The Invisible Valley

by Wei, Su; Woerner, Austin;

  —Glad to hear it, the foreman said, falling in alongside him and cracking his big knuckles as he spoke. If you’ve got any problems or questions, report them immediately to the unit.

  Fong, who seemed put out that he hadn’t acknowledged her, jounced her yoke as she walked up the trail so that her empty baskets slithered audibly through the bushes. Lu Beiping laughed and whistled to himself, ignoring her.

  —So, the foreman went on, trying to seem casual: Some weather we’ve had, eh? Been too hot in the mountains for the cattle? Seems you like to graze the animals a lot down in Sector 12.

  Lu Beiping’s heart skipped a beat. Sector 12—that was Choi’s sector, the grove next to the waste clearing where Han lay buried. He saw that the foreman was underlining the real reason for his visit, and answered airily:

  —Yep, it’s been hot as the blazes up here. For some reason the cattle love to go down to that grove for their afternoon nap.

  Lu Beiping glanced over at Wing. The boy looked away immediately. Obviously, he had something to hide.

  On his visit to camp yesterday Lu Beiping had meant to seek out Wing and press him for details about the burnt board. But the place had been dead quiet, empty except for one lone worker snoozing in the latex-collection station. He’d even entertained the idea of knocking on Choi’s door and demanding more information about the mysterious grove, but then he’d thought better of it, knowing that this would probably incite a tantrum that would draw unwanted attention to the matter. Now, seeing Wing so obviously flustered, Lu Beiping felt his curiosity flare once more, and he made a snap decision. Amid the uproar that ensued when the first group of workers waded into the mire, Lu Beiping kicked the burnt board out of the clump of weeds next to the corral gate where he’d tossed it yesterday upon returning from camp, and nudged it with his toe into the middle of the trail. Then he waited, eager to see how Wing would perform in the next act of this drama.

  —Bless me, this is good, ripe manure! the foreman exclaimed, his eyes glowing as he raked aside the straw to reveal the black layer of fertilizer glittering beneath. Slipping back into his accustomed role, he began singing Lu Beiping’s praises: Looks like I chose the right man for this job! You’re no slacker, not like some folks I know—he threw a barbed glance in the direction of the Gaffer—who’re always keen to cut corners. Look at these fine beds of straw you’ve laid. This is the best batch of fertilizer we’ve had in years!

  Lu Beiping smiled. He knew that the foreman’s compliments were sincere. Ever since he started on as cowherd he’d been particularly diligent about spreading fresh straw, mostly because he cared for the animals and wanted to keep their living quarters pleasant. Maintaining herds of cattle for the sake of their manure was a “high-yield strategy” employed by many of the region’s rubber plantations, whose heavily tapped trees relied on frequent doses of fertilizer to recover from hard use and replenish their milk reserves. As a consequence, a plantation’s “manure yield” was often invoked as an indicator of its overall productivity. It was no surprise, therefore, that the foreman was so vocal in his praise as he stirred the rich, dark manure.

  —Aw, this place reeks! Fong complained, pinching her nose against the smell. What a stinking pile of shit you’ve left us with, Lu!

  She laughed loudly, pleased with this sidelong insult, then, when no one else joined in, she fell silent and buried her nose in her handkerchief, hacking and muttering to herself. Lu Beiping, standing at the edge of the corral, chuckled.

  —Hey, Fong! he called over to her. Don’t forget what the Chairman said: Cowshit is the perfume of the class-conscious woman! I think you should use that line tonight when you make your self-critique to Sergeant Fook.

  Fong spluttered and went red.

  —Good for you, embracing revolutionary aesthetics! Lu Beiping pressed on remorselessly. Nobody can ever accuse you of harboring petty bourgeois sentiments!

  —Hmph! Fong retorted, rolling her eyes: You ought to practice what you preach!

  —Oh, really? said Lu Beiping, cocking his head. And what exactly do I practice?

  Fong turned her shapely buttocks to him and flounced off toward the corral.

  Lu Beiping pretended like he didn’t give a damn, but the truth was, he still cared far too much.

  —Listen to you two! the foreman chimed in, laughing from within the press of bodies now swarming into the corral: A woman warrior and a surly cowpoke, quarreling like an old married couple!

  At that moment Wing, not to be outdone, plunged his hoe into the manure and began heaving with militant vigor, applying to his own skin and to the workers standing around him a liberal spattering of revolutionary makeup. Soon his arms and legs had acquired a thick coat of mossy green.

  The air was heavy with the stench of manure. The crew labored in silence, their bloodshot eyes glittering pungently above the shirts and waistcloths they had tied as facemasks over their noses and mouths. Lu Beiping alone waded into the morass undaunted, stomping through the manure with no protection except his ignominious rubber boots, barking orders to his comrades as they evacuated his slimy bounty bucket by bucket. As they worked, the contents of the corral formed a mounting gray-green hillock in the Gaffer’s oxcart.

  The corral was a little over half empty when Lu Beiping heard a hoarse yell of surprise from over by the corral gate.

  —Mother heaven! It’s a curse! It’s witched!

  Lu Beiping smiled. The Gaffer had entered right on cue, and was playing his part admirably. The oxcart creaked back a few paces, then the old man hopped down, picked up the burnt grave marker, and held it up, crowing theatrically:

  —Mercy, Lu! This baleful thing of yours was blocking the wheel of my cart!

  The manure-hauling team halted, stupefied, amid the roiling stink. But before anyone could bat an eye the foreman was standing right in front of the Gaffer and upbraiding him in a voice an octave higher than usual.

  —You, you, you . . . Kam! What the hell are you playing at?

  The crowd craned their necks to watch, and a hush fell over the corral. The Gaffer tossed the “baleful thing” into the grass and, turning to Lu Beiping, cried out:

  —You, Lu! What the hell are you playing at?

  Lu Beiping stumped over in his manure-caked boots, picked up the board, examined it, and turned to the foreman.

  —Sir, do you know what this is?

  The foreman’s face went pale. Lu Beiping, pressing the offensive, turned to Wing.

  —Wing, do you have any idea what this thing is?

  —I . . . Of course not!

  Wing skipped back as if on scorched feet, waving his hands.

  —That goddam thing is witched! the Gaffer burst out, stealing a glance at Lu Beiping. That trail was clear but a moment ago, then that filthy piece of wood popped out of nowhere, right in front of my cart, like a ghost put it there!

  —What filthy piece of wood? What’s going on? Fong asked innocently, squeezing to the front of the crowd.

  —Enough of this bullshit! the foreman snapped. He grabbed the board from Lu Beiping and flung it into a nearby thicket, then exploded at the Gaffer: You, Kam, you lousy troublemaker! Quit playing tricks! After a good day’s manure haul you go messing around and sabotaging revolutionary production! Don’t you . . . don’t you ever forget . . . don’t you ever forget class struggle! Long live the Revolution! Long live Chairman Mao!

  The Gaffer squawked in continuous protest over the foreman’s shouts, so that nobody could tell exactly what the foreman was condemning. The last thing the onlookers heard was a string of balefires! and mercy mes! from the Gaffer as the old man stamped his feet and appealed to Lu Beiping for aid.

  — . . . balefire! Mercy me, Lu, you know I don’t have the slightest clue what that goddam thing is! Tell him, son! On my honor, I swear!

  —Your honor? the foreman said with a scornful laugh. Kam, don’t play me
for a fool. You think I was born yesterday? You think I don’t know what’s under your pants? I know just how long your dick is and the color of your shit—as the foreman’s invective took on a vulgar tint, the workers standing around them began to chuckle quietly—so don’t be sly with me! I assign you to mind the cattle and you gripe the light out of the day, then I call you back and you do nothing but slink around meddling and pissmongering! For better or worse, I’m the captain of this unit! Are you trying to undermine my authority? You think I don’t know what rotten juices you’ve got sloshing around in your bones? Listen, Gaffer, you’d better be careful what noises you make with that limp little tongue. There’s not an ant or a cricket on this whole mountain that can cross me and get away with it!

  It was clear to all who listened that this was a general warning, not intended for the Gaffer alone.

  Lu Beiping stood to one side, expressionless, laughing inwardly. The angrier the foreman got, the more he smelled a rat. Obviously this tirade was meant, above all, as an admonition to him. Yet it only served to stoke his rebellious impulses. He hadn’t expected a confrontation with the foreman so soon, and this was clearly a sign that he was hot on the trail. Of what, though? He wanted desperately to know.

  In the midst of the foreman’s outburst Lu Beiping had noticed Wing slip to the back of the crowd, where he lingered, throwing furtive glances at Lu Beiping through the gaps between the workers’ bodies. Whenever Lu Beiping looked in his direction his gaze darted quickly away. Lu Beiping smiled grimly to himself. Whatever secret lay behind that burnt grave marker, Wing was the key, the breach, the chink in the foreman’s armor. As he began spreading a new bed of straw for Maria in the corner of the corral, he decided upon a fresh course of action.

  Turning his back on the Gaffer, who continued shrilling his agonized self-defense, the foreman bellowed to the assembled workers:

  —What are you all standing around for? Come on, pick up those buckets, keep moving! Once the cart’s full, everyone take a pail of fertilizer down to his own grove!

  Before long the corral was clean. The stench that had saturated the forest thinned to a faint suggestion of pungency wafting among the evening mists. As the workers trooped noisily after the foreman down to the creek to wash themselves, Lu Beiping peeled off and doubled back to his hut, where he found Fong leaning against the doorframe, her hands resting on her hoe, eyeing him warily.

  —Lu, can we talk for just a second?

  —Sure. What’s up?

  —I know you must really hate me by now. And if so, I totally understand—

  —Just tell me what’s on your mind, Fong.

  —Okay, Fong said, shifting her weight with a willowy bend at the hip that did not escape Lu Beiping’s attention. Here’s what’s on my mind. I know you’re sort of part of the foreman’s family now. But really, Lu, you shouldn’t poke your nose into their business.

  —What business? Lu Beiping asked, furrowing his brow. What business of theirs am I poking my nose into?

  —I don’t know, she said slowly, gazing up at him. But . . . I know that they care. A lot.

  —Care? About what?

  —It’s not my business! Think about it, Lu. I’m going now.

  As the crowd surged back up the slope, Fong hooked her hoe through the handle of her manure pail, hoisted it over her shoulder, and walked away with laborious, swaying steps. Lu Beiping noticed that she’d abstained from washing like the others; below her rolled-up cuffs, her shapely calves were still spattered with manure. He laughed to himself, remembering that it was now the custom among the most “progressive” re-eds not to wash away the evidence of the day’s labors, but to leave their bodies dirty in order to prove the purity of their thoughts. A good spattering of filth was a badge of merit, not to be disposed of lightly.

  As the foreman shouldered his towering manure bucket and led the staggering troops away from the corral, Lu Beiping slipped into the trees on the pretext of rounding up his cattle. He wasn’t interested in lingering among the departing hands and nattering polite goodbyes. Peeeeeeee-ter! he yelled. Al-yooooosha! The empty forest thrummed with echoes. He could still hear the Gaffer’s oxcart squeaking sullenly far off in the trees, as if giving voice to the old man’s resentment, overlaid with the sonorous shouts of the foreman, who seemed launched into high spirits by the sight of the quivering, gray-green monument to his unit’s productive capacity. Now, from far down the dusk-reddened trail Lu Beiping heard the foreman leading the workers in a chorus of Red Book songs: We! Are—the—chil—dren! Of all—the lands—between—the seas! And—yet—our—will—is—oooooooone!

  But the afternoon’s intrigues were not yet over.

  (Years later, Lu Beiping would wonder aloud to Tsung whether those months spent alone in the jungle, in a life that managed to be grindingly monotonous at the same time that it was filled with strange adventures, had inflated his curiosity to dangerous proportions. At the time, he said, I was almost shocked by the intensity of my own desire to provoke. It makes me shudder just a bit to remember what came next.)

  As the sun sank low and the column of workers wound its way down the valley, Lu Beiping herded the animals into the corral, grabbed his machete, and, scrambling over the creekside bluffs in a series of shortcuts well known to him, arrived in a matter of minutes at the second bend of the creek. As he sloshed up out of the shallows, Wing, who had arrived moments before with his manure pail, turned to look, and when he saw Lu Beiping his eyes goggled so wide they looked in danger of falling out.

  —Hey there, Wing! Lu Beiping said. Isn’t this a coincidence?

  —What . . . what are you trying to do? Wing stammered, his eyes glued to Lu Beiping’s machete. He had removed his hat reflexively and now held it clenched in one hand, as if he might somehow defend himself with it. Lu Beiping, trying hard to keep from laughing, took a deep breath and announced dramatically:

  —Don’t be scared, Wing. I know what you did.

  —What are you talking about? Wing said in a defiant voice, retreating a few paces.

  —That burnt piece of wood the Gaffer made such a scene about. That was your sister’s grave marker, right? It was you who slunk up into the hills and burnt it by the creek next to my hut—right?

  Lu Beiping stiffened the muscles in his cheeks to keep from laughing at the hilarious expression on Wing’s face.

  —And that jungle fire. It was you who set it, right? You were the one I saw mucking around near the pool during that fire that almost burned down Sector 12. Right? Tomorrow afternoon, Wing, one hour before sunset, I want you to be waiting right here at this spot. I’ve got a few more questions to ask you. Don’t forget!

  Lu Beiping spun on his heel and walked off into the forest. Soon his silhouette had melted into a nearby stand of banana trees. Wing, speechless from shock, stood rooted to the spot.

  The next day, in the early afternoon, the wind picked up. At first Lu Beiping didn’t pay it any mind, assuming it to be the harbinger of a routine summer thundershower. Yesterday’s corral cleaning had left the air heavy and rank, and he’d been hoping for a nice, big rainstorm to deliver him from the lingering stench. When he woke up he saw gray clouds massing in the sky, and rejoicing that they were in for a good dousing he immediately set about mustering the cattle so that they could get in some grazing before the hourlater hit. The animals, however, were sluggish and unresponsive, probably none too pleased to be roused from their freshly cleaned beds. He gave Alyosha a few whacks on the rump, was answered by a groan of protest from Maria. Maybe today, he thought, her time might finally arrive.

  But no sooner had they forded the creek than the sky grew alarmingly dark, as if night had fallen prematurely. The cattle began lowing in fright. When Lu Beiping looked up he could barely make out the mountain through the fog, and now he heard, far off in the distance, a faint disturbance in the air, a low, muffled rumble. Then without any warning the rain came
ripping down, pounding the hillside so hard that the ground seemed to tremble beneath his feet. With a panicked shout he tried to rally the cattle, hoping to get them home quickly, but they stood motionless, petrified by the sudden, stiff onslaught of wind. A moment later he could see and feel nothing but hard darts of rain as the downpour wrapped him in a howling hood. He crouched down reflexively, afraid to move; then before he knew what had hit him a powerful gust of wind had knocked him off balance and slammed him facedown into the dirt.

  The animals crashed off in all directions. Two terrified bulls came close to trampling him as they veered off into the trees.

  Good god! Nature had forgotten her manners. It was still summer, and typhoon season usually didn’t arrive till autumn. And normally the approach of a typhoon would be signaled by a long prefatory period of drizzling rain. But this time there’d been no warning signs; the sky had just opened up in a fit of unpremeditated wrath. There’d been no lightning, no thunder—a silent dog has the deadliest bite, the locals said, and surely a lightningless thunderstorm was a thing to be feared. Lu Beiping felt like the ground beneath his feet was being twisted and sucked upward by a giant suction cup. He struggled to his feet, bounded forward a few steps, then flattened himself against the ground so as not to be blown over again. He yelled for Alyosha, but the wind swallowed his voice. The cattle had disappeared. All he could see were dark boils of fog twisting and whipping toward him like Mudkettle Mountain’s famous snakeclouds. Water slapped over him in solid chunks, and as the tempest rose to a fever pitch the entire mountain seemed in danger of being ripped free from the soil and yanked upward into the sky.

  Where water goes, wind follows, he remembered—in the mountains, during a typhoon, the wind would writhe its way along the watercourses before blowing out into open land. He needed to get out of the creek valley fast, needed to find refuge from the wind. But his glasses were drenched and he couldn’t see a thing. He took them off, only to find that the sky had turned black as midnight and the world around him had been reduced to a wavering haze. He had no way to get his bearings. The only thing he could hear besides the eerie wailing of the wind was the rapid thudding of his own heart. Gripping his machete in one hand, he unwound his sopping undershirt from his head and wriggled into it, for the raindrops, not to mention the windborne pellets of grit, were biting like knife points into his skin. He crawled forward on hands and knees, head turned away from the wind, seeing nothing, feeling like time had stopped and the entire universe had collapsed into a single, vast scream. He paused for a moment, panting, then, taking advantage of a brief lull in the wind, he scrambled to his feet and ran forward as fast as he could. There was no path. He was completely lost. Relying solely on intuition, he plunged onward through the brush in what he hoped was the right direction, until he staggered to a halt in front of a huge, dark rock that loomed abruptly out of the haze.