“No. It must have been Daddy.”
After Wumei left, several black rings were visible on the spot where she’d been standing; they were like cauterized imprints. Mrs. Yun scuffed them with her foot but couldn’t get rid of them. When she took a closer look, she didn’t see them.
They were eating supper. After Mrs. Yun changed the lamp wick, the kerosene lamp brightened. Mrs. Yun noticed that the father’s and daughter’s faces flickered in the lamplight, and a dark shadow stood behind Mr. Yun for a while and then behind Wumei for a while. Mrs. Yun forgot about eating. All of a sudden, she burst out: “Youlin?” She was scared out of her wits.
“Living where Youlin lives isn’t as tough as we imagine. I suppose there are some arcane truths there. Let’s drop this subject. I’m afraid it will frighten Wumei,” Mr. Yun said.
Wumei’s shining eyes led Mrs. Yun to think of the strange bird’s eyes.
“Give me some credit, will you, Daddy?”
“Could Youlin be dead?” Mrs. Yun said.
Mr. Yun began laughing. Mrs. Yun saw the dark shadow behind him bow in his direction.
“No way. You just saw that he was all right, didn’t you? I told you: he has a great life! I’ve thought about him in the years that we’ve been apart. But it never occurred to me that he was living next to the marsh. I used to haul coal, and he fixed tires. Back then, I felt that he and I were much the same. As I see it now, we are indeed in different social classes. Think about it: So many years have gone by, how could our characters not have changed?”
Mrs. Yun was staring at her husband’s face, which had gradually become thinner. Her disbelief was growing. Mr. Yun seldom talked so much. What was wrong with him today? The dark shadow behind him seemed to be smelling his hair. Mrs. Yun wanted to stand up, but she felt nailed to her chair. Wave after wave of chills assailed her. She set her chopsticks down.
“Ma!” Wumei shouted.
“Ah?” She was a little more clear-headed.
“You have to give me some money to buy glossy paper.”
“Oh, okay! You’re so industrious.”
Wumei stood up and went back to her room. Just then, the owl began hooting. It wasn’t like the frightening hoot of an ordinary owl. It didn’t scare Mrs. Yun at all; it was merely a little strange. It was intense and resounding, and it lasted a fantastically long time. She thought, Maybe this is the birds’ mountain ballad? It was a long time before it stopped hooting.
Mrs. Yun lit another lamp and went to the courtyard gate to investigate. As usual, she was worried about her chickens and ducks, but there was no problem: it was quiet all around. Outside, the old mulberry tree bobbed its head gently in the breeze, and the owl was no longer there. Perhaps, its song had been its last outburst. What emotions did its outburst hold? Birds’ ideas were hard to fathom. Two villagers passed by the tree. They were quarreling, and suddenly they came to blows. One of them lifted the older one into the ditch. Mrs. Yun heard the one in the ditch groaning loudly. Mrs. Yun called Mr. Yun over to help the old codger.
“It seems he doesn’t want our help. Take a look for yourself. You’ll see.”
Mrs. Yun limped the whole way over there. A lot of stones and clods of earth were piled up on the path.
“Uncle Weng, do you want me to help you? Or do you want me to call someone over to help?”
She was talking to the blurry ball below, but it didn’t answer. Quite the opposite: she heard a strange sound come from his mouth — like the menacing sound made by a cat when it encounters a suspiciously dangerous adversary. Frightened, Mrs. Yun turned and went home.
“What’s wrong with Uncle Weng?”
She saw Mr. Yun snickering.
“I guess he’s enjoying life in the ditch,” Mr. Yun said.
“If I open the courtyard gate, will our chickens, ducks, and piglets be safe?”
“Hard to say. Nobody can be sure.”
Mr. Yun went back to his room to plait sandals. He liked working at night. He would work until midnight.
Mrs. Yun took another look at the ditch. She heard nothing now. For some reason, she visualized a motorcade on the marsh. She muttered, “Something is coming closer and closer.” When she went inside, her legs felt like lead.
Wumei told her that the last time she went to the market to sell papercuts, a group of women had surrounded her. They wanted a hundred of her works. Those countrified women seemed to come from a remote mountain area. There were two blind people among them.
“Did they buy your interlinked rings?” asked Mrs. Yun.
“Yes. They wanted to take them home and learn how to make the rings. When I asked where they came from, they just mentioned a strange place name. It definitely isn’t in our province, and yet I could understand their accent. One of the older ones told me that the sun shines there all year long, so they like black and they like circles.”
Mrs. Yun took stock of Wumei’s bedroom wall. Now there were no longer black rings pasted there, but many yellow ants. Looking at them was nauseating. Wumei was truly spirited and skillful. Such tiny ants: she could cut them out so they were lifelike. But why didn’t she cut some pleasant things?
Mrs. Yun was dazed as she stood in Wumei’s room. Wumei was staring at her, obviously urging her to leave soon. Mrs. Yun couldn’t imagine when Wumei had begun being so uncompromising. No matter what she was doing, she always had her own way. She sighed and went back to her own room.
The bedroom she shared with Mr. Yun was spacious. The old-fashioned bed with flowers carved on it was large, like a small house. When they first moved here, Mrs. Yun didn’t feel comfortable. And so, every day after dinner, Mr. Yun extinguished the lamp, making the house as dark as a cave. Mrs. Yun gradually felt better in the dark. Back then, night birds — usually more than ten of them — always flew over to their windowsill. They were small, and their songs were soft and gentle like crickets on the stove. Mr. Yun joked that he had summoned the birds to keep Mrs. Yun company. Sure enough, these soft sounds at night soothed her nerves. Later, they stopped coming, and Mrs. Yun raised more chickens, because chickens could also dispel her inner unease. Especially the hens that laid eggs.
As she stitched the soles for cloth shoes, Mrs. Yun was thinking of the lovely events of the past. The strange thing was that when she thought of the bizarre episode between Youlin and her, she didn’t feel guilty. She was merely curious. Occasionally, she thought that even if she told Mr. Yun about it, he probably wouldn’t care. She felt that in the last two years, father and daughter were bewitched by something that she had no way to understand. Nothing else would have made such an impact on them.
All of a sudden, she felt sleepy. Mr. Yun was still plaiting sandals, so she went to bed first. She lay in bed for a while, but no longer felt sleepy. When she heard the window rattling, she got up to close it.
“Who’s there?”
“Me. Youlin. I’m back from the market. I’ve brought some glossy paper for you.”
After tossing a package through the window, he hurried off.
Mrs. Yun picked it up and looked at it carefully in the moonlight. This glossy paper should be purple; in the moonlight it looked a little wicked. She lit the lamp uneasily. Sure enough, it was purple. It was the best kind of glossy paper.
When Mrs. Yun went to Wumei’s room, she was still awake. She was cutting those ants in front of the lamp. Mrs. Yun gave her the glossy paper. She said she’d bought it a few days before, but had chucked it into the kitchen cupboard and forgotten about it. She didn’t know if the color was right.
“It’s perfect. Did Uncle Youlin give it to you?”
“How did you know?”
“He said he wanted me to try the purple color.”