The Ancient Ship. Zhang Wei

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СКАЧАТЬ the main house, he had seen Huizi die, had seen the terrifying writhing of her body on the kang. He did not dare tell Jiansu any of this, though he worried that the boy already knew and that it was what burdened his mind. When Jiansu reached adulthood, he had the eyes of a panther searching for prey, and Baopu hoped he’d never see his younger brother pouncing to rip and tear with his teeth.

      As the eldest son of the family, he could not rid himself of the feeling that he had failed Hanzhang in his responsibilities to her. She was now a thirty-four-year-old woman who, like her brother, had known love but not marriage. Her uncle had once arranged a marriage for her with Li Zhichang, to which she had agreed. But two days before the wedding she had changed her mind. Li had paced the drying floor for several days bemoaning his fate, assuming that what had happened beneath the willow tree that time had created resentment in her mind. But she begged him to leave her, saying she was unworthy of being part of the Li clan, which she revered. Over the days that followed she grew increasingly wan, until her skin was nearly transparent. She actually grew lovelier by the day, and frailer. From time to time she visited Fourth Master, returning home more obstinate and unruly than ever. She was a dedicated worker, never missing a day. When she returned home from a day on the drying floor, she wove floor mats from tassels of cornstalk to add to the family’s income.

      Baopu sat in the mill gazing at the drying floor, thinking about his hardworking sister and growing increasingly melancholy. He was on edge for days after the blowup with his brother in the mill, and he felt as if something were gnawing at his heart. Then one afternoon he threw down his ladle in a fit of pique and walked over to the drying floor, where a chorus of women’s voices came on the wind before he reached it. One horse cart after another drove up to the racks, with their silvery threads waving in the air; the horse bells and the women’s voices merged. Baopu skirted the area of greatest activity and headed for a corner, where he saw his sister standing next to one of the drying racks. She did not see him coming. As her hands flew over the strands of noodles, she was looking up, a smile on her face, gazing through the gaps in the racks at the other women. The sight flooded Baopu’s breast with warm currents of joy, and he decided not to get any closer.

      The noodles around her were as clean and clear as crystal, uncontaminated by a single blemish; the sand at her feet shimmered slightly. For the first time Baopu detected the harmonious relationship between his sister and the drying floor. He reached into his pocket looking for some tobacco but left it there as Hanzhang spotted him; by the look in her eyes, she was surprised to see him, and when she called out to him, he walked up. First he looked into her face, and then he turned to look elsewhere. “You never come out to the drying floor,” she said. He looked into her face again but said nothing. He wanted to tell her that he and Jiansu had had a fight, but he swallowed the words.

      “Guo Yun says you’re sick,” he said. “What do you have?”

      With a look of alarm, she pressed herself up against the drying rack and grabbed threads of noodles with both hands. “I’m not sick,” she said with a grimace.

      “Yes, you are,” he said, raising his voice. “I can see it in your face.”

      “I said I’m not!” she shouted.

      Feeling hurt, Baopu lowered his head and crouched down to stare at his hands. “It can’t be like this, it can’t,” he said softly. “No more…everything has to start from the beginning, and it can’t be like this.” He stood up and looked off in the distance, where the old mills stood at the riverbank, dark and forbidding, like fortresses, and quiet. “The Sui clan,” he said, almost as a moan, “the Sui clan!…” He gazed off in the distance for a long while before spinning around and saying sternly, “You have to get whatever it is treated! I won’t let you turn into someone useless like me. You’re still young! I’m more than ten years older than you, so both you and Jiansu are supposed to do as I say, to listen to me.”

      Hanzhang held her tongue. Baopu kept staring at her. She looked up at him and began to tremble.

      In the same stern tone of voice, Baopu said, “Answer me. Are you going to have that treated or aren’t you?”

      Eyes open wide, Hanzhang looked into her brother’s face without so much as blinking. She held that look for a moment and then stepped up and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She begged him not to mention her sickness again, never again.

       SIX

      “Another member of the Sui clan has died!” The news traveled stealthily through town for several days. At first no one knew who had died, but word slowly leaked out that it was Dahu, who had been sent up to the front. Half the town knew before anyone told Dahu’s family. Word came first from a mine prospecting team. A young worker’s elder brother who had been in Dahu’s team wrote home. Then Technician Li told Sui Buzhao, and the news continued to spread until one day people saw Dahu’s mother carrying a set of her son’s clothing as she ran wailing up and down the street. “My son!” she was crying, “my unmarried, teenage son!…” People stood around gaping at her. Now that she had been notified of her son’s death, she sat down on a rush mat and wept until she lost her voice. A pall settled over the town and did not lift all that afternoon. Even the workers in the noodle factory were silent. After Zhang-Wang closed the Wali Emporium, old men on their way to have a drink turned back and went home. When night fell no one lit lamps; people groped their way through the dark to sit with the old woman as she mourned her loss.

      A tiny, three-room hut with incense curling into the air produced the smell of death familiar to all the town’s residents. Several chests were piled up to form a sort of pulpit covered by a mat and a bedsheet. Various bowls and cups vied for space with gray-yellow candles on top. The bowls were mostly filled with glass noodles dyed in a variety of colors, topped with slices of egg-filled pancakes and decorated with lush green cilantro. Behind were photographs of the only person qualified to enjoy the offering. The photos, all of them small, were fitted into a large frame. The one in the middle, in red and yellow, had been taken six months after Dahu left home. Dressed in an army uniform, he struck a handsome, commanding pose, which had drawn the admiration of nearly every girl in town. Under the flickering candlelight, old folks leaned on their canes and bent forward to examine the photo.

      At midnight Zhang-Wang came over with a stack of coarse yellow paper and a bundle of incense sticks, which she handed to the old woman, who then told her young son to record the items in pencil. With a solemn look, Zhang-Wang mumbled something before taking a twig from the old woman to draw an oval shape on the ground. She burned the yellow paper in the middle of the oval. Still mumbling, she sprinkled liquor around the flames; a few drops fell on the fire, which leaped up suddenly. The smoke got thicker, making people cough and tear up. Zhang-Wang sat down on the largest rush mat, her eyes downcast, her sleeves and her shoulders drooping. Her dusty neck was slender but strong, and with her chin pressed inward, she began to chant in a low voice like the whir of a spinning wheel. The people around her began to sway to the rhythm of her chants, the range of their movements widening as they went along, as if they had been dumped into a giant washbasin and were being stirred rhythmically. That went on till daybreak; Zhang-Wang never wavered in her chanting, but some of the people fell asleep and slumped to the ground. The old folks held on to their canes with both hands, their heads drooping down between their legs, their purplish mouths hanging slack. Some of them dreamed they were in the old temple listening to monks reciting sutras; they barely managed to escape when the temple caught fire. It was daylight when they finally woke up. The windows were red from the morning sun and the candles had burned down. Zhang-Wang rose from the rush mat to leave but was stopped by the old woman and her son, who held tightly to Zhang-Wang’s sleeve. Mother and son let her go only after she told them what they wanted to hear.

      The Sui clan moved to the yard СКАЧАТЬ