Binu and the Great Wall of China (6 page)

‘So you are favouring me, are you? You want to hire my cart to take you up north, is that it?’ Wuzhang glared at her before exploding in rage. ‘Don’t you have ears? I told you, I’m in the employment of Lord Hengming. Weren’t you listening when I mentioned his name? He is the King’s brother! How else could I have such a fine cart? Bend down and take a look at this axle, at these wheels. Do you really think they are made for the likes of you? Take a look at the panther insignia on the canopy. That is Lord Hengming’s insignia. Everything that carries this insignia belongs to him, including me. Do you understand? If not, take a look at the back of my jacket. See that, it’s a panther insignia too.’

Binu walked around the cart. A circled panther insignia was displayed proudly on the man’s back. ‘I understand,’
she said solicitously. ‘You cannot hire the cart out because it does not belong to you. Then will you take me to see Lord Hengming, and speak to him for me? Ask him if he will let me hire the donkey. I wouldn’t think of hiring such a fine cart, but if he’ll let me have the donkey, I’ll give him my nine sabre coins.’

‘Nine sabre coins, nine sabre coins! You think that carrying nine sabre coins makes you a rich woman, is that it?’ Wuzhang made no attempt to hide his disdain. ‘If you possessed some unique skill, if you could fly up to the eaves or walk up walls, or if you breathed fire or walked on water, I would take you to see him, and he would reward me. If you could get your frog to wish Lord Hengming a long and happy life, I would take you to see him. Since a Huangdian rooster can lead the way down a road, a Huangdian frog ought to be able to speak. Have your frog say something to Lord Hengming, have it bow to him and wish him a long and happy life, and I’ll take you to Hundred Springs Terrace.’

‘Where do you keep your ears, Elder Brother?’ Binu said. ‘I’ve told you over and over that I am from Peach Village, not Huangdian. This frog comes from Banqiao, not Huangdian. It cannot bow, and it certainly cannot speak.’

‘If it can do neither of those, then you should not go.
Not only would you fail to hire the donkey, but when Lord Hengming saw you, he might take a fancy to you. He has bought many women in recent years, some bright and beautiful, some broad in the hip, just right for bearing children, and some handy with needlework. He has kept some for himself and has given others to his retainers. Anything he likes, he buys. If you could cut up pieces of the sky and sell them, he would buy a big piece. Now, do you understand what my employer is like?’

Binu nodded at first but then shook her head. ‘You can say I’m from Huangdian all you want, but I’m not, and since I’m not, I’m not afraid.’ She looked at the resplendent donkey cart; and the more she looked, the more arrogant the donkey seemed, and the more luxurious the canopy seemed. She tried to imagine what the owner of that cart might be like, but her mind failed her. She sighed and gave up trying. ‘Elder Brother, that must be a rich and powerful man whose donkey cart is better decked out than any person could be. Well, I am not interested in hiring that donkey. My feet will take me to Great Swallow Mountain. But I don’t understand why everyone I meet along the way lies to me? They all tell me that Bluegrass Ravine sells large livestock.’

‘That just shows how stupid you are. Large livestock means people, not animals!’ Having lost his patience with
her, Wuzhang picked up a whip with his feet, raised it high and brought it down with a crack right above her head. ‘Go on, get out of my way. I’m here to take on a new retainer for Lord Hengming. He’ll be coming down the mountain any minute now, so stop bothering me.’

Binu jumped in alarm, the violent movement causing something metallic in her bundle to clink.

The carter’s eyes lit up. ‘You’re not a woman who lies,’ he said. I can tell that you do in fact have nine sabre coins. Well, I didn’t lie to you either. Go and buy a head of large livestock. Go out of this pass and look down the mountain. You’ll see a place where they buy and sell people. Large livestock is all you’ll find there.’

The People Market

It was nearly time for the people market to close for the day, now that the sun was setting, but people still lined both sides of the street, the most notable being a cluster of bewitching young women. Given their dazzling, elaborate dress, they had probably come from the northern districts of Blue Cloud Prefecture. Rouge covered their foreheads, cheeks and lips, and they were dressed in colourful blue, peach-red or pastel-green dresses. The sleeves and hems were adorned with diamond patterns, some large, some small; their sashes, decorated with inlaid stones of agate and strips of jade, were tied in butterfly knots, and on the ends hung jade rings, silver lockets or perfume sachets. It must have been their splendid attire that lent them such self-assurance and a palpable sense of pride. Their faces betrayed little sadness over the chaotic state of the world around them. It was late in the day, and potential buyers had yet to show, so the women chattered like birds about to return to their nests for the night, making a racket over one thing or
another. Scattered around them were barefoot mountain women in bamboo hats, and a few middle-aged women from a distant prefecture, all wearing simple dark clothing. They stood silently, with downcast looks that befitted their station, as they gazed at horse-drawn carriages travelling up and down the road. Across the way, elderly men and boys sat lazily, cross-legged, several of them asleep, with their heads resting on their neighbours’ shoulders. One boy, unmindful of his station, had climbed a date tree by the road and was shaking the branches with all his strength, even though the dates had been picked long ago; all that fell to the ground were dry dead leaves.

A man sitting beneath the tree shouted, ‘Stop that! You’ll kill the tree that way, and there won’t be any shade left. Then you’ll have to stand in full sun waiting to be sold, and sooner or later that will kill you.’

The threat worked on the boy, who stopped shaking and sat still in the fork of the branches, from where he spotted an unfamiliar woman with a bundle on her head coming down from the mountain pass. A new target had presented itself. Reaching under his shirt, he took out a slingshot and shouted excitedly to the people below, ‘Here comes some new large livestock! Hand me some stones, hurry!’

The others watched as Binu, with a bundle on her head, walked under the tree; the women across the street heard the stones bombard her body, but Binu merely looked up into the branches of the tree and said, ‘You cannot hurt me with your stones. But you had better be careful up there or you might fall and hurt yourself.’ Her warning caught the boy off-guard; he put away his slingshot and said to the man under the tree, ‘I hit her with my slingshot but, instead of scolding me, she cautioned me to take care not to fall out of the tree. The head of this large livestock has a problem.’

Binu stood fast on the dirt road. Since the tree and its surroundings were men’s territory, she could not stop there. But across the road were all those women, whose fancy dresses rippling in the desolate autumn breezes struck her as somehow improper. So she stood in the middle of the road and took a good look at the Bluegrass Ravine people market. The finely attired young women were, at the same time, sizing her up.

‘Why is she carrying a bundle on her head? Isn’t she afraid of crushing her hairstyle?’

‘Hairstyle?’ one of them sneered. ‘It’s a rat’s nest, that’s what it is. Southern women don’t fuss over their hair.’

Another woman’s attention was drawn to Binu’s face.
With a combination of envy and ignorance, she said, ‘I didn’t know there were beauties down south too. Just look at her delicate moth eyebrows, her phoenix eyes and her willowy waist, a classic beauty.’

A woman beside her added caustically, ‘Too bad she never learned how to wash her face or apply make-up. She’s actually smeared dust all over her face in place of rouge. Look at the dirt on that face; you could plant crops in it.’

Binu was not immediately offended by the malicious gossip. From Peach Village all the way to Bluegrass Ravine, she had believed that women who congregated at the side of a road must be waiting to be taken to Great Swallow Mountain, and she expected to meet women from other towns who were also searching for their husbands, assuming they could travel north together.

She walked up to a woman in green who was eating flatbread. ‘Are you waiting for a ride?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to Great Swallow Mountain?’

The woman looked at her out of the corner of her eye. ‘Great Swallow Mountain?’ she replied, still munching her food. ‘This is not a stopping point for labourers heading north, so how could there be any rides to Great Swallow Mountain? If you want to go there, you’d best get back on the road while it’s still light.’

‘Then what are you all waiting for? And where are you going?’

The woman in green removed a packet from her sash and waved it in front of Binu. ‘We’re not like you. See that? It’s an embroidery kit. We are not large livestock, we’re skilled needleworkers who are waiting for a carriage from the Qiao family textile mill to take us into employment. Why are
you
standing here?’

Noting the derisive tone of the question, Binu said, ‘You shouldn’t talk like that, Elder Sister. None of us chooses what we are. Just because you can do a little needlework there is no reason to act like spoilt girls. In Peach Village girls grow up knowing how to plant mulberries and raise silkworms. Our needlework may not be as fancy as yours, but every thread in that packet comes from a silkworm. I can tell that your silk threads came from Peach Village silkworms.’

The woman blinked. ‘Are you saying our thread is silk from your hometown? Are you from Peach Village? No wonder you sound like crackling thunder when you speak!’ She laughed smugly. ‘I know who you are. People say there’s a madwoman in Peach Village who is afflicted with lovesickness. She is carrying a frog with her as she travels north to search for her husband. It’s you!’

Binu was shocked to learn that news of her travels
had reached Bluegrass Ravine. It did indeed sound like news of a madwoman. She detected a look of pity in the eyes of the woman in green, the controlled pity of a normal person towards a mad one. ‘Who is spreading such vicious rumours behind my back?’ she said. ‘I am taking winter clothing to my husband. That is not being lovesick, and I have no affliction. Any woman who could bear to let her husband go shirtless in winter is the afflicted one.’

‘If you have no affliction, then hurry up and get back on the road, deliver your winter clothing, go all the way to Great Swallow Mountain. If you don’t hurry, you’ll arrive after the winter snows, and your husband will have become a snowman!’ The woman cackled over her little joke and then, with a swish of her sleeve, edged closer to her embroidery sisters.

Binu heard the gleeful sounds of the woman passing on the news: ‘Can’t you see who that is? Come take a look, it’s the madwoman of Peach Village!’

The whispering embroidery women turned to give Binu looks of timid curiosity. ‘It’s her. Yes, it’s her. The lovesick one. The madwoman. What about the frog? It’s hidden in the bundle on her head.’ Caught in the needle-sharp gaze of the women, Binu felt her face and body prickle all over. Worn down physically and emotionally,
she lacked the strength to reason with the women. It was just like Peach Village, with girls chattering away whenever they got together, and they loved spreading idle talk about her.

All this time, the mountain women stood quietly at the edge of the people market like a row of shadowy trees in the settling darkness. Binu left the gaggle of decked-out embroidery women and walked up to a woman in black who was holding a conical hat in her hand. She was reminiscent of the mountain woman on the raft and reminded Binu of the frog in her bundle. Binu thought of asking the woman if she was from Northeast Mountain and, if so, if she knew a woman who poled a raft to search for her son. But the hostility she had experienced in this people market had destroyed her confidence in human contact. So she chose to say nothing. I ask you nothing, and you ask me nothing, she thought. Binu stood silently amid the mountain women, waiting with them for carts and horses to pass by.

The woman in black lowered the hat that she held in front of her face, revealing ashen, swollen features. The moment she opened her mouth to speak, a rank, fishy smell engulfed her. ‘You ought not to stand with those women. But then, only the aged, the ugly, the sick and dying, those with no skills, should stand here with us.’
The woman, with a blank look on her face, eyed up the bundle on Binu’s head. ‘You are better off than us,’ she said, ‘since you at least own a large bundle. We have nothing and can only stand here and wait. We are not waiting for a cart from the textile mill. If someone were to buy us to pull a plough, that would be enough. We are what is known as large livestock. But no one wants to buy mountain women like us; they think we are too ugly and too stupid. We will never find a cart, so we stand here awaiting death. If that is what you are waiting for too, then stand here with us.’

Obviously, there was no place in the Bluegrass Ravine people market for Binu. She could stand with neither the embroidery sisters nor the mountain women. Unable to see an alternative, she stood in the middle of the road to wait, like the others; just wait. The last cart passed by the people market; the sky above Bluegrass Ravine darkened slowly, winds from the mountain were chilled. Every now and then, a cart passed down the road, creating a stir among women on both sides of the road. The embroidery sisters brushed and straightened their clothes and waved their colourful packets, retaining a modicum of reserve. The boys across the street simply ran over and grabbed hold of the cart canopy, hoping to jump aboard, but were driven back by the driver’s
whip. ‘We’re not buying people, not today,’ the driver said.

The mountain women chased meekly along behind the cart, shouting, ‘Don’t you want some large livestock? We don’t need wages, just some food.’

The man on the cart answered, ‘No, we don’t need large livestock, not at any price.’