out with peace of mind and can save Qiliang from worries.’
Sensibly Binu used the last remaining water in the vat, first to clean her gourd, then to wash Xiaozhuo’s hair. However badly the boy treated her, she was, nonetheless, fond of him. But she could not stand his filthy head, nor its sour stench. When she finished washing his long hair, there was not enough water left for her to wash her own, so she dipped her comb in the little water that remained; but before she had finished combing out her hair, she ran outside, hairpin in her mouth, to see what time it was. The sombre look on her face gave everyone to believe that she was planning something. Later, when her neighbours recalled her final moments in Peach Village, they remarked that her immense calm had been more memorable than her madness. They watched her hair billow out like a black cloud as she led Xiaozhuo up the slope, dripping water along the way. She was still carrying her gourd, the top half covered by a not-quite-new silk handkerchief, a red thread pendant hanging from the bottom half. Seeing the villagers’ disdainful gazes, Xiaozhuo wore a look of sheer embarrassment, but Binu held his hand tightly. ‘Madwoman!’ he shouted. ‘Where are you going to bury that gourd?’
Binu gazed up at North Mountain, where her mother and father were buried. ‘I would like to bury it next to my mother and father but, since I am married to Qiliang, I belong to him and will not be able to attend to the Jiang family gravesite.’
‘Then why gaze up at North Mountain? Let’s bury it in Qiliang’s ancestral tombs.’
‘Qiliang is an orphan, like you. But you are better off than he is, because he has no ancestral tomb in Peach Village.’
‘So, where will you go?’ cried Xiaozhuo impatiently. ‘Just find a spot anywhere. After all, you’re burying a gourd, not yourself.’
‘Burying a gourd,’ said Binu, ‘is the same as burying myself. I need to find a good spot, a place with a tree, so that the vine can climb. It may be all right to suffer above ground, but not below. The terrain on this slope is high and dry, with daily sunlight, but too many people pass by; a wicked person might come along, dig up the gourd and make ladles out of it.’
‘Then bury it lower down.’
Unsure what to do, Binu examined the slope. ‘This is no good either,’ she said. ‘It is where Sude lets his pigs feed, and if one of his rooting pigs were to dig up this gourd, that greedy Sude would take it home.’
Xiaozhuo’s patience had run out. ‘This place is no good, that place is no good, so forget about burying it,’ he said. ‘Toss it into somebody’s water vat instead.’
Binu pushed Xiaozhuo away in a fit of pique and walked the slope alone until she reached an old willow tree, where she saw the frog again. Now that Xiaozhuo was seemingly not around, it had returned, hiding timidly under the willow tree, thinking human thoughts. With the arrival of the frog, Binu once again saw the gaunt shape of the drowned mountain woman, dressed in black and wearing her straw hat. The woman was crouched under the willow tree waiting for Binu; the woman’s ghost was waiting for her. Binu was able to see the ghost, because no one knows sorrow better than sorrowful people, and she felt a deep sadness for the mountain woman. Knowing how hard it had been for a blind woman to search alone for her son, Binu had sought a companion to travel north with her. The Peach Village women had avoided Binu and her idea like the plague. Even wild geese fly north and south in flocks, and anyone setting out on a long journey is on the lookout for companions. From summer to autumn Binu had looked in vain without finding a single one. Then along came the frog, which was not her ideal companion, but which she could not drive away because it was intent on travelling with her.
‘You are too eager,’ Binu said to the frog. ‘How can I set out before I have buried my gourd? You are a frog, hopping from place to place in search of your son, and you are more fortunate than I am, because when I die I will become a gourd. If I do not bury myself, I will be left at the side of the road waiting for a passerby to find me.’
The frog kept its vigil beneath the willow tree, listening intently to Binu’s footsteps. Holding the gourd to her bosom, Binu took a turn around the willow tree. Towards the east, she saw a hillside covered with some waterlogged locust trees. Off to the west, she saw higher ground and an old juniper tree, the tips of its high branches ringed with an auspicious sunset. But someone had set loose a small herd of goats to graze there and, even if she drove them away, it was not the right spot; the villagers could find her too easily. ‘Peach Village is so big, why can I not find a place to bury my gourd?’ she cried.
Finally, she abandoned the search for the ideal burial spot of her imagination and, looking morose, turned her attention to the willow tree. ‘You’ll do,’ she said. ‘You are not a shady tree to which people pray for good fortune, and I am not blessed with wealth and status, so neither of us can afford to be choosy about the other.’ She looked at the locust trees to the east and the old juniper to the west. ‘Let the others have their pines, their cypresses and their locust trees, I don’t care. This willow is the one I want.’
The young Xiaozhuo had by then climbed the heights of North Mountain to look down at Binu as she performed her solemn, secretive burial rite for the gourd. He had rich experience in burials: he had helped his father bury his grandfather, he had helped his mother bury his father, and finally he had buried his mother all by himself. Other youngsters would be interested in a gourd burial, but not Xiaozhuo – he had become too used to burying people. Nevertheless, he followed Binu’s progress with keen interest.
Binu was crouched, busying herself beneath the willow tree, and when she stood up again, the gourd was nowhere to be seen. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Xiaozhuo trumpeted down the mountain, ‘Come and look. Binu has buried herself!’ The words were barely out of his mouth when he choked on a gust of wind, which stopped him from revealing Binu’s secret. It would be the last time he laid eyes on his aunt. Everyone, including him, had heard the prediction by the Kindling Village sorceresses that she was fated to die on the road. Xiaozhuo considered the spot beneath the willow tree a good place and thought Binu’s choice of burial site was the only wise thing she’d done. On the day before she left Peach Village, Binu buried her gourd, and so buried herself in her hometown in advance of her death.
The mountains around Bluegrass Ravine had been badly eroded by heavy human traffic, until what had once been a steep slope had been flattened out and become almost unrecognizable. The area was densely populated, and each gust of wind carried smells of fried cake and cow manure. It was one of Blue Cloud Prefecture’s border regions. About thirty li away was the legendary Blue Cloud Pass, beyond which lay Pingyang Prefecture, a seemingly boundless expanse of cultivated flatland. People said that the King’s horse-drawn carriages were speeding across that plain on a mysterious southern excursion.
Binu walked on until she spotted wheeled carts, which were drawn by donkeys and oxen, as the horses had all been consigned up north. Equipped with brass bells, they were harnessed to carts and assembled at the side of the road to wait for heavy loads. There in Bluegrass Ravine, the animals showed their diverse natures: the oxen, taken from dreary fields, loudly snorted confusion, while the donkeys, suddenly highly valued, voiced a kind of heady arrogance.
Countless box-like constructions had been put up at the side of a red clay road leading down the mountain. Binu could not tell if they had been built for royalty or wealthy gentry; it was the first time she had seen buildings like these. Flags hung from tall poles, most with a colourful word written on them. Binu could not read, so she asked one of the donkey-cart drivers what it said. Clearly he couldn’t read either, for he stood there blinking for a moment, and then hazarded a guess. With a contemptuous glance, he said, ‘Can’t read, is that it? I would say that the
