Soul Mountain (8 page)

“It’s good at begging for food, the cheeky devil.”

“It was starving. It ate up everything in that big bucket.”

“It’s fatter. I touched it.”

They are very excited and go into minute details – who was first to hear, who was first to open the door, how he saw it through the crack in the door, how it followed him, how it put its head into the bucket, how it sat down next to the pan, and how it really enjoyed eating. Someone even said he’d put sugar into the corn mush and that it likes eating sweet things! Normally they scarcely speak to one another but here they are talking about Beibei as if it’s everyone’s sweetheart.

I look at my watch, this whole episode took no more than ten minutes but they are raving on endlessly about it. They’ve got all the lamps on and some are even sitting up in bed. That’s just the way it is, life is monotonous and lonely on the mountain and one needs this bit of comfort. From Beibei they go on to talking about Hanhan. The rifle shot earlier on had alarmed them. Hanhan came before Beibei and was killed by a peasant called Leng Zhizhong. They had been getting Hanhan’s signals from the same location for a number of days and, thinking it was seriously ill, set out to look for it. Finally, under a fresh mound of earth in the forest they dug out Hanhan’s carcass and its neckband which was still giving signals. They organized a search with tracker dogs and got to this Leng Zhizhong’s house where they found the rolled up skin hanging under the eaves. Another panda with a neckband was Lili but its signal simply disappeared in the wilderness of the forest and was never again heard. There was no way of knowing whether it had been attacked by a leopard and its neckband chewed up or whether it had met a clever hunter who had smashed the neckband with his rifle butt.

Close to daybreak two shots sound from the lower part of the compound. Their muffled echoes reverberate in the valley for a long time, stubbornly lingering like smoke in the barrel of a rifle that’s been fired.

You regret not fixing a time to see her again, you regret not chasing after her, you regret your lack of courage, not getting her to stay, not chatting her up, not being more forward, and that there will not be a wonderful liaison. To sum up, you regret losing the opportunity. You don’t suffer from insomnia but you sleep badly the whole night. You’re up early, think it’s all ridiculous and luckily you hadn’t been rash. That sort of rash behaviour damages one’s self-esteem. But then you detest yourself for being too rational. You don’t even know how to go about starting a romance, you’re so weak you’ve lost your manliness, you’ve lost the ability to take the initiative. Afterwards, however, you decide to go to the riverside to try your luck.

So you’re sitting in the pavilion just as the timber merchant had suggested, sitting in the pavilion and looking at the scenery on the other bank. From early morning it’s busy at the crossing. The water level goes right up the sides of the ferry as people cram into it. As it docks, even before the ropes are tied, people fight to get ashore. People with big baskets on carrying poles and people pushing bicycles jostle one another, all shouting and swearing as they surge towards the town. The ferry shuttles back and forth and eventually brings across all the people from the other shore. This side of the crossing also turns quiet. Only you are left sitting in the pavilion, like an idiot, pretending to wait for an appointment which wasn’t made, with a woman who came and vanished, just as if you’re daydreaming. Could it be that you’re bored, that you’re fed up with your monotonous life devoid of passion and excitement and that you want to live again, to experience life again?

The river-bank is suddenly bustling with activity, this time they’re all women. They crowd onto the stone steps by the water – some washing clothes and others washing vegetables and rice. A black canopy boat approaches and the fellow standing at the prow with the punt-pole shouts at the women. The women shout back but you can’t tell whether they’re flirting or quarrelling. Just then you see her again. You say you thought she’d come, that she’d return to the pavilion so you could tell her about its history. You say an old man sitting in the pavilion told you about it. He was wizened like firewood and as the words came from his parchment-like lips with a wheeze, he looked like a demon. She says she’s terrified of demons so you say that his rasping voice was like the wind blowing onto high-voltage wires. You say there are town records dating back to the
Historical Records
and that in early times this crossing used to be called Yu Crossing. Legend has it that when Yu the Great quelled the floods, he crossed here. On the river-bank there used to be a round carved stone with seventeen barely discernible tadpole-like ancient ideograms on it. However, as no-one was able to decipher them, when stone was needed to build the bridge they dynamited it. Then they couldn’t raise enough money and the bridge wasn’t ever built. You show her the couplet written by the famous Song Dynasty scholar. The Lingshan you seek was known to men of ancient times, however the generations of villagers who have lived here since don’t know the history of the place, don’t know about themselves. If the lives of the many generations of inhabitants of these courtyards and apartments were written up in full, without leaving anything out or any fabrications, it would really amaze writers of fiction. You ask if she believes you. Take for example the old woman sitting on the doorsill and staring blankly ahead. Her teeth have all fallen out and her wrinkled face is like a salted turnip. She’s like a mummy, there’s no movement except in her dull, lustreless, sunken eyes. But in those times, she was radiant and beautiful. For several ten
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around, she ranked as the number one or number two most beautiful woman and people who saw her couldn’t help taking another look. But today who can imagine how she looked in those times, not to mention how sexy she looked after becoming the bandit’s wife? In this town the bandit chief was called Second Master. Whether he came second amongst his siblings or was honoured with the nickname to get on good terms with him is of little consequence, but everyone in town, young or old, addressed him as Second Master, partly to curry favour but more out of fear. The courtyard beyond the doorsill she’s sitting on isn’t huge but there are a series of courtyards. Back then, gold coins were brought in big cane baskets from the black canopy boats to this courtyard. She’s now staring blankly at the black canopy boats: long ago the old woman was kidnapped and taken onto one of these. At the time she was like those girls with long plaits washing clothes on the stone steps, only she had wooden clogs instead of plastic sandals, and came to the river with a basket to wash vegetables. A boat came alongside and before she realized what was happening two men had grabbed her by the arms and were dragging her into the boat. She didn’t have time to call for help because cotton wadding had been stuffed into her mouth. Before the boat had travelled five
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she had been raped in turn by several bandits. In these black canopy boats which have plied the river for a thousand years, once the woven bamboo canopy was drawn, it was possible to perpetrate such crimes in broad daylight. That night she lay naked on the bare deck boards, the next night she was lighting the stove to cook at the prow of the boat . . .

What will you talk about now? Will you talk about her and Second Master, how she became the bandit’s wife? Or will you talk about why she is always sitting on the doorsill? Back then her eyes weren’t dull like now and she always carried a woven bamboo container in her bosom and her hands were forever busily embroidering. Her plump white fingers would embroider mandarin ducks frolicking in the water or peacocks with their tails outspread. She coiled her black plaits onto the top of her head and held them with a jade and silver hair-clasp, painted her eyebrows and trimmed the hairline around her face, but no-one dared to suggest that she was attractive. People around her, of course, knew that the container had coloured silk threads on top and a pair of loaded shiny black revolvers underneath. If soldiers boarded while the boat was moored, these delicate hands which embroidered would shoot them down one at a time. While this took place, the elusive Second Master would be sure to be at home fast asleep. Second Master took a fancy to the woman and had kept her for himself, so she followed the womanly virtue of following the man she had married. Didn’t anyone in the town ever report them? Well, even rabbits don’t eat the grass growing close to the burrow. Then, miraculously, she assumed a life of her own. As for the once famous bandit chief Second Master, whose fighting prowess was unchallenged by all the bandits prowling the roadways or waterways, in the end he was killed by this woman. How? Second Master was cruel but this woman was worse – men are no match for women when it comes to being cruel. If you don’t believe me you can ask Mr Wu the teacher in the town middle school. He’s been commissioned by the new tourist office of the county to compile a chronicle of the customs, history, and stories of Wuyizhen. The director of the tourist office is the uncle of the wife of Wu’s nephew, otherwise he wouldn’t have got the job. People born and brought up in the locality all have stories to tell and he’s not the only one in town who can write. Who doesn’t want to go down in the annals of history and moreover be able to draw advance overtime payments as well as a writer’s fee? Wu is a local from a family which has been influential for generations. The clan genealogy mounted on yellow silk, confiscated and publicly burnt during the Cultural Revolution, was twelve feet long. His ancestors enjoyed power and high positions as Leader of Court Gentlemen during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and as Hanlin Academician during the reign of the Guangxu Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. However in his father’s generation they ran into the land reforms and the re-allocation of land and, burdened by their landlord classification, suffered decades of misfortune. Now however, his elder brother, an overseas professor on the verge of retirement with whom he’d lost contact, arrived in a car to visit his hometown accompanied by the local county head and with a colour television for him. As a result the cadres in town started showing him respect. Don’t talk about all this. All right, I’ll talk about the rebellion of the Long Hairs – the Taipings. At night they came along and torched half of the main street. Previously, the main street of the town ran along the river-bank from the wharf. The present bus station is located at the end of the main street, on the old site of the Dragon King Temple. Before the Dragon King Temple was reduced to a heap of rubble, on the fifteenth day of the lunar New Year, the evening of the Lantern Festival, the best view of the lanterns was from the opera stage of the Dragon King Temple. The lantern dragons from the four villages along the river congregated there – teams of men wearing red, yellow, blue, white or black turbans depending on the dragon they performed with. At the sound of the gongs and drums, the heads in the crowd thronging the streets begin to move to the beat. The shops along the river all have their bamboo poles out with red packets of cash dangling from them, everyone wants good business during the year. The red packets of old man Qian in the rice shop diagonally opposite the Dragon King Temple are the most lucrative and two strings of five hundred crackers hang from his upstairs window. It’s among exploding crackers and in a sea of light that the lantern performers demonstrate their prowess. One after the other, the dragons wheel and somersault: it’s hardest for the performers manipulating the dragon’s head or holding the embroidered ball. And while I’m telling you this, two dragons appear – the red one from Gulaicun in the village and the black one from town led by Wu Guizi. Don’t go on with this story, don’t. But you do, and go on to tell about the black dragon and about Wu Guizi, the great performer everyone in town knows. The young women are all besotted with him and if they see him they call out, Guizi, come in for some tea, or they bring him a bowl of liquor. Improper behaviour! What? You go on with your story. Wu Guizi, performing in the lead, approaches with the black dragon. He’s covered in sweat and in front of the Dragon King Temple unbuttons his vest and tosses it to someone he knows in the crowd. There’s a black dragon tattoo on his chest and the youngsters on the street shout their approval. At this point, the red dragon from Gulaicun comes onto the scene from the other end of the street. Twenty or so youths of the same build, each charged with strength and energy, have also come to contest the first prize at old man Qian’s rice shop. Neither team will yield and both begin to perform at the same time. The red and the black dragons are lanterns lit by candles and two fiery dragons are seen prancing amongst the heads and feet of the crowd, suddenly rearing their heads and wagging their tails. Wu Guizi is performing with a ball of fire, somersaulting bare-chested on the cobblestones and turning the black dragon into a fiery circle. The red dragon also puts on a good performance – following the embroidered ball closely, it thrusts forward and back like a centipede biting into some living thing. Just as the two strings of five hundred small crackers finish, the employees let off a few bungers. The two teams of contestants, panting and dripping with sweat like eels coming out of water, charge up to grab the red packet hanging from the pole next to the counter. In one bound, it is seized by a youth from Gulaicun. How could Wu Guizi and his team take this humiliation? Loud swearing between the two teams replaces the sound of crackers and then the black and red dragons are embroiled in a fight. The onlookers can’t tell who started it but in any case both had been itching for a fight, and this his how fights often start. As usual the children and women start screaming and women who had been standing on stools at doorways to watch the fun grab their children and retreat indoors. The stools they leave behind turn into vicious weapons for both sides. The town does have a policeman but on a festival day like this people would be buying him drinks or else he’d be hanging around mahjong tables watching people play to find pretexts for extracting bribes . . . preserving public order isn’t free of charge after all. Civil disturbances of this nature don’t involve the law. The fight results in one death in the black dragon team and two in the red dragon team, and that’s not counting little Yingzi’s big brother who was watching. Three of his ribs were broken when, for no reason at all, someone knocked him down and stomped on him. Luckily, they managed to save his life by using dogskin plaster, a family prescription from Pockmark Tang’s which is next door to Joy of Spring Hall, the brothel with the red lanterns hanging outside. You’ve made it all up and it’s a story you could go on telling, except that she doesn’t want to listen.