Early the next morning Dahe received a call. Third Uncle coughed a few times and asked how the little girl’s operation had gone.
Dahe told him about her condition. After a few more questions, Third Uncle sighed. “Silly boy!”
“To hell with building a house! Everything your aunt says is bullshit! Don’t listen to her, and don’t pay her any mind!” he said. “She’s a foolish woman. I’ve lived with her for decades. I’m used to it! What am I supposed to do? She’s the mother of my two children. Am I supposed to hack her to death?”
Third Uncle complained about his wife a little longer, then sighed and explained that Dahe had received very little from the family growing up, and had contributed so much while working away from home. They had already wronged him enough. Third Uncle had been bedridden with illness for the past six months and hardly gone outside. Only a few days ago had he learned that his wife had taken possession of Dahe’s land and the demolition money. He had been furious. He had promised before the former village Party secretary and all the villagers that he would never take advantage of his nephew or covet his land and home. What his wife had done was like smearing dung across his face.
Third Uncle returned most of the compensation money to Dahe. A portion had already been spent on his medical treatment. He explained that they truly could not pay that part back now, but when Dahe’s younger brother started working, they would certainly repay him.
With that money and what he could scrape together elsewhere, Dahe finally arranged a second operation for his daughter. This one was very successful, and her recovery went well too. Xiuxiu’s mother could not stop smiling as she coaxed her increasingly lively granddaughter to say ‘Grandma.’ Because the little girl had been ill so long, she was slower than other children to learn to speak. Dahe had been worn down by months of worry and hard work, with sores around his mouth and a sallow face, yet he spent all his energy smiling foolishly at his daughter and poking her plump cheeks with his thick fingers. One day, while they were playing, the little girl sucked on her finger, drooled, and said, “Da… da!”
Dahe’s legs almost gave way beneath him.
Xiuxiu had heard her say ‘Mama’ a few days earlier. Now she stood beside Dahe, her hair disheveled and her face tired, but happiness shone in her eyes just as it did in his. At the moment a child first struggles to speak, the hearts of parents are much the same.
Since her outburst at Dahe that night, Xiuxiu had not behaved strangely again. Every day the couple met at the hospital, spoke little as usual, and quietly attended to their work. Neither mentioned what had happened. But she was often absent-minded, staring into a corner of the room whenever she had nothing to do. No one could tell what she was thinking.
Before long the doctor declared little Qiuhan ready to leave the hospital. The family rejoiced. Dahe and Xiuxiu took leave from work to accompany Qiuhan and Xiuxiu’s mother home.
The train brought them back to the provincial capital. The four of them stood with their luggage at a bus stop waiting for the coach to the county town. Xiuxiu’s mother held the baby while the couple stood on either side and gently lifted little Qiuhan’s hands, teaching her to play ‘Little Bug, Fly, Fly.’ Suddenly came the shrill screech of tires and screams from people nearby.
“Screeech!”
Dahe’s last memory was the grinding sound of a vehicle crushing the bus-stop sign. He saw his daughter’s face: she was smiling wide at her little hands raised in the air, so happy, entirely unaware of what was happening around her.
Then terrible pain struck his whole body and he was flung into the air.
That summer was oppressively hot. The mountains became a welcome refuge from the heat, drawing constant streams of tourists, some visiting for the day and others staying at farmhouse guesthouses near the foot of the slope. To create a landscape of abundant mountain flowers, the village Party secretary, now director of the Dahan Mountain scenic area, had people plant peonies all around the shrine. Their great red blossoms bloomed in masses, echoing the bright red cloth trimmed with gold thread atop the statue.
The scenic area’s director had commissioned the cloth and even taken it to a popular Buddhist temple elsewhere in the county to be blessed by a monk, though what sort of blessing a monk was supposed to give a god was anyone’s guess. An artisan had also repaired the statue’s head. The new head was porcelain-white and did not match the stone body. It had a broad face, wide nose, long ears and thick lower lip. The craftsman knew nothing of the shrine’s history and had modeled it on the face of Shakyamuni Buddha.
The mountain god lounged contentedly on the shrine roof among the lavish flowers, waiting for worshippers from every direction. Visitors usually stopped briefly, burned incense, rested, then continued toward the summit. Women coaxed children to drink water and eat fruit; men gathered in twos and threes to smoke and chat about family and public affairs. Some who had forgotten to buy incense at the foot of the mountain stuck a couple of cigarettes into the incense burner as offerings instead. Most other forest scenic areas banned smoking, but this place was small and remote, environmental awareness was poor, and no one enforced such rules. The visitors were happy with the freedom.
The mountain god was just as pleased. Holding a cigarette between two fingers, he copied the visitors by taking a puff with furrowed brows, then blew the smoke out in a circle. Watching the perfect smoke ring rise, he felt immensely proud of how quickly he had mastered the skill.
A jar of good wine would make things even better. He lay on the big rock beside the shrine, stretched, and rolled about in a most ungodlike manner. He hadn’t had wine in years. Dahe’s grandfather at least knew to offer him a cup of rice wine on festivals. That thickheaded silly boy Dahe!
As the sun was setting that day, tourists came down the mountain in scattered groups. In their hurry, few stopped at the shrine. The mountain god lay on his back on the rock, playing with a mantis woven from yellowed grass. He waved its scythe-like forelegs about until he suddenly heard uneven footsteps.
He turned his head. It was Dahe, limping toward the little shrine.
The mountain god’s face remained distant, but his normally deep, unfathomable eyes became fixed and clouded, as though veiled. He froze for a moment, scarcely recognizing Dahe. He watched the man stagger toward the statue, fall to his knees with a thud, bend his back and embrace ‘him’ tightly, pressing his face to the statue’s porcelain-white cheek. His shoulders shook violently, but he made no sound.
After a long while, Dahe rose, his expression blank and lifeless. Bent over and limping, he went to the big rock, lowered himself onto it, curled up with his limbs passing through the mountain god’s body, and lay still.
It took the god a long time to raise his hand and gently touch Dahe’s sallow, wasted face. Dahe’s eyes were squeezed shut, his thick dark brows knotted together in inexpressible pain. His once tall, powerful body had almost wasted beyond recognition.
With his cheek against the cool stone, Dahe fell asleep almost immediately. Outside this place he could not sleep. From the moment he woke after the crash, he had been unable to sleep at all.
The enormous bus had charged straight at them out of control and at high speed, striking the family of four waiting in its path. Dahe had stood somewhat to the side. Being thrown had broken only two ribs, but he struck a stone bollard behind him and fractured a leg. Little Qiuhan, Xiuxiu, Xiuxiu’s mother, and three other people at the stop were struck, knocked down, and crushed to death. After hitting them and flattening the stop sign, the bus reversed, turned, charged forward, and hit again. Then it reversed and drove into people fleeing, striking a third time, then a fourth. Only after seven people were dead and more than a dozen injured did it crash into a tree by the roadside. The driver’s head struck the steering wheel, leaving him bloodied and unconscious, and the vehicle finally stopped.
The investigation dragged on for months before concluding that the driver suffered from a psychiatric illness, could not be held legally responsible, and could not pay compensation. The authorities hurriedly paid ten thousand yuan for each death and one thousand for each serious injury, with nothing for minor injuries. But victims’ families heard rumors that although the driver did have signs of mental illness, the real trigger had been workplace mistreatment during a staff reassignment. He had fallen foul of his superiors, been bullied, and gone out to take revenge on society. Some victims’ relatives refused to accept the compensation and demanded accountability from the driver and his employer. They petitioned everywhere, but the courts would not hear their cases, the authorities ignored them, and the media did not report their complaints. A year later, when a senior state official visited the provincial capital, local officials took the event very seriously. People were sent to monitor and blockade the victims’ homes and workplaces, supposedly to prevent troublemakers from stirring public unrest and disrupting social harmony, stability, and development.
All of that happened later, without Dahe knowing. For him, even if he won more compensation or had the driver cut to pieces, the people who were gone would never come back. His loved ones’ living, smiling faces had become blood. Three lives lost, and money stained with blood was put into his hand and called compensation. He lay in hospital in a daze and never said a word to Third Uncle or Xiuxiu’s eldest uncle when they came to visit. He could not sleep, not at all, and grew thinner day by day.
He did not know what else heaven might have in store for him, or how much more one person could suffer in a single life.
He no longer knew what reason there was to live. Then, faintly, he remembered this place, the one place he could sleep. The wind stirred the bamboo, bringing the scent of leaves and grass. Birds sang clearly in the forest. Here he could return to his carefree childhood, when hunger had been his only suffering. It was as if none of the world’s complicated turmoil had ever happened.
In his dream he saw the yellowed grass mantis he had woven for the mountain god, its big black eyes made of little stones, proudly raising its scythe-like forelegs.
Then he saw a robe, thin and smooth as flowing water, behind the mantis. The god of the mountains sat beside him, sighed, and leaned forward to draw him into his arms.
That warm, long-forgotten embrace. Ten years had passed. It felt like yesterday.
The mountain god touched the hollow at the corner of Dahe’s eye, his face full of pain. “Silly boy,” he sighed gently. “Silly boy.” Then he pressed Dahe’s face against his cool chest.
Dahe trembled in his arms. His great body seemed suddenly to collapse, shrinking into a small, frightened, helpless creature. He clung to the god’s waist, shaking, tears slipping from his sunken eyes. For the first time since the blood-soaked disaster, he began to cry, sobbing out loud in a hoarse, broken voice.
“Waaah… Ahhh… They’re dead… They’re all gone… All gone… All gone… Waaaah…”
His sobs were ragged and shrill, painful to hear, filled with unbearable anguish. The mountain god held him tightly. The cries of endless suffering rose from his chest, and Dahe’s uncontrollable agony seemed to shake the heart that had lain dead within the god for hundreds of years, even through the thin robe. The god lowered his face to Dahe’s hair and sighed, feeling as though he might weep himself.
“Silly boy,” the god whispered, his voice trembling faintly with how deeply Dahe’s pain hurt him. “Silly boy, don’t cry. They would want you to live for them. They would want you to go on living well…”
He gently lifted Dahe’s tear-blurred face, his cool fingertips tracing the wet tracks.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry…” He bowed and kissed Dahe softly on the forehead. His voice was gentle and trembling, seeming at once far away and beside his ear. “Come back… Don’t leave again. Don’t go back to all that suffering… You are a child of the mountains. This is your home… Come back. Come back to me…”
When Dahe woke, the sun had already sunk behind the mountainside and the lamps along the mountain path were lit. The sanitation worker responsible for the area, Auntie Zou from the village, was shaking his arm vigorously. “Hey! Isn’t that Dahe? Get up! Get up! Don’t sleep here or you’ll catch cold!”
He sat up groggily and in confusion. Only after a while did he remember to wipe the tears from his face, but his cheeks were dry. There was no trace of crying to feel.
He looked around in bewilderment. In the streetlamp shadows the peonies had become a dark mass. There was no sign of the mountain god.
“Dahe, when did you get back? Are you feeling any better?” Auntie Zou knew all the village gossip and had heard of the disaster that struck his family. Now she wanted to show some concern. But the young man looked as though he didn’t understand a word. He only glanced around, rose unsteadily with a blank, frightened expression, and limped downhill without a word.
Auntie Zou sighed as she watched his thin back. The poor child had suffered from the time he was small: first his mother, then his father, then his grandfather had died. Just when life seemed to improve, when he had married and had a child, his whole family was gone in the blink of an eye. Perhaps there was something to the villagers’ claim that he was born unlucky, a walking jinx.
“Poor boy,” she sighed, lifting her broom to sweep away a discarded drink carton beside the big rock.
Dahe buried his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law, resigned from his job, and returned to the village. He used the government compensation to pay off the debts from his daughter’s earlier surgery and gave the remainder to Third Uncle for medical treatment. His brother was close to graduation, had not yet found an internship, and was frantic with worry every day.
The village Party secretary wrote an application for him, and once the person in charge, namely the secretary himself, approved it, Dahe set up a small stall beside the mountain shrine. He sold drinks and all kinds of woven bamboo toys. Crickets, mantises, and butterflies were the most common, while other small animals cost a little more. Visitors staying for several days at the foot of the mountain could also order special pieces. In two or three days, Dahe could produce a lifelike rabbit, a little truck, or a delicately made miniature mountain shrine.
He still lived in Xiuxiu’s ancestral home, sleeping in a small guest room and leaving everything else untouched, as though he were merely a temporary lodger instead of the owner of the house.
Every morning he cooked two sweet potatoes and two eggs, went early to the shrine, set out his stall, and sat on the big rock. He placed one sweet potato and one egg beside him, then lowered his head and quietly ate his own portion. After eating, he sat cross-legged weaving bamboo. By the time he finished his third cricket, the first tourists were usually arriving.
For lunch he ate steamed buns prepared that morning with dried meat, sometimes bringing a stir-fried dish or two as well. As always, he shared a portion with the mountain god.
After the visitors left in the afternoon, he packed up his stall and lay down on the big rock for a while. It seemed to possess a strange magic: he could sleep nowhere else. The breeze gently ruffled his hair, and when he opened his eyes in his dreams, he could see the immortal in emerald robes sitting beside him, long black hair falling across his cheek, smiling softly.
During the first dream, when he cried until he could scarcely breathe, he had not seen clearly. So the second time he dreamed of the mountain god, he was terribly startled. Half the god’s face was still as handsome as before, but the other half bore the traces of terrible burns. Blackened skin and decaying flesh covered it, and the raised white bone was faintly visible where the brow had once been. It scarcely resembled a human face. Only the eye remained the same, deep and gently black.
“Are you frightened?” the mountain god asked with a smile.
Dahe shook his head desperately. Tears began spilling from his eyes. He cradled the god’s face, lifted the long hair that concealed it, and examined it carefully once more. At twenty-six years old, he broke down sobbing again.
“Was it when the lightning struck?” he asked through his tears, touching the uneven, scarred side of the god’s face as softly as though afraid to hurt him.
The mountain god only smiled without answering, wrapping both arms around Dahe’s shoulders and stroking his hair.
Ten years had passed. Even with a thick head and a one-track mind, Dahe ought to have understood certain things by now. Still crying, he went on, “…You saved me, didn’t you? You weren’t supposed to, were you? Heaven punished you? You can’t show yourself to me, or you’ll be punished again, isn’t that it?”
The mountain god neither denied it nor said anything else. He only stroked Dahe’s head and called gently, “Silly boy.”
Dahe sobbed without another word. Through tears that blurred his sight, he moved closer and suddenly, very gently, followed his fingertips with his lips and kissed the hollow of the mountain god’s cheek.
The mountain god froze. His cool, detached expression abruptly softened. He raised a hand helplessly to Dahe’s shoulder, meaning to push him away, but he could find no strength to do it. He could not bear to. He did not want to.
Fortunately Dahe only brushed the corner of his lips against the god’s cheek with inexperienced tenderness, then moved slowly upward, kissing the prominent brow bone and the dark eye. It seemed an impulse he could not restrain; perhaps he did not even know what he was doing.
The mountain god trembled slightly and in the end simply closed his eyes in silence.
Soft, warm kisses spread across his face.