Dahe lay facedown on the cold concrete floor, struggling for breath. Blood stained half his face.
The bald men who had beaten him had already dispersed, cursing as they went out and locked the door.
The others hurried to his side and helped him up. They used a half-empty bottle of mineral water to clean his wounds. The bald men had beaten him savagely; one had slammed his head against a red-brick wall.
The woman accompanying his former coworker sat to one side, wiping away anxious tears. “Big brother, thank you! If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have been beaten. Whatever are we going to do?” In her dialect, ge laoguan was a familiar way of addressing an older brother.
When their mobile phones were confiscated, she had asked if she could at least have her SIM card back. One of the men kicked her. Dahe stepped forward to stop him and was beaten even more brutally.
Dahe’s former coworker had shouted at the men to stop. He too received a fierce slap, leaving half his face swollen. Now he peered through a crack in the door. The courtyard outside was locked and heavily guarded. Several bald men sat playing cards, with sunflower seed shells, empty instant-noodle tubs and toppled beer bottles scattered around their feet.
A middle-aged woman from the northwest lowered her voice as she cleaned Dahe’s wounds. “Young man, stop looking. There’s no way out. We’ve been locked in here for a week. That old gentleman over there came first. He’s been here almost a month.”
There were more than ten people crowded into the room, men and women, old and young. All had traveled from different regions to petition the authorities. As they left the petition bureau, they had just happened to encounter officials from their hometowns, who used various tricks to lure them here. Their means of communication were confiscated, and they were locked in this cramped room of barely thirty square meters.
Some sat and others lay on the floor, huddled together and speaking quietly of the injustices they had suffered. Some had lost their land, others their compensation. Some were ruined, some imprisoned unjustly for years. One had lost a father to violence; another spoke of a daughter who had been assaulted. When they asked Dahe, the tall young man they had just watched defend himself against the bald men, he only remained silent.
Holding a hand over his wounded head, he sat in the corner and drew a photograph from an inner pocket, looking at nothing else. The others assumed he felt ill and left him alone. After whispering among themselves a little longer, they settled wherever they could to rest.
In the middle of the night Dahe tried to break the lock and escape. The bald guard on watch heard him. Several men rushed in and beat him again.
It was a place where no appeal to heaven or earth would be answered. The other prisoners had grown numb and helpless. They helped him up and tended his injuries, then retreated to their corners and tried to sleep, not knowing when their ordeal would end. The woman from the northwest wept softly in her sleep. She was dreaming of her daughter, whose youth had been ruined by an assault and whose attackers had then smeared her reputation.
Surrounded by oppressive darkness and muffled sobs, Dahe drifted into an exhausted sleep.
They remained imprisoned in the airless room, eating, drinking, and relieving themselves in the same space. Each day they received only a little food and water. The old gentleman who had arrived first scratched marks on the wall to count his days. His son had died in a coal mine accident, and the body had still not been recovered. Every day the father counted the marks from one end of the wall to the other and back, as though counting each moment his son had spent suffocating in the mine.
Dahe began marking the wall too. At first he made only shallow scratches. Later his marks became deep, dense grooves in the concrete. By the time he cut his twentieth groove, the fingers gripping his shard of stone were bleeding. He carved with such force because he was filled with desperate hatred.
Over those twenty days he had tried negotiating with the bald men, secretly escaping, even fighting them. Each attempt earned him another beating. The other prisoners urged him to be patient and wait. The guards had only been paid to hold them; surely they could not lock everyone away until they died and cause such a scandal. Dahe would listen to none of it. Silent as a stubborn ox, he had been stripped of words by the cold blades of fate until nothing remained but a final, frantic struggle. He had to leave. He had to fight for even the faintest possibility of saving his mountain, or sink beneath the water with it.
The night he carved his thirty-second deep notch, spring was drawing to a close. The first dry heat of summer drifted through the cracks around the door and across the prisoners’ gaunt faces. Outside, swarms of cicadas shrilled desperately in the courtyard trees, their cries rising and falling until they seemed to tear at everyone’s ears.
Dahe had just suffered another beating, one of too many to count. He slept fitfully, frowning. The constant abuse had left him weak and wasted. He was burning with fever.
In the hazy heat of fever, he suddenly heard the low rustle of wind through bamboo leaves. A cool and gentle breeze swept the scorching air away.
A serene, beautiful landscape entered his dream and almost instantly quieted his pain and agitation. Wind stirred the bamboo grove and green leaves fell one by one, until the unreal scene filled with a rain of drifting leaves, just like the day of his grandfather’s funeral when he was small.
In that gentle shower of bamboo leaves, the same gentle, handsome mountain spirit appeared.
The immortal’s green robes gathered before him. The god bent down and knelt beside Dahe, his cool fingertips resting on Dahe’s battered face.
Dahe trembled uncontrollably. He forced his eyes open and struggled to grip the thin hem of the god’s robe with fingers that barely obeyed him. The fabric felt so ethereal, so unreal.
Cupping Dahe’s face, the immortal slowly wiped dirt from the corners of his eyes. He sighed, sounding almost as though he were scolding him for failing to care for his body. “Silly boy…”
“Moun…” Dahe answered in a rasp, laboring to raise his heavy head. “Mountain… God…”
The immortal lowered his head toward him and gently placed a finger over his lips, quieting him.
“Silly boy,” the immortal whispered, so close their noses almost touched, “promise me you won’t do foolish things anymore. Take care of yourself. Promise me.”
Dahe tried to open his mouth, but the god kept a hand over it. Burying his face beside Dahe’s ear, the immortal’s usually calm, refined voice trembled. “Don’t say anything else. Just promise me you won’t do foolish things anymore. Live well… I saved your life. Don’t throw it away. Promise me…”
Dahe broke into sobs. Muffled sounds escaped beneath the cool palm covering his mouth as he nodded desperately. He wanted to embrace his slender, half-unreal god, but could not lift his arms.
The immortal released a long breath and smiled. He took his hand from Dahe’s mouth, drew back and looked at him carefully. Then he smiled once more and bent down to kiss him. “Silly boy, you’ve grown up…”
“You’ve grown up… I thought I would be able to watch you grow old…”
An icy tear fell beside Dahe’s face, sliding slowly down to his ear. He shuddered. Suddenly a roar filled his mind, as though something had burst apart.
The fingertips touching his face were growing more transparent. More tears fell onto his battered skin. The immortal kissed him with a smile, as though he could not kiss him enough, or knew there was no longer time. “Silly boy, don’t be sad… As long as you believe in me, I’m here…”
Light bamboo leaves circled behind the mountain god. His green robe stirred in the cool breeze, rippling through the air like water.
“If you remember me, I’ll always be here…”
“When one day you’re gone, and no one remembers me anymore, I won’t be here either…”
“I’m your mountain god…”
“So you must live well, live…”
His voice broke off. His tear-streaked face vanished behind the flapping sleeve of his robe. Dahe’s eyes flew wide as a withered yellow bamboo leaf swept suddenly past them.
The cool touch on his face disappeared. In an instant the green figure splintered in the wind. A swirl of falling bamboo leaves swallowed the fragments, leaving not a single trace.
All that remained in the bamboo grove was the rustle of the wind and the endless darkness beyond the mountain.
The sky abruptly darkened, heat flooded back, and the gentle dreamscape collapsed.
It happened with such merciless speed, too fast even for a blink, like a heart that stopped and suddenly began pounding again. Dahe lay motionless, his hands still stretched toward the sky. Through his filthy fingers he saw a huge spiderweb hanging from the dark ceiling, black and oppressive as a fate of suffering and loneliness he could never escape.
Between his outstretched hands there was only emptiness, as though he were embracing a fairy tale that had never existed.
Suddenly he opened his mouth wide and released a long, soundless scream.
* * *
Two weeks later, the bald men released the oldest captive because the officials from his hometown had stopped paying to hold him. Though threatened with harm to his family if he spoke, the old man went straight to the police: he had already lost his whole family and had nothing left to fear.
The prisoners were finally rescued. Some emerged filled with fresh anger, others with deeper despair; all were relieved to have survived. Yet the police investigation of the bald men dragged on without any definite conclusion.
Xiao Chen traveled from the provincial newspaper to Beijing and joined several local reporters in an investigation. They interviewed various officials said to have tricked petitioners into vans; every one of them flatly denied the accusation.
Reports on the affair spread widely. Xiao Chen’s fearless reporting brought her to prominence and earned her editor-in-chief’s admiration. Two years later, another long-investigated report of hers, The Last Mountain God, exposed the failings and consequences of the great river project and the harsh lives of displaced residents. Although it could not be formally published, it circulated online and drew widespread attention.
By then the subject of the report, the Bamboo Grove Guy who had once woven such exquisite things deep in the mountains, had cancelled his mobile number and broken contact with Xiao Chen. No one knew where he had gone.
* * *
Many years later.
“I wasn’t lying! I really saw an immortal here when I was little!” a girl wearing a strawberry hairclip protested loudly to her friends. “I still have that bamboo rabbit at home!”
Her companions, a group of middle-school students her own age, all scoffed in chorus, eager to prove how grown-up and sensible they were. “As if! We don’t believe you! How old are you now, still believing in things like that?”
“It’s true! As long as you believe, you can see him!” the girl cried.
“The mountain was flooded ages ago. What would there be to see?” one of her companions replied.
The bus suddenly braked, pitching them against the seats ahead. Amid squeals and laughter, the tour guide spoke into the microphone. “Teachers and students, we’ve arrived at our lovely new attraction, the Dajiang Reservoir! Please gather your belongings. We’ll spend three wonderful days here. First we’ll have some delicious local river fish in the restaurant while enjoying the magnificent view!”
The students tumbled out of the bus, chattering and laughing, and eventually shuffled into the restaurant under their teachers’ calls. Behind the dining room, the kitchen was in full bustle preparing lunch for the dozens of students on their graduation trip.
“Chef, we’re short of fish!” a young apprentice called to the head cook.
“Phone Old Chen and tell him to bring some!” the chef answered without turning. “Twenty jin to start with, and tell him to hurry!”
Before long a tall man with a limp pushed a cart of fresh fish to the restaurant’s front entrance. He lowered his head and silently maneuvered through the noisy dining room toward the kitchen.
He heard the guide pointing out the broad river view to the children. “You’ve chosen a wonderful time to come! Not long ago an enclosed reservoir upstream released water through its gates for the first time since it was built ten years ago. That has made the scenery here even more beautiful! New species of fish have come downstream too, including the ones you’ll be eating today. Ha ha! Now everyone…”
“What rubbish,” the kitchen apprentice muttered to a server as he came out to collect the fish. “Don’t we buy all our fish from the farms? They’re raised in ponds!”
“Too much talking from you,” the waitress said, swatting him aside. “Get them inside before the chef starts shouting again.”
Grinning, the apprentice hauled crates off the cart and told the delivery man, “Old Chen, put the payment on the account as usual. We’ll settle it at the end of the month.”
The man helping unload the fish raised his head. Fine lines marked the corners of his eyes. His features remained regular and calm, yet time had settled heavily across his expression. Without a word he nodded, then quietly turned to leave.
After a short walk he entered the cluster of fishponds beside the reservoir, passing one enclosure of netted fish farms after another. His home stood beside the last pond.
“Old Chen, back from your deliveries?” a neighbor called while unloading fish.
He nodded and helped the neighbor shift several crates in silence. Knowing how little the man liked talking, the neighbor made no attempt at conversation and finally offered him two cigarettes.
Dahe accepted the cigarettes but did not smoke them. He carefully wrapped them in a scrap of paper, tucked them into his pocket, and limped home.
The furnishings were plain: a table, chairs, a bed, some fish-farming tools and books, and an old radio. Its tinny speaker played a familiar song about a broad river and its waves.
He laid the cigarettes gently on the table, then went to the simple kitchen behind the house to cook. In another pot he boiled water and dropped in two red sweet potatoes.
The fishponds were still brightly lit that evening. Two recent university graduates who had pooled their savings to buy a small farm stood beside their pond, discussing something in low voices. They looked up at the sound of Dahe opening his door and waved in greeting.
Dahe came out holding a large, lively fish in one hand and a small paper packet in the other. He nodded to them. They had a question about their fish-farming work and walked over to ask his advice.
He answered their questions briefly and plainly, then lowered his head and limped away. Beyond the long rows of netted ponds he approached the reservoir, braced himself on his knee, and slowly crouched at the water’s edge.
He loosely tied the little paper packet of several cigarettes to the big fish and released it into the water.
The fish swished its tail in obvious discomfort, plunged beneath the surface with a splash, blew several bubbles, and disappeared.
Only the ripples remained, spreading slowly and silently toward the distance.
The night was so peaceful. Squatting beside the water, Dahe looked at the distant stars flickering in the sky. As though he could feel a warmth from far away, he closed his eyes and let a faint smile lift the corners of his mouth.
If you believe, I am here.
And his faith was as devout as anyone’s could be.
This was his mountain god.