The Watermill

by Arnold Zable

  He is by my side as we board a bus. He speaks fluent English and has assumed the role of interpreter. Inside the bus he seems smaller, in contrast to the adults leaning over him. The seats are taken, and passengers crowd the aisles and entrances. Bodies register each movement. We are like matches in a box, says one passenger. I think we should envy the matches for the breathing space they have, says another.

  The Little Gentleman and I step off the bus together. He guides me through narrow streets, past cottages with grey slate roofs and wooden houses hard up against the concrete walls of three-storey apartment blocks. A man’s face, ghostly white, appears at a window; a parrot shrieks in a cage suspended over a doorway. Chickens cackle in coops clustered on several balconies. Between blocks we glimpse mountain peaks towering on the city’s outskirts. The air is acrid with smoke; Guiyang is a city that struggles to withstand the daily onslaught of industrial waste and congested living.

  We come to a halt at a housing block with the drab appearance common to Mao-era dwellings. The Little Gentleman leads me to a second-floor apartment. He lives with his grandparents. His parents, high-school teachers, live and work in a distant town.

  The living room is furnished with armchairs, stools and cushions. A small bookshelf displays a four-volume digest of world literature. On one wall hangs a framed ivory carving of a flock of cranes in flight, their necks extended. On the wall opposite is a poster of Renoir’s veiled woman. The room speaks of poverty, but also homeliness.

  In the centre of the room there sits a coal stove, with pots of salted beef, rice noodles, steamed vegetables and chilli. The Little Gentleman joins his grandparents in ferrying dishes to and from the stove. He places a bowl of sweets, plates and cups on a low table beside a vase of chrysanthemums.

  When we are settled, Grandmother does the talking, while Grandfather sits back in his armchair with his arms folded. She is fluent in English, with barely a hint of the Chinese syntax of most local speakers. As she talks she gazes at the coal stove. From time to time her gaze shifts to the poster of the veiled woman, as if drawing on it as a reference point. Fragments of story appear between lapses into silence, backed by the murmur of chatter in neighbouring apartments.

  It was in 1945 that Grandmother met the English woman. Mrs F had lost her husband to war and had come to Guizhou Province to teach English. She made her way to this little-known city in search of anonymity. She talked little of the past, save to say that she wanted to do something of worth far from the battlefields that had left her a widow.

  History, Mrs F was soon to learn, is ridden with ironies. The war was, it seemed, over in Europe, but in China it had not ended. The Japanese had been driven out, but the country resumed the bloody civil conflict that had been, in part, suspended in the face of a common enemy.

  Grandmother pauses. The clouds have parted. A band of sun slips in through the window and lights up her face and the Renoir poster. She closes her eyes and takes in the warmth. In contrast to the tumultuous events she is recounting, she is calm and tranquil. Her husband appears older, and his laughter, when it breaks out, is deeper.

  The couple has weathered many crises, and the years have taught them the art of acceptance. It is there, in Grandfather’s easy silences, and in the quiet cadences of Grandmother’s speech. The weight of history, and the suffering it had wrought, had honed their patience; they had adapted to their fate and learnt to live with the twists of fortune.

  These qualities have been instilled in the Little Gentleman. He is precocious in his patience and his air of cheerful obedience. He pours the tea into porcelain cups, content to do his grandparents’ bidding. His movements are confident and compact; he is well practised in the art of hospitality.

  Mrs F lived in Guiyang for three years. She stayed on when Mao made his triumphant entry into Beijing and proclaimed the birth of the Peoples Republic of China. The country was swept up in euphoria. The fighting was finally over and the nation united. This is how it had been in the Middle Kingdom for millennia: periods of fighting and disintegration, followed by the consolidation of a new dynasty. The revolution would surely deliver them.

  Mrs F worked as a volunteer teacher at a primary school. She said little about her past, and much of what she did say Grandmother has long forgotten. Within months of the proclamation of the Republic, Mrs F announced her time in Guiyang was over. The country had regained its independence and was forging a new identity. It was time to return to England.

  This, at least, is how Grandmother remembers it, along with the sense of loss she felt on the afternoon her friend left. She recalls it with clarity: the bus ride to Guiyang Station, the silent walk to the platform, and the clamour of the crowds as she helped her friend lift her suitcases into the carriage.

  Mrs F settled in her window seat and waved as the train drew away from the platform. Grandmother remained, her eyes focused on the rails, as if trying to fix that point where the train vanished. She was overcome by a wave of envy. Mrs F was disappearing into a wide world, while she remained enclosed in a landlocked city. She felt the weight of it as she made her way through the shabby streets of Guiyang to a flat made somehow smaller by her friend’s absence.

  Grandmother was now competent in English, her fluency born out of conversation. She taught English for twenty years in a Guiyang middle school and enjoyed the process of refining her students’ phrasing and diction.

  It was, she says, like watching ink dry on parchment, the words in her students’ speech assuming greater clarity. Learning a new language was an act of persistence and the rewards, though slow in coming, were enduring. She loved teaching, but her career was cut short by the Cultural Revolution.

  Grandmother speaks of the events matter of factly. She was beaten by her students, paraded through the school and forced to crawl like a dog as they berated her. The placard dangling from her neck branded her a counter-revolutionary, a spy and a decadent.

  Her former friendship with a foreigner, and her fluency in English, had made her suspect. She hid her language books for fear her students would burn them. She got rid of the correspondence and documents that would have associated her with the English woman. As anticipated, her students ransacked her flat in search of incriminating evidence.

  Grandmother pauses and returns her gaze to the framed poster. I wish to travel, she says, changing the subject. I wish to go to England and see Mrs F. She had long lost touch with her foreign friend, but hoped she was still living. She had two former classmates who had left Guiyang years ago and were living in London.

  They will be my starting point, she says, and from there I can begin my search. She is saving money for the journey. Once a month she visits a sister in a provincial town where she buys fresh beef. She dries and salts the meat, and returns to Guiyang where she sells it to local businesses.

  The English woman loved Guiyang, she says. She would say: Guiyang is a well-kept secret, a city concealed in a forgotten valley. I am so far from everywhere, no one need know I exist. She was a good woman, says Grandmother. She asked for little, worked diligently, and did not judge others.

  Grandmother has no photos of her. Not one. Her face had disappeared when the train pulled out of view from the Guiyang Station, and the few photos she did have were destroyed by her rampaging students. No matter how hard she tried to retain the image, as the years went by she lost her picture of her.

  A year ago, Grandmother was out walking when she passed a stall selling posters of paintings: Chinese landscapes and works of the Western canon. She was arrested by the poster of the veiled woman. There was something familiar about her. She was drawn to its sombre beauty, the muted colours, and something else: the woman and her stance evoked a lost memory, more precisely, the impression of a memory. She could not quite place it.

  When she arrived home she leaned the framed print against the wall, stepped back and contemplated it. It was not so much a physical resemblance, but the woman’s elusiveness. The portrait was a study of transience. It evok
ed the fading dream that Mrs F’s three-year stay had come to be.

  The veiled woman has become the dominant presence; she commands our attention. Her face is turned away. She is on a threshold, about to step into the cold, perhaps at nightfall. She is slightly huddled as if uncertain of what awaits her. Behind the veil can be seen an earring, shaped as a flower with black petals. A bow of blue, white and pink below her chin adds a touch of colour, as too the right-hand cuff, and her hat with its brown and white feather.

  The thumb and forefinger of the right hand appear to be holding a small object, perhaps a purse. All that can be seen of the left hand is the thumb, and that too is barely visible. Her thick shawl suggests winter. The entire painting is veiled in a green darkness, tempered by the light streaming through the windows.

  One day, says Grandmother, addressing me directly, you will remember Guizhou as my friend did, as a place where you spent time and then left to get on with your life elsewhere. Your friends will accompany you to the station and help you with your luggage. Until the last moment you will be a living presence, as they will be to you, standing face to face, making promises.

  Then you will step aboard and settle into your seat. Already you will be elsewhere. You will continue to wave, and you will be sad at your parting, but that will be outweighed by your anticipation of the journey ahead of you. You will see your friends’ faces fade from view and see the mountains close ranks behind you. And they will remain on the platform long after the final wave, staring at the empty tracks, transfixed by that moment when a living presence begins to give way to memory.

  The clear image of those you have known here will wane, but from time to time, unexpectedly, you will dream of them. Scenes will form before you, perhaps of the countryside, and the way the mountains press in on this city, perhaps of your brief time in this room, and the afternoon light settling on the veiled woman.

  Foreigners rarely stay here. The city is polluted. Unromantic. The few Westerners I have met have told me this. Many pass through by train en route to better-known places: Sichuan Province to the north and, to the south, Yunnan. When your work is over, you will step out of our lives, and after you have left, you will begin to see me, as I now see Mrs F, from a great distance, a waning memory.

  The memory is already waning as the Little Gentleman farewells me at the bus stop. Evening is falling, casting a veil over the valley. The bus competes with horse-drawn carts, cars and bicycles. The skies emulate the dark hues of the Renoir, while the evening light intensifies the dreamlike quality of the landscape.

  When I arrive back in Huaxi I am reluctant to return to the apartment. I make my way to the riverbank. There is a chill in the air. The winter is long over, but the cold lingers. The fields are in darkness and the bridge is deserted. The first stars are out, and through the doorway of the mill I see a single globe and, beneath it, the miller seated on his stool, pipe in hand, deep in reverie.

  I step inside. The mill is enclosed by farmland and limestone ranges, lost in a dream of the Middle Kingdom. I have come through the mountains and am enveloped by them. In this moment, this is my reality. All that exists is a room lit by a single globe, the miller seated beside me. And the thoom, thoom, thoom of the wheel, an endless churning.

  I return at dawn, and cross the river shallows on a series of stones to the pavilion, upstream from the watermill. It has been my habit to come here at this hour to escape the martial music and the strident homilies and slogans that boom from the college speakers every morning.

  On one side of the pavilion are fields and ascending paddies. On the other are parklands and, on the horizon, the familiar outline of the mountains. Some fifty metres downstream the river flows over an outcrop of rocks and quickens into rapids. On weekends art students line the banks with their easels. They paint in oils, working layers of blues and silvers to capture the textures of the cascading waters.

  And he is there, as he is most mornings. The old man is walking with steady steps along the bank in the park opposite the pavilion, carrying a bamboo birdcage covered in a blue cloth. He stops at a tree, places the cage on the ground, takes off his flannel jacket and hangs it on the lowest branch. He bends over, removes the cloth from the cage and suspends it on the branch, beside the jacket.

  The songbird begins to sing as soon as the cloth is lifted. For half an hour, the old man performs tai chi beneath the tree. He faces east, to catch the first rays of the sun. There are other people in the park practising their chosen form—each within their private sphere of intimacy. For some it’s tai chi, for others chi gong. Younger men and women are performing martial arts.

  A woman dressed in a black flannel jacket, white runners and loose-fitting black trousers shadow boxes. Her hair is kept in place by a blue headband. She is stocky in build, but lithe in movement. She assumes a succession of postures and delivers blows with lightning swiftness. She lifts the scimitar she had placed on the grass beside her, parries and thrusts, pirouettes and lunges at her imagined opponent.

  A young man practises Kung-Fu monkey style. He moves on tiptoe; his body is loose and his arms are bent at the elbows. He raises them to his face and droops his wrists like monkey paws. He drops on all fours and leaps back upright. His head jerks from side to side, and his eyes dart about, alert and curious, like a watchful monkey. Then, without warning, he lunges forward, fingers clawed, and cuts loose with a flurry of kicks and jabs.

  Another man performs drunk-boxing style. He lurches and falls on his back, feigning drunkenness. He moves as if unbalanced, and wobbles and parries to avoid imagined blows. Suddenly, his body is tensed, then triggered into action. The jerking legs and hands are transformed from helplessness into lethal weapons. The abrupt change disarms his opponent. It is an ancient strategy.

  The old man takes the same route every morning. He stops at the same tree, hangs the cage and jacket on the same branch and performs the same sequence of movements. He has never shown any sign that he knows I am watching; and I have never tried to speak to him.

  He may have been a teacher, a scholar. Perhaps a retired engineer or a party functionary, perhaps a farmer. It does not matter. I am drawn to his serenity and composure. He lives outside and beyond time. I cannot imagine who he had once been, where he received his training, nor what he has witnessed, and this is how I prefer it.

  He is there even on mornings when rain threatens. When it falls, the stepping-stones are submerged, forcing me to pick my way with great care to the pavilion. The water swirls at my feet and tumbles over the rocks, finding new pathways between them. Crabs scuttle to higher ground. The earth is pungent with damp. Water pours down the shingled roof and slides down the lacquered poles of the pavilion.

  The old man appears on time, cage in hand, wearing a rain-cape. The cloth on the cage is covered by a sheet of plastic. In his other hand, he holds an umbrella. He stops beneath the tree, hangs the birdcage on the lowest branch, and suspends the open umbrella beside it. It provides a dry space where he can perform his movements. The limestone peaks are shrouded in cloud, and the birdsong is drowned out by the rush of the water. But it remains a part of the soundscape: a presence. The bird does not sing in vain.

  Soon others appear—children on their way to school and workers taking shortcuts to the town, stepping warily over the stones under their capes and umbrellas. Two young boys stand on the muddy banks and launch branches into the river. They watch them until they disappear over the rapids.

  And all the while the old man continues his practice. His feet are firmly grounded, his body erect but supple, his hands and arms flowing. He follows his routine at the same unhurried pace. Once done, he covers the cage and retrieves the umbrella. Within minutes he is gone into the rain and cloud: Han Shan, vanishing towards Cold Mountain.

  The Spring Festival is long over, but the turning of the seasons has stalled. For weeks, the skies are covered in cloud; people scurry to and from work beneath the steady rainfall. Winter has reclaimed residence, but still I walk ever
y afternoon and, at times, at dawn and nightfall.

  And still they come to my apartment, my students, to tell their stories. In turn, I visit them in their spartan rooms, composed of single beds on concrete floors and cane chairs at tables piled with books and papers. On the walls, perhaps a map of Guizhou or a poster of a Chinese film star. And I visit those higher in status, the older lecturers, the party cadres and their families, in their modest quarters.

  Take for instance the Beijing Man. He is a culinary magician. The tiny balcony of his flat is his kitchen, and from a small gas stove he produces gourmet dishes: hot and sour soup, stir-fried egg and tomato, fish cooked with five-spice powder, and fried tofu with egg wrapping. He steps back into the living room and delivers the dishes to the table. After the meal is done, we shift the table against the wall along with the chairs and sofa. He switches on a cassette recorder and plays a medley of tangos.

  The Beijing Man is a teacher of Russian and English. He conducts the college orchestra in his arrangements of Western classics. Beethoven. Mozart. Tchaikovsky. He can be found, on any night, at one of the dance parties that break out in the college, where students practise steps—ballroom and, increasingly, disco—that were until recently off limits and which are still frowned on by old-school cadres.

  The Beijing Man dresses in style. In winter, he wears a dark wool coat, in summer, open-necked shirts and flannel jackets. At fifty, his hair is dyed black and is slicked back from his forehead. He wears a tan suit and a tan tie on a white shirt, freshly ironed. He guides his partner to the cassette music, on the diagonal, making maximum use of the space available. He twirls her round with a theatrical flourish and glides back on the return journey. There is a lightness in his step, a playfulness in his movements, and on his face, a smile of exuberance.