by Can Xue
Sherman thought it was because he had disturbed her that his daughter urged him to leave. What did she want to do? She didn’t say. She and Marco hustled him off to the road and then turned and ran back. Sherman was too tired to keep his eyes open. He’d better go home.
By the time he woke up back at home it was afternoon. Yuanqing was back. She asked him sullenly what he had said to the sailor downstairs, because he had mocked her and wouldn’t let her pass. She put a paring knife in her satchel; only then could she charge past his blockade. She blamed Sherman and Little Leaf for thinking only of themselves and leaving no way out for her. And if the man blocked her way again, she would have to fight him to the death.
“I didn’t say a thing to him. He’s nuts. He thinks he’s a curtain. You’re not the only one he blocked. He blocked everyone,” Sherman pleaded.
Yuanqing sneered. Just then, a bird flew in through the window and fell to the floor. Sherman bent down and looked. It wasn’t a bird; it was a rooster. It was dead. He wouldn’t have thought that a rooster could fly this high!
“See? We’ll all end up like this rooster. Little Leaf is smart—she found a way to leave this place.”
As his wife talked, it occurred to Sherman that Little Leaf had discussed this with her mother.
“The roof leaked again last night. The repairs didn’t do any good. So I simply set up a tent in the room.”
Sherman had already noticed the tent. He felt a bit uncomfortable.
They ate their meal in silence. Sherman wanted to go out. Yuanqing held him back, telling him to drive the sailor away. Sherman agreed.
But he looked everywhere downstairs without seeing a sign of him. A neighbor told him the sailor had returned to his ship. Before going, he had bade farewell to many people in the building and asked them to let Sherman know that he would come back to see him next year. “Your wife Yuanqing hacked at his hand. Did she hate him that much?” the neighbor said, staring at Sherman. Sherman blushed. He noticed that the neighbor hadn’t talked about her “temper,” but about “hate.” Sherman was imagining what Yuanqing looked like when she hacked the sailor with a paring knife. His eyelids twitched. At home, she didn’t even dare kill a chicken.
He went back upstairs and asked Yuanqing, “Did you really cut him with a knife?”
“I did, because I had no other way to get into the building. I aimed for him each time, but the knife only cut through air. Why did such a strange thing have to happen to me? Just tell me that!”
At the end, she was screaming, as if fighting with Sherman. Sherman covered his ears and escaped downstairs.
A long time after this incident, when Sherman had nearly forgotten it, he saw the sailor again. The sailor had lost so much weight, and his gray hair and beard hadn’t been cut for such a long time, that he was hard to recognize. He sat in Liujin’s garden drinking tea. When Sherman spotted him there, he wanted to walk away, but Liujin greeted him loudly and invited him to join them.
The sailor’s eyes were dull, and he was preoccupied as he held a cup.
Liujin said, “He’s leaving tomorrow. I went with him to his mother’s grave. It’s unlikely that he can live here as his mother did. He’s tried it.”
In the shadows of the trees, Liujin’s face looked thin. Sherman thought she was something of a stranger. What had she been doing recently? She called the sailor “Axiang.” They seemed to have known each other a long time. When Liujin said “he’s tried it,” Sherman recalled that this person had pretended to be a curtain downstairs.
How strange! Although the three of them were sitting there, as in the past Sherman still sensed a snow leopard walking back and forth under the table.
“What’s new with the project in the foothills of the snow mountain?” Sherman asked Liujin.
“They say they’ve built a new city that’s connected with ours. It’s hard to imagine.”
As she spoke, Liujin drew back, as if she felt a wind blowing over from the snow mountain. Sherman thought to himself: Why hasn’t that bird come out? His gaze fell to the sailor’s wrist: he saw the scar. A large watch hid it, but one could still see the deep mark from the knife. Why had Yuanqing done this? What was she afraid of? Sherman thought this person was actually very gentle—not the kind of person you had to take a knife to. So Yuanqing must have gone crazy. Why had Yuanqing been so afraid that she’d gone mad? In his mind’s eye, Sherman saw his wife wielding a paring knife and ferociously hacking at the man in front of him. Just then, the sailor looked at him, and Sherman felt himself tremble a little. Suddenly, he heard the loud sound of a frog croaking, but only once. And he couldn’t be sure where the sound came from. Was he hallucinating?
“Axiang, do you have pets?—such as turtles, guinea pigs, white mice, and the like? While at sea, these animals could tell you the correct time,” Liujin said.
When the sailor heard this, he stared straight ahead, apparently daydreaming. Sherman thought, Liujin is good at talking; she’s an invaluable treasure. He smiled a little. The snow leopard squatted at his feet, warming his insteps. He didn’t hear what the sailor said because he was mumbling. Then he stood up, said goodbye, and left the courtyard.
“Sherman, where do you live? This is a small town, but somehow I sense that you live far away. Maybe across the snow mountain?”
As Liujin spoke, she was also listening. Sherman wondered if she was listening for the frog.
“I do live quite far away. My roof leaks. It’s been repaired several times, but never satisfactorily. But because of Axiang, I became more optimistic, and so even I would like to see him off.”
“Tomorrow is a day off. Let’s both go,” Liujin said.
“Okay, but don’t wait for me. If I’m not there by nine o’clock, just go ahead without me.”
Liujin thought Sherman was strange. She really was listening for the frog. She found only one and dug a ditch near the irises so that it could squat there.
Sherman was thinking as he walked. When he had almost reached Feiyuan’s small shop, he made up his mind: he would not go with Liujin to see the sailor off—because he was too ashamed to show his face. At this moment, he suddenly understood Yuanqing’s crazy behavior: at the gate to their building, the sailor had been acting as an invisible obstacle that he and Yuanqing couldn’t cross over. That explained why Yuanqing took a knife along to deal with it. She was a courageous woman. But this was from his and Yuanqing’s viewpoint. What significance did the sailor see in all of this? Ah, ah! So many webs were woven together! And what about Liujin? It seemed she hadn’t met any obstacles she couldn’t get across. She was a heroine.
As soon as he entered Feiyuan’s small store, Sherman froze in amazement, because the sailor was sitting at the third table facing the window. He should have noticed Sherman, but he didn’t because his gaze was fixed on a certain place. Sherman evaded him and went into the kitchen in back.
Feiyuan frowned, pointed outside, and said softly, “He wants to go, but I’m worried that he’ll have an accident. I don’t want to see him have an accident right after leaving my shop, as his mother did. He’s still young.”
Sherman placed the roasted mutton kebabs on a plate and carried them out to the customers. The sailor was waving something away with his hands. Sherman thought he was driving away fingerlings. Had they blocked his line of vision? Or was his mother in the dark corner across the way? Feiyuan was calling him, “Axiang, Axiang.” Axiang opened his mouth, revealing two rows of snow-white teeth. It was the first time Sherman had noticed how sharp his teeth were! How could anyone have teeth like this? Could he have gone to a dentist and had his teeth sharpened this way? Sherman was so nervous that he almost dropped the plate.
“Just take a look at his teeth,” Feiyuan said, frowning. “This is the crux of the matter. I feel I should apologize to his mother. My heart aches.”
“His mother wouldn’t blame you.”
“Of course not. But I . . . but I . . .”
Feiyuan’s jaw dropped: he was s
tunned at what he saw over there. Axiang was raising a bloody hand. He was bleeding from the scar that Sherman had seen before. What was he doing?
Taking a bandage that Feiyuan gave him, Sherman hurried over to dress the wound for him. While Sherman was doing that, Axiang’s whole body started to shake as he bent over the table. Sherman asked if he was leaving the next day. Axiang nodded his head decisively. He had injured himself on purpose. Why? As a reminder of Yuanqing wounding him?
He propped himself up and looked at Sherman. He seemed to have something to say, but he held back. Sherman encouraged him to say what was on his mind.
“Can you take me to the hostel?” he asked bashfully.
He leaned on Sherman and, dragging his feet as though intoxicated, walked outside.
His room was in the hostel’s basement. He explained that this was the only kind of place he could afford because he had stayed too long and run out of money. He said it wouldn’t turn out well if he went back, because his skipper wanted to kill him. “He would throw me directly into the sea.” That’s what he said about the skipper. That dark, gloomy room was filthy. Another person was staying there, too, snoring in the other bed. Axiang asked Sherman to sit on a recliner. He himself slouched on the bed and smoked.
A glow flashed in the corner of the dark room, making the atmosphere strained. Axiang said it was a mini alarm that he had bought with the intention of taking it to the ship. “It will keep me alert. It just lights up instead of making a sound. It’s exactly what I was looking for.
“Living on the ocean, your nerves are numb. Everything has lost its meaning. If you don’t have a way to stay alert, it can be really dangerous.”
Raising himself up a little, he pointed at the man in the other bed and told Sherman the man had been sleeping three days and three nights. He was also a sailor. He seemed to have broken down. Axiang went on to say that he would board the ship the next morning, but his biggest worry was not knowing if the skipper still wanted him. The skipper wouldn’t tell him, because he loved to ambush people. If he were suddenly thrown into the sea as shark food, he would narrowly escape death. One of his shipmates had experienced this: he had somehow managed to climb back onto the ship; now he was a cook. Axiang still remembered the way this cook had looked when he climbed back onto the ship. He was bleeding: a shark had bitten off a third of the sole of his left foot.
“My mother also worked on this ship. I replaced her. I was twenty-two before I boarded that ship. Before that, I took care of my ill father. Working on the ship was my lifelong dream. Can you understand that kind of longing?”
The alarm light in the corner went out. A smothered cry for help came from the corridor. Sherman got up and headed for the door, but was unable to find it even after groping a long time. Where had the door gone? Frustrated as he leaned against the wall, he called softly, “Axiang! Axiang!”
Axiang had disappeared. Sherman felt all over the empty bed. The man in the opposite bed sat up. He was eating something.
“Hey, buddy, don’t bother looking for him. He works the night shift. He lied to you about being a sailor. He kept telling me that, too. In fact, he works in the produce firm behind this place. All year long, he wears that old sailor uniform. To each his own.”
Sherman stood up and asked why he couldn’t find the door. The other person laughed.
“This room extends in all directions. Just pick up your feet and you’ll be outside.” Sherman tried it, and sure enough, he walked outside. Behind him, an alarm went off like crazy. He looked back. The whole building was in chaos; people kept running out. Sherman strode quickly to the street and saw Axiang approaching him, laughing uproariously.
“I bought a train ticket. Sherman, we won’t see each other again. Can’t you see me off?”
He was a bit dirty, but the smell of fresh grass mixed with flowers wafted from him. Sherman couldn’t help but take a deep breath and draw that scent into his lungs. What did “won’t see each other again” mean?
Sherman wondered if Liujin was this person’s lover. Would there be a scene if she saw him off alone tomorrow? He felt discouraged about his future, and slightly queasy. He accidentally stepped on a passerby’s foot. The person swore at him.
Sherman had been awake for quite a while but didn’t want to get up. A lot of little things were clamoring and fluttering in the air. The window clattered as it was blown by the wind. All of this made him fearful. He asked himself, “What am I afraid of?” But his voice scared him even more. Was he sick? He had lived this long without ever being sick. He heard Yuanqing talking with a colleague in the other room. At first, he heard only a buzzing sound. Then suddenly a sentence leaped out: “Our daughter Little Leaf is an extraordinary woman!”
Yuanqing looked exuberant. She went out the door talking with her colleague.
Now Sherman remembered the orphanage head’s words. At the time, he had been sitting on the bed worrying. The man was conducting a bed check. In the moonlight, the man’s face looked like that of an old monkey. “Sherman, Sherman, if you run away, you can never come back.” After saying this, he stood at the door for a long time before leaving uneasily. Now these words reverberated in Sherman’s ears. He was cold all over. It seemed he really was sick. His mouth even smelled sour. He was tired. Back then when he had run from the orphanage all the way down to this place, he hadn’t felt this tired.
In his dazed state, he saw a little grayish-blue bird hop onto the table from the window. It was chirping. Ah, a bird! He felt feverish. His head heavy and his feet light, he walked to the room in front to drink some water. The bird followed him. Sherman thought, It would be splendid to spend my remaining days with this bird! How long would the bird live? When he was about to fall asleep, the bird chirped again and again, and Sherman felt grateful as he drifted off.
Downstairs, Yuanqing described Little Leaf’s circumstances to her colleague. She gestured a lot, but this didn’t help much to make her points clear. Her colleague opened her eyes wide in surprise.
“She’s a happy-go-lucky girl. Have I told you that? She—ah, she dares to go anywhere. And she’s the same wherever she is. She’s doing much better than I am—for example, in those places where ghosts come and go.”
She laughed shrilly and then strolled again hand in hand with her colleague in front of the building. They were close friends, so they talked about everything.
“Did you say that Little Leaf has gone to the riverside? There’s a gangster mob of beggars there.”
“It might be the riverside. It might be the mountain. Are they any different? This child isn’t like either Sherman or me. I can’t explain it, but anyhow, she’s different.”
She stopped walking and stared at that little bird that had run out of the building. She had seen this bird many times. She had no idea why it always ran and never flew.
Chapter 5
THE BABY
Qiming tossed the baby into the air three more times. The little girl chortled.
Early one morning, Qiming saw that the baby had been placed in the grass. When he picked her up, he found she was wet—either from her urine or the dew. He thought this was Nancy’s fault. He didn’t understand how a woman could be so hardhearted. When he looked up, however, he saw her holding her head as she paced in the small lane. She seemed to be in unbearable pain.
“What’s the baby’s name?”
“Liujin.”
“Oh, what a pretty name! It will remind people of Pebble Town. She’s wet, Ms. Nancy.”
“I know, I know. Oh, I have a splitting headache. Am I going to die?”
As she talked, she turned away. Qiming had to continue holding the child.
Later, he took the baby to her home, where a startled José opened the door.
“Oh, old Qi, old Qi, I’m so grateful to you. Did she chuck the baby aside? She finally cast her away! I was worried and was about to go looking for them.”
He started frantically changing the diaper. The baby was unusually quiet.<
br />
When Qiming left the building, a cold wind blew him sideways, and then he heard the baby’s loud, clear crying. It didn’t seem that such powerful wails could come from such a little baby. While she was crying, the snow mountain appeared in front of Qiming, as did a snow leopard squatting under a tree with a young woman. Her hair was black, but he couldn’t get a good look at her face. At the time, Qiming didn’t yet realize that this baby girl would captivate him for a long time. He felt distracted on his way home.
He saw Nancy in the distance. She was talking animatedly with the institute director. Had she recovered—or hadn’t she ever been sick? She showed no regret about leaving the baby behind with Qiming. Was that because she trusted him completely? Qiming detoured, avoiding the two of them. He had a lot of work today, but the incident involving the child had disturbed him. Because this kind of thing had occurred several times, Qiming now felt something akin to a father’s love for this baby. He had also noticed that when Nancy was with the baby, she was really miserable. There must be a knot in her heart that she couldn’t loosen. Otherwise, what mother wouldn’t adore this pretty, healthy baby? Qiming was sorry that such a warm woman didn’t love her child.
Standing in the pavilion in the middle of the garden, Nancy talked with the director. Qiming overheard their conversation when he was tidying up the garden. The director seemed to be urging her to go to work, but she hadn’t made up her mind.
“When I gave birth to her, I saw the garden—the banyan tree was so close that I could stretch out my hand and grab the aerial roots. I thought I might hurt this child, but once I left her, my legs went weak.”
“You need to go to work. My dear, what you need is work. Then everything will be fine.”
The director patted Nancy’s thin shoulders in a motherly way.
They were talking loudly, so Qiming heard everything. He also saw a bird with a long showy tail land on the pavilion’s railing. The bird wasn’t at all afraid of the women. Qiming, who had lived so long in the guesthouse, had never seen such a beautiful bird. It had probably flown over from the snow mountain. Nancy was pretty, but her beauty wasn’t the same as that of the goddess he loved. Nancy’s beauty was scented, but the woman he adored had only color and form, like a painting on a wall.