Peach Blossom Paradise

by Ge Fei

  When Ding Shuze found her, he said, “Your son committed a heinous and intolerable crime, offensive to both gods and men. Even if the court had taken him, he would still be put to death.”

  “How can you only hear that old woman’s side of the story? How do you know her daughter-in-law really did kill herself because of my son? How do you know she didn’t die of consumption? And that the clever mother showed up in Puji to blackmail us?”

  “The truth was revealed through your son’s own lips,” Ding Shuze replied, “and now both culprit and evidence remain. That he not only should be lecherous and rapacious but brazen enough to boast of it later makes the crime utterly inexcusable. There is nothing more to say.”

  “My Yellowtooth may be a horribly bad man, but he did have one good quality: He knew how to respect his elders. Say nothing of what he did for me, I know that you and your house received plenty of the best cuts of every pig he slaughtered,” the old lady continued to protest.

  “If that is your purpose here, wait and I will settle all the family’s accounts with you. Whatever we owe you I will pay and close this account.”

  The blind woman laughed through clenched teeth. “Sounds like an easy enough way out for you! Pay your account if you like, but there’s one debt you’ll never be able to settle. Remember how you treated me in the days before I went blind? Not even a week had passed after my poor husband died when you came groping around my house. And me still wearing my mourning dress, how could I have had the energy to refuse you? ‘Nothing makes one horny like a wife in mourning,’ eh, you worthless creature? Don’t you play the spotless saint with me now! You ran me ragged, if I hadn’t thought to save the interest on this bloody account for my ancestors, I would have swung myself from the rafters years ago! So don’t you grab your prick and lose your memory now.”

  Her words filled Ding Shuze with such anger, shame, and frustration, he could barely speak.

  His wife was washing dishes by the stove and heard every word that was said. When the situation reached the boiling point, she hurried out of the kitchen and addressed the blind woman cheerfully: “Come now, a couple of old folks like you digging up your youthful indiscretions out loud in broad daylight, what will the neighbors say? Our nephew’s business is our business, there’s no doubt. How can we stand by and let him be seized for no reason? You just go home now and don’t worry: we’ll take care of everything.” She helped the blind woman rise from her knees, sending her off with more gentle assurances.

  Ding Shuze was still staring into the courtyard, shaking his head and mumbling: “Dragged through the mud, just dragged through the mud . . .”

  “Drag your mother’s ass through the mud!” Zhao Xiaofeng snapped, and slapped Ding Shuze across the face so hard she raised a welt.

  Ding Shuze spent the night drafting a bail guarantee and acquiring signatures from a few respected members of the local gentry. The following morning, he went to the academy to bail out the prisoner. Xiumi wasn’t around that day; she had left the potter, Xu Fu, temporarily in charge.

  “Principal ordered his arrest,” Xu Fu told Ding Shuze. “I can’t give him to you until she gets back.”

  “Xiumi was my student—she doesn’t refuse me anything,” Ding Shuze lied. “Just let him go.”

  Xu Fu replied, “If that’s the case, teacher, we’ll beat him first so he learns his lesson.”

  When Yellowtooth heard they were letting him go, his attitude changed. “Beat me? Which one of you dares to beat me? Wang Badan, get over here and untie me . . . Now, you little shit, or I swear you’ll regret it.”

  Wang Badan looked at Xu Fu uncertainly. The latter had a painful toothache that commanded most of his attention. He waved a hand and said, “To hell with it. Do him a favor and untie him, and we’ll make sure he sends us a pig’s head next time he’s working.”

  Further emboldened, Yellowtooth stuck out his chin and roared, “Some real bullshit to harass me and lock me up for! I’ll tell you right now, what happened to Miss Sun those years ago was all me too! I fucked her and killed her, and had a good time doing it! And what are you gonna fucking do about it?”

  Ding Shuze could hardly believe his ears; Xu Fu was scared speechless. A minute later, Xu Fu stood up and bowed to Ding Shuze, saying, “Mr. Ding, if what he says is true, it means he has another murder to answer for. I don’t dare make the call—I can’t let you have him.”

  Ding Shuze could only laugh bitterly, shake his head, and leave again.

  Wang Qidan and Wang Badan were the first to be tasked with killing Yellowtooth. But Wang Qidan pulled a face and claimed he couldn’t bring the ax down on someone he knew so well. They hired another executioner from outside the village, a peasant who also had no experience killing people. One evening, the peasant dragged Yellowtooth out of the stables and marched him out to a secluded spot. He whispered to him, “Brother, I know you’ve got a blind mother at home to worry about, so once I hack through these ropes, start running and I’ll pretend to chase you for a while. After you get away, don’t come back for at least a couple of years.”

  “It’s funny,” Yellowtooth replied, “you got a piece of the action too when we gave it to that cunt in Changzhou. So how come I get arrested and you’re off the hook? Shut up and cut these ropes off me, my arms are getting numb.”

  The executioner raised his eyebrows in alarm, and immediately sank his knife into Yellowtooth’s back. Yellowtooth screamed, then cried out, “Stop, brother, stop! I have something to say . . . !”

  “And what is that?”

  “You can’t kill me,” Yellowtooth grunted as blood oozed through his teeth.

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . because . . . if you kill me, everything will go dark.”

  The executioner didn’t reply; he found the hollow space under Yellowtooth’s collarbone, aimed the knife, and drove it in halfway up the handle. When the blade entered, Yellowtooth’s neck stretched straight out and his eyes bulged. When the blade slid back out, his neck relaxed and his eyes finally shut.

  7

  IT WAS Tiger’s first visit to the garan shrine. The tall and imposing building was still poorly furnished—a simple wood-frame bed against one wall and a long table with a single oil lamp for the whole hall. That was it. Why would the Principal be lighting lamps in the middle of the day?

  Almost no external light filtered into the enormous room. The windows that stretched across the main hall’s eastern and western walls, along with the wide door that led to the Heavenly King shrine in the back, had been bricked up. The skylight above had also been covered with a black curtain. Upon entering, Tiger could smell unswept dirt in the chilly room cloaked in shadows.

  The temple didn’t resemble his dream at all. There was no lacquered black screen with gold inlay, no sharp-angled pearwood furniture, no gold-rimmed mirror, no blood-red vase of flowers. He noticed the shabbiness of the Principal’s bed, its mosquito netting patched in several places, the bed held together with ropes, its old sheets a jumbled mess. A pair of black cotton shoes rested on a rude wooden footstool beside the bed.

  The Principal was dressed in a light cotton jacket with a red floral pattern, wisps of loose cotton padding bursting through the seams. The only aspect of her that matched Tiger’s dream was the sadness of her expression. You could even smell sadness on her breath. When Tiger’s gaze fell on an uncovered bedpan in one corner of the room, he felt a pang of pity for her. He still couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye.

  “Come to me,” the Principal said in a husky voice.

  She directed him to sit at the edge of the bed, then turned slightly his way and asked, “Do you know why I’ve asked you here?”

  Staring at his feet, Tiger stammered, “I . . . I . . . I don’t know.”

  The Principal stared at him silently. Tiger could feel her eyes peeling back his skin.

  “How old a
re you?”

  “What?”

  “I asked you how old you are.”

  “Fourteen.”

  The Principal smiled. “No need to be afraid. I only wanted to talk.”

  She spoke like she had something in her mouth. Tiger looked up to see a silver hairpin between her lips; the Principal was putting up her hair. He could almost smell her breath—not fragrant at all, and a little sour, like the smell of yams.

  “Talk about what?”

  “Anything,” she replied.

  She started to ramble, and Tiger listened, though it sometimes felt like she didn’t really care if he were listening or not. She said she couldn’t sleep, she could never sleep. Only when she walked by the river alone and smelled the fresh water did she feel sleepy, but once back in bed, the feeling disappeared. She said she hated sunlight. She said that only dead people who had turned into ghosts hated sunlight. Then she chuckled sardonically and slapped Tiger’s shoulder. “Look at me. Do I look like a ghost to you?”

  Tiger merely trembled.

  “Don’t be afraid. I’m not a ghost,” she said with a laugh.

  She said she couldn’t be sure the work she was doing wasn’t a mistake—or even worse, a joke. She mentioned a place called Huajiashe. She said there was a tomb there, with a headstone that was carved with an inscription written by someone as sad as herself. Sometimes she felt like they were the same person.

  She said that one evening in Yokohama, she was walking down an empty street and ran into someone she didn’t expect. It gave her such a shock, she sat right down on the pavement. It was inconceivable, absolutely inconceivable.

  “And who do you think it was? Take a guess.”

  “Um . . . I don’t know.” Tiger shook his head. He imagined that if he shook it a few more times, she might let him off the hook.

  She talked about the strange dreams she had been having. She was sure that everything she dreamed about was real. Sometimes you wake up from dreams, but other times you wake up inside them, and you realize the world you had been living in was itself a dream. Her speech gradually lost logical coherence. Had she really sent a messenger out for him so she could tell him all this nonsense?

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Tiger interrupted her for the first time in his life. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because no one else will listen to me say it,” the Principal replied. “Not a day, not a minute passes when my head doesn’t hurt. As if it were being fried in oil. Sometimes I just want to smash it into a wall.”

  “Are you really going to attack Meicheng?”

  “Yes.”

  “But . . . but why do you want to attack Meicheng?”

  “Because the only way to forget something is to do something else,” the Principal said.

  “What do you want to forget?”

  “Everything.”

  “So what do they mean by ‘revolution’?” Tiger asked after a pause.

  “Ah, revolution . . .” The Principal rubbed her temples, as if her head had started to hurt again. “Revolution is when no one has any idea what they’re doing. You know you’re making revolution, it’s true, but you have absolutely no idea what’s going on. It’s like . . .”

  The Principal closed her eyes and leaned against the wall before continuing, “It’s like a centipede that crawls over the walls of Black Dragon Temple every day. It knows every part of the temple, every crack and cranny, every single brick and tile. Yet if you asked it, ‘What does Black Dragon Temple look like?’ it couldn’t answer you. Understand?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Tiger agreed, “but there has to be someone who knows what revolution is. Even if the centipede doesn’t know what Black Dragon Temple looks like, the hawk would know.”

  “You’re correct. The hawk knows,” the Principal replied with a smile. “But I don’t know who the hawk is—who is up there giving the orders. He sends a messenger to Puji regularly, always the same person. Sometimes it’s a written message, other times it’s by mouth. The messenger’s extremely private. It’s impossible to persuade to him to give us more information. We’ve tried before. But I’ve never met the person who gives the messages. Sometimes I feel like a centipede myself, one that’s been trapped underneath a magic tower . . .”

  The Principal slid off topic again, and Tiger gradually lost the thread. Yet she seemed more delicate to him now, despite her babbling, and not at all like the intimidating madwoman he thought she was.

  “Okay . . .” She breathed in sharply and adjusted her bearing, raising her voice as she addressed him. “Enough of this nonsense. How old are you, Tiger?”

  “Hmm? Didn’t you just ask me that?”

  “Oh, did I? Then forget it.” Xiumi continued, “Let me ask you a serious question.”

  “What?”

  “You’re lying to me about something,” the Principal declared. “Tell me what it is—there are no strangers here.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The Principal asked with a short chuckle, “You came into the kitchen awfully late last night. Were you supposed to meet someone?” Tiger couldn’t hide his nervousness. “I . . . um . . . I . . . I came to get you, the mistress was sick, I came to ask you to come home, she was dying, I—”

  “Tell the truth!” The Principal was scowling now. “You may only be a child, but you’ve already learned how to lie.”

  Her eyes were wet, her gaze both threatening and gentle. The fact that she could spot deception so easily meant that not only was she not crazy, she was very much alert. Tiger felt like she could hear his thoughts while he was thinking them.

  “A cotton fluffer came to the village . . .” he began his reply.

  The sound of his own voice startled him, as if the words hadn’t been spoken by him but had escaped his lips of their own accord. He hesitated, still unsure whether he should tell her everything that happened that night.

  “A cotton fluffer? From where?” the Principal asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Keep talking. What about the cotton fluffer?”

  True, where exactly had the cotton fluffer come from? What was he doing in Puji? How did he meet Lilypad? And why did she ask him if he was a pig? Why did Lilypad get so nervous when she saw Tiger, and why did she tell him “Your sister’s life is in your hands”? This last question raised a cold sweat on his back.

  “Principal, what’s your zodiac sign?” Tiger looked up at her and asked.

  “Monkey, why?” The Principal looked at him in puzzlement. “You just told me that a cotton fluffer had come to the village.”

  “He . . . he . . . he, uh, he fluffs cotton really well!” Tiger blurted out, having finally made up his mind. He pursed his lips together hard, as if worried that opening his mouth one more time might allow the secret to slip out.

  “All right, that’s enough. Get out of here.” The Principal sighed and shook her head.

  •

  As he emerged from the darkness of the temple, the sharp glare of the summer sun reminded Tiger that it was still daytime outside. A cacophony of voices filled his head. He plodded toward the temple gate. As he passed under the eaves of the pharmacy, a figure popped out of the shadows behind him. It was Lilypad. He knew it was her without having to look back. He knew from her scent. He couldn’t figure out where she had been hiding; in one hand she carried a bunch of wet scallions.

  She caught up with him in a few strides. Tiger’s heart was already racing. He continued walking with her next to him.

  “Look to the west,” she said in a lowered voice.

  Tiger looked in that direction. He saw the temple’s high outer wall, and the branches of an even taller locust tree that reached over the wall from the other side.

  “Do you see that locust tree?”

  Tiger n
odded.

  “Can you climb trees?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. If you climb the tree, you can reach the top of the wall easily. I’ll leave a ladder on the other side. Don’t let anyone see you. Come tonight, don’t be late.” Lilypad hurried off.

  Tiger looked up once more at the canopy of the locust tree, which contrasted sharply against the infinite blue sky. An old sparrow’s nest sat on one of the branches like a promise. Amidst this tranquility, he could hear the rushing of his own blood through his veins. For the first time in his life, he felt an irresistible urge to smoke.

  Returning home, he sat down on the stone lip of the inner courtyard wall and waited for the sun to set. He had already planned to leave through the back door of the rear courtyard. There could be absolutely no mistakes, otherwise his chest would surely explode and he would die. He couldn’t risk even the slightest error. To ensure no one would hear him pass through the door, he sneaked into the rear courtyard to apply some soybean oil to the hinges. Only after testing it a few times and confirming that it would make no sound did he finally relax.

  8

  THAT EVENING, Tiger slipped out of bed and crept his way downstairs and into the rear courtyard. As he had planned earlier that day, he took off his shoes and carried them in one hand as he tiptoed toward the back gate.

  He drew the bolt, opened the door, and slipped outside. Aside from the occasional barking of dogs, he heard no sounds indicating knowledge of his presence. He knew he was in the middle of the first important act of his life. He felt no need to hurry to the academy; at this juncture, there was no point in hurrying anything. He made his way to the riverbank. The narrow stream, grown thick with sweet flag and cattail, ran straight into the Yangtze. Fronds of sweet flag beneath the moonlight looked withered, and rustled like old leaves in the breeze.

  He sat by the river a long time, looking between the moon suspended among the trees like a cloth floating on water and its shattered reflection on the river surface as the current breathed cold air on him. He wanted to think clearly about what was going to happen, but a vague, inexplicable sadness interrupted his train of thought.