The Real Story of Ah-Q (27 page)

‘Then what happened?’ Aunt asked.

‘I heard she didn’t get up the next day.’ She looked back up at Aunt.

‘And after that?’

‘Oh, she got up after that. By the end of the year, she had a baby, a boy. He’ll turn one this year. While I was at my mother’s just now, a few of the villagers went to call on the Hos. They said they’d seen the pair of them – both thriving, mother and son. No mother-in-law to worry about, a strong husband, with lots of work in him; a house of their own. Things are looking up for her, and no mistake.’

Aunt stopped mentioning Xianglin’s wife.

But one autumn – probably a couple of years after the news of her change in fortune had been put about – Xianglin’s wife stood again in Uncle’s hall. A round basket, shaped like a water chestnut, she had placed on a table; her bedding lay under the eaves. She wore the same black skirt, blue jacket and lighter blue waistcoat as before, her hair still tied back with a white cord. Her face still had a greenish-yellow tinge to it; but the pink had left her cheeks. Tears hung at the corners of eyes cast dully down at the floor. As before, she was in the company of Mrs Wei, who – her features arranged into an expression of charitable indulgence – verbosely explained matters to Aunt.

‘… Heaven truly moves in mysterious ways. We all thought her husband looked strong enough for anything, but there he was – carried off by typhoid, in the prime of life. He’d shaken it off, then he ate a bowl of cold rice, and the fever came back. She still had her son, though, and she could work, chopping wood, picking tea, raising silkworms. She would have managed. Then her child was taken by a wolf! A wolf in the village – at the end of spring! And now she’s got no one. Her uncle’s taken the house and thrown her out. She’s nowhere to go except back to her old place. She’s no other ties now, and I happened to notice you were needing a new servant, so I thought we’d try our luck. Better to have someone who already knows her way around the place…’

‘I was so stupid,’ Xianglin’s wife now picked up the story, raising her lifeless eyes. ‘I knew wolves came down into the villages when it snowed, because there was nothing to eat in the mountains. But I didn’t know they came in spring, too. Soon as it was light, I got up, opened the door, and put some beans in a little basket, then told Ah-mao to sit on the doorstep and shell them. Such a good little boy, he was, always doing whatever I told him, so out he went. I was out back chopping wood and washing rice. After I’d got the rice in the pot, I thought I’d steam the beans, too. But when I called out to him, he didn’t reply, and when I went out to look, all I could see was the beans, scattered all over the ground – but no Ah-mao. He wouldn’t have gone to someone else’s house to play. I asked everywhere – no sign of him. Then I started to get worried, and begged my neighbours to go out looking for him. That afternoon, they got as far as the valley, where someone spotted one of his little shoes caught on a bramble. This was a bad sign, they all said – looked like he’d been taken by a wolf. A bit further in, they found him, in the lair, his guts eaten away, his little hand still holding tight on to that basket…’ She broke down into sobs.

Though Mrs Wei’s exposition had left her undecided, tears reddened Aunt’s eyes by the time Xianglin’s wife was finished. After further, brief thought, Aunt told her to take her basket and bedroll to the servants’ quarters. Mrs Wei sighed, as if relieved of a heavy burden. Looking much easier in herself than she had done on arrival, the returnee set out her bedroll, just as she had done in the past, without needing to be reminded. And so she resumed her career as a maidservant in Luzhen.

Everyone still called her Xianglin’s wife.

And yet she seemed very different. After a few days back at the Lus’, her employers began to feel she wasn’t as quick as before: that her memory was much worse; that her lifeless face never smiled. Soon, Aunt began to articulate her discontent – at least in her tone of voice. Uncle had frowned when she’d rejoined the household, just as he had done the first time. But he had put up no substantial resistance to her return, given the problems they had lately had with maidservants. All he had done was offer Aunt a few quiet words of warning: however tragic someone like Xianglin’s wife might seem, she would bring her bad luck with her. She could help out around the house, but she mustn’t touch anything to do with the sacrifices – Aunt would have to prepare all the food herself. If it wasn’t ritually clean, the ancestors wouldn’t touch it.

Before, Xianglin’s wife had been rushed off her feet during the all-important sacrifices, but now there was nothing for her to do. When the table had been positioned in the middle of the main hall, and the tablecloth tied down around it, she began setting out wine cups and chopsticks as she had done before.

‘Put them back!’ Aunt panicked. ‘I’ll do it!’

Xianglin’s wife pulled back her hand, embarrassed, then picked up a candlestick.

‘Put that down!’ Aunt fussed again. ‘I can manage.’

Xianglin’s wife circled about, trying unsuccessfully to find something she could do, then walked dazedly off. The only task available to her that day was to sit by the stove and mind it didn’t go out.

Though everyone in the town still called her Xianglin’s wife, though they still spoke to her, there was no longer any warmth in their smiles or in their voices. Ignoring the change in them, she kept her eyes fixed ahead of her and concentrated on telling everyone she met her tragedy.

‘I was so stupid,’ she said. ‘I knew wolves came down into the villages when it snowed, because there was nothing to eat in the mountains. But I didn’t know they came in spring, too. As soon as it was light, I got up, opened the door, and put some beans in a little basket, then told Ah-mao to sit on the doorstep to shell them. Such a good little boy, he was, you know, always doing whatever I told him, so out he went. I was out back chopping wood and washing rice. After I’d got the rice in the pot, I wanted to steam the beans, too. But when I called out Ah-mao! he didn’t reply, and when I went out to look, all I could see was the beans, scattered all over the ground – but no Ah-mao. I asked everywhere – no sign of him. Then I started to get worried, and begged my neighbours to go out looking for him. That afternoon, they got as far as the valley, where someone spotted one of his little shoes caught on a bramble. He’s done for, they all said – he must have been taken by a wolf. A bit further in, there they found him, in the lair, his guts eaten away, his poor little hand still holding tight on to that basket…’ She broke down into sobs.

Her story certainly had an impact on those who
heard it. Men would walk awkwardly away, the smirk fading from their faces, while women exchanged their looks of contempt for sympathetic profusions of tears. Some old women – those who hadn’t heard her recitation about town – would seek her out specially to hear her tragic story. When she broke into sobs, their own tears, ready at the corners of their eyes, would also gush out; then, with a sigh, they would leave, perfectly satisfied and still discussing it animatedly among themselves.

Over and over she repeated it, gathering small groups of listeners about her. But soon everyone knew it too well – from memory – and even the town’s most devout old lady Buddhists were left unmoved. The moment she began, her audiences felt only irritation.

‘I was so stupid – ’

‘Yes, yes, you knew wolves came down into the villages when it snowed, because there was nothing to eat in the mountains,’ they would impatiently interrupt before stalking off.

She would stand there, mouth hanging stupidly open, watching as they distanced themselves, before moving on herself – as if she, too, were bored with her own tragedy. And yet she went on trying other prompts to bring up her story – small baskets, beans, other people’s children.

‘If my Ah-mao were still alive,’ she’d say if she saw a child one or two years old, ‘he’d be as big as that…’

Frightened by the look in her eyes, the children would tug their mothers away. Again, she would be left alone, walking listlessly off. In time, everyone learnt to tease her about this new trick of hers.

‘If your Ah-mao were still alive,’ they would ask, trying not to smirk, whenever a child happened to be in sight, ‘wouldn’t he be about as big as that?’

Perhaps it hadn’t yet dawned on her that her sorrow, having been chewed deliciously for so long, had now been reduced to dregs, to be spat out in disgust. But even she could read the mockery in their smiles, comprehending that no response was required, beyond a silent glance across at them.

Around ten days before New Year, Luzhen always turned into a hive of activity. Even with an extra man about the house, hired to help out with the celebrations, there was still too much to do at Uncle’s, so they asked a Mrs Liu to lend a hand with slaughtering the chickens and geese. Since she was a Buddhist, though, she refused to kill living things and would only wash the sacrificial vessels. Xianglin’s wife sat idly around, watching the fire, then watching Mrs Liu at work. A fine snow was slowly falling.

‘I was so stupid,’ she sighed, staring off into the middle distance, as if no one else was listening.

‘There you go again,’ Mrs Liu glanced impatiently at her. ‘Is that scar from when you smashed your head when you got married?’

She mumbled a yes.

‘Why did you go along with it in the end?’

‘What?’

‘You must have wanted it, or else – ’

‘He was too strong for me.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’re strong, too – you could have fought him off. You must have wanted it in the end, then pretended afterwards he was too strong for you.’

‘I… I’d like to see how you’d have managed,’ she smiled.

Mrs Liu’s sour frown also broke into a smile, puckering her face up like a walnut, her tiny, shrivelled pupils darting from her interlocutor’s forehead to her eyes. Discomforted by her scrutiny, Xianglin’s wife stopped smiling and looked away, out at the snowflakes.

‘You really shouldn’t have, you know,’ Mrs Liu went on, confidentially. ‘Much better if you’d struggled a bit harder, or dashed your brains out against the table. Just think about it: in less than two years, you were punished. When you go down to hell, your two dead husbands will fight over you, and then the King of the Underworld will have to saw you in two, for them both to share.’

Xianglin’s wife’s face was engulfed in terror; no one had ever said anything about this in the mountains.

‘Best try and pay your dues as quick as you can. Go to the Temple of the Earth God and buy a threshold, to stand in for your body. Then tens of thousands of people will stamp over you, to punish you for your crime in this life, so you won’t suffer for it after you die.’

Though she said nothing, Xianglin’s wife was left deeply troubled by Mrs Liu’s advice. The next morning, she had enormous dark circles around her eyes. As soon as breakfast was over, she took herself off to the Temple of the Earth God in the west of the town, to buy a threshold. Though he wouldn’t sell it to her at first, the altar attendant eventually relented when she burst into tears. It cost her twelve thousand coppers.

She had given up talking to other people some time ago, because everyone had wearied of Ah-mao’s story. But when reports of her conversation with Mrs Liu spread about town, it reawakened their interest in her. Once again, people sought her out – but this time to discuss the scar on her forehead.

‘Why did you go along with it, Xianglin’s wife?’ asked one.

‘You might as well have not bothered smashing your head,’ someone else added, looking at the scar.

Realizing – from their smiles, from their tone of voice, perhaps – that they were mocking her, she merely stared. Soon, she didn’t even bother to turn round. Every day, she went silently about her tasks: running her errands, scrubbing the floor, washing rice and vegetables, all the while wearing on her forehead her badge of shame. As the year neared its end, she asked Aunt for her accumulated wages, exchanged them for twelve silver dollars, then requested leave to go to the western quarter. Before the next mealtime had come around, she had returned, looking more at ease with herself, her eyes less glassy. She had, she happily told Aunt, offered up her threshold to the Earth God.

As the winter solstice came again, bringing with it the sacrifice, she worked harder than ever. When she saw Aunt setting out the sacrificial objects, lifting the table into the centre of the hall with Aniu, she confidently approached, to take up the wine cups and chopsticks.

‘Put those down!’ Aunt screeched.

The colour draining from her face, Xianglin’s wife whipped back her hand, as if branded. This time, she made no move towards the candlesticks. There she stood, until Uncle told her to leave when he came in to burn incense. This – this transformed her. The next day, her eyes seemed sunken with dejection, as she crept about, more listlessly than ever. Like a mouse venturing out of its hole in daylight, she was terrified of everything: of the darkness, of shadows, of other people – even her employers. Sometimes she would simply sit, blank and stupid, as if carved out of wood. Within six months, her hair began to grey, her memory to deteriorate further. Often, she would forget even to wash the rice.

‘What’s wrong with Xianglin’s wife?’ Aunt sometimes said to her face, as a warning. ‘I shouldn’t have taken her back on.’

But on she went, just the same, an incurable case. They decided to try to get rid of her – send her back to Mrs Wei. When I was still living in Luzhen, they were only talking about it. But I suppose, from how things turned out, they must have done it in the end. Whether she started begging as soon as she left Uncle’s house, or went back to Mrs Wei’s for a while first, I can’t say.