The Valley of Amazement (57 page)

“It turned out she had run away,” Pomelo said.

I breathed again. Now I was eager to hear how she had done it.

“She took the path along the river. At the first bend, two women working in the field saw Perpetual and Verdant
struggling. She broke free and quickly stepped into the river and wobbled forward over the smooth rocks below. The water was only knee deep by the banks and she must have thought she could easily cross to the other side. But the moss on the rocks was slippery, and the water was swift, and she fell a few times. Then it deepened, and toward the middle, the water was up to her thighs. Her clothes wrapped around her legs and she struggled to stay upright. Every time she fell, she moved a little bit farther downstream before she could stand again. But then the water deepened to her waist, and it carried her along like a leaf. She managed to steer herself to the bank and grabbed onto the roots of a tree. Perpetual found a sturdy branch and held it out to her, and she grabbed on. The women watching this were relieved. As Perpetual pulled her in, he shouted to her. She shouted back. The women didn’t know exactly what they said because the water was running fast and loud. But one said Perpetual looked angry and he let go of the branch. Verdant was carried away with the branch still in her hand. Her head bobbed up twice before her body went tumbling over a small drop and was churned under. The woman said that Perpetual looked as pleased as a man who had caught a large fish.”

I went numb seeing this in my mind.

“The other woman told a different version. She said that as they shouted at each other, Verdant got a crazy look in her eyes. She gave him one last shout and flung away the branch and let herself be carried away. The woman said Perpetual looked like a man who had caught a large fish only to have it escape and swim away.

“Verdant’s body was found a mile downstream the next day, slapped against a boulder. The current was so strong her body could not be peeled off until summer when the water level went down. Whichever way it happened, people said, Perpetual could not be blamed for her death. After all, she ran away. She walked into the water. But if you ask me, I think it was she who let go of the branch. That was the kind of woman she was. She was like you.”

My throat tightened. “You said there was another concubine. Did she die, too?”

“She is the one I have been waiting to tell you about. Charm arrived after me, and she left a year before you came. She used to be in your room.”

I hoped Pomelo would not tell me that Charm had had a gruesome death.

“Charm and I became as close as sisters. We shared confidences about our hatred of Perpetual. We plotted ways to leave. She had two good feet and I had two bad ones. She suspected that whenever Perpetual said he was going to check on the lumber mills, he actually went up Heaven Mountain. Early one morning, she waited in hiding where the hidden trail starts. Sure enough, there he was, walking up briskly. When he returned home, she plied him with a lot of wine and a few drops of opium and exhausted him with enthusiastic sex. When he fell into snoring sleep, she went through the pockets of the trousers he had worn on the journey. She pulled out a small leather envelope and found inside a piece of paper that had been folded five times. It appeared to be a poem about the landscape of Heaven Mountain. It described a tree with a branch bent like a man’s arm, a rock in the shape of a turtle—many different landmarks, including boulders on the trail that a person could climb over, but a horse could not. There were also words like
left, right, straight, up, down, the third one, the second one.
She realized she was holding the directions for going to the top of the mountain, to Buddha’s Hand.”

My heart soared. A means of escape. “Did you write down the answers as well?”

“Let me finish. When she left, she did not want Perpetual to know where she had gone. She tore a jacket and a pair of pants and showed them to me. ‘Let him think that I followed Verdant into a watery grave.’ She promised to send word when she reached a safe place. She left that night after she rendered Perpetual helpless again with her potion of drink and sex. She took with her the directions, the torn clothing, and a small satchel with food and water. Perpetual found the torn clothes in the river the next day. He was actually heartbroken. I cheered that Charm had escaped by going up Heaven Mountain. But after hearing nothing from her for two months, I thought she had died. I mourned her and hoped she did not die painfully.”

So there had been a ghost in my bed after all. Charm.

Pomelo opened a drawer and removed a small folded sheet of paper. “Two days ago, I received proof that she is alive. A traveling shoe mender came by and said he had brought me shoes from my sister. The shoes looked familiar, and I accepted them. They had belonged to Charm. She had torn apart her shoes and refashioned them into a pair that would fit my bound feet. The seams were perfect and I searched for an opening in the lining—the one we courtesans make for hiding money or notes from our lovers. I carefully snipped open the back seam of the left shoe.” She handed me the note:

Use the directions below to climb Heaven Mountain. At the top, you will see the valley and a dome of rock shaped like Buddha’s Hand. Look down from the ridge and you will see the town of Mountain View. Go to the House of Charm and I will welcome you.

I pictured a town that lay in the valley at the top of the mountain. Magic Gourd and I clutched each other with happiness “When should we leave?” I asked Pomelo.

“As soon as possible. I’ll stay behind to tell them I heard you talking about running away toward the river. When you get to Mountain View, send a note in a pair of shoes to tell me how difficult it was to get there.” She pointed to her bound feet. Although they were not particularly small, it was clear she would not be able to climb all that distance on her own. We spent a few
minutes arguing, Magic Gourd and I insisting that we should go as three sisters.

Magic Gourd lifted her own feet up. “See? Mine were bound, too, and I’m willing to try.”

Pomelo pushed them away. “Yours were unbound when you were a small child. They’re as big as Violet’s, maybe even bigger.”

We continued to argue. We would find a way to help her. She insisted she would be a burden. We pointed out that she had given us the instructions and letter from Charm. In the end, she said, “You are both too good to me. I didn’t even repair any furniture for your room.”

I
SAW LIFE
differently after that night. I heard the farmers shout gruff greetings in the morning. And they seemed softer. I saw old men on the streets puffing on their pipes. A pack of dogs howled and barked and their ruckus dwindled as they ran away, and in my mind, I was running with them.

It was spring and the leaves were budding. At last, the rain was gone and the days were warming. Pomelo had already fashioned a pair of crutches from broken chair legs. She had glued layers of stiff leather on the bottom of her shoes and had a pouch of herbs for reducing swelling. She practiced by marching back and forth in her room every night that she was not with Perpetual and when the maids had gone to bed.

We brought other scraps of wood from the shed of broken furniture, which we used to make our effigies, which we hoped would fool people into thinking we had never left. The bottoms of small stools became our heads, half of a tea table top was used for a torso, and the table legs became our legs and arms. Magic Gourd insisted on fashioning faces for the effigies. She made a mixture of clay mud and sculpted mounds on the stool bottoms, then stuck different-size stones and pegs to create the eyes, nose, and lips. Our faces were quite frightening.

Magic Gourd and I had been hoarding food to last the three of us for three days. There was nothing I could not bear to part with. Everything would be a burden on either my heart or my back. I would bring only the clothes that would serve me best during warm days and cold nights. But then I remembered something I could not leave behind: Edward’s journal and his and Little Flora’s photos. I recalled the terrible day that Flora was snatched from me. I had looked at her photo and said to her, “Resist much, obey little.” I had been following those words of advice. I slipped the photos out of their frames, and tucked them between the pages of the journal.

Magic Gourd set a Western blouse and long skirt on my bed.

“Why are you bringing me those?” I said.

She smiled slyly. “So you can turn yourself into the half of you that’s Western. A Western woman traveling without a husband is not going to be questioned. People know foreigners are crazy and roam anywhere they please. It’s worth a try.”

“And if anyone asks why I’m traveling up a mountain, what do I say?”

“You will say in English, you are an artist. You travel to paint scenery. I will translate into Chinese.”

I frowned. “Where are my paints? What is there to prove I’m an artist?”

She pulled from her bag two rolls of canvas. “You don’t need to show me,” I said. I knew what they were: Lu Shing’s paintings, the portrait of my mother, the other of the valley. Every time I had thrown these paintings away, Magic Gourd had retrieved them.

“It’s at least worth a try,” she said. “I’ll carry them. She unrolled one, the painting of the valley. “How could I give this up?” she said softly. “This looks like the place where my mother lives.”

We waited until it was Azure’s turn for a nocturnal visit from Perpetual. The moon was half full. In the afternoon, when Azure’s maid was nearby, Pomelo made a show of inviting us to play mahjong, and we begged off at first and finally agreed after she insisted twice more. We had already brought our belongings piece by piece to her room over the last week. At seven, we went to Pomelo’s for our game of mahjong. At ten o’clock, when all was quiet and Azure’s maid was with her lover, we put on the simple clothes of farmers’ wives. We laid out on the floor by the far wall our three effigies, donned in pretty dresses. We quietly placed the table and chairs on their sides, as if they had been overturned. We sprinkled the mahjong tiles and teacups on the floor, as if our game had been suddenly interrupted. An oil lamp stood in this heap, and we carefully doused oil on the bed quilts, the silk curtains, the gauze-covered lamps, and the rug. Alas, once the fire started, no one would be able to enter to save us—those ugly effigies with rocks for eyes. Pomelo and I left by the back gate just behind Pomelo’s courtyard. Magic Gourd wound the Victrola, put on a sad aria, knocked over the brazier and oil lamp, then lit the curtains of the bed and darted to the gate where we were waiting.

We took the upper path along the foothills. After five minutes, we heard shouts along the main road below us. I imagined the horrified looks of those who saw our poor effigies lying just out of reach in the inferno, burned beyond recognition. Azure would be directing everyone to save the temple. And what would Perpetual do? What would he feel? How long would it be before someone entered the room and examined those bodies with skins of burnt bark?

The path turned up, and we looked over our shoulders frequently and saw how high the orange flames had grown. I wondered if the entire house was burning. Would the village burn down as well? I was stricken with guilt at the thought. We all talked bravely, but our voices gave us away. We were frightened. I had the sense that
Perpetual would jump out of a bush in front of us. As the village receded, we could no longer see the smoke above the lower foothills, and we all felt relief.

We walked for three hours. Pomelo had to rest often because her arms tired with the crutches. We were stopped when we arrived at a spot in the path that was covered with rocks. There was a way to get through, but it was dark and we did not want to risk anyone falling, so we found a place behind bushes and slept, two at a time.

With the new day, we were struck by the beauty of the open sky and the slopes and dips of the mountain. I had a sense of peace within me I had never felt. When we returned to the path, I saw that Perpetual had said one thing that was true. The mountain had slid down and covered the path with rubble. Magic Gourd and I could have jumped from boulder to boulder to cross. But we stayed next to Pomelo as she planted her crutch carefully with each step. She teetered over the larger boulders, and we had to be ready to catch her. When she reached the other side, she was exhausted, and so were we. We indulged ourselves in an hour of rest and a meal. Our progress was slow, and she thanked us often and profusely, apologizing as well.

“The world does not care for the woes of another when they have their own,” she said.

Someone once told me: When you save a person, even unwillingly, you feel bound to each other for life. That’s how we felt toward Pomelo. Magic Gourd often asked if she needed another rest. I asked if her feet were painful. And she asked if we had tired of carrying her little sack of belongings. We protested loudly that nothing was a burden, and, in fact, it was not.

By the afternoon, we had climbed high enough that the path had gone into the forest, where it was mercifully cool. We worried, however, that a tiger or bear might leap out from behind the trees. I confessed that I imagined worse: that Perpetual might appear.

“How could that be?” Magic Gourd said. “It would take him a while to learn we are not those fake corpses. He would also look first along the river. Why would he think to go into the mountains?”

We walked through the pine forest and began seeing patches of open sky, and soon, the whole sky. The oppressive fear immediately lifted from my chest. But soon it returned when the path narrowed into a foot trail that had been cut into the side of a cliff. I grew dizzy seeing how far down the bottom was. I remembered the story Edward told about the boy who flew over the edge of cliff trying to catch a doll.

“Look ahead and not down,” Magic Gourd warned. “Where you look is where you’ll go.”

“According to this map, we are coming close to the grotto,” Pomelo said. “It must be somewhere across there.” She pointed to the other side of the abyss. “We should reach it in a few hours.” Pomelo had a feeling our jewelry was hidden there. I imagined a hermit sitting in the grotto, just as the poems had described him. I always thought of the hermit as Perpetual. The idea that we might find him in the grotto made me shudder.