The Invisible Valley

by Wei, Su; Woerner, Austin;

  They sat by the fireside, eating rice cakes, talking. Wow, Lu Beiping said, these are great. And saved me a meal’s worth of firewood too. Jade said, Come up and eat with us from now on, then. You can save yourself a meal’s worth of firewood every day. No, Lu Beiping said, I can’t do that. I eat out of a magistrate’s hand, remember? Well, Jade said, I guess I can’t compete with the magistrates. Lu Beiping laughed and said: You wouldn’t say that if you’d tasted the magistrates’ cooking!

  They ate, laughed, shot the breeze. The evening wore on. Throughout all this Lu Beiping tried to maintain a measure of distance, a neutral attitude; but time and again he found his feelings slipping away from him, sidling off in the same direction without his permission.

  Smudge finally figured out how to turn on the radio, and after a burr of static the dulcet voice of Radio Moscow’s Mandarin-speaking female announcer filled the gully. If this had been heard down at camp there’d have been hell to pay. Yet, though tuning in to Enemy Broadcasts had in fact become one of Lu Beiping’s favorite pastimes in the jungle, now, in the presence of Jade and Smudge, all these concerns seemed unspeakably remote, pointless, irrelevant, and he let Radio Moscow play on. A murky-sounding choral arrangement of “Su Wu the Lonely Shepherd” (Thirteen years on the icebound plains, so far, so far a-waaay from hoooome . . .) played for a minute or two, then Smudge turned the dial again, cutting to the warbling gobbledygook of a European or American station.

  Irrelevant. Yes, completely irrelevant. Jade gazed into the flames, deaf to the sounds of the radio. Smudge twiddled the knob, eliciting a fit of shrieks and squawks, then got bored and turned his attentions to the on-off switch of Lu Beiping’s flashlight.

  These people live in a completely different world from me, Lu Beiping thought. He was impossibly distant from her. This distance brought a simultaneous sense of novelty and security, and as they talked he became more and more convinced that the shame he felt when she saw him “supping sun,” the initial sense of propriety he’d tried so hard to maintain in Jade’s presence, was a silly thing, of no account. Did he try to maintain a sense of propriety while bantering with Choi and the other female workers down at camp? Just go with it—yes, just go with it. This was a good thing; there was no need to remain on his guard, to affect reserve just for the sake of reserve.

  As she sat by the fire, talking with Four Eyes, Jade experienced a similar rearrangement of her emotions. Not once since Horn died had she passed an evening in such quiet, attentive conversation. When she looked up at him Lu Beiping recognized the same placid look she’d worn on their first meeting, that expression of deep, imperturbable serenity flashing from time to time from behind her eyes.

  —Kambugger came up the mountain a few days ago, Jade said. When he collected his leaf money he asked after you. He was anxious to know whether you . . . knew—she grinned—whether you had “dirt” on him.

  Lu Beiping laughed. He’d been expecting this.

  —So, did you tell him? No? You didn’t? Well, you know what, I don’t care. What’s it to me whether he earns a few bucks selling tobacco? Is that my business? Damn it, this country is getting stranger and stranger. People are so paranoid now that they’ll practically burn down their own houses in order to destroy every scrap of evidence that could be used against them. Everybody takes it for granted that other people care enough about what they do to want to dig up dirt on them! It’s terrifying!

  Lu Beiping was rather surprised to hear this impassioned speech issue from his own mouth. He would never have expressed these sentiments in the company of the other re-eds, not even Chu. Yet even as he spoke these words he felt strangely distant from the reality they described. Jade, though, appeared quite intrigued by them, and gazed at him even more intently, as if expecting him to go on.

  —So, Lu Beiping said, changing the subject: I’ve been meaning to ask you, why do you call him Kambugger?

  —Kambugger is a mother-plugger! Smudge interjected shrilly. He does nasty things!

  That kid’s sharp as a tack, Lu Beiping thought. Even while he’s absorbed in his own games he doesn’t miss one word the grown-ups are saying.

  —Really? he said, looking questioningly at Jade. So . . . he ventured, what kind of nasty things does the Gaffer do?

  Jade guffawed.

  —Smudge’ll tell you.

  —He diddles the kine! Smudge crowed. When he was kinekeeper, he diddled a mama cow! I saw him chasing her all over the mountain, and Uncle Stump saw him too!

  Lu Beiping stared in disbelief. Really? a voice clamored in his brain. No way! Holy crap! Jade giggled through her fingers, then picked up the story:

  —When he couldn’t get inside he’d fly into a rage and beat the cows bloody. Stump caught him at it, and not just once. He said: Get a woman, Kam! What kind of man lets it out on a dumb cow? A man with grit enough to come alone into the hills ought to find himself a real woman to plow. Hell, I’ll find you one! That sent Kam running. You should’ve seen the look on his face, Stump said!

  She fell into another fit of laughter, then went on:

  —That’s a right nasty thing, don’t you think? So on account of that, Kambugger’s convinced we’ve got some kind of “dirt” on him, gives us free smoke-leaf, and comes up to the hollow all the time to make nice. He’s got eyes for me, but he’d never dare. When I tease him he gets all wincey. Hmph! You call that a man?

  —Kambugger’s afeared of my Uncle Stump! Smudge boasted. He’s afeared of me too!

  The flames leapt and crackled. Lu Beiping said nothing, studying this strange mother-son pair in the firelight. These were a man’s most personal secrets, the very darkest corners of his life, and here these two sat gabbing away cheerfully, tossing the horrible topic around as if it were a plaything. They really do live in a different country than I do, Lu Beiping thought, and for a moment he pitied the crabbed, cringing old man. The Gaffer’s constant digging up and hoarding of dirt had twisted him into something not quite human. But he and the Gaffer had more in common with each other than with these two; they were countrymen, compatriots. In their world, human affection—love, lust, sex—was a liability. It was dirt.

  For a short while nobody spoke. Outside the night sky was a rich, deep blue, and the moonlight thinned the forest shadows. Only on rare evenings, when the moon rose above the treetops and its pale light filtered down through the branches, did the sky turn this particular cobalt color, and the whole jungle seemed suffused with a dim luminescence. The insects fell quiet, and the water grew loud. It was getting late. They should probably get going, Lu Beiping thought.

  Smudge, who had been busy fooling around with Lu Beiping’s harmonica, accidentally summoned a note.

  —It sings! he cried, squealing with amazement. Thrusting the harmonica into Lu Beiping’s lap, he commanded him: Play it, Stinkyfoot! Make it sing!

  Called back from his reverie, Lu Beiping again became aware of Jade’s ivory toes curled just two feet away from him in the firelight, and felt her big, far-gazing eyes weighing upon him.

  —Make it sing! Please!

  He glanced at Jade, picked up the harmonica and blew a few chords, then set it aside, not in the mood to play.

  —Next time, Smudge.

  —No! Play it! Play it now! Please!

  With a weary smile Lu Beiping lifted the harmonica to his lips, played a warm-up arpeggio. But halfway through the first phrase of “Red River Valley” he stopped.

  —Sorry, Smudge, I really can’t play tonight. I’ll play for you next time, I swear, or I’m a dirty son of a dog.

  Jade, sensing the change in the atmosphere, stood up.

  —Smudge, time to go.

  She turned to Lu Beiping.

  —My clothes ought to be dry now. Just a minute, got to go change out of my government garb.

  While Lu Beiping tried to mollify the pouting Smudge, Jade turned and in the blink of an eye
had swapped his “magistrate’s cloth” for her shorts and flowered blouse. When she came back into the firelight her braids were once again neatly arranged at her ears. She looked clean and fresh, the way the cliffs did after rain, when the patterns and textures of the rock became suddenly vivid. Strange, he thought—this woman, for all her wild and, at times, uncouth ways, possessed a lofty, even noble kind of beauty.

  —Oh, Jade said, glancing down. My slippers. I left them by the creek. She lifted one of the bare feet upon which Lu Beiping’s eyes had by now lingered several times; said to Smudge, Wait here; and went quickly out the door. Lu Beiping took the flashlight and hurried after her.

  It was pitch black outside. The moon had passed its zenith and been swallowed again by the mountains, and the forest was dark as a cave. Smudge seized the flashlight from Lu Beiping and, shrieking with laughter, whirled its beam around like a searchlight, momentarily illuminating pale wisps of mist gliding among the black trunks of the trees. Lu Beiping led the way down to the bank. But in the darkness they couldn’t find the place where he’d bathed that evening, and Jade lost her footing on the stones, almost slipping into the water.

  Lu Beiping reached out a hand and grabbed her.

  For the second time that day, Jade took Lu Beiping’s hand by the water’s edge. When her unsuspecting hand was caught up in the boy’s thick-knuckled grip, Jade’s fingertips brushed the hair on the back of his hand again, and she shivered.

  Lu Beiping also felt a twinge of electricity. The treetops swam. He snatched the flashlight back from Smudge and, pulling Jade behind him, combed the ground beneath the banana trees. Behind one of the trees, among the leaves of a calla-lily plant, the flashlight’s probing glow at last alighted on a pair of cast-off plastic sandals—this, then, was the hiding place from which Jade and Smudge had watched him “supping sun.”

  The ring of light hovered briefly over her feet as she put on her sandals. As she leaned on his arm, still gripping his hand, Lu Beiping felt her fingers press twice against the inside of his palm.

  His mind reeled. He’d never come so close to a female body, not even to Fong’s, and never in darkness. From the first moment he laid eyes on Jade he had imagined her to be a kind of wild gypsy woman, fierce and forthright, undaunted by the wilderness and the dark. But something about this squeeze of her fingers betrayed a docile, even childlike dependence.

  Even after she put on her sandals she still held his hand tightly. As he led her back up to the hut he heard the cattle, startled by their approach, lowing in the corral.

  Finally she released his hand. Lu Beiping handed her the basket. She took it, started to walk away, then turned, looked at Lu Beiping, and said slowly and deliberately:

  —Four Eyes, I want it to be good between us.

  —Oy! Smudge yelped nearby. I want it to be good between us too!

  Again the silhouettes of the trees blurred and swam. To hide his own alarm Lu Beiping threw the flashlight beam onto Smudge’s face. Smudge tossed his head back and bellowed into the night:

  —BULL DEVIL! I WANT IT TO BE GOOD BETWEEN US!—TOOOOO!

  In the flashlight’s glare Smudge made an impish face.

  (Years later, Lu Beiping would tell Tsung: When he turned off the flashlight and Jade and Smudge vanished back into the dark forest, he remembered, with a wry grin, the Chairman’s Immortal Words.)

  Revolution is inevitable.

  Chapter 5

  The Haunted Grove

  He bounded like a leopard through the jungle, driving the cattle before him in panicked disarray. A hot ferment seethed on the summer air, turning Mudkettle Mountain into a massive wine cellar. Every leaf, frond, fruit, and flower exhaled a heady, intoxicating scent; even the roar of the cicadas in the treetops seemed to ooze an alcoholic fragrance. Lu Beiping romped beneath the boiling sun, his face a mask of roasted flesh, like a pig’s face grinning from a banquet table. Gone was the nameless dread of his first nights in the jungle, gone the emptiness and the angst—he’d banished them to Java, flung them to Timbuktu. Just as the light, the sounds, the quality of the air all seemed subtly changed as if in sympathy with a subtle change within him, the world outside the mountains seemed also to be undergoing a mysterious transformation. A scorched odor drifted on the humid air. Flocks of birds alighted hectically in the trees, then exploded like shrapnel back into the sky. At certain times of day the waters of Mudclaw Creek grew inexplicably turbid, and in the evening after work he saw white-bellied loaches lolling in the shallows below his hut. An occasional cross-breeze carried hints of a far-off noise, a buzzing, multilayered hubbub like overlapping radio waves, which seemed to radiate from the folds of the mountain itself. Sometimes it grew louder, sometimes faded into the distance, and always it ceased before he could make out what it was. Bleached clouds hung motionless in a crystal blue sky. At every turn the mountain slouched belligerently in his vision. The cattle, it seemed, were the first to sense the change; they were edgy and quick-tempered, with no appetite for grass, and spent the days frisking from slope to slope and getting into fights with one another so that Lu Beiping, their helpless master, spun after them like a leaf on an erratic wind. The sun beat down, seething over him, turning his body into a hunk of glowing charcoal, and soon his “magistrates’ cloth” was a suit of salt-crusted armor, hardened by wave after wave of drying sweat.

  And so he thought: Might as well try “supping sun.”

  He peeled off his thick denim work clothes, rolled them into tubes and tied them around his waist, then removed his wet undershirt and turbaned it on his head, tying it with a twist in front like an old Shaanxi farmer. He still brandished his long-handled machete, still set the valleys echoing with cries of ABRAHAM! and RASTIGNAC!, and yet, in the sweat sizzling on his skin, in the wind beating against his chest, he sensed the miraculous new relationship into which he and this mountain had entered. The nature of this bond was still a mystery to him. But when he bathed in the creek that evening, offering his bare body to the effulgent sunset, he heard—could actually, distinctly hear—the sound of the sweat droplets that sheeted off his shoulders clattering on the water’s surface below. At the same time, wafting off his long-confined skin, he noticed a scent that he’d never smelled before—the odor of sunlight. Light air, just like Kingfisher said. It smelled petulant, and sort of blue-black, like gunmetal; wild and lonesome, like the songs of Yangtze river boatmen; brash and imperious, like the hoofbeats of ironshod horses carrying weapons to a war on a distant frontier. He splashed water on his chest, his soul soaring. The smell carried him back to his childhood, back to the smile on his mother’s face as she hung sheets out to dry in the first rays of post-monsoon sun; back to the touch of his grandmother’s wispy hair on his cheek as she told him bedtime stories about flying cats and talking flowers. He felt as if he’d knocked open the door of time. As he drove his cattle deeper into the hills, from the first finger of Mudclaw Creek to the second, the third, the fourth, he had the strange sensation that he was traveling into time itself, into the past, into his own interior, into a dreamlike, unknown dimension. Listening to the babbling creek, he felt a swooning bliss, like the hiss of a white-hot ingot plunged into cold water. He thought: If I keep going, if I go all the way to the end, what will I find?

  A surprise visit from Chu and his friends revealed to him how much he’d changed.

  Just after sunset Chu arrived with a posse of re-eds, bringing, in addition to peals of impudent laughter, two pounds of raw pork from the day’s ration supplement. Apparently, unbeknownst to Lu Beiping, the unit was mobilizing for a massive pan-battalion Agricultural Reclamation Operation. There’d been Orders From the Top, and Chu and his pals were preparing for deployment; the meat was a special morale-boosting measure, distributed at the pre-campaign Pledge Rally.

  —Soon as I heard there’d be a ration supp, Chu explained, I thought to myself, we can’t forget about our poor cowherd up in the mountains. But gues
s what? Turns out I wasn’t the only one thinking of you. After I’d picked up your share I discovered that the foreman had already set aside a pound of top-notch jowl meat for you. Everybody’s supposed to get one pound of meat, but you get two, thanks to my misunderstanding. And to your . . . ahem . . . special status!

  Laughter filled the hut. Cigar drawled:

  —Lu, you’ve missed out on a lot of scuttlebutt, squirreled away up in here in the mountains. Chu’s too modest to tell you—he got promoted to platoon leader! Lieutenant first class! Hell, he could pull rank on any of us.

  —Lieutenant! Lieutenant! Man the cannons! someone yelled, and everyone groaned at the predictable war-movie quote.

  Watching their faces in the firelight, Lu Beiping felt strangely remote, as if he were gazing at his old friends from the far side of a primordial ice river. The guys yammered on, dishing out sundry pieces of camp gossip: how so-and-so had been busted for cheating during the Champion Tapper Competition; how this Canton re-ed had been given so-many demerits for picking a fight with that Swatow re-ed; how this year’s Personnel Call for Trainees and Students allotted so-many slots to Battalion Three . . . Their voices slid back and forth across his eardrums, trying futilely to pry their way into his brain. Orders From the Top, Pledge Rally, Champion Tapper Competition . . . those words were like dim memories from an antique past, bearing whiffs of dust and mildew whenever they issued from Chu’s mouth. All this talk of platoons, battalions, and campaigns seemed to Lu Beiping a kind of arcane cant, murky, mysterious, and utterly unrelated to his present life. He stood off to one side, arms crossed, eyes wandering around the hut, while his friends’ voices babbled over his ears like a brook in the dry season. From time to time he gave a chuckle or a grunt, like an idle traveler loitering on the bank, tossing absentminded pebbles into indifferent eddies.