Border Town Page 8

  Cuicui, of course, was unaware of this. A young girl whose days were always filled with play and work, she felt something very mysterious racing within her little heart, but when night came, she went peacefully to sleep.

  And yet, everything changes with time. This family’s quiet and ordinary life, as days came and went in succession, saw the peace in its human affairs completely broken.

  In Fleetmaster Shunshun’s household, Tianbao’s actions were already known to No. 2, and Nuosong let his elder brother know what was on his mind, too. They were brothers in the hardships of love, both loving the granddaughter of a ferryman. This did not seem at all peculiar to the local folk. A common saying in the borderlands was: “Fire can burn and water can flow anywhere; sunshine and moonshine also reach everywhere; and so, too, does love.” It was not remarkable that the sons of a rich fleetmaster had fallen in love with the granddaughter of a poor ferryman. There was one problem. Would the brothers decide who would marry the girl by the usual Chadong practice of a bloody struggle?

  These brothers would never take up arms against each other, but neither were they accustomed to “yielding in the contest of love,” like the laughable behavior of cowardly city males when faced with matters of love and hate.

  The elder took his younger brother to a shipbuilder’s yard upstream to see the family’s new boat, then told the younger boy all that was in his heart, adding that his affection had been growing for two years. The younger brother heard him out with a smile on his face. The two boys followed the riverbank from the shipyard to Squire Wang’s new grain mill. The elder brother said:

  “No. 2, you’re lucky to be Militia Captain Wang’s prospective son-in-law and have this mill; as for me, if I do things right, I’ll be inheriting from that old man the right to row a ferryboat. But I’d like that. I’d like to buy up the two hills at Green Creek Hill and plant stands of bamboo around the boundaries, fencing us in at our own little fortress by the stream!”

  No. 2 continued listening in silence. He hacked at grasses and shrubs by the roadside with his sickle. When they reached the mill, he stopped and told his brother:

  “Elder Brother, would you believe me if I told you that this girl already has her heart set on another, and has for some time?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Elder Brother, do you think this mill was meant for me?”

  “No.”

  They entered the millhouse.

  No. 2 continued: “Now don’t…Well, Elder Brother, let me ask you again, suppose I didn’t want this mill, but that ferryboat instead, and suppose, too, that I’d got this idea two years ago—would you believe that?”

  Startled, the elder brother stared at his younger brother, Nuosong, sitting there on the horizontal axle of the mill roller. Realizing that No. 2 was telling him what was in his heart, he came up to him and clapped him on the shoulder, as if to bring him down to the ground. He understood now, and laughed. He said: “Now I believe you. Everything you’ve said is true!”

  No. 2 looked back at his brother and said, with utter frankness:

  “Elder Brother, believe me, this is the truth. This has been my plan for some time now. If her family agrees, even if ours doesn’t, I truly mean to be a ferryman! What about you, then?”

  “Papa has already acted on my behalf. He had Horseman Yang come from town to be my matchmaker and deliver my proposal to the ferryman!” When No. 1 got to the part about how he went about it, as if aware that No. 2 might laugh at him, he explained why he wanted a go-between to do it: “You see, the old man said that chariots must move like chariots and horsemen must move like horsemen. So I adopted the direct way, the chariot’s move.”

  “What was the response?”

  “There’s none yet. The old man talked out of both sides of his mouth.”

  “What about adopting the horseman’s move?”

  “The old man said that the horseman’s move means singing for the girl from the bluffs across the creek for three years and six months. If I could bend Cuicui’s heart toward me, she’d be mine.”

  “What a good idea!”

  “Maybe. Sometimes a stutterer can sing what he can’t say. But that’s not me. I’m no song sparrow; I haven’t got the voice. Who the hell knows whether the old man would rather marry his granddaughter to a singing waterwheel or to a real man!”

  “What are you going to do, then?”

  “I’d like to see the old man and get a straight answer out of him. Just get the word. If ‘No,’ I’ll take a boat downstream to Taoyuan. If ‘Yes,’ I’ll agree, even if it means tugging that ferryboat.”

  “Would you sing for her?”

  “Younger Brother, that’s your strong suit. If you want to be a song sparrow, hurry up and get to it. I won’t stuff your mouth with horse manure.”

  No. 2 could tell how upset his elder brother was. He knew his temper, which embodied the rough, straightforward side of the Chadong folk. In the right circumstances, he’d tear out his heart for you; cross him, and he’d battle his own maternal uncle blow for blow. If No. 1 met with failure after making the chariot’s move, surely he would want to try the horseman’s. But once he’d heard his younger brother’s frank profession, he realized that No. 2 would best him at the latter approach. No. 1 hadn’t a chance. Hence he was a little offended, a little indignant, and he couldn’t hide it.

  No. 2 had an idea: let the brothers go together to sing at Green Creek Hill one moonlit night, without letting on that there were two of them. They would sing in turn and whoever got a song in response could let his victorious lips take up the refrain for the ferryman’s granddaughter. Since No. 1 was not much of a singer, when it was his turn, No. 2 would sing for him. What could be fairer than to let fate decide their future happiness? When he heard this proposal, No. 1, thinking that he could not sing for himself, didn’t want his younger brother to be the song sparrow in his place. But No. 2, being of a poetic disposition, stubbornly insisted on this solution. He said this was the only way, for it was completely fair and impartial.

  No. 1 thought about his younger brother’s suggestion some more and smiled wryly. “Damn it all! I’m no songbird—so I’m going to ask my little brother to be one for me? All right, let’s do it this way: we’ll take turns singing, but I don’t want any help from you. I’ll do all my own singing. An owl in the forest can only screech, but when he wants a wife, he sings for himself, he doesn’t hire a stand-in!”

  Once in agreement, they picked the date. The moon would be fullest this night, the fourteenth, and the two nights following. It was midsummer; the nights were neither too hot nor too cool. Wearing plain white homespun undershirts, they’d ascend the high bluffs where the moon shined bright and, according to local custom, truthfully and earnestly sing for the girl—an unspoiled maiden, made unafraid by her innocence. When it was time for them to go home, as the dew fell and their voices grew weak, they would make their way back in the dimming moonlight. Or they might stop at a familiar grain mill that operated all night without rest, lying down to sleep in the cozy barn until daybreak. It was all so natural, and although neither brother could imagine the outcome, that would come just as naturally. They decided to do it that very night: engage in a competition honored by local custom.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Cuicui sat beneath the white pagoda behind her house as dusk fell, watching wispy clouds in the sky burned peach-blossom pink by the setting sun. The fourteenth of the month was market day at Middle Stockade. Many merchants from town went to that village fair to buy native products from the mountains, so ferry passengers were particularly abundant. Grandpa worked on the ferryboat without rest. As nightfall descended, the songbirds fell quiet: only the cuckoos sang on without cease. The mud on the boulder had dried in the sun the day long, and so had the trees and grasses. Now they were giving back their heat. The air smelled of damp soil, of the grasses and the trees, and also of beetles. Watching the pink clouds in the sky and listening to the jumble of voices from the merch
ants touring the countryside, Cuicui felt faintly despondent.

  The dusk was as serene as always, just as beautiful and peaceful. Yet anyone in this situation would feel faintly despondent. And so the days became a time of unhappiness. Cuicui felt that she was missing something. As she saw the days pass before her, she seemed to want to be caught up in a new kind of human relationship, yet it was beyond her. Life seemed too dull and ordinary. She could bear it no longer.

  “I want to sail a boat down past Taoyuan, across Lake Dongting. Let Granddad search for me all over town with a lantern, beating a gong and calling out my name.”

  Letting her imagination run wild with this impossible development, she seemed purposely angry at Grandpa. She went on to imagine him searching for her everywhere to no avail, until finally he would lie down in his boat in defeat.

  Someone would shout, “Ferry me across, uncle. What’s wrong with you? You’re not doing your job!” “What’s wrong? Cuicui is gone, she’s gone down to Taoyuan County!” “What are you going to do about that?” “You know what? I’m going to pack a knife and catch a boat downstream, so I can kill her!”

  Cuicui became as frightened as if she had really heard such a conversation. She shrilly called out for her grandpa, running from the ridge to the creek where the ferry landing was. When she saw Grandpa in midstream, tugging his ferryboat while the passengers talked softly on board, her little heart leaped up and down.

  “Grandfather, pull the boat back to this side!”

  The old ferryman didn’t understand what was on her mind. Thinking she wanted to take over for him, he said,

  “Cuicui, wait a little, I’ll be back over!”

  “Why aren’t you coming back now?”

  “I’m coming right away!”

  Cuicui sat by the stream bank, observing everything out on the creek, which was now enveloped by the dusk. She also looked at the crowd of passengers on the ferryboat, including one who knocked the ashes out of his long-stemmed tobacco pipe by striking it against the side of the boat before lighting it with a sickle-shaped steel striker. She suddenly began to cry.

  When Grandpa pulled the boat back to shore, he saw Cuicui sitting on the stream bank, staring into space. He asked what was the matter, but Cuicui didn’t reply. Grandpa wanted her to light the fire and prepare supper. After thinking about it, Cuicui felt foolish for having wept. She went alone back into the house. She sat down in the pitch-black kitchen and lit the fire, then went back outside onto the high bluffs and called out for her grandpa to come home. But he did not come ashore. The old ferryman was too serious about his job for that. He knew that his passengers were all hurrying back to town for their meals. He ferried them as they came, one by one if necessary, so they wouldn’t have to wait alone on the riverbank. Standing in the prow of the boat, he told Cuicui to stop yelling at him, to let him do his job. When he had got his passengers across, he would return home and eat supper.

  Cuicui again begged Grandpa to come, but he paid no attention. She sat on the bluffs, feeling quite put out.

  It was now completely dark. Blue light shone from the tail of a big firefly that flew past Cuicui in a burst of speed. She thought, “Let’s see how far you can fly!” She followed the light with her eyes. Cuckoos began to sing again.

  “Grandfather, why don’t you come back? I want you here!”

  When Grandpa heard her sweetly pleading voice, which bore a measure of reproach, he answered her gruffly: “I’m coming, Cuicui, I’m coming.” Meanwhile he mumbled, under his breath, “Cuicui, when your grandfather is gone, what will you do then?”

  When the old ferryman returned home, the kitchen was completely dark, lit only by flames from the stove. Cuicui was sitting there on a low stool, her face in her hands.

  When he came closer, he realized that Cuicui had been crying for quite a while. Usually when Grandpa came home, stooped from pulling the boat all day long, with sore hands and an aching back, he’d smell vegetables stewing in the wok and see Cuicui dashing about in the lamplight, preparing supper. Today was a little different.

  Grandpa continued, “Cuicui, I came in late, but is that any reason to cry? What if I were dead?”

  Cuicui said nothing.

  Grandpa went on: “No more crying! Act like an adult. No crying, no matter what. You have to be a little tougher, a little stronger, to get through life on this earth!”

  Cuicui uncovered her eyes and cuddled up to Grandpa. “I’ve stopped crying.”

  While the two made supper, Grandpa told Cuicui some interesting stories. This led to talk of Cuicui’s deceased mother.

  After they’d finished their meal by the light of a soybean-oil lamp, the old ferryman, tired from his day of work, drank half a bowl of liquor. This picked up his spirits. He went outside with Cuicui and told her some more stories under the moonlight out on the bluffs. He told her about how lovely and good her poor mother had been, and also about her stubborn streak. Cuicui found it wholly absorbing.

  Listening in the moonlight next to her grandpa, with her arms wrapped around her knees, Cuicui asked for more stories about her poor mother. Sometimes she would sigh, as if something heavy were weighing on her heart that she could move away with her breath. And yet she had no way to relieve her anxiety.

  The moonlight was silvery and it shone everywhere. The bamboo stands in the mountains appeared black under the moon. From the thickets of grass came the chirping of insects, thick as rain. Occasionally, a warbler suddenly twittered from some hidden place, until the little bird seemed to realize that it was too late to be making noise and closed its eyes to go peacefully to sleep.

  Feeling in good spirits this night, Grandpa kept telling Cuicui his stories. He told of how the local people’s songs, twenty years ago, were famous throughout the borderlands of Sichuan and Guizhou. Cuicui’s father was the best singer of them all, able to summon up every kind of figure of speech to explain the travails of love and hate—he told her all about that, too. He also told her how her mother had loved to sing, how she and Cuicui’s father had sung love songs to each other in broad daylight before they ever met, one while cutting bamboo on the mountain, the other while tugging the ferryboat across the stream.

  Cuicui asked: “Then what happened?”

  Grandpa answered: “That would take a long time to tell. The important thing is that these songs gave us you.”

  After that, Grandpa fell silent. He did not add, “The songs gave us you, and then they took away your father and mother.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Exhausted by his work, the old ferryman slept. Cuicui, tired from crying, slept too. She could not forget the things Grandpa had spoken of. In her dreams, her soul drifted up on the strains of beautiful songs, seeming gently to float all about, up to the white pagoda, down to the vegetable garden, onto the boat—then it flew back, midway up the hanging bluffs—but for what purpose? To pick the “tigers’ ears”: saxifrage! While pulling the boat during the daylight hours, she looked up at those cliffs and became quite familiar with the huge saxifrage leaves there. The cliffs were thirty or fifty feet high, ordinarily too high to reach, but now she could pick the very biggest leaf and make an umbrella out of it.

  Everything was happening just as in Grandpa’s stories. Cuicui drifted off as she lay on a reed mat inside the burlap mosquito netting, taking pleasure in the beauty and sweetness of her dream. Grandpa, however, lay awake on his bed, straining his ears listening to late-night singing on the high cliffs across the stream. He knew who was singing: it was No. 1, Tianbao of River Street, making the horseman’s move. He listened, both troubled and excited. Having worn herself out from crying during the day, Cuicui slept soundly, so Grandpa didn’t disturb her.

  Cuicui and Grandpa rose at dawn the next day and washed their faces in the creek to remove the taboo against telling one’s dreams the morning after. Then Cuicui hastened to tell Grandpa what she had dreamed the night before.

  “Grandfather, you told me stories about singing, and yesterday
I heard the most beautiful songs in my dreams, soft and sweet. I felt I was able to fly in the air with these songs, to the face of the cliffs across the creek, where I picked a big saxifrage leaf. But once I picked it, I don’t know who I gave it to. I slept wonderfully and dreamed magnificently!”

  Grandpa smiled gently in sympathy, but did not tell Cuicui what had gone on the night before.

  He thought to himself: “If only you could dream on forever. Some people become the prime minister in their dreams.”

  The old ferryman still thought it was Tianbao, No. 1, who had sung the night before. In recent days he had asked Cuicui to take charge of the ferry. Pretending to be delivering some medicines in town, he set off to find out what River Street was up to. There he ran into No. 1. He drew the young man aside, saying, cheerfully,

  “No. 1, you dog, now you’ve tried both the chariot’s move and the horseman’s move. You’re a sly one!”

  But the old ferryman was wrong—he had confused one brother with the other. The night before, the two brothers had come to Green Creek Hill together. Because the elder brother had already made the first move, in the role of chariot, he insisted on letting his younger brother sing first this time. Realizing from the moment the latter raised his voice in song that he could never match him, No. 1 was more reluctant than ever to sing himself. The songs that Cuicui and her grandpa heard that night were all sung by No. 2, Nuosong. As No. 1 accompanied his younger brother home, he decided to leave Chadong and go downstream on the family’s new oil boat, the better to forget what had happened. Just now, No. 1 was thinking of going to the docks to see cargo loaded onto the new boat. Noting his cold expression, the old ferryman, misunderstanding, gave an amused wink to let on that he knew that No. 1’s cold-shouldering was pretend, and also to show that he had good news to impart. He clapped No. 1 on the back and whispered, sticking his thumb up,