The Past and the Punishments

by Yu Hua

  Suddenly, Willow sensed billow after billow of a strange fragrance, a fragrance that seemed to be carried toward him by the night breeze from behind the place he was sitting.

  When Willow turned around to look, he was engulfed by shock. Candlelight glimmered inside his hut by the side of the road. Willow unthinkingly rose to his feet and moved Classical Love 57

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  toward the hut. When he arrived at the threshold, he saw a woman sitting on the earthen floor and reading by lantern light. His bundle lay at her side, open. The book had probably been removed from the bundle.

  The woman lifted her head, saw Willow standing by the door, and hurriedly stood to greet him. “The gentleman has returned.”

  When Willow gazed attentively in her direction, he was thrown into a state of utter bewilderment. The woman was none other than the maiden Hui. The maiden stood straight as a jade column, her gauzy silk skirts just brushing the floor. The skirts were pale, silvery white, strangely lumines-cent. It was as if she were clad not in silk but in moonlight.

  Seeing Willow’s befuddlement, the maiden smiled. Her smile was like the gentlest of ripples. The maiden said,

  “Won’t the gentleman come inside?”

  Willow, still bewildered, went inside.

  The maiden said, “I know I’ve appeared rather suddenly.

  Please don’t be offended.”

  Willow gazed at the maiden. Her hair was elaborately coiled above her forehead, curling like tendrils of cloud, and her cheeks were flushed with the hue of peach flowers. Her eyes rippled with little waves of longing, and she held her small, cherry-red lips slightly open. Willow was transported, but his heart was also awash with suspicion and doubt. Finally, he could not refrain from asking, “Are you human? Or a ghost?”

  The maiden’s eyes clouded over with gleaming tears.

  “The gentleman is mistaken.”

  Willow carefully appraised the maiden, and, indeed, she was undoubtedly real, undoubtedly standing before him. In her left hand, she held a lock of hair, the very same lock of hair that she had given him on their farewell more than ten years before. Willow realized that she had taken it from his bundle.

  Noting that Willow’s gaze had fixed on the lock of hair, 58 yu hua

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  the maiden said, “I thought that you might have lost this long ago. I hadn’t expected that you would treasure it all this time.”

  So saying, her tears fell like rain.

  Waves crashed and rolled in Willow’s heart. He rushed to the maiden’s side and grasped the hand that held the lock of hair. Her hand was terribly cold. They held hands and gazed into each other’s eyes through a mist of tears.

  With a wave of the maiden’s silken sleeve, the candlelight was extinguished, and she fell into Willow’s embrace.

  Her skin was chill to Willow’s touch. Her body trembled.

  Willow heard the sound of her broken sobs, sobs that repri-manded Willow for having left her waiting by the window for so very long after he had taken his leave. Willow, drunk with enchantment, felt as if he had been cast back to that lovely scene ten years before. They slid to the floor locked in an embrace.

  Later, Willow fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke, the sun was already high in the sky, and the maiden was no longer with him. But the reed cushion on which they had slept was tamped down where the maiden had lain by his side, and he could still detect billow after billow of that strange fragrance rising from the makeshift mattress. Willow gathered a few strands of hair that lay softly curled on the bed and appraisingly placed them next to a few strands from the lock of hair she had given him long before. They were identical, except that the strands left from the previous night shone with a dim green luster.

  Willow went outside. Under the morning sun, the stream was a band of glittering red light, and even the weeds and willows were flecked with red sparkles. Willow walked over to the maiden’s burial mound. The fresh earth on top of the mound was still moist with dew. Carefully examining the grave, he determined that it had not in the least been disturbed. Willow knew that the events of the night before had been real. It had been neither a dream nor a hallucination.

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  No, the traces the maiden had left on the cushion were enough to attest to that. Perplexed, Willow sat down next to the mound, reached out his hand, and picked up a handful of earth from the mound. The dirt was very warm. Was the maiden really at rest underneath this grave? Could it be that she had long ago taken her leave of the grave, that she had already rejoined the world of the living? Consumed by these questions, Willow began to wonder whether the burial mound was empty.

  Willow sat by the grave for a long time, and the more the events of the night before played through his mind, the more he suspected that the grave was empty, that the maiden had somehow been resurrected. Finally, unable to bear the uncertainty, he resolved to open up the grave and see, once and for all, what lay underneath. He began to dig up the grave with his bare hands, and as he removed each layer of earth, he moved that much closer to the maiden and her mystery. Willow saw that the twigs and branches he had used to cover the maiden’s body had already succumbed to rot. The branches crumbled in his hands like clods of mud.

  And the cloth robe with which he had covered the maiden’s naked body had also turned into mud. Willow gently

  pushed these obstructions aside. The maiden’s naked body emerged from under the mud. Her eyes were shut, her vis-age pure and serene. Her body was soft and pink with a layer of supple new flesh. Her dismembered, shattered leg had knitted itself back onto its stump, whole and unblem-ished. And the knife wound in her chest was nowhere to be found. Although she lay reclined in a muddy grave, her hair was neatly and carefully coiffed, as if it had been combed just a moment before. Her hair shone with an indistinct, green luster, and a strange fragrance billowed from the grave.

  With this revelation – the rejuvenation of the maiden’s body – Willow’s heart began to murmur like a flowing spring. He was certain now. The maiden was preparing to 60 yu hua

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  rejoin the world of the living. As he examined her body, he felt as if she were merely sleeping, sleeping as tranquilly as if she had never become fodder for a cannibal’s meal. And if the maiden was asleep, she would soon awake from her slumber. Willow spent a moment immersed in rapt contemplation and finally began carefully to replace the earth he had removed. When he was finished, he continued to sit by the grave, as though he were afraid that the maiden would somehow escape from the grave and slip out of his grasp.

  Much later, Willow was abruptly roused from sleep by a billow of strange fragrance. Looking around him, he saw that the stream had been engulfed by darkness. He looked toward the hut by the side of the road. Candlelight flickered unsteadily through the moonlit night. Thrown into a kind of ecstasy, Willow stood and sprinted toward the hut. But when he entered the room, the maiden was not, as he had expected, sitting on the earthen floor, reading by candlelight. Willow began to suspect that something was amiss.

  He heard a noise behind him and turned to see the maiden standing by the threshold. As with the night before, she was clad in moonlight, and her body emitted a constant, glittering light. Only this time, her countenance was suffused with sorrow. Seeing that Willow had turned to look at her, she said, “The maiden was originally going to rejoin you in the world of the living, but because of the gentleman’s discovery, there is no longer any hope of that.”

  With these words, she took her leave, tears streaming from her eyes.

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  World Like Mist

  chapter one

  1

  The first tears of spring fell outside the window.

  7 had been bedridden for several da
ys. He had fallen ill on his son’s fifth birthday. At first, he had felt well enough to walk to the Chinese herbal doctor’s office, but later he had to lean on his wife’s arm in order to move about, and later still he was terminally confined to his bed. As 7’s wife watched her husband grow frailer each day, a face as white as a sheet of paper and five fingers as white as sticks of chalk began to appear in her mind’s eye. The fortune-teller lived in a shadowy room located somewhere within a network of streets. The fortune-teller’s hair glowed with a greenish luster. And, at that moment, she began to feel that it was time to snatch her husband away from the energetic hands of the herbalist and deliver him into the fortune-teller’s pallid care.

  She gazed at the raindrops splitting and rolling across the pane and felt as if the glass itself were shattering into fragments. This inauspicious sight seemed to intimate the nature of 7’s fate. For this reason, the sight of her son’s head through the window that looked out on the courtyard looked like a black cloud.

  The night he had fallen ill, 7 had quite distinctly heard his next-door neighbor 4 talking in her sleep. 4 was a sixteen-year-old girl. Her sleep talk was like wind rustling over the surface of a river. As 7’s condition gradually worsened, 4’s sleep talking grew more and more intense. In the dark of night, 7 was comforted by the sound. But 3, a sixty-year-old woman, disturbed him to no end. After the advent of his illness, he was no longer able to sleep at night. As he listened to the riverine 62

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  rustle of 4’s sleep talk, there was no way to avoid also hearing the strange sounds emerging from the room in which 3 shared a bed with her grandson. The grandson was already a big, strong seventeen-year-old. Yet he still slept in the same bed with his grandmother. He could very well imagine how they laid together. They would share the bed in much the same way he and his wife shared their bed. This supposition was rooted, of course, in that series of strange sounds he heard emanating from their room.

  A pair of birds flew from afar through the rain. 7 heard their song. The birds’ song made 7 feel hollow. The birds flew away. A wet strip of pavement appeared before 7’s eyes, glittering like the trail of snot his five-year-old son had wiped on his sleeve. A blind man sat on a big rock, his handsome, refined face dappled with freckles. The blind man was aware of many things that had happened and many things that were to occur. His silence was abundant. The fortune-teller’s son walked down the road, passing the blind man like a bamboo pole. The shadow of a woman in gray appeared at a window. The truck driver careened by in a blue truck, spraying muddy water in the direction of the window and the woman in gray. 6 stepped gingerly out of an alley and into the street, leading a group of little girls as if they were a flock of ducks. 2 walked by with a cigarette dangling from his lips, slipped on the pavement, but did not fall down. A girl died, and her corpse was laid out on the muddy ground. A girl went crazy, and her body was set afloat. And through it all, the fortune-teller sat in his dimly lit room, as if he had anticipated everything that was to come to pass, and on the bank of a narrow, babbling stream, a peach tree put forth brilliant pink blooms. 7 sat on a little skiff, bobbing on the stream’s surface like a dry leaf, listening to the symphonic cadence of the flowing water.

  7’s wife was listening to a conversation between the midwife and 4’s father. The conversation merged with the sound of dripping water. She turned to see that 7’s eyes were as World Like Mist 63

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  dull and lusterless as mud. But his ears were cocked and alert, and she saw how they twitched.

  I’m afraid that she’s been possessed by a ghost, the midwife said.

  I’m worried about that too, said 4’s father.

  Go see the fortune-teller, the midwife suggested.

  2

  The truck driver woke up that morning so ex-

  hausted that his entire body felt damp. His mind was hazy with the dream he had the night before. He lay in bed listening to the conversation between his mother and 4’s father.

  Their voices carried through the rain, resonating with the sound of dripping water. They were discussing how the fortune-teller had managed to live to the ripe old age of ninety.

  Of the fortune-teller’s five children, four were dead. They said that when children die young, their parents live for a long time. Their conversation made him feel as if his heart were clotted with mud. He pictured the fortune-teller’s last remaining son walking down the street, already fifty, still single, thin to the point of emaciation, dragging a shadow behind his anxious frame like a bamboo pole. His mother came inside, moved toward the door of his room, and looked in. In addition to her duties as a midwife, his mother was also skilled at reading dreams. But the truck driver hesitated, solemnly relating the dream to his mother only after he had gotten out of bed and eaten breakfast.

  His mother was sitting serenely in the corner of the room, so that her body was enveloped in shadow. As her son moved toward her, a knowing smile played across her face.

  What is it you want to tell me?

  I dreamed about a woman in gray, the truck driver began his story. I was driving the truck down a winding mountain road, and I saw the woman in gray ahead of me, but she 64 yu hua

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  didn’t move out of the way, and I didn’t hit the brakes, and then I drove right over her.

  The midwife thought the dream was much too complex.

  She told her son: If you had dreamt of a dog, I could tell you that you’re going to fail, and if you had dreamt of fire, I could tell you you’re going to get rich, and if you had dreamt of a coffin, I could tell you that you’re going to become a government official.

  But this particular dream left the midwife at a loss because it lacked any of the familiar symbols with which she might be able to predict her son’s future. She wished that her son could give her something else to go on, but he had nothing more to say, and the midwife was forced to admit her failure. Even so, she knew that the dream was some kind of omen. She said to her son: Go ask the fortune-teller.

  3

  The truck driver followed his mother out of the

  house. Two umbrellas billowed in the rain. He watched his mother’s pitifully skinny frame walk ahead of him into the courtyard. He saw 4 appear at her front door. She seemed to know that she talked in her sleep, that her sleep talk had somehow enveloped the entire courtyard, and so her face was as dark and murky as her black pants, despite the brilliantly red book bag slung over her shoulders. The truck driver found her terribly beautiful, but he was distracted by the sight of 3’s grandson staring fixedly toward him across the courtyard. The look, he knew, implied nothing in particular, but he was disturbed all the same. He began to wonder what went on between 3 and his grandmother. The truck driver hastily looked away from 4, and his eyes drifted over toward a window, through which he could indistinctly make out the shadow of 7’s wife sitting at the edge of a bed.

  The truck driver walked out of the courtyard. 4’s footfalls World Like Mist 65

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  rang out behind him. The crisp clarity of the sound only exaggerated the dull, plodding quality of his mother’s steps as she walked on ahead of him.

  The blind man sat on the slick, wet pavement, and in the drizzly haze he was as wet as the road. Twenty years before, he had been abandoned in a place called Half Way. Twenty years later, he sat in the middle of the road. There was a middle school nearby. The blind man had chosen this spot because it allowed him to listen to the stirring shouts of the middle school girls pour through the air. Their voices were like cool, fresh spring water bubbling in his chest. The blind man lived in a sanatorium to the south of town with an imbecile and a drunkard. Once, the drunkard had told the blind man of his exploits as a delinquent and feckless youth, of girls whose skin was as silken as flour to the touch.

  Soon after, the blind man had t
aken up his current position by the school. At first, he had come infrequently. Following the first time he had heard 4’s voice, though, he began to come every day. A group of voices had been passing by that day, 4’s among them. With one clipped and perfectly ordinary phrase, her voice had wafted its way into the blind man’s heart.

  Each syllable had dripped into his ears with all the revelatory sweetness of ripe fruit, leaving an indelible mark. And so the blind man sat every day at his post by the school, trembling uncontrollably whenever he heard 4’s voice. But it had been several days since the blind man had last heard 4’s voice. As the truck driver and the midwife passed, he could determine from the sound of their footsteps which direction they were going.

  But when 4 passed by an instant later, there was no way for him to know that she was the voice for whom he spent his days in breathless expectation.

  The truck driver was the first to arrive at the fortune-teller’s building. He closed his umbrella and, following his mother’s cue, put it down by the entrance. They walked down a long corridor to the fortune-teller’s apartment. What 66 yu hua

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  struck him first were the five fierce roosters visible through the open door. Only after that did he see the back of a woman dressed in a gray shirt. She stood and moved toward him. The truck driver could not suppress a shiver of surprise. The woman in gray walked rapidly out the door and down the corridor. The dream from the night before flashed before his eyes. He found it unaccountable that his mother seemed not to notice the scene that had just unfolded. He heard his mother recount the dream to the fortune-teller.

  Instead of hazarding an immediate response, the fortune-teller asked the midwife for the truck driver’s eight natal coordinates.

  After a moment of indistinct mumbling and murmuring, the fortune-teller told the midwife: Your son has one foot planted in life, but the other foot has already stepped past the threshold of death.