoved him back and forth as they asked him questions, spinning him between them. The traveler carried a long wooden pole on his back; he must have been a cotton fluffer. After the brothers finished their fun, they cuffed the man a few times and sent him on his way.

  “What did I tell you?” Tiger said smugly. “You slap whomever you want to, and sleep with whomever you want to.”

  “But why did they question him?” Little Thing asked.

  “They have orders to interrogate suspicious people.”

  “Who’s suspicious?” Little Thing persisted.

  “People like spies.”

  “What’s a spy?”

  “A spy is . . .” Tiger pondered this for a moment. “A spy is someone who pretends not to be a spy.”

  Feeling a little confused himself, Tiger added, “But how could there be so many spies around? The brothers are just looking for an excuse to beat someone up for fun.”

  They conversed until they stood at the front door of their home. Magpie and Baoshen had been looking everywhere for them.

  •

  That night at dinner, Madame Lu couldn’t stop sighing and shaking her head. Though she was only in her fifties, her hair had turned completely white, and she spoke and moved like an old woman. Her hands trembled so much that she could hardly hold her bowl and chopsticks; she wheezed and coughed as she breathed. She suspected everything, though her memory for past events had crumbled and she frequently repeated herself or recalled things haphazardly. She often talked to her own shadow, not caring if anyone else heard her. These conversations usually opened with one of two customary lines: the first, “This was all my fault”; and the second, “This is all retribution!”

  Opening with the first line meant she was about to scold herself. But what exactly had she done wrong? Tiger never could figure it out. Magpie had said that Madame Lu regretted allowing a young man named Zhang Jiyuan to stay with them. Tiger had met Zhang Jiyuan, and heard he was a revolutionary. For that, they tied a stone to him and threw him into the river; or as they said in the village, he was “sent down to pluck lotuses.”

  If Madame Lu started with the second line, she was complaining about the Principal. This was the subject she chose that night.

  “This is all retribution!” She angrily wiped a bead of snot off her nose onto the table leg.

  “I married her off properly, making sure she received the best of everything—new clothing, bedding, jewelry. Who would have thought she’d run into bandits! I didn’t know anything about it until her husband’s family sent word the following day. The village elders all said that bandits usually cared most about the ransom, that someone would come around in a week or two at the most asking for money, and all I would have to do was pay to get her back. So I waited and waited for days on end, unable to eat or sleep, just staring at the door until my eyes dried out for six whole months, and not a single goddamn word!”

  At this point in her tirade, Little Thing would always giggle deviously. He thought hearing his grandmother swear was funny.

  “And then my own daughter claims that I wasn’t willing to spend the money to get her back! If anyone had actually showed up to ask for a ransom, would I care an ounce about a little silver? And for her of all people, to have the nerve to accuse me . . . Even if we had zero savings I would have sold every inch of land and stripped the house for timber to get her back. Baoshen, Magpie, were either of you ever approached by someone asking for ransom?”

  Magpie lowered her head with a morose “No one. Not even a shadow.”

  Baoshen added, “I would have brought the money to their doorstep myself, no matter if they showed up or not. I wore out six or seven pairs of sandals asking around for Xiumi without uncovering a single clue. Who knew she was right over there in Huajiashe?”

  Tiger didn’t know where this Huajiashe was, but his dad made it sound like it couldn’t be too far from Puji. Magpie and Baoshen comforted and cajoled Madame Lu until she wiped away her tears, stared diffidently into the corner for a while, and finally picked up her bowl and ate.

  Little Thing must have been exhausted from playing all day, because he slumped onto the table and fell asleep before finishing his dinner. Madame Lu ordered Magpie to carry him upstairs to bed, then sent Tiger into the kitchen for water to wash the young child’s feet. But by the time Tiger arrived upstairs with some hot water, Little Thing was already awake and wrestling playfully with Magpie.

  “Are they really going to attack Meicheng?”

  “Who?”

  “The Principal and all those guys.”

  “Who told you that?” Magpie asked in alarm as she fluffed the comforter. Her waist, hips, and breasts looked so soft; even the shadow she threw on the opposite wall seemed soft.

  “I heard Lilypad say it,” Tiger replied.

  He and Little Thing had overheard Lilypad talking about it with some people by the pond; they were on their way to collect the horse from the stable around noon. Tiger’s eyes liked to follow Lilypad, too. Her butt was much bigger than Magpie’s. These past few days, it felt like the sight of any woman, no matter who, made him nervous, dry mouthed, and starry eyed.

  That can’t be true, can it? Magpie asked herself, her cheeks noticeably paler. She had only the tiniest measure of courage and could be frightened by her own shadow.

  In the end, she said, “Kids like you shouldn’t pay attention to grown-up things. If you hear something, keep it behind
your teeth, don’t go blabbing around.”

  Once she finished with the comforter, Magpie tested the water temperature with a finger, then picked up Little Thing to wash his feet. Little Thing splashed his feet in the basin, getting the floor and Magpie’s clothes wet, but she didn’t grow angry. She even tickled the bottoms of his feet. Little Thing giggled wildly and dove deeper into her arms. He could even snuggle his face into her bosom however much he wished.

  “Do you think . . . the Principal really is crazy?” Little Thing asked after he finished laughing.

  Magpie rubbed his head with a cold, wet hand and laughed, “Silly child. Everyone else calls her Principal, but you can’t. You should call her Mama.”

  “Is Mama really crazy?” he asked again.

  Magpie paused, unsure of quite how to respond. “Most likely. Possibly. It’s a good chance. Look at this, look at this now . . . you put holes in these socks.”

  “But . . . what happens to people who go crazy?” Little Thing blinked his big eyes at her, unwilling to let go of the question.

  “You’re not going crazy, why worry about it?” Magpie smiled.

  Tiger sat down in front of the basin, took off his shoes and socks, and extended a foot toward Magpie. “Wash my feet, too,” he said with an impudent smile.

  Magpie pinched the meat of his calf. “Wash them yourself.” She carried Little Thing to bed, where she helped him take off his clothes, tucked him in tightly, and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. Finally she topped off the oil in the lamp, because Little Thing was afraid of the dark. As she left, she turned to remind Tiger: “If he kicks the blanket off at night, cover him up again.”

  Tiger nodded as he always did, while thinking, I sleep until the sun’s up, and every morning the pillows and blankets are all over the floor—how am I supposed to pay attention to him?

  Yet that evening Tiger couldn’t sleep at all. Not long after Magpie went back downstairs, he heard Little Thing grinding his teeth. No matter how he lay, the first thing he saw when he closed his eyes was the scene from his dream on the hillside. It made his whole body burn, but when he tossed the covers away, he got cold. Wind hissed against the window. Visions of Magpie’s face, the Principal’s open shirt, and Lilypad’s round butt floated through his mind. Every time he moved, the new straw in the mattress beneath him rustled, as if someone were talking to him.

  2

  XIUMI returned home from Japan during the first snowfall of winter. The air wasn’t particularly cold, and the wet flakes of snow that fell from the apricot-yellow clouds carpeting the sky melted before they touched the ground. Lilypad was the first to meet Xiumi outside the village. She helped her down from her horse, brushed the melting snowflakes from her clothing, wrapped her in her arms, and wailed.

  She had good reason to do so. Before Xiumi’s marriage, they had been as close as blood sisters. That pain should accompany the moment of their reunion was entirely natural. What’s more, Lilypad had secretly sold the family’s tithes of the harvest that year to a middleman from Taizhou, and was once again facing the prospect of being driven out by an employer. Madame Lu had a soft heart and was reluctant to send away a longtime servant with no family or place to go, especially in such dangerous times. Then a letter arrived from Xiumi. Years of silence after the kidnapping had led everyone to believe she was no longer alive; Madame Lu had already bought her a votive at the Buddhist temple. No one expected this long-lost family member to reappear out of thin air. Lilypad concluded that heaven had sent Xiumi back to save her.

  She said this openly, in front of everyone. According to Magpie, the news arrived while she was cooking in the kitchen. Lilypad jumped up on a bench and clapped her hands, exclaiming, “The Bodhisattva protects! Heaven has sent someone to save me.”

  Xiumi didn’t share Lilypad’s enthusiasm. She merely patted her lightly on the back a few times, then pushed her away and set off for home, her riding crop still in hand (leaving Lilypad to lead the horse). Xiumi’s absentminded reaction left Lilypad at a loss. Whether or not this young woman could serve as her protector, one thing was obvious: Xiumi wasn’t the Xiumi of ten years ago.

  Three porters with shoulder poles and a fourth with a backpack followed them. The three shoulder poles bent low under the weight of the heavy cases; their carriers shrugged their shoulders often and breathed hot steam. Little Thing snoozed happily inside a heavy cotton quilt as he rode high on the fourth porter’s shoulders; soon, the old women and girls from the village gathered around, petting and tickling him.

  Tiger followed his father through the whole production of welcoming Xiumi. His father cautioned him more than once to refer to Xiumi as Big Sister, but Tiger never got the chance to say it. Her eyes swept over the two of them without the slightest pause, proving that his “big sister” no longer recognized him after so many years. Her gaze seemed distant and distracted. When she looked at people, she didn’t really look at them; when she chatted with her fellow villagers, she never really said anything, and when she laughed, she did so to hide her annoyance.

  Baoshen, who was well known for his servile, deferential behavior, hid himself and his discomfort by helping one of the porters carry a shoulder pole.

  Madame Lu awaited Xiumi in the family shrine room by the incense table. She wore a straight-hemmed jacket of brocade silk that she usually reserved for New Year’s, and she had brushed, oiled, and perfumed her hair. As Xiumi approached the shrine room, the old lady began to tremble, smile, and weep. But Xiumi raised one foot over the high doorstep before she suddenly stopped and examined her with suspicion, as if trying to figure out if the woman standing before her really was her mother. Then, she asked bluntly, “Ma, where am I sleeping?”

  The tone of her question sounded like she had never left Puji, completely unbalancing the old woman. Madame Lu took a moment to recover, then forced a smile and said, “My dear daughter, you’ve come home. This is your home, you can sleep wherever you like.”

  Xiumi retracted the foot that had crossed the doorstep and replied, “All right. Then I’ll stay in Father’s chambers.” She turned and left. Madame Lu’s mouth hung open in astonishment. This was their first reunion, not one unnecessary word exchanged.

  In the hallway, Xiumi bumped into Baoshen and Tiger. Tiger’s father, who always embarrassed his son to no end, smiled obsequiously and fiddled with his wrinkled trousers with one hand while patting his son on the back with the other, as if trying to slap out some kind of greeting.

  “Heh-heh, Xiumi, heh-heh, ah, Xiumi . . .” Baoshen stuttered.

  Now Tiger felt embarrassed for his father.

  Xiumi, however, walked right up to Baoshen with a smile on her face that recalled her former energy, naiveté, and girlish mischief, and cried out, “Oh, Cockeye!”

  Her greeting carried a heavy metropolitan accent. Having just witnessed Xiumi’s cold reception of her mother in the shrine room, Baoshen didn’t expect to be addressed in such an intimate way. He imagined that the Xiumi standing before him was the same troublemaker he knew ten years ago, who would sneak into the accounting office to mess up his abacus, put spiders in his tea while he was napping after lunch, and beat on his forehead as she rode on his shoulders through the New Year’s temple fair. Unprepared for such affection, he couldn’t keep two dusky tears from rolling down his cheeks.

  “Baoshen, come here,” Madame Lu called from the shrine room. Her voice sounded restrained and deeply confused. Its falling pitch suggested she was anticipating many changes about to take place.

  Xiumi stood in the courtyard, ordering the porters to move her luggage into the studio. Lilypad joined in, pointing and giving orders with a hand on her hip, though the only person who listened to her was Magpie. Tiger watched Magpie scamper upstairs with a brass basin and a rag to clean the upper chambers.

  Baoshen and Madame Lu couldn’t keep up with what was happening before their very eyes. The fourth porter w
alked straight up to them to hand off Little Thing, who slept soundly within several layers of heavy clothes. When Madame Lu received him, his little eyes above his bright red cheeks opened up and looked straight at her, but the child neither cried nor screamed. Caring for him at least gave Madame Lu something to do for the time being.

  She would later regret her laxity. Allowing her daughter to take up residence in that accursed studio seemed an unwise move. The building had come to embody ill fortune over the years, after her husband, Lu Kan, lost his mind while residing there, and Zhang Jiyuan’s six-month stay there before he was killed. Nor could Madame Lu forget that if she had not ordered it rebuilt, the wolves would never have come into the fold and carried her daughter off to Huajiashe. It had remained locked and empty for a decade, moss covering its stones and ivy racing upward toward the roof. In the evenings, clouds of chittering bats circled the eaves.

  After Xiumi moved into the studio, she didn’t come out. Lilypad delivered her meals, always strolling back downstairs with confidence and an indifferent demeanor toward the others, including her mistress, to whom she no longer always paid close attention.

  “I tell you, that little tramp is in Xiumi’s corner now. Now that she’s got coattails to ride, she’s lost all her manners,” Mother liked to complain to Baoshen.

  Though she was angry, Madame Lu softened her tone when she spoke to Lilypad, preferring to swallow her irritation in the off chance she might learn more about her daughter.

  “What’s she got in all those boxes?” she once asked with a forced smile.

  “Books,” Lilypad replied.

  “What does she do up there all day?”

  “Read.”

  Days passed one after the other, and Madame Lu’s anxiety increased. With Xiumi apparently going down her father’s road, insanity seemed the only probable destination. “The day she came back I saw that look in her eyes, the same one her father had before he went crazy,” Madame Lu declared. She and Baoshen discussed the matter thoroughly. Eventually, she insisted on going back to the same old method she had tried with Lu Kan: hire a Taoist priest to capture the evil spirits.