Mingmei Yip - Song of the Silk Road

I muttered in the dark, “Lop Nor, are you here?”

No answer. Of course. Even if there were ghosts and they could somehow talk, I didn’t imagine that they could be heard by the living.

I focused on sending energy to my third eye. Moments after, I thought I saw something—a shadow flickering by the window.

“Please, Lop Nor, if that’s you, are you now in the yang world or the yin one?”

Again, no response.

Feeling that I was about to have a panic attack, I exclaimed, “Lop Nor, please. Give me some sign! Anything! Please!”

Suddenly a strong wind blew in through the window, startling me.

“Just tell me if you are dead.” This time my voice came out softer and calmer.

Again, another wind blew in, rattling the door, the windows, the teapot, the teacup.

“Are you very unhappy? Do you want me to do something for you?”

Yet another strong draft. This time it knocked the teacup off the small table. The sound of the thin china shattering pierced my ears.

Then total silence. I forced myself to stay awake, just in case my friend was going to give me another sign. But it remained disturbingly quiet. Lop Nor’s seeming presence had completely dissolved into thin air. And I, exhausted, fell into oblivion….

The next morning, I quickly ate two rice balls, drank the leftover tea, got dressed, then left the cottage for Lop Nor’s store.

When I arrived at the herbal shop, the door was half open. Hope surged inside me. Maybe Lop Nor was back and what I’d experienced last night was nothing but my own imagination. With a slightly trembling hand, I knocked at the door a few times before stepping in. Then, to my distress, it was not my Uyghur friend who came to greet me but a plump, fiftyish man—in a blue shirt and a matching muslin hat—I did not recognize.

“I’m the landlord. Lop Nor is gone, so we’re not doing business anymore.”

To my relief, he spoke in Mandarin. Maybe he could tell I was Han Chinese.

“I understand. I’m Lop Nor’s friend. He helped me to find herbs.”

“So you must be the girl from the U.S.?” His round face lit up.

I nodded. “Yes, I’m Lily Lin.”

The landlord immediately went behind the counter, snatched a letter and a bulging package, then came back to hand them to me. “Lop Nor left this package for you. I also have a letter he mailed to me to give to you.”

“Do you mind if I sit here while I open it?” I glanced at the envelope hoping to see a return address, but no such luck.

“Go ahead. I’ll be busy packing and cleaning up.”

I sat down on my usual chair, tore open the envelope, snatched out the letter, and saw Lop Nor’s neat, childlike writing in Chinese:

Miss Lin,

Your prediction was right. My wife and child are alive. But this is bad news for me, not good. Before, every night I could not sleep believing that they were dead. Now, every night I cannot sleep knowing that they are alive—because they refused to acknowledge me. The hope you gave me when you entered my life was soon crushed by cruel fate.

After you left, I had a dream in which I saw them together in the marketplace, laughing and looking happy. As soon as I woke up from the dream I went to the shaman’s village, risking my life to look for them. I soon spotted my wife and son. They were happily talking and eating, just as in my dream.

I dashed up to them. But instead of looking happy and throwing herself into my arms, my wife stepped back with a shocked expression. She was not happy at all! Instead she looked so disgusted that I felt my body being axed a million times. As for my son, he looked scared and didn’t seem to recognize me either. He hid behind his mother and looked at me suspiciously.

She grabbed our son and tried to pull him away. I held onto her and asked, “Aren’t you happy that we are a family again?” I begged her to come home with me but she refused. When I tried to put my arm around my son, my wife moved in front of him to block my hand as if I were an abductor, or a leper.

Angrily, she asked me to leave them alone and not spoil their good life. But I’d thought she had a good life with me! I’d given her everything she wanted and pampered her like a princess. But she said I didn’t understand women. Was she crazy, or me?

Then she told me she was now the shaman’s wife and my son his son.

I felt like I’d been struck by lightning. She was having a rich, luxurious life with the murderer of my family! My wife glared at me and said she would tell her husband about our encounter and if I kept harassing them then I needed to watch out. I realized they must be under a spell cast by the shaman.

Life does not make sense anymore—there is nothing left for me. My only hope is to reunite with my family, especially my mother and grandfather, in the Black Dragon Pond.

My friend, you are a good person. My life came back a little every day when you began your visits to my store, especially when you told me that my wife and son might still be alive.

I will leave all the special herbs and recipes for you, including how to decoct the snow lotuses. I hope they will be of use to you instead of ending up in the hands of the ignorant, or evil. I buried the herbs in plastic sacks under the grave marker of the boy named Tangri, my son whom I’d believed was killed during the massacre. You should be able to easily unearth them. There are no bodies buried there; they are all under the lake as I told you. I just placed the markers there to commemorate my family—to have a place for me to pay my respect.

I believe the shaman put a fatal spell on me because I have not been feeling well at all, and even my best herbs have not helped. When you read this letter, I’ll be a ghost with a big stone tied around each of my feet, just like my relatives. The stones will keep me at the bottom of the lake where I belong, and where my family will be with me again after all these years.

I am leaving my jade pendant for you. I know you liked it.

This was my wedding gift to my wife, but she rarely wore it. She only liked new things and this stone is one thousand years old and contains spirits. I have been wearing it since I believed my wife was dead.

I hope this jade will watch you living a long, healthy, happy life. I also hope that you’ll think of me from time to time when you touch it.

Good-bye.

The jade and letter in my hand, I wiped away a tear, then braced myself to tell the landlord. “Lop Nor is not coming back.”

“I figured.”

“How did you know?”

“Because he never missed work or left suddenly. He knows he’s needed here. He’s dead?”

“No, but traveled to a far-off place to collect herbs.”

A heavy sigh escaped from the plump man. “Lop Nor was a wonderful healer. There are not many good ones these days. I need to tell his patients.”

Of course he knew that I’d lied, but like me, he just didn’t have the heart to tear off truth’s mask to stare straight at its cruel face.

I thanked the owner, left the store, and headed home. On my way, my heart was pounding like a jackhammer, my back sweating, and my hands trembling.

I went straight to the cemetery, found the grave and dug it up, took out the bags of herbs, put them in my backpack, and quickly left, not eager to take a chance of being seen.

Back in my cottage, I reread Lop Nor’s letter while tears flooded my cheeks like water from a collapsed dam. I wished I’d had the audacity to caress my friend’s hands when they were still warm. Those big, crude, scarred, brown, herb-collecting hands always smelling of plants, mud, and the mountain. But now icy cold and pale under the lake.

Then my eyes landed on the necklace. I remembered I’d liked the jade so much the first time I’d laid eyes on it that I’d almost asked Lop Nor if he would sell it to me. I’d have never imagined that one day I’d actually own it—but, sadly, at the expense of his dear life. In my sadness, the jade appeared even more beautiful to me. Why must beauty so often be attached to sorrow? Now the jade seemed to me like a big crystallized tear. I lifted it to my nose, hoping to sense some lingering life from my departed friend.