by Can Xue
Ah, she beckoned to me! From a long way away, I saw her beckoning to me! After setting down my dinner bowl, I ran toward her, even though Mother was scolding me from behind. I ran over to the old woman. How strange. She’d reverted to the way she was before: she was like a fossil, motionless.
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“Granny—quick! Please teach me your secret recipe.”
I said this three times in a row.
She pointed at the contraption. I looked, but it was no longer there. There were only some flies licking the syrup that had fallen to the ground. The old woman stood up, pretending to turn the crank. I heard the tremendous sound again. After shaking it for a while, she looked disheartened and sat down heavily on the wooden stool. She uttered a crisp sound from her mouth, but not from her throat: “Take it!” I looked at the ground: nothing was there.
My hopes had been dashed: How could I reconcile myself to this? For so many years, my only goal had been to be a vendor—one like this trickster. Not only did I want to shake cotton candy out of thin air, but I also wanted to shake out little golden bells. First, I had to amass capital and buy a contraption and practice. But I had no capital. With no capital, I had to shake a treasure out of thin air that could turn into money for real. The old woman was my only hope. With my own eyes, I’d seen her empty hands shake out cotton candy. I couldn’t let this hope be dashed. As I reasoned with myself, I came up with a bizarre, audacious plan.
That morning, while the adults were at work at the bamboo-ware factory, Little Zheng and I began putting our plan to kidnap the old woman into effect. Everything went smoothly: we didn’t even need our rope and chair, because the old woman made no sound as we manipulated her. Little Zheng and I carried her, letting her old legs drag on the ground. She was heavy. After we dragged her to the custodian’s tool shed, we were ready to pass out from exhaustion. When we flung her to the ground, we also fell down and couldn’t get up for a long time.
“Let’s starve her and see if she opens her mouth or not!” Little Zheng said angrily.
We knew that she had only an alcoholic son at home, so there would be no problem for a while.
When we glanced at her, we saw that she was coiled into a ball on the ground. She was pawing at the dust with one hand and rubbing her face with it. Her face was now as black as the bottom of a pot, and her crocodile-like eyeballs were turning slowly. Little Zheng and I felt uneasy: Could she have some sinister motive?
“Granny, do you want something to eat?”
I had no sooner said this when my eyes were blurred by dust; they hurt too much to open. The old woman had thrown a handful of dust—accurately and ruthlessly. I had never expected this. I heard Little Zheng kick the old woman.
“Water! Water!” I shouted wildly.
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In unbearable pain, I had no recollection of how Little Zheng got me home. The next day, my eyelids were swollen. Although I couldn’t go out, I was still thinking about the tool shed. How was she getting along there? I had a hard time waiting until afternoon when my parents left. Then I got out of bed. Covering my eyes with a washcloth, I moved to the door. From outside came the sound of running footsteps. Someone came in.
“Little Qing, little Qing, the floor of the tool shed is heaped with cotton candy. She’s almost buried in it!” It was Little Zheng.
“Really? Really?”
“Alas, we were really dumb. Why didn’t we wait and watch her sorcery?”
“She wouldn’t let us.”
“It’s too bad that all of the sugar is filthy. Otherwise, we could sell it for a lot of money. The custodian swept it all into the garbage can. What a shame.”
When Little Zheng and I finally went over there, we saw the door of the tool shed standing open. She was sitting on top of a pile of brooms. I kept wiping my eyes with the washcloth. I despised this old woman. I heard a bunch of children coming this way: after a while, they formed a long line at the door.
“Here you go!” the old woman said to the little boy at the head of the line.
The little boy was holding the air with both hands; he went out rapturously.
“Here you go!” the old woman said to the second child—a little girl—in line.
The little girl was also holding the air with both hands; she, too, went out rapturously.
Like the head of a household, the old woman sat smugly on the brooms. Little Zheng and I were dumbfounded. Some of these children were from our neighborhood, others from elsewhere. What were they doing together with the old woman? Each child took ten or twenty cents from his pocket and gave it to her. The money was all real. After taking the money, she carefully put it into a pocket in the front of her garment. Soon, the pocket was bulging. When I looked outside, I was startled: I couldn’t see the end of the long line. The custodians didn’t mind postponing their work. They were looking on with interest, as if they were celebrating a holiday.
Little Zheng was seized by a whim: he also joined the line and waited. When it was his turn, the old woman—without even lifting her eyes—said, “Get out of here.”
Little Zheng wasn’t willing to move out of the way, and the other children angrily set upon him and threw him to the ground. He was like a drowned mouse. I helped him up, and in the midst of hisses from the other children, we left.
We went back to my home, where I lay down on the bed. I was still plagued by the same question: How could I amass enough capital to become a vendor? Sitting next to the bed, Little Zheng brainstormed: we could rob the old woman; in any case, she had earned her money fraudulently. I vetoed that idea. Unconvinced, he said, “She got the money through fraud.”
I didn’t think the old woman had been cheating people. I’d seen the multi-colored cotton candy, and I’d seen Amei eat it. The children’s excited expressions had persuaded me that something I hadn’t seen was real. I couldn’t rob her. And it was useless to kidnap her. So how would I get the capital?
“What if we establish good relations with the other children, and make them do as we say and hand money over to us?” Little Zheng was talking nonsense.
In reality, the children not only wouldn’t listen to us, but they had thrown Little Zheng down on the ground. Maybe the key was to gain their trust and then do what we wanted. For years, the old woman had shaken so much cotton candy out of that contraption that everyone believed she was a cotton candy vendor. Later, she used neither machinery nor sugar. Yet, everyone was still accustomed to the notion that she was a vendor. She had practiced this for years and years. We were just little kids; it was evident that no one would trust us. Even if we did trick people, no one would take the bait. We gave it a lot of thought. We couldn’t figure out what to do, and yet we weren’t willing to give up.
Someone came in. I thought it was my parents, and so I lay there very still. Little Zheng left the room to take a look. When he returned, his face was flushed. He poked me, meaning that I should get up right away.
I looked: the old woman was sitting in the outbuilding.
When Little Zheng and I walked over to her, she held out her hands. Each of us took hold of one hand and stood there waiting for her to speak.
“You can’t cheat people,” she said with her shriveled mouth.
Little Zheng and I nodded our heads earnestly.
We thought she wanted to say something else, but she seemed tired of talking. She just lowered her eyes again and started snoozing. We were still holding her hands. I was afraid my parents would return and question us, so I had to urge her to leave my home. As soon as I made this clear, she opened her eyes and angrily called me “fickle.”
Then my parents came back. They looked at the old woman sitting at the table, but said nothing. Weary of hanging around, Little Zheng went home.
When it was time for dinner, the old woman ate with us. My parents didn’t seem to think this was unusual; it was as if the old woman were part of our family, not the vendor from two streets away. After eating, she rose to leave. When she reached the door, she
suddenly turned around and said to me: “Every day, I sleep and dream amidst the cotton candy.”
As she spoke, her breath and body both smelled sour. When I watched her walk into the distance, I was still tasting her words. Right up until Mother called me.
“You finally have some ambition. We feel reassured,” Mama said.
This time, Father broke precedent and didn’t scold me; rather, he stared at me questioningly for a long time.
The next day was another bright, sunny day. After I fetched water and dried vegetables, I walked over there. From a distance, I saw a long line of children, but the old woman wasn’t at the head of the line. I saw Little Zheng again; he was sitting where the old woman used to sit. He and the children were exchanging knowing looks. He beckoned to me, and I sat side by side with him on the bench. One by one, the children came and solemnly smacked our palms. Although they didn’t give us money, I felt utterly content. Little Zheng, the children, and I were immersed in daydreams about the multi-colored cotton candy. One after another, the honey jars in the depths of our memories were opened up: the strong fragrance overflowed into the air.
THE BRILLIANT
PURPLE CHINA
ROSE
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Mei lived on a small, lonely side street in the downtown area. The five-story building had been constructed in the 1950s. Mei and her husband Jin lived in a three-room apartment on the first floor.
Mei’s home was a little unusual: except for the kitchen, all the appliances and furniture were covered with cloths of various colors, as if the two of them were about to go traveling. It was only when they wanted to use these things that they uncovered them. For example, at mealtimes, they removed the heavy tablecloth, and when they drank tea, they uncovered the tea table and sofa. Even the two large mirrors hanging on the walls were covered with embroidered cloths. Only when they looked in the mirrors did they uncover them. Because of these cloths, the rhythm of Mei’s daily life was much slower than that of ordinary persons.
Mr. Jin seldom took off these covers, for Mei handled everything for him. All day long, he lay on a chaise lounge—the only piece of furniture that wasn’t covered with a cloth—and read a thick book, A Collection of Illustrations of Wild Plants, and looked repeatedly at the pictures in it. Lying on the chaise lounge, he was staring with his left eye at the book’s illustrations of humid euphorbia while at the same time glancing sideways at the shoe rack. He said loudly, “The cat has pulled the cloth on the shoe rack down to the floor!” From the kitchen, Mei heard him and rushed over to re-cover the shoe rack. Jin was obviously a sensitive person, too.
In the small garden outside, Mei grew neither flowers nor trees. From strips of bamboo and plastic film, she created an awning—a long one which looked ridiculous. Inside the plastic awning, she raised a strange plant from seeds that Jin had bought through a relative who lived in another place. The seeds were a small, purple crescent shape. Jin dug a furrow one foot deep and buried these seeds in it. He told Mei that this plant was the rare “underground plant.” None of it was on the surface. After the seeds were buried, they would grow straight down. He also fertilized and watered their plants, and then Mei covered them with the plastic awning. Jin said, After this, you don’t need to tend them. You only need to keep this plastic awning in shape, that’s all. When this plant grows underground, it makes strict demands of the environmental conditions. In short, the less environmental change the better.
“Mei, what kind of treasure are you growing?” the neighbor Ayi asked.
“The China rose.”
“Why don’t I see any buds?”
“They grow downward, and the flowers also blossom underground. It isn’t the China rose that we’re accustomed to seeing. The flowers are only as large as grains of rice, and the petals are stiff.”
Mei blushed. She was repeating what Jin had told her. In her own mind, she didn’t have a good grasp of it. With her goldfish eyes bulging, Ayi looked at her for a moment and then silently entered the apartment.
Mei told Jin that their neighbor Ayi didn’t believe they were growing the China rose. Jin was shaving just then, and lather covered his face. Blinking his little triangular eyes, he said he hadn’t believed it either, at first. Whether people believe it or not has no bearing on the China rose’s growth. With that, he went into the bathroom. Holding a mop, Mei stood there thinking. Presumably, Jin had a clear understanding of this. When the seeds were seen under lamplight, they did look like a singular variety. She remembered that two nights ago the two of them had put their heads together and taken stock of these seeds. She bent over and mopped the floor. When she reached the desk, she noticed a seed that had been left next to a leg of the desk. She quietly picked it up, wrapped it in crepe paper, and put it in the kitchen cupboard.
In the afternoon, Jin napped on the chaise lounge. As for Mei, she sat on the sofa. She could rest just by leaning against the back of the sofa and dozing a little. When her eyelids grew heavy, she heard someone knocking on the door. Twice. Not continuously, but with an interval between them. Who would knock this way? Was it a child playing a prank? She didn’t open the door. She heard Jin snoring softly. After a while, just as her eyelids were growing heavy again, the knock came again—this time, twice in a row. Still light and hesitant. Mei had no choice but to go to the door.
Ayi was standing outside. Her face was pale, as if she’d been frightened.
“I’d also like to grow a little of that variety—that variety of China rose. Do you have any extra seeds?”
“No. Old Jin brought them back through a relative. If you want some, we can ask someone’s help again.”
Ayi looked terribly disappointed. Then her expression changed to spiteful probing—she impertinently stuck her head in and looked into the room. Mei generally did not invite neighbors into her home. Ayi’s unusual behavior made her a little nervous.
“I just remembered. I still have one seed. Do you want it?” She looked almost ingratiating.
“You have one? Sure, I’d like it. Let me have it.”
Taking the seed wrapped in crepe paper, Ayi gave Mei a hard look.
When Mei turned around to close the door, what she saw in the room startled her: a rat was sneaking back and forth under the tablecloth on the dining table. There had seldom been rats in their home. Was it really a rat? Pouncing, she covered the tablecloth with her hands, but the little guy still slipped away. She had pounced on air. She looked on helplessly as the gray rat climbed up the window and glided outside. Shaken, Mei stood in the room and said, “Rat.”
Jin’s gaze left his book, and he glanced at her. Then he returned to the book and said:
“The rat is Ayi. You needn’t worry too much.”
Recovering, she replaced the tablecloth and went to the kitchen. After cooking for a while, she rushed back to the bedroom because she was afraid of the rat. Luckily, she didn’t see the little guy again. But she noticed that the lower part of the cloth on the dresser had been gnawed on, so it seemed this problem was real! When Mei was in primary school, the city was overrun with rats. People had employed all kinds of ways to get rid of them: blocking their paths, poisoning, tracking, pouring water on their nests, and so on. From then on, there had been no problem.
As she chopped radishes, she savored what Jin had said. Jin had said the rat was simply Ayi. This made some sense. Although the two families were next-door neighbors, and their children had played together, their socializing had been limited to simple greetings made in passing after the children grew up and moved away. So she’d been a little surprised when Ayi had asked for flower seeds. Judging by Ayi’s expression and movements, she was taking this matter quite seriously. But why? It couldn’t be merely for a few flower seeds.
At mealtime, Mei said to her husband:
“Will Ayi really grow the seed she took with her? What do you think?”
“No, because that one is fake; it’s one I culled to throw away. Altogether, quite a few are fake. As soon as she
looks at it, she’ll realize that. It isn’t a flower seed; it’s a beautiful pebble.”
Jin winked at her complacently. Mei whispered to herself: “You cunning bastard!” She was a little worried that Ayi would hold a grudge against her because of this. Ayi’s husband was a sullen, one-eyed man. Would the couple think she had played a trick on them? Perhaps she should explain to them. Jin argued against this. He said it would be a case of “confusing the issue with more talk.” He also said, “Since she’s interested in this underground plant, it’s okay to make fun of her a little.”
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Because of insomnia, Mei and Jin had started sleeping in separate rooms ten years earlier. In general, Mei could sleep from midnight to a little after one o’clock. After awakening, she couldn’t sleep again until after three o’clock. She would wake up again about five o’clock, and at close to seven o’clock she slept again for a while. She arose at sometime after eight o’clock. Every day was much like this. Mei’s nights were long. At first, this was hard to put up with. Between periods of sleep, she was drowsy. After awakening at one o’clock at night, dressed in her pajamas, she always made the rounds of each room. While doing this, she didn’t turn on any lights. And so, one night she fell—frightened of the sudden glare on the large mirror in the living room—and bumped against the side of the dining table. She broke her collarbone. Looking back on it, she thought the subtle sparkle had been caused by a passing car. Afterward, Mei had covered everything with cloths. After getting better, Mei ceased her nighttime rounds. She still got up during the night and sat on a low kitchen stool. Leaning against the wall, she would doze for a while. She sat in the kitchen because she could look out the window and see the sky and the trees. This was relaxing. At such times, recalling the long-ago days when she and her children had been together, she was astonished at the well-being she felt: Was that really the life she had experienced? The sense of well-being, however, came from her present contentment. Thus, after a long time, she started enjoying her insomnia. She imagined that she had become a large white goose waddling in the woods looking for food.