Can Xue - Vertical Motion

As the vet’s wife talked, she stared at Mrs. Yun, making Mrs. Yun so uncomfortable that she left immediately. She had walked some distance and yet she could still hear the woman shouting at her: “You need to calm down!” Mrs. Yun was really annoyed. She didn’t want to go home, either, so she sat in a daze on a rock beside the field. When she had composed herself, she glanced all around. Everything was ashy and white. There was no vitality anywhere. Could the pox already be here? Growing worried again, she hurried home at once.

“There’s a pestilence,” she said.

Mr. Yun said “Oh” indifferently and continued sieving the rice. Noticing his livid face, Mrs. Yun knew something was wrong and headed for Wumei’s room. Sure enough, Wumei was gone. Hanging from her mosquito net were little serpents that she had cut out.

“Has she really gone off?” a very upset Mrs. Yun asked her husband.

“Just ignore what she does. She’s a child with ideas of her own. And the pestilence is everywhere, so how can she go on with her papercuts? It’s better to hide for a while. One doesn’t worry about what one doesn’t see. A person alone won’t be in danger. Last time, she shouldn’t have gone with those other women.”

Mrs. Yun glanced out the window with hopeless eyes and saw some villagers — old and young, men and women, some of them driving their pigs — hurrying past as though they were fleeing from disaster. Mrs. Yun recalled what she had heard the Wengs saying as she fed the pigs, and she thought even more that there was no way out. But what on earth was Mr. Yun up to?

“There’s something wrong with the big pig,” she said faintly.

“Oh, I saw that. I think it will survive.”

Mrs. Yun felt that, in these days of pestilence, Mr. Yun’s body had become heavy and unwieldy. Not only was he not as restless as others, but he had gradually become as solid as a rock. When he reached out for something, he was like someone exerting a lot of strength to open a massive iron door. The hens seemed to have sensed something, for they were especially afraid of Mr. Yun. Whenever he went near them, they cried out in fear and flew high up in the air. Their wings stirred up dust and fluff and also lent energy to this lifeless courtyard. Only when Mr. Yun went to the pigpen to clean out the dung did the hens quiet down and shiver next to the wall. Mrs. Yun thought to herself, Could he still do things that took strength, such as cleaning out the dung? But she didn’t want to go over to check. She was startled each time she heard her husband making loud noises.

Mrs. Yun steeled herself to go outside. She walked to the road, where she took hold of a child and asked where he was going. The child struggled hard, but she wouldn’t let go of him.

“Tell me, and then I’ll let you go!”

“I’m going to the marsh. I’m going to kill myself! So there!”

“Ah, don’t go!”

“I have to! Let go of me. ”

He bent down and began licking the back of her hand. His tongue was as quick as a serpent’s. Nauseated, Mrs. Yun loosened her grip at once. The boy slid away like a billiard ball and ran off into the distance. After a while, he disappeared.

A motorcade appeared at the end of the road — foot-pedaled flat-bed trucks, with two or three people in each one. Not until the motorcade reached her did Mrs. Yun see that all of those people were tied up, and their faces were ashen. The drivers were all alike — rough, robust, heavily bearded guys from the countryside. Mrs. Yun immediately remembered what Wumei had told her. So this motorcade had come from the marshland. Mrs. Yun drew closer to get a better look at them; she wanted to see the prisoners’ faces. She noticed that these prisoners were also very much alike; even their expressionless gazes were similar. You could say this expression was composed, or you could say it was indifferent. Suddenly she saw a familiar face. It was the vet. His expression was different from that of the prisoners: extreme yearning showed through his composure. He was also tied up, but he seemed to like this punishment: his face was as red as if he’d been drinking. As Mrs. Yun ran several paces after his truck, a jeer suddenly flashed out from his eyes. Mrs. Yun stood still. She craned her neck to see if Youlin was in the motorcade. He wasn’t. He wasn’t there.

She recalled, too, how the vet’s wife had looked while she stared at her. Apparently, the villagers had all anticipated the present situation. She was the only one who was confused. Had Wumei really gone out on the mountain roads? Although the mountains around here were only some small hills and had no wild animals, this was still enough to make people uneasy. Mr. Yun said she had to “try a new path.”

She saw that child. Head down, he was walking ahead, holding at his chest a large bird that had just grown feathers. Mrs. Yun thought it was the bird from the courtyard wall at her home.

“Hey, kid, why did you come back?”

“I forgot to take this bird with me.”

With that, he scampered off.

Mrs. Yun glanced at the trees next to the road. Why had all the leaves turned an off-white color? Suspecting something was wrong with her eyes, she massaged them a few times and looked again: the leaves were still off-white. And not just the leaves, either: even the brown dog that she knew so well had turned into a gray dog. Her body felt as light as a swallow’s wandering in an expanse of off-white scenery. The gigantic owl that she hadn’t seen for a long time also appeared. It was watching her from the mulberry tree. Its eyes had turned into two points of cloudy white light. Its faded feathers looked old. When Mrs. Yun saw a rough bamboo pole lying on the ground, she was seized by a whim. She bent down and picked up the pole to drive away the owl. Although she tried several times, it didn’t move. Just as she set the pole down and sat down to rest, she suddenly heard it cry out sadly. By the time she looked up, it had changed into a tiny black dot and vanished into a spot deep in the ashy white sky. Mrs. Yun was shaking from the depths of her being. Why was it so grief-stricken? Was it because it had lost its child? In the past, it had been so ferocious! An image of the docile piglet that had been killed came to Mrs. Yun’s mind.

After cleaning out the pig dung, Mr. Yun sat in the courtyard shelling soybeans.

“Something’s wrong with my eyes. Everything I see looks ashen,” Mrs. Yun said.

“The same thing happened to me once, but it went away after a few days.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I was afraid you’d worry.”

“The owl won’t come back, will it?”

“No. Next time, it will be its son.”

“I’m still worried about Wumei.”

“No need to worry about her. Just take it as the old owl did. How much worse can it be?” This made sense to Mrs. Yun.

“Do you suppose the vet will return to the village?”

“Of course. But our pig is better now.”

Mrs. Yun went to look at the pig right away. Mr. Yun had left food for it, and it was eating slowly at the trough. From a distance came the sound of trucks. Mrs. Yun didn’t bother to go out to take a look. She quietly picked up a broom and swept the pigpen until it was perfectly clean.

After Mrs. Yun left the pigpen, she stood on a slope and looked into the distance. The colors of the things before her were gradually restored, and the sky was no longer so cloudy, either. As she stared into the distance, a shadow appeared in her field of vision. As she looked more closely and the shadow neared her, it grew more and more focused — and it even waved to her! Ah, it was Wumei! Where had she gone? The road she walked on seemed close and yet at the same time it seemed far away. Mrs. Yun could see even her backpack very clearly. Something seemed to be wrong with her legs: she was limping.