by Xiaolu Guo
The breakwater extends all the way to the foot of the mountain. On the mountaintop, incense smoke continues to waft from the Temple of the Sea Goddess, although these days her supplicants are few and far between. Her statue seems to have fallen into decrepitude, the face blackened with age, as if it has been many years since the villagers last bothered to add a new coat of gold leaf. I don’t know why, but her face looks different somehow, not at all the kind and merciful visage I recall.
Walking along the beach one day, I am puzzled to notice that all the fishing boats seem to be returning home empty-handed, the piles of silvery fish I remember from my childhood conspicuously absent from their decks. When I enquire about the whereabouts of the catch, the fishermen tell me that the boats no longer bring their catch ashore. Instead, they take it directly to the seafood cold processing plant to be frozen and shipped.
Down by the wharf, a large placard hung from the door of the maritime broadcasting station and a loudspeaker mounted on the roof provide the villagers with the most up-to-date weather forecasts and storm warnings. The village fishermen, it seems, are no longer entirely at the mercy of the elements. The wharf is much busier than I remember it. Fleets of fishing boats now ply the coast, their whistles reverberating through my eardrums and echoing down the narrow alleyways of the village.
On the far side of the mountain, I find my grandparents’ headstones, side by side. The graves are overgrown by clumps of wild grasses and the topsoil has eroded, weathered away by the ocean winds. Both plots are so choked with weeds that they appear to have grown together, merged at last into a single grave. I am unsure whether I ought to pull up the weeds or leave them in their natural state. The graves are surrounded by wild strawberries in bloom, berries so ripe that they have turned almost black, as if they have been ripening here for thousands of years. As I stand beside the graves, I realise that my grandparents always were and always will be inseparable. In life they occupied separate floors, one above the other, but they always shared the same front door. In death they occupy adjacent graves, but they still share the very same patch of earth. Their headstones are surrounded by rows of newly whitewashed grave markers that have expanded to cover the entire hillside.
The mute was buried here as well, in the same cemetery as my grandparents. I have no idea which headstone belongs to him, because I never knew his real name. None of the villagers ever called him anything but ‘the mute’. As I stand in that graveyard, I feel a sudden shiver of fear at the thought of having trodden on his grave without even realising it. I ponder my feelings about the mute and wonder whether he deserves the same things that any dead sinner is entitled to, the same pity and compassion. If I have known misfortune in my life, it is fair to say that he knew even greater misfortune. Now, twenty years later, I still have the power to speak, to write my story, to voice the ocean of hatred I feel towards him. But the mute lost his language and his life. He will lie buried in this cemetery for all eternity, powerless to speak, as silent in death as he was during his wretched life. If there really is an afterlife, I hope that the mute will be reincarnated as a person with the power of speech, so that he can know how it feels to speak, to scream and to cry.
I feel a profound grief, as if my heart is filled with sorrow. It is a sorrow that emanates from these graves, these graves marked with names I know and names I will never know. I grieve for the dead. I have grown up, moved away from the village and become an adult woman. But none of the occupants of this cemetery will ever know this. I want to offer something to each one of them, some sort of memorial, no matter how frightening or hateful they were while alive. All that is left of their lives is this yellow earth, this ancient soil.
I stand in the cemetery on the far side of the mountain and weep. As the harsh ocean winds buffet my skin, I feel the tears streaming down my face, falling to the parched, dry earth below.
On my last day in the village, I face in the direction of the mountain cemetery, kneel down and touch my head to the ground. There, buried in the shadow of the Temple of the Sea Goddess, on that hillside looking out to sea, are the souls who will live on for ever in my heart.
Coda
I would like to relate one final story, an incident that happened on our last day in the Village of Stone.
It was late afternoon, and Red and I were playing Frisbee on a beach strewn with endless piles of fishing nets. The sea and sky seemed boundless. Wave upon wave rolled up onto the beach, and the seabirds, every bit as carefree as I remembered, flitted back and forth through the foaming whitecaps. Red played happily along the shore, tossing the Frisbee first to me, then out to sea, then wading into the water to retrieve it while I looked on from drier ground. Suddenly I saw the Frisbee spinning through the air, being carried far out to sea by the breeze. It hovered for a moment before plunging into the water, lit gold by the setting sun. Red dived into the ocean and swam out to retrieve his beloved Frisbee, but he could not find it anywhere. He must have searched for the better part of half an hour, but all he could see was crashing waves and sea spray.
I stood upon the rocks at the shore and helped him search, but I could see nothing.
I had a feeling that Red’s prized Frisbee would not be coming back.
As for the Frisbee itself, its history and vital statistics are as follows: regulation size, professional class disc especially designed for tournament use. White in colour, with a picture of a green banyan tree on the top, weighing one hundred and forty grams and measuring twenty-six centimetres in diameter. It has been with Red for longer than I have; six years to be exact. It has won forty-three Chinese Frisbee tournaments and two international friendship tournaments. It ended its brilliant career with a burial at sea in the Village of Stone.
If the sea could swallow up Red’s prized Frisbee so easily, I wondered, could it also swallow up my Village of Stone?
I began to fear rising sea levels, the melting of the polar ice caps and the expansion of the Arctic Ocean. I was afraid that some day those frigid waters would engulf the Village of Stone and wash away all proof of my memory, all evidence of the place I came from. It makes no difference how far we travel or where we go, but it is important to be perfectly clear about where we come from.
It was almost midnight by the time Red and I struggled out of Beijing’s main train station with our luggage, the salt scent of sea air still clinging to our skin and clothing. The sound of the station clock striking midnight echoed up and down Changan Boulevard, the city’s main thoroughfare. This was our city, Beijing. Tiananmen Square stretched to the east, the Fragrant Hills to the west. We managed to catch the very last bus, the bus that would bring us back to our home in the suburbs west of the city. From the windows of our bus, speeding through the darkened city, the streetlamps looked like an endless string of tiny fireworks. Looming up ahead, I saw the familiar old twenty-five-storey block of flats. The enormous high-rise that I had once hated so vehemently now seemed welcome and familiar, like a hated friend, or a beloved enemy. As it receded from view and drew back into the depths of the night, its windows still gave off a faint, warm glow. I wondered about the people living in those rooms behind their tiny windows. Behind which windows were there people still awake, people talking, people waiting for lovers not yet returned? I felt as if I knew their secrets, as if I could feel their joys and their sorrows.
I rested my head on Red’s shoulder. When the bus shuddered, I felt the baby move inside my belly, kicking, stretching, reaching out with tiny hands. With the pain came a moment of anxiety, pre-natal jitters or something else. The feeling was bittersweet, both gratifying and sorrowful.
The road home is a long one. As I walk this road, I recall my grandmother’s words: ‘Everyone has a past life, a future life and a present life.’ If that is true, I feel as if my present life has only just begun.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
He lived on the ground floor of a twenty-five-storey building in Beijing. Thanks to Rao Hui for showing me the basement experience, and love.
When I contacted the man who became my agent, Toby Eady, the good woman of China, Xinran, came to test me in Häagen-Dazs, Leicester Square. She had a bunch of flowers with her but not for me. Since then I remind myself again and again that it is still a long journey to carry Chinese fiction to the west. Thanks to both of them for their support, as my agent and friend.
Thanks to Cindy Carter for her lively translation. If she hadn’t worked on my book, she would have had more time to perfect her own poetry.
And thanks to Rebecca Carter for her creative editing.
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