Can Xue - Vertical Motion

Side by side, the two of them stood at the window and looked out.

In the moonlight, the willow trees planted in the courtyard the year before were being blown from side to side, all of them taking on an unearthly lavender color. Fluttering in the air were some weeds from who-knows-where. All of them were burning. “Will there be a fire? Will there be a fire?” Mrs. Yun asked in a quivering voice. She kept shaking her husband’s arm. Mr. Yun was also looking on in disbelief.

“Where did the fire start? Why didn’t we see any smoke?” he mumbled.

But he evidently didn’t really want to know where the fire started, for he staggered back to bed.

After giving it some thought, Mrs. Yun put on a jacket and went outside. When she opened the door, a gust of wind almost knocked her down. Burning weeds no longer floated in the air. Instead, the air from the wind held a transparent purity. The full moon was a little dazzling. Because it had never been so bright, its rays were tinged with purple. When Mrs. Yun was about to go back inside, she suddenly saw a woman with disheveled hair standing at the gap of the courtyard wall.

“Who are you??” Mrs. Yun shouted sternly. She was trembling all over.

“Wumei!” the woman wailed.

In her bedroom, Wumei — by fits and starts — told Mrs. Yun of the night’s events. She and the women she’d seen at the market had arranged to meet tonight to take a bus to a valley in the north where expert paper cutters gathered. They said there was a lot of good, tough glossy paper there, made from a plant that grows on the mountain. Because the plant was inexpensive, the paper was also cheap, and so all the villagers made papercuts. Outsiders exclaimed over their extraordinary designs. At the market, when they showed her one design, Wumei had been speechless with astonishment. She and the women headed toward the marsh. After walking a long time, they had intended to board a bus they’d seen stopped along the road. All of a sudden, a woman ran up from the marsh shouting something. Running up to them, she pointed at Wumei and said repeatedly that she was a “traitor.” At that point, the women began driving her away. They lifted her up, threw her to the ground, and kicked her head. They trampled her until she fainted. Then they went off on the bus.

“I’m fed up. Just leave me alone.” She waved at Mrs. Yun.

=

Mrs. Yun felt that her home was gloomy these days. Whenever Wumei had spare time, she shut herself up in her room and made papercuts. Mrs. Yun didn’t know exactly what she was cutting, because she no longer hung up her papercuts. As soon as she finished one, she hid it.

“Wumei, it’s been a long time since you’ve gone to the market to sell things,” Mrs. Yun said gingerly.

“I haven’t finished anything yet.”

Although Wumei appeared serene, Mrs. Yun knew this was a pose.

Mr. Yun said, “It’s good for a kid to experience some setbacks.”

When he spoke, Wumei’s face was expressionless.

Mr. Yun had already repaired the earthen wall; it looked as if it had never been damaged. The new wall wasn’t like a new one, either: fine grasses were still growing on it, so that it was exactly like the old wall. Mr. Yun did this work at night. In the morning, Mrs. Yun stood dazed next to the courtyard wall. She heard only magpies singing in the trees.

As Mrs. Yun stood there stunned, Mr. Yun came up and said:

“The water in the marsh has been low for quite some time. Now the sun has dried it up so it’s hard as rock. It’s said that a road will be built on it.”

“How can that be?”

“These years, anything is possible.”

Mr. Yun said he had left a hole under the wall for birds to stay in. He pointed it out to Mrs. Yun. The hole was cleverly designed: its entrance was behind a rock, so if you didn’t look carefully you wouldn’t find it. Mrs. Yun thought to herself, No wonder birds have been inside the wall . Mrs. Yun hadn’t noticed before that Mr. Yun had this skill. Maybe Wumei had inherited her skill from her father. When Mrs. Yun put her hand in the hole, she found it was so deep that you couldn’t touch the bottom.

“Back in the beginning, I never imagined that I had married someone who was such a skilled craftsman,” she said as she stood up.

The news of the marshland caused her to worry anew about Youlin, but after the road was built over there, his business would be better, wouldn’t it? Was he willing do business next to the highway? If he liked roads, then why had he run off and set up shop in the marshland? Mrs. Yun thought it over every which way and still didn’t understand.

“Mrs. Yun, the magpies are singing so cheerfully that there must be a happy event in your family!” Old Mrs. Weng said as she entered the courtyard.

The old woman smiled hypocritically, and she looked ugly and ferocious. Mrs. Yun was a little afraid of her.

“Old Weng is sitting in the ditch, waiting for that event!”

“What event?!” Mrs. Yun was startled.

“Something connected with the marsh. Lend me a little salt.”

When Mrs. Yun went into the kitchen to get the salt, the old woman tagged along.

“Your Wumei is blissful,” she said as she took the salt.

Mrs. Yun figured borrowing salt was her excuse to come and reconnoiter. She reeked of the strong smell of pepper and spices. It made one’s thoughts run wild. After she left, Mr. Yun mockingly commented that she was “the flower queen.” Mrs. Yun asked him why he called the old woman the “flower queen.” Mr. Yun said, “Go ask Uncle Weng. He knows. Don’t think of them just as neighbors. Their home is the barometer for this region.”

“Why did she say that Wumei is blissful?” Mrs. Yun was very suspicious.

“Maybe she smelled out this omen with her nose.”

Later, Mrs. Yun went to the pigpen to feed the pigs. As she listened to the pigs chewing their food, she heard the Wengs talking outside her pigpen.

“Lately, the situation kept changing. Now, it’s finally come to light,” Uncle Weng said.

“Then why don’t you go check on it? The brushwood with the floating wildfire is just where you’re longing to be. As for me, I’ve smelled everything already.”

“It’s better to stay here without moving and let the roaring vehicles push across from the top.”

“Yes, that makes sense.”

Mrs. Yun wanted to continue listening, but they had already walked on. Only a few words carried by the wind reached her ears: “the low water season. ”; “motorcade. ”; “smoke. ”; “prisoners. ”; “before sunset. ”; and so forth. Mrs. Yun set down her bucket and went out to look. She saw that they had already gone into their own courtyard. In this sort of dreary weather, Mrs. Yun didn’t think Wumei would have any good luck; she was deeply uneasy about her daughter. The day before, Wumei had complained to her father that her brain was addled. “I can’t cut anything new.” Mr. Yun had advised her, “Leave your handicraft work and go walking in the mountains — the farther, the better. Don’t be afraid of getting lost.” When Mrs. Yun heard him say this, she wanted to slap him! She had no idea whether Wumei would do as her father suggested. In her mind, she kept seeing the piglet being cruelly killed.

The large pig stopped eating, swaggered to one side, and lay down. When Mrs. Yun looked closely, she saw a melancholy, sad expression in its eyes. She thought to herself: Perhaps I should ask the vet to look at it .

When she went to a neighboring village to look for the vet, he wasn’t home. His wife said he had gone to the marshland first thing in the morning, because a large number of horses there had the pox and were lying on the ground braying and braying.

“One of our pigs is sick, too. There’s also a sick pig at the Youshun household. They all caught it from over there.”