Binu and the Great Wall of China (21 page)

Binu was bundled into the crowd, where she stepped on someone’s toes. She was caught up in a frenzied mob; people pushed her from behind and elbowed her from in front. The faces on everyone – men and women, young and old – burned red from the thrill of plundering; their breath was fast and shallow, their eyes shone brightly. One person choked on tears as he vowed to loot everything in Five-Grain City. He would burn down the city and kill everyone; no one would survive.

Binu followed some boys into Used Clothes Street. Stumbling as if walking in her sleep, she was different from the other, more excited looters. When she reached a corner, she fixed her gaze on a clothes stand, her eyes
full of expectation and shame. The woman who sold used winter robes was stunned by the disaster that was unfolding. Madly waving a forked pole, she wailed as she tried to protect her stock. The boys, with the help of older folk, snatched the pole away from her and pushed her down on a hemp sack, where she was ordered not to resist.

‘Come and get it,’ a boy called out to the others. ‘It’ll be cold soon, so concentrate on the warm clothes.’

The clothes on display and the pile of shoes, hats and socks disappeared in a flash. Everything but a single black robe with green piping that had fallen behind the hemp sack. Binu stepped away from the looters and, seeing that no one was watching, bent over to pick up the robe. But too late. Someone else had grabbed a corner; it was the clothes seller, who had somehow escaped from the boys and freed one hand to clutch Binu. She stared at Binu with angry eyes. Binu could not be sure if the woman recognized her as the prisoner in the cage; but she easily spotted Binu’s poverty.

‘The world has been turned upside down!’ she screamed. ‘People have taken to stealing used clothes! The poor robbing the poor. Well, everyone will be poor again in the next life.’ Tears streamed down her face as she railed against heaven and earth, but held on tightly
to Binu, as if prepared to die with her. She spat on her captive.

When Binu wiped the spittle from her face, tears welled up in her eyes as she said to the woman, ‘Big Sister, don’t hold me like that. Let me go.’

‘I will not let you go,’ the woman screamed. ‘I’ll die first, unless you release the robe.’

Binu stood there not knowing what to do, when she heard two boys say to her as they pushed the woman down again.

‘Are you demented? The forked pole is there under your foot. Pick it up and hit her. She’ll let go then.’

Still gripping the robe, Binu looked down at the pole and hesitated briefly before picking it up and hitting the woman’s hand with it. But the woman was relentless.

‘You’re that prisoner!’ she shouted. ‘You escaped from the cage, but instead of taking your anger out on the officials, you come here to beat me. You don’t know how to rob the rich, so you come here to steal used clothes from me. You’re worse than dogs and pigs, all of you!’

Binu was shocked by the venom in the woman’s words.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ someone said from behind. ‘Beat her.’

So Binu hit the hand again. This time it hurt so much
that the woman began to wail, but still she wouldn’t let go. Now she remembered Binu’s story.

‘You’re taking my winter robe for your husband. Well, it’s no use. Your husband died at Great Swallow Mountain. He’s dead, dead. He doesn’t need a winter robe any more.’

The curse made Binu so furious that she gave the woman’s hand a vicious whack with the pole, forcing her to let go. But she didn’t stop there; she hit her over and over until one of the boys told her to stop.

‘She’s let go of the robe. Take it and leave.’

Throwing the pole away, Binu ran out onto the street with the robe; now she was crying. After a few steps, she stopped to look back at the woman with remorse in her tearful eyes. Then she ran to the other side of the street, where she stopped and looked back at the boys as if to express gratitude. But it was not the sort of gratitude that can be spoken, so in the end she thanked no one. She simply ran off.

The boys watched as Binu disappeared around the corner of Used Clothes Street. They were fortunate enough to hear the last weeping sound she left in the street, but they could not have cared less. They had never had anything good to say about tears. What was the point of crying?

‘Rain moistens the land,’ the boys said. ‘The river provides for people, the water in ditches nourishes weeds, and the water in ponds makes fish and shrimps grow big. Only human tears are useless; they are the most worthless things in the world.’

The North

Travellers inundated the public road like a flood and divided off in two directions outside Five-Grain City. One group, comprising fancy carriages and magnificent horses, surged towards the clean south, the other, consisting mainly of refugees, headed north like migrating crows.

They passed the beached golden-turret boat, whose gigantic body had now turned into a pile of oddly shaped wooden planks that littered the roadside. The King’s entourage had finally left with his corpse and the priceless Nine Dragon golden mast; the boat looked like a fat, tasty fish after a feast, only its bones left behind. Along with the disassembling of the golden-turret boat went the people’s fantasy about a journey on the canal. Most of the refugees had never seen a boat and were convinced that it ought to have wheels. Others believed that it had been made in the image of a fish, so it must have a mouth, fins and scales. They actually did discover some painted fish scales on the sides, and a group of people who had gathered around the boat were using
hammers to chip them away. They were tight-lipped about what they were doing, but a voluble young boy stopped people on the road and persuaded them to help with the work, telling them there was gold in the paint.

A madman excitedly ran into the oat field, pointed a twig at a pile of excrement and shouted at the flow of traffic on the road, ‘Come and take a look. The King’s shit. Here’s the King’s shit.’

The riot at Five-Grain City had bestowed two pieces of property on Binu: a man’s black robe with green piping and an unripe gourd that she had picked up somewhere. She put the loose man’s robe over her own and tied the gourd to her sash. Then she pulled her hair into a topknot and gathered the loose strands together with a blue ribbon, which made her look like a willow swaying in the wind-blown sand. Some people caught up with that willowy figure and, on closer inspection, realized that she was the caged prisoner.

‘What a lucky woman,’ they said. ‘Only yesterday she was waiting to be beheaded, and now she’s travelling with us.’

Seeing the gourd at her waist, a child asked for some water to drink. Binu shook the gourd to show that it was empty. ‘My gourd isn’t for carrying water,’ she said. ‘It will contain my soul if I should die on the road.’

‘The sword was poised over your neck,’ they said, ‘yet you didn’t die. Then, thanks to the riot, you have escaped from the cage. But instead of thanking people for saving your life, you keep travelling alone.’ A fake hunchback in the crowd asked, ‘Where are you going, anyway?’

‘To Great Swallow Mountain. I’m taking winter clothes to my husband. Do you know how far it is from here?’

‘Not too far, just another ninety li or so, but you may never get there stumbling along. Take a look at yourself in the ditch water. You are not well. You ought to find a village and rest for a while. My home village is only ten li from here.’

‘I cannot rest,’ she said. ‘The weather will turn cold any day now, and I must deliver this winter robe to Qiliang before the first snowfall.’

‘Your Qiliang? Who knows if he’s a man or a ghost now? Seven out of ten people who went to build the wall are dead, and the remaining three are coughing up blood. The colder it gets, the more they cough. They’ve all nearly coughed themselves to death!’

‘Big Brother, spit three times on the ground. Hurry. You mustn’t curse like that.’ Binu looked daggers at him. ‘My Qiliang is alive and well. He’s used to hard work so he won’t get tired or cough up blood.’

‘Fine, your Qiliang is a man of steel. Others cough up blood but not him.’ The hunchback spat three times, but reached out to grab her shoulder. ‘What an ungrateful woman! I was worried about you. In bad times like this, who can be bothered about the bonds between husband and wife? Many Great Swallow Mountain widows went off with someone else. Only a foolish woman like you would struggle against this wind-blown sand to deliver winter clothes.’

The man’s glibness failed to disguise his lewd intentions. Binu shrugged off his hand and stood to the side, where she waited until he walked away unhappily. An old man turned and gave her an approving smile. ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t go with him. He’s in the business of tricking and selling women; he was going to sell you to be the wife of a madman.’

Speechless, Binu followed the old man for a while. ‘Old Uncle,’ she said, ‘do you know if they’ll still be building the Great Wall now that the King is dead?’

‘Why not? The old King may be dead, but there’s a new King on the throne. All kings want to build walls.’

‘Old Uncle, I have another question. Why are so many people talking about coughing up blood? I don’t believe it. If everyone coughed up blood and their health was ruined, who would build the Great Wall?’

‘Those who cough up blood, of course. When I was young, I helped build Dragon Pot Pass and I coughed up plenty of blood on the mountain. You’ve never been there, have you? You’d know what I mean if you had. When the sun shines on the walls, the rocks turn red, blood red, which is why we call it Bloody Pot Pass.’ He chattered away until he noticed Binu’s ashen face and stopped to try to comfort her. ‘Coughing up blood isn’t so bad; poor people have lots of blood. Didn’t I live to come down from Dragon Pot Mountain? There’s a trick to hard work: those who know it hide their strength in such a way that the foreman can’t tell, but those who don’t know it fail to conserve their energy. Everyone who coughed up blood and died did not know how to conserve energy. Is your husband the honest type?’

‘Yes, he is. My husband Qiliang is the most honest of all the honest men at the base of North Mountain.’ Binu was overcome by near despair and fell to her knees, giving the old man an opportunity to pick up speed as if ridding himself of a burden. He muttered to himself as he walked away, ‘Who told you to marry an honest man? Things don’t turn out well for honest men.’

The old man may have had weak legs, but he walked faster than Binu; he quickly disappeared into the sandy wind, plunging her into a nightmare of despair. Standing
on the road, she found she could not move. Another group of people emerged from the airborne sand, all women, with green or pink scarves covering their faces. They walked in single file, with the younger ones leading and the older ones bringing up the rear. What was puzzling was that each of them was carrying a large rock in her arms. When they saw Binu standing motionless in the middle of the road, they said, ‘Don’t just stand there. In such a strong wind, you need to keep moving if you’re going to get somewhere. If not, then move out of the way.’

Binu stepped aside, nearly knocking the rock out of a woman’s arms. The woman was about to scream at her, but recognized her face in spite of the blowing sand.

‘Aren’t you the woman from the cage? Everyone says you’re delivering winter clothes to Great Swallow Mountain. Why are you standing here? Was your husband hit by falling rocks?’

Binu began to sob. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘My husband Qiliang doesn’t know to conserve his energy when he works, so he must be coughing up blood.’

‘He’s the one coughing up blood,’ said the woman, ‘not you. So why stand here like an idiot?’

‘All my internal organs ache when he coughs up blood, and I cannot take another step.’

‘It’s just a little blood,’ said the woman nonchalantly. ‘When a man is up on Great Swallow Mountain, he can’t worry about blood. The most important thing is to stay alive. All the men from our River Village are there too. See how many of us got together to go to Great Swallow Mountain?’

Binu’s eyes lit up, but quickly darkened. ‘That’s wonderful for your village. But I am the only woman from Peach Village who was willing to go.’ She reached out to tug at the sash on the woman’s robe. ‘Big Sister, please tell me how I can keep my husband alive.’

‘Go and get a rock,’ said the woman. ‘You can’t go there empty-handed. People along the way know how you feel, but the Mountain Deity doesn’t. Get a rock and walk the sixty-six li to give it to the Mountain Deity at Great Swallow Mountain. He’ll see you and will protect your husband, who then won’t have to worry about a thing, even if the mountain crumbles and the earth splits open. No rocks will fly at your husband’s head.’

From Peach Village to River Village, it was the first time Binu had encountered travellers on their way to Great Swallow Mountain. But the women would not let her join them, either because they didn’t want a woman who had been imprisoned with them, or because they
were afraid she might become a burden. By the time Binu had found a rock and returned to the road, the River Village women had disappeared in the sandy wind. Cradling her rock, Binu ran after them, but only briefly. She knew they could not have got far, but she could not see the pink or green scarves. The wind had sent off the last few northbound travellers, leaving her behind on the sandy road. Weak sunlight filtered through the sand to cast her shadow on the road, a lean shadow, like water that can flow nowhere. It looked like the shadow of the last person on earth.

Cradling the rock, Binu began heading north alone, again. The rock kept getting heavier, as if she were carrying a whole mountain. Rocks of various sizes littered the roadside, and she thought she should pick up a smaller, lighter one until she recalled the River Village woman’s words that the Deity at Great Swallow Mountain could see the rock in her arms. The wind was like a galloping horse that had broken free of its reins and, now caught and pulled back by the sun, had stopped its sandy howl. Pale golden sunlight returned, revealing the savage, vast outline of the plain. In the distance, the greyish shadow of a mountain blocked out half the sky. When Binu saw it, she stopped and gazed in happiness at Great Swallow Mountain. The Mountain Deity must
be hiding in a crevice, watching her. She had not yet reached Great Swallow Mountain, and she wondered why the rock in her arms could not contain itself any longer. Warmed by her arms, it fell like a landslide and crashed at her feet.