By the next morning, frost had formed in Dahe’s hair.
He sat up groggily. The frost melted and trickled down his forehead, yet strangely, he was not cold. Nor did he have a headache or aching muscles and bones.
He patted his padded jacket. It felt icy beneath his hand, as though there were frost on it too, though he could not be sure. He stood unsteadily. The difficult journey of the past few days and the little he had eaten left him dizzy and muddled just after waking.
He raised his heavy head to look at the offerings on the altar, which had not moved at all, then looked away as he was accustomed to doing. After tidying himself up, he began clearing the dust and fallen leaves that had gathered in the shrine over the past year.
After washing the red cloth that covered the statue’s head and putting it back, he pushed aside the heap of blackened leaves and the little stones weighing them down in a corner of the shrine. Beneath them lay the bamboo toys he had given the mountain god.
Then he stopped short.
The little bamboo truck was ruined beyond recognition.
It looked as though a rat or some other small animal had gnawed it. The body was such a tangle that its shape was barely recognizable. Three of the four little wheels were gone; only one remained, hanging miserably from the chassis with a small notch bitten out of it.
Dahe held the little truck and stared at it for a while, feeling sad.
Stubbornly, he studied the wreck, hoping he could weave more bamboo leaves into its broken frame and restore it. He worked with his head down until noon, the winter sun warming the dark, smooth nape of his neck. Somehow he worked himself into a cold sweat with worry, but made no progress at all.
He went down the mountain that afternoon. Third Aunt had guessed that he had gone up there again and was sighing over how hopeless he was. Then Dahe pulled out his wages, saved over the past year and tucked against his body: a not especially thick stack of red banknotes. The moment he handed it to her, the sighing stopped. She went away happily counting the money.
Next came his younger brother and sister, Xiuxiu, and a crowd of village children who had grown up in his absence. The children laughed around him, scrambled for candy, then pestered him with questions. Dahe was no good with words and could not describe the dazzling life of the distant province. Besides work and staying in the dormitory, he had experienced very little of it. The children soon wandered off. After Dahe spoke to his younger siblings for a while, they too slipped away looking conspiratorial. That left him alone with Xiuxiu.
After a year apart, Xiuxiu seemed little changed. She still wore her hair in two thin, long braids and had the same delicate features. When she lowered her head and spoke quietly, no one could tell what she was thinking.
“Dahe,” she said softly, “your sister told me you brought me a dress.”
Dahe obediently rummaged through his luggage and took it out. It was wrapped in a plastic bag. Inside was an emerald-green cloth dress, long enough to reach the ankles.
He knew nothing about choosing dresses. A few days before leaving for home, he had remembered Xiuxiu’s request and gone around several big shopping centers. The glittering dresses under the bright lights were frighteningly expensive, nothing like the affordable little shops he used to visit with her in the county town. At last a salesperson persuaded him that this style was fashionable this year, all the girls liked it, and it was on sale for half its usual price. Gritting his teeth, he bought it.
But the style considered fashionable outside the mountains was excessively long and impractical by village standards. Xiuxiu had never seen such a long dress, and was immediately displeased. Trying it on made her even unhappier. It was too big.
When the salesperson asked what size to buy, Dahe had no idea, so he had asked for a regular size. Xiuxiu was plainly thinner than average. Years of depression and withdrawal meant she never gained weight no matter how much she ate, and her complexion was sallow. Holding up the oversized dress, she resembled a slender willow, yellowing and on the verge of toppling.
Xiuxiu reluctantly accepted the dress without offering to pay. As far as she was concerned, Dahe buying her things was only natural.
Dahe did not mind. He had bought her things often enough when he lived in the county town, and thought it natural too. Xiuxiu wanted all sorts of food and pretty clothes every day, so she probably hadn’t saved much money. If she needed money or anything else, he would do his best to give it to her.
The entire village celebrated New Year noisily and happily. On New Year’s Eve, Third Uncle and Third Aunt sent Dahe to bed early. Several years before, the trouble involving him and Xiuxiu on the mountain had happened on just such a night. They were determined to stop him from getting another strange idea and sneaking away.
Dahe couldn’t sleep. He sat quietly on his bed amid the villagers’ noise outside, still fiddling with his broken bamboo truck. Then a soft voice sounded at the door. “Dahe?”
He looked up and saw Xiuxiu, so he invited her in. Without any embarrassment, she sat on his bed and said, “I told my mother I want to go and work where you are. They say a girl can earn just as much as you by working as a waitress.”
Dahe looked up at her in surprise. Xiuxiu had always been a girl who needed looking after. In the village her mother cared for her; in the county town, her uncles and aunts had done so. He could not explain it, but he felt she was unsuited to the bustling, dazzling world of the other province. Imagining that thin, yellowing willow of a girl amid its roaring traffic and surging crowds filled him with fear and concern.
But he was clumsy with words and could not explain himself, so all he could say was, “Think about it some more.”
“If you can go, why can’t I?” Xiuxiu demanded, upset again. She felt he was looking down on her.
Dahe opened his mouth but could think of no argument. “Does your mother agree?” was all he managed.
Xiuxiu snorted. “We argued, and I won. I made her agree. I told my eldest uncle too, and he agrees.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She slapped Dahe’s arm. “You don’t want me to go with you? Well? Do you or don’t you?”
Dahe did not know what to say. He and Xiuxiu were such good friends that it would of course be nice to have her nearby. Yet he still felt she shouldn’t go. After thinking for ages, he could only say, “…But it’s not good over there.”
That answer infuriated Xiuxiu. What wasn’t good about it? Everyone described a new and colorful world, with broad roads and towering buildings, dreamlike amusement parks, and handsome men and beautiful women sipping red wine in bright, luxurious homes. And the wages were so high! Work for a few years and you could come home, buy a motorcycle, and build a big house. How wonderful! How irresistible! To her, Dahe was simply rejecting her and did not want her around.
He was nothing but a fool who never understood anything. How dare he reject her? Had she spent all these years making a fool of herself over a man who showed no interest?
“If you hate having me around, just say so! What’s the big deal? I was going on my own anyway! I don’t need you looking after me!” She got up in a huff and rushed for the door.
Dahe’s tongue was slow, but his reflexes were quick. He caught her arm at once. Under her furious stare he stammered nervously, unable to explain. “No, I don’t. I don’t hate you. You’re good. I… I…” I just don’t think you’ll be happy there. I don’t much like it there myself. It doesn’t make me happy.
Before he could get the rest out, a chorus of teasing cries burst from the doorway. “Oho! Well, well! Look at that!”
His sister was standing there with several half-grown children. They had arrived just in time to see Dahe holding Xiuxiu’s arm and trying to appease her. Convinced the two were meeting secretly as sweethearts, they were beside themselves with delight. Crowding around them, the children began chanting a rhyming village song: “Silly head, take a bride! Give a kiss, then kick aside!”
Then they ran shrieking and jumping around the room. “Give her a kiss! Give her a kiss!”
Xiuxiu blushed so deeply it showed even under the dim yellow electric light. She stamped her foot, shoved past the children, and fled through the door.
Dahe was left standing there, surrounded by delighted little troublemakers, staring in bewilderment.
By the next day the entire small village had heard. Old and young alike said that an unmarried boy and girl sitting alone together exchanging sweet words might as well marry and make it respectable. Xiuxiu was so embarrassed she shut herself indoors, refusing to come out or even eat. Her mother was angry at her for making a spectacle of herself. On reflection, though, everyone knew Xiuxiu and Dahe had been close since childhood, and their families were a suitable match. They had only exchanged sweet words, not done anything truly improper. After thinking it over carefully, she paid a formal visit to Dahe’s Third Uncle.
Third Uncle was in his forties, ordinarily still in the prime of life, but in recent years severe rheumatism and arthritis had left him looking sickly, with gray at both temples.
Smoking his pipe, he told Xiuxiu’s mother, “Elder Sister Lai, you know this nephew of mine. I’ve raised him like my own son, but he’s still my nephew. It’s not my place to decide whether he marries, and I won’t interfere. If he wants to marry, I’ll support him.”
“Third Uncle, here’s what I mean,” Xiuxiu’s mother replied. “Our children are so close that marrying wouldn’t be a bad thing. If my daughter wants to, I won’t stand in her way either.”
“But they’re still young. You know our circumstances. Her father died long ago, and it’s been just the two of us women struggling along. I also know you’ve got a son at university, and money is tight at your place.”
“I think we should go home and talk to the children first. They shouldn’t marry just yet. They can’t even afford a home of their own! After New Year, why not let my daughter go with your Dahe to work in the other province? When they’ve saved enough, they can come back, build a house, and marry. That would work!”
Third Uncle considered the proposal and agreed. Both families set about urging the two young people to leave together for work as soon as possible, escape the village gossip, and earn money for their wedding.
Dahe could hardly begin to explain himself to Third Uncle. He was simple and honest, and so introverted that he never mixed with the other boys in the village. No one had ever explained such things to him. Even the inexplicable stirrings of adolescence, he had worked off through physical labor. When he woke with his trousers tented in the morning, he thought nothing of it and simply waited for it to subside. Apart from work and meals, he spent his days thinking about his handicrafts. Romance between men and women was a complete blank to him. Marriage? He had never even considered it. Marrying Xiuxiu was further beyond anything he could imagine.
All he had done was advise Xiuxiu not to go to the other province. How had that become a question of whether they should marry?
He wanted to find Xiuxiu and ask what was going on, but she refused to leave her house. When he visited twice, children passing the gate merely chased after him teasing and laughing, and even candy could not make them go away.
With no other choice, he took a few steamed buns and hid halfway up the mountain to escape the commotion, bringing along a piece of sausage and an egg he had saved from the New Year’s Eve feast.
He put the sausage and egg on the altar, then talked to the mountain god around mouthfuls of steamed bun.
He did not mention what had happened with Xiuxiu the night before. To him, it was hardly important. The mountain god might have been interested, though. Dahe still remembered the time he had asked whether Dahe liked Xiuxiu. Yet somewhere deep down, Dahe simply did not want to tell him about this.
Instead, he talked about what had happened during his year away.
The children had wanted to hear wonderful stories about the dazzling outside world, things he was too clumsy with words to describe. But with the mountain god, he could talk about little things: how no bamboo grew where he worked, how the big dog at the factory was named Erbing, after a mahjong tile called Ertong back home, and how there was something called an automatic vending chicken. The mountain god would never look down on him, and would certainly find it all fascinating. Thinking this way, Dahe felt he had so much to say. After all, it had been a year since they had seen each other.
Elio’s Notes: Dahe says “automatic vending chicken” because he confuses the Chinese word for machine (机, jī) with the identically pronounced word for chicken (鸡, jī).
No, not since that New Year’s Eve when he was sixteen. In truth, they had not seen each other for seven years.
On the night before leaving, Dahe carried his padded jacket up the mountain again. He draped it over himself and switched on a flashlight, continuing his attempt to mend the little bamboo truck in the dim beam. By midnight the battery was exhausted, but he kept working by touch. Gradually he began shivering. The jacket was damp and cold, and he was terribly sleepy. Before he knew it, he had curled up on the big rock and fallen asleep.
When he woke before dawn, he thought he would have caught a cold, but he hadn’t. His jacket was still clammy and chilly, yet his body remained warm. He looked at the offerings on the altar. They were still where he had put them, giving no clue whether the mountain god had enjoyed them.
He scrambled up and, before the sky grew light, resumed working on the little truck. Yet several days of steady effort had done nothing to save it. The truck was still a wreck, and the bamboo leaves he had woven around the outside came loose again because they would not hold.
Some things, once broken, stayed broken. Once lost, they were gone. Once past, they were past. The mountain god had never had the chance to teach him that nothing could bring certain things back. And Dahe, stubborn all these years, had never wanted to understand it on his own.
He looked at the truck sadly, then at the sky. It really was time to leave, or he would miss his train.
He laid it in a little woven bamboo box he had brought the night before, then carefully arranged the mantis family, bamboo grasshoppers, bamboo mice, and other toys beside it. He put the box inside the shrine and weighed down its lid with a stone.
Not long after New Year, Xiuxiu followed a friend of her eldest uncle to the other province. Someone recommended her for a job as a waitress in a restaurant. The restaurant was downtown, while Dahe’s factory lay on the outskirts, so they rarely saw each other. Only when their rotating days off happened to coincide could they stroll around together. Sometimes, when Dahe drove downtown to make deliveries, he stopped at her restaurant to bring her daily necessities.
After working for a little over a month, Xiuxiu quarreled bitterly with the owner’s wife and resigned in anger before her probationary period was over. According to her, the woman was demanding and brutal, treated her like a servant, and let older waitresses bully her as the newcomer by assigning her every unpleasant task. The pay was lower than she had expected too, certainly lower than Dahe’s.
Xiuxiu was quick-witted, so she asked a regular diner who admired her pretty appearance to help her find another job. It was as a massage therapist at a sauna and massage establishment. Her arms and legs ached from the work each day, but she received tips. Her pleasant face and sweet talk soon attracted customers who asked for her by name. Her pay rose steadily, becoming more impressive month after month.
After half a year, even slow-witted Dahe noticed how Xiuxiu had changed. She grew livelier and more outgoing; her voice was no longer so quiet. She learned makeup and began dressing in tight, short skirts and high heels, looking like a fashionable city woman. As she walked, she held her gaze higher and higher, often looking straight past the tall Dahe toward who knew what. She loved wandering through bright, luxurious department stores. She bought nothing, but pointed excitedly into the windows: that was the handbag their massage parlor boss’s wife carried; that diamond ring was even bigger than the boss’s wife’s; and those shoes were the ones some television celebrity had worn. Then, without looking at Dahe, she clicked off in her high heels to the next store.
She met Dahe to go shopping less and less often. After all, he could not afford the things she really wanted. She even called him less. Incidentally, not long after leaving the restaurant, she had lectured Dahe into setting money aside to buy two mobile phones, one for each of them.
At Mid-Autumn Festival that year, Dahe called and invited her to the factory to have dinner and mooncakes with his coworkers and join their celebration.
Xiuxiu hemmed and hawed. First she complained that the factory was too far away, then that all his coworkers were men and she would be the only girl among them.
Dahe thought she wanted the two of them to spend the festival alone. It had been the same in the county town: she never liked being taken to the factory and insisted that they go shopping by themselves. But then Xiuxiu said she had arranged to celebrate with the women from the massage parlor.
Dahe found it a little odd, but she was so firm that he did not press her. Instead, he celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival with more than a dozen factory workers who could not go home. They played cards all day and shared a hotpot meal. In the evening their boss gave them cheap mooncakes sold by weight at the supermarket, and everyone noisily divided them up.
Of course, the merriment belonged to everyone else. Dahe remained quiet and withdrawn. He didn’t play cards. He helped add ingredients to the hotpot and cut the mooncakes into pieces for the others.
But his silence did not protect him from teasing. A few bachelors demanded to know who the pretty girl who had visited the factory was. Was she the one he called all the time? His girlfriend? How had they met? When were they marrying?
No matter how many times they pressed him, Dahe stood firm, smiling sheepishly and shaking his head. She was not his girlfriend.
“Oho! So you couldn’t win her over? A girl that pretty can’t be easy to catch!” they teased.
Dahe shook his head again. “I haven’t been trying to win her over. She’s from my village. We grew up together.”
He was a young man in his early twenties, slow and simple rather than hopelessly stupid. He had never understood Xiuxiu’s feelings for him, but at least he understood his own. He did not feel the attraction his coworkers were teasing him about. He liked Xiuxiu, but not in a way that made him want to marry her. He couldn’t say what sort of liking made someone want to marry, only that it was certainly not what he felt for Xiuxiu. She was a dear friend, almost another younger sister.
His coworkers accused him of being shy and dishonest, then changed the subject to ask where the pretty girl from his hometown worked.
After thinking a moment, he gave them the long, awkward name of the massage establishment.
“Well, that’s a big massage place! My girlfriend works as a masseuse too. She’s heard of it. It’s a high-end place, where only rich people go. The tips there are something else!”
Dahe smiled and took a bite of mooncake. He knew nothing about such things, but Xiuxiu’s wages must be quite good. Otherwise she could hardly have acquired so many new shoes, clothes, and handbags, most of which Dahe had not bought.
“But listen,” a coworker leaned close, eager to gossip. “My girlfriend says a lot of the women there are kept mistresses. You know what that means? Rich men pay to keep them…”
Dahe continued eating his mooncake, unimpressed. What did any of it have to do with him? He knew he was a little slow, and he neither understood nor wanted to understand the city’s glittering, complicated ways.
Even after nightfall, some coworkers kept playing cards. Dahe went around to the empty space behind the dormitory, stripped down to his boxer shorts, and bathed from a bucket of cold water. Droplets bounced off his smooth, firm muscles and ran down his long, strong legs. As he poured water over his shoulder, he saw the round, bright moon. They had looked at it all evening. It was no different now: simply round and bright.
In the faint chill of the wind against his wet skin, he heard loose cardboard rustling behind him and his coworkers shouting in the distance. Everything around him was so different, yet he could not stop the sudden warmth behind his eyes as he remembered an evening whose year he could no longer recall. As a small child, he had sat on the mountain god’s cool knees, raised a thin, dark hand, tipped back his head as far as it would go, and asked, “Mountain God, is there really a long goose on the moon? Is it good to eat?”
The immortal sucked the remaining sweet-potato crumbs from his fingertips, arched an eyebrow, and said, “Chang’e isn’t good to eat. But her rabbit might be nice roasted.”
Elio’s Notes: Chang’e (嫦娥, Cháng’é) is the goddess associated with the moon in Chinese folklore. Little Dahe misheard her name as 长鹅, literally “long goose,” prompting the mountain god’s joke about roasting her rabbit.
Dahe kept his face lifted for a while, then squatted down, curled up, and balanced the washbasin he had used to scoop water over his head in a strange posture. In that damp darkness, it was as though he had returned to those cold yet warm nights. He was a tiny child again, curled in that warm embrace.
He felt happy. Deeply, wonderfully happy. Beneath the basin he laughed softly to himself, then suddenly fell quiet, lowered his head, and wrapped his arms around his knees.