Wuzhang hurriedly brushed the white silk covering from the dead man’s face with his elbow. ‘Is Qinsu’s family all dead?’ He jumped onto the cart and yelled, ‘Has his mother died? If his parents are dead, how about his siblings? They can’t all be dead too? If they are, there must be other relatives. Why doesn’t someone come
forward to claim him? This is Qinsu, from Seven-Li Cave. Take a good look at his face. Someone help me out here and take the coffin away.’
A limping man in a coat of hemp cloth was leering at Binu. He walked up to the carter, who said, ‘Are you Qinsu’s brother? Or maybe his cousin? Come and take the coffin off my hands.’
‘I don’t want that coffin. I’d have to get help to bury it. But I’d be happy to take the living off your hands.’ He nudged the carter. ‘I could take the widow for a wife, and the boy as my son.’
‘I assumed you were all not quite right in the head,’ said Wuzhang, grimacing in anger as he realized the man’s intentions. ‘That shows how much I know. You’re smarter than I figured. No dead man for you, but you’d be willing to take on a wife and a son, all for free. Well, keep dreaming.’
By now most of the villagers had gathered round a few of the older, wiser men, talking things over as they sized up the hearse from a distance. Some stared at the people, while others focused on the two Blue Cloud oxen; some, who were more concerned with the coffin’s capacity, ran over to measure its length and height. ‘Three loads of wheat flour, no problem,’ they said.
They solemnly announced their decision: ‘The coffin will stay in Seven-Li Cave to store grain to keep it from
rotting. As for Qinsu’s wife and son, they can stay or leave; it’s up to them. But the dead man, Qinsu, is unwelcome here. You can take him away and bury him wherever you please. Seven-Li Cave may be a poor place, but rites and morality are important here. There is no place for a robber and a thief, whether he is from the area or not, and no matter where he’s been, even if he has returned from serving the King. Seven-Li Cave will not stand by and allow such a man to be buried here.’
The irate carter could not control his tongue. He smirked. ‘What kind of place is this? You’re poor and lowly, and yet you talk about honour. You can forget about the rest if you won’t take the dead man. All I can leave you is a few wheel ruts.’
It had taken a great deal of trouble to get to Seven-Li Cave, but it took none to leave. The carter flicked his whip, and the dead man, the living, the oxen, and the coffin were on the road again. They never expected that their trip to Seven-Li Cave would end in such haste, and the carter could not stop cursing, furious that the villagers had drifted back into the incense cave even before the cart had left. ‘They can’t read a word, but they know how to recite chants! They won’t claim a member of their own family, and all they care about is a bumper wheat crop! I hope they have a flood next year,
then a drought and, after that, locusts. Then we’ll see what kind of harvest they have!’
Binu turned to gaze at Seven-Li Cave in the smoky mist, the look in her eyes turning to bewilderment. This was the first time since leaving Peach Village that she had actually tasted the sorrow of others; it was bitter and it was cold. Qinsu’s spirit began to rage uncontrollably. Filled with remorse and guilt, she patted the coffin to comfort the corpse inside. ‘Qinsu, don’t be sad. It’s not that your family didn’t want you or your coffin, just that you’d been away so long that no one remembered you. That is not your home, and it is useless to go back there. Maybe it wasn’t even Seven-Li Cave, maybe the carter took a wrong turn.’
‘Are you talking to a dead man?’ The carter turned to glare at Binu. ‘Who says I took a wrong turn? I’ve driven for years and never once did I take a wrong turn. If I made a mistake, it was with the people. The problem was with the people at Seven-Li Cave.’
The strange hearse returned to the road; two oxen and three people, plus an unclaimed coffin.
Surprisingly the early autumn floodwater remained on the ground. The sun shone brightly high above the deserted, bleak public road, which was overgrown with
weeds, covered with mud, and full of streams and holes of unknown causes. The hearse was no sooner on the road than it was ambushed by a subterranean hole. The axle snapped and the cart broke into two. The oxen strained to cross the hole, leaving the wheels and the coffin behind in the water, and throwing Binu and the boy in it as well. They crawled onto dry land, only to see one end of Qinsu’s coffin sink into the water and the other end about to detach itself from the cart.
Frantically whipping his oxen, the carter complained, ‘What sort of task did Lord Hengming give me, anyway? First the people give me trouble, then the water and the road, and now it’s the turn of you oxen. Just wait and see if I don’t whip you to death!’
‘Elder Brother,’ said Binu, ‘please don’t beat them. It’s not their fault; the coffin is trying to run away.’
‘A coffin doesn’t have legs,’ the carter argued as he stared at the coffin in the water. ‘To hell with you, Qinsu,’ he cursed. ‘You were a loathsome man alive and just as loathsome dead, and now your spirit is out to trap my oxcart.’
‘Don’t blame Qinsu’s spirit for our difficulties,’ said Binu. ‘We’ve been walking in the sun for three days now, and Qinsu can no longer stay in there, no matter how nice the coffin may be or how wonderful the fragrant
herbs are. If he isn’t buried soon, they will no longer be able to cover the stink of corruption.’
‘Who does he have to blame for that? Himself, that’s who!’ screamed the carter at Binu. ‘I’ve transported more than a dozen coffins, but none like this. Someone with karma as bad as that is bound to stink.’
The carter waded through the water and placed one foot on the coffin. Excessive fatigue and anger lent his face a green pallor. His nose dripped when he spoke, and spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth. He began kicking the coffin. ‘If you want to stop here, that’s your business. You left my cart of your own accord, and there’s nothing I can do if you want to leave your corpse out on the open road. Heaven has eyes. I can report back to Lord Hengming that I suffered taking you to Seven-Li Cave.’ He started pushing down on the cart to help the runaway coffin slip more easily into the pothole.
‘We can stop anywhere except on the road,’ Binu pleaded. ‘You cannot leave a coffin on the road. The dead man’s spirit cannot go into the ground, where it belongs, and people’s carts and horses cannot get past.’
‘That’s even better. That’s what Qinsu wants. Since he can’t move, he doesn’t want anyone else to get past.’ The boy banged on the coffin and burst out laughing.
‘At long last I’ve met someone with worse karma than mine. It’s one thing for me to forget where my home is, but something else altogether when people in your own hometown won’t accept your coffin. Now
that
is bad karma.’
‘No matter how bad his karma is, you simply cannot leave his coffin on the road.’ Binu walked up and grabbed the carter’s sleeve. ‘Elder Brother, you must complete the good deed you began. Since you can’t manage with no hands, we’ll help you unload the coffin and place it in the field. But please don’t leave it on the road.’
The carter shoved her away, just as the heavy black lacquered coffin sank into the water with a loud sucking noise. The three of them stood frozen to the spot, staring at the coffin, one end in the water, the other end sticking straight up, a lonely object towering over the road like a wayward boulder. That seemed to calm the agitated spirit of the dead man. They could almost hear the sound of water seeping into the coffin.
Wuzhang, the first to recover, came over to press down on the coffin with his foot. ‘That’s good,’ he muttered. ‘He didn’t jump out, which means he doesn’t want to give up such a nice coffin.’ Then he pushed down hard and said, ‘So much the better. Qinsu, you cannot accuse me of being unkind or inhumane. You picked the spot.
This pothole on this public road is your Seven-Li Cave, and when I pass by here next spring I’ll remember to burn some spirit money for you.’
There were no travellers on the road; no carts or horses passed by. Once the coffin was unloaded, the two Blue Cloud oxen began grazing by the side of the road, waiting for the carter to put the yoke back on them. But he had to give up trying to fix the broken axle, and he sighed deeply. ‘Without hands, it’s no use. I can drive with my feet, but I need hands to fix the cart.’ Then, looking towards Blue Cloud Prefecture, he sighed again. ‘It’s all Qinsu’s fault. I drove an oxcart out, but now I’ll have to return on the back of an ox. I don’t know what sort of punishment Lord Hengming will choose for me, but whatever it is, I deserve it.’
It was time for them to go their separate ways, a moment that came upon them suddenly.
The boy, sitting on one of the cart planks, wiped a tear from his eye and said, ‘I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m going to sit here and wait for a salt merchant’s caravan.’
‘No salt merchants are likely to pass through a place as remote as this.’ Binu tried pulling the boy up to take him over to the carter, but he wouldn’t budge. So she looked north. ‘If you have nowhere to go, then come with me to Great Swallow Mountain.’
‘Only fools go to Great Swallow Mountain,’ he shouted, feeling humiliated. ‘You may be a fool, but I’m not. I’d rather die than go to Great Swallow Mountain.’
The carter and his oxen stumbled off into the dusk, leaving Binu and the boy on the road. Half of the black lacquered coffin remained submerged in water, the other half was exposed to the setting sun. What had been a splendid and luxurious coffin only yesterday was now spattered with yellow mud and looked utterly dispirited. Since no spirit voice emerged from inside, they could not tell what it wanted done. Perhaps it was unable to be master of the coffin, so Binu decided she would act. She tried to drag the coffin out of the pothole and push it off the road down the slope.
But no matter how hard she tried, it was stuck fast. ‘Come and help me,’ she called to the boy. ‘Qinsu may not have been a nice person, but he was raised by human parents, and we cannot let his coffin remain on the road.’
‘He wasn’t raised by human parents. He was no better off than me. Seven-Li Cave, my eye! Old father, old mother, brothers and sisters – ha! A pack of lies. He slithered out through a crack between two rocks, just like me.’
‘That doesn’t mean we can leave his corpse exposed on the road. No one has any say in when and where they
are born. Everything depends on your parents and your previous life. But no matter how tough your life is, you need to have a good death and, end up in the ground. If Qinsu just lies here on the road, in his next life he’ll either be a dirt clod or a pebble, and people will trample on him all day long.’
‘I’m not going to help you do anything,’ the boy said contemptuously. ‘Only a fool would believe you. All you talk about is the next life. What’s so wonderful about the next life? This life has been bad enough. If some stupid woman dares to give birth to me next time, I’ll try my hardest to crawl back into her belly and refuse to come out.’
The boy would not help, and neither would the spirit. Since Binu could not move the coffin by herself, she gave up trying and walked into the empty field, where she broke off a branch and said to the boy, ‘You did a fine job digging a grave before. Let’s dig one for Qinsu. When men walk by and see a hole, they’ll understand. They’re strong and they’ll move his coffin into the hole.’
The boy grinned and pointed at the evening sky. ‘You’d better stop worrying about Qinsu and get on the road. Haven’t you heard that the forest is infested with bandits? If you don’t get moving, you may run into them.’
‘My bundle is gone and all I have left is this mourning
robe.’ She picked up the hem and looked at it. ‘No, I’m not afraid of bandits.’
‘You’re a woman. If you don’t have anything they want, they’ll take you.’
That gave her something to be afraid about. She rushed back onto the road, where she gazed fearfully at the gloomy fields all around. ‘Yes, it’s time to go. I’ll have to leave Qinsu’s coffin to some kind-hearted person.’ She tried to pull the boy up, but he shrugged her hand off.
‘Are you deaf? I told you I’m not going to Great Swallow Mountain. I’ll wait for a travelling pedlar. When one of them comes along, I’ll have food to eat and clothes to wear.’
‘Do you really plan to sell yourself to a travelling pedlar? They buy old stuff and sell new stuff, but they don’t buy and sell people.’
‘I’m not going to sell myself. Besides, people who sell people don’t sell themselves. I have something good to sell, but I’m not telling you what it is.’ Suddenly, a secretive flame burned in his eyes, which shifted evasively. But only for a moment, until he revealed his secret. ‘I’m not afraid to tell you. I’m going to sell Qinsu’s coffin.’ He rubbed his hands together as a sign for money. His voice turned shrill. ‘I’m selling the coffin. The people
at Hundred Springs Terrace said that Qinsu’s coffin is worth lots of gold!’
Binu was shocked. She clapped her hands over her own ears.
‘Why are you doing that? I’m selling Qinsu’s coffin, not your ears. You women are always making a fuss. If you think you’re being cheated, you can take Qinsu’s funeral robe. Didn’t you say your husband needs a winter coat? Qinsu’s funeral robe is made of silk and satin, just the right gift for your husband.’
Binu watched the boy walk up to the coffin and, like a deer, jump onto his new and very large property. Slowly he lifted the lid. ‘He doesn’t stink yet, but if you don’t take the robe off now it’ll be too late.’
Binu turned and ran, not stopping until she spotted some roadside huts flanked by farmers’ earthen pots, dogs and chickens. She suddenly realized that she had returned to the human world. She turned to look back down the road. Qinsu’s coffin looked like a big, black rock, abandoned there by an unfeeling mountain. On the plain the setting sun shimmered, the last warm rays letting Binu see the outline of a deer. She thought she was seeing things, so she rubbed her eyes and looked again. No mistake. The boy’s figure had disappeared, and a deer now stood on Qinsu’s coffin.