第一章 序幕 (Chapter One: Prologue)

Nearly forty years have now passed, yet that scene remains vividly etched in my memory: the sky had just brightened, the morning bell from the Guardian Deity Temple next door had tolled-was this not the perfect hour for a lie-in? Yet I had to scramble up without delay; otherwise, the whole family would stage a charade for my benefit. Without even washing my face, I had to break into a trot to reach the schoolhouse-called a schoolhouse in those days, what we now term a traditional private school-to seize the first place. Failing that, I would feel ill at ease and forfeit the teacher's praise. A schoolboy so starved of sleep, who had already spent the morning chanting new lessons at the top of his lungs like a clamorous sparrow, was almost certain-eight mornings out of ten-that, burdened with too many new lines, he would fail to recite them and earn several strokes of the ferule on his head, his eyelids pinched until they smarted. By the time he was dismissed for the morning, returned home for breakfast, and headed back to school, his stomach was already pleading for rest. Add the warming breath of spring, and as he faced that stack of familiar texts over a foot thick, how could he not feel his eyelids drooping, his eyes heavy, utterly unable to hold out, yearning to lay his head on the desk and sleep his fill? But that most detestable teacher, the one who specialized in caning, showed not a trace of weariness. Propping up a pair of hideous brass-rimmed spectacles, half-squatting, half-sitting before an enormous, cumbersome old desk, he wielded a wooden ferule about a foot long, tapping it incessantly on the desktop, producing a sound more dreadful than the yowl of a wildcat, so terrifying that you simply dared not doze.

And every day it was thus. At this hour, a procession of two-man operated wheelbarrows-to this day we call them wheelbarrows, though 'mechanic's carts' might be more apt, yet that seems too literary-loaded with oil, rice, or pigs bound for the slaughterhouse, would be pushed into the city from the surrounding countryside. The heavy wheels rumbled over the red sandstone flagstones, and the axles, under the strain, emitted a harmonious, pleasing "Ee-ya-ya! Ee-ya! Ee-ya!"

Ee-ya? Though merely a monotonous screech, at this moment it utterly transformed into a potent lullaby! The teacher's odious face seemed to drift away from before my eyes, farther and farther, until it resembled a shadow at dusk; the sound of the ruler also faded from my ears, fainter and fainter, until it was like the buzz of mosquitoes in early summer, receding into the realm of the unseen and unheard. Had I not been quietly shaken awake by the older classmate seated beside me, I would surely have awaited the teacher's royal expedition, to be roused by the ferule.

Though it was but a momentary nap, it felt like a true indulgence. Only then could my eyes open wide, and the recitation of familiar texts become loud and rapid again. Though my mouth chanted "Heaven and Earth, the Primal Yellow" and "Roughly Stated in Four Characters," in truth, what my eyes beheld was not the Thousand Character Classic or Dragon's Whip Shadows, but clearly, distinctly, a stretch of golden rapeseed flowers, emerald green wheat seedlings, and a winding stream encircling a dense grove of trees, and within a walled enclosure, a graveyard with several tiled-roof structures.

To this day it is hard to explain why that graveyard, some twenty li from the city, held such powerful allure for me, a child raised in the urban confines. Recalling those years, truly there was not a moment when I wasn't thinking of it, like a lover's longing, especially when spring arrived.

Studying at the traditional private school, by rule, from dawn until the second watch of the night, one was not permitted to rest. Apart from the two meals at noon and evening, which necessitated two dismissals, and the unavoidable calls of nature, throughout the year there were essentially no holidays. Except for the Dragon Boat and Mid-Autumn festivals, each granting three days off, and New Year's with a half-month break, plus any major family events like weddings, funerals, or birthdays that required a significant absence. If you wished to rest, you had to fall ill. But wasn't falling ill a miserable affair? No, at least not when the texts weren't fluently familiar and you had to memorize entire volumes. But illness wasn't easily come by. You might pray for it to grace you with a visit, yet it might not deign to appear. The only recourse was to feign illness-to pretend a headache or a stomachache. This could temporarily spare you the misery of study, but then you had to put on a pained expression, lie in bed, and sometimes even drink some unpleasant bitter medicine. Still not good! All considered, only the Qingming Festival was best. Every year at this time, not only were there three days without study, but we also got to spend two nights at the countryside graveyard. Those days were truly wonderful! Even better than New Year's or other festivals, which were merely about wearing new clothes, eating delicacies, and playing wildly, making a wild ruckus. Happy to what degree? Still, I cannot say.

I only remember sitting with Mother in a two-man sedan chair-specially hired from a sedan-chair shop for trips to the countryside, a sedan chair with a duck-feather canopy. As soon as we emerged from that thick, high city gate tunnel, although we still had to traverse several streets rather like those in the city, we could gradually see the shops on both sides becoming lower, smaller, shabbier; we could see the shops thinning out, revealing patch after patch of fields, revealing a deeply dusty main road, revealing clusters of trees around farmsteads dotting the fields. Yet the moment my nostrils met that utterly different atmosphere, it sent this child of mine-who only left the city a few times a year but was rich with a fascination for the countryside-into a daze.

Ah! How vast the sky! How broad, how level the land! How brilliantly yellow, how sweetly fragrant the rapeseed flowers! How green the wheat! The ditch water, clear to the very bottom, flowed on! It flowed with a gurgling sound, and there were so many bamboos and trees! On the distant horizon, a swath of mountain shadows lay brushed across-how utterly delightful!

That year, something strange occurred at the graveyard.

Since the year I remember clearly, whenever I came to the graveyard with Father, Mother, Eldest Sister, and Second Sister, the ones greeting us at the entrance were always the old couple living in the adjacent courtyard. To look at them, they seemed even older than Grandfather and Grandmother, yet they were very amiable, always smiling at people and not the least bit disagreeable, and unlike other country folk, they weren't dirty. The old man particularly loved to carry me about to look at the oxen and sheep, amusing me along the way, teaching me the names of trees and wildflowers. I felt that aside from the odor of tobacco, there was nothing unclean about him. The old woman was also neat and brisk. Whatever she brought, Eldest Sister never showed any aversion to; she was even willing to go sit and chat in their courtyard, treating them better than she did our eldest aunt.

This year was peculiar indeed! When our sedan chair reached the main gate, it was not the old couple of previous years who came out to greet us, but a wild child-in those days, any child not usually playing with us was routinely given the special name: wild child-together with a tall, slender, neatly dressed young woman. That woman had her cheeks heavily rouged, her eyes smiled into slits, revealing a set of fine white teeth. She laughed brightly and loudly, "The Mistress and Young Master have arrived first! I could see it was you from far off. Mother still said it wasn't."

Mother, as if not quite recognizing her at first, now cried out loudly, "Oh my, it is you, Deng Meijie! I almost didn't recognize you."

As soon as Mother stepped down from the sedan chair, just as if returning to Grandmother's house, she gave no thought to dismissing the sedan bearers or to the things inside the chair, but turned at once and walked toward the woman. The woman had originally followed the sedan chair into the courtyard, but her feet being small, she couldn't outpace the bearers.

Mother flicked her sleeves in front of her chest as she returned the greeting, "I heard you've been well, Deng Meijie!... You've certainly changed, better than before even!..."

"Don't tease me, Mistress! What's so good about it? I just have enough to eat. But you, Mistress, have grown even more prosperous. The Young Master has grown a head taller. Do you still recognize me?"

I seemed to have some memory of seeing her before, but couldn't recall clearly, nor did I need to dwell on it. What most intrigued me at that moment was the wild child.

He was a boy who seemed perhaps a bit older than I. His eye sockets were very small, and his upper and lower eyelids looked both swollen and puffy. As for his eyeballs, you could only see a tiny bit of them, and they weren't like other children's eyes. Other people's eyes were lively; even when not speaking, they often darted about. Everyone always said Cousin Qian from the Qian family was born with a pair of dull eyes, but truly, this wild child's eyes were the dull ones! Whenever he looked at something, he would stare fixedly, dead still, for a long, long time, without his eyeballs turning in the slightest. His eyebrows were thick too. His face was sallow and parched-looking; at first glance, it seemed not properly washed. He had a large mouth, with the corners downturned, always looking as if on the verge of tears.

That day, there were traces of sunshine, making it warm and cozy. Inside the sedan chair, I couldn't even keep on a small black satin skullcap trimmed with gold edges, yet that wild child wore a monk's cap made of blue fabric, with a pigtail as thick as a thumb hanging down the back of his head. What he wore was not as fine as my clothes, yet he had on a thick yellow-green foreign cloth wadded jacket, without a single patch, only it was an awkward length, reaching just to his knees, revealing the lower half of his blue cloth lined trousers. Below that, barefoot, he wore a pair of dark blue cloth shoes with upturned, rounded toes.

Both rooms were opened, and they were still just as clean. This point I never quite understood: why was it that locked rooms, when we opened them each year upon arrival, were always spotlessly clean inside, not a speck of dust or a single spiderweb in the corners, and the floor, just like at home, washed to a yellowish shine, fit for sitting or even rolling about on? The lattice windows were pasted with white paper, smooth and neat. Tables, chairs, and the canopy bed were all polished until they gleamed. The things we brought only needed to be put in place and spread out, and everything was perfectly suited. Still, each year upon arrival, when Father and Mother entered the room, they would always smile at the old man following close behind and say, "We've troubled you, Uncle Deng! We've put you to work for several days again!"

The main hall was not large; aside from the shrine for the ancestors, it could only accommodate two large square tables. Every year when we made sacrificial offerings and ate here, as well as for our own family's two daily meals, we had always used just one table. Eldest Sister said that one year, Eldest Uncle, Eldest Aunt, Second Uncle, Third Aunt, Youngest Aunt, Cousin Qian, Cousin Luo, and a few others had all come here to observe the Qingming Festival, and they had set up three tables; it had been very lively. She often spoke of it with Mother. Second Sister remembered a bit of it, but I couldn't recall any of it.

Behind the main hall was a rear reception hall. Facing it was a thick earthen wall. Against the wall was a wide, high flower terrace planted with some flowers and plants. On either side of the terrace stood two very large redbud trees; there was also a papaya tree, which they also called the 'iron-foot crabapple' or 'azalea.' Outside the wall lay the graves, the graves of our entire family. One had a border of stone slabs around its base, the mound of earth piled exceptionally high; this was said to be our old ancestral grave, over a hundred years old. The other eight were all somewhat smaller, but each had a stone tablet and a stone worship platform in front. In one corner was a very small one, without a tablet or a platform; this was said to be the grave of Old Wang the Second. Old Wang the Second was the grandfather of Wang An, a capable old family servant under our great-grandfather who had followed our great-grandfather in campaigns against the rebel leaders Lan Dashun and Li Yonghe, and thus was granted burial in our family graveyard after his death.

The graveyard was large, covering two or three mu of land. The center was filled with large cypress trees, the biggest even larger than those in the Confucian Temple or the Marquis Wu Shrine. There were also over twenty nanmu trees so thick one could barely encircle them with one's arms. Under the dense, enclosing shade, standing there felt like standing beneath a great green canopy. Father often said these big trees were already enormous, so it was said, before we purchased the land for a graveyard. Besides these were the ginkgo and plum trees planted by Grandfather, both now quite large. Along the bank of the flowing ditch were all alder and chinaberry trees, their branches and leaves sparse and elegant, extremely pleasing to the eye. On this side of the ditch grew a dense, thick, green hedge of thorny vines. It was said to be sturdier than any wall or fence. Not only could thieves not climb over it, even dogs couldn't squeeze through.

As for dogs, Uncle Deng's family did keep two thin, old black dogs. But they were very afraid of people. When we arrived, they would hide; only at mealtimes would they slip under the table, tails between their legs, to guard the bones. Whenever Wang An saw them, he would always chase them out with a window pole.

The graveyard was our paradise. When studying at school, this was the place I missed most. Second Sister was three years older than I. Upon arrival, the two of us would always wash our faces and then dash into the garden. On the green, tender grass we would leap, run, and tumble. Second Sister loved to say the grass was fragrant. "If you don't believe me, get down and smell it!" It was true, it really was fragrant. When tired from jumping, we would lie on our backs on the grass and look up through the gaps in the emerald green foliage at the sky filled with rosy clouds. The feeling of openness all around seemed to penetrate directly from one's skin into one's innards, making you inevitably joyful, making you want to tumble about. Clothes became wrinkled, pigtails tangled-we paid no heed. Eldest Sister, who normally supervised us more strictly than Mother, when she came to straighten our clothes and pigtails, wasn't as cross as she was at home, merely saying, "What a nuisance!" Sometimes she would also sit on the grass for a while. She didn't dare jump or run; she had bound feet and wore high-soled shoes.

That year's arrival, however, was somewhat different from previous years, because out of nowhere there was a Deng Meijie, and a wild child-her son.

The wild child, embarrassed by my stare, stuck a finger in his mouth, turned behind his mother, and clung to her apron. I was determined to look at him; he was determined to bury his face stubbornly in his mother's apron. His mother, entirely engrossed in talking with our mother, walked toward the main hall, and he followed closely.

Father's sedan chair arrived, the sedan chair shared by Eldest and Second Sisters arrived, and Wang An arrived supervising the porters with the luggage. So many people! Some were moving things, others settling accounts with the sedan bearers and porters, arranging the sedan chairs. Uncle Deng, Aunt Deng, and their daughter-in-law, Sister-in-law Deng, bustled about greeting everyone, helping carry things, hanging mosquito nets, making the beds. Wang An was the busiest, dashing from the rooms to the kitchen and back. A temporary hired hand was also summoned to help fetch washing water and sweep the floor. Deng Meijie kept up a constant stream of talk with everyone. Eldest Sister, like Mother, became extremely friendly with her the moment she stepped from her sedan chair.

The wild child vanished in the blink of an eye.

I told Second Sister, "There's a wild child here today, Deng Meijie's son, so rustic and amusing."

Second Sister blinked her eyes several times and said, "Deng Meijie's son? I seem to remember... Where is he? Let's go find him to play."

We searched everywhere. We found the kitchen, where Sister-in-law Deng was already sitting before the stove feeding the fire, shoving large pieces of firewood-the kind rarely seen by city folk-branches, leaves and all, into the stove's belly. She asked what we were doing. We replied we were looking for Deng Meijie's son.

She said, "Probably by the ditch? That child loves running off to such places."

He wasn't by the ditch either. Uncle Deng was there slaughtering a chicken; the hired hand was scraping and cleaning the cured meat we had brought.

We searched all the way to the side courtyard where Uncle Deng lived. He was standing there, looking simple-minded and vacant, under the eaves of a side room, next to a yellowish winnowing basket.

We bounded up to his side. Second Sister said with a smile, "I hardly recognize you. What's your name?" No answer. "Don't you recognize me much either?"

No answer.

"How old are you?"