The Invisible Valley

by Wei, Su; Woerner, Austin;

  In the trees up ahead he could hear his startled cattle moaning in alarm.

  That was when he found the tobacco patch.

  He was on the far side of the creek’s third loop, on a wild, gently sloping hillside where one could still make out faint paths worn through the underbrush by travelers or hill folk long ago. It was at the fork up ahead that he’d parted ways with the animals earlier that afternoon, leaving them to wander to their favorite grazing grounds. When he passed through this area yesterday he’d noticed this sunny clearing, probably an old swidden. In the hills one was always coming across such places, where hunters or travelers of years past had left their marks upon the landscape. The swidden had long gone to waste, overgrown by a profusion of shrubs that covered any trace of cultivation, but he couldn’t help noticing these clumps of broad-leafed plants growing among the weeds—they were low, full, and leafy, but the cattle hadn’t eaten them, which made him curious. He’d also caught whiffs of a familiar scent rising into the morning air, but he’d paid it no mind; just as his ears tuned out the jungle’s constant clamor, his nostrils were inured to the tides of strange and familiar scents washing over him from dawn till dusk. In the evening the grassy smells were strongest: herb-like medicinal aromas and, once in a while, the cool, cutting clarity of Nerve Perfume. Mornings, when the woods were milky with mist, he’d catch puffs of a light, sheepy odor not unlike the smell of semen. He’d imagined it was probably a mixture of dew, night air, and rotting leaves, but the similarity was uncanny, and though the thought made him queasy at first, before long he was pulling Chu aside and gleefully sharing his lewd discovery. So it hadn’t occurred to him that these aromatic plants might be anything out of the ordinary—hadn’t he seen, in every ditch, draw, and riverbed around here, scads of these shrubs with their broad, slightly furry leaves?

  No. He recognized that smell. It tugged at him, it was rich with memories.

  As soon as he caught his breath, he pegged it: This was a tobacco field. He’d smelled that aroma as a child; these were the leaves with which his father had filled his pipe. Because now, through tangles of weeds, he saw them, lying on mounds of turned soil: crisp, tan leaves tied in bundles and left to bake in the sun.

  It was then that he looked up and studied the curl of smoke hanging against the far mountainside. He’d noticed it a few days back and suspected it might be smoke from a cooking fire. But the mountain was always wreathed in vapor, and he spent the whole day wading with the cattle through seas of mist. There was little reason to single out that one white wisp clinging like a smear of salve to the mountain’s flank.

  For some reason this discovery saddened him. There had to be some connection between the tobacco field and that naked boy, and the boy couldn’t be living by himself in the hills. Lu Beiping now realized that he’d been deluding himself: Mudkettle Mountain wasn’t his alone to enjoy. In the end, there was no escape from the human race, which he found increasingly detestable.

  The munching of the cattle, which had calmed him in the past, now just put him even more on edge. The bugs racketed away, and the air was insufferably hot. He unscrewed his aluminum canteen and took a swig of musty, lukewarm water he’d boiled hastily that morning, as the creekwater couldn’t be drunk straight. He hollered to the animals and led them from the clearing, stripped off his sweaty work shirt and draped it on a clump of wild myrtle so that the beasts, smelling his scent, wouldn’t stray; then he padded furtively back into the clearing, carrying his canteen and books. Tilting his frayed straw hat to shield his eyes from the sun, he reclined into the knotty roots of a cassod tree. A vein in his temple throbbed, beating a tattoo against his taut eardrum. That bare-assed kid would be back, he’d put in a second appearance at his tobacco patch, Lu Beiping was sure of it. Some part of him wouldn’t rest till he’d gotten to the bottom of this business. If he and his cattle shared this mountain some other soul—or souls—he couldn’t ignore the fact.

  He’d guessed right. The boy hadn’t gone far. The vein in his forehead had barely quit thumping when another flight of pitter-pats set off sirens in his brain.

  Silent, Lu Beiping lay in wait at the edge of the tobacco patch, half-obscured by brush, his glasses glinting beneath the rim of his straw hat.

  Once more the child’s nude silhouette appeared among the trees, his skin gleaming like a suit of copper armor. With swaggery grace he leapt into the clearing and danced through and around the bushes, flattening weeds with his small brown feet. Now and then he stooped to pick up a bundle of tobacco leaves, his eyes flitting reflexively around the clearing.

  Before long those eyes caught sight of Lu Beiping’s trail through the brush and, following it, alighted on straw hat, canteen—

  The boy sucked in a sharp breath, leapt back, fled a few paces; halted, turned round, fixed Lu Beiping, who’d just removed his hat, with a defiant glare, and warbled shrilly:

  —Oy! You’re not Kambugger! Who are you?

  Lu Beiping knitted his brow, puzzling out the boy’s meaning through his thick accent. There was a stilted, archaic sound to his speech, like a nobleman in a singshow, and hearing it from the mouth of this swarthy wild-child, he couldn’t help chuckling.

  The boy grinned.

  At that, all the hostility in the air evaporated.

  (That kid, Lu Beiping said to Tsung years later—it was as if our meeting was arranged by Fate. We were friends from practically the first moment we laid eyes on each other. It felt like we were acting out a script.)

  He stood up, patted himself off, walked over to the boy. The boy narrowed his eyes, and Lu Beiping realized that he was squinting against the glare off of his white undershirt. The boy repeated, as if passing a verdict:

  —You’re not Kambugger. Who are you? I’m not feared of you.

  He pronounced his vowels like a northerner, or a Hakka. But his features were like those of the Hainan hill folk: deep, dark eye sockets; broad face; broad, flat nose.

  Lu Beiping laughed.

  —You might not be scared, but you sure gave me a fright.

  The boy stood like a drawn bow, black eyes glinting, as if he were about to pounce on Lu Beiping or turn and bound off into the trees.

  Lu Beiping saw that the boy’s face was covered with sweat. He smiled and offered him the canteen.

  —Care for some water? How old are you? What’s your name?

  The boy, still eyeing him warily, gathered up the bundles of tobacco leaves and swaggered boldly after him into the shade of the cassod tree. Lu Beiping threw a calculatedly casual glance over the boy, taking in the features of his dark colt-like body. Every protruding feature—nose, collarbones, nipples, the little bat dangling from his crotch—shone as if it had been lacquered.

  The two sat beneath the tree and fell to talking, the boy fanning himself with Lu Beiping’s hat, as if they had known each other for years.

  His name was Smudge. He wasn’t sure how old he was, stuck out a pair of grubby hands to count—seven, maybe. He was talkative, spoke shrilly in an odd, unplaceable brogue that sounded at times like Cantonese, at times like Hakka, and at other times like Jiangxi or country Hunan speech. Kambugger, Lu Beiping deduced, was their name for his predecessor, Gaffer Kam. The Gaffer, it turned out, had planted this patch of tobacco plants in secret while he’d been herdsman, and sold its produce to Smudge’s people. They hadn’t known the job had switched hands, and when the patch went wild and they finally ran out of leaf, they’d sent Smudge down in search of the Gaffer, only to find this four-eyed stranger in his place. It was Smudge whom Lu Beiping had heard scampering through the trees—when Smudge realized “Kambugger” had been replaced, he’d dashed back up the mountain to alert his folks, then steeled himself to return and harvest the unclaimed leaf.

  —I wasn’t thieving, he explained, shaking the bundle. My pa says, we can take what’s Kambugger’s then give him back money later. We’re not thieves, Pa says.
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  —Where does your pa live?

  Smudged gestured in the direction of the smoke.

  —Where do your folks come from, Smudge? Are you from around here?

  —Pa and us, we’re driftfolk. Do you wit what’s meant by that, driftfolk?

  Ah, of course. How could he not know about the driftfolk? In those days the two most backbreaking jobs on the island were construction—baking bricks, framing buildings, mortaring and plastering—and woodsman’s work, harvesting timber in the mountains and hauling it out to the Agrecorps camps. The driftfolk, itinerant laborers from the mainland who roamed the hills, were inevitably called upon for such work, which was thankless but required certain skill. They were homeless, unpapered, “invisible,” and often paid in grain. Usually they’d pitch camp in the mountains not far from a village or base camp, then drift off when their work was done, leaving empty shacks. When, though, had a band of driftfolk stolen onto Mudkettle Mountain, and why were they camped so deep in the jungle?

  He knew a child couldn’t give him clear answers to these questions, so he didn’t ask. But Smudge had plenty of questions for him.

  —I see you got double eyes, sir. You from Canton?

  He nodded, fingering his glasses reflexively. He often forgot they existed.

  —Thought so. Canton folk ever speak pretty.

  He bobbed his head with grave authority, noodling with Lu Beiping’s canteen strap.

  —Why are you here with the kine? What happened to Kambugger?

  Lu Beiping pursed his lips, studying Smudge, trying to think of a good way to answer this question. In Smudge’s black pupils he saw reflected in duplicate the uneasy expression on his own face.

  —Because of the smell of my feet.

  Smudge nodded.

  —I wit, yep, I wit . . .

  His fingers paused.

  —What’s meant by that?

  Lu Beiping laughed.

  —Come on, you must “wit” smelly feet.

  He tugged off a boot. Smudge skipped away, holding his nose and shrieking with laughter.

  —I wit, I wit! Oy oy oy, I wit!

  He chortled, doubling over, swaying back, his whole body wriggling like a small brown eel, pinching his nose all the while. Lu Beiping laughed too, kicking waves of the odor in Smudge’s direction.

  In the surrounding forest the cattle, disturbed by their laughter, began a call and response of concerned lows.

  —Oy, that’s smelly alright! Oy, oy, oy . . .

  Smudge’s laughter diminished to titters. When they were done Lu Beiping put on his boot again and asked:

  —So who lives up there with you, besides your pa?

  Smudge danced back another few paces.

  —I won’t tell!

  He charged over, grabbed the bundles of tobacco leaves, and flew out of the clearing on diminutive hooves.

  —Pa says tell nobody!

  The boy’s silhouette, then his voice, melted away into the trees. Above the forest arched the dark curve of the mountain. There was no sound except for the tinny ring of dying echoes. Lu Beiping felt like he’d woken from a dream.

  The cattle munched grass, the sound soothing as water. The sight of the green hills was like a cool, refreshing breeze.

  Lu Beiping sat in dumb silence. Pa says tell nobody. Smudge’s odd cadences lingered in his ear.

  The curl of smoke was thicker now, and tinted pink. It must be supper time up there, he thought. Supper time for me too. It was time to drive the cattle home, get a fire going, prepare for the night.

  He dug out his harmonica and played his animals a slow, brooding serenade.

  Chapter 3

  “Pa”

  That night, Lu Beiping couldn’t sleep. Because of Smudge. Or rather, because of the eerie premonitions that Smudge’s appearance had aroused in him. Was this another of those chance encounters that would change everything, like when he’d picked up that slip of paper lying at the edge of the forest on that fateful, crimson-skied evening less than a month ago? It made him uneasy to think that the quiet order into which he’d reined his life might soon be thrown to the winds—to the winds of this volatile wilderness, where anything could happen, and where whatever happened, he’d have to face it alone.

  There was a cold breeze that night. He’d put too much wet wood on the fire, and smoke had filled the hut, making him hack and wheeze. He got up and prodded the embers with his machete, causing sparks to leap and light to shudder on the ceiling. He listened to the ruminating cattle, to the wind soughing in the thatch. He’d built the hut too close to the water. Where water goes, wind follows, the hands always said. Every year when the typhoons came, the wind would snake along the rivers, scything the bluffs on either side clean of trees. Autumn was typhoon season. When autumn came the wind would have its way with this hut, for sure. But at least it was sturdier now that the foreman’s team had reinforced the frame. They’d swapped out Lu Beiping’s randomly cut branches for real beams, dug a shallow drainage ditch around the hut and filled it with lime to keep out vermin. Out here, everything attracted bugs. Building houses in Hainan required special attention to wood quality; if a structure wasn’t built from solid heartwood, the insects would chew it up in no time, honeycomb the beams like the intricately carved ivory tusks he’d seen once at a city museum. On the first few nights the bugs had kept up a constant drone in the rafters, and when he stuck his finger into the wood, dust had rained down. The sound had soothed him, lulled him to sleep. Now his new beams had banished the insects, traded their gnawing for the jungle’s cacophonous silence.

  He couldn’t sleep. The creek gurgled below him, abrading his ears. He felt like he was sleeping in a hanging coffin, like he’d read about in books—those mysterious caskets clinging to cliffs over hundred-foot chasms.

  Nope, it was no use. He just couldn’t sleep.

  For some reason he thought of the Gaffer—“Kambugger,” Smudge called him. Lu Beiping chuckled. So, the tobacco patch was that geezer’s little secret. After working the Gaffer’s job for close to a month, he’d started to wonder why the old man bore him such a grudge. It turned out that being herdsman wasn’t such a carefree existence after all, what with the rain, the cold, the constant battering of the elements. And the Gaffer had always vehemently refused to camp in the hills during winter—he said he’d seen spirits, heard wispwomen cackling in the trees after rain, had even, one night, glimpsed the great serpent itself, the Snakeweird. He’d demanded a gun from the unit, said the smell of sulfur scared off haunts. But even then he’d refused to spend nights in the jungle. Why, then, after Lu Beiping had willingly shouldered his thankless assignment, did the Gaffer start spreading nasty rumors about him behind his back? Lu Beiping smiled; it all made sense now. The truth was, the Gaffer had far overestimated his powers of inference. Private Crop Cultivation was a crime policed only erratically in those days—the Weeds of Capitalism were too many to be pulled, and whether such clandestine farming got punished depended on who noticed and took an interest. But Lu Beiping was notorious among the re-eds as a political “laggie.” Didn’t the Gaffer know that? An independent spirit, Fong had coyly called him. Yes, he’d always be a misfit, out of step with the rest of humanity. At this thought, Lu Beiping felt a strange pang of grief. A loser like you, Chu had said with a grin, makes a perfect husband for a ghost. (The little bastard.) Didn’t the Gaffer know that he had nothing to fear from Lu Beiping?

  He rolled over in bed, and his thoughts drifted to Han. His ghost spouse had become very concrete to him now. Even now, in the wavering firelight, he could picture her face: eyes twinkling with merriment, a lock of hair hanging over one eye, as she giggled over Lu Beiping’s frantic quest for a “bathroom.” Poor thing, she really was crossed. He mulled over Choi’s cryptic words. If Han really had suffered some wrong, as Choi hinted, then his ghost wife’s spirit was indeed an unquiet one. He
wasn’t afraid that she’d come looking for him, nursing some old grievance; if she came looking for anybody, it would be the person who wronged her. But what if, out of the jungle’s cavernous darkness, a vengeful phantom—like the ghost in the The Black Urn, the opera that his percussionist father so adored, in which he said you could discern in the patterns of drumbeats the different footsteps of the living and the dead—came gliding toward him right now, crooning its desperate song, accosting him like the poor pot-seller in the story? Ere I open my lips, my tears flow down; hark, hark, old man, hear my tale . . . His father had loved to sing those lines, lingering melodramatically on the high notes, and boasted that he could do the pot-seller’s voice in three different vocal styles. What if Han’s ghost came to him singing like that—good god!—long sleeves rippling, hastening through the jungle in search of her lonely cowherd . . . Would he shout out a brave Ho! Who goes there? Or would he turn tail and run? (All this Lu Beiping wondered in half sleep, with a half smile, half-frightened and half-amused.) He thought of the Snakeweird, the serpent-demon the locals claimed could swallow a whole village, thought of the “wispwomen” the Gaffer said could be heard cackling and wailing in wild banana groves after rain. They said that the Snakeweird, like Confucius’s leocore, appeared only once a millennium, but while the leocore brought bounty to the land, the Snakeweird brought ruin. What were wispwomen? Hadn’t he read about them somewhere? Yes, in that old poem by Qu Yuan—they were shapeshifting spirits who lived in the mountains, whose songs lured travelers off their paths. Spirits were afraid of the smell of sulfur; snakes too. The Gaffer had said that. But on Midsummer’s Day you used something else to ward off spirits. What was it? Orpiment. Bloodstone. He didn’t have any sulfur or bloodstone, but he did have a pair of abominable-smelling boots. Ha! Were ghosts afraid of smelly feet?

  So Lu Beiping mused, turning fitfully on his bamboo cot, unaware that it had begun to grow light outside and the mist from the creek had risen up the slope and was pouring into his hut. Through the fog of sleep he heard the cattle snorting and moaning in the corral, hollered, Peter! Judas! Quiet down! then drifted off again. In a dream, he saw a figure walk into his hut, fiddle with his clay jug and frypan, then sit down. Was it Han? he wondered half-consciously. Had she climbed out of his water jug, like the Snail Maiden, so that she could clean his hut and cook him breakfast before he woke? But the movement ceased. Apparently his supernatural helper had gotten lazy. He rolled over, murmuring; then he heard, seemingly just inches from his ear, a quiet, tittering laugh. He came awake with a start.