Vertical Motion

by Can Xue

  “I’m fed up. Just leave me alone.” She waved at Mrs. Yun.

  =

  Mrs. Yun felt that her home was gloomy these days. Whenever Wumei had spare time, she shut herself up in her room and made papercuts. Mrs. Yun didn’t know exactly what she was cutting, because she no longer hung up her papercuts. As soon as she finished one, she hid it.

  “Wumei, it’s been a long time since you’ve gone to the market to sell things,” Mrs. Yun said gingerly.

  “I haven’t finished anything yet.”

  Although Wumei appeared serene, Mrs. Yun knew this was a pose.

  Mr. Yun said, “It’s good for a kid to experience some setbacks.”

  When he spoke, Wumei’s face was expressionless.

  Mr. Yun had already repaired the earthen wall; it looked as if it had never been damaged. The new wall wasn’t like a new one, either: fine grasses were still growing on it, so that it was exactly like the old wall. Mr. Yun did this work at night. In the morning, Mrs. Yun stood dazed next to the courtyard wall. She heard only magpies singing in the trees.

  As Mrs. Yun stood there stunned, Mr. Yun came up and said:

  “The water in the marsh has been low for quite some time. Now the sun has dried it up so it’s hard as rock. It’s said that a road will be built on it.”

  “How can that be?”

  “These years, anything is possible.”

  Mr. Yun said he had left a hole under the wall for birds to stay in. He pointed it out to Mrs. Yun. The hole was cleverly designed: its entrance was behind a rock, so if you didn’t look carefully you wouldn’t find it. Mrs. Yun thought to herself, No wonder birds have been inside the wall. Mrs. Yun hadn’t noticed before that Mr. Yun had this skill. Maybe Wumei had inherited her skill from her father. When Mrs. Yun put her hand in the hole, she found it was so deep that you couldn’t touch the bottom.

  “Back in the beginning, I never imagined that I had married someone who was such a skilled craftsman,” she said as she stood up.

  The news of the marshland caused her to worry anew about Youlin, but after the road was built over there, his business would be better, wouldn’t it? Was he willing do business next to the highway? If he liked roads, then why had he run off and set up shop in the marshland? Mrs. Yun thought it over every which way and still didn’t understand.

  “Mrs. Yun, the magpies are singing so cheerfully that there must be a happy event in your family!” Old Mrs. Weng said as she entered the courtyard.

  The old woman smiled hypocritically, and she looked ugly and ferocious. Mrs. Yun was a little afraid of her.

  “Old Weng is sitting in the ditch, waiting for that event!”

  “What event?!” Mrs. Yun was startled.

  “Something connected with the marsh. Lend me a little salt.”

  When Mrs. Yun went into the kitchen to get the salt, the old woman tagged along.

  “Your Wumei is blissful,” she said as she took the salt.

  Mrs. Yun figured borrowing salt was her excuse to come and reconnoiter. She reeked of the strong smell of pepper and spices. It made one’s thoughts run wild. After she left, Mr. Yun mockingly commented that she was “the flower queen.” Mrs. Yun asked him why he called the old woman the “flower queen.” Mr. Yun said, “Go ask Uncle Weng. He knows. Don’t think of them just as neighbors. Their home is the barometer for this region.”

  “Why did she say that Wumei is blissful?” Mrs. Yun was very suspicious.

  “Maybe she smelled out this omen with her nose.”

  Later, Mrs. Yun went to the pigpen to feed the pigs. As she listened to the pigs chewing their food, she heard the Wengs talking outside her pigpen.

  “Lately, the situation kept changing. Now, it’s finally come to light,” Uncle Weng said.

  “Then why don’t you go check on it? The brushwood with the floating wildfire is just where you’re longing to be. As for me, I’ve smelled everything already.”

  “It’s better to stay here without moving and let the roaring vehicles push across from the top.”

  “Yes, that makes sense.”

  Mrs. Yun wanted to continue listening, but they had already walked on. Only a few words carried by the wind reached her ears: “the low water season . . .”; “motorcade . . .”; “smoke . . .”; “prisoners . . .”; “before sunset . . .”; and so forth. Mrs. Yun set down her bucket and went out to look. She saw that they had already gone into their own courtyard. In this sort of dreary weather, Mrs. Yun didn’t think Wumei would have any good luck; she was deeply uneasy about her daughter. The day before, Wumei had complained to her father that her brain was addled. “I can’t cut anything new.” Mr. Yun had advised her, “Leave your handicraft work and go walking in the mountains—the farther, the better. Don’t be afraid of getting lost.” When Mrs. Yun heard him say this, she wanted to slap him! She had no idea whether Wumei would do as her father suggested. In her mind, she kept seeing the piglet being cruelly killed.

  The large pig stopped eating, swaggered to one side, and lay down. When Mrs. Yun looked closely, she saw a melancholy, sad expression in its eyes. She thought to herself: Perhaps I should ask the vet to look at it.

  When she went to a neighboring village to look for the vet, he wasn’t home. His wife said he had gone to the marshland first thing in the morning, because a large number of horses there had the pox and were lying on the ground braying and braying.

  “One of our pigs is sick, too. There’s also a sick pig at the Youshun household. They all caught it from over there.”

  As the vet’s wife talked, she stared at Mrs. Yun, making Mrs. Yun so uncomfortable that she left immediately. She had walked some distance and yet she could still hear the woman shouting at her: “You need to calm down!” Mrs. Yun was really annoyed. She didn’t want to go home, either, so she sat in a daze on a rock beside the field. When she had composed herself, she glanced all around. Everything was ashy and white. There was no vitality anywhere. Could the pox already be here? Growing worried again, she hurried home at once.

  “There’s a pestilence,” she said.

  Mr. Yun said “Oh” indifferently and continued sieving the rice. Noticing his livid face, Mrs. Yun knew something was wrong and headed for Wumei’s room. Sure enough, Wumei was gone. Hanging from her mosquito net were little serpents that she had cut out.

  “Has she really gone off?” a very upset Mrs. Yun asked her husband.

  “Just ignore what she does. She’s a child with ideas of her own. And the pestilence is everywhere, so how can she go on with her papercuts? It’s better to hide for a while. One doesn’t worry about what one doesn’t see. A person alone won’t be in danger. Last time, she shouldn’t have gone with those other women.”

  Mrs. Yun glanced out the window with hopeless eyes and saw some villagers—old and young, men and women, some of them driving their pigs—hurrying past as though they were fleeing from disaster. Mrs. Yun recalled what she had heard the Wengs saying as she fed the pigs, and she thought even more that there was no way out. But what on earth was Mr. Yun up to?

  “There’s something wrong with the big pig,” she said faintly.

  “Oh, I saw that. I think it will survive.”

  Mrs. Yun felt that, in these days of pestilence, Mr. Yun’s body had become heavy and unwieldy. Not only was he not as restless as others, but he had gradually become as solid as a rock. When he reached out for something, he was like someone exerting a lot of strength to open a massive iron door. The hens seemed to have sensed something, for they were especially afraid of Mr. Yun. Whenever he went near them, they cried out in fear and flew high up in the air. Their wings stirred up dust and fluff and also lent energy to this lifeless courtyard. Only when Mr. Yun went to the pigpen to clean out the dung did the hens quiet down and shiver next to the wall. Mrs. Yun thought to herself, Could he still do things that took strength, such as cleaning out the dung? But she didn’t want to go over to check. She was startled each time she heard her husband making loud noises.

&n
bsp; Mrs. Yun steeled herself to go outside. She walked to the road, where she took hold of a child and asked where he was going. The child struggled hard, but she wouldn’t let go of him.

  “Tell me, and then I’ll let you go!”

  “I’m going to the marsh. I’m going to kill myself! So there!”

  “Ah, don’t go!”

  “I have to! Let go of me . . .”

  He bent down and began licking the back of her hand. His tongue was as quick as a serpent’s. Nauseated, Mrs. Yun loosened her grip at once. The boy slid away like a billiard ball and ran off into the distance. After a while, he disappeared.

  A motorcade appeared at the end of the road—foot-pedaled flat-bed trucks, with two or three people in each one. Not until the motorcade reached her did Mrs. Yun see that all of those people were tied up, and their faces were ashen. The drivers were all alike—rough, robust, heavily bearded guys from the countryside. Mrs. Yun immediately remembered what Wumei had told her. So this motorcade had come from the marshland. Mrs. Yun drew closer to get a better look at them; she wanted to see the prisoners’ faces. She noticed that these prisoners were also very much alike; even their expressionless gazes were similar. You could say this expression was composed, or you could say it was indifferent. Suddenly she saw a familiar face. It was the vet. His expression was different from that of the prisoners: extreme yearning showed through his composure. He was also tied up, but he seemed to like this punishment: his face was as red as if he’d been drinking. As Mrs. Yun ran several paces after his truck, a jeer suddenly flashed out from his eyes. Mrs. Yun stood still. She craned her neck to see if Youlin was in the motorcade. He wasn’t. He wasn’t there.

  She recalled, too, how the vet’s wife had looked while she stared at her. Apparently, the villagers had all anticipated the present situation. She was the only one who was confused. Had Wumei really gone out on the mountain roads? Although the mountains around here were only some small hills and had no wild animals, this was still enough to make people uneasy. Mr. Yun said she had to “try a new path.”

  She saw that child. Head down, he was walking ahead, holding at his chest a large bird that had just grown feathers. Mrs. Yun thought it was the bird from the courtyard wall at her home.

  “Hey, kid, why did you come back?”

  “I forgot to take this bird with me.”

  With that, he scampered off.

  Mrs. Yun glanced at the trees next to the road. Why had all the leaves turned an off-white color? Suspecting something was wrong with her eyes, she massaged them a few times and looked again: the leaves were still off-white. And not just the leaves, either: even the brown dog that she knew so well had turned into a gray dog. Her body felt as light as a swallow’s wandering in an expanse of off-white scenery. The gigantic owl that she hadn’t seen for a long time also appeared. It was watching her from the mulberry tree. Its eyes had turned into two points of cloudy white light. Its faded feathers looked old. When Mrs. Yun saw a rough bamboo pole lying on the ground, she was seized by a whim. She bent down and picked up the pole to drive away the owl. Although she tried several times, it didn’t move. Just as she set the pole down and sat down to rest, she suddenly heard it cry out sadly. By the time she looked up, it had changed into a tiny black dot and vanished into a spot deep in the ashy white sky. Mrs. Yun was shaking from the depths of her being. Why was it so grief-stricken? Was it because it had lost its child? In the past, it had been so ferocious! An image of the docile piglet that had been killed came to Mrs. Yun’s mind.

  After cleaning out the pig dung, Mr. Yun sat in the courtyard shelling soybeans.

  “Something’s wrong with my eyes. Everything I see looks ashen,” Mrs. Yun said.

  “The same thing happened to me once, but it went away after a few days.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “I was afraid you’d worry.”

  “The owl won’t come back, will it?”

  “No. Next time, it will be its son.”

  “I’m still worried about Wumei.”

  “No need to worry about her. Just take it as the old owl did. How much worse can it be?” This made sense to Mrs. Yun.

  “Do you suppose the vet will return to the village?”

  “Of course. But our pig is better now.”

  Mrs. Yun went to look at the pig right away. Mr. Yun had left food for it, and it was eating slowly at the trough. From a distance came the sound of trucks. Mrs. Yun didn’t bother to go out to take a look. She quietly picked up a broom and swept the pigpen until it was perfectly clean.

  After Mrs. Yun left the pigpen, she stood on a slope and looked into the distance. The colors of the things before her were gradually restored, and the sky was no longer so cloudy, either. As she stared into the distance, a shadow appeared in her field of vision. As she looked more closely and the shadow neared her, it grew more and more focused—and it even waved to her! Ah, it was Wumei! Where had she gone? The road she walked on seemed close and yet at the same time it seemed far away. Mrs. Yun could see even her backpack very clearly. Something seemed to be wrong with her legs: she was limping.

  “W— u— u— m— ei—,” she shouted.

  Something blocked her voice. No matter how hard she tried, her voice wouldn’t carry. Suddenly, she knew: Wumei was separated from her by several mountains. How could she see so well? It certainly was Wumei, because—for many miles all around—she had never seen anyone else with such a distinctive backpack. And there was also the way she walked—a little like a squirrel now. Mrs. Yun felt a twinge in her heart, and she almost lost her breath. She bent her head, and carrying the bucket, she went home.

  “I saw Wumei,” she said to Mr. Yun.

  “So did I. After this, we’ll see her often,” Mr. Yun said insipidly.

  “Is this all we get for bringing up a daughter?”

  Mr. Yun laughed. “Isn’t it true that your colored vision has also been restored?” he asked.

  “You’ve been there, right?” She blinked her eyes and understood.

  In Wumei’s room, her mosquito net swayed in the breeze. Those small green serpents all seemed alive. They were moving around. Mrs. Yun looked at them woodenly, and her legs went weak for a while. Mr. Yun came over and led her out of the room, and then locked the door with a copper lock.

  “We can see her whenever we want to,” he said.

  Mrs. Yun couldn’t figure out her feelings: she seemed to want to weep and yet she seemed to rejoice.

  TRANSLATORS’

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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  We thank Bradford Morrow, editor of Conjunctions, for publishing three of the stories included in this volume: “An Affectionate Companion’s Jottings” (No. 47, fall 2006); “Moonlight Dance” (No. 50, spring 2008); and “Rainscape” (No. 53, fall 2009). We also thank Heide Hatry for including “The Roses at the Hospital” in her book Heads and Tales (New York: Charta Art Books, 2009).

  All of the other pieces appear here for the first time in English. We are grateful to Can Xue for graciously making available two stories that have not yet been published in Chinese, “Vertical Motion” and “Papercuts.” We have worked with Can Xue for nearly ten years, and our association with her is one that we treasure.

  We also wish to thank Open Letter’s Chad W. Post and E.J. Van Lanen for their enthusiastic response to our submission of this book. We greatly appreciate E.J. Van Lanen’s skill in editing this manuscript. He made light use of the blue pencil, and we’re grateful for his helpful revisions and queries. We thank him, too, for his stunning cover design, and we thank N. J. Furl for the attractive interior book design.

  Translating takes time from those who are central to our lives. Chen Zeping thanks his wife Weng Zhongyu and Karen Gernant thanks Louis Roemer for their understanding and patience.

  AUTHOR BIO

  Can Xue, meaning “dirty snow, leftover snow,” is the pseudonym of Deng Xiaohua. Born in 1953, in Changsha City, Hunan province, her parents were sent to
the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and she only graduated from elementary school. Can learned English on her own and has written books on Borges, Shakespeare, and Dante. Her publications in English include Dialogues in Paradise, Old Floating Cloud, The Embroidered Shoes, Blue Light in the Sky and Other Stories, and most recently, Five Spice Street.

  TRANSLATOR BIO

  Karen Gernant, professor emerita of Chinese history at Southern Oregon University, and Chen Zeping, professor of Chinese linguistics at Fujian Teachers’ University, collaborate on translating, and more than thirty of their translations have appeared in literary magazines. This is their tenth book.

  ABOUT OPEN LETTER

  Open Letter—the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press—is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to increasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow.

  Making world literature available in English is crucial to opening our cultural borders, and its availability plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy and vibrant book culture. Open Letter strives to cultivate an audience for these works by helping readers discover imaginative, stunning works of fiction and by creating a constellation of international writing that is engaging, stimulating, and enduring.