Can Xue - Vertical Motion

“Papa! Papa! What are you saying?” Tears were mixed with my shouting.

“Rushu, help me hang that account book on this nail.” His voice was composed and strong.

“No.” I retreated a few steps and glared at him in desperation. “Father, don’t force me. I can’t do it.”

“Okay. I’ll do it myself.”

He went back to his room and took the black notebook out of a cupboard. The book was fastened with fine hemp rope. As he entered his room, I noticed that all of the old books and letters had disappeared. The floor had been swept clean. Even the space under the bed was empty. When he walked out, he staggered again onto the square stool. The fine ropes on the book were tangled together, and it took him a long time to straighten them out and hang the notebook on a nail. While he was doing this, the stool kept swaying and creaking. I don’t know why he hadn’t steadied the stool before stepping onto it. His actions made me feel extremely tense, like an arrow held in a bowstring.

None of us knew what was recorded in the black notebook. We tacitly agreed that since Father had humiliated everyone in this despicable way, we’d better just ignore it. Would ignoring it put us at ease? I observed the four of them and found that didn’t seem to be the case. They were fretful and uneasy. Every noon when Father was with us, he staggered up on the square stool, took the black notebook down, and carried it back to his room. One of us could never keep from saying: “Look, he’s doing it again.” The person seemed to be speaking scornfully, yet his hands were shaking. After a while, all of us looked down, and one by one we slipped out.

=

One day I was asleep and having a long dream when Nishu knocked on my door. I looked at the clock: it was two in the morning. Nishu was pouting, and she was worriedly digging at her ear with her little finger. She hesitated a long time before saying:

“It was raining. I suddenly remembered the clothes hadn’t been brought in from the courtyard, so I ran out there. I saw a light on in Father’s room, and someone was standing in front of the window. It didn’t appear to be Father because he was much taller than Father. Who was it? Someone had actually come calling on Father at midnight: Wasn’t this frightening? The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I felt, so I ran into Father’s room. The door was unlocked; it opened with a slight push. The strange thing was that Father was the only one in the room! Really. I peered into every corner. Maybe he had run into the hallway through that door. I didn’t dare follow him into the hallway for fear that Father would get angry. In the incandescent light, Father’s face was quite frightening. He kept laughing. I wasn’t sure if he was angry or happy, so I retreated step by step all the way to the courtyard. By then the rain had stopped and the clothes were drenched so there was no point in bringing them in. I went back to my room. The more I thought about this, the more wrong I thought it was. So I came to find you. What do you think?”

After saying all of this in one breath, Nishu seemed very weary and couldn’t keep her eyes open. She fell onto my bed in confusion and covered herself with my quilt. Soon, she was asleep. Nishu’s news wasn’t anything new, but after listening to her, I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t a good idea to have the light on at midnight, so I turned it off and sat up in the dark. When I was half asleep, I seemed to hear the sound of something stirring in the hallway. As soon as I was more clear-headed, I realized that nothing was stirring. I was just hallucinating. That night, I opened the door twice and looked toward Father’s room at the end of the hall. I noticed that his light was out. Not until daybreak did Nishu awaken. Rubbing her eyes, she said:

“The old shark had gone so far as to come out with that. I was arguing with him in my dream about that lost letter. Are you listening? I shouted until I was hoarse. Now my throat is burning.” Nishu used to call Father “shark” behind his back.

“From now on, you mustn’t wander around at night. You overreacted when it was raining. It’s no big deal if laundry gets wet. Just leave it.”

“You’re talking nonsense again.” Laughing, she bent to tie her shoelaces. “I’ve tried not to meddle, but it didn’t work. While I was in bed, I thought and thought. I thought of Father as an old spider in this house. His webs are everywhere. You run into them when you lift your head or stretch your hand out.”

Then she finished lacing her shoes, leapt up, and ran out.

=

I did my best to recall what day it was that Father had assumed control over the family. It seemed it had begun not long before, but it also seemed a long time ago. Maybe it had begun when I was in the cradle. The more I thought about it, the more blurred that boundary line became. In the end, I couldn’t grasp it. On the surface, he had dropped out of life without our sensing it. Now it appeared that he had retreated in order to advance. I remembered going to his room one day when I had just become an adult, and saw him looking through a magnifying glass at traces of water at the foot of the wall. Arching his back, he was looking at it very earnestly.

“Rushu,” he said to me, “This old wall has experienced everything. I always want to find some clues in it. This isn’t asking too much, is it?”

“Of course—” I said hesitantly, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Good. Good girl. In times to come, you’ll complain. You pay too much attention to minutiae. There’s nothing I can hide from you.”

At the time, his words sounded a little unreasonable. Only now as I recalled them did I understand. But did I really know what his purpose was? It was very likely that he was setting off a smoke bomb to distract me. So it made more sense to take it as a permanent rejection. This would put an end to useless illusions. He had said “There’s nothing I can hide from you.” Maybe this meant that he would hide everything from me. When he said “There’s nothing I can hide from you,” was it a way of ridiculing me? Or he might have had a longer-range plan and thus was scattering bait and waiting for the fish to take it? He had waited for so many years to pass: he was really patient. Now the fish had taken the bait and so he should feel gratified. But I noticed that in his excitement he grew thinner by the day. The gratification that he had fabricated for himself was poison to the nerves and gave him insomnia.

The other thing had occurred even earlier. I was about seven or eight at the time and had come back from playing outside when I heard him whispering with Grandmother. They were talking about a neighbor who had just died, and they were looking very serious.

“Rushu, if Grandma gets an infectious disease and the rest of you might catch it, what should be done?” Grandma asked.

I remember that she was reaching for me with her plump arms as she spoke in a kindly tone.

“Then we’d carry you out to the courtyard.” I rolled my eyes and thought myself clever.

They both began laughing.

“Rushu is really bright.” Father stood up excitedly and began pacing in the room.

Grandma’s face brimmed with warm smiles. She patted me on my little head and let me go. I shot out of there like a bullet and quickly forgot the episode.

Now, remembering incidents from my childhood, I also recalled that Father and Grandma often chatted with each other. Was it beginning at that time, while they were chatting, that they masterminded my future? When I was a child, Grandma told me the story of the souls’ night visits. Now, of course, I no longer believed those absurd tales, so who was the person Nishu saw?

I decided to ask Father directly.

When I went in, he was sitting with his eyes closed. In the shadows, his sunken cheeks made him look frightening.