The Ancient Ship

Crackpot continued, “If those two persimmons ever bang into one another, they’ll both be crushed. They are the key to whether or not there’ll be a world war. Both sides need to be careful not to cross the line. The year the Soviets shot down a South Korean airliner, America sent its army into Grenada. Then the Americans announced plans to place midrange missiles in Western Europe, so the Russians countered by upping the number of missiles siloed in Eastern Europe. They also broke off weapons talks on three occasions and boycotted the Olympics. It was tit for tat, with both sides digging in their heels, till they reached an impasse. Relations between the two countries were deteriorating rapidly, and the rest of the world looked on anxiously, detecting the smell of gunpowder in the air. The US and USSR faced off like that for more than a year before relaxing tensions a little. In the end the foreign ministers of the two countries sat down in Geneva and talked for more than seventeen goddamned hours…”

“Everything was ruined by people who knew nothing about water,” Sui Buzhao bellowed, his body twisting in the hay. “After Uncle Zheng He died, the goddamn ships, all eight or ten of them, sank, killing all those people. There were cracks in our hull and we tried to stop the leaks with our bare bodies. They didn’t trust the Classic of the Waterway, so they deserved to die, disregarding even the life of the helmsman. How the hell could it end well? I puked until there was nothing but bitter bile in my stomach, and the barnacles cut me bloody when I went down to stop up the leaks. I bled while reciting the Classic of the Waterway until I was hoarse. The ship sailed to Qiyang zhou, and as stated in the book, ‘You must fix your direction with care and make no mistakes in your calculation. The ship cannot veer. If it heaves to the west it will run aground, so you must heave east. If you heave too far to the east the water will be dark and clear, with many gulls and petrels. If you heave too far to the west, the water will be crystal clear, afloat with driftwood and many flying fish. If the ship is on the right course, the tails of birds will point the way. When the ship nears Wailuo, seven geng to the east will be Wanli Shitang, where there are low red rock formations. The water is shallow if you can see the side of the boat and you must be careful if you see rocks. From the fourth to the eighth month, the water flows southwest, and the currents are quite strong…’ But no one paid any attention. These men finally had to cry when the waves rose up around midnight. It was useless to cut the mast, for the current ripped the ship apart. I’ll curse them for the rest of my life because of what happened to that ship.”

“All arms races are fierce competitions,” Crackpot continued. “Tey start out on land or at sea, but that doesn’t hold their interest for long, so then it moves to outer space. When the Americans say they’re going to do something, they do it. They decided to put up their Strategic Defense Initiative in three stages: The tests would take them up to 1989, they’d finalize the design in the 1990s, and the program would be functional by the year 2000. Maybe earlier. Then they could shoot down any missile, no matter where it came from, using guided weapons with lasers or particle beams. At that point it would no longer be necessary to fight on land. Everything would be taken care of out in space. Space, the new frontier. The Star Wars initiative is part of what the Americans call advanced frontier strategy. The newspapers call it a multilayered deep-space defense system. If they’re allowed to actually succeed in this, the long-standing balance of power between the US and the USSR will no longer hold, and that will be a challenge to the whole world.”

Crackpot ignored Sui Buzhao’s shouts as he carried on a lively onesided conversation with Li Zhichang, who nodded and occasionally made a mark in the dirt with his finger, as if recording scientific data. “What I don’t understand,” he said, looking in the direction from which the notes of the flute carried over in the darkness, “is how the foreigners can spend all that money making enough atomic bombs for any contingency and still not be content.”

Crackpot slapped his knee. “The more A-bombs you have the less you have to be content about. That’s the whole point. Consider this: A few powerful countries have labored for years to produce nuclear weapons, more than they could ever use, and they could double their present arsenal, and it wouldn’t make any difference. There are so many of the things that no one dares to use a single one. Whether you launch the first attack or not, that’s the end for everyone. It’s a perfect example of the concept that when things reach an extreme they develop in the opposite direction. When the number of bombs reaches a certain point they can’t be used and have to lie sleeping in their silos for all time. But if the Americans’ Star Wars initiative becomes operational and can intercept the other guy’s missiles in space and keep them from hitting friendly targets, that changes everything, don’t you see?”

Li Zhichang murmured his understanding of what he was hearing but didn’t say anything. Then, as if awakening from a dream, he blurted out, “My god! If they can do that, what’ll happen to us?”

He received no answer. None of the men around the haystack had an answer to that question. Sui Buzhao, whose trancelike state allowed for some sorrow, picked this moment to leave the broken old ship and lie down exhausted on the hay. Silence lay over the men and the haystack. The stars were enormous, some shining like bright lanterns. The sharp, mournful sounds of the flute still sliced through the night. Chilled winds cut to the bone. Baopu rolled a cigarette and lit it, then curled up as far as his back would let him.

After fiddling with his liquor bottle, Sui Buzhao stood up unsteadily and, his steps wobbly, paced back and forth in front of the haystack, his tiny eyes poking through the darkness. There were no more conversations; everyone stared at him. He flung his bottle through the air; it hit a wall and broke. “Good shot!” he cried out. Then he laughed. “Two masts with one goddamn shot…don’t act so surprised! An armada of warships came from the south to wage war on Wali. There were corvettes, frigates, corsairs, towered ships, and bridged ships. They didn’t know we had a giant ship of our own in port, a seven-thousand-tonner with four or five hundred men and six cannons. I stood on the dock with my telescope trained on their sailors, black men who weren’t wearing pants. That infuriated me! ‘Set sail at once and engage the turtle scum!’ I shouted. Our ship pulled noisily away from the pier and moved out with a following wind. Li Xuantong wanted to come aboard and fight with the rest of us, but I told him to stay ashore and keep reading his sutras. It was a battle for the ages, recorded in the history of our town. You can check it for yourself…it happened in 485 bce…and people were still talking about it hundreds of years later. Wali’s brilliant reputation was well deserved, and talented people came from miles around. Fan Li, the old man, was not valued in foreign countries, so he floated over from the Eastern Ocean in a basket. The banks of the Luqing River were so cold that year that the frost settled on the corn before it could be harvested, and it would have been lost if not for Zou Yan from the west bank, who blew his flute and melted the frost. Gimpy’s playing cannot compare. He just spends his time on the floodplain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a reincarnation of Zou Yan. A few years after the melting of the frost, the First Emperor of Qin rose to power, and Xu Fu, from the Xu family in East Wali, was possessed. He insisted on taking me to meet the First Emperor. Not me. I preferred to practice meditation with Li Xuantong…” At this point in Sui Buzhao’s narration, his legs got tangled up and he stumbled to the ground. That broke the trance that held the others, who rushed over to help him up.

Li Zhichang stayed where he was, however. He had been listening to Sui Buzhao with the others, but not a single word got through to him. He was still thinking about Star Wars. Since he did not grasp all the details and had many questions about related issues, such as the effects on politics and the economy, when Crackpot came back and sat down, he asked him to tell him more.

“I could talk all day and still not be finished,” Crackpot said with a shake of his head. “We’ll get back to it some other day. It’s an important, serious issue, and I wish there was someone in town who’d debate it with me, the way my uncle used to—”

“Not me!” Li Zhichang said. “I can’t.”

The sky was beginning to lighten up in the east, creating an air of tranquillity. Baopu was thinking about the dim candle that burned in Dahu’s house and how the wick was flickering. Zhang-Wang, a hard look on her face, was seated on a rush mat, and everyone was waiting for dawn to break. Gimpy’s flute was not as crisp as it was at night; now it had a delicate, gentle quality. And the winds were no longer so cold, warmed, it seemed, by the strains of the flute. Baopu was reminded of his uncle’s strange comment, that Gimpy might be a reincarnation of Zou Yan.

SEVEN (#ulink_fee4b227-bcd2-57a1-92fe-25afe4d3890f)

Leilei was no taller than a few years before, it seemed to Baopu, and hadn’t changed a bit. By counting on his fingers he tried to fix the boy’s age but couldn’t do it. The boy’s head was nice and round, shaved on all four sides, with just a tuft of hair on the top. He had a gray pallor on his skin, which never seemed quite dry. The outer corners of his eyes turned strangely upward, just like his father’s, Li Zhaolu’s, and he had thin, curved, almost feminine brows, much like those of his mother, Xiaokui. Baopu wished he could somehow hold the boy in his arms. He often dreamed that he had his arms around him and was kissing him. “You should call me Papa,” he said to the boy in his dreams.

Once, when he was walking by the river, he spotted Leilei coming toward him carrying a live fish, its head hanging low and twisting from side to side. When he spotted Baopu he stopped and looked at him, the corners of his eyes inching upward. It made Baopu feel awkward, almost as if Zhaolu were looking at him. It was an agonizing moment, for he knew that sooner or later that look would compel him to reveal what had happened on that stormy night. So he crouched down and rubbed the tuft of hair as he studied the boy’s face. Everything below those eyes resembled him, Baopu discovered. With a muttered oath, he stood up and hurried off. But then he stopped and turned to take another look. Leilei was still standing there, not moving. Abruptly he held up the fish and shouted: “Pa—” It was a shout Baopu would never forget, and one night, when thoughts of Leilei came to him, he murmured: “Not bad. I’ve got a son!” But then feelings of self-reproach gnawed at him, creating a desire to say that to the boy’s mother. Yet as soon as he was outside and washed in the moon’s rays, he realized he was being ridiculous—Leilei had clearly gotten those eyes from Li Zhaolu. Counting backward, he tried to calculate when Zhaolu had come home for the last time and then recall the date when the old tree by the mill had been struck by lightning. His heart was pounding as he relived the night of passion and joy they had shared. No detail escaped him: Xiaokui’s moans of pleasure, her frail figure, and the two sweaty bodies as lightning flashed outside the window. The night was hideously short, and he recalled Xiaokui’s cry of alarm when the sky began to lighten up in the morning. She was holding him as he lay, utterly exhausted, as if he had only minutes to live. She shook him, maybe thinking he was in mortal danger, and began to cry. He sat up but lacked the strength to jump out her window.

The rain had stopped by the time he was on his way back to his room, and that is where his reminiscences always ended. He concluded that such heart-stopping joy had to have produced fruit, a realization that made him break out in a cold sweat. Time and again he asked himself if there was a chance that he could someday claim the boy who refused to grow up.

The next emotion to torment Baopu was profound remorse. He had watched Xiaokui limp along dragging the boy with her all these years, and he’d never once offered to help, to his everlasting feelings of guilt. There were times when he turned his thoughts upside down, telling himself that Leilei was definitely not his son, and that invariably lifted an emotional burden from his shoulders.

Xiaokui wore her mourning garb for a year. Such attire had likely been outlawed in other places, but not in Wali. Rather than diminish in number, complex funeral rites and strange customs had actually increased in recent years. Where death was concerned, only the eyes of the spirits were watching. For the better part of a year, Xiaokui was seen on the streets and in the lanes clad in funereal white, a reminder to the townspeople not to forget to grieve. When Baopu saw the white garb he immediately thought of Zhaolu, who had died in the far-off northeast provinces. He did not have to be told that if the people in town knew what had happened between him and Xiaokui, he would never be forgiven, for that was what people called “stealing a man’s wife when he’s down.” Zhaolu could not experience the loathing of a man whose wife had been taken from him, for he was already in the ground. This thought made Baopu cringe. But no one in town knew, and no one could imagine that their taciturn neighbor was capable of what had happened on that stormy night. Baopu censured himself anyway.

In the end, Xiaokui shed her mourning garments, and a huge sigh of relief was let out all over town. The mill seemed to turn faster; the color returned to Xiaokui’s face. She was often seen in Zhao Family Lane with Leilei in her arms.

They met once. Her burning gaze made Baopu lower his head and hurry away. From then on he avoided the ancient lane. On another occasion he saw her deep in conversation with Sui Buzhao, who was nodding, his tiny eyes shining. Later that night his uncle came to his room and smiled as he fixed him with a stare. Baopu could barely keep himself from sending the old man away. But then his uncle said, “Tis is your lucky day. It’s time for you to have a family. Xiaokui—”

A shrill shout burst from Baopu’s throat, to his uncle’s astonishment. With a cold, hard look, Baopu said, exaggerating every word: “Don’t mention that to me ever again!”

Ever since his teens, Baopu had been unhappy with his uncle, owing mainly to the day he had tried to tempt Jiansu into going out into the river with him on a boat that immediately sank, scaring Baopu half to death. A later incident only increased his disgust for the man. Early one cold morning, during the lunar New Year holiday, Baopu and Guigui rose early to celebrate, as custom dictated. First one, then the other washed up with bath soap they kept in a small wooden box, filling the small room with a pervasive fragrance. Guigui urged him to wear the leather, square-toed shoes left to him by his father. The sky was lightening, but the streets were still deserted. In a campaign to do away with superstition, officials had forbidden the use of firecrackers and paying New Year’s calls. So Baopu summoned Hanzhang and Jiansu to his room and had Guigui go for their uncle while they placed dumplings with yam fillings on a cutting board. Guigui had not been gone long when cracking noises erupted on the street. At first they thought someone was setting off firecrackers, but Jiansu ran out to see what it was and reported that a couple of local carters were riding up and down the streets, their heads beaded with sweat as they snapped their whips in the air.

Water boiled in the wok as they waited for their uncle. But Guigui returned alone, red eyed, and said she’d pounded on their uncle’s door, but he was inside snoring away. When he finally woke up, he refused to get out of bed. Even when she told him they had prepared dumplings, he said he wasn’t getting up, not for anything or anyone. She stood there until water began dribbling out under the door onto the ground, and it took only a moment to realize that he was on the other side relieving himself. She came straight home and announced that she never wanted to see that man again. Baopu and Hanzhang were beside themselves, but Jiansu merely looked out the window and said, “That uncle of ours is really something!”

As he dumped the dark dumplings into the boiling water, Baopu summed up his view of the man: “He’s the sinful member of the Sui clan.”

Baopu’s uncle stood in his room that day wanting to continue with what he’d come to say about Xiaokui, but the determined look on Baopu’s face kept him from doing so. Caught off guard by his nephew’s attitude, he turned and left, stumbling along as always, with Baopu’s eyes boring into his back; he wondered if the old man had learned of his wretched secret.

Much later that night, Baopu was out pacing the yard. Finally, unable to restrain himself, he went to his brother’s room and knocked on the door. Wiping his sleepy eyes, Jiansu let him in and lit a lamp. “I couldn’t sleep,” Baopu said. “I have to talk to someone. I’m really depressed.”

Jiansu, dressed only in a pair of shorts, crouched down on the kang, his skin glistening in the lamplight, as if oiled. Baopu took off his shoes and joined him on the kang, sitting cross-legged. “I’ve been there,” Jiansu said, “I know how it feels. But time took care of it. If I’d carried on like you, I’d have been skin and bones by now.”

With a forced smile, Baopu said: “I guess I’ve gotten used to it. I’m in the habit of feeling sinful. I’m used to suffering.”

The brothers smoked in silence until Jiansu, pipe in hand, lowered his head and said, “There’s nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night. There are so many things on your mind at this time of night that if your thoughts take an ugly turn, you can forget about getting any more sleep. Going outside and letting the dew wet your face helps a little. Or, if your heart seems on fire, you can pour cold water over your head. I hate waking up in the middle of the night.”

Seemingly oblivious to what his younger brother was saying, Baopu asked, “Jiansu, who would you say is the most sinful member of the Sui clan?”

With a grim laugh, Jiansu replied, “Didn’t you say that’s what our uncle is?”

Baopu shook his head, tossed away his cigarette, and looked at his brother without so much as blinking.

“No, it’s me!”

Jiansu shoved the pipe back in his mouth and bit down hard. He gave his brother a strange look. “What are you talking about?” he said with an angry frown.

Baopu rested his hands on his knees and arched his wrists. “I can’t tell you now, but believe me, I know what I’m saying.”

With a bewildered shake of his head, Jiansu smiled grimly. Then he took his pipe out of his mouth and laughed. Surprised by that laugh, Baopu frowned. “I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Jiansu said, “and I want to keep it that way. You didn’t kill somebody, did you? Become an outlaw? All I know is that members of our clan are in the habit of making things hard on themselves right up to the day we die. If you’re a sinful man, then everybody else in Wali deserves to be killed. My days are not pleasant—sheer torture, if you want to know—and I don’t know what to do about it. I often suffer from a toothache that makes that side of my face swell up, and I have to stop myself from picking up a hammer, knocking out every last tooth, and letting the blood flow. What am I supposed to do? Why does it happen? I don’t know. So I suffer. I know I should do something about it, but I don’t. Sometimes I feel like picking up a hatchet and cutting off my hand. But what good would that do? I’d be gushing blood and rolling around the ground in agony, minus a hand, and drawing a crowd of people whose only reaction would be to look down on me for being a cripple. I just have to put up with things the way they are. That’s the punishment for being born a Sui! During the crazy times a few years back, Zhao Duoduo came into our yard with a bunch of men and a steel pole with the idea of digging up buried treasure left by our ancestors. That was like stabbing me in the chest. I watched them through the window and—I’m not joking when I say this—I cursed myself the whole time. Myself, not Duoduo and his men, and I cursed our ancestors for their blindness in setting up a noodle factory on the banks of the Luqing, ensuring that future generations could neither live nor die well. As I grew into adulthood I imagined myself with a wife, just like everybody else. But what woman would willingly marry into the Sui clan? You were married once, so you know what I mean. Nobody gives a damn about us. They see we’re alive and breathing and never give a thought to what our lives are like. You’re my brother, look for yourself, just look!” Jiansu’s face was red. Tossing away his pipe and knocking his pillow to one side, he crawled under the covers to fetch a little book with a red cover. He opened it, and several photographs of women fell out, all local women who had married. “See those? They were all in love with me, all former lovers, and all were stopped from marrying me by their families. Why? Because I’m a Sui! One after the other they married someone else. One married a man in South Mountain who then hung her up from the rafters. I can’t forget them. I look at their photos at night and meet them in my dreams.”

Baopu picked up the photographs and held them until his hand was shaking so hard they fell onto the bed. Wrapping his arms around his brother, he held his face next to his, where their tears merged. Though his lips were quaking, Baopu tried to console his brother, but even he wasn’t sure what he was saying.

“Jiansu, I hear what you’re saying and I understand completely. I shouldn’t have come over. I’m just adding to your suffering. But like you, I can’t bear it any longer. What you said about our family was right. But you’re young, after all, you’re still young, and you were only half right. There are other things you don’t know. What I mean is, there’s something else that causes us to torment ourselves. And it might be worse, even harder to bear. That’s what I’m facing, that’s what it is…”

With Baopu gently patting his brother’s back, they both calmed down after a while and sat down on the kang. Jiansu angrily dried his tears and then looked around for his pipe. After lighting it and taking several puffs, he gazed out the window at the darkness. “Uncle has feasted and drunk like a sponge all his life,” he said softly, “which means he hasn’t suffered the way we have. Papa lived a proper life and died trying to settle accounts. You and I were shut up in our study so you could practice your calligraphy and I could prepare the ink for you. Then after Papa died, you put me back in the study, where you taught me all about benevolence and righteousness and made me repeat the words to you. You taught me how to write the words ‘love the people,’ which I did, one stroke at a time.”

Baopu, his head lowered, listened silently to his brother. The image of a burning house flashed before him, red fireballs descending from the eaves and burning in all directions. The whole house was engaged as his stepmother writhed on the kang…He jerked his head up as he felt compelled to tell his brother about Huizi, tell him how his mother died. But by gritting his teeth he managed to keep from saying anything.

They stayed up all night.

The riverside mill rumbled along. Baopu, wooden ladle in hand, sat motionless twelve hours a day, until he was relieved by an older worker. It was a job for old men who had sat on the same sturdy stools for decades. When one of them, who had worked for the Sui clan all his life, saw that Sui Yingzhi had died, he’d said, “It’s time for me to go too,” and he died there on the stool. With their stone walls, the old mills were like ancient fortresses carved into the riverbank and drawing generations of people to them. Moss that grew on the ground beyond the paths trampled by ox hooves, a mixture of old and new growth, looked like the multihued fur of a gigantic beast. The old man died and a master miller hanged himself because of a ruined batch, but neither drew a sound from the mill itself. They were the soul of the town. During hard times there were always people who ran to the mills to do things in secret. Then during the reexamination period following land reform, whole families fled from Wali after first stealthily performing kowtow rites in the mills. Villagers burned spirit money to memorialize the forty-two men and women buried alive in a yam cellar by the landlord restitution corps, and the mill did not make a sound. It had only a single tiny window, its only eye. Tenders of the millstone gazed at the open fields and the river through that eye.

The first thing Baopu saw when he looked through that window each day was the partial trunk of the tree of heaven taken down by a bolt of lightning. At the time people had discussed the destruction of the tree, but it was soon forgotten by all except Baopu, who continued to study it. His face darkened when he examined its ruined state. A tree so thick at its base that two people were needed to circle it with their arms was now split down the middle, exposing a white core that had the look of a shattered bone. A lush canopy that had only recently created welcome shade, the branches emitting refreshing moisture, was now nothing but splintered debris. A dark liquid had congealed at the outer edges of the wood core, the bloody seepage from the lightning strike. A strange odor emanated from its depths, and Baopu knew it was the smell of death. Thunder and lightning are bullets from the universe’s rifle. Why had that particular tree wound up in its crosshairs? And why that night? Heavenly justice has a long arm.

He had bent down to pick up pieces of the tree and carried them back to the mill.

The abandoned mills were left over from the heyday of the glass noodle industry. Many had rumbled loudly during their youth, but after Father died in a field of red sorghum, the mills began dying off, one after the other. They had been built on the bank of the river for its abundant supply of water. Then one day Baopu stumbled across stone troughs that showed that the millstones had once been turned not by oxen but by water, which was why the Luqing River was shrinking. That discovery had people believing that the excavated ship had sailed down a raging river and that the Wali pier had indeed been the site of a forest of ships’ masts. Vast changes occur as the constellations change places, making predictions of the future impossible. The old mills slowly ground time itself away. Once the mill was mechanized, the conveyer belt and the gears that turned it dazzled the people’s eyes, an example of how abruptly the world can change. People flocked to see the motor-driven millstone, which brought life to the mill. But now that the novelty had worn off and they had stopped coming, Baopu looked out the window and spotted Xiaokui, market basket in hand, and Leilei, the son who never seemed to grow. He called to the boy, but there was no response.