by Xiaolu Guo
After she had settled the children safely by the shed, Boy Waiting’s mother ran back down to the beach. The outline of the boat grew clearer, but it was moving very slowly. The swells on the surface of the sea rose like backdrop scenery, obscuring the tiny boat. At this point, a group of villagers carrying umbrellas and oil lanterns appeared on the beach. They were celebrating the Festival of the Dead as they did every year, drumming on metal pans with sticks to drive away the Sea Demon.
The crowd of villagers grew larger. Their lanterns were like dozens of tiny stars, casting flickering shadows on the dark, angry sea. By now, the boat was not far from shore. As Boy Waiting’s mother watched it approach, she grew more and more excited. The Sea Goddess had heard her prayers and brought her Captain home safely.
The other fishermen’s wives were unable to hold back any longer. They began to shout their husbands’ names, hoping that the men on the boat could hear them.
Nobody paid the slightest attention to the two little girls standing in the distance near the seaweed beds.
The sound of the villagers’ drumming became more muted, and there was a pause in the howling of the wind. Boy Waiting’s mother seemed to be listening to something, some sound only she could hear. It was her child crying! Her seventh daughter, Boy Waiting, was crying!
As the boat moved closer to shore, the villagers on the beach surged forward to meet it. Boy Waiting’s mother left the crowd and rushed frantically towards the enormous expanse of marsh near the shoreline. Cloaked in darkness, the marsh seemed boundless, unfathomably deep. When she reached the little shed, she found it deserted. Following the direction of her child’s voice, she waded deeper into the seaweed, her knees sinking into the muck. At last, she drew close enough to discern the cries more clearly. Boy Waiting was shouting her sister’s name.
The little fishing boat finally reached shore, accompanied by petrol fumes from the motor and the hubbub of the villagers’ voices. The Captain and his crew, exhausted after their many days battling the storms, disembarked from the boat, and their wives and families rushed forward to welcome them home. No one was in any hurry to unload the spoils from the hold of the ship. In truth, the catch was not quite as good as they had anticipated, but this was of little consequence. The most important thing was that the men had made it home safely.
When the Captain, Boy Waiting’s father, set foot on the beach, he was puzzled to find neither his wife nor his children waiting for him. He circled the crowd several times, searching in vain for his family, before he finally gave up and returned to his boat. Not long afterward, as he was lowering the ship’s flag from the mast and the villagers were still milling on the shore with their lanterns, there came the sound of Boy Waiting’s mother wailing in the distance.
Her youngest child, her precious Boy at Last, was dead. She had drowned in the shallows just beyond the seaweed beds, less than a hundred metres from shore. Boy Waiting’s mother had tried to rescue her daughter, but was hindered by the gusts of wind and rain. By the time the other adults arrived to help, it was already too late.
I heard the villagers say that when they pulled Boy at Last’s body from the water, it was bloated with salt water, swollen like a fish bladder.
The Festival of the Dead was drawing to a close. Every house in the village was illuminated by the glow of home-made paper lanterns, and the last fishing boat had arrived home safely, its nets filled with yellow croaker and cuttlefish. The village was safe for another year, but the Sea Demon had managed to spirit away one of its children.
Boy Waiting’s family had lost their youngest and most precious child. Once again, Boy Waiting found herself the youngest girl in a household of girls.
Boy Waiting had watched her sister die. Powerless to help, she had stood in the darkness of the marsh and watched. The long tangled strands of seaweed that the villagers cultivated along the shoreline were like wire mesh, forming an invisible netting that demarcated the boundary between the mud-flats and the sea. Boy at Last had been swept over this inky green boundary to her death. After the death of her sister, Boy Waiting seemed to grow up almost overnight. Her youthful expression gave way to a more serious expression, and she started to look just like all the other adults in the Village of Stone. I think I understand why Boy Waiting had to grow up so fast. Growing up was the only way to protect yourself from the scary things in this world. Things like shame, fear, hunger, loneliness and death.
The Captain always liked to say that there were only three inches of wooden plank separating a sea scavenger from the Sea Demon. Only this time, the Sea Demon had come not for the Captain’s boat, but for one of his children.
After Boy at Last was gone, a series of other misfortunes befell the family. Boy Waiting’s father was plagued with mishaps at sea: a torn sail, a damaged stern, an oil leak in a recently repaired motor. More often than not, his ship encountered typhoons and was forced to take refuge in Chinmen harbour. Just as the family seemed to be falling apart, Golden Phoenix announced that she was leaving the village. She had always been the hardest worker in the family, but now she had decided to join the provincial Shaoxing opera troupe. Not only was Golden Phoenix beautiful, she also had a lovely singing voice. Although she was not an official member of the village opera troupe, she could sing the ingénue roles better than any of the regular actresses, and even had her own silken costume and phoenix headdress. She liked to dress up as Lin Meimei, Meng Lijun and other famous characters, and could sing the lead role in The Journey of Eighteen Li, a classic story of two star-crossed lovers. Her parents were opposed to Golden Phoenix’s joining the opera troupe because they considered acting a disreputable profession. They imagined shiftless men, women of dubious virtue, actors chasing after actresses, actresses chasing after actors and all manner of scandalous behaviour. They feared that if their daughter joined the operatic troupe, she would fall in love with some effeminate, unreliable actor and before long, the young couple would be travelling the country, putting on shows in far-flung provinces – or even worse, they would move to the big city, never to return. The Captain said that he didn’t care how well those actors sang; none of them would ever be man enough to take over his fishing boat. But the Captain’s words fell on deaf ears. The more he argued, the more determined Golden Phoenix was to leave the village.
As long as I can remember, Golden Phoenix had always been the most beautiful girl in the Village of Stone. She was truly extraordinary. Most of the women in the village were dark and wiry, their skin coarsened by years of exposure to the wind and sun and rain. Golden Phoenix, with her pale, delicate skin and voluptuous figure, was like a rare pearl in comparison. When she walked down the street with her procession of sisters, she looked like a swan leading a crowd of ugly ducklings. She seemed to glow, as if she emanated a natural purity and grace. When she was younger, she was voted the queen of the Weaver Goddess’s Festival, held on the seventh day of the seventh moon. According to legend, it was the only day of the year when the Weaver Goddess was able to cross the skies to meet with her beloved Heavenly Herdsman. The girl chosen as queen represented the Weaver Goddess. On the eve of the festival, it was traditional for the village girls to gather seven different types of flowers and leave them outside overnight in a courtyard or on a rooftop to ‘gather the dew’. The next morning when the girls awoke, they would bathe in the fragrant dew, said to be the tears of the Weaver Goddess and her Herdsman. The dew bath was said to brighten the eyes and whiten the skin. I supposed that Golden Phoenix must have taken an awful lot of dew baths to become so beautiful.
Golden Phoenix left the village in the end, although her father tried his best to stop her. Before she left, he called on the provincial operatic troupe and begged them not to let her sign up. He also paid a visit to the bus station, the only point of exit from the village, and asked the old stationmaster not to sell Golden Phoenix a bus ticket. I don’t know whether or not the old stationmaster agreed. As I have said, he was a very powerful man. At any rate, Golden Phoenix some
how managed to leave the village, and when she left, she left for good. She ran off to join the provincial operatic troupe and was admitted easily enough, by virtue of her natural good looks and singing ability. After that, I never saw her again.
When she left, I was as sad as Boy Waiting. It felt as if I had lost an older sister, too.
Golden Phoenix’s departure changed the way I thought about the Village of Stone. It made me realise that there were gaps in the village, gaps through which people could escape. Before Golden Phoenix left, I had thought of the village as a sealed fortress, bordered only by an endless, impassable sea. Her departure meant that I finally had some hope of escape. But every time I stood at the gate of the bus station and watched the stationmaster sitting, all-powerful, behind his tiny ticket window, my hopes began to fade. I wasn’t even tall enough to reach the ticket window. Even if I were taller, I still had no money to pay for a ticket. I would just have to wait until I was more grown-up. I couldn’t wait to grow up, because it seemed to me that being a grown-up was the only way to resolve all my problems. If only I were grown-up, I could leave this place. I could leave behind that cruel carnivorous sea and the cobblestone alleyways where the mute had once walked.
13
I WAS ALWAYS hoping that one day the stationmaster would speak to me.
I was always hoping that one day, he would come out from behind his ticket office window and greet me.
But the old stationmaster seemed to have grown into the Village of Stone bus station like one of the fixtures. It was as if there were some invisible thread connecting him to the book of tickets upon his desk, a thread that bound his lower body to the seat of that ravelled rattan chair and then stretched on to the three buses parked in the yard.
The stationmaster was like a seated Buddha destined to spend every second of every minute of every hour of every day safeguarding the village bus depot.
One day, however, as I was hanging around the station gate, the stationmaster raised his head and looked at me through the dust-streaked windows of the station ticket office. Then, to my delight, he put down his blue ticket book and red stamp and came limping out towards me. He motioned for me to sit down with him on a step.
‘Little Dog, that’s your nickname, isn’t it? What’s your real name? You must have a real name, right?’
‘Coral.’
‘Coral Jiang?’
I nodded my head.
‘Well now, that’s a much prettier name than Little Dog.’
This elicited a smile from me, because I thought it was the nicest thing that anyone had ever said to me in my whole life. At last, I began to feel happy. But suddenly, my eyes filled with tears and I felt sad again. I did not want to cry in front of the stationmaster, because I didn’t want him to see how ugly I looked when I cried.
‘Your grandfather’s name is Jiang Mingfeng.’
I lowered my head and made no answer.
‘And your father’s name is Jiang Qinglin.’
I looked up at the old stationmaster in surprise, for it was a name I had never heard before.
‘It’s a shame, that.’ He sighed. I wasn’t sure on what or whose account he was sighing.
‘But you know, hard luck only makes a person stronger,’ he added.
I did not know whether the stationmaster was referring to me or to my father. Maybe he was talking about himself. After all, he was crippled in one leg. I wondered if his leg still hurt when he walked.
‘You know that, don’t you, Coral? You’ve had a hard time of it, but you’re a survivor.’
Me? A survivor?
The three buses stood silently, parked in a neat row. Why wasn’t anyone on them? Why didn’t anyone want to ride those buses? If it were up to me, I’d get on one of those buses and go somewhere far away, the farther the better.
‘Where do these buses go?’ I finally worked up the nerve to ask.
‘The other side of the mountain. The roads are so bad that they are building a tunnel, several very long tunnels in fact, to get to the other side.’
‘How long are they?’
‘Oh, very, very long. And they’re only halfway through. There are people up there blasting tunnels every day. Eventually they’ll clear away all the rocks, and it will be much easier to get to the other side.’
I raised my head. The stationmaster seemed to be talking about a place so high it was almost ethereal, some place in the infinite distance. That was the direction from which my grandmother had arrived as a girl, when she walked all the way from her village to the sea.
‘Right now all the roads are blocked with boulders that have fallen from the mountain during the blasting, so none of the buses can get through. I’m left with nothing to do. But that’s all right, because it gives me the chance to talk to you.’
I made no answer, because I was busy thinking. I was hoping that they would finish the tunnels soon, so that the buses could drive out again.
Noticing my silence, the old stationmaster became thoughtful. I got the feeling that he was trying to think of something to cheer me up.
‘Do you know why they call this place the Village of Stone?’
I pondered for a moment. ‘Because there are a lot of stones?’
‘No, because in the beginning, there weren’t any stones here at all.’
My curiosity now piqued, I tried to imagine a Village of Stone without any stones.
‘Have you ever heard the story of the Dragon King and the boy who boiled the sea?’
I shook my head.
‘Your grandmother never told you that story?’
‘My grandmother’s not from around here.’
The old stationmaster nodded his head.
‘Well, in the beginning this place wasn’t called the Village of Stone. It was called the Village of the Marsh. It stood right on the coast and there were only a few people living here. At that time, the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea was in charge of things in the village. But life was difficult, because between the typhoons and the tides, the entire village was one big marshland. Fields were inundated with water and boats were washed away in the floods. Eventually someone from the village volunteered to boil away the sea to drive out the Dragon King.’
Slowly, the old stationmaster began to warm up to his tale. ‘Back in those days, everyone said that there was gold buried beneath the Village of the Marsh. Even though they knew that living in the Village of the Marsh was dangerous, greedy people from all over moved to the village to search for buried treasure. Though the people were greedy, the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea was even greedier. He decided to flood the village so that everyone would leave and he could have the buried gold all to himself. The Dragon King spent every day, from morning until night, stirring up trouble, calling on the winds and rains and tides to drive everyone out of the village. But the villagers couldn’t stop thinking about all that buried gold, so they refused to leave.
‘Now, near the village there was a mountain called Weaver Mountain, and on top of the mountain lived the Weaver Goddess. When she saw what was happening, she decided that she had to do something to save the lives of the villagers. So she sat at her weaving for seven thousand, seven hundred and forty-nine days and nights until she had finished weaving a golden fishing net out of nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-one pounds of golden thread. She brought the net to the Village of the Marsh and said to the villagers, “I am giving you this gift of a golden fishing net. Now you must send one of your own out to sea to do battle with the Dragon King.” But the remaining villagers were money-grubbing treasure seekers only concerned with saving their own skin and all of them were too afraid to go out to sea.
‘Finally, a little boy – let’s call him the Sea Child – stepped forward and volunteered to take on the Dragon King. Now, the boy was still very young, only seven or eight years old, and he was still dressed in the split-bottomed trousers that babies wear, but he bravely thumped his chest and said to the villagers, “I’ll do it! I’ll go out to sea!” T
he villagers were shocked. The Weaver Goddess, however, simply chuckled and said, “You are truly a child of the sea. The golden fishing net is yours.” The boy took the golden fishing net and, following the instructions of the Weaver Goddess, stood beside the sea and shouted, “Bigger!” Sure enough, the minute the boy shouted this command, muscles began to bulge under his skin and he grew taller and taller, bigger and bigger, until he was transformed into an incredibly powerful giant who towered over all the villagers. The now gigantic Sea Child easily picked up the nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-one pound golden fishing net and cast it over the ocean.
‘To his surprise, the net snared one of the Dragon King’s generals, the Dog-faced Eel Demon in charge of guarding the Dragon King’s treasure chest. The Sea Child knew that among the many treasures in the Dog-faced Eel Demon’s possession was the magical Sea-Boiling Cauldron. The Sea Child shouted “Smaller!” and the golden fishing net gradually began to shrink, trapping the Dog-faced Eel Demon inside. The Eel Demon had no choice but to surrender. When the boy had taken the Eel Demon captive, he made him open the Dragon King’s Chest of One Hundred Treasures and hand over the magical Sea-Boiling Cauldron. The Sea Child set the cauldron on the beach as the Weaver Goddess had told him to do, filled it with sea water and set a blazing fire underneath. Soon the water in the cauldron was bubbling and boiling. On and on the water bubbled. A few minutes passed, and the boy saw steam begin to rise from the surface of the ocean. After another few minutes, the boy saw that the surface of the ocean had turned a fiery red. Another few minutes passed, and the boy saw the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea float to the surface of the ocean, along with his defeated army of shrimp soldiers and crab generals, who were crying for mercy after having been nearly boiled to death in that bubbling, red-hot sea. “Turn back the tide and return the land!” the boy commanded the Dragon King. “Call back the winds and quiet the waves, or I will keep boiling you! Would you have me boil you to death, Dragon King?”