Hop by hop, Miss Banner and I climbed into those mountains. Sometimes she would stumble and land on her bad leg, then cry, “Leave me here. I can’t go on.”
“Stop this nonsense,” I would scold each time. “Yiban is waiting, and you’ve already made us late.” That was always enough to make Miss Banner try again.
At the top of the first archway, I looked back at the empty village. Half of the Ghost Merchant’s House was on fire. A great black cloud was growing above it, like a message to the Manchus to hurry to Changmian.
By the time we reached the second archway, we heard the explosions. There was no way to hurry ourselves except in that place where our stomachs churned. It was growing dark, the wind had stopped. Our clothes were sweat-drenched from our struggle to come this far. Now we had to climb along the rocky side of the mountain, where one misstep could send us tumbling into the ravine. “Come, Miss Banner,” I urged. “We’re almost there.” She was looking at her bad leg, now swollen to the size of two.
I had an idea. “Wait here,” I told her. “I’ll hurry to the cave where Yiban is. Then the two of us can carry you in.” She grasped my hands, and I could see in her eyes that she was frightened of being left alone.
“Take the music box,” she said. “Put it in a safe place.”
“I’m coming back,” I answered. “You know this, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes, of course. I only meant you should take it now so that there is less to carry later on.” I took her box of memories and staggered forward.
At each cave or crevice I passed, a voice would cry out, “This one’s already taken! No room!” That’s where people in the village had gone. The caves were plugged up with fear, a hundred mouths holding their breath. I climbed up, then down, searching for the cave hidden by a rock. More explosions! I began to curse like Lao Lu, regretting every wasted moment going by. And then—at last!—I found the rock, then the opening, and lowered myself in. The lamp was still there, a good sign that other people had not come in and that Yiban had not gone out. I put down the music box and lighted the lamp, and groped slowly through the twisty bowels of the cave, hoping with each step that my exhausted mind would not take me the wrong way. And then I saw the glow ahead, like dawn light in a trouble-free world. I burst into the room with the shining lake, crying, “Yiban! Yiban! I’m back. Hurry, come and help Miss Banner! She’s standing outside, between safety and death.”
No answer. So I called again, this time louder. I walked around the lake. A dozen fears pinched my heart. Had Yiban tried to make his way out and gotten lost? Had he fallen in the lake and drowned? I searched near the stone village. What was this? A wall had been knocked over. And along another part of the ledge, blocks of stone had been piled high. My eye traveled upward, and I could see where a person could grab here, step up there, all the way to a crack in the roof, an opening wide enough for a man to squeeze through. And I could see that through that hole all our hopes had flown out.
When I returned, Miss Banner was sticking her head out of the archway, calling, “Yiban, are you there?” When she saw I was alone, she cried, “Ai-ya! Has he been killed?”
I shook my head, then told her how I had broken my promise. “He’s gone to find you,” I said in a sorry voice. “This is my fault.” She did not say what I was thinking: that if Yiban had still been in that cave, all three of us could have been saved. Instead, she turned, limped to the other side of the archway, and searched for him in the night. I stood behind her, my heart in shreds. The sky was orange, the wind tasted of ash. And now we could see small dots of light moving through the valley below, the lanterns of soldiers, bobbing like fireflies. Death was coming, we knew this, and it was terrible to wait. But Miss Banner did not cry. She said, “Miss Moo, where will you go? Which place after death? Your heaven or mine?”
What a peculiar question. As if I could decide. Didn’t the gods choose for us? But I did not want to argue, on this, our last day. So I simply said, “Wherever Zeng and Lao Lu have gone, that’s where I’ll go too.”
“That would be your heaven, then.” We were quiet for a few moments. “Where you are going, Miss Moo, do you have to be Chinese? Would they allow me in?”
This question was even stranger than the last! “I don’t know. I have never talked to anyone who has been there and back. But I think if you speak Chinese, maybe this is enough. Yes, I’m sure of it.”
“And Yiban, since he is half-and-half, where would he go? If we choose the opposite—”
Ah, now I understood all her questions. I wanted to comfort her. So I told her the last lie: “Come, Miss Banner. Come with me. Yiban already told me. If he dies, he will meet you again, in the World of Yin.”
She believed me, because I was her loyal friend. “Please take my hand, Miss Moo,” she said. “Don’t let go until we arrive.”
And together we waited, both happy and sad, scared to death until we died.
22
WHEN LIGHT BALANCES WITH DARK
B
y the time Kwan finishes talking, the pinpricks of stars have dulled against the lightening sky. I stand at the ridge, searching among the bushy shadows for movement of any kind.
“You remember how we die?” Kwan asks from behind.
I shake my head, but then recall what I always thought was a dream: spears flashing by firelight, the grains of the stone wall. Once again, I can see it, feel it, the chest-tightening dread. I can hear the snorting of horses, their hooves stamping impatiently as a rough rope falls upon my shoulder blades, then scratches around my neck. I’m gulping air, the vein in my neck is pumping hard. Someone is squeezing my hand—Kwan, but I am surprised to see she is younger and has a patch over one eye. I’m about to say don’t let go, when the words are jerked from my mouth, and I soar into the sky. I feel a snap, and my fears fall back to earth as I continue to rush through the air. No pain! How wonderful to be released! And yet I’m not, not entirely. For there is Kwan, still holding tight on to my hand.
She squeezes it again. “You remember, ah?”
“I think we were hanged.” My lips are sluggish in the morning chill.
Kwan frowns. “Hang? Hmm. Don’t think so. Back then, Manchu soldier don’t hang people. Take too much trouble. Also, no tree.”
I’m strangely disappointed to be told I’m wrong. “Okay, so how’d it happen?”
She shrugs. “Don’t know. That’s why ask you.”
“What!
You
don’t remember how we died?”
“Happen so fast! One minute stand here, next minute wake up there. Long time already gone by. By time I realize, I already dead. Same like when I gone hospital, got electric shock. I wake up, Hey, where am I? Who knows, last lifetime maybe lightning come down, send you me fast to other world. Ghost Merchant think he die same way.
Pao!
Gone! Only two feet leave behind.”
I laugh. “Shit! I can’t believe you told me this whole story, and you don’t know the ending?”
Kwan blinks. “Ending? You die, that’s not end story. That only mean story not finish. . . . Hey, look! Sun almost come up.” She stretches her legs and arms. “We go find Simon now. Bring flashlight, blanket too.” She plows ahead, sure of the way back. I know where we are headed: the cave, where Yiban promised he would remain, where I hope Simon might have gone.
We hike along the crumbly ridge, gingerly testing each foothold before bearing down with our full weight. My cheeks sting as warmth floods them. At last I’ll see this damn cave that is both curse and hope. And what will we find? Simon, shivering but alive? Or Yiban, forever waiting for Miss Banner? While thinking this, I trip on a shifting pile of scree and land on my rear.
“Careful!” Kwan cries.
“Why do people say careful after it’s too late?” I pick myself up.
“Not too late. Next time, maybe you don’t fall. Here, take hand.”
“I’m fine.” I flex my leg. “See. No broken bone.” We continue climbing, Kwan looking back at me every few seconds. Soon I come upon a cave. I peer in, search for signs of former life, prehistoric or more recently departed. “Say, Kwan, what became of Yiban and the people from Changmian?”
“I was already dead,” she answers in Chinese, “so I don’t know for sure. What I know comes from gossip I heard during this lifetime. So who knows what’s true? People from other villages always added a bit of their own exaggeration and let the rumors trickle down the mountain like a roof leak. At the bottom, everybody’s hearsay turned into one ghost story, and from there it spread throughout the province that Changmian was cursed.”
“And—what’s the story?”
“Ah, wait a little, let me catch my breath!” She sits on top of a flat boulder, huffing. “The story is this. People say that when the Manchu soldiers came, they heard people crying in the caves. ‘Come out!’ they ordered. No one did—would you? So the soldiers gathered dried twigs and dead bushes, then placed them near the mouths of those caves. When the fires started, the voices in the caves began to scream. All at once, the caves breathed a huge groan, then vomited a black river of bats. The sky was thick with the flying creatures, so many it was as though the ravine had been darkened by an umbrella. They fanned the fire, and then the whole valley burst into flame. The archway, the ridge— everywhere was surrounded by a burning wall. Two or three soldiers on horses got away, but the rest could not. One week later, when another troop came to Changmian, they found no one, either dead or alive. The village was empty, so was the Ghost Merchant’s House, no bodies. And in the ravine, where the soldiers had gone, there was nothing but ash and the stone pilings of hundreds of graves.” Kwan stands up. “Let’s keep walking.” And she’s off.
I hurry after her. “The villagers died?”
“Maybe, maybe not. One month later, when a traveler from Jintian passed through Changmian, he found the village full of life on a busy market day. Dogs were lying in the gutter, people were arguing, children were toddling behind their mothers, as if life there had passed from one day to the next without any interruption. ‘Hey,’ the traveler said to the village elder, ‘what happened when the soldiers marched into Changmian?’ And the elder wrinkled his face and said, ‘Soldiers? I have no memory of soldiers coming here.’ So the traveler said, ‘What about that mansion there? It’s been blackened by fire.’ And the villagers said, ‘Oh, that. Last month, the Ghost Merchant came back and threw a banquet for us. One of the ghost chickens roasting on the stove flew up to the roof and set the eaves on fire.’ By the time the traveler returned to Jintian, there was a pathway of people, from the top of the mountain to the bottom, all saying that Changmian was a village of ghosts. . . . What? Why are you laughing?”
“I think Changmian became a village of liars. They
let
people think they were ghosts. Less trouble than going to the caves during future wars.”
Kwan slaps her hands together. “What a smart girl. You’re right. Big Ma told me a story once about an outsider who asked a young man from our village, ‘Hey, are you a ghost?’ The man frowned and swept out his arm toward an ungroomed field of rocks: ‘Tell me, could a ghost have grown such a fine crop of rice?’ The outsider should have realized the man was fooling him. A real ghost wouldn’t brag about rice. He’d lie and say peaches instead! Ah?”
Kwan waits for me to acknowledge the logic of this. “Makes sense to me,” I lie in the best Changmian tradition.
She goes on: “After a while, I think the village grew tired of everyone thinking they were ghosts. No one wanted to do business in Changmian. No one wanted their sons or daughters to marry into Changmian families. So later they told people, ‘No, we’re not ghosts, of course not. But there’s a hermit who lives in a cave two mountain ridges over. He might be a ghost, or perhaps an immortal. He has long hair and a beard like one. I’ve never seen him myself. But I heard he appears only at dawn and dusk, when light balances with dark. He walks among the graves, looking for a woman who died. And not knowing which grave is hers, he tends them all.”
“Were they talking about . . . Yiban?” I hold my breath.
Kwan nods. “Maybe this story started when Yiban was still alive, waiting for Miss Banner. But when I was six years old—this was shortly after I drowned—I saw him with my yin eyes, among the graves. By then, he really was a ghost. I was in this same ravine, gathering dried twigs for fuel. At the half-hour when the sun goes down, I heard two men arguing. I wandered among the graves and found them stacking rocks. ‘Old uncles,’ I said to be polite, ‘what are you doing?’
“The bald one was very bad-tempered. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘Use your eyes, now that you have two. What do you think we’re doing?’ The longhaired man was more polite. ‘See here, little girl,’ he said. He held up a stone shaped like the head of an ax. ‘Between life and death, there is a place where one can balance the impossible. We’re searching for that point.’ He placed the stone carefully on top of another one. But they both fell and struck the bald man on the foot.
“ ‘Fuck!’ cursed the bald man. ‘You nearly chopped off my leg. Take your time. The right place isn’t in your hands, you fool. Use your whole body and mind to find it.’ ”
“That was Lao Lu?”
She grins. “Dead over a hundred years and still cursing! I found out that Lao Lu and Yiban were stuck, unable to go to the next world, because they had too many future regrets.”
“How can you have a
future
regret? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No? You think to yourself, If I do this, then this will happen, then I will feel this way, so I shouldn’t do it. You’re stuck. Like Lao Lu. He was sorry he made Pastor believe he had killed Cape and the soldiers. To teach himself a lesson, he decided he would become Pastor’s wife in the next lifetime. But whenever he thought about his future—that he would have to listen to Amen this and Amen that, every Sunday—he would start cursing again. How can he become a pastor’s wife when his foul temper is still foul? That’s why he’s stuck.”
“And Yiban?”
“When he couldn’t find Miss Banner, he thought she had died. He grew sad. Then he wondered if she had gone back to Cape. He grew even sadder. When Yiban died, he flew to heaven to find Miss Banner, and because she was not there, he believed she was with Cape in hell.”
“He never considered that she’d gone to the World of Yin?”
“See! That’s what happens when you become stuck. Do good things enter your mind? Mm-mm. Bad things? Plenty.”
“So he’s still stuck?”
“Oh no-no-no-no-no! I told him about you.”
“Told him what?”
“Where you were. When you would be born. And now he’s waiting for you again. Somewhere here.”
“Simon?”
Kwan flashes a huge smile and gestures toward a large rock. Behind it, barely visible, is a narrow opening.
“This is the cave with the lake?”
“The same.”
I poke my head in and yell: “Simon! Simon! Are you in there? Are you all right?”
Kwan grabs my shoulders and gently pulls me back. “I go in, get him,” she says in English. “Where flashlight?”
I fish it out of the day pack and click it on. “Shit, it must have been left on all night. The battery’s dead.”
“Let me see.” She takes the flashlight and it immediately brightens. “See? Not dead. Okay!” She presses herself into the cave and I follow.
“No-no, Libby-ah! You stay outside.”
“Why?”
“In case . . .”
“In case what?”
“Just in case! Don’t argue.” She clutches my hand so hard it hurts. “Promise, ah?”
“All right. Promise.”
She smiles. The next moment, her face bunches up into an expression of pain, and tears spill down her round cheeks.
“Kwan? What is it?”
She squeezes my hand again and blubbers in English, “Oh, Libby-ah, I so happy can finally pay you back. Now you know all my secret. Give me peace.” She throws her arms around me.
I’m flustered. I’ve always felt awkward with Kwan’s emotional outpourings. “Pay me back—for what? Come on, Kwan, you don’t owe me anything.”
“Yes-yes! You my loyal friend.” She’s sniffling. “For me, you go Yin World, because I tell you, Sure-sure, Yiban follow you there. But no, he go heaven, you not there. . . . So you see, because me, you lost each other. That’s why I so happy first time I meet Simon. Then I know, ah, at last!—”
I back away. My head is buzzing. “Kwan, that night you met Simon, do you remember talking to his friend Elza?”
She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “Elza? . . . Ah! Yes-yes! Elsie. I remember. Nice girl. Polish-Jewish. Drown after lunch.”
“What she said, that Simon should forget about her—did you make that up? Didn’t she say something else?”
Kwan frowns. “Forget her? She say that?”
“You said she did.”
“Ah! I remember now. Not ‘forget.’
Forgive.
She want him forgive her. She done something make him feel guilty. He think his fault she die. She say no, her fault, no problem, don’t worry. Something like that.”
“But didn’t she tell him to wait for her? That she was coming back?”
“Why you think this?”
“Because I saw her! I saw her with those secret senses you always talk about. She was begging Simon to see her, to know what she was feeling. I saw—”
“Tst! Tst!” Kwan puts her hand on my shoulder. “Libby-ah, Libby-ah! This not secret sense. This you own sense doubt. Sense worry. This nonsense! You see you own ghost self begging Simon, Please hear me, see me, love me. . . . Elsie not saying that. Two lifetime ago, you her daughter. Why she want you have misery life? No! She
help
you. . . .”
I listen, stunned. Elza was my mother? Whether that was true or not, I feel lighthearted, giddy, a needless load of resentment removed, and with it a garbage pile of fears and doubts.
“All this time you think she chasing you? Mm-mm. You chase youself! Simon know this too.” She kisses my cheek. “I go find him now, let him tell you hisself.” I watch her squeeze into the cave.
“Kwan?”
She turns around. “Ah!”
“Promise you won’t get lost. You’ll come back.”
“Yes, promise-promise! Course.” She is lowering herself into the next chamber. “Don’t worry.” Her voice returns, deep and resonant. “I find Simon, be back soon. You wait for us. . . .” She trails off.
I wrap the space blanket around my shoulders and sit, leaning against the boulder that hid the entrance to the cave. Hope, nothing wrong with that. I scan the sky. Still gray. Is it going to rain again? And with that single unhappy possibility, bleakness and common sense take over. Did I become hypnotized while listening to Kwan’s story? Am I as delusional as she is? How could I let my sister go into the cave by herself? I scramble to my feet and stick my head into the entrance. “Kwan! Come back!” I crawl into the mouth of the dark chamber. “Kwan! Kwan! Goddamnit, Kwan, answer me!” I venture forward, bump my head against the low ceiling, curse, then holler again. A few steps later, the light tapers, and at the next turn disappears. It’s as if a thick blanket had been thrown over my eyes. I don’t panic. I’ve worked in darkrooms half my life. But in here, I don’t know the boundaries of the dark. The blackness is like a magnet drawing me in. I backtrack toward the cave opening, but I’m disoriented, with no sense of direction, not in or out, nor up or down. I shout for Kwan. My voice is growing hoarse, and I’m gasping for breath. Has all the air been sucked out of the cave?