Peach Blossom Paradise

by Ge Fei

  Silence flooded the room after the old lady finished; Magpie and Madame Lu wiped away tears. After a pause, Baoshen chimed in: “In that case, you should report him to the magistrate or look for Yellowtooth yourself.”

  “Buddha’s brother!” The old lady clapped her hands together. “We arrived in Puji this morning to look for Yellowtooth. He wasn’t home, and his mother’s an old, blind woman pushing ninety. She said, ‘Yes, Yellowtooth is my son, and he is a butcher, but he hasn’t come home in two years; he hasn’t brought back as much as a marrow bone for the dogs to gnaw on. So if he wants to act like he doesn’t have a mother, then I’ll just pretend I don’t have a son. Whether or not he’s killing pigs or people, none of it has to do with me. Every debt has its owner and every bill comes due, so if he beat and raped your daughter, you should go to the magistrate. Chasing after an old bag of bones like me won’t do you any good. If you want my bones to boil in your soup, you can have them.’

  “Well, there wasn’t much I could say to that. I left the blind lady’s house and walked to the center of the village, not knowing what to do; the three of us started to cry. A fellow who had journeyed from the south and was carrying buckets of night soil found us there. He took pity on us and asked why we were crying. So I told him the whole story. He thought it over, then said, ‘Yellowtooth doesn’t sell meat anymore; he spends his time performing weapons drills over at Puji Academy, though nobody knows why.’

  “I said, ‘Okay, then we’ll go to the academy.’ But he stopped me and said we’d never be able to get in. I asked him why, and he said that the academy was full of senseless people. I replied, ‘If the students are senseless, can you expect a sorry old peasant like me to have any sense?’

  “ ‘That’s not how it works,’ he said to me, ‘but I don’t have time to explain it to you.’ Then he sat down on his shit buckets and thought about it. In the end, he told us that we should come here and settle with you. He said Yellowtooth was one of your daughter’s subordinates. If he works for her, then your daughter must be a butcher too, correct?”

  The assumption made Magpie snort with laughter. Madame Lu glared at her, then said bitterly, “If only she were a butcher, it would be a blessing for all of us.”

  4

  WAKING from their afternoon nap, Little Thing and Tiger discovered that the old woman and her children were still talking to the adults by the hearth. Madame Lu could sense the grandmother’s unwillingness to leave; she sent Magpie into her chambers to fetch a few handfuls of loose silver and some used, yet still presentable sets of clothing. To this she added a scoop of soybeans and a scoop of rapeseeds, plus half a bag of wheat, so the old lady would have something to plant next year. At which point the old woman kowtowed to the mistress and happily went home to Changzhou, her two grandchildren following behind her.

  Minutes after the party had left, Madame Lu began to complain of a headache. She leaned against a wall, her head in her hands, an “oh, no . . .” escaping from her lips as she slid to the floor. Baoshen and Magpie rushed to her side and lifted her into a comfortable chair; Madame Lu asked them for a bowl of sugar water. When Magpie reappeared with the bowl, Madame Lu wheezed a few times, then coughed up a mouthful of blood. Baoshen and Magpie panicked. After they quickly helped the mistress to bed, Baoshen flew out the door in the direction of Dr. Tang’s house. Little Thing, scared half to death, yelled at his back, “Run faster, Baoshen! Run as fast as you can!”

  Hearing his cry brought Madame Lu to tears. A moment later, she opened her eyes, rubbed Little Thing’s head, and reminded him, “He’s not ‘Baoshen’ to you, child. You should call him Grandpa.” She looked at Tiger and said to him, “Take him out to play, don’t let him sit here frightened.” But Little Thing wouldn’t leave. As if suddenly remembering something, he bent over Madame Lu’s side and whispered something in her ear. The old lady laughed.

  “Can you guess what this child just asked me?” she said to Magpie.

  “What did he say to make the mistress so happy?”

  “Happy?! He asked me if I was going to die.”

  Turning to Little Thing, she explained, “Whether I die or not isn’t really up to me. You can ask the doctor in a minute.” Then she added, “Of course it isn’t really up to the doctor either. You’ll have to ask the Bodhisattva.”

  “What is death?” Little Thing asked her.

  “It’s like when you have something, and then all at once it’s gone.”

  “But, but . . . where does it go?”

  “It just disappears, like smoke in the breeze.”

  “Does everybody die?”

  “They do.” She thought for a moment. “Your grandfather liked to say that we are all just stewards of our lives. He meant that your life is like a thing someone has put in your hands to take care of. Sooner or later, they’ll come back for it.”

  “Who comes to take it?”

  “Well, that’s Yama, the god of death, of course.”

  Magpie finally dragged Little Thing away from the bedside and placed him in Tiger’s hands. “Take him out to play—don’t let him stand here all day saying unlucky things.”

  Tang Liushi walked in. He asked Baoshen, “Where’s the blood the mistress coughed up? Let me see it.” Baoshen brought him into the guest room, where Magpie had already sprinkled wood ash over the bloodstain. “Was the blood red, or black?” the doctor asked.

  Baoshen replied, “Red, the color of new paint on a temple door.”

  Tang Liushi nodded, then bent over and sniffed the blood. He smacked his lips, shook his head, and muttered, “Not good, not good . . .” Then he went to see his patient.

  Madame Lu lay in bed for a full week. The doctor changed her prescription twice, but it didn’t seem to help. The second time Tiger and Little Thing went in to see her, they could hardly recognize her. The smell of medicinal herbs permeated every room in the estate. Villagers dropped by to pay their respects, as did her own relatives from Meicheng. Baoshen and Magpie always seemed to be sighing and shaking their heads.

  Once, Tiger overheard his father saying to Magpie, “If the mistress really does pass away, my son and I can’t stay here in Puji.” Magpie bit down on her handkerchief and started to cry. Tiger finally realized that Madame Lu might really be in trouble.

  That night, Tiger was forcibly shaken out of a deep sleep. He opened his eyes to find Magpie sitting by his bed, looking very nervous. “Get dressed,” she said urgently, then turned away, still trembling.

  “What’s going on?” Tiger asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “Go wake your godfather up. The mistress coughed up blood again, a whole bowlful of it, and her face is turning purple.”

  “Where’s my dad?”

  “He went to Meicheng, remember?” Magpie reminded him, then turned and scurried down the stairs.

  That’s right, his father had gone to Meicheng that afternoon to buy wood for the coffin. Grandma Meng had said to him that if he needed timber, the apricot tree outside her house was ready to cut. Baoshen considered it, then replied, “Best to go to Meicheng for something better.”

  Little Thing was still sound asleep. As Tiger deliberated whether or not to wake him up so that they could go together, Magpie shouted at him from downstairs to hurry up.

  Tiger ran down and out into the street. Stars filled the canopy, while the moon slowly sank in the west; it must have been well past midnight. He followed the alley that would take him to the rear of the village. Neighborhood dogs barked one after the other as he passed more houses. Tang Liushi lived at the border of the mulberry field at the village’s far end. He was the sixth-generation scion of a family of traditional doctors, but a wife and two concubines hadn’t been enough to give him a son. Once, Baoshen asked Madame Lu to offer Tiger to Doctor Tang as a godson, so he could pass on his family’s trade. Madame Lu was too respectable to be refused outright, so Tang Liushi said, “If you c
ould trouble your clerk to bring his son around, I will read his face.”

  That had been New Year’s Day two years ago. Two weeks later, on the day of the Lantern Festival, Baoshen dressed in his best clothing and marched happily to Tang Liushi’s house with his son and a lacquered gift box. But when the doctor saw the two of them, he chuckled and said, “Cockeye, I assume you’re making fun of me because I can’t have a son.”

  “How could I be?” Baoshen protested. “It’s a win-win situation, everyone profits. The Tang family medical tradition needs an heir, and the boy will learn a trade he can feed himself with later in life.”

  Though Tang Liushi had promised to read Tiger’s face, he gave him little more than a quick glance before saying, “From the looks of him, your boy would do better learning how to butcher pigs with Yellowtooth.”

  Baoshen didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry.

  The doctor paused, and continued, “I’m not trying to mock you. Look at the heavy eyebrows, the powerful frame. Studying medicine would waste his talent. A military career seems much more promising. I expect he could rise to be a garrison commander no problem.”

  It was obviously just an excuse, but Baoshen took him at his word, and walked home just as content as he had left. He said that while Doctor Tang did write bad prescriptions on occasion, his judgment of potential was as sharp as a razor. His “garrison commander” prediction even inspired Baoshen to speak to his son in a different tone of voice than he had before.

  That night, Tiger arrived at the doctor’s front door and knocked. Many minutes passed before lamplight rose inside. In a surprising display of clairvoyance, Tang Liushi didn’t ask who was at the door, but simply coughed a few times and called out, “Go home. I’ll be right behind you.”

  As Tiger walked home, he thought anxiously, The doctor sent me home without even asking who it was . . . What if he goes to someone else’s house by mistake? He was trying to decide whether or not to turn back when, as he passed the fishpond next to Miss Sun’s old house, he heard the front door creak open. He knew that an itinerant cotton fluffer was squatting in the house, but what was he doing up at this hour?

  Through the trees, he could faintly make out the silhouettes of two people leaving the house. A woman said with a childish lilt, “You’re really a pig?”

  A man replied, “I was born in 1875.”

  “You better not be lying to me.”

  “Oh, dearest, do the math yourself and you’ll see. Why would I lie to you?” The man put an arm around the woman’s waist and pulled her in for a kiss.

  Could it really be her? What was she doing here? Tiger asked himself.

  It was obvious that the two of them were quite familiar with each other, and that there was more to him than met the eye. The conversation, though, didn’t make much sense to Tiger. Zodiac signs? Year of the pig? Tiger’s heart beat loudly as he thought of the bandanna and comb he had found inside Miss Sun’s house a few days earlier. So it really was her.

  He heard the woman push the man, saying, “You’re getting me all wet again.”

  The man snickered.

  The woman crossed behind the pond, coming directly toward Tiger. He had no time to hide, so he marched quickly on his way. She had clearly discovered his presence, her footsteps behind him quickening. Then she started to run.

  The woman caught up to Tiger just as he reached the alley that passed Grandma Meng’s house. She put a hand on his shoulder; his whole body froze. The woman put her face close to the back of his neck and whispered, “Tiger, what are you doing out here so late at night?”

  Her voice touched him with soft, weightless tendrils, like fog.

  Tiger said, “Getting the doctor to come check on the mistress.”

  She wrapped her arms around him. He could feel the heat of her body on his face, though her fingers were cold. “Were you listening to the two of us just now?” she asked him in a voice that seemed like both a sigh and a moan, though it was so low that Tiger had to hold his breath to hear her clearly.

  “Tell your big sister the truth. What did you hear?”

  “You asked him if he was a pig . . .” Tiger said.

  His brain wouldn’t work and his body wouldn’t move, so he stood still and let her move him.

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “A cotton fluffer.”

  For a moment, she was silent. Then he felt her fingertips slide over his lips and jaw: “Haven’t seen you in a few days, and you’re already growing a beard.” Her fingers played over his throat: “And you’ve grown an Adam’s apple!” She massaged his shoulders: “What a strong boy you’ve become.”

  Tiger felt a little dizzy. Though he couldn’t see her face in the darkness, her fingertips, her voice, the breath from her lips both mortified and intoxicated him.

  “Such a good boy . . .” She pressed her hips tightly to his back, as her hands flowed down over his shoulders like water. Tiger slowed his breathing to make it easier for her fingertips to find their way smoothly under his shirt collar. She caressed his chest, his stomach, his ribs. Her fingers were so cool and soft and sweet.

  “You can’t tell anyone about what’s happened tonight, my dear,” she murmured in his ear.

  “I won’t . . .” Tiger replied. His voice sounded different, like he was crying. Quietly he promised himself that he would agree to anything she asked of him; no matter what she wanted him to do, he would do it. “I wouldn’t tell for anything,” he added after a pause.

  “Call me Big Sister . . .”

  He called her Big Sister.

  “Call me your favorite Big Sister . . .”

  He called her his favorite Big Sister.

  “You mustn’t talk to anyone about this. Your sister’s life is in your hands now . . .” She suddenly let go of him and turned to look behind her. They both heard the sound of coughing not too far away. Tiger knew it was Tang Liushi finally catching up to him.

  She kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “Someone’s coming . . . Come to the academy tonight.” Then she smiled and padded sinuously away, disappearing into the grove of trees in front of Grandma Meng’s house. Tiger continued to stand locked in place, his mind empty. The whole affair had ended before he even had a chance to understand what was happening—like a dream, yet stranger than a dream. He felt a part of himself ache with a painful swelling.

  “I said you could go home without waiting for me,” Tang Liushi said as he arrived at the end of the alley, a wooden box under his arm. “The truth is, it doesn’t really matter if I go or not. Your mistress isn’t going to make it. After taking that prescription I wrote for her yesterday afternoon, if she had slept through the night, there would still be hope. But I went to bed with my clothes on, and I knew it was you when you knocked on my door.” The doctor nattered on as he shuffled unevenly toward the house.

  Then he asked Tiger, “Where did your father go?”

  “He went to Meicheng to buy coffin boards,” Tiger replied.

  “It’s just about that time,” Tang Liushi said with a nod. “Though maybe a little soon still. I expect she has five or six days left in her.”

  As they entered her bedroom, Tiger saw Hua Erniang sitting next to Madame Lu, applying a cold cloth to her forehead. The mistress’s face looked swollen and noticeably shiny, as if it had been rubbed with wax. Seeing the doctor come in, Hua Erniang addressed him, “Just now, when she opened her eyes, I spoke to her, and she didn’t recognize me.”

  Tang Liushi sat beside the bed, picked up the mistress’s wrist to take her pulse, then shook his head. “ ‘We all must pass through the iron gate and rest inside a loaf of earth,’ as the poem goes. At this point, even if I were the best doctor in the world, there is nothing I could do.” Instead of examining further or prescribing new herbs, he opened his box and removed his water pipe, then crossed his legs and began to smoke.

/>   The smoke smelled wonderful to Tiger; he suddenly no longer felt so worried about Madame Lu’s sickness. The people before his eyes, the events happening around him, nothing seemed related to him. Everything felt different.

  Tiger left Madame Lu’s room. He sat for a while under the inner eaves of the courtyard, absorbed in thought, then went into the kitchen and drank two bowls of cold water. His heart was still beating fast. Going back upstairs, he lay in bed with his clothes on, thinking of nothing but her. He kept asking himself the same question: If Tang Liushi hadn’t showed up, would she have . . .

  Little Thing turned over in bed and announced, “It’s going to rain.”

  Tiger knew Little Thing was talking in his sleep. But then he heard the pattering of raindrops on the tile roof. The shadows of trees on the window paper began to sway as the wind rose.

  Tiger decided to wake Little Thing. He would explode if he didn’t talk to someone. But Little Thing was impossible to wake, even as Tiger tickled him, shook him, slapped his face, and breathed on him. When he sat him upright, he discovered that Little Thing could sleep sitting up. So Tiger pinched his nose shut and waited. Little Thing took a gasping breath in through his mouth, rubbed his eyes, and giggled. He really did have such an easygoing disposition—no matter what you did to him, he never got mad.

  “You remember that cotton fluffer?” Tiger asked him.

  “What cotton fluffer?”

  “The foreigner, the one living in Miss Sun’s house.”

  “Yeah, what about him?” Little Thing looked blankly at him.

  “You remember how we saw that green bandanna on the table when we were in Miss Sun’s house—”

  “What bandanna?”

  “And there was a bamboo comb, too.”

  “Bamboo comb?”

  “I’m going to tell you a secret, but you can’t tell anybody.”

  “Okay, I won’t tell.”

  Little Thing lay his head on his pillow, turned back over, and went back to sleep. The rain thundered down on the roof. After a gust blew the oil lamp out, Tiger could see that it was already dawn.