Through the mist he made out a small figure sitting in the middle of the hut, a plastic rain tarp draped over its head.
He sat up in bed. It was Smudge. The tarp slid to the floor, showering water droplets. The boy was naked like before, his unkempt hair sodden with dew. He was sitting bent over, engrossed in Lu Beiping’s harmonica.
Hearing Lu Beiping stirring, Smudge looked up and grinned at him. Lu Beiping noticed that his teeth were almost black.
—You’re a lazybones too. My pa says I’m a lazybones. Where’ve you been? I’ve been all over the mountain, looking for you.
—How long have you been here, Smudge?
—Can’t read hours, Smudge said, pointing at the alarm clock on Lu Beiping’s nightstand. I feared I’d rouse you, so I waited.
Something about the expression on Smudge’s face struck Lu Beiping as extremely worldly for a seven-year-old.
—What do you want, Smudge?
Smudge opened his left fist. In his palm lay several wet, crumpled bills.
—Pa’d be pleased if you give these to Kambugger. For the leaf we took.
—I can’t, said Lu Beiping, now fully awake. Tell your pa your folks need to give it back themselves.
He reached out and closed Smudge’s fingers over the bills.
—Why?
—Money’s complicated.
Smudge nodded.
—I wit.
He was silent for a moment, then said:
—Pa’d be pleased if you come visit, come jolly with us awhile.
Lu Beiping laughed at this quaint turn of phrase.
—I’m sorry, Smudge, I really don’t have time to jolly. I’ve got to take care of the cattle.
—Liar. That’s not so. Kambugger’d ever come jolly with us. Even when we didn’t ask. And he nay ever slept nights on the mountain.
Passing the rain tarp to his left hand, Smudge reached over and tugged at Lu Beiping’s arm.
—Come along, he said cajolingly. When I told them about you and your smelly feet they near about laughed their supper bowls off the table, said you should come jolly with us. Won’t you come along? Please?
—No! Smudge, listen to me—Lu Beiping peeled the boy’s fingers off of his arm—I can’t go. I overslept. The animals are hungry. I want you to run home now and give that money back to your pa. I’m afraid you’ll lose it, jollying around down here.
Smudge opened his fist again, considered the bills gravely, looked back at Lu Beiping, then edged reluctantly toward the door. Turning and meeting Lu Beiping’s gaze, he said:
—Liar.
As he said this, the boy wore the same sensitive, sorrowful expression as before, a look that made him seem old beyond his years.
Lu Beiping threw on his work clothes and followed Smudge out the door, saying nothing in response to this accusation. The warm, pungent odor of sun-baked excrement filled the air. The cattle were frisking in the corral and lowing impatiently. He gave Smudge’s rump a farewell slap and watched as the boy made his way across the creek, hopping from one round stone to another in the swirling mist. On the far side Smudge lingered for a moment, pouting. Lu Beiping waved at him, then turned his back to the boy as he unwound the thick wire that held shut the corral gate. The animals surged forward, accompanied by a gust of odorous air, a pleasant mixture of manure and the morning smell of jungle grass.
As he pulled on his legendary rubber boots he heard a high-pitched voice calling mischievously from across the creek:
—Cow got loose! Run, smellyfeet, catch her!
That little joker. I must have offended him, Lu Beiping thought.
Lu Beiping would never be able to say whether his first meeting with Smudge’s “Pa” came about by chance, or whether he’d willed it subconsciously. He’d known that, sooner or later, he’d cross paths with the people who dwelt beneath that wisp of smoke—after meeting Smudge, the encounter was inevitable. And yet, for some reason, he kept putting it off. He felt an inexplicable dread at the thought of facing this band of strangers alone in the wilderness. What sort of people were they? And how many? Whenever a certain restlessness rose in him, a tantalizing mixture of curiosity and temptation, he had to force it down by deliberate effort before he could be at ease. He needed some time to adjust.
Three days went by, during which Smudge didn’t show himself. The humid summer air, aside from being occasionally pulled taut by a scuffle between bulls, hung deathly still. The sky was an oppressive gray, and drizzled endlessly. Lu Beiping found that he couldn’t stop thinking about Smudge. The cattle, too, seemed to be on edge; they grazed in an aimless, restless manner, riffling haphazardly through one patch of forest and then galumping off to another. The herdsman’s bottom was afforded no comfortable perch, and his mind found no refuge in his books.
The area where Lu Beiping had set up his bivouac was a hilly patch of forestland enclosed by the third finger of Mudclaw Creek, where the stream flowed out toward the valley bottom. On the third day he decided to ford the creek and venture higher into the hills, toward the fourth finger, where he might discover fresh pastures. Even before the morning mist cleared his hunch was rewarded. This was a great spot; the cattle were grazing with gusto. He knew that the sun set earlier in these steep ravines, so when he woke from a nap after an afternoon spent reclining against a fallen tree reading Turgenev, his first thought was to drive the cattle back across the creek before darkness fell. Hollering their outlandish names, hurling rocks and dirt clods as he’d once flung discuses in track and field, he flushed the animals out of the leafy crannies into which they’d strayed. Southern yellows always kept in herds, never wandered far. As he rounded them up, he counted off by fives and tens. Seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-seven . . . one missing, as usual. That would be Judas, the gaunt-faced straggler.
—Judas! he bellowed. You lousy bastard! Quit playing hide and seek!
He thrashed through a prickly wall of shad cane, tugged aside several thick curtains of bloodvine, shouted again:
—Judas! You—
He fell silent. On a solitary, moss-covered log in the middle of a clearing sat a woman, her face framed by two thick braids, a cigarette burning between her fingers, eyes fixed on Lu Beiping.
Beyond her he heard the bright whisper of the creek. He had emerged above the creek’s fourth finger, where an open, sunny meadow rolled gently down to the water.
Silhouetted against the dark curve of the mountain, the woman’s form radiated a deep, placid composure.
(Years later, telling his story to Tsung, Lu Beiping would return again and again to this scene.
He said: I felt like Fate was sending me a coded message.
Something about this woman struck me immediately, Lu Beiping told Tsung. Catching Fong’s eye, or holding her hand when we were out of others’ sight, I never felt this deep tremor of apprehension. In my books I’d read about solemn coming-of-age ceremonies performed by young men of Western religions: My own coming-of-age ceremony, odd as it might sound, was a gaze exchanged with a woman in the wilds of Mudkettle Mountain.)
She sat in a slash of shade cast by the afternoon sun, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette while arranging something in a wicker basket on her knees. Immediately he noted the way she wore her hair: two fat braids tied with purple yarn and looped once above the ears, a hairstyle seen on almost no woman in those days. Even stranger, she wore a pair of bracelets, one of silver and the other of a dark red wood he would later learn was called snakesbane—an aromatic, supposedly snake-repellant wood. From her ears dangled, shockingly, a pair of earrings, which he’d only seen on feudal-society women in movies; hers were short jingly bangles inlaid with mica or some other glittery substance. Her skin was ruddy but smooth, her features broad. He couldn’t tell at first glance how old she was, but her gaze had a steady, mature woman’s power.
Lu Beiping smiled and gave a sligh
t bow from the waist, a wordless salutation. This was a gesture with which city kids of a certain class were accustomed to greeting guests or older relatives. Later, she would mock him for it.
He walked toward her. She put out her cigarette, slowly set aside her basket, and stood up.
Lu Beiping felt his own feet grow clumsy.
—You must be . . . she began, then she stopped. Finding no better words, she said: You must be the four-eyed cowherder with the smelly feet.
He grinned, and she smiled back. The uncomfortable moment was gone.
(If I were Napoleon, Lu Beiping said to Tsung, my feet might have changed the course of history. If every wild, unbelievable, ecstatic, harrowing thing that followed could be traced back to that meeting—should I thank my smelly feet?)
—Strong men stink, she said with a chuckle. It’s the strength that smells. Eh? Or is it just cowshit?
He flexed a black-booted ankle, not sure how to respond to this. At last he said:
—I’m looking for a lost bull. An old spotted bull. Have you—
—Smudge is sick, the woman said, cutting him off. It’s the fits. I’m picking medicine.
—The fits? Smudge has malaria?
Lu Beiping was alarmed.
—What kind of medicine are you picking?
—Viperwort, she said, lifting a handful of leaves from the basket. You ought to come see him. He’s been lying in bed two days, shivering and giggling about your smelly feet.
Lu Beiping noticed that her voice had no trace of Smudge’s brogue.
Smudge sick, and with malaria no less. There was no getting out of this one. Did she really think that a funny-named herb was going to save Smudge from that terrifying disease?
The woman gazed at him unflinchingly. He noticed that her eyes had a far-gazing quality, a look of serene, unbroken attention always fixed on something in her immediate surroundings. Later on, this gaze of hers would follow him frequently.
He tried to discipline his own eyes, which kept straying without his permission. She wore a white flowered blouse with no sleeves or collar, and above the round neckline the faint beginning of a valley showed. Below her breasts were two dark half-moons of sweat, and through the thin, damp fabric he could see the texture of her skin, the flesh full and plump, the pores like fine, dark grains.
—I can’t go, he said, feeling a little flustered. I’ve got to drive the animals back down to the corral. I’ll go see him tomorrow. I have medicine.
—Bring the cattle then. Autumn can help you herd them back tonight.
Who was Autumn? Strangers were popping out of thin air. Just how many people lived up there? Well, he’d soon find out. For some reason he felt liberated: If he was to go, let it be with a thundering herd of cattle, at the heels of this strange wild-woman; let him march up boldly into the riddle of that mountain valley. The cattle would give him courage.
On the far side of the creek rose a steep bluff ablaze with orange myrtle. The sun was low in the sky, and the forest teemed with shadows. Now he heard the faint sound of a dog barking. He couldn’t tell where it came from. It didn’t sound close by, but it wasn’t far off either. Just then Judas, displaying unusual timeliness, appeared in his field of vision, nibbling his way with haughty steps out of a vine-tangled ditch. Lu Beiping swore and ran after him, heard the woman shout from behind:
—Round up your beasts and follow me!
Basket in hand, she waded into the water, her plastic sandals treading the stones on the shallow creek bottom. She pointed up the creek.
—This way.
The path didn’t continue on the other side of the creek. Later Lu Beiping would learn that most hunters, woodcutters, and travelers who ventured into the forests of the Mudkettle stopped here at the creek’s fourth loop, where this precipitous slope created the illusion of a dead end. Few noticed that the creek itself formed a narrow, burbling passageway. The water wasn’t deep, and as Lu Beiping stepped into it the woman was already wading upstream, entering a shadowy tunnel formed by flanking bluffs and overarching branches. The cattle debarked tumultuously into the creek and sloshed with pleasure up the cool waterway. Sandwiched between their jostling bodies, Lu Beiping watched the woman’s silhouette far ahead winking in and out of visibility in the light reflected off the water’s surface. He now noticed her loose knee-length shorts, her dark calves scissoring in the sunlight, slender but firm looking, and the curves of her hips distinctly outlined against the bright water.
The thought that leapt into his brain then was absurd. But still, he could hear his own blood gurgling like the creek.
Rhrhrhrhrhrawf! Rhawfrrrrrawf-rhawf-RHAWF-rrrrrrrr-RHAWF!
When he emerged he was greeted simultaneously by Smudge bowling toward him, wrapped in a threadbare cotton blanket, and by the vicious snarling of a dog. (The cattle, rumbling up out of the tunnel of branches, must have frightened the scraggly mutt the driftfolk kept, provoking this gut-wrenching tantrum of howls.) Strange, Lu Beiping thought—why hadn’t he heard the dog before? At night, in his hut on the far side of the mountain, he’d heard everything from the booming calls of baboons to the wails of hyenas to the weird bickering sounds made by mating snakes. The barking of a dog should have been obvious.
—Wildweed! Hush! Cut it out!
This was the woman, raising her voice over the dog’s invective. Lu Beiping was thoroughly rattled by this unexpected aural assault, and Smudge capering around him and tugging at his arms disoriented him even more. Even after the whole herd had assembled on the bank, he still hadn’t caught sight of the dog, whose endless, lunatic barking seemed an ominous welcome to this unfamiliar turf. Twice Smudge tried to shout something in his ear, but the animal drowned him out.
—Wildweed, enough!
A deep voice rang out like a thunderclap, and finally the dog fell silent. Echoes hummed in the ensuing quiet. The gurgling of the creek grew loud again.
That voice must be Smudge’s pa, Lu Beiping thought. Shame on me for thinking those things.
The man, like the dog, remained invisible.
The woman took charge of the cattle and herded them onto a nearby slope. In the sudden silence, Lu Beiping came to his senses and took a moment to survey the hollow into which they’d emerged.
Here Mudclaw Creek came to an end, trailing off into a necklace of shallow, pebble-bottomed pools. Later Lu Beiping would learn that the actual source of the creek was higher up, behind the next shoulder of the mountain, a deep spring-fed pond that the driftfolk called the Sea’s Eye and said bubbled up from the ocean itself. The hollow was a half bowl cut into the mountainside, hidden from sight and sheltered from wind, and the bluff that Lu Beiping had seen rising above the creek was one of its walls, seen from the back. Its inside slopes were crowded with trees whose gnarled figures looked like they’d been carved by the passage of centuries. The place was like a scene from a Ming novel: an exile’s hiding place, a mountain sanctuary. (Later, he and Autumn would make a discovery in the mountains above the hollow that would suggest that this wasn’t too far from the truth.) Two thatch-roof lodges, one large and one small, had been built at catty-corners near the water, and by the door of the larger one, clearly the sleeping quarters, leaned a jumble of saws, ropes, and bamboo shoulder poles. The smaller lodge was open at one end, and out of it poked a stone cooking hearth from which a tendril of smoke rose. The ground between the huts was littered with planks and boards, and piles of logs sat soaking in a pool clearly deepened for this purpose. As he walked along the pebbly bank a ragtag flock of chickens swarmed around him, and he noticed one tall, craggy-faced rooster who seemed to be their leader, with a sure strut and a calm, imperious gaze.
At first he saw no one else in the hollow. Smudge tugged him a few paces toward the lodges, then released him abruptly and dashed away. It was then that Lu Beiping saw beneath one of the bluffs, sitting at the foot of a lychee tree partially d
isfigured by lightning, a pair of children, slightly younger than Smudge; a big, scrawny dog tied up with a cane-twine rope; and two men, perched opposite one another on a wooden frame, trading pulls on a long two-handled saw.
The shadow of the bluff deepened the shade cast by the tree, and it took Lu Beiping a moment to make out the men’s figures. When he did, he was quietly shocked. Both men, like the kids, were naked. The one seated lower on the frame, his back to Lu Beiping, wore a pair of briefs, but the swarthy, bald man facing him, higher up, astraddle the frame, wore not one thread of clothing, and as he hauled on the saw the bundle that hung between his thighs swung impudently. But the charcoal hue of his skin made his body’s contours seem somehow gentle, and this lessened the awkwardness of the full-on view.
Kids and men alike gazed at Lu Beiping with varying mixtures of curiosity and distrust.
Lu Beiping smiled and gave a slight bow, as he’d done when he met the woman. He heard the dog breathing heavily.
Must have been the bald guy who shouted just now, Lu Beiping thought. I’ll bet he let the dog bark for a while on purpose, just to intimidate me.
The woman, who’d disappeared a moment before, now reappeared at the door of the smaller lodge and yelled:
—Time to call it a day, boys! Show some respect, get down off that thing and say hello to our guest.
The men laid aside the saw and dismounted from the structure. Lu Beiping saw that the log they’d been sawing was nailed with big metal staples to the wood-cutting frame. Though they wore no clothes, they’d sweated so hard that the log and the frame both glistened with moisture.
The Invisible Valley Page 6