by Tong,, Su
Avoiding his superior’s ardent gaze, the constable looked at the little bird in the water and replied, ‘Soon. If not today, then tomorrow. General, the wall will be finished soon.’
As the bird waited for its rebirth in the water, a morning of accidental sorrow arrived. The sun rose, and along with it, as General Jianyang discovered, the bitter sadness of Great Swallow Mountain erupted. Calls to work that had been loud and clear were stilled on this morning. Porters’ baskets moaned forlornly on mountain paths, bricklayers’ trowels and stonemasons’ chisels sounded dull, causing General Jianying considerable anxiety, for he could not sense the elation of imminent completion. Walking out onto the observation terrace, he saw the construction crew surging all over the mountain. Fire burned bright in the brick kilns; workers carrying dirt and rocks were scattered along the mountain ridge; stonemasons applied their hammers and awls to distant stones. For the first time, the General detected fatigue and sadness on their bodies. Removing his golden helmet, he listened carefully, and thought he heard some indistinct sobbing carried by the wind. He turned to look at the brick kilns, where the sobbing floated in the fire. He turned towards the stone ground, and the sobbing was now echoing in the rocks. He grew even more restless.
‘Why didn’t I hear the bugle today?’ he asked Shangguan Qing. ‘Instead I hear crying, non-stop crying.’
‘General, the wind is so strong today that it diffused the sound of the bugle,’ replied the constable. ‘The sobbing you hear is probably the wind. The workers at Great Swallow Mountain would not dare cry, so it must be the wind.’
Pulling Shangguan Qing over to the side of the city wall, the General insisted that someone was sobbing in the wind. Shangguan said that all he could hear was the wind, not sobs. So the General ordered him to stand on top of the wall and listen carefully. Not daring to disobey, he was helped to the top of the wall, but again he shook his head and said, ‘General, it is the gusting wind. You have mistaken the sound of flying sand for someone crying.’
The General beat him off the wall with his helmet. ‘How dare you challenge me with those pig’s ears of yours!’ He went on angrily, ‘Even the King remembered that I, General Jianyang, come from the steppe. I can hear the steps of wolves from ten li and horses from fifty li. I can hear a storm from a hundred li. But you, all you stupid good-for-nothings, forget that I can even hear my enemy when he pulls his bow outside my tent. So when I say that someone is sobbing on Great Swallow Mountain, then someone must be sobbing. But who is it? I want you to find them.’
Shangguan Qing had not expected to be given such a difficult task. Used to catching and arresting people, on this unlucky morning, he was ordered to pursue an imaginary sound. Despite his misgivings, and amid a sea of people on Great Swallow Mountain, Shangguan Qing carried out the order by leading a group of constables to track down the sound.
‘Who has been crying?’
‘Who cried? Who among you cried? Whoever cried step forward.’
Most of the workers stared at Shangguan Qing blankly, posing their own discourses with their eyes. ‘Who cried? Take a look at our faces, and you’ll see there is sweat but no tears. Only someone who has lost his mind would cry; the penalty is forty-seven lashes and carrying forty-even extra loads of stone. You would need to have a death wish to cry. Besides, why should we? We were born poor, and moving rocks to build a wall is our fate. When our bones are so tired they seem about to fall apart, a good night’s sleep will bring them back together, and we go back to work. What’s there to cry about?’
Dying men at the hospital faced the search with the same calm and ease. They responded to Shangguan Qing with violent coughs and traces of blood at the corners of their mouths. ‘I have phlegm, blood and a fever, but no tears. What’s the use of shedding tears? There are only so many ways to die, here at Great Swallow Mountain: the escapees are captured and hanged in public; the frail ones, defeated by the rocks and bricks, cough up blood and die; the unlucky ones are infected with plague and die of a high fever; and the stubborn and pessimistic ones jump off a cliff. There you have it; that’s how people die around here. When you’re not afraid of dying, there’s nothing to be afraid of, and when you don’t know to be afraid, where should the tears come from?’
Under Shangguan Qing’s interrogation, a few workers admitted that they had a sad look, but vehemently denied that they had cried. One young porter from distant Canglan Prefecture said he had felt like crying, but had devised a way to stop the tears from flowing. He stuck out his tongue to show Shangguan Qing and revealed that he bit his tongue whenever he felt like crying. Once the tongue started bleeding, the pain stopped the tears from flowing. Shangguan Qing examined the porter’s tongue and discovered that it was indeed a bloody mess, covered with bite marks. The constables were beginning to feel dismayed over their failure to locate the sobbing sound, and some of them whispered about General Jianyang’s mental state, which angered Shangguan Qing.
‘Underlings are not permitted to criticize their superiors,’ he said. ‘If the General said he heard someone crying, then someone must be crying. With the Nine Dragon helmet on his head, the General is smarter than us. If he orders us to locate the wind, we must do it. That goes double for weeping.’
When they reached the stone ground, a foreman reported that a woman looking for her husband had cried there that morning. Seeing that she was crawling with a rock on her back, the driver of an oxcart transporting rocks from the quarry had given her a ride out of pity.
Annoyed by the foreman’s stammering, Shangguan said angrily, ‘You’re not a child, why can’t you give us a decent report? What happened to the woman after she got onto the cart?’
‘I can’t say. The quarry people are responsible for that,’ said the foreman, making sure he could not be blamed before continuing. ‘She was a strange woman. She boarded the cart with the rock on her back, and a frog jumped up with her, upsetting the carter, who said she could bring the rock but not the frog. The woman pleaded on the frog’s behalf, saying that one of them was looking for her husband and the other for her son. The frog was here to search for her son!’
‘A frog looking for her son?’ shouted Shangguan Qing. ‘Let’s get this straight. Where did the frog go? And who is its son?’
‘It was a tiny frog, and I don’t know where it went. My eyes were on the stonemasons, not the frog. How would I know who the frog’s son is?’ Seeing the furious look on Shangguan’s face, the foreman quickly added, ‘The woman is here to see Wan Qiliang. She’s his wife. That’s why she’s crawling with that rock on her back and crying.’
‘You must be the frog’s son. Otherwise, how could you be so stupid,’ said Shangguan. He cast his eyes over the nearby straw sheds and rocks. ‘Where is the woman? And where is she from?’
‘From Blue Cloud Prefecture; she’s Wan Qiliang’s wife. She said she walked a thousand li, through the whole autumn, to get to Great Swallow Mountain.’
‘So where is Wan Qiliang? Get him over here.’
‘We can’t. He’s dead,’ said the foreman. ‘He died in the summer in the rockslide at Broken-Heart Cliff. Sixteen people from Blue Cloud Prefecture died, and Wan Qiliang was one of them, buried alive.’
The foreman took a bamboo strip out of a pouch on his back and showed Shangguan Qing the carving, ‘Blue Cloud Prefecture, Wan Qiliang, Stoneyard, two dry dishes and two liquid dishes.’ The name was crossed out in red, which made the constable frown.
‘He’s dead, so why is she here? Take her over to the potter’s field and dig up a bone for her. Then send her away with seven sabre coins.’
Putting the strip away, the foreman said uncertainly, ‘We followed the rules and sent her away with a tally to get her sabre coins. But she didn’t want the tally, she wanted her husband. Where was I supposed to find him for her? We can’t even find his bones. Wan Qiliang’s bones aren’t buried at the potter’s field. He died at Broken-Heart Cliff and, unless we tear down the wall, I can’t dig up a bone for her. She was
crying at the stoneyard, but I couldn’t let her do that. If the General heard her, I’d have been in big trouble. So I told her to cry somewhere else.’
‘Thinking only about yourself again, I see! Somewhere else is still part of Great Swallow Mountain, and no one is allowed to cry here,’ yelled the enraged Shangguan Qing.
While leading the constables in a search for the woman from Blue Cloud Prefecture, he detected a gloomy tone in the sounds of the stonemasons chiselling the stones. He noticed that what flew out from under their awls were not rock chips, but sparkling tears, some of which splashed Shangguan in the face; they were boiling hot. He went up to see, first examining the mason’s tools, then their eyes and faces.
Pointing at the wet stones, one of the masons said, ‘Look at the stones. They accumulated so much water overnight we can’t wipe them dry.’
The stones did look as if they had been dredged out of water, sparkling with moisture. Staring at one of the rocks, Shangguan said, ‘There was neither rain nor fog last night, so where did the water come from?’
‘We don’t know,’ one of the masons said, ‘but the stones began to weep after Wan Qiliang’s wife arrived. We aren’t crying, the stones are.’
After bringing all those strange tears to the stoneyard, the woman from Blue Cloud Prefecture had disappeared from sight. No one saw where she had gone, as Shangguan Qing discovered after questioning the stonemasons. He suspected them of hiding the truth, but they shook their heads resolutely and said, ‘We were chiselling stones and have no idea where she went.’
A few of them, bolder than the others, had the cheek to be provocative. ‘A frog was showing the woman the way and, since we are not frogs, how could we know where she went?’
In the end, it was an honest, elderly worker who cleared up the constables’ confusion. Pointing to the rocks on the ground, he said, ‘Follow the watery rocks if you want to find her. They are wet wherever she has crawled.’
The Great Wall
A silhouette of rolling hills was carved out of the northern sky; between the sky and the hills was the long, curving Great Swallow Mountain Wall. Under the early winter sun, it gave off a razor-sharp white light, lending the sky a tired, despondent look. The Great Wall was in reality a long, unending fence that scaled mountains and climbed hills, stretching into the distance along the mountainous contour. It looked like a white coiled dragon, but was actually a fence that straddled mountains, a great many of them, wearing a row of stiff caps and sashes on the peaks, and one of those capped and sashed sections was the Great Swallow Mountain.
The workers on Great Swallow Mountain saw Wan Qiliang’s wife, who, like a tiny piece of black jewellery, was now studded on the top of Broken-Heart Cliff.
Cradling a rock in her arms, she knelt on the cliff and cried. No one could understand how a sickly woman carrying a rock could negotiate those steep hills and narrow rugged paths. Someone said it was a magic frog that had led her there, but not everyone believed him.
Seeing the vultures circling above the woman, someone else said, ‘Broken-Heart Cliff is so steep and so high, even a frog can’t get up there. It must have been a vulture that took her up.’
Floating clouds drifted over the cliff. Men who were building the wall at mid-slope sometimes saw the tiny figure of Binu when the clouds disappeared. They heard the howling of the wind but not her cries, though every gust from Broken-Heart Cliff sounded like sobbing and, like the wind from the south, left a moist, sticky pall on the workers. The porters carrying rocks to higher places gathered on the cliff like clouds, but quickly dispersed. When they heard at mid-slope that a woman from Blue Cloud Prefecture had dragged a strange trail of water with her, the porters from her home prefecture easily located her by following the water marks. But they shook their heads in disappointment and left when they saw her tearful face.
‘It’s not my wife,’ each of them said. ‘I knew my own wife could not endure that much hardship.’
Some people, having heard at the foothills that Wan Qiliang’s wife was on the cliff, followed the water trail, still carrying rocks in their baskets, as if running after their own wives. They stopped below Broken-Heart Cliff.
‘What a pitiable woman that wife of Wan Qiliang is. She walked a thousand li to deliver winter clothes, but there’s no one to wear them now. Wan Qiliang left nothing behind, not even a bone. Look at that winter robe, rolled up on her back. Now there’s no one to wear it.’
All the porters walked past her like floating clouds, except for one called Xiaoman, who had been given an unusual task. Carrying a pair of empty baskets on his pole, he followed the trail up to Broken-Heart Cliff and stopped when he saw Binu. After filling one of the baskets with rocks, he kicked the other one over to Binu.
‘You must be Wan Qiliang’s wife. Get into that basket. Shangguan Qing cannot make it up this high, so he told me to put rocks in one basket and you in the other and take you down the mountain.’
Binu looked at the basket, then slowly removed the robe with green piping and put it in the basket.
‘Not the robe!’ said Xiaoman. ‘He wants you in the basket.’
Picking up her rock again, Binu said to Xiaoman, ‘Retribution. This is retribution. Heaven would not permit Qiliang to wear a robe that I had taken by force in Five-Grain City.’
Xiaoman had no idea what she was talking about, so he picked up the robe and shook it. ‘It’s a nice, warm winter robe. Why throw it away instead of that rock? You have no use for the rock now that he’s dead. You cannot change things, no matter how many rocks you offer to the Mountain Deity. Now, hurry up, put on the robe and climb into my basket. I’ll take you down to get Wan Qiliang’s tally. That way you’ll receive seven sabre coins.’
Binu kicked the robe away and said again, ‘Retribution. This is retribution. How could Qiliang possibly wear a robe that was taken by force?’
‘Don’t speak to the valleys below. I’m talking to you.’ Xiaoman angrily walked over to the cliff ’s edge, where he saw a blue mountain mist spreading across the valley. ‘There’s nothing but the blue mist left. Ever since the accident at Broken-Heart Cliff, the valley has been shrouded in mist, day and night. They say it’s the spirits of the dead. What’s the point of talking to the mist? You can’t take a spirit back with you, anyway.’
Binu pointed down at the valley and opened her mouth, as if to speak, but Xiaoman heard nothing. He saw, instead, her tear-stricken face and drops of sparkling water raining down from her fingers.
‘Why all those tears?’ Startled by Binu’s mournful face, Xiaoman instinctively covered his eyes and shouted, ‘I’m from Fort Double Dragon at the base of North Mountain. Only a single mountain separates our two villages. I know that people from that region are not allowed to shed tears. When your husband dies, you must cry with your ears, your lips or your hair. How can you shed tears with your eyes? You mustn’t cry with your eyes!’
But the tears gushed from her eyes, like spring water spewing across mountains and forests. She appeared to have forgotten the Peach Village Rulebook for Daughters. She cried with abandon and pointed at the valley, while saying something to Xiaoman. But he heard only ear-piercing shrieks.
‘A grave, you say? You want a grave?’ He tried with difficulty to decipher the words by reading her lips. ‘Where am I supposed to find a grave in the valley? This is the Great Wall, not Peach Village. You can’t dig a grave wherever you like. There is a potter’s field on the western slope, and that is where all those who died at Great Swallow Mountain are buried. Quick, get into the basket and let me take you there. You can dig a grave for Wan Qiliang.’
Binu’s cracked lips were also brimming with tears, as her cries turned to wails. Her voice was unworldly. Xiaoman suddenly heard something clearly.
‘Bones,’ she murmured. ‘Bones, where are the bones?’
‘What bones are you talking about? You think you are going to retrieve his bones? You won’t find them. Over a dozen men died in the landslide at Broken-Heart Cliff,
and they are all buried under the rubble. With the wall built on top of them, they have become part of its foundation.’ Beginning to lose patience, Xiaoman pulled out a ball of hemp and said, ‘No more crying. Do you know what this is? Shangguan Qing told me to gag you with it. There’s a rule here that, no matter how sad you may be, you cannot cry, not at North Mountain, and not here. General Jianyang hates the sound of weeping, he says it disturbs the workers and delays the work.’ Xiaoman tipped the basket over and pointed to its opening. ‘Get in, or I’ll be in big trouble. Big Sister, please don’t get me into trouble. You are the wife of Wan Qiliang, and we are from the same area. I’d rather not handle you as if I were moving rocks, so please get in there of your own accord.’
Binu pushed the basket aside and turned away. Xiaoman picked it up and stood in front of her, obviously ready to put his pole to use if necessary. ‘We are all unfortunate people,’ he said angrily. ‘You are not the only woman whose husband died, and you are not the only one who wants to cry. My three brothers and I came here together, and now I am the only one left. You can cry all you want, but do you know how many people will suffer because of it? I’m going to count to three, and then I’ll pick you up if you won’t get in the basket on your own.’
Pointing his pole at Binu, he began to count. Binu stopped crying at the count of one, and struggled to her feet at the count of two. When he counted three, Xiaoman realized that she was preparing to jump off the cliff. Dropping his pole, he rushed over, grabbed her and carried her back to the basket. She was light as a feather, but abundant water from her body splashed him in the face. He was rubbing his eyes, which had been forced shut by the tears, when he heard a crackling noise coming from his basket. It was the sound of the willow rotting away from the assault of tears.
‘Don’t cry. Your tears are ruining my basket. Without it, we can’t get down, and you’ll have to jump. Then what will I do? I’ll have to jump with you.’ He could not keep his eyes dry, but quickly discovered that the tears were his own. He strained to keep his eyes open, while looping the pole through the basket handles; they snapped off the instant he tried to lift the pole. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to cry? See, you’ve ruined the handles of my basket. Now how can I take you down?’ He raised his pole, but it fell to the ground. Then he saw a familiar face, ancient like that of his mother and sad like that of his sister. The woman sat in the basket, like his mother or his sister, crying to him. A watery sky spread out in her eyes and rain began to fall. Xiaoman sat down on his pole and sobbed.