Peach Blossom Pavilion (53 page)

I craned my neck and looked. The long, narrow steps seemed to soar all the way to heaven. From the mountainside, branches stretched here and there, looking like esoteric symbols struggling to show me the way to enlightenment.

I turned back to the coolies. "How do you know there's a temple up there?"

"I heard about it," the skinny one shrugged, "anyway, why else would all these steps be here?"

"But it looks like nobody's been there for a long time."

"Miss, all temples here look like this." He paused to wipe the moisture from his face with a filthy rag. "Now we'll either drop you off here and you go up to find the temple yourself, or if you like, we can take you back." He cast a glance at his comrade. "We're going home before the storm gets any worse."

I said to the two dark faces, "Why don't you two wait for me here for an hour. If I don't come back, you can leave. If I do, I'll pay you double."

They jabbered loudly to each other, their eyes darting around. Then the stout one said, "We'll wait thirty minutes and you pay us three times-or else we don't wait."

"All right." I took a deep breath and blurted out, "It's a deal."

The climb was never-ending. I counted the steps: ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred, one hundred twenty, two hundred, three hundred ... until my mind became a blur. And in the deepening snow, so did the steps. Tired and short of breath, I climbed very carefully, lest I lose footing and slide back down. My throat felt dry and my lips cracked. The inconsolable rumble of my stomach sounded like an old wife's incessant complaints. I took out a bun and chewed; it tasted like a salted stone.

As if this were not bad enough, the snow was beginning to soak through my clothes. I hugged my chest but that still didn't stop my body from shivering nor my teeth from chattering. My vision was blurred from my exhaustion and the glaring whiteness. I took out and opened my umbrella, but it was immediately blown away by the wind.

"Damn!" I spat.

Although now I could not see the top of the stairs, nor where I had started from, I somehow kept going. While my leather-booted feet continued to drag me upward, the question I dreaded began to harass my mind: What if there was nothing at the end of the steps?

I panicked, turned, and mustered all my strength to scream down to the coolies. But I heard nothing except faint echoes of my own voice bouncing off the rock cliffs. To avoid the strong wind swirling down the steps, I staggered against the wall to catch my breath. I called out again to the sedan bearers, but the buffeting wind immediately knocked the breath out of my chest.

They must have left without waiting for me!

My breath froze in my chest. I started to have a feeling like floating in space. Through the blur of snow, the world seemed small yet infinite. The deep imprints of my footsteps stared back at me like enlarged eyes. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I savored the momentary sensation of warmth prickling on my skin.

I began to feel certain that there was nothing at the end of the stairs. This thought, spinning within, synchronized with the swirling snow without. Horrible thoughts entered my mind: When the storm was cleared, someone-a monk, a nun, a pilgrim, a bandit-would discover a corpse on these steps. The battered body would look as if suspended between heaven and earth. The eyes would be wide open, as if the deceased were still resisting being dragged down to hell, since her earthly wishes had been left unfulfilled. The monks and nuns whom I'd asked about my mother would recognize my face but my identity would remain an eternal puzzle. The local gossip newspapers would desperately try to discover who I was. When they failed, they'd just fill in the puzzle with a story from their wildest imagination-a runaway girl from a rich family, lost on the mountain on her way to meet her clandestine lover, accosted by bandits, raped, then brutally murdered ...

I shivered from the thoughts as well as the bitter snow. My breath had become harsh and labored; my lungs felt as if they were submerged in boiling water. Delirious, I looked up at the sky and muttered a prayer, "Heaven, let me see my mother one last time before my last moment comes. If I have to die, let me die in her arms, please!"

But heaven, looking so white and pure, seemed completely oblivious to my prayer. Though my feet felt like icy marbles, they dragged doggedly one step after another while my mind danced in the swirls of dementia ...

To lift my spirit, I began to sing-a medley of Peking opera arias and qin lyrics.

The strong wind whistled and moaned to accompany my songs. After more demented singing, suddenly I felt my feet land on something unexpected-level ground. I stood still, inhaling deeply to calm and focus myself.

My eyes looked around until they lighted on a haunting sight. A woman, bald-headed, her thin body wrapped in an equally thin robe, was meditating in the full lotus position. Behind her was a small, dilapidated temple.

The scene struck me with its terrible beauty. It was completely white except for the nun's black robe under the temple's crimson roof. For a fleeting moment I wondered if I was seeing a stone statue. Or a hairless ghost.

But, of course, she was neither a statue nor a ghost, but the woman who had been Beautiful Fragrance-my mother.

My heart fluttered like snow falling on a withered lotus. Despite my recent bitterness, now I felt only sorrow seeing her emotionless face and the shivering of her frail body.

Why was she torturing herself in the freezing cold?

Overwhelmed by emotion, I had no time to think. "Ma, I'm here!" I screamed and sprinted toward the bell-shaped figure at full speed.

To my utter surprise, the nun continued to meditate as if she were both deaf and blind-or as if my running toward her was merely an illusion. Or had time stopped forever in her world?

I kept running and screaming "Ma! Ma!" until I slipped and fell...

31

The Reunion

Then I woke up, I felt cocooned in something soft and warm. I looked up and caught my mother's eyes.

"Ma . . . " I didn't know what more to say. But now that I was in her arms, what more did I need to say?

My mother said, "Rest more, Xiang Xiang."

Tears rolled down my cheeks. The last time I'd heard my name from her lips seemed to have been in some remote, former incarnation. How strange my name sounded now, so sweet and yet so bitter to my ears. Its mere sound brought me back to my childhood when my father had been alive and handsome, my mother a happy wife and mother, and I an indulged child.

Although her hair was gone, her crown marred with scars, her smooth face replaced by a finely wrinkled one, her name changed from Beautiful Fragrance to Wonderful Kindness-she was still my mother.

Feeling strangely comfortable, I uttered another "Ma ..."

"I heard you, Xiang Xiang," my mother said in her nun's calm voice. When she touched my face, I was shocked to see a row of small scars on her wrist.

"Ma, what happened?"

"I burned them."

"But why?"

"Same as those on my head, as offerings to the Buddha."

I searched her face. "It must have hurt."

"Not if you're enlightened."

Enlightened. What would that be like?

I sighed inside, then looked at her and blinked hard-once, twice, three times, hoping that after each blink she'd be transformed back to the mother I'd known-young, beautiful, smoothfaced, scarless.

But after endless blinks, what I saw in front of me was still the same thin, bald-headed, scarred nun that I'd encountered in Pure Lotus Temple a few days-or an entire incarnation-ago.

My eyes misty and my mind confused, I fell asleep again.

When I woke up, sounds of clanking pots drifted into my ears together with my mother's voice. "Xiang Xiang, I've cooked some simple vegetable dishes; they'll be ready in a minute."

I looked out the window. The sky had turned completely dark. The snow and wind were still howling like hungry ghosts searching for food. Listening to the water dripping from the eaves, I thought of life draining from an hourglass and felt an unspeakable sadness. But soon it was replaced by a small joy when I heard the wind through the trees calling my name cheerily, "Xiang Xiang! Xiang Xiang!" Swiftly I slipped off the bed, left my room, and went into the small hall. It was practically empty except for an altar bearing a wooden Buddha statue. In front of the Enlightened One rested several miniature bowls of rice and vegetables, still steaming. Two candles burning high on the altar cast pools of warm, cozy light into the room's four corners.

This remote place must have been neglected for a long, long time. But now the floors were swept clean as a polished mirror. With my mother's silhouette flickering in the kitchen next door, the familiar sound of her setting the table, and the aroma of food, this lonely temple actually gave the illusion of a home. Home! For how few years had I a real home to go back to!

Big Master Fung's image flashed across my mind. It was this shredded-by-thousand-knives monster who had pulled our whole family from paradise and sent it plunging to hell! I felt my entire being consumed by a burning sensation. "Sha!" Kill. I said to myself in a heated whisper, imagining Fung's head being hit by a bullet and spurting with blood, or chopped off by a cleaver and falling on the ground, bouncing away.

But Mother was calling my name gently, "Xiang Xiang, come sit at the table, dinner is ready."

I sat across from my mother. As I looked at the dishes, my heart felt a happiness mixed with pain. Our reunion dinner. On Chinese New Year. Finally.

"Ma," I asked, "do you know it's Chinese New Year?"

"We nuns don't pay much attention to secular festivals."

I watched Mother's serious countenance and remembered how my parents, unlike most Confucian couples, would pat and touch each other in front of me. While most men, believing their wives inferior and their bodies contaminated, would stay away from the women's quarters except to have sex, Baba had been more than happy to help Mother with her makeup and wardrobe.

The burning sensation again overcame me. I'd changed from an innocent child to a scheming-hearted ming ji, my mother from an attractive woman to a sexless nun, and my father from a famous actor and fiddler to a wandering ghost. All as a result of Fung.

Oblivious of my boiling emotion, Mother said, "Eat more, Xiang Xiang, even if you find vegetarian food tasteless," and began to pile food into my bowl.

"Ma, you're a wonderful cook. Nothing that you prepare is tasteless." I gobbled down chunks of food and drained cup after cup of fragrant tea. My chopsticks kept flicking onto the different plates and scraping rice into my mouth. Suddenly I noticed my mother was not eating but watching me with sad eyes.

"Ma," I said, putting down my chopsticks, "please eat, too."

I thought I saw tears in her eyes, but I was not sure. Without a single hair on her scalp nor a single word from her lips, she picked up some rice, put it into her mouth, and chewed, slowly, as if she were doing some kind of eating meditation.

Finally we finished our meal and I helped Mother clear away the table. After that, she brewed more tea, then, holding the steaming cups in our hands, we sat opposite each other. We both knew the time had come when we had to reach into the darkest corners of our minds, drag out our secrets, and toss them under each other's light.