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"What does she have against Mangmang?"
"I'll bet you she's got someone else on her mind…"
One by one, the crowd dispersed. From their remarks, Dou Gua could tell that the single lash of the whip had cost her father his reputation.
When there was no one left, Dou Gua pushed herself to her feet and returned to Qiao Family Gully. She stripped naked and stretched out on the kang.
"Come on, Mangmang," she said. "You can do whatever you like.
"Mangmang, you've ruined my life," she wept.
She hadn't visited her father Dou Bao since that time.
But she became a frequent visitor to the Field of Ghosts.
An expanse of red soil, nothing else-not even a blade of grass. Yet she loved to go there.
At this moment, the Field of Ghosts was shrouded in a layer of moonlight that drifted here and there like mist. The lenses of Teacher Chai's glasses, too, seemed to have been covered with a layer of drifting mist.
Then there was the road; it, too, drifted about. She walked and walked and became the girl of the pancake stall, became Mang-mang's woman.
She heard somebody walking toward the Field of Ghosts. She knew it had to be Mangmang. Worried that she was meeting another man, he had come looking for her.
Mangmang, you've ruined my life, she thought to herself. With that, she picked up a rock that lay close by and struck him on the forehead. Mangmang sank to the ground without a murmur.
The sound made by the rock was not very loud, but it traveled far, startling the moonlight on the Field of Ghosts into flight, wings fluttering, like a swarm of white butterflies.
She glanced at Mangmang. His eyes were opened wide as if to ask her what had happened.
And that was the only thing that Dou Gua did.
Now Dou Gua was in her father's cave, her backside resting on the edge of the kang; she was confessing to him. There was no movement inside the cave. Dou Bao's shepherd's whip hung behind the door, its thong snaking quietly down the wall. Even the shadow of the whip remained quiet and still.
The bare-bottomed moon shone bright and clear. Dou Gua remembered the moonlight on the Field of Ghosts, wings fluttering like a swarm of white butterflies. She had gone there so many times, but only tonight was the moonlight like white butterflies. And that she would never forget.
Translated By Ellen Lai-Shan Yeung
Ge Fei – Remembering Mr. Wu You
1
Not until the two middle-aged policemen in white uniforms and their young skirt-clad female partner showed up did the villagers reluctantly recall Mr. Wu You. [3] That bygone episode, like a maiden's lost chastity, stirred the people's emotions. And since their recollections were triggered by the introduction into their lives of the three outsiders, village elders were quick to tell youngsters eager to revisit the painful past, "Time erases all memories."
Thanks to the three uniformed guests, the villagers learned of such things as handcuffs and, so they were told, alarm sirens. A sense of security accrued from the presence of the outsiders, even though they were not above putting on airs at times. One of their favorite pastimes was getting farmers to stop work, either out in the woods or in the shade of high walls, to relate obscure details regarding Mr. Wu You. They failed to get the answers they sought, not because the people were uninformed but because they were so blase. Nothing excited the people of this village. I, on the other hand, was eager to work with the outsiders. I still recalled how the condemned man was shot that morning.
Mother reacted to the news that I was going to watch them shoot Mr. Wu You at a spot five miles from where we lived by slapping me across the face. "Killing a man is the same as killing a chicken," she said. So I went out back to watch my younger brother do just that. Old K, who was still little then, held the chicken by its neck in one tiny hand and a small penknife in the other. As I walked up to him, he asked me to help. "Killing a chicken is the same as killing a man," I said.
"They're the same thing," Old K replied.
Suddenly, the bird broke loose and flapped its way across a block of stone before soaring over the wall. Old K stood there holding his blood-streaked penknife, mesmerized by the sight of chicken feathers floating above us, I grabbed his hand and dragged him out the gate, telling him we were going to watch them actually kill a man. He was standing beside me when they shot Mr. Wu You. His mouth hung slack, and he was a different boy from the one who was trying to kill the chicken. On the way home, he muttered the only thing he would say for three whole days: "Killing a man is a lot easier than killing a chicken."
I divulged this to the three outsiders, who wouldn't dignify it with a response, would not even jot it down. But when I told them I was a distant relative of Mr. Wu You's, they smiled and turned real friendly, urging me to go on with my story. My ears rang with official jargon in a singsong twang that made my skin crawl. I said Mr. Wu You was shot on the day of the dragon-boat festival.
"That's perfect!" the skirt-clad young woman said.
It really was the day of the dragon-boat festival. Women, some of whom had stayed up all night, went down to the stream to pick leaves, which they floated home on bamboo rafts, in sampans, even in washbasins as wrappings for their glutinous holiday treats. A gossamer mist hung in the early-morning air like evanescent steam, heavy with the subtle fragrance of water reeds. Men were washing rice in large sieves. Children played behind their parents as they worked, splashing stream water with stripped willow switches. Just then one of the younger wives took off ru
2
As soon as they heard the clanking noise, the villagers knew that the police were out for a stroll: all ma
Apparently feeling tension in the air for the first time since their arrival, the outsiders asked me to show them Mr. Wu You's living quarters, in an old, dilapidated, and boxy little ancestral hall. His room had been sealed on the day of his death, and no one had entered it since. Prying open the rusty latch was hard work. When we finally got the door open, we were greeted by a thick cloud of dust. It was stifling inside, and we were sweat soaked in no time. The room was just as its occupant had left it, as if awaiting his return. A coat of fine white dust had accumulated on a pencil sketch tacked to the wall: a black sun sinking into the reedy bank of a black river inhabited by a pair of egrets with crossed beaks. The sketch had been done for him by an itinerant artist. Appearance was important to Mr. Wu You, who could not abide dirt or slovenliness. He shaved with a finely honed straight razor and wore a black oilcloth apron when doing the dishes. Years later, whenever his name came up in conversation, the villagers invariably remarked, "Just like a woman!"
[3] Pronounced WOO-YO.