The Past and the Punishments

by Yu Hua

  Having finished the wine, he slumped back down to the ground, his back to the counter. Willow asked him what had become of the maiden. The steward listened to the query, shut his eyes, and began to mumble, “Ah, the splendor and glory of the past . . .”

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  When Willow repeated his question, the steward replied only with this same phrase. And each time Willow renewed his entreaties, the steward opened his eyes, extended his grimy hand, took more coins, exchanged them for watery wine, drank, and finally replied, “Ah, the splendor and glory of the past . . .”

  Willow sighed and left, for he knew that further questioning was useless. He walked about ten paces down the street and found himself turning into a smaller alley. There was a lantern hanging in the alley, and under the lantern was a small tea stand. Willow suddenly realized that he was not only parched but also terribly hungry. He sat down on a long bench, ordered a bowl of tea, and slowly drank. A kettle full of rainwater was boiling on a brazier next to the bench. Someone had stuck a few seasonal flowers into a crack in the tabletop. Looking closely at the flowers, Willow discovered that there was a chrysanthemum, a crabapple, and an orchid. Willow could not help remembering that, as he walked into the garden several months earlier, the peach, apricot, and pear trees had all been in bloom. Only the chrysanthemums, crabapples, and orchids had yet to open. Who could have known that they would have blossomed here?

  3

  Three years later, Willow traveled once again down

  the yellow highway on his way to the civil service examination in the capital. It was the height of spring, just as before, but this time the landscape had been transformed.

  There weren’t any flourishing stands of peaches and willows.

  The mulberry and hemp fields were nowhere in sight.

  Withered trees and yellow, dusty fields stretched as far as the eye could see. The peasants’ bamboo fences had all been twisted out of shape, and their dilapidated thatched cottages reeled crazily in the wind. The spring scenery was as 30 yu hua

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  desolate as winter. The only people Willow encountered along the way were beggars in tattered tunics.

  Despite the harvest’s failure, Willow was on his way to the capital to take the civil service examinations. When he left his thatched cottage, he was pursued no longer by the heavy clatter of his mother’s cloth loom. His mother had gone to her eternal rest under the Nine Springs. In the days after her death, Willow had managed to support himself only by dint of the two ingots of silver the maiden had given to him three years earlier. If he failed to win a name for himself on the examination rolls this time, the opportunity to bring glory to his ancestors would never present itself again. As he stepped onto the yellow highway, he suddenly turned to look back at his hut, only to see bits of thatch from the roof flying up and shuddering in the wind.

  Was it a premonition of what the hut might look like if, having failed the exam, he returned home? The thatched cottage, the heavy clatter of his mother’s cloth loom – all of these might well disappear without a trace.

  Willow walked for several days. He saw neither government couriers nor young aristocratic gentlemen on their way to the examination in the capital. The yellow highway underfoot was worn and uneven, stretching interminably through a season of famine. He had seen a man sitting on the ground, gnawing on a dirt-encrusted root, his face covered with mud. The man’s clothes were in tatters, but Willow could tell that he had once been clad in silks. If an aristocrat had sunk so low, the plight of the poor was unimaginable. A rush of feeling surged through Willow’s heart.

  All along the way, the bark of the trees by the side of the road had been notched and scarred by hungry refugees.

  Sometimes he saw teeth sticking out of the bark, teeth that had been embedded there when refugees had gnawed too greedily into the bark. Corpses were scattered all along the road. With every passing mile, Willow saw three or four Classical Love 31

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  rotting and dismembered bodies. There were men, women, old and young alike, but each corpse had been stripped of its remaining possessions, left naked and exposed to the ele-ments.

  All along the way, the fields were yellow and withered.

  Only once did Willow catch sight of a patch of green weeds.

  About ten people were crouched above it, buttocks raised high in the air as they grazed, resembling nothing so much as a herd of sheep. Willow hurriedly averted his eyes from this scene, only to be met with the sight of a dying man chewing a clod of dirt across the road. Before the man had even managed to swallow the dirt, he collapsed on the ground, dead. Willow walked past the corpse. His legs felt light, insubstantial. He didn’t know whether he was walking down a sunlit highway or a little path through the darkness of the netherworld.

  That same day, Willow arrived at a crossroads. Pausing to consider his route, he experienced a sudden twinge of recognition. But everything had changed. There was no trace of the profusion of green weeds and the weeping willows he had seen three years earlier. The weeds had been plucked, in just the same way that the patch of green he’d seen the day before had been grazed clean by hungry refugees. The willow tree, shorn of its leaves, was barely alive. The stream was still there. Willow walked over to the edge of the stream and saw that it was nearly dry. The little water that remained was viscous and cloudy. Willow stood by the bank, recalling this place as it had been three years ago.

  There had been a white fish ambling in the stream, floating to and fro with a lovely swaying motion. Despite the passage of three years, the image of the maiden gazing out of her window appeared once again in his mind’s eye, as clearly as if it had been yesterday. But soon, this image disappeared, to be replaced by a dry stream bed. How could he see a white fish through that muddy, turbid water? Where could 32 yu hua

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  the maiden be? Was she still alive, or dead? Willow peered up into an empty sky.

  By the time Willow stepped once again onto the yellow highway, he could already see the city wall. The closer he got to the city, the more insistently memories of the past welled up in his heart. The maiden’s shadow seemed to flutter by his side, now close, now far away. Images of aristocratic pavilions and secluded courtyards appeared in his mind, followed by a vista of crumbling buildings littered across a barren wasteland. These images began to pile on top of one another, to blur together into a vast jumble.

  As he reached the city wall, Willow sensed the air of decay that hung over the town. The entrance to the city was cold and cheerless. The pole-bearing porters who had poured in and out of the city gate were gone. There were no longer any aristocrats wandering idly through the market.

  Inside the gates, the streets no longer rang out with the clamor of commerce. A few pallid and emaciated stragglers wandered through the market. The town was still brimming with storied buildings and pavilions, but the golden paint that had covered their facades was chipped and peeling, only intimating the miserable poverty within. The travelers and hawkers who had once circulated through the market had been replaced by a few miserable souls clad in grubby cotton robes. Only a few of the innumerable teahouses and wine shops remained. The rest were closed and shuttered, door frames and windowpanes covered with a thick layer of dust. The few places that had stayed open neither hung fat slabs of lamb from the eaves nor displayed tangerine cakes and lotus-wrapped rice outside their doors. The boys who prepared the wine sat by the shops, unable to rouse themselves from their stupor. There were still plates laid out on the counters, but they were piled on top of one another, empty. Griddle cake sellers and noodle vendors no longer hawked their wares.

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  As Willow walked, he thought back to the prosperity and bustle of the past –
all a dream. The world is like mist, spiraling through the air, only to vanish. Insensibly, Willow came to the temple. The glittering gold and green building had been reduced to gloomy decay. The temple steps were as crumbly and uneven as a path through the mountains. The branches of the ancient cypress in the courtyard had been broken off, and its bark was notched and scarred. The lacquer on the columns and rafters was peeling off, revealing rotting wood. Weeds shot up through the cracks in the tiled floor. Willow stood for a moment, took off his bundle, pulled out a couple of ink paintings, and hung them on the temple wall. A few people passed by, but their faces were etched with worry and bitterness. In times like these, who had either the leisure or the inclination to indulge in a touch of elegance? Willow waited for a long time, but the grim scene all around him was convincing enough testimony that no one would buy his work. He packed away the paintings. The fact was that he hadn’t sold a single painting during his journey. And for this reason, he had suffered hunger pangs and terrible thirst, for he dared not spend what little remained of the maiden’s gift of silver.

  Willow left the temple and walked toward the market.

  Remembering once more the prosperity of the town as it had once been, he was rocked by a wave of feeling, a wave that emanated from the maiden’s brocade tower and her aristocratic pavilions and secluded courtyards. He thought of the destitution of the city and the ruin of the brocade tower. No more was the ache he felt in his heart reserved for the maiden alone. He began to sorrow for everything that is transitory, for all that is fleeting and ephemeral.

  Lost in these reflections, Willow came to the ruins. Three years had passed, and now even the crumbling remnants of the pavilions had vanished without a trace, supplanted by empty wasteland. He could not even make out where the maiden’s brocade tower had once stood. All that remained 34 yu hua

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  were patches of weeds, little piles of roof tiles, and hunks of rotting wood scattered sparsely across an empty field. If it had not been for those two maples, sturdy as skeletons, Willow feared that he would not recognize the place at all.

  The field looked as if it had lain desolate for a century, as if there could never have been any pavilions, any gardens, any stands of bamboo, any trees in blossom, any pleasure gardens for aristocratic young ladies, any brocade towers, or even any maidens called Hui. And it seemed as if Willow himself had never been to this place before, even though he had come three years earlier, only to find crumbling ruins.

  Willow stood for a while and then turned to go. As he moved away, he was suddenly aware of a peculiar sensation of freedom. Unaccountably, the solemn burden of recollection had lightened. He left the ruins far behind, his memories of the maiden crumbling away with each step he took, until they were gone, until it was as if he had never been enchanted by their spell.

  Instead of returning to the market street, Willow walked down a little alley. As he moved along, he saw cobwebs hanging from the little houses that lined the way. The alley was uninhabited, cold, and cheerless. But this was just to Willow’s liking, for the last thing he wanted at this point was to contend with the pedestrians in the main streets.

  Having reached the end of the alley, Willow came to a little square, in which there were ten grave mounds that had almost sunk to the level of the ground with years of neglect.

  A little farther on, Willow saw a little shack, open at the front. There were two men inside who looked like butchers and a few people waiting outside. Before he had realized that this was a market for human flesh, Willow had already drawn close enough to see what was happening inside. The crops had failed this year. The harvest had yielded no grain.

  Gradually, even tree bark and plant stalks had grown scarce.

  Soon, markets selling human flesh had begun to appear.

  The two men inside the shack were in the process of Classical Love 35

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  sharpening an ax on a whetstone. The people outside, bearing baskets and carrying poles, looked as if they had been waiting for quite a while. Their baskets and carrying poles were all empty. Willow moved closer. He saw three people approaching from the other end of the square. At their head was a man whose tattered clothes barely covered his torso.

  He was followed by a woman and a child. The woman and the child also wore tattered clothes that exposed much of their bodies. The man went into the shack, and the head butcher stood up to greet him. The man gestured at the woman and the child outside the shack. The proprietor glanced over toward them and held up three fingers. The man did not haggle. Accepting three strings of cash, he promptly went on his way. Willow heard the child cry,

  “Papa,” but the man walked as fast as his feet would take him, without so much as a backward glance, and quickly disappeared.

  Willow saw the proprietor come out of the shack with the cashier. He tore off what was left of the woman’s rags, leaving her without a stitch of clothing. Her naked stomach was slightly distended, but the rest of her body was strangely, extraordinarily thin. The woman’s body trembled for an instant, but she made no move to protest being shorn of her clothes. Naked, she turned to look at the little girl by her side. The two men were tearing off the little girl’s clothes.

  The girl struggled for a moment, but, after looking up at the woman, she stood still. The girl looked like she was somewhere around ten years of age. Although the girl too had been reduced to skin and bones, she was still slightly fleshier than the woman. The crowd outside the shack surged forward and began to negotiate with the proprietor.

  It soon became evident that most of the customers were interested in the little girl, because many complained that the older woman’s flesh was no longer quite so fresh as the girl’s. Growing impatient, the proprietor demanded, “Is it for your own family to eat? Or are you selling to someone else?”

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  Two people replied that their own family would be eating, and the rest said that they planned to resell the meat elsewhere.

  The proprietor went on, “If you’re selling it to other people, it’ll be more convenient to buy in bulk.”

  The proprietor gestured at the woman.

  The negotiations continued until an agreement was

  reached.

  Only then did the woman speak, “She goes first.”

  The woman’s voice was blurry and indistinct.

  The proprietor, nodding, took hold of the little girl’s arm and led her into the shack.

  The woman spoke again, “Do a good job of it. Kill her with the first stroke.”

  The proprietor said, “That I won’t do. The meat wouldn’t be as fresh.”

  Inside the shack, the cashier grabbed hold of the little girl’s body, laying her arm out on top of a tree stump. The girl, whose eyes had drifted out of the shack to glance at the woman, did not notice that the proprietor had already picked up his ax. The woman averted her eyes away from those of the little girl.

  Willow watched the proprietor’s ax blade bear swiftly down, heard the “ka-cha” sound of splitting bone. Blood spattered in all directions, covering the proprietor’s face.

  The girl’s body convulsed in time with the “ka-cha”

  sound. She turned to see what had happened and, catching sight of her own arm resting on the tree stump, was quietly transfixed. Only after a long pause did she let out a long scream and collapse. Crumpled on the ground, she began to cry in earnest. The sound was ear piercing.

  At this point the proprietor picked up a rag to wipe his face, while the cashier took the arm and handed it to someone outside the shop who was carrying a basket. This person placed the arm in the basket, paid, and left.

  Suddenly the woman burst into the shed, lifted a knife Classical Love 37

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  from the floor, and quickly thrust it into the little girl’s chest. T
he little girl gasped. Her screams gave way to a lingering sigh. By the time the proprietor had realized what had happened it was already too late. He knocked the woman into the corner of the shed with a punch, picked the little girl off the floor, and rapidly sliced apart her body with the help of the cashier before handing the pieces one by one to the people waiting outside the shed.

  A frightened Willow stood dazed for a moment before coming to his senses. The little girl had already been completely dismembered, and the proprietor was leading the woman from the corner of the shack over to the stump. Not daring to watch any more, Willow turned and made his way down an alley. But he was pursued by the dull sound of the proprietor’s ax cutting into the woman’s flesh, by the woman’s lacerating shriek. He shook uncontrollably, and it was only when he had rushed out of the alley and into another part of town that the sounds began to recede behind him. But, try as he might, he was unable to expel the scene he had just witnessed from his mind. It would linger, stubborn, wretched, fluttering across his field of vision. Wherever he might go, the image would implacably follow. Leery of the prospect of spending the night in town, Willow hurried out of the city gates just as dusk began to fall. It was not until he stepped onto the yellow highway that he began to regain his composure. Soon, a harvest moon rose and hung high in the night sky. Walking in the moonlight, Willow was buffeted by wisp after wisp of chill air.

  4

  The next afternoon, Willow came to a little village composed of no more than twenty shabby thatched cottages.

  Each cottage had a chimney sticking up out of its roof, but no wood smoke rose and dispersed slowly into the air above 38 yu hua

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  the village. The sun shone on the road, revealing a thick coat of dust and ash that roiled off the ground like mist as Willow walked along. There were a few pairs of footprints embedded in the dust, but it was clear that neither horse hooves, dog paws, or any sort of livestock had passed this way in a long while. A little path branched off from the highway toward a small irrigation ditch. The ditch was dry.