The Real Story of Ah-Q (14 page)

Taking the broken bowl with him, Seven-Pounds sat down melancholically on the threshold with his pipe, forgetting to smoke, until the light in his six-foot speckled bamboo pipe (with its ivory mouth and pewter bowl) slowly petered out. Though he could sense the situation was critical, every attempt to find a solution fizzled out: ‘Where’s your queue? Eighteen-foot lance – the youth of today! The emperor’s back. Get it mended in town. No one! All the books. Damn it all to hell…’

The next morning, Seven-Pounds got up and poled the boat, as always, from Luzhen into the city and back again, returning to the village that evening, carrying his long, speckled bamboo pipe and the rice bowl. He’d had it riveted back together in town, he told Mrs Nine-Pounds at dinner. Sixteen copper nails, it had taken, at three coppers apiece – forty-eight coppers in total.

‘The youth of today,’ his grandmother groused. ‘Seventy-eight years I’ve lived – that’s enough for anyone. Three coppers a nail; it was never that much in my day… Seventy-eight years…’

Though Seven-Pounds kept up his daily routine, passing back and forth between village and town, gloom remained the keynote at home. His fellow villagers gave him and his bulletins about current affairs a wide berth, while his wife was often sourly on at him to keep digging his own grave.

One evening, however, some ten days later, Seven-Pounds returned home to find his wife in much-improved spirits. ‘Any news from town?’ she asked.

‘Oh, nothing much.’

‘Anything about the emperor?’

‘Nope.’

‘Nothing at the Universal Prosperity?’

‘Nope.’

‘I’m sure the emperor’s not back. When I walked past Mr Zhao’s today, he was just sitting there reading, his queue tucked back on his head. He wasn’t wearing that gown of his either.’

No reply from her husband.

‘D’you think he’s back?’

‘Probably not.’

And so Seven-Pounds again enjoys the deferential regard of his wife and fellow villagers. Every summer, they dine out on the mudflat outside their door, graciously acknowledging their neighbours’ smiles and greetings. Now well past her eightieth birthday, old Mrs Nine-Pounds enjoys the same healthy ill-temper as always, while Six-Pounds’s two wiry little braids have merged into a larger, single plait. And even though her feet have now been bound, she still helps Mrs Seven-Pounds with the chores, hobbling back and forth across the mudbank, carrying her rice bowl with its sixteen copper nails.

October 1920

After a twenty-year absence, and a journey of seven hundred bitterly cold miles, I returned home.

As I neared my destination the weather grew overcast, the midwinter wind whistling through my cabin. Through a crack in the awning, I could see a bleak scattering of villages beneath a dull yellow sky. A powerful sense of desolation welled up in me.

Was this the place I had kept nostalgically alive in my thoughts these past two decades?

As I remembered it, it was nothing like this; it was a much better place. But when I tried to recall or articulate its beauty, I discovered I held no mental image of it – no words to describe it. Maybe it had always been like this, I told myself. Even though time had not been kind to it, it was surely not as bleak as it now struck me. It was I who had changed, I reasoned; grown melancholy.

I had come back only to say goodbye. The old family house had been sold off, and was to be handed on at the year’s end. I had to hurry back before the start of the new lunar year to take my final leave of the old place, before moving on – to the place where I now scraped a living.

Early the next day, I arrived at the house. In among the roof tiles, broken, withered stems of grass trembled in the wind, testimony to the old owners’ inability to maintain the clan establishment. Now that most of our relatives had moved out of their apartments, the compound was quiet. As I approached the wing occupied by my own family, my mother came out to greet me, my seven-year-old nephew, Hong’er, scurrying out behind her.

Beneath her pleasure at seeing me lurked an unmistakable sorrow. But she had me sit down: rest, drink some tea. She would say nothing of the imminent move. Hong’er, who had never met me before, stood some distance away, looking on.

Eventually, our talk turned to what had brought me here. I had rented lodgings in the other place, I told her, and bought a few items of furniture; but everything from this house would want selling, to get what we needed for the new place. My mother agreed, and said she had just about finished her packing and sold almost half of the things she couldn’t take with her – it was just that her buyers were being slow in paying up.

‘By the time you’ve rested up a couple of days and visited a few relatives,’ Mother said, ‘we’ll be ready to go.’

‘Good.’

‘And don’t forget Runtu. He always asks after you – I know he wants to see you. I told him when you’d be arriving, so you might be getting a visit from him, too.’

Suddenly, I saw in my mind’s eye a marvellous golden moon hanging in a midnight-blue sky over a seashore planted endlessly with dark green watermelons. A boy, around ten or eleven years old, a silver chain around his neck and a pitchfork in his hand, was stabbing at a fierce-looking dog darting between his legs.

The boy was Runtu. I can’t have been much older than nine when I first met him – thirty years ago. Back then, my father had still been alive, the family finances tolerably healthy and I the spoilt young master of the house. Elaborately grandiose preparations were under way for my family’s turn to host an important sacrifice, one that came round only once every three decades. In the first month of the lunar year, the ancestral portraits were to be laid out on the altar, alongside piles of offerings in ornate sacrificial vessels. Because of the crowds of visitors expected to pay their respects, additional security precautions were necessary. Our family hired only one regular extra helper for busy times of the year (in our part of the country, servants and labourers fell into three categories: permanent employees, who worked for one family all year round; temporary workers, hired by the day; and those who worked their own land but took on seasonal work for a specific family at New Year, during other holiday times and at rent collection). As he was too busy to keep an eye on the sacrificial vessels himself, he told Father he’d ask his son Runtu to come and lend a hand.

I was delighted when my father agreed, because I’d heard a good deal about this Runtu. I knew he was about the same age as me, and how he’d got his name: after he’d been born in a
run
, a leap-year month, the fortune-teller had said his horoscope was short of one of the five elements,
tu
(earth). To make up for it, his father called him Runtu – Leap Year Earth. I’d also heard he could trap small birds.

I now burned with impatience for New Year, because it would bring Runtu. One day, when at last the old year had reached its end, Mother told me he had come. Rushing off in search, I found him in the kitchen, his round, sun-burnt face crowned by a small felt hat, a gleaming silver necklace at his throat – token of his father’s love for him, of the endless offerings he had made on his son’s behalf to the Buddha. The necklace was to trap him in this world, to protect him from death. Though he was usually shy around company, it was different with me. As long as no one else was about, he would burble happily away, and within a few hours we were fast friends.

I don’t really know what we talked about; all I can remember is Runtu happily telling me about his trip into town, and all the things he’d never seen before.

The next day, I wanted him to take me bird-trapping.

‘Not today. It’s best when there’s been snow. Then you clear a patch of sand, prop a basket on a short stick and scatter some blighted grain. Tie some rope to the stick, stand a good long way away, holding the other end of the rope, then soon as you see a bird come to get the grain, give the rope a tug and it’s stuck, under the basket. I’ve caught all sorts: wild pheasants, woodcock, wood pigeons, bluebacks…’

Now all I wanted was for it to snow.

‘You should come and see us when it’s warmer, in the summer,’ he went on. ‘We collect shells during the day – red ones, green ones, Ghost Charms, Buddha’s Hands, lots of them. Then in the evenings, Father and I guard the watermelons; you could come too.’

‘Against thieves?’

‘No. If someone passing by gets thirsty, he can just pick one – that doesn’t count as stealing. It’s badgers and hedgehogs and
zha
we’re worried about. Soon as the moon’s up, you hear this snuffling sort of noise: that’s your
zha
, eating melons. Then you get your pitchfork, and go over, quiet as you can…’

I had no clue what kind of a creature this
zha
was – nor do I now. For no good reason at all, I’ve always pictured it as a small, unusually fierce kind of dog.

‘Mightn’t it bite you?’

‘That’s what the pitchfork’s for. Once you’ve got the
zha
in your sights, you jab at it. But they’re quick and clever as anything: first it’ll make straight for you, then dart between your legs, slippery as grease…’

I still had so much to discover: seashells of every colour, dangerous goings-on around watermelons… Until then, they’d just been something you bought at a fruit stall.

‘We’ve jumping fish at the seashore, too, lots of them when the tide’s in, with legs like frogs.’

What riches were to be found inside Runtu’s head; he wasn’t like any of my other friends. While Runtu was at his seashore, it seemed, we had all been imprisoned within the high walls of our courtyard mansions, staring up at the sky.

All too soon, the first lunar month was at an end, and Runtu had to return home. I burst into tears, with him hiding in the kitchen, sobbing that he didn’t want to go. But in the end, his father took him away. Later on, he got his father to pass a bag of shells and a handful of pretty bird feathers on to me. I sent him one or two things myself, but we never saw each other again.

The instant my mother mentioned him, this rush of memories flooded over me, resurrecting the marvellous childhood home of my imagination.

‘That’s wonderful!’ I exclaimed. ‘How… how is he?’

‘Well… not so good…’ Mother glanced outside. ‘Back again. They say they’re browsing, but they’re just waiting for a chance to walk off with things without paying. Better go and keep an eye on them.’

She got up and went out; I could hear women’s voices outside the door. I called Hong’er over to me, and began chatting to him: asking him if he was learning how to write, whether he was glad to be going.

‘Are we going on a train?’

‘Yes.’

‘And on a boat?’

‘Boat first, then – ’

‘Well!’ a shrill voice interrupted. ‘Aren’t we all grown-up! What a moustache!’

Looking up in some trepidation, I now saw before me a woman of around fifty: high cheekbones, thinly drawn lips, hands on hips, trousered legs set angularly apart, like the limbs of a compass.

I stared blankly.

‘Don’t you recognize me? You used to sit on my knee when you were small enough!’

I went on staring until, mercifully, my mother came to my rescue.

‘He’s been away so long he’s forgotten everything. You remember Mrs Yang,’ she turned to me. ‘She runs the bean-curd shop over the way.’

I began to remember. When I was a child, this Mrs Yang – celebrated locally as ‘the Bean-Curd Beauty’ – had presided over the bean-curd shop opposite us. With a dusting of powder over her face, her cheekbones hadn’t stuck out so much, and her lips hadn’t looked so thin; and as she was always sitting down, I’d never got to see how spindly her legs really were. Everyone used to say back then that it was thanks to her the bean-curd shop turned over such a tidy profit. But I’d never given her much thought – probably because I was still so young – and in time had forgotten her entirely. She gazed on me with aggrieved contempt – as if I were a Frenchman who had never heard of Napoleon, or an American who knew nothing of Washington.

‘Forgotten? Me?’ she said, a sarcastic smile on her face. ‘Well, aren’t we the busy, important one now…’

‘No, no… nothing of the sort…’ I struggled nervously to my feet.

‘As you’re so rich and important, Mr Xun, what do you want with all these broken old bits of furniture? You don’t want to take them with you – let me take them off your hands. Ordinary people like us – we can still get some use out of them.’

‘I’m not rich. We need to sell them so we can buy – ’

‘What are you talking about? You work for the government – I bet you’ve three concubines, and travel everywhere in a sedan car with eight carriers. Ha! You won’t pull the wool over my eyes.’

I held my ground, keeping my mouth resignedly shut.

‘The richer you are, the meaner you get; the meaner you are, the richer you get…’ She spun indignantly on her axis, and picked her way out of the room, tucking a pair of my mother’s gloves into the waistband of her trousers as she went.

Three or four days passed: a handful of relatives came to call, while I finished packing in moments snatched between their visits.

One particularly cold afternoon, as I sat drinking tea after lunch, I realized I had another visitor waiting outside the door. Looking round, I jumped to my feet and rushed over to greet him.

Although I knew straightaway it was Runtu, he bore little resemblance to the boy I remembered. He was twice the size of my childhood friend; his round, sun-burnt face was now a sallow grey, and etched deeply with wrinkles; his eyes were his father’s – puffy and red-rimmed. This was what the scouring coastal winds did to the human face, I knew. Beneath a battered felt hat and a thin padded cotton jacket, his body trembled from the cold. A paper bag and a long pipe were carried in rough, clumsy hands cracked like pine bark – again, no longer the strong, pink hands I remembered.

Though I was delighted to see him, I could think of nothing to say. ‘Runtu,’ was the best I could do.

There were all kinds of things I wanted to say: about woodcock, about jumping fish, about shells, and
zha
… But something seemed to be stopping them come out, leaving them swirling uselessly about inside my head.

He stood before me, a combination of joy and sorrow registering on his face, his lips moving but generating no sound. Eventually, deference won out: ‘Sir!’

I almost felt myself shudder with sadness – at the thick wall sprung up between us. I said nothing.

‘Come and kowtow, Shuisheng.’ He pulled the child hiding behind him forward: Runtu as he had been twenty years ago – only thinner, sallower, and without his silver necklace. ‘This is my fifth. He’s not seen much of the world, so he’s shy with company.’

Mother and Hong’er came downstairs; they must have heard voices.

‘I got your letter, madam,’ Runtu began. ‘I was so pleased to hear Mr Xun was coming back…’

‘Don’t stand on ceremony with us,’ Mother reproved him warmly. ‘You used to be like brothers!’

‘You’re too kind… I couldn’t possibly. We were children back then, just children…’ Runtu motioned Shuisheng forward again, but the child clung tightly on behind him.

‘Is that Shuisheng? Your fifth? He doesn’t know us, it’s no wonder he’s nervous,’ Mother said. ‘Why don’t he and Hong’er go off and play?’

The moment Hong’er approached him, Shuisheng relaxed and happily followed him out of the room. Mother invited Runtu to sit down, which, after some hesitation, he finally did, resting his pipe against the side of a table.

‘Just a handful of peas we dried at home, I’m afraid, sir,’ he apologized, presenting his paper bag. ‘There’s never much of anything during the winter.’