The Past and the Punishments

by Yu Hua

Her face was obscured by the darkness. Only her dark, glittering eyes revealed her outrage. Willow, who stood as still as a tree rooted in place, seemed not to have heard.

  Gradually, the tower fell into complete darkness. Rays of candlelight began to emerge from the open windows, but, rather than descending, the light hovered somewhere above Willow’s head. The candlelight also served to cast the maiden’s shadow on a column within the apartment that was visible from the outside. To Willow, her huddled, indecisive shadow, flickering and indistinct, was extraordinarily vivid.

  Although a few drops of rain had already fallen onto Willow’s face, he did not notice the imminent arrival of a summer shower. Soon, the sky opened, and his head and shoulders were pelted with rain. It was only then that he finally became aware of the rain, but despite its arrival he remained obstinately rooted in place.

  The maid appeared once more at the window, silently gaped at Willow, and finally shut the window. The young lady’s shadow was snuffed out. The candlelight also receded behind the window’s oiled paper panels.

  The rain slanted violently down, failing to dislodge Willow from his place. His cap was knocked to the ground, and his hair was beaten over to one side of his head. The rainwater slammed into Willow’s body, curved, and slid to the ground. Through the noise of the wind and the rain, 20 yu hua

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  Willow could hear the distinct sound of water dripping from his body. But Willow paid the storm no heed. Instead he stared up at the candlelight dancing and leaping behind the window panel, and although he could not see the young lady’s shadow, its very absence rendered it all the more vivid in his mind.

  For some reason, the window opened once more. The

  storm had reached its zenith. The maid appeared, turned, left. An instant later she returned with the maiden in tow, and the two women looked out together at Willow. Just as Willow was thrown into a state of happy astonishment, they retreated, leaving the window open behind them. Willow saw the shadows on the column come together and then separate. The two women moved once more to the window, releasing a rope that slid down to the ground, trembling in the wind. Befuddled by the sight of the young lady, Willow ignored the rope. The maid, growing impatient, called out,

  “Just what are you waiting for?”

  The maiden, seeing his incomprehension, chimed in, “If the gentleman would please come up out of the rain . . .”

  Her voice, as delicate as tinkling jade, quieted the roar of the wind and rain. Willow at last seemed to experience a flash of comprehension. He took a step toward the rope, only realizing too late that his limbs had grown quite numb and stiff from his long, wet vigil. After a moment or two of clumsy efforts, he grasped hold of the rope and slowly climbed up and into the window. The young maiden had already retreated toward the back of the apartment with the help of her maid. As the maid busily attended to the task of recovering the rope and shutting the window, Willow carefully appraised the young lady. She stood about five feet away from him, her pale, graceful form clad in roseate skirts and a short cape embroidered with shining crescent moons.

  Before she had even pursed her cherry red lips, Willow could already detect the sweet fragrance of her rouge. The Classical Love 21

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  maiden turned bashfully toward him. The maid crossed the room and took up a position at her side. A flustered Willow introduced himself. “My name is Willow.”

  The maiden returned the gesture. “My name is Hui.”

  Willow went on to introduce himself to the maid, who responded with the appropriate formalities.

  Having finished with introductions, both the maid and the maiden covered their mouths and burst out in peals of laughter. Unsure as to whether they were laughing at his sorry state, Willow joined them with a few chuckles of his own.

  The maid said, “You can rest here for a while, but when the rain stops, you have to leave as quickly as you can.”

  Instead of replying, Willow gazed silently at the maiden, who added:

  “Will the gentleman please change clothes as soon as he is able? So as not to catch cold.”

  With this, the maid and the maiden receded toward an adjacent room. The maiden’s red silken sleeves swayed as she moved, revealing to Willow a glimpse of her jade-pale wrists. The motion of her body called to Willow’s mind the lovely sway of the white fish he had seen swimming through the stream. The maid reached the curtain to the next room and disappeared under it. The maiden followed her to the door and almost imperceptibly hesitated. As she lifted the curtain, she could not restrain herself from turning her head to steal a glance behind her at Willow. The maiden’s eyes were suffused with such undeniable longing that Willow was left nearly beside himself with joy.

  It was not until quite a while later that Willow realized that the maiden had left. He felt empty and lost. Looking around the room, he realized that he was in a study. Stacks of books were piled neatly on the shelves, and a zither lay prone on the table. A moment later, he noticed that the room also contained a rosewood canopy bed, the body of which was obscured by a silk curtain embroidered with 22 yu hua

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  plum blossoms. Willow felt his heart flutter. Clear spring water began to flow through his entire body. Willow moved toward the curtain, which emitted an aroma not unlike that of a cypress tree. A jade-green quilt reclined on the bed like a sleeping body, and the embroidered flowers flickered in the candlelight. The maiden had departed, but her scent lingered, for, amid the smell of cypress, Willow could still detect a fainter and more elegant fragrance, a fragrance so fleeting that Willow could hardly distinguish whether it was real or illusory.

  Willow stood for a moment longer by the bed before lowering the raised curtain, which was as smooth and lustrous to his touch as skin. The bottom of the curtain glided downward until it reached the floor, its edges arrayed in a fan fold.

  Willow retreated to the candlelit table and sat down on a ceramic stool. He looked back toward the canopy bed, which was now almost completely hidden behind the curtain. Even so, he could still steal glances through the seams at the jade-green form of the maiden sleeping within. It was as if he had already become her lover. She had retired for the evening. He, absorbed in his studies, was burning the midnight oil.

  Willow picked up a collection of lyric poetry that lay open on the table. This was the book from which the maiden had been reciting poetry earlier in the evening. The words danced on the page like raindrops. Immersing himself in fantasy and conjecture, lulled by the sound of falling rain, Willow gradually drifted off into sleep.

  From across a hazy expanse, Willow heard the sound of someone’s soft calls drift toward him. Startled, he opened his eyes and saw the maiden standing by his side. Her hair fell loose and disordered around her face, on which traces of rouge were still visible. Her image was even lovelier and more moving than before. Willow was unsure as to whether she was real or merely a dreamy apparition until he heard Classical Love 23

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  her begin to speak. She said, “The rain has already stopped, and now the gentleman may resume his journey.”

  What Willow had taken for the sound of falling rain was merely the rustling of leaves in the wind.

  The maiden, understanding the reason for his confusion, gently added, “It’s only the sound of the leaves.”

  Willow’s position in front of the candle cast the maiden into shadow. Eyes fixed on her dimly lit figure, he sighed deeply, stood, and said, “Today it seems we must part, though we may never meet again.”

  He moved toward the window.

  The maiden did not stir. Willow turned back to see desolate tears glistening in her eyes. Almost despite himself, Willow retreated toward her, taking hold of her jade-white wrist, and clasping it to his chest. The maiden wordlessly lowered her eyes, submitting to Willow’s caress. Several moments p
assed until the maiden broke the silence. “From whence do you come, sir? Where are you going?”

  Willow, grasping both of her hands now, told her of his travels. When he had finished, she looked up and began carefully to examine his face. Their clasped hands and gazing eyes bespoke the depth of the sentiments that had arisen between them.

  At this point, the candle suddenly went out. Willow responded by pulling the pale, soft, fragrant, warm maiden into an embrace. The maiden cried out softly once before falling silent. She trembled in Willow’s arms. Willow was transported. Nothing existed save the melting together of their bodies. In the midst of the endless caresses that ensued, Willow heard the sound of jagged breathing, but could not tell if it was his or that of the maiden. The lonely scholar and the cloistered maiden locked together in an embrace so tight that they were nearly indivisible.

  The tolling of the night watchman’s bell drifted in through the window. Startled, the maiden hesitantly extri-24 yu hua

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  cated herself from his embrace. “It’s almost dawn. Please, sir, you had really better leave.”

  Willow, enveloped in darkness, stood quietly in place.

  After a long pause, he nodded, fumbled for his bundle, and then froze once more.

  The maiden repeated, “Please, leave now, before it’s too late.”

  Her voice was incomparably desolate, and, hearing the faint sound of her sobs, Willow insensibly began to cry as well. He groped through the darkness, reached for her, and they fell into yet another close embrace. Willow turned and once more approached the window, but just as he was preparing to slide out, he heard the maiden call, “Wait.”

  Willow turned and through the darkness saw the maiden’s indistinct form move across the room. He heard the “ka-cha” of scissors slicing through something, and an instant later the maiden placed a small, heavy package in his outstretched hands. He rolled the package into his bundle without opening it to see what was inside. Then he climbed out of the window, slid down the rope, and landed on the ground. Turning back to gaze up at the window, he could see only her shadow. She called out, “Please remember this.

  It doesn’t matter to me whether you win honor and glory on the examination rolls. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll come back.”

  She closed the window. Willow gazed at the window for a moment, turned, and left. The back gate was still ajar. As Willow left the garden through the chill gloom of dawn, a few lingering drops of rain fell onto his face. He heard the clop of a horse’s hoofs, unusually resonant in the silence of the night. The streets were empty, save for a passing watchman carrying a lantern in the distance ahead. Willow soon stepped back onto the yellow highway. Gradually the east-ern sky began to fill with sparse dawn light. As Willow continued to walk, the contours of thatched huts lining the Classical Love 25

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  route slowly became visible through the gloom, and it was only then that the highway under his feet seemed to take on substance and solidity. By the time the red disk of the sun had risen above the horizon, he was already far from the maiden’s brocade tower. He opened his bundle and extracted the package that the maiden had given him. It contained a lacquer-black lock of hair and two slender ingots of silver wrapped in a handkerchief embroidered with mandarin ducks.2 Willow’s heart began to gurgle like a spring. As he tied up the package and repacked his bundle, he seemed once again to hear the maiden’s parting words: “The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll come back.”

  Willow walked down the road as fast as his feet would take him.

  2

  Having failed the exam, Willow began his journey

  home several months later. He walked indecisively down the yellow highway, for although he yearned with all his heart to be reunited with the maiden, he could not escape the feeling of shame that had come with failure. He walked in fits and starts, sometimes moving slowly in mincing steps and sometimes taking the road in rapid strides. On his way to the capital spring had been at its zenith, but now the desolate colors of autumn had begun to prevail. Muffled gray skies stretched as far as the eye could see. As he approached the city wall, he was overcome by a wave of tangled emotion. Willow walked over to the bank of a nearby stream. The reflection he saw in the water was clad in cheap cotton, not brocade. He thought to himself that this was how he had looked on his way to the capital. Now, on his return, he was the same. The seasons might change, but he 2A conventional symbol of marital bliss.

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  had not been able to return clad triumphantly in the silks of examination success. How could he face his maiden?

  Lost in his thoughts, he made his way to the city gates. A wave of noise and bustle swarmed toward him as scenes of prosperous city life once again arrayed themselves before his eyes.

  Willow traversed the noisy market, but he soon drew to a halt. Although he had been away for several months, the town remained just as it had been before, regardless of the change of season. Willow stood immobile, and, as he recalled his meeting with the maiden in the tower, his memories seemed to take on an illusory cast, as if it had all been a wonderful, romantic story and nothing more. But the maiden’s words of farewell had been real, substantial. The maiden’s words rang out like raindrops in his ears: “It doesn’t matter to me whether you win honor and glory on the examination rolls. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll come back.”

  Waves of sentiment rolled across Willow’s heart. He could hesitate no longer. He walked forward as fast as his feet would take him. As he propelled himself forward, the maiden’s window appeared in Willow’s mind’s eye. She had been waiting too long. Her eyes shone with sadness, brimmed with tears. The reunion would be silent, even dazzling. He would almost certainly scale the tower by means of a rope.

  But when Willow arrived at the gate of the aristocratic pavilions and secluded courtyards he had visited once before, he was met with a vista of crumbling buildings littered across a ruinous, empty wasteland. If the maiden’s brocade tower was no longer there, how could he find her waiting at the window? Confronted by the ruin of the estate, Willow felt a wave of dizziness pass through him. The pomp and splendor of the estate had deteriorated unimaginably quickly – in his memory the events of several months ago seemed as fresh as yesterday. But now the place was a miser-Classical Love 27

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  able sight, strewn with rotting wood and broken stones.

  Even the two stone lions who had stood by the gate had disappeared.

  Willow stood for a while in the place where the main gate had once been and then began to walk along the perimeter of the ruins. After a short walk, he sensed that he had reached the place where the side gate had been. This, too, was in ruins. Willow continued to walk and soon reached the spot where the flower garden should have been. Only the garden gate was still standing, half the door propped haphazardly against its frame. Willow walked through the door, stepping gingerly over the rubble, carefully trying to discern where each element of the garden – the serpentine stone bridge, the lotus-covered pool, the open pavilion and the vermilion railing, the stand of green bamboo, the flowering peaches and apricots – had once stood. They had all melted into the air, like tendrils of smoke, like misty clouds. All that remained were the two towering maples that had stood on either side of the pavilion, but even the bark on their trunks looked battered and scarred. The hard frosts of autumn had come, and the trees were now as dazzling red as if they had been varnished with blood. A few leaves drifted down to the ground. The trees were still alive, but it was clear that they were not long for this world.

  Finally, Willow came to the place where the brocade tower had once stood. He saw a few stacks of broken tile, a heap of rotting wood, all hemmed in by choking weeds and wildflowers. Where were the glorious peach and apricot blossoms that had once gra
ced the garden? All that remained were little white wildflowers growing out of cracked roof tiles. Willow looked up at the window, only to see the empty sky. He had once scaled a rope through that emptiness. He could see the tower in his mind, the rope itself was almost palpable, and everything that happened played once again through his mind. But when the moment arrived when he had said, “Today it seems we must part, 28 yu hua

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  though we may never meet again,” his reverie came to an abrupt halt. The tower was gone, the sky was empty.

  Willow steadied himself, turning these last words over and over in his mind. How could he have known that his words would prove true?

  Dusk began to fall. Just as before, Willow stood motionless before turning and leaving the garden. He went out the gate by way of the same path he had followed months before and walked along the edge of the ruins, contemplating for the last time the bygone splendor of the palace.

  By the time Willow had walked back to the market, the street lanterns – suspended from the eaves of the wine shops and teahouses – had already been lit. The market was so bright that none of the people in the crowds who still flowed through the area needed to carry their own lanterns.

  Willow began to ask the townspeople where he might find the maiden. He asked the wine sellers, the tea merchants, the noodle makers, the wonton cooks. No one knew. Just as he was beginning to despair, a servant boy pointed his finger at a man across the street, saying, “He’s the one you really should ask.”

  Willow looked over to see a man sitting on the ground in front of a wine shop counter. His clothes were in tatters, his face grimy, his hair disheveled. The servant boy told Willow that this man had once been the steward of the estate.

  Willow rushed toward him, only to be met with a vacant stare. The steward stretched out his filthy hand and asked for alms. Willow groped for a few coins from within his bundle and placed them in the steward’s palm. The steward brightened immediately, stood, slapped the coins onto the counter, ordered a bowl of wine, and drank it in one gulp.