Jia Pingwa - Ruined City

When she was gone, Zhuang considered going to Zhou Min’s house, wondering what he might give to Tang Wan’er. After searching through the wardrobe, he found only some snacks and candy, nothing worth taking, so he went into Old Mrs. Niu’s bedroom, where he found a piece of floral silk in her closet. The old lady kept him around to chat, going on and on about Yueqing’s father coming to stir up trouble when it was barely light out. She told him she had asked the old man what made him so angry so early in the morning and he’d said, “Why won’t you do something about them since I can’t?”

“Who are they?” Zhuang asked.

“I asked him,” she said. “I told him our son-in-law is a celebrity who sits at the same table as the mayor, so who would dare pick on him? He said it was the new couple next door. They fought and argued all day long, making so much noise he couldn’t sleep and lost his appetite. I thought it over. He never lied. Since you’re not going to the birthday party, go take a look. If there really are troublesome neighbors, plant a peach-wood stake on the spot.”

When she finished, she went out into the yard and began slicing a peach tree with a knife. Bemused and annoyed, Zhuang helped her back inside before he carved three stakes with the promise of checking on the old man’s grave.

He would have left after settling the old lady down if not for Niu Yueqing’s cousin, who arrived from the countryside with a package of millet. The old lady was so pleased, her smile turned to sobs, saying how wonderful the woman was, always thinking about her. Mrs. Niu asked about the woman’s father, with a litany of questions: What’s he doing? Why hasn’t he visited lately? People in the countryside are rich now, so he’s forgotten about an old sister even though she doesn’t plan to borrow money from him. The cousin quickly explained that her father had taken over the village’s brick kiln. Though he was too old for manual labor, he had been a well-known stoker and was put in charge of regulating the fire’s intensity. He simply could not get away at the moment.

“So he can’t get away,” Old Mrs. Niu said. “How did he find the time to come every three or four days to eat and drink and then leave with a sack of grain in the past?”

The cousin blanched at the reproach, prompting Zhuang to smooth things over by saying that his mother-in-law’s brain was addled, which was why she talked nonsense all day long.

“How could I be upset over what she said? She was telling the truth. Life was tough back then, with so many children in the family. We were lucky to have Aunty’s help.” The cousin turned to the old lady. “Aunty, you have every right to complain about my father. He knows he hasn’t been to see you in a long time. We’re having a temple festival in ten days, and there will be an opera performance. He asked me to bring you back with me.”

“Your brother-in-law here gets free tickets for shows at the city’s Yisu Club, Sanyi Club, and Shangyou Club, so why would I want to go see a rural opera?” the old lady said.

“A theater performance is different from open-air. Besides, now that we’re doing so much better, my father would like you to be our special guest. He’ll even wait on you.”

“I guess I should go. But you only invited me. Why don’t you ask your uncle along?”

Color drained from the cousin’s face as she stared at Zhuang.

“She’s like that, talking about the living one moment and going on about the dead the next,” Zhuang said.

“Sure, sure. I’ll invite Uncle, too.”

“This is what we’ll do, Zhidie. You and your cousin go check on your father-in-law’s grave. He won’t go unless the new neighbors are punished.”

Left with no choice, Zhuang stalled by saying that they should offer the cousin something to eat first. Saying she wasn’t hungry, the cousin nevertheless sampled all the snacks and fruit that Zhuang brought out, while asking the prices of their refrigerator, tape recorder, modular cabinets, nightstands, and lamps. Her envy was palpable. When they were ready to leave, the old lady told Zhuang to go out for a while, for she had something to say to the cousin. He waited in the yard until the cousin came out with a red face.

“What did she say now?”

“She asked if I’ve taken the medicine Yueqing sent, and if I’m pregnant. She told me not to let my husband drink alcohol. I want my baby to have a good life here with you, but I’m worried he won’t be smart enough to deserve your name.”

Not knowing how to respond, Zhuang changed the subject, telling her some amusing anecdotes about the old lady’s inability to tell the living from the dead.

“She’s old, so it’s not strange for her to be talking like that. For old people, there’s no barrier between the human realm and the underworld, and we mustn’t automatically think that what old people say is crazy talk. It happens in our village quite a bit.”

Zhuang smiled unhappily. “I didn’t expect you to sound like her.”

They rode on Zhuang’s Magnolia out the city’s north gate and headed west toward an earthen trench next to a Han dynasty ruin. The heat made them sweat. After parking the scooter, they walked across a barren field and reached a ridge by the trench, where they saw a stone marker in the distance. The cousin began to wail.

“Why are you doing that?” Zhuang asked.

“If I don’t, Uncle will be angry, and even the ghosts around his grave will laugh at him.” She howled three more times.

Zhuang was surprised to see a new gravesite to the left of Yueqing’s father’s. Cogon grass had yet to grow on the mound, where rain-soaked white paper from funeral wreaths was scattered on the muddy ground.

This must be the new neighbor the old man was talking abou t. Zhuang’s heart raced.

The cousin was muttering as she crouched down to burn paper money. He walked over to the ridge and asked a man digging dirt nearby who was in the new tomb. The man told him that a young couple and their child had been killed in an accident with a truck. Their kin had buried all three of them in one grave. The information so dismayed Zhuang that his face turned a ghostly white, as he now knew that the old lady had been telling the truth. He hurried over to plant a peach stake on the new tomb before dragging the cousin away.

After they returned, the old lady left for the countryside. Zhuang guessed that Yueqing would be coming back late after the party, so he scrounged up something to eat. As he thought back to what he had learned at the gravesite, he knew he could no longer treat the old lady’s prattle as nonsense; instead, he racked his brain to recall all the strange things she’d said and wrote them down for closer examination. Meanwhile, the sky turned overcast and wind gusts rattled the window, a sign of an impending downpour. He shut the windows before going outside to gather the clothes and bedding drying in the yard. But no rain came after an hour, just surges of dark clouds accumulating and roiling in the sky, and changing shape every minute or so. Sitting alone by the window, he watched them for a long time as they grew in size and formed a figure that was nearly human, running with flowing hair. The figure’s bare feet were so enormous he could almost distinguish upturned toes and detect their swirls. Amused, he tried to write down what he was seeing but could not find the words, so he took a picture before a sudden terror seized him. He turned to glance at the old lady’s room, which increased his fright and unease, so he locked up and went to his apartment in the federation compound.

Niu Yueqing did not return that afternoon and was still out at nightfall. Around ten, someone came to the compound with a message: Old Mrs. Wang had insisted that she stay the night to play mahjong, so she was returning the favor by inviting Old Mrs. Wang and Wang Ximian’s wife over the following day. They had both accepted the invitation.