No choice, then, but to remain on his own small patch of turf, hole up in his lonely mountain redoubt. His hut and cattle corral between the second and third bends of the creek were, he did his best to imagine, the sole safe haven offered him by Fate; they were a quarantine, a no-man’s land, a demilitarized zone between two bristling absurdities.
For several days he drove the cattle back and forth like trapped houseflies between the narrow limits of his domain, avoiding like the plague any open hillside from which he might glimpse the white wisp of smoke hanging against the mountainside; avoiding also any south-facing slope where he might hear the tolling of the work bell down in the valley. The cattle were antsy; he was antsy; even his books offered no escape.
And then, one evening, Fate brought him to the water’s edge.
No, not to some mythical riverbank where fairies and wispwomen cavorted—just to the narrow pebble beach down by the creek, a minute’s walk from his hut through a stand of wild banana trees, where he cooked and bathed every evening after work. Here, where the water was deep and long grasses trailed in the eddies, where smooth stones cobbled the creek bottom and the fat fans of the banana trees formed a natural screen, he liked to beguile the early evening hours, eating and reading, humming along to the tunes on his shortwave radio while he scrubbed off the sweat of the day’s labors, till darkness fell and his hut beckoned. Only on rainy days would he cook in the dim cave of his hut, and this was a much less pleasurable activity. Usually he’d build a fire on the bank and put on water to boil before taking his bath; but today he was so sweaty that he didn’t bother filling the pot, just peeled off his work clothes straightaway and tossed them into the stream, followed by his illustrious rubber boots. Then he leaned down, dabbled his fingers in the shallows to test the temperature, took off his glasses and perched them on a rock, splashed some water on his ears and chest, took off his briefs, and waded into the creek till the water came up to his waist.
A daub of rosy light lingered between the hills. A light breeze blew, and the water felt less chilly than normal. He glanced down at his naked silhouette reflected among the dark shapes of the banana trees. Life in the countryside had changed his body, added some bulk to his etiolated bookworm physique. He had actual shoulder muscles now, and the lines of his buttocks and thighs formed two taut curves. It was in hopes of growing muscles like that these that he and his seventh grade pals had once flocked to the school gym to hoist barbells and swing sandbags, fired by early, whispered discussions of human biology. Now those muscles seemed to Lu Beiping to be the single, unasked-for reward of his lonely backwoods adolescence. He hadn’t shaved in a month, and a bristly fisherman’s beard now clung to his cheeks and chin. He’d always been hairy, probably thanks to the mixing of his father’s northern genes with his mother’s southern ones. Back at camp, when he washed by the well, he’d always been embarrassed to reveal his hirsute body to the public eye and suffer the inevitable jeers of “hairy occidental.” But now, gazing at the luxuriant black tangles that sprouted on his lower belly and between his thighs, he felt a melancholy sense of wasted potential. The breeze blew, gentle and cool. Once again, on this still-young evening, he could hear his own blood gurgling like the creekwater.
The water was alkaline, and it left his skin feeling slippery. Still he didn’t forget to wade back to the bank for his cake of Trolley Car soap—one piece every two months, doled out at the co-op—and attend to the sweatiest places on his body. In those days scented bathroom soap was unheard of, and even coarse lye soaps like Trolley Car were considered quite decadent. Reflected among the dark shapes of the banana trees, his body looked exceedingly pale, even after a month of daily beatings from the sun. Smelly feet notwithstanding, he was quite meticulous about personal hygiene. He had his dad to thank for his iconoclastic streak, but it was to his mother, a nurse, that he owed his strict sense of discipline and his healthy eating habits, which she’d drilled into him from an early age. It was these very habits that had allowed him to adapt so easily to life as a jungle-dwelling hermit; from day one, he’d run a tight personal ship. What was his mother doing now? he wondered. Silent, long-suffering, always the pillar of their household, now suffering through the absence of her son and two daughters . . . He pictured her sitting in the living room, watching dust motes fall through the slanting evening light while his father, bitter and bereft of music, tapped out a bored rhythm on a cardboard box.
The creek chimed and chattered. As he scrubbed himself, turning these things over in his mind, he felt a spot of warmth growing on his back and had the uneasy sensation that he was being watched. He turned, saw nothing but green walls of foliage and the fat trunks of the banana trees standing like a row of silent, buxom women. Damn it, stop overreacting, he thought, and waded deeper into the stream. Then he heard, very distinctly, a quiet giggle, the sound of laughter just barely contained.
Before he could figure out where the giggle had come from, an explosion of impish cackles ricocheted down the slope, followed by Smudge’s barreling brown body.
—We found you! We found you! Where have you been, Stinkyfoot?
Lu Beiping turned and saw Jade walk out grinning from behind the banana trees. She caught his gaze and gave a loud chuckle.
—I’ve never seen a man wash with such care, Four Eyes. That’s a nice, trim body you’ve got. We’ve been watching you for a while now, we didn’t want to disturb you.
For a moment Lu Beiping said nothing, just stood frozen to the spot, mortified to have been caught out in the open with no clothes on. Meanwhile Smudge was thrashing toward him through the water, a small, bare-bottomed cyclone of glee.
—Water fight, water fight! Let’s have a water fight, Four Eyes!
A volley of spray slapped him in the face. Lu Beiping remembered that he’d left his glasses on the bank.
—Smudge! he protested. Quit it, okay? But it was no use; Smudge kept shrieking and splashing water at him, caught up in raptures of silliness.
—Hoy, Pa! Come down here! Come water fight! Come on!
(That kid was my nemesis, or my guardian angel—I’m not sure which, Lu Beiping joked to Tsung. So, what was I supposed to do? Back at camp, when we boys went down to the well to bathe wearing nothing but our briefs, the girls would go scurrying away with squeals of embarrassment. Was I, a grown man, alone in the wilderness, going to take flight at the sight of a grinning woman? And with Smudge capering around me like some fey river spirit, insisting that I join in his horseplay, refusing to take no for an answer—could I reasonably, even in my state of undress, just turn tail and run?)
But of course, this was all an after-the-fact rationalization. In the moment there was nothing to it but this: In order to preserve his own masculine dignity, or perhaps guided by some mysterious intuition of whose workings his conscious mind was ignorant, Lu Beiping made one of the most important, and strangest, decisions of his life.
Okay, he thought. Just go with it.
Laughing, he plunged into the rosy glow of the sunset, infected by Smudge’s merriment, and joined in the fun.
—Take that, Stinkyfoot! Smudge cried, beating water back at him. You’ve been hiding from us, haven’t you? Take that!
Smudge pranced around him, lashing water, kicking up iridescent blooms of mist, seeming to unfold on all sides of him like a water lotus, his soprano cries echoing throughout the twilit valley. All at once the melancholy that had been weighing on Lu Beiping’s heart lifted, and, as if heaving it all off his chest at once, he bellowed:
—Take THAT, Smudge! And THAT! And THAT!
Mustering his old schoolyard hell-raising abilities, he beat salvo upon salvo of water at Smudge, from the right, from the left, whipping hissing arcs of water at the boy, while Smudge, wriggling like a brown mud-eel, flopped in and out of the waves of spray. At last Smudge gasped through a mouthful of water:
—Pa! Help! Come down here, quick!
Be
fore the words were out of his mouth Jade had hopped into the creek and was advancing on Lu Beiping, splashing water at him with both hands while shielding Smudge with her body. But even together they were no match for Lu Beiping; just a few one-handed salvos sent her reeling and spluttering. She beat water at him with all her might, but it seemed as if the spray were magnetically repelled by his body, pummeling back pitilessly into her eyes, nose, and mouth.
—Enough, Smudge! she cried, choking and gasping. Stop it, you’ll make yourself sick again!
By now her flower-patterned blouse was soaked through. When Lu Beiping and Smudge, panting, let their arms fall slack by their sides and silence descended abruptly over the gully, Lu Beiping realized that the thin fabric of Jade’s blouse had become nearly transparent, and he was now standing face-to-face with a naked woman. Their eyes met reflexively; her gaze faltered, and he looked away.
—Whew! You sure are strong, she said after a pause, her chest heaving from exertion.
—He’s a demon! Smudge crowed. He’s the Bull Devil!
Laughing, Lu Beiping waded back to the bank. As he climbed, dripping, out of the water, he saw that it was nearly dark, the last rays of twilight glowing on the undersides of the tree branches. A breeze blew, cold against his skin. He sucked in a sharp breath, drew Smudge, still protesting, up onto the bank, and held out a hand for Jade. She looked up at him for a moment, then put her hand in his.
He hoisted her up onto the bank. At the squeeze of her soft, big-boned fingers, a shiver ran through him.
—It’s cold, she said. He felt her fingertips brush the hair on the back of his hand.
—Quick, let’s get back to the hut.
He gathered up his clothes, glasses, and radio, took Smudge under his arm and, sheltering him from the wind, hurried up the slope. Jade picked up a basket she’d left on the bank and followed, trembling from the cold.
It was strange the way the air temperature fluctuated in the hills. A little while ago it had been swelteringly hot, but now that the sun had set, it was cold as snowmelt.
The fire crackled, warming them and loosening their tongues.
—Sorry it’s such a mess in here, Lu Beiping said as he squatted to tend the fire after tugging on a pair of shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. I never have any visitors, so I never clean.
Smudge, butt-naked as always, was clambering around on Lu Beiping’s cot and fiddling with his numerous playthings: alarm clock, radio, flashlight, harmonica.
Jade stood in the doorway, her head tilted to one side, wringing out her hair and studying Lu Beiping with a faint look of amusement in her eyes. The two thick braids that she usually wore coiled above her ears now spilled down over her shoulders, gleaming purplish in the light, and drops of water rolled down her skin.
Lu Beiping felt her eyes following his busy movements. He poured water from the jug into the frypan, hung it over the fire to boil, then turned and tossed her a spare set of work clothes.
—Here, put these on. You’ll catch cold.
—Dole clothes, Jade said, sniffing them mischievously: Do they smell too? Guess I’ll wear the magistrates’ cloth while my own dry.
Locals often referred to the government-supported mainlanders, both the military and the Agrecorps, as “dolers,” people who “wore the magistrates’ cloth.” Lu Beiping chuckled.
—Okay, glad to hear you’re okay with magistrates’ cloth for now.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she went to the far end of the hut and, briskly and without any trace of self-consciousness, stripped off her wet blouse and shorts. This was the first time he’d ever seen a woman naked, and his head snapped away immediately at the sight. Yet he was conscious of how every detail had printed itself on the backs of his eyelids. Her skin had looked paler than usual in the firelight and appeared to be suffused with a faint glow. Her breasts were big and solid-looking, their twin curves etched starkly against the shadows. And that dark patch on her lower abdomen, the sight of which made his insides lurch: Really? he thought. Women have it too? Once, back in the city, when the Revolution was going full tilt, he and several of his male classmates had stolen into the boarded-up school library and raided the stacks in search of those albums of “pornographic Western artwork” that the students all had been warned against yet secretly longed to see. When the pages fell open to those startling naked figures—Eve, Venus, the Greek goddesses—the hypnotic triangles between their thighs had all been glossy and bare.
This careless discovery lent fuel to the perilous feeling that had been growing inside him. He steered his reluctant body over to the cot and forced himself to play with Smudge while a hot, prickling sensation crept up the insides of his thighs.
Jade, looking dry and refreshed, returned to the fireside, where Lu Beiping had tented three sticks for her to hang her wet clothes on. The first words out of her mouth as she reached to pick up the basket that she’d left by the door nearly made Lu Beiping faint from surprise.
—Four Eyes, she said, arranging her shorts and blouse carefully over the sticks: Why do you wear clothes? I’m like to die of heatstroke, watching you go about buttoned to the chin in this June heat. And you even tie up your wrists and ankles too. What makes you want to hide such a fine body beneath so much clothing?
—A fine body? Lu Beiping said with an uneasy laugh and a little, unconscious flex of his arms: Well, I should ask you the opposite question. Why shouldn’t I wear clothes? I mean, with Kingfisher, Stump, and everybody up there walking around naked as the day they were born, isn’t it a bit . . .
Awkward, he wanted to say, but didn’t.
. . . unusual? And unhygienic too. Aren’t you afraid that Smudge and the little guys are going to get bitten by mosquitos and get sick?
—Unhygienic? Jade said, pausing to consider this alien word, perhaps encountered once or twice before in a commune literacy class. Then she said disdainfully: Wearing clothes, that’s what you call hygienic? You dolers get your cloth tickets every year, you eat out of a magistrate’s hand. But we driftfolk, where are we going to go for our . . . hygienic? My pups grow like bush cane in July, give them a set of clothes and a month later they’ll be busting the seams.
She reached over and flicked off some straw that clung to her blouse, then continued:
—That day after you ran off so quick, me and the men got to talking about your clothes. You see, Stump and Kingfisher and them are so tanned the flitleeches can’t get their teeth into them. Kingfisher says, man’s a child of the sun, if he hides from the sun he’ll lose his brightness, his light air, and that means shadowy things like bugs and snakes’ll glom on to him. Going around in high summer with every inch of your body covered will turn you into a big sack of shadow, they said, it’ll draw haunts and tempt ruin. So I said, you just wait, before long I’ll get him to take off his clothes and sup on some sun. They even bet me I couldn’t! But what do you know, today me and Smudge saw you supping sun, just as easy as that!
She leaned back, chortling heartily, sticking out her crossed bare feet in the process. Two rows of plump ivory toes intruded at the lower edge of Lu Beiping’s vision, catching like burrs in his eyes. Still chuckling, Jade pulled Smudge into her lap and said:
—Pity this rascal couldn’t keep from laughing!
Supping sun. She spoke so frankly, so matter-of-factly, about what had been for him a moment of awkwardness more intense than any he’d ever experienced. Imagining his own naked body being drunk in so studiously by a pair of strange female eyes, and recalling that spot of heat growing on his back, Lu Beiping fell silent. Light air, she called it. Could it be that Kingfisher’s superstitious mumbo-jumbo really had some truth to it?
Jade collected herself, then got right to the point, pulling the cloth off the basket to reveal a layer of snow-white rice cakes. Lu Beiping’s eyes lit up. As a kid he’d loved to eat those soft, sweet cakes, which in Cantones
e were called “virtue cakes” for some reason he’d never learned. Speaking quietly now, Jade said:
—Four Eyes, you know, bringing that medicine saved Smudge’s life. I thought for sure I’d weep another Midsummer. Kingfisher insisted we give you a proper thanks, cook you a batch of virtue cakes to show you how grateful we are. But when I came down the mountain with the first batch I couldn’t find hide nor hair of you. I cooked a second batch, same thing. This here’s the third batch. Kingfish said, third time’s the charm, we’re going to thank that boy if means sitting by his hut till the sun falls out of the sky. Someone saves your child’s life, shines some light on you, you’d better thank him or you’re asking for trouble. Even if—
—I hid all day long in those trees, waiting for you! Smudge cut in. I saw the kine, and I savvied you wouldn’t be far.
—Quick, Jade said, let’s eat these while they’re fresh. I made them just this afternoon. Smudge, Four Eyes saved your life, isn’t there something you ought to do for him?
—No! Smudge yelped, wriggling in protest: He’s a demon! He near about drowned me! I won’t!
—Smudge, Jade said reproachfully, Don’t butt heads with me, now. Show Four Eyes some respect, or this’ll be the last time you get to jolly with him.
Before the words were out of her mouth Smudge had flopped to one knee in front of Four Eyes. Lu Beiping, to whom the traditional forms of etiquette were utterly foreign, tugged at Smudge’s arm while spluttering anxiously:
—Wait, Smudge! Don’t! I—
Jade watched him with a look of barely concealed hilarity, holding one hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.
—Four Eyes, she said, Why don’t you bow back, like you did with me? She mimicked the slight bend at the waist with which Lu Beiping had first greeted her, then flew into a paroxysm of laughter.
Hahahahaha-HAH-hahahaha-HAH-hahahahahahaha . . . !
In the jungle, on summer nights, the brightest sound isn’t the wind, the rustling of leaves, or the calls of wild animals. It’s the insects. The moment darkness falls it’s as if a floodgate has been pulled open, and a tide of strange noises inundates the forest: googook . . . googook . . . chiggacheep, chiggacheep . . . GYAK! gyak GYAK! gyak GYAK! gyak . . . There are noises like infants suckling, like the buzzing of thin silk strings, like moaning dogs trapped inside crock pots, like throbbing drumbeats, like rolling thunder . . . And yet there are no sad sounds. No; on summer nights, there isn’t a single melancholy sound to be heard in the jungle. Even those sounds that ought to be terrifying are terrifying in a lurid, clownish sort of way, like the costumed devils in a southern Ghostmas parade, or a masquerade ball out of a European novel . . .
The Invisible Valley Page 9