From the Old Country: Stories and Sketches of China and Taiwan

I picked a few rambling roses, a few stems of bachelor’s buttons, and one of goldencup¹ to make a bouquet. These are all flowers that fade quickly, but they would just have to do: there was nothing better in the garden. I added a spray of pine. It seemed only yesterday that Li’er had helped me plant these flowers; I never thought that one day—today—I would be using them to garland his grave.

Li’er was our second son. Our eldest was weak and sickly from birth; Li’er was the strong and bright one, bursting with life and energy like a lion cub, always itching to bound out onto the savanna of life. My wife and I both placed our greatest hopes on him. His death brought home to us the cruelty of the universe and the hopelessness of life. Even now we had not yet recovered from the blow: the physical and mental wounds, the shock and enfeeblement. At the time my wife had fainted with grief and needed first aid treatment before she came round again.

Afterward we avoided mentioning Li’er and anything to do with him. We didn’t touch any of the drawers that held things of his. We wanted the painful memories to go to sleep in the deepest parts of our consciousness, never to be woken. Sometimes in the middle of the night both of us would wake from dreams: my wife would stuff the quilt in her mouth and softly sob; on the other side of the bed, I too would be silently weeping. Each of us knew why the other was crying, but neither tried to comfort the other. I was afraid that any words of comfort might stir the name and the things that we both tabooed. That would only make the pain worse, and that was what we most feared. Side by side, we wordlessly shed tears, and when we had cried enough, wordlessly we each sank back into deep sleep.

Today was the Hundredth Day since our son’s death; since his burial we had not been back to the grave except on the Seventh Day. Now I wanted to go and take a look. I wanted to know if the grave was all right. The whole of spring had passed, so was the grave all covered in grasses? I didn’t say anything to my wife, nor did I know if she realized what day it was. This morning all I told her was that I was going to take Ying’er to the village for a haircut.

Having cut the flowers, I tied them in a bunch, got Ying’er’s clothes changed, picked up the spirit money and incense, locked up the house, and led Ying’er off in the direction of the village.

It was late spring, early summer; the wind was warm and the sun shone beautifully. Wildflowers were growing all along the path: yellow ones, white ones, red, purple …; butterflies and bees were flying all around, while skylarks sang in the sky.

We walked at Ying’er’s toddler’s pace. She had been very happy to hear I was taking her to see her big brother, and that the flowers were for him. All along the way she pestered me with questions I had no way of answering, and kept asking to be allowed to hold the bouquet. Although she couldn’t understand what I meant by “going to see Li’er” she cocked her head and looked up at me through her eyelashes as she pondered the words, seeking to establish a concrete image of where her brother might be found. She was really still too small to try to understand such mysterious matters, but that didn’t stand in the way of her enthusiasm. She kept saying to herself, “I’m going to see Li’er, I’m going to see Li’er.”

Ying’er was not yet three years old. Li’er had always been the one to play with her or to carry her places on his back. One might almost say it was Li’er who brought her up, because apart from breastfeeding, their mother hardly had to bother with her. When Li’er died it fell to me to take charge of Ying’er, but it was clear that I fell short of Li’er’s standards of care: nowadays she seemed to spend most of the time crying. This was yet another thing that kept cropping up, suddenly reminding us of Li’er with a stab of pain to the heart.

The cemetery was about a hundred meters off the road to the village, on a little ridge coming down from the hills. Even more wildflowers were growing here, while the guavas had already formed fruits as big as fingertips and the wild strawberries were as big as thumbs and already ripe. Both kinds of fruit were growing everywhere amid the tombs that were dotted high and low all over the ridge. Along the path I picked lots of wild strawberries for Ying’er. She was so happy she kept waving her arms in the air.

Li’er’s grave lay low on the ridge beside a thorny hedge. Behind the hedge was a garden; the path led along the edge of the ridge all the way to the house beyond the garden. As we walked up to the hedge suddenly a large dog came through it with something in its mouth. I instantly recognized the thing as a human bone; it seemed like a piece of shoulder blade. I immediately felt my legs turn to jelly and cold sweat break out on my brow. I hurried over to my dead son’s grave. Oh, thank heavens! The grave was intact and unharmed, covered all over with grass. I have no way of expressing in writing how glad and comforted I felt to see this. But how strange! In front of the grave was a spent incense stick and a pile of black paper ashes. I could see that both incense and paper had only just been burned. I could also see that the grass and shrubs around the grave seemed to have been tidied up. Silently observing all this, I realized what it meant.

I placed my bouquet on top of the grave mound, got out the incense, and lit it. Then I told Ying’er to pay her respects to her brother—to bow to the grave. I told her that this was where her brother was. Once more she looked up at me from under her eyelashes, and then she stared hard at the grave, but the upshot was that her face only seemed to show more confusion. Holding the incense stick, she solemnly bowed several times, then performed a kowtow. I stuck the incense sticks in the earth, then opened the packs of spirit money and burned them. No other person could be seen anywhere on the ridge; there was only the sough of the wind, the cries of birds, and the chirruping of insects, only the bleak scattered grave mounds and the burgeoning grasses, and the sun shining coldly from above. Bleak desolation shrouded the cemetery, and deep sorrow overwhelmed my heart.

I told Ying’er to perform another kowtow as a goodbye to her brother, and then I led her out of the cemetery to the village for her haircut. When we got home it was already past eleven. My wife was back, and was sitting alone thinking. As I entered she looked up; her face was solemn, and her eyes confused. I could see that her heart was still troubled by what she had been thinking about.

“Ma!” Ying’er dived into her mother’s open arms. “Me and Pa went to see Li’er,” she reported. “I had lots of strawzers.”

My wife glanced up at me again; silently, wordlessly, we looked at one another. She appeared somewhat uneasy. Each of us realized that we had discovered the other’s secret worries, and each of us realized that the other knew that we knew it all, but we said nothing. All of this took only a moment; in the next instant a dark cloud of regret and sorrow swept over that lean face of hers. She gathered Ying’er to her bosom, pressing her own cheek to the top of the child’s head, and large teardrops began to fall onto Ying’er’s hair.

“There’s lots of strawzers at Li’er’s place,” Ying’er was saying proudly. “The strawzers there are really big. Pa picked lots for me; they’re lovely.”

More tears fell from my wife’s eyes.

I turned and went into the bedroom. I felt more listless and empty than I had ever felt.

Neither of us tried to comfort the other. For years afterward we would be wary of our mouths or ears coming in contact with that dreaded name and everything associated with it. These things should be buried forever alongside that poor, unlucky son of ours.