by Liu Zhenyun
Given her condition, Xuelian belonged in the hospital. But Yue Xiaoyi had nothing left after paying for her stay in the Bullhead Hospital, and Youcai was no better off. So Xiaoyi did the next best thing: he paid for a doctor at a local clinic to come hook Xuelian up to an IV. Two days later, she still had not come to, and Youcai was getting anxious, as he needed to return home to tend to his father’s funeral, which he did after talking it over with Xiaoyi.
Xuelian finally regained consciousness two days after that. She had no idea where she was until she saw Xiaoyi’s familiar face and surroundings. Recollections of what had happened before she lost consciousness filtered back, little by little, though everything felt like a lifetime ago. Xiaoyi was thrilled to see his cousin with her eyes open.
“You scared me half to death,” he said as he handed her a bowl of millet porridge.
“Xiaoyi, I’ve been nothing but trouble for you,” she said with difficulty.
Xiaoyi, true to his disposition, turned her comment aside.
“I’ll have none of that,” he said. “What could be more important than your life?”
“Don’t worry about the money you spent, Xiaoyi,” Xuelian said. “I still have a house back home, and I’ll have enough to pay you back when I sell it.”
“And none of that talk either,” he said.
Tears sprang from Xuelian’s eyes. Xiaoyi was well aware of her history of protests; he knew what had brought her to this difficult stage and could see what an awkward position she was in.
“Wait till you’re well again, Sis. If you don’t feel like going back there for the time being, you can stay here and sell ribbon fish with me.”
That brought even more tears to her eyes.
“Xiaoyi,” was all she could say.
The fever broke three days later, and she was able to get out of bed. In three more days she was walking and could help Xiaoyi with the meals. Once he was sure she could take care of herself, he went back to the farmer’s market to sell his fish.
One morning, after breakfast, Xiaoyi went to work, leaving Xuelian to do the dishes and prepare lunch. That done, she set the lunch dishes out on the table and covered them with empty bowls, then sat down and wrote a brief note:
Thank you, Xiaoyi. I’m leaving now. I’ve already told you how I’ll repay you, so I won’t repeat it here.
She picked up her traveling bag and walked out the door, planning not to return home but to find a spot to end her life—to hang herself. Why? Not because her reason to protest had died in the river with Qin Yuhe, ending her quest to purge the stain on her name, but because Qin’s death had made a travesty of that quest and a laughingstock of her. Tricked into soiling her body, an event that was known to all, Li Xuelian had in fact become a Pan Jinlian, and that too was a travesty. Failing to lodge her protest was an injustice, but the resulting travesty was humiliating. She could live on with an injustice, but not humiliation. Having made up her mind to kill herself, she was then confronted with the problem of where to do it. Ideally, she would hang herself in front of one of her adversaries: in front of Big Head Zhao’s door or the courthouse or the county or municipal government building to give them one more dose of trouble before she died. But now that her protest had become a travesty, no purpose was served by killing herself in front of them. To do so would be yet another travesty. A travesty both in life and in death. Like dying with no place to be buried. Yet another travesty if word got out, for such illfated people are either hateful or wretchedly poor. For Li Xuelian, it would just be a humiliating travesty.
She left Yuegezhuang and headed not for the city, but the suburbs, feeling a sense of liberation, for now she could choose any spot she wanted to end her life. At noon she spotted a hill crowded with peach trees. After twenty days of struggle and unconsciousness, she had missed the riotous sight of early spring peach blossoms. She walked into the grove and spotted a little secluded hut, its open door revealing bedding and an array of pots and pans, plates and bowls, as well as pruning tools: saws, shears, a ladder, and more. An orchard tender’s hut, in all likelihood. The peach trees were in need of a pruning. Xuelian continued walking, up one hill and down the next, where the peach blossoms were a fiery red in the bright sunlight.
“This is the place,” she said, pleased with the surroundings.
“I said anyplace would do,” she said to herself, “but this is more than that.”
She unzipped her traveling bag and took out the rope she’d put there for this very purpose. After looking around, she found the tree she was looking for: tall with a sturdy, thick trunk. She tossed her rope over one of the limbs, sending a carpet of peach blossoms earthward. After forming a noose, she moved a rock over, stood on it, slipped her head through the noose, then kicked the rock out from under her, and was hanging by the neck.
But before Xuelian breathed her last, she felt a pair of arms wrap around her legs. Breathing hard as he lifted her up, a man shouted angrily:
“There’s no bad blood between you and me, Cousin, so why are you doing this to me?”
He placed her on the ground. He was in his middle years.
“I’ve been watching you. I thought you meant to steal my things, never dreaming you were intent on killing yourself.”
“I’ll die if I want to,” Xuelian said. “It’s none of your business.”
“That’s what you think,” he said, a hint of anger in his voice. “I contracted for this peach grove. Peaches aren’t worth much in the fall, so I make my living from people paying to pick fruit themselves in the spring. Didn’t you see the sign, ‘PICKING ORCHARD’ at the foot of the hill? Do you think people would come if they knew someone had hanged herself here?”
Xuelian did not know whether to laugh or cry at what he said.
“Where should I go then?” she asked after a moment.
“Are you really going to kill yourself?”
“Yes, and you can’t stop me.”
“Why are you doing it?”
“It would take more than a couple of sentences to make you understand. And if I understood it all, there’d be no need for me to die.”
“If you’re dead set on dying, then help me with something. See that hill over there, the other grove where the peach trees are blossoming? Old Cao has that contract, and he and I are rivals.”
He paused, then added:
“As they say, if you can’t hang yourself from one tree, try another. You won’t lose much time doing that.”
Xuelian had a good laugh over that.
Chapter Three
The Main Story: For Fun
1
On West Avenue in a certain county of a certain province there is a restaurant called Another Village, which has gained fame over its specialty dish, known as “meat on the bone.” There are other dishes on Another Village’s menu: offal soup, baked flatbreads, cold cuts, and an assortment of spirits. But these are little different than their counterparts in other restaurants. The preparation of their meat-on-the-bone, however, is unique. At other places, the meat is stewed until it falls off the bone; but not at Another Village, no matter how long it stews. The flavor penetrates both the meat and the marrow of the bone. And that flavor is unique as well: salty yet fragrant; fragrant yet sweet; sweet yet spicy; spicy yet bracing and smooth. Visitors to that county who crave a banquet will dine at Pacific Seafood City; those interested in less sumptuous meals will visit Another Village for its meat-on-the-bone. For full enjoyment it must be eaten straight from the pot, when it burns your hand. Strong liquor helps beat the heat, so you drink more than usual.
At Another Village, two cauldrons of meat-on-the-bone are prepared, one at noon and another in the evening. Eager customers queue up to partake of the specialty. The restaurant policy is that the meat is reserved for customers who eat at one of the tables; anyone wishing to buy takeout alone will be accommodated only if there is some left over after the diners have finished. And there is no guarantee there will be enough even for the regulars. It all d
epends on how many people are in line and each person’s position in that line. Out-of-towners frequently ask, Why don’t you make more, since it’s in such demand? I don’t want to tire myself out, proprietor Shi responds.
2
Shi, a man of sixty, plays mah-jongg when he isn’t preparing meat-on-the-bone. Two cauldrons a day frees him to enjoy his favorite pastime. He won’t let the restaurant tire him out, or, for that matter, mah-jongg, which he plays once a week, every Thursday, from three in the afternoon till eleven at night, a full eight hours. His playing partners are a distillery owner named Bu, a wholesaler of spirits and tobacco named Wang, and the owner of a bathhouse named Xie. Year in and year out, the seasons change, but not the players. They win some and they lose some, and it all evens out in the end. It’s just four men killing time.
The game takes place in a private room at Another Village. In the afternoon an additional pot of meat-on-the-bone is prepared for their dinner. The distillery owner supplies the liquor. Once the meat and liquor are gone, the game begins.
3
One Friday, Shi received a phone call informing him that an aunt in the city of Liaoyang in Northeastern China had passed away. Her son, his cousin, asked him to come north for the funeral. Shi asked if she had spoken any last words. His cousin said no, that she had suffered a heart attack in the middle of the night, and when they discovered her body, it was already cold. With a sigh of regret, Shi decided to attend the funeral. That decision came not because she hadn’t left any last words, but because he wanted to see her one last time. He thought back to his youth, when she had followed her soldier husband north to Liaoyang and found work in a textile mill. They did not return for five years, when Shi was eight, and came to visit his parents. When his cheapskate father saw how well they had done up north, he tried to borrow money. Shi’s uncle held his tongue, but his aunt said no.
“Don’t think I don’t want to lend you some money,” she said. “But we have so many poor relatives that if I said yes to you and no one else, I’d offend them all. But if I took care of them all, I’d have to sell my pants to survive.”
At dinner that night, Shi’s aunt took him aside and, without letting his parents see, handed him two yuan.
“I was the first person to hold you the day you were born,” she said. “With these two hands.”
Two yuan back then was a princely sum, and second-grader Shi held on to it till the sixth grade, a period during when he felt like a rich kid, when he fell for a girl in his class and spent twenty cents on a handkerchief that, he recalled, was embroidered with a pair of butterflies frolicking amid flowers.
Shi’s cousin met him at the end of his two-thousand-li trip, where Shi expressed his condolences and reminisced about days past. After the funeral, he headed home, stopping in Beijing to switch trains. The sight of massive crowds trying to get to their far-flung homes reminded him that the year was coming to an end, a year that had passed almost without his knowing it. He stood in line for four hours, but was unable to buy a ticket for that day and the three days that followed; his aunt could not have picked a worse time to die. He decided to find a small hotel nearby and wait till after New Year’s to buy a ticket home; by then there ought to be plenty of seats. Besides, he wasn’t the anxious type, so why be put off by a forced delay away from home? He walked out of the station, heading south, and entered a lane to the east of the main road dotted with small hotels and a great many luggage-toting tourists, all speaking in different dialects. He was about to check on room rates when his cell phone chirped. It was his distillery owner friend at home. Old Bu told him he’d like to take home a bowl of Another Village’s meat-on-the-bone for a visiting in-law. The man had asked specifically for the dish. Shi took a look at his watch. It was six o’clock. If it had been anything else, even a request for a loan, he’d have said yes unhesitatingly. Meat-on-the-bone was a different matter, for Another Village had its rule that they could not sell meat out the back door. People would be lined up at six o’clock. He couldn’t make up his mind.
“My in-law isn’t just anybody. I’m heading over to Another Village now. I’ll see you there.”
“You won’t find me.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m in Beijing.”
Bad news. “That spells trouble,” Bu said.
“It’s only a bit of meat,” Shi said. “Your in-law won’t die without it.”
“This isn’t about meat,” Bu said. “It’s Wednesday. Tomorrow is our game day.”
Shi had forgotten all about that. Tomorrow at three o’clock the four old friends were supposed to meet for their game of mah-jongg.
“I can’t buy a train ticket,” Shi said, “so I’m stuck here. We’ll have to pass this week.”
“We can’t do that,” Bu said. “It would mean big trouble.”
“We’re talking about mah-jongg,” Shi said. “Missing a game won’t kill us.”
“Not me, maybe, but old Xie is a different matter.”
“What does that mean?”
“After being bothered by a headache all month, yesterday he went to see a doctor, who found a growth in his head. They’re going to operate right after the first. We don’t know if it’s malignant. We hope it’s benign, but if not, old Xie will be in bad shape, and I’m worried that this could be his last game.”
Bu hung up. Not another word, not even about the meat-on-the-bone. Shi snapped his phone shut. This was terrible news. Xie was the worst player of the four. When he won, he was over the top happy, whistling and singing opera; when he lost, he flung down his tiles and sputtered angry curses. But Shi really got to know Xie one night the winter before when he and his wife had had an argument, and he’d had too much to drink at dinner. The more he drank, the angrier he got, and the angrier he got, the more he drank, until he was roaring drunk. Wobbling unsteadily, he stumbled out the door; his upset wife did nothing to stop him. It was snowing heavily, and he had no idea where to go, as he weaved his way drunkenly from West Avenue to South Street. He spotted Xie’s public bathhouse. As soon as he staggered into the compound he keeled over and was out like a light. The next morning he awoke to find himself in one of the bathhouse beds, Xie seated beside him. A couple of masseurs stood at the foot of his bed, towels over their shoulders. The next thing he saw was a needle stuck in his arm and an IV drip above his head.
“What’s that for?” he asked, pointing with his free hand.
One of the masseurs said:
“When you wouldn’t wake up last night, the boss sent for a doctor.”
“I only had a little too much to drink,” Shi said.
“The doctor said you’re lucky he came,” the other masseur said. “Your heartbeat was so accelerated you could have died.”
“So what!” Shi said willfully. “Everyone has to die sometime.”
Xie shook his head. “We couldn’t let you die,” he said. “We need a place to play mah-jongg.”
Shi felt warm all over, not because Xie had saved his life, but because it had given him a chance to see the true worth of the man at a critical juncture. The momentous news that Xie suffered from a brain tumor, one from which he might not survive, and that the next day’s game of mah-jongg could be his last, convinced Shi that he had to get home somehow, and no later than three o’clock the next day, when the game was scheduled to start. But how was he going to get a seat on the train if all the tickets had been sold? He walked out of the lane and headed to the station, going first to the ticket return window, despite knowing full well that at this time of the year, when there were no tickets to be had, no one would be returning theirs. Next he went to the stationmaster on duty, pleading for a ticket, saying that someone in the family was critically ill. The stationmaster looked at Shi sympathetically, informing that he’d already had more than thirty similar requests that day alone, and there simply were no seats available on any train. So Shi went out into the station square to find a scalper, but the overwhelming presence of police had kept them awa
y. At that moment, the station lights came on, signaling the end of another day. All of a sudden, Shi knew what he had to do. He took a piece of paper out of his bag, and a pen, and wrote three words:
I DEMAND JUSTICE
He raised his new sign over his head.
Less than a minute later, four policemen rushed up and pushed petitioner Shi to the ground.
4
Two adjunct policemen, not regular cops, one named Dong, the other Xue, were charged with the responsibility of escorting Shi back to his hometown. The absence of seats on packed trains could not stop authorities from escorting petitioners out of Beijing. The end of the year was the worst time to air a grievance. The conductor on Shi’s train freed up two bunks in the train’s lounge for Shi and his escorts. Since petitioning was not illegal, not only did Shi’s escorts avoid giving him a bad time, but in order to make sure he would not cause trouble, they gave him one of the bunks and shared the other. All three men breathed a sigh of relief when the train began to move. Once they were on their way, Dong and Xue kept an eye on Shi, who gazed out the window. After passing the city of Fengtai, Dong asked Shi:
“What took you to Beijing at this time of year, friend?”
“What good would it do to tell you? Could you solve my problem if I did?”