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By the River
Seven Contemporary Chinese Novellas
By Charles A. Laughlin, Liu Hongtao, Jonathan Stalling UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5404-6
CHAPTER 1
The Beloved Tree
Jiang Yun
TRANSLATED BY CHARLES A. LAUGHLIN
It was 1890, or 1891; a man packed his things for a journey. He left the road by the ocean, and followed a path through a thicket dense with grasses and trees, on his way around the island. Later he borrowed a horse, and he continued to travel along the island's length. All along the way people hailed him, saying "Haëre maï to maha!" which means "Please join us for a meal." He smiled but continued on his way. Later someone did stop him: it was a woman as hot and brilliant as the sunlight.
"Where are you going?" she asked him.
"I'm going to Itia," he answered.
"What for?"
"I'm looking for a woman."
"There are many beautiful women in Itia; is that what you want?"
"Indeed."
"If you like, I can give you one; she is my daughter."
"Is she young?"
"Yes, she is."
"Is she healthy?"
"Yes."
"Good; please bring her to me."
And just like that, the European Gauguin found his treasure, a bride with skin like golden honey, in Itia. He used a horse to take his bride, his happiness and his inspiration, back to his island home.
Two years later, this man departed; he boarded a ship from Tahiti back to France. His woman sat on the stone edge of the pier, her two sturdy feet immersed in the warm sea water. The flower that she always wore behind her ear had withered and fallen onto her knees. A group of women, Tahitian women, gazed at the retreating steamer, at the man going far away, and they sang an ancient Maori song:
Ye gentle breezes of the south and east
That join in tender play above my head,
Hasten to the neighboring isle.
There you will find in the shadow of his favorite tree,
Him who has abandoned me.
Tell him that you have seen me weep.
— Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa
1. Meiqiao and Sir
Meiqiao was sixteen when she married the man they all called "Sir." He was much older than she, by maybe twenty years, so of course she wasn't his first wife. His first wife had died of consumption, leaving him with a boy and a girl. When he married Meiqiao, his boy had already gone to Beijing for school, while the girl was almost thirteen, living with her grandparents in the countryside.
Meiqiao had her conditions for marrying Sir. At the time she was already attending a normal college, Women's Normal, so she agreed to marry him only on the condition that she be allowed to complete her studies. "I will marry you if you'll let me study," she said, "even if you have to wait until I'm seventeen." This last part she said ominously, as if she were defying him. But honestly, who was she to lay down conditions? That's the kind of girl Meiqiao was, always throwing caution to the wind. Of course, you couldn't tell that just by looking at her; her doe-eyed face was childlike, tame, with moist red lips pursed like a baby's. She was the image of innocence. There she sat, doing embroidery by the window, and she looked up when she heard the door. The expression of surprise when she raised her head was like something out of a painting, and it lodged itself in Sir's heart for fifty years.
* * *
It was a small town; at least to Meiqiao it was small. Meiqiao yearned for a larger place, a bigger city. To be more specific, this "bigger" city bore the name of Paris.
Meiqiao wanted to be an artist.
Seventy or eighty years ago, Meiqiao's town was undoubtedly drab and gray. Northern cities often have this kind of dark gray color. If you stand at a higher elevation, for example up on that thousand-year-old seven-story pagoda east of town, the place might seem as quiet as a fish submerged in water, the way the gray roof tiles wrap the body of the town like fish scales. Meiqiao found it depressing, so she used her paintbrush to revise the town's appearance, repainting the roof tiles a brilliant red. An expanse of roofs painted red covered the earth, rising like steam, roaring, as if a fire had started. Sir stated his opinion — "Terrifying!"
At the time, Meiqiao was already pregnant, and it was getting too hard for her to get around for her to continue attending classes. Sir used the evening hours to help her keep up with her assignments. In the daytime she sat alone in the empty compound with its double courtyards, bored to tears. The sun's rays seemed to inch along interminably. She reached out to grab them, then opened up her hand: her palm was full of sunlight. She grabbed again, squeezing hard, but when she opened her hand, it was only a handful again. She had so much time on her hands; when would it ever end? Meiqiao sighed as she listened to the cicadas in the trees, their chirring cries making her feel empty inside.
Sir was a disciplined man — stern, stodgy, not much for talking and laughing — all appropriate to his station in life. Sir was the dean of the normal college in the city, and its mathematics teacher. His achievements in this field were well known near and far. In terms of his family rank, he actually was not the eldest, but everyone referred to him as if he were, calling him "Da xiansheng" — "Sir," mostly as a token of respect.
Sir, who as a teacher had seen all kinds, discovered to his great surprise that his new bride, his humble little lady, was exceptionally intelligent. When he started to give her math lessons at home, she instantly solved every problem. Trying to conceal his excitement, he began to experiment, pushing her harder or leaping ahead, even setting traps for her, but nothing was too difficult for her. She was like a horse — a proud young filly — and mathematics was a vast prairie in which she could gallop freely to her heart's delight. Sir started to become frustrated, wanting to trip her hooves, looking everywhere for obscure and unusual problems, but who could stop her? Like Liu Bei's jinxed horse, at the moment of truth she would leap across the Tan River. The glass shade of the kerosene lamp was polished snow-white, and the flame danced on her face, giving the profile of her lowered head an unreal, faraway quality. Sir thought of the poetic description of Lin Daiyu in Dream of the Red Chamber — "Her mind more agile than Bi Gan" — and suddenly he was gripped with foreboding.
Now Meiqiao would no longer be Meiqiao, but "Mrs. Sir." Everyone's "Mrs. Sir." Getting used to this name would take more than a day or two. At first when people called her "Mrs. Sir," she blushed up to her ears, sensing that she was being teased. Only at school did her classmates still call her by her name. Sir was a man of his word, and sure enough, after the wedding he sent her back to the Women's Normal College. Only there was she still Fan Meiqiao, even "Miss Fan." Her group of friends took to calling each other "Miss": Miss Zhang, Miss Li, Miss Fan. The Women's Normal College was in a Western-style building, one of those colonial affairs with a stone foundation, soaring Roman pillars, a pointed Gothic roof, and halls that were eternally gloomy with a booming echo. Earlier, Meiqiao had not realized that she loved this place; now she knew for sure.
Less than a month after giving birth to her first child, Meiqiao ran back to take her final exams. In the hot July weather, her full breasts swelled painfully, and the milk oozed out in streams. In no time, the front of her blouse was soaked. The examination proctor kindly stopped in front of her, wondering whether he should give her a handkerchief. She wished she could disappear into a crack in the earth. Swallowing tears of humiliation, she swore never to have a baby again.
But that was not something she could control. Those little creatures, those babies, kept coming one after another in spite of her. After Number Two and Number Three came, before she knew it she had Number Four inside. Her body was just too good, like a fresh, fertile field: casually toss some seeds and you get a bumper crop. She tortured herself, running lap after lap on the college exercise field, practicing long jumps in the sand pit, her legs bruised blue and purple, but those warm, weird lumps of flesh seemed to have become part of her body and would not go away. She took croton berries and castor oil to purge them, and even hid charms on her body to induce an abortion. None of this, however, could stop those lumps of flesh from growing bigger and maturing by the day. Her mother-in-law, Sir's mother, came in from the countryside after she gave birth to Number Two and said, "Mother of Lingxiang, quit going to that school and making a fool of yourself. Even if you're at the top of the class, what good will it do with these kids here?" Her own mother also tried to reason with her, saying, "Don't be so stubborn; just accept your fate. Who can overcome fate with her will?" And Sir? He didn't say anything out loud, but those arguments were written into his gaze. Meiqiao avoided that gaze, and persisted, and that persistence took endurance. For what should have been a three-year course, because she alternated periods of study with time off, it wasn't until the sixth year that this extraordinary and painful journey came to its conclusion: Meiqiao finally received her Women's Normal College diploma with its bright red stamp.
She ran to her mother's house, diploma in hand, laughing as she entered the gate, hot tears streaming from her eyes.
Sir heaved a great sigh, and thought, It's about time we had some peace and quiet around here.
Number Four was getting bigger every day in her belly, and she did quiet down, maybe even too much. She had never been much of a talker, but now she had practically become mute. It was as if she had used up all of her energy, and her eyes became dull and distracted. The northern summer was winding down, but Indian summer had arrived. She moved a bamboo bench out under the tree to cool off, her belly rising up like a hill. It was a locust tree, no one knew how old, with dense branches and leaves, sprinkling rich shade over half of the courtyard. Locust trees were the most common in this city, practically a symbol of the city. Meiqiao hated the tree's old and decrepit look, so on one of her paintings she changed it, taking her revenge by mischievously painting the leaves blue. A vast blue grove of locust trees, it had a surging, roiling power, so that at first glance it looked like a rough, stormy sea, bursting with passion and ... evil.
Shortly before the baby was due, late one night Sir was startled awake by Meiqiao's screams. She was having a nightmare. In terror she grabbed his hand, saying, "I'm going to die!" and burst into tears. In all their years together, not once had she ever wept like this, crying right in front of him so weak and helpless, unrestrained and overwhelmed with sorrow — she had always kept a respectful distance from him as if he were her father. Sir was paralyzed by her weeping, panicking in his heart, yet from his lips came the words "What nonsense, how could that happen? Dr. Hu is the best obstetrician ..." But no sooner had he said it than he realized this was not the kind of assurance she was looking for.
The birth did turn out to be difficult; the fetus was out of position. Dr. Hu, who had studied in Japan, tried everything he knew, but in the end he had to take out scalpel, scissors, and obstetric forceps. Meiqiao had endured two excruciating days and one night of labor; it was a life-or-death struggle. After that came postpartum depression, anorexia, fever, silence, inexplicable weeping and sobbing. The child was taken away by a wet nurse; Meiqiao hadn't produced a drop of milk, so at least she was saved the past troubles of stopping the milk after weaning. The infant was just a little thing, less than five pounds, like a skinned cat; his head had been stretched by the forceps so that it resembled a long purple eggplant. One look at the baby made her shudder with disgust, disgust mixed with pity.
Sir invited his mother-in-law in to stay with her during the first month. Meiqiao's mother sat cross-legged on the kang, chatting delicately about one thing or another. She could have said one hundred, one thousand, sentences, and Meiqiao would still have ignored her. She wasn't speaking or eating, either. She couldn't even keep a bowl of Qinzhou yellow millet porridge down. It was almost like morning sickness. She became thinner, more haggard and withered, every day. Her mother was at her wits' end, and began to cry. "Meiqiao, it's like you don't want a perfectly good life, and now you're making yourself die!"
Her comment cut to the quick. It was shocking, the kind of thing only one's own mother could say. After she said it, she went home moaning. Out of sight, out of mind. But that didn't work for Sir. He couldn't put her "out of sight"; he couldn't run away from the situation. One day when he came home from work, he called their eldest daughter, Lingxiang, over to him and gave her something. Lingxiang carried the object into her mother's room and called out, "Ma." She climbed onto the kang and handed it to her.
Meiqiao took hold of it and froze for a moment. Gradually her hands began to tremble, and she pulled Lingxiang to her bosom in a tight embrace. She felt Lingxiang's body, so warm, tender, and fragrant; she drew in the warmth and scent of this little creature. She was saved.
It was an appointment letter, for a teaching position at a public elementary school.
* * *
After the New Year celebrations, Meiqiao became an elementary schoolteacher. First she taught fourth grade arithmetic, and later she began to teach art. It goes without saying that this job was Sir's doing. Most people have to work hard to find employment, but for Sir it was as simple as saying the word. Only for Sir, whether to say that word was a very difficult decision. Sir was perfectly clear about what was wrong with this girl: she dreaded being doomed to the ordinary life of a housewife in a courtyard house; her lush young body resisted that life. But what could be done about it? Saving one life is better than building a seven-story pagoda, after all.
The weather had not yet become warm, but Meiqiao had already traded her cotton-stuffed clothes for spring clothes, a bright indanthrene blue gown with a green cashmere sweater on top. That green was fresh and confident, clear and bold like spring grass. Despite having carried four children, Meiqiao's body had actually not changed much. Standing there, she still cut a striking figure, with the pristine look of someone who could go through the muck without getting dirty. This fresh person went out every morning and came home in the evening, and even with all the chalk or watercolor paint on her hands, the ink or chalk dust on her clothes, she still looked fresh and bright. The world outside, the vast land, nourished her. In fact, she was not all that enthusiastic about teaching; it was the outside world that she loved.
The public school was about a fifteen-minute walk from home. Her teaching load was not heavy. What's more, there was a happy surprise, in that a classmate from the Women's Normal College, the one they had called "Miss Zhang," also happened to be on the faculty at this school. Miss Zhang had graduated some years before Meiqiao (don't forget that Meiqiao was held up by one pregnancy after another) and returned to her hometown, a county town about thirty miles away from this city known for its grapes and rice vinegar. Over time they had lost touch with each other, but they had never imagined that they would run across each other in this place, much less as colleagues! Meiqiao was overjoyed.
"Oh, my, my!" she cried. "I had no idea where you'd gone. I thought I'd never see you again, and here you are right outside my back door!"
"That's right! I've been lying in wait for you!" Miss Zhang replied.
Their eyes flashed, sparkling as they had when they were students, but of course they were not students anymore. They both suddenly felt time whoosh past them, like a strong wind past their ears, and for a moment it left them at a loss.
"I got married," Miss Zhang said.
In the old days, Miss Zhang had been a pretty but masculine young lady, with broad shoulders, a long neck, thick eyebrows, and a body that seemed that it would be as straight as a poplar forever. They teased her with the nickname "Boy Beauty." This proud "Boy Beauty" once boasted that she would be a virgin for life. It appeared that she still had the same broad shoulders, long neck, and straight figure, but that oath from the past had gone up in smoke.
That day, the two reunited old friends had lunch at a place outside the school gate run by some people from Shandong. Meiqiao treated. They even had a little Zhuyeqing, that fine liquor infused with real bamboo leaves, both clear and green. When you take it into your mouth, it has a wondrous flavor. With cups in hand, the two of them shared their experiences since they had parted ways. Meiqiao's story was quickly disposed of: it consisted only of having children, one after the other, now up to the fourth. Miss Zhang, however, had a much more complex and dramatic tale: resisting an arranged marriage, eloping, running away with the man she loved — it was a story of the era.
"Oh my goodness," Meiqiao couldn't stop saying. Because of the wine, because of her excitement, her cheeks bloomed like peaches, hot and feverish. "Miss Zhang, you're really something else!"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from By the River by Charles A. Laughlin, Liu Hongtao, Jonathan Stalling. Copyright © 2016 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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