The Invisible Valley

by Wei, Su; Woerner, Austin;

  —How about Autumn? Where’s he?

  —Gone tree-scouting. These days they split up the work, Autumn finds the timber, Stump and Kingfish fell it and hew it.

  Jade gave Lu Beiping a sharp look.

  —Care to talk with me for just a minute? You look like you’re about to bust a nerve, you’re so eager to get out of here.

  —I can’t stay. I’ve got to let the cattle out. It’s late.

  He found his undershirt, put it on, and strode out the door. Jade hurried after him.

  —Come back for supper tonight!

  —I can’t!

  Without looking back Lu Beiping walked briskly across the pebble beach that bordered the string of pools. Kingfisher, perched on the woodcutting frame beneath the lychee tree, yelled something at him, but he was too far away to hear clearly. Lu Beiping acknowledged him with a wave and waded into the creek. As he entered the shady tunnel of branches he heard Jade, standing on the bank, call out teasingly:

  —Four Eyes, you homesick for dole food? Eat with us from now on!

  It was cool in the tunnel. The lingering after-odor of meat and yam beer was now replaced by the familiar morning smell of the jungle, that odd, fishy smell that reminded him of semen. If you sniffed hard enough at this time of day you could detect even the body odors of long-dead dinosaurs—but no matter how hard he tried to refocus his attention, that semeny odor remained strong in his nostrils, a mocking reminder of recent developments. Crazy, he thought. Jade’s cooking has gone to my head. Laughing to himself, he reflected that those two pounds of half-turned pork had become his passport into the hidden nation of the hollow-dwellers. From now on, he suspected, he would be doing a lot more dining “off the registers.”

  The thought made him smile, but at the same time it set off a deep current of melancholy within him.

  The water was chilly. In the rush to leave his hut last night he’d forgotten to put on his boots and had hiked up to the hollow wearing only his “commando” sandals. He fancied himself a fairly rugged forester by now, but he’d never gotten used to walking barefoot in the jungle. The creek was shallow but icy cold, and after wading a short distance his feet began to go numb. It was with good reason that the grove hands had warned him against “jungle chills.” Drink more yammings, Kingfisher had said to him last night as he pushed another cup of yam beer on him: Liquor’s hot-natured. I can tell you’ve got a heavy shadow lying over you. You ought to drink more, son. Suddenly it struck Lu Beiping that he hadn’t vomited last night; he should have, after all that meat and beer. Maybe Jade and Kingfisher’s “light air” had driven off the shadows, kept him from getting sick. He laughed again. As he turned these things over in his mind, he kept returning to the same image: Jade curled in his arms, like a sleeping wildcat. What a thought! A four-eyed city boy, embracing a leopard-woman. Was a leopard a creature of shadow? he wondered. Surely it was. He pictured himself striding through the jungle with a were-leopard at his side, a herd of cattle at his back, a ghost husband commanding a host of horned demons. Ha! The Devil himself would give him a wide berth.

  Oh, what a bunch of nonsense. A few months in the jungle and his brain was already full to bursting with light air and shadow air, haunts and weirds. What if—the thought occurred to him suddenly—what if the spirit world were a place anyone could visit, if one went far enough? In a way, Han’s ghost was leading him into another world. He shuddered. Han, it always came back to Han: vexing, omnipresent, impalpable Han. By now, just thinking about her made him queasy. The clearer her face grew in his imagination, the more he saw through it to something sinister lurking behind, like looking too long at a piece of carrion and noticing maggots crawling beneath the skin. No, he wouldn’t reach out and touch that rotting flesh; he’d do his best to steer clear of it, though it might be too late. For it now seemed that Han dogged his every step, that her spirit had seeped through every inch of his being. There was no way to be alone any more. He remembered yesterday’s encounter in the abandoned grove, thought of the Gaffer, the “balegrass,” the unmarked grave . . . No, it didn’t bear thinking on.

  Then, as he stared off into the light that spangled the water’s surface where the creek curved away into the trees, another thought occurred to him. Hadn’t Han, his imaginary “ghost wife,” brought him a real woman, Jade, summoned her out of the hazy otherworld of the jungle? From Han to Jade, from fiction to fact, from haunted rubber grove to palm-shaded creek bank: Hadn’t one led naturally to the other? God, enough of these bizarre fantasies. Shaking his head, he brushed aside a fat fern that trailed over the creek and saw, on the steep slope opposite him, a swath of myrtle flowers flaming orange in the mist. In autumn those myrtle bushes, whose flowers the locals called “maidengolds,” bore clusters of purplish-black berries whose mouthpuckering sweetness was like sunlight on the tongue, and whose juices left one’s lips purple for hours afterward. Maidengolds liked to grow on sun-facing slopes; maybe they, like liquor, were “hot-natured.” Damn it! Here he was, spinning Kingfisheresque sophistries again. He gave a loud, macabre laugh, and as his laughter echoed in the valley the orange flowers in the shadowy undergrowth winked at him through the mist.

  At that, his melancholy finally began to lift.

  As he emerged into the sunlight, Lu Beiping noticed with a start that there was a human figure standing high above him on the slope. He squinted through the mist and saw that it was Autumn. He must have heard me laugh just now, Lu Beiping thought. From down here Autumn’s thin silhouette looked like a scrap of black cloth caught on the crown of the bluff. As Autumn picked his way downward through the bushes, Lu Beiping noticed that he had a short-handled machete hanging at his side. Autumn, who had seen Lu Beiping first, raised a hand in greeting, then turned and scrabbled backward down the slope on his hands and knees. When he reached the bottom, he bounded up onto a low overhang, leapt clean over the water, and landed on the opposite bank, where he swayed for a second, windmilling his arms, before succumbing to his own momentum and toppling head first into the grass.

  Lu Beiping rushed up the slope to give him a hand, but Autumn was already on his feet, striding toward Lu Beiping with a grin on his face. He was wet from head to toe, like he’d just been dragged out of a lake. Dewdrops glistened on his bare upper body, and his roughspun shorts were soaked.

  —Wow, Lu Beiping said, unable to hide his admiration: You’re a real acrobat!

  —Can’t not be, Autumn said, wiping sweat from his brow: Living the way we do. And today I’ve got twice the usual vim, thanks to your meat.

  —My meat? Lu Beiping asked with a chuckle. What was so magical about my meat? You all made it out to be some kind of gift from the gods.

  —It sure was! Didn’t you see Kingfisher?

  Autumn clasped his hands and aped Kingfisher’s bow and his muttered prayer. Then he straightened quickly and said in a serious voice:

  —No, I shouldn’t. Kingfisher always says, honor the spirits, but don’t get too friendly with them.

  Lu Beiping noticed that Autumn’s manner became more lively whenever they were alone together. Up in the hollow he always wore an absent expression; or maybe his dark features were just hard to read. Now his face, which was quite well-proportioned, had a sunny, open aspect.

  —Is meat really that hard to come by up here? Lu Beiping asked. I see wild pigs and rabbit deer running all over the place. Don’t you have a gun?

  —We can’t do that. If we want meat, we have to buy it at the Whitesands market when we haul our lumber down to the purchasing station. But it’s a long way, and half the time the meat goes bad on the road.

  Autumn licked his lips as if still savoring last night’s meal.

  —Kingfisher says, Tam-chow hill men can chase hogs and shoot deer all they want. But not us. We’re outsiders. Felling trees is enough hurt on the land. If we killed too, that’d bring ruin on us.

  —Good god, how’d you end
up with all these rules?

  —Never mind that. Listen, friend—Autumn changed the subject, pointing excitedly at the mountain ridge that loomed over them—when Kingfisher gets word of this, he’ll drink a dozen cups to celebrate! On the far side of that slope, there are mountain valleys that nobody around here dares set foot in. They’re steep and viney and swampy, and folks say they’re haunted too, full of spooks and treeweirds. These past few days I finally got up the nerve to explore them, and you’ll not believe the kind of timber I found. Red lauan, silkwood, pearlwood, flowering pear . . . and other queer trees I don’t even know the names of!

  —Really? And you didn’t run into any . . . spooks?

  Lu Beiping smiled wryly, remembering the eerie thoughts he’d entertained just a moment before while wading down the creek.

  —No spooks, but plenty of snakes. I’ve never seen so many snakes in one place! And plants that make your skin itch, lacquer bushes and blood kudzu and such. But look—he pointed at his wooden bracelet and the sopping-wet cloth tied around his waist—I’ve got my snakesbane bracelet, soaked my waistcloth in sulfur water, even smeared my skin with orpiment wine. Kingfisher taught me all this. Whenever I go upmountain I bring a flask of hillflower wine infused with orpiment, to rub on my skin. Snakes don’t like orpiment, and the liquor keeps your skin from itching. Here, can you smell it?

  Autumn leaned toward Lu Beiping. Sure enough, a faint, alcoholic fragrance wafted off of his skin. Lu Beiping wrinkled his nose and laughed.

  —Is that good against shadow air too? You said Kingfisher thinks you’ve got the shadow of death on you or something . . .

  Autumn’s face darkened.

  —There you go again, breaking laws. Careful, you don’t want to cross yourself.

  —Oh, give me a break! How many laws do you people have? See you later, Autumn, I’ve got to let the cattle out. They’ve been waiting for me all night.

  Autumn looked at him in surprise, his face hardening into a stiff mask of disappointment. Clearly Autumn had wanted to keep talking. The clear morning air was a fine stimulant for conversation, but the mention of sins and laws had instantly drained Lu Beiping’s enthusiasm. As he walked away Lu Beiping felt crestfallen, regretting that he’d spoken so rashly and secretly hoping that Autumn would find some new topic to break the silence, bridge the reopened gulf between them. He’d had so much on his mind lately that he really did need someone to talk to.

  But Autumn said nothing. There was no second chance, no bridge. Once more his face had the same look of unmitigated gloom that Lu Beiping was used to seeing him wear up in the hollow.

  After walking a short distance Lu Beiping looked back and saw Autumn still standing at the edge of the creek, gazing up at the ridge. Lu Beiping waved but got no response. Weighed down with a fresh load of melancholy, Lu Beiping turned and jogged onward up the slope.

  Soon he heard the faint lows of the cattle emanating from the far side of the hill. When he reached the top of the rise he turned and looked back again. Autumn was now wading into the creek, his paper-thin silhouette infusing the whole scene with an air of coldness and desolation. Strange man, Lu Beiping thought. Strange people. He could almost reach out and touch Autumn’s brittle, injured pride hanging palpably in the air over the valley.

  —Oy, Four Eyes! You don’t wit what this is? This is some grave business, I’ll warrant.

  That evening, as he counted the cattle, Lu Beiping noticed that the reek of manure in the corral had grown unbearably strong. He concluded that it was time for a corral cleaning, and wondered whether he should go down to camp and tell them now. The grove maintenance crews were responsible for cleaning the corral, and when the time came they’d send up a team of men to shovel out the manure-caked straw and haul it down to the groves to spread as fertilizer. But at the moment Lu Beiping had no desire to be seen at camp, or to behold the foreman’s blunt, ugly countenance. Just as he’d begun debating this question Lu Beiping looked up and saw another set of blunt, ugly features hanging in the doorway, just below the lintel.

  It was Stump. His broad cheeks gleamed with sweat as he stood stooped in the doorway, looking like some kind of primeval ape-man. In one hand he held a charred wooden board. Lu Beiping listened as Stump, panting, recounted a story whose gist became clear only slowly as Lu Beiping’s ear grew accustomed to Stump’s thick accent. Jade had sent him. Two days ago, Stump said, he’d followed Mudclaw Creek down this side of the mountain in hopes of scouting out a new path by which to ship their timber to market. Not far from Lu Beiping’s hut, he’d seen a strange sight. A shifty-looking young man had been standing on a stony beach by the creek, burning a bundle of paper notes. After he finished burning the notes he’d stuck this wooden board straight up in the stones and set fire to it too. Hearing Stump sloshing down the creek toward him, the man had looked around wildly and then hightailed it into the trees.

  —What did he look like? Lu Beiping asked.

  —He weren’t tall. Wore a soldier’s hat, soldier’s shoes.

  Soldier’s hat and shoes? Lu Beiping’s stomach lurched. Homemade, guano-green military caps and canvas army shoes were the latest fashion among the re-eds. Lu Beiping inspected the board. Half of it had been burnt away, and on the badly singed remaining half he saw something scrawled in ink, though he couldn’t make out the characters. A premonition budded in his brain, but he furrowed his brow and, shaking his head, said:

  —Nope, I’ve never seen this thing. I have no idea who it was.

  Stump had taken the board back up to the hollow, and Kingfisher, after brooding on the matter for two days, had finally decided to invite Lu Beiping for supper in order to get his opinion on it. That was the original reason for Jade’s visit yesterday. But when the meat appeared, all was forgotten. As Lu Beiping was leaving the hollow that morning, Kingfisher had remembered this pressing matter and yelled to him as he waded into the creek, but Lu Beiping hadn’t heard. Then, as evening drew near, Jade had prevailed upon Stump to trek down to Lu Beiping’s hut and urge him to join them again for supper. Stump mustn’t take no for answer, Jade said. If Lu Beiping didn’t come, Kingfisher might get suspicious.

  —What Jade told you in confidence I don’t wit, the huge man said hesitantly as he stooped to negotiate the vines that hung in the entrance to the creek-tunnel: But she bade me tell you, when you’re with Kingfisher, be mindful what you say.

  Lu Beiping waded up the creek in silence. If secrecy was so important, why had Jade entrusted this message to Stump? His heart started beating faster. Off in the trees, some nameless jungle bird repeated an insistent, two-note song.

  —Where are you from, Stump? Lu Beiping said finally, when the silence had begun to grow oppressive.

  —Old Hill.

  —Old Hill? Which Old Hill?

  —Oy, you don’t wit Old Hill? Home and hearth of the Kings of the South, where their bones lie buried. Famous men’ve been there. Han Feizi, Justice Bao too.

  —What? Lu Beiping said reflexively. Han Feizi? Can’t be. You mean Han Yu. He was exiled to the South during the Tang Dynasty. Han Feizi was from way back in ancient times.

  —I mean Han Xin, Han Xin of the Song, same as Han Feizi, no?

  Lu Beiping grimaced and changed the subject.

  —So . . . you and Kingfisher aren’t from the same part of the province, right? When’d you leave home?

  —Year of the frog, month of the dog. Been earning underground coin a long time now, couldn’t keep my belly greased doing dole work. Nay thing in the supper bowls but northwest wind. I’m a strong man, I’d fain use my arms but there was nay work to do. So I hied me down to the river, started helping folk haul sand. Magistrates call that capitalism, I say, do I look like a capitalist? But they were keen to struggle me down, same as they struggled the gentry.

  A vein stood out on Stump’s thick neck. He blew his nose into his hand and flung the snot in the water. />
  —Let’s not speak of this.

  The rest of the way to the hollow there was no sound but the sloshing of their footsteps.

  Much to Lu Beiping’s surprise, the atmosphere was as cheerful as before. The whole clan had gathered around the low dinner table, ready to dig in, eager for Stump and Lu Beiping to arrive. As usual Jade reigned over the rowdy scene; here was the “den mother” in her natural element. Last night she had pulled a devious trick and skimmed off a few scraps of pork before serving the stew, and now the vegetable dishes that crowded the table wafted savory reminders of yesterday’s feast. Where there’s meat there’s godliness, Autumn would later say to him; this was a hallowed truth among the driftfolk. When Lu Beiping came into the lodge Smudge was squatting at the foot of the bed, tooting randomly on his harmonica to the squealing delight of the little ones, while Kingfisher sat at the table fingering his own bald pate and needling Jade with salacious remarks. When Lu Beiping entered, Kingfisher’s eyes brightened immediately, and he greeted the young man with a playful leap of the eyebrows and an audible tap on his own skull. Only Autumn seemed indifferent to his arrival, and acknowledged Lu Beiping with the slightest of nods before returning his attention to his sooty bamboo water pipe.

  Stump tossed the burnt board aside before walking into the lodge. As he reached for a supper bowl Kingfisher—not Jade, Lu Beiping noted with mild surprise—barked at him to go wash his hands.

  —Stump! he said. Don’t you dare come in here after touching that filthy thing. Four Eyes, you go wash your hands too.

  Jade caught Lu Beiping’s eye, as if to say, This time you had better do as he says.

  Laughing inwardly, Lu Beiping followed Stump outside and knelt to wash his hands in the pool. Such was his fate; he was now a hollow-dweller in his own right, and must bow before Kingfisher’s authority.

  When he went back into the lodge Kingfisher immediately asked about the board. Lu Beiping, remembering the veiled admonition that Jade had conveyed to him via Stump, denied all knowledge of it.