Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Mr. Du is the last one to sit down, after moving his orchids out of his room and carefully lining them under his window. Mr. Du is a big fan of orchids. What he raises are the most expensive species, the Gentleman’s Orchid. That summer a small pot of blooming Gentleman’s Orchid costs hundreds of yuan on the black market, more than the earnings of a worker for a year.

“Old Du, be careful of your orchids,” Mr. Song says, waving his bamboo fan at a mosquito passing by. “Did you hear what happened last week in the Eastern Fourteen Alley? Someone broke into this old man’s house and robbed him of all his orchids, and stabbed the old man, too.”

Mr. Du nods without answering, his face squeezed into a smile that makes him look like a wrinkled baby. He is a janitor in a nearby warehouse. Apart from the bed in which his old mother moans and curses all day, all the other furniture in their rooms is made of the cardboard boxes he has taken home from the warehouse. Sheets of old calendars are pasted on the outside. One time I went with Mrs. Pang to their room and saw my favorite actress, Chen Chong, dangling from a cardboard cabinet. Underneath her smile were the printed words FIRST CLASS UREA, IMPORTED FROM JAPAN.

“What’s the big fuss about the orchids?” Mrs. Song purses her lips. “I don’t see anything special about them.”

“What do you know, Ma?” the third son says. “It’s said that they are Japanese orchids. Imported, understand? Just like Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic — Japanese products.”

“Imported? No, no,” the oldest son says. “The orchids are raised here, so they are at most Japanese parts, Chinese assembled. ”

Everybody laughs. Japanese brands have become the symbol of modern life in Beijing. At lower prices, people can buy appliances of Japanese parts assembled in China, and still be able to boast about their second-class luxuries.

“Still, it is not worth losing one’s life for the orchids,” Mrs. Song says.

“ A bird is willing to die for a morsel of food. A man is willing to die for a penny of wealth, ” Mrs. Pang sighs. “They do not see the flowers. They see money.”

“Not everyone.” The second son points to Mr. Du. “Old Du here is an exception. Others raise the orchids for money. He is raising them as his wife and kids.”

“Absolutely,” the first son says to Mr. Du. “You know, you have every right to fight for your orchids. We won’t blame you if you are killed by a robber. A man has to fight with someone who steals his wife and kids, right, Old Du?”

All of the Songs laugh. Mr. Du smiles again and does not say a word. His old mother is shouting indistinct words from inside her room. He nods again and moves the orchids back to his room, as tenderly as if they were his wife and children.

THAT NIGHT I can’t sleep. Mosquitoes dash outside the netting around my head like small bombers. I lie on one side of the bed until the bamboo mat becomes sticky from my sweat, and roll to the other side, feeling the patterns left on my thighs by the woven bamboo. I am waiting for the burglar to break into our quadrangle, running away with the orchids as dear to Mr. Du as his own wife and children, leaving Mr. Du in a pool of blood. For the first time, I start to miss our apartment, secure within the high wall of the Institute.

The burglar does not come that night, nor the following nights. Still, the waiting keeps me awake night after night, until the dawn light sneaks in from above the curtain and the rooster’s muffled song comes from Mr. Pang’s tightly closed window. I stop going out to play with the alley girls, spending the hot afternoons taking long naps and waking up soaked in sweat. My head grows dizzy as I sit on the bed, looking out the window at the inner quadrangle, waiting for the Dimwit to come out of her room and dance in the yard. She is the only resident from the inner quadrangle who has ever crossed the moon-shaped door to the front quadrangle. The five families, reluctant to face Mrs. Pang in their everyday life, have built another door leading to the alley and blocked the moon-shaped door with barbed wire. The Dimwit once squeezed through the wire to talk to the Song boys, baring her breasts, which looked so stunningly huge that I was frightened speechless. When the Song boys targeted her breasts with slingshots, she giggled with them.

“What are you looking at?” Mrs. Pang comes in with a cup of chrysanthemum tea. She always keeps the pot of tea cool in a basin of water while I nap.

“Where’s Dimwit? I haven’t seen her all week.”

“She’s not living here anymore. I must have forgotten to tell you. She was married off this last spring.”

“Who would marry her?”

“Someone in her auntie’s working unit. An older man. He married three times, and three times the wife died. They say he has the fate of a diamond.”

“What does that mean?”

“Can you think of anything harder than diamond?”

“No.”

“Right. His life is as hard as a diamond and whoever he marries will be damaged.”

“Then why did they marry Dimwit to him?”

“Because she is a dimwit. A dimwit is empty, like air. Have you ever seen a diamond leave a scratch on the air?”

I think about Mrs. Pang’s explanation. It makes sense and it does not make sense. I think about Mr. Pang. “What’s Mr. Pang’s fate, then? He is not a diamond, is he?”

“What do you think?” Mrs. Pang asks with a smile.

“Of course he is not,” I say but my voice trails off. I know he has left scratches on Mrs. Pang’s life. He has left scratches on my life, too.

“You are thinking too much these days,” Mrs. Pang says, pinching my chin. “You are getting thinner. Your mom will wonder what has happened to you when she comes to pick you up. I’ll make the chicken stew for you tomorrow.”

“I NEED THE rooster tomorrow,” Mrs. Pang says to Mr. Pang the second to the last evening. He is sneaking into the kitchen to get his dinner and a small handful of rice for the rooster. He smells horrible.

“Hear me?” Mrs. Pang raises her voice when he does not reply.

“Yes,” Mr. Pang answers in a low voice, retreating toward the kitchen door. “Can I go buy a rooster for you?”

Mrs. Pang places the chopper on the chopping board with a bang. “I am going to make the chicken stew with that rooster in your room, and you go ahead and kill it after dinner,” Mrs. Pang says, not looking back at Mr. Pang.

Mr. Pang does not reply, still keeping his head low. I walk around Mr. Pang and hug Mrs. Pang’s back from behind with my sweaty arms. “Nana, I don’t want to eat chicken stew.”

“She doesn’t want the chicken stew,” Mr. Pang mumbles to Mrs. Pang’s stiffened back.

Mrs. Pang does not return my hug and says with a strange flat voice, “I want the rooster for the chicken stew.” I squeeze myself in between the counter and Mrs. Pang, looking up at her. Big drops of hot tears fall on my face.

Mr. Pang leaves for his room without making a sound, closing his door quietly as if fearing to let out the secret to the rooster. Mrs. Pang takes a towel and wipes my face clean. “Don’t worry. He has to do it.”

“Nana, let’s not eat the chicken stew.”

“We’ll eat the chicken stew. We cannot let him live with the rooster forever.”

THE YOUNGEST SON of the Song family is ambushed by a gang of boys from the West Forty Alley on his way to the grocery store for beer. When he comes back from the hospital, his stitched head is bound in thick blood-stained gauze. Good that he has his head shaved like a shining lightbulb that summer, I am about to comment to him but decide not to. “Clean-shaven heads are easy for doctors to sew up,” I say in a low voice to myself, making sure the boy does not hear me.