“He’s going to die in a couple of days.” Both his facial expression and his tone were indifferent.
“What happened?” Jinglan asked.
On the way to the house, Jinglan was on the verge of tears, but in the end he didn’t cry. Upon entering the house, Yunma’s cousin went directly to the kitchen, where a lot of people were gathered. When Jinglan went into the bedroom, he saw Yuanpu sitting on the bed, repairing a lock. All kinds of small tools were spread out on the quilt. Jinglan let out a sigh.
“Did they ask you to come?” Yuanpu asked without raising his head. “Don’t worry. I won’t die. I just fell. It isn’t serious. I fooled all of them. As soon as they came in, I pretended to be on my last legs.”
“But when I came in, you didn’t do that.”
“That’s because I knew it was you. When I saw Yunma’s cousin go out, I guessed you would come.”
He finally finished repairing the old-style copper lock and opened it a few times with the key. Then he put it and the tools into an iron box which he placed beside the bed. He looked toward the door and made a face, signaling Jinglan to open the door a crack.
The courtyard was noisy: a large coffin was being carried in. Yunma directed the porters to place the coffin under the oil-cloth rain shed. Jinglan noticed that she was dressed all in black. She looked refined and clean.
“This time, your joke has gone too far.” Jinglan turned around and said, frowning in disgust.
“It doesn’t matter. Yunma is an old hand at this. In the end, will it be she or I who wins this battle of wits? What do you think? This issue is just like a lock and this key. I think you’d better leave. This kind of environment is hard on you. And don’t come back next year, either. Why make yourself uncomfortable? Come, help me shift my legs a little. I’m already dead from the waist down because of my fall, yet my upper body is still vigorous.”
His legs were very heavy, bewilderingly so. Even when he shoved them energetically a few times, Jinglan couldn’t move them. All he could do was climb into the bed, bend down, and shift them with both hands. His face turned purple. After he had arranged Yuanpu’s legs and covered them with a quilt, he and Yuanpu looked at each other. He noticed that Yuanpu’s eyes were a little damp, and he felt his emotions surge.
“Go on, go on! Why haven’t you left yet?!” Yuanpu was energetically waving his hand, perhaps to cover his embarrassment or perhaps because he was weary.
Jinglan walked into the courtyard, where Yunma had just arranged the coffin. Looking at Jinglan, she gave him an unearthly smile. She said, “Come back again next year. Mr. Yuanpu always cares about you.”
“This. ”
“Do you mean the coffin? This is just for looks. How can he die? He can fool the others, but he can’t fool me. Are you going now? Come back next year for sure. For sure! You’re all he thinks of!”
Jinglan quickened his pace, but Yunma was behind him, seeing him off. She was excited. She opened her mouth a few times, wanting to say something, but in the end she said nothing. She just silently watched Jinglan walk into the distance.
=
As Jinglan got back to the street, he thought he had no reason to despise Yunma. He had seen that his mentor seemed content with his lot in that eerie house; it was hard for others to understand what was so wonderful about his life. It seemed that Jinglan himself now had no choice but to consider himself one of the others. After all, he returned only once a year. Although he had thought of himself as his pupil, in the end, he hadn’t mastered some things — for instance, he didn’t understand Yuanpu’s relationship with Yunma at all. He could only understand the Yuanpu of the past — and evidently there was no connection between the mentor of the past and the mentor of the present. Had this change occurred only when he had a premonition that he would die soon?
Jinglan kept going, intending to thrust all of this behind him. Then he changed his mind and decided to board the boat and leave at once. He walked to the wharf. As it happened, a boat was waiting. No sooner had he entered the cabin and fallen onto the cot than the boat started up. Half-dazed, he heard the water grumbling below and felt it was a little absurd to have left immediately.
At midnight, he awoke with a start and walked onto the deck. When he looked up, he saw a large meteor fall from the sky. He looked down: everything was inky black. The events of the past few days once more weighed heavily on his heart. The boat had already gone a long way. For some reason, Jinglan felt that this was not like leaving, but instead like sailing straight toward the dark center of his hometown. It was a place where he’d never been before.
Papercuts
The gigantic owl — twice as large as ordinary owls — had been coming around for days, each time at dusk. It sat on a branch of the old mulberry, its round eyes — of indeterminate color — like two demonic mirrors.
That day, Mrs. Yun returned from the vegetable garden carrying a pair of empty buckets on her shoulders. As she turned and suddenly saw this big thing, her legs went weak and she nearly fell. She wanted to run off, but she couldn’t move. It was as if something were holding on to her legs. She struggled for a long while and calmed down only when she reached her door. When she looked again at the tree and saw that thing again, she promptly shut the courtyard gate.
Mr. Yun was sharpening a hatchet. She noticed a ruthless expression looming on his face.
“What scared you so much?”
Walking over, he opened the courtyard gate and watched for a while.
“Hunh!” he said.
Then he closed the gate slowly. Mrs. Yun knew he didn’t feel like talking. And because of his explosive temper, she didn’t dare ask him anything. She heard the chickens hopping around uneasily in the coop. One old hen didn’t want to return to her nest. Finally, she grabbed the hen and thrust it in. With that, all twelve chickens in the coop went crazy, and Mrs. Yun’s heart thumped continuously. She remained in shock right up until she lit the lamp, finished her dinner, and washed the dishes. She wanted to open the courtyard gate to take another look, but she didn’t have the nerve.
Sure enough, that night the chickens and dogs were all in an uproar. The next morning, two chickens were missing. At the gate were chicken feathers and traces of blood. Mrs. Yun thought, was it the owl? Why did she think it was a man-eating beast? Mr. Yun looked at the feathers on the ground and said, “This doesn’t matter.”
Feeling uncertain, she stood next to the entrance, cupped her hands, and shouted through her tears: “Wumei! Wumei!”
She was calling her daughter. She’d had five children, but the first four had died. The only one left was Wumei. Her daughter leapt out from the dry ditch; she had cut a small bundle of firewood.
“What are you shouting about?” Wumei said disapprovingly. Her face was flushed.
Mrs. Yun reproached her: “What are you shouting about?”
Wumei set the firewood down and went to her room. Mrs. Yun knew she was making papercuts again. Recently, she’d become infatuated with a weird design — concentric circles. She cut them out of black paper and pasted them on the walls and windows. Mrs. Yun told her that looking at the rings made her dizzy. But Wumei didn’t care and continued cutting.
Mrs. Yun was a little indignant because no one else in the family was upset by what had happened the night before. And neither father nor daughter seemed to think the ill-omened bird was even there. They just went on doing whatever they had to do. She wasn’t one to make a mountain out of a molehill, but wasn’t it true that something had invaded her life? Those two hens were both new and were about to lay eggs. They had eaten a lot of food every day.