to arrange and explain matters about marriage, death, birth and sex. When these wild flowers are encountered in the mountains they may be admired but not plucked. They said once there were three blood brothers who scoffed at this. They came upon a zhuhuapo on a mountain road and had a wicked idea. Couldn’t we three brothers deal with one woman? They talked it over, then with a shout rushed up and dragged the zhuhuapo off to a cave. She was a woman after all and couldn’t get away from these three big fellows. After the two older ones had finished, it came to the youngest brother’s turn. The zhuhuapo pleaded with him — good and evil bring good and evil retribution, you’re young, don’t copy their wicked behaviour. If you listen to me and let me escape I’ll tell you a secret recipe which you will find useful later on. When you’ve made enough money you will be able to marry a young woman and enjoy a happy life. The lad wasn’t sure if he believed her or not but he was young and, distressed at seeing the woman in such a wretched state, he let her go.
Did you rape her or did you also let her go? she asks.
You say you got up and started to walk away but couldn’t resist taking another look and saw the other side of her face. She had a red camellia in her hair. Light flashed from the tips of her eyebrows and the corners of her lips, and suddenly it was as if a bolt of lightning had lit up the dark mountain and valley. Your heart was on fire and started to pound, and you immediately realized you had run into a zhuhuapo. She was sitting adroitly there right in front of you, her firm breasts protruding under her light blue fine-weave cotton jacket. She had in the crook of her arm a bamboo basket covered with a new floral hand towel and the paper flowers pasted on her new blue cotton shoes stood out as clearly as papercut silhouettes on a window.
Come here! She beckons.
She is sitting on a rock holding her high-heel shoes in her hands and carefully testing the round pebbles with a bare foot. Her white toes wriggling in the clear stream are like plump little grubs. You don’t know how it began but suddenly you are pressing her head against the green undergrowth on the bank. She sits up and you find the hook to her bra at the back and her perfect round white breasts glow in the noon sun. You see her stiff” pink nipples and the fine blue veins below them. She calls out softly as her feet slide into the water. A black coloured bird with white toes, a shrike, is standing in the middle of the stream on a grey-brown rock. The rock is perfectly round just like a woman’s breast. The sides of the rock reflect the rippling light of the water. Both of you slide into the water. She’s upset about her skirt getting wet, not about herself, and her moist eyes sparkle like the sun’s rays reflected in the stream. You have finally captured her, a stubborn struggling wild animal, and she suddenly turns docile in your arms and begins to silently weep.
The black shrike with white toes looks from one side to the other, sticking up its tail as its waxy red beak moves up and down. As soon as you approach, it flies off, skimming the water’s surface and settling on a rock ahead. It turns to look back defiantly at you, nodding its head and wagging its tail. It challenges you to approach and then flies off, but not far, and is again waiting there for you, chirping in a quiet, shrill voice. This black spirit, it’s her.
Who?
Her ghost.
Who is she?
You say she’s dead. Those bastards took her out at night for a swim in the river. When they got back they said she was missing. It was all lies but this was their story. They even said there could be an autopsy and if we didn’t believe them, a forensic expert could be called in. Her parents wouldn’t agree to an autopsy, they couldn’t take it. When their daughter died she was just sixteen. At the time you were younger than her but you knew this had all been planned. You knew they had got her to go out with them at night before, baled her up under the bridge pylons, took turns on her then later met to swap stories about their experiences. They laughed at you for being stupid and not having a go at tasting and feeling her. They had planned to get her. More than once you heard them talking dirty and mentioning her by name. You told her on the quiet she should be careful about going out with them at night, and she told you she was terrified of them. But she didn’t dare refuse and went with them. She was frightened but weren’t you also afraid? You coward! Those bastards harmed her but didn’t dare own up to it. But you didn’t dare expose them and for many years she has remained in your heart like a nightmare. Her wronged ghost will give you no peace, and appears in various manifestations, but how she looked as she emerged from under the bridge pylons that time remains unchanged. She is always in front of you, this chirping black spirit, this shrike with white toes and a red beak. You pull on chaste fronds and grab at willow roots in the cracks of the rocks to clamber ashore.
She calls out.
What’s up?
I’ve sprained my ankle.
You can’t go climbing mountains in high heels.
I hadn’t planned on climbing mountains.
But now that you’re in the mountains, be ready to suffer.
Outside the upstairs widow of the old house in a twisting narrow lane are rooftops sloping at all angles, running in all directions, all adjoining and stretching into the distance as far as the eye can see. Shoes are airing in the sun on the roof-tiles below the window of a little apartment poking up between two roof ridges. The room has a carved timber bed with a mosquito net and a red wooden wardrobe with a round mirror; a cane chair is next to the window and there is a bench by the door. She gets me to sit on the narrow bench. There is nowhere to move in the small room. I met her a couple of nights ago at the home of a journalist friend and we were all smoking, drinking and chatting. She wasn’t put off when it came to crude jokes and in this small mountain town, she seemed to be quite up to date. When we later discussed my request, my friend said, you’ll need a woman to take you there. She agreed straightaway and has now brought me here.
She whispers into my ear in the local dialect, quickly alerting me. “When she arrives you must ask for incense. You must ask for incense and also kneel and prostrate yourself three times. This ritual must be observed.” Her voice and movements have reverted completely to that of the local women. Squashed next to her on this narrow bench, I suddenly feel quite uncomfortable. In this small county town where everyone knows everyone else couples come to places like this for illicit sex if they’re having an affair. I detect the acrid smell of preserved vegetables. Yet the room is immaculate, the floorboards in the middle of the room have been scrubbed so clean that the original colour of the timber can be seen and the wallpaper behind the door is spotless. There isn’t the space here for an urn to preserve vegetables.
Her hair brushes against my face, as she says in my ear, “She’s here.”
A fat, barely middle-aged woman comes in, followed by an old woman. The fat woman takes off her apron and straightens her dress which has faded from washing but is clean. She has just finished cooking downstairs. The slight and gaunt old woman who follows her into the room nods to me.
My friend immediately reminds me, “Go with her.”
I get to my feet and follow her to the side of the stairs where she opens an inconspicuous little door and goes in. It is a tiny room where there is a table with an incense altar dedicated to the two Daoist deities, the Venerable Lord Superior and the Great Emperor of Light, and to the bodhisattva Guanyin. Below the incense altar are offerings of cakes, fruit, water and liquor. On the wooden walls hang red banners with black borders and jagged yellow pennants, all bearing words to invoke good fortune and to dispel misfortune. Sunlight streams in through a transparent roof-tile and smoke from a single
