by Hua Bai
death. But never mind that. Tell me about your case.”
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After I gave a brief account of my case, she said with a frown: “How could you let others hold anything in your
handwriting? If you had only said those things to Gui Renzhong, you could easily deny them. You are as naive as a three-year-old, having done such a silly thing behind my back.”
“I did it out of a good heart.”
“How much money is a good heart worth? All right.
Don’t try to defend yourself any more.” She sighed. “I really don’t know how to get you out of this prison. Most of the prisoners here are political criminals. Without a drastic change in China, you can’t dream of getting out. Whether you are convicted or not, you will have to wear out the bottom of the prison. That’s not just a threat.”
“I know. Do you think China will have a drastic change
soon?”
“Hard to say. The Lin Biao affair was big, wasn’t it? Yet its occurrence brought no change.”
“You mean, China needs an even more drastic change?”
“Yes. Waiting cannot be rewarded by any change. Only
the fool knows nothing but waiting…waiting.…” She
looked at me with tears in her eyes. “No thinner than
before. You look puffy. Although I know you’re starved
here, I can’t bring you a sack of buns. Here are a couple of candy bars, pretty hard to buy in shops.” She threw four fifty-gram bars of chocolate across the table. “Hide them quickly.”
Long starved as I was, the sight of food made me tremble.
My shivering hands fumbled several times before picking
up the candy bars and shoving them into my pants.
“Listen, I’ll pretend to ask you to write a report about your parents so I can come here to get it. Next time I may be unable to see you, especially to see you alone.”
I reached out to her under the table. She held my hand in hers. My dear Yunqian – she still belonged to me. I groped for her legs, and she helped me find them. I was still search-2 4 9
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ing for the place that I had searched for hundreds of times during my longing hours for her. She was generous enough to offer it – the door creaked. Quickly I withdrew my hand and stood up when the guard and the warden walked in.
“Have you finished?” asked the guard.
“Yes.” Taking out a notepad from her army satchel, Yun-
qian said, “I am leaving this for him to write a report.”
“No problem. Is it urgent?”
“No. Let him take his time. I’ll come and get it in a few days.”
“Good.” The warden took the pad and passed it to me.
“You may leave now. You are allowed three days absence
from labor.”
“Yes, sir.” I turned and walked out of the visitors’ room without a chance to cast Yunqian a tender glance.
In the long, damp corridor, the guard followed me. Now
our positions had been switched. I was not the one who
visualized the other’s body through the uniform. Perhaps she never noticed me as a human body because prisoners do not belong to the human race. It was hard to say. After all, I was a healthy male. I was trying to figure out whether she could visualize my body through my prison clothes and
what my body looked like in the eye of this woman wrapped in a guard uniform. I had an impulse to look over my shoulder and catch her facial expression at the moment, but dared not take the risk.
I gaze at her window. In the past, it was pasted over with black paper; now a cloth curtain with tiny blue flowers hangs there.
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At dawn, several large white clouds floated
low over Xienami. Five or six wild ducks darted across the lake to the other bank. In the center of the lake, an old man and a little girl seated in a canoe gathered in the nets they had put into the water the night before. Although the sun was still on the other side of the mountain, a faint redness was already starting to appear and spread about in the dark blue of the lake, as though someone had squeezed a drop of red ink into a blue ink bottle.
Two horses and three people broke the tranquility by the lake. Sunamei had left home. She had really left home. The extended family had discussed the matter for three days and nights before reaching a final decision. All the villagers had taken part in the discussion. A few supporters had opposed the majority, who were against her. Luo Ren had become the target of blame, an outcast. Some had even called him a
slave trader. Ami Cai’er alone understood Sunamei’s heart.
The more people opposed her going, the more determined
she was to go, even if she had to leap over a sea of flames.
Finally, narrowing her eyes into a sweet smile, Sunamei
declared to the whole family, “I am leaving tomorrow morning,” as if nobody had ever questioned her going.
Who was going to see her off? On hearing the news, her
former axiao Longbu came with fifteen horses. Yingzhi, who had no horse, was willing to carry her on his back. But
Sunamei declined both of them. She chose her uncle Awu
Luruo as her guide to the county. He prepared two horses 2 5 1
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and they set out before daybreak, without waking elders or children. No one in the village knew they would leave so early. Yingzhi stayed in Sunamei’s huagu for the last night.
His words flowed in buckets, and his tears wet Sunamei’s beautiful hair. But Sunamei did not let him persuade her not to go to a strange land. She chased him out of bed early and did not allow him to see her off. “Find another axiao, ”
she said. “Better an ugly one so that you won’t forget me.”
“Don’t worry. Once you are gone, all the girls remaining will be ugly.”
“I don’t want to hear your pretty words. I want you to listen to me and go home. If I catch you following me on the road, I will never speak to you again. Please go, go back to your own yishe. ” Yingzhi submissively stomped out of Sunamei’s huagu.
Only Ami, her big white cat in her arms, saw her daugh-
ter off. She put Sunamei on horseback and followed her a long way. Mother and daughter were silent. Luo Ren, too.
And so was Awu Luruo. The eight horses’ hooves said con-
tinuously to the road of her hometown: Gone, gone, gone, gone!
It was light when they approached the lake. On a ridge
Sunamei jumped off the horse and drew a line across the
road. Then she said to her ami, “Ami, please stop here.
From this height you will see far away. You will see your Sunamei again soon. Please stop here. One step beyond this line and your daughter will lose a year of life. If you do not love your daughter, go ahead and cross this line.” After these words, Sunamei got on her horse with a carefree laugh.
She whipped the horse with the pine switch with which
she had drawn the line. The horse galloped away like a trail of smoke. Standing behind the line with the big white cat, Ami followed the horse and Sunamei with eyes blurred by
tears. How could she know that Sunamei’s laughter was
rolling out together with her tears. Laughing while crying expresses a person’s saddest emotion. Sunamei’s heart was 2 5 2
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empty, as if in drawing that line she had cut all ties between her hometown and herself. What were these ties, anyway?
Before her birth, her umbilical cord had been attached to Ami’s body. At that time, she was unconscious, because all senses were blocked. Now that her senses were alive again she tasted the pain of separation, as if all the feelings of aff
ection and love had been severed. She wished she could tumble off the horse and lie on this land. From here she could still see her Mosuo village. The smoke from the fireplace of each yishe formed a thin layer of purple mist over the village. Yet she did not tumble off the horse. Instead, she straightened up and kept her eyes forward, in spite of the tears streaming down onto the horse’s mane.
How she wished at that moment that Yingzhi was fol-
lowing her. Maybe he was tramping through the woods
beside the road, keeping pace with her. But he could see her in the dark; she could not see him. Yingzhi was too submissive. If he were boldly to stop her horse, could she really ignore him? Of course not. She would dismount. Holding
the horse, she would say to Yingzhi, “I’m not leaving. I want to go back, go back to the huagu you’ve visited and never leave again, ever.” But Yingzhi did not appear. He was faithful to her. Being such an honest man, even if he were following he would not dare show his face. Thoughts like these made the tears trickle down her face. She did not wipe them away, nor did she want to check them. Let them flow, flow. The wind on the journey would dry them in time.
Luo Ren rode on, never turning his head. Awu Luruo fol-
lowed the horse loaded with baggage and food. He was a
smart old man, filled with jokes and tales. But now he was walking mechanically with his eyes downcast, staring at the tip of the horse’s swaying tail.
“Awu Luruo,” Sunamei called in a tone mixing sadness
with loneliness. “Awu Luruo, why don’t you say some-
thing?”
“Ah.” Awu Luruo poked at his wirelike gray hair with
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the tip of his whip. The sound of ah seemed to have opened his windpipe.
“Please tell me a story, Awu Luruo.” Sunamei implored.
“Ah.” Still no text followed.
Sunamei waited, riding another couple of miles. “Awu
Luruo, if you don’t want to tell stories, tell me something about yourself. You’ve been on long trips, haven’t you?”
“True, I have journeyed far, to Lhasa and also to India and Calcutta.”
“Were you happy when you left home, Awu Luruo?”
“No. I felt the way you are feeling now, Sunamei.”
“How about later?”
“Later, the farther I went, the more outlandish things and people I met. Gradually, I forgot Xienami, our yishe, and even my axiao. ”
“Did you enjoy the outside world?”
“Yes, very much.”
“No longer missed home?”
“No.”
“I can’t understand how one could not miss home any-
more?”
“It did occur in time, Sunamei.”
“Really? Awu Luruo, please tell me how you came to
enjoy it.”
“When I left home, I was only seventeen. I had an axiao named Muzhami, who tried to keep me at home. But finding nothing around me attractive, I ran away from my yishe.
Jiacuo, a Tibetan horse trader, had told me that the outside world had women as it had flowers – and the women were
more playful. I regretted my decision as soon as I took to the road, but it was too late because I had agreed to help Jiacuo with his horses, for which he would feed me and take me to Lhasa so that the living Buddha could touch my forehead
and bless me with a hundred years’ longevity. Jiacuo’s trade was quite successful. He even took me to India once. He
said that India had a big river called the Ganges, and, while 2 5 4
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Indian women were bathing in the river, one could choose any one of them, the beautiful or the tender. But the road to Lhasa led not to paradise but to hell. We drove fifty horses: two were lost in a snowslide; three were lost on a slippery slope in a heavy rain; one was carried away by flood; and one was killed by a leopard. Although I risked my nine lives, they were exciting times. I was strong, stronger than horses and stronger than Jiacuo, and fiercer than the leopards that winced before me. Even a flood couldn’t wash me away.
Dozens of times I escaped whirlpools. At night I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the ground, but a drop of rain woke me instantly. Although it took half a year to get to Lhasa, Jiacuo made an enormous amount of money when we
got there, because what was buried in the snow or lost in the flood had been cheap stuff. The expensive tea and jewels arrived safely. After making a fortune, Jiacuo bought me a leather coat, with borders decorated with leopard fur, and a pair of Indian boots. He knew his journey could not have succeeded without me and that without me he would have
been long dead. Twice I had dug him out of the snow. With a caravan of fifty horses, every morning and night I had to load and unload so many goods. I was a ball of energy then.
I could gobble up five pounds of veal.
“When Jiacuo took me to the Potala Palace, I presented a hada to the living Buddha and he touched the center of my head. While I was standing in the octagonal square, many Tibetans took me as the prince of a former Tibetan lord. At the height of his career, Jiacuo asked me to take a fifty-horse caravan to India. India was a terribly hot place, extremely poor and extremely rich. Jiacuo was right that you could see thousands of women bathing in the Ganges, their sandal-wood skin soft and smooth, their eyes slender, and a vermilion dot imprinted between their eyebrows. Some even wore gold flowers on their noses. They came out of the water in veils, their bodies half revealed and half concealed, like the moon in the clouds. I forgot where I came from and where I 2 5 5
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was going. Calcutta is a large city. People there were more crowded together than fish in a bucket, and all sorts of vehicles were ready to run you down. We bought some cattle
from the suburbs and shipped them to the city by truck. We stayed in hotels that were perfumed daily. Jiacuo had made a great deal of money with his Tibetan products, which he
had exchanged for gold and jewelry. Being a generous man, he gave me a lot of Indian rupees and told me to spend them in the market. He told me Indian silk was very famous and that numerous restaurants in Calcutta served all kinds of delicious food. But I dared not go out, for I could speak neither Bengali nor English. One morning Jiacuo, covered
with a satin quilt, couldn’t get up from his bed. Falling from the peak of his fortune, he had been struck by plague.
The doctors refused to see him and the hotel servants dared not serve him food. I alone waited on him by his bedside.
Realizing that his days were numbered, he offered all his possessions to me out of gratitude. I declined his offer and said I would take his gold and jewelry back to Tibet and give them to his wife. I swore this beside his deathbed.
Before Jiacuo gasped his last breath, the Indian government sent the police to take him away from me and burn him
with his clothes and quilt. They also stripped me and
burned my clothes. However, I had plenty of money and
could afford many new clothes and more luxury hotels.
Although I did not speak Bengali, my money spoke Ben-
gali, English, and all other human tongues. At that time I was crazy for money; the Indians would have nothing to do with me unless they saw my money. They had first thought I was a poor horse driver from Tibet, stinking with dung.
When I took out my rupees, their eyes lit up and the corners of their eyes and mouths rose. They could hardly wait to kiss my smelly toes.
“While I was paying the bills and getting ready to
go home – oh my heavens – an Indian girl came to see
me. What a celestial being, what a beauty! Every one of her 2 5 6
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movements was like dance. Although she did not under-
stand my
words, she knew what I meant. Counting on her
tapered fingers, she told me she was only fifteen. She was wearing a pair of sandals made of stringed pearls, revealing her red toenails. Through her transparent veil I could see her breasts. They were not the breasts of a fifteen-year-old girl, but those of a twenty-five-year-old woman. I could also see her delicate, round navel. Although I could not understand her words, I could easily guess her intentions. I knew she wanted to be my axiao. It was like a moon flying into my door shining on me. The faint shadow of Muzhami vanished in her presence, nothing left.…
“Because I had not touched a woman for a long time, I
grabbed her, tearing open her clothes. She attempted to
struggle free from my arms, but how could she, confronted with a man who had subdued leopards and whose desire was lit like a pine torch? She was definitely not a child. Instead of struggling, she caressed my face with her tiny hands and calmed me down. Then she took off my clothes and led me
like a lamb to a bathroom. Actually, I had not realized there was a bathroom in my suite. She filled a tub with hot water and let me lie down in it. Then, before me and the large mirror, she stripped. Good heavens, I was stunned. Her
body was pure and smooth like brown ivory; she looked like the jade fairy waiting on the living Buddha in his private pavilion. My body, covered with scars, contrasted sharply with hers, which was spotless and pure. I was ashamed and wanted to ask her to leave me. Yet I seemed to be paralyzed.
She came to me and bent down to wash my body. I was
embarrassed to watch a layer of black dirt being scrubbed off my caravan-man body and the water being instantly
dyed black. She changed the water; it took three tubs to get me clean. When she lowered her body to dry mine, my face touched her breast accidentally, and I did not even dare to breathe. After drying me with a long white cloth, she led me to bed, and she herself went back to take a bath. I heard 2 5 7
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her water splashing for a long time. I did not know what she had to wash away, because there wasn’t even a speck of dust on her body. When she came to my bed in a veil, I could not press her roughly under my weight as I had done to