Standing quietly at the far end of time, Great-Grandmother has transcended the meaning of life. Her life encompasses an entire century of history. She is silent year-round. During that weak and quiet century, my grandfather's generation all passed away, leaving only the old lady to look down from across the generation gap at her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her eyes are white with cataracts, which allow her to look down, beyond all human limits, shrinking the vastness and boundlessness of the universe while displaying the same immemorial and profound qualities of matter itself. To this day, Great-Grandmother has maintained the customs and attitudes of the Late Qing dynasty. Great-Grandmother does not bathe. All year-round, the smells of a coffin and coffin nails hover over her. Great-Grandmother does not brush her teeth. Great-Grandmother does not believe in airplanes. Great-Grandmother does not watch television. Great-Grandmother understands nothing but her hometown dialect, not even the Mandarin radio broadcasts.
Great-Grandmother spends every morning at her toilet. She has begun every morning for the last hundred years with the same ritual-fixing her hair in the Qing-dynasty style. Afterward, she sits up straight without saying a word, spending hours measuring up whatever she first lays eyes on. The old woman's way of sizing up things is like philosophical speculation-she looks but does not see, what appears true is false, and any historical conclusion is always shrouded in the mists of ambiguity. Each winter, Great-Grandmother sits in the sunshine, which seems incapable of penetrating her and instead merely casts a shadow behind her. That is the image-carved in wood-I had of my great-grandmother from ten years ago. Ten years ago, on the morning I left to study in Beijing, I looked back at Great-Grandmother's garret. She was already up and standing at her window, time covering her cheeks with a network of wrinkles. She stood as tranquilly as a piece of antique porcelain, all the tiny cracks displaying an archaeological significance. I knew she couldn't see, but I waved to her anyway. I suspected I would never see her again, and I felt very sad. Ten years later, she was still there, as tranquil as an antique, standing at the window. This time, I was the father of a son, and I could see the ravages wrought by those ten years. Great-Grandmother didn't move, as if the only thing that had happened in the last ten years were that another layer of dust was added to the antique porcelain.
I returned home with my wife and son after receiving Father's urgent telegram. My home is situated at the far end of a long, dark alleyway in a dusty gray town. To get there, you must make five turns and pass by ten thresholds. There is a dark, dank passageway, above which sits the wooden garret where my great-grandmother lives.
The space inside Great-Grandmother's garret forms a separate universe, a dark, enigmatic corner of my home. No one is permitted to enter. I remember hearing Great-Grandmother say when I was small, "Don't even think about coming in, not unless I'm dead." In those days, my father would say, "What's all this talk of death? We won't come in; nobody is thinking of entering."
Returning home this time, I noticed a number of major changes. The place was a mess and in decay; things had been torn down and removed from the house. After making only the third turn, I saw that the neighbor on the other side of our western wall had cleared out; the only remaining traces were some bricks and a few pieces of wood. And those ancient remains formed a very modern flat composition. To one side, Great-Grandmother's garret stood all alone, looking forlorn and helpless, making one think of a wooden coffin hanging on a precipice.
In the evening when the maid was helping her down the stairs to dinner, I walked up and called loudly to her, "Great-Grandmother."
Her eyes fixed on me, and after a long pause she said, "I heard your footsteps this afternoon."
I let my wife greet Great-Grandmother. Clutching our son, she stood nervously, if not fearfully, before Great-Grandmother. For a moment, I didn't know what my son should call my great-grandmother. Since he could not speak yet, I could address her for him only as Old Ancestor. Great-Grandmother stood in front of my son for a long time. She felt around inside his diaper, then she smiled. When she smiled, it was like an irregular chink that had opened in parched ground. I knew she must have touched his little penis. She drew back her hands, spit on her fingers, and pressed them between my son's eyebrows. My son cried. Irrelevantly, Great-Grandmother shouted "Old Ancestor" at him. I thought she had made a mistake, but I was incapable of deciphering the mystery and the profundity of her universe.
Great-Grandmother said, "They've all left us." I knew she was referring to our neighbors of old. "Your great-grandfather told me that our days as neighbors were limited," she said. When Great-Grandmother spoke, her perfect mouthful of teeth shone like fossils. "When this house was built, the Chong Zhen emperor had not yet ascended the throne." When she finished speaking, she heaved a long sigh and said nothing more for the rest of the night. Piercing my ears and her silence, that long sigh was like the light of a comet falling back across the ages to the Ming dynasty.
I saw our house moving in the fluid of time, and the shore upon which the arcing waves broke was Great-Grandmother's teeth. That's really weird.
After seeing Great-Grandmother back to her garret, Father said, "You've been on the road all day, better go to bed early If there is anything to do, it can wait till tomorrow. You two sleep in your mother's and my bed." When he finished speaking, Father opened the lattice door to the east wing. I remembered that Great-Grandmother's coffin had always been stored there and that every year Father applied another coat of black lacquer tinged with red For decades, the coffin had calmly followed the revolutions of the earth around the sun with Great-Grandmother, both exchanging positions of responsibility, looking forward to each other. They had a mutual understanding that each would give the other its or her significance and eternal ending.
"Where are you going to sleep?" I asked Father.
"In your great-grandmother's coffin," said Father.
My wife gave me a nervous look. Unsure, she refrained from talking. Father quietly closed the door, and the east wing quickly became black as the giant pupil of an eye.
Once in bed, my wife said, "Why does he sleep in a coffin?"
"It doesn't matter, we're all one family. Dead or alive, we're all together."
"The living can't live with the dead, no matter what," said my wife.
To comfort her, I said, "That's the way our family does things. There's nothing unusual about sleeping in a coffin; sometimes we even fight over who gets to sleep in it. I had an older brother and an older sister who died young. Great-Grandmother wouldn't permit them to be buried outside, so we buried them under the bed."
My wife sat up immediately. "Where?"
"Under the bed." I tapped on the wooden planks of the bed with my foot, making a hollow sound. "Right under this board."
My wife's eyes shone with fear. She clutched my arm and said, "Why did your family do that?"
"It's not just our family," I said. "Every family is the same."
My wife held me tightly by the waist. "I'm scared," she said. "I'm scared to death."
I called you home for Great-Grandmother's sake."
"Is she going to die soon?" I asked.
Silently, Father shook his head. "If only that were the case," said Father. "I don't care what anyone says, all I wish is for the old lady to die."
I asked him what was the matter and how he could say such a thing.
Father lowered his head and said nothing. Father's silence reminded me of Great-Grandmother at another time.
"In another ten days or so, your great-grandmother will be one hundred years old," said Father. It looked as though Great-Grandmother had become a wooden cangue on him. Father lifted his head, looked at me, and asked, "Did you see her mouthful of teeth?"
I didn't understand Father. I couldn't figure out what he was driving at.
Father tugged at the cuff of my Western-style suit and, lowering his voice, said, "If a person lives to a hundred and still has all her teeth, she'll become a demon after she dies."
"How can that be?" I asked.
"Why shouldn't it?" asked my father.
"Who ever saw anyone become a demon?"
"Did anyone ever not see a person become a demon?"
How could that be possible? I asked myself. My back seemed to go numb and felt all prickly. I saw in Father's eyes the same look I had seen in my wife's. She was afraid of death, but my father was afraid of life.
Explosions were heard all around our house. Several dynasties were reduced to rubble and dust in the strong smell of dynamite. The state of relative rest between buildings and debris is what the history books call a dynasty. The workers had done their utmost to ensure that a building would last. Later, people would complain, "What's the point of making it so solid? Dynasties are like buildings and teeth-they grow, and they crumble." The smell of dynamite is like incense in a Buddhist country-it alters the mystery present in the redeemer's posture.
My son walked haltingly around the courtyard. Holding on to the same small redwood stool that I had held on to when I was a child, he played by himself in a corner of the courtyard. He was absorbed in playing with a bamboo chopstick. After two hours, he was drooling and humming a hymn only God could understand. Great-Grandmother stood in another corner of the courtyard, eyeing my son and listening to him sing. It must have been because of him that she hadn't gone upstairs. Great-Grandmother approached my son, and they conversed with a natural affinity in a language not understood by other human beings. On their faces played an essential correspondence given to man by Nature, echoing each other like sunrise and sunset, relying on each other's heartbeats to transmit spring, summer, fall, and winter, making of humanity the most wonderful quintessence of the universe. They talked. There was no interpreter. It was the way the wind understood the sound of the leaves, or the way water guessed the direction of the waves, or the way light saw the mirror, or the way one pupil could contain another.
"They seem to be having fun. What are they playing?" my wife asked.
Great-Grandmother turned and said to me, "When I die, take a piece of cloth from your son, wrap some of his hair in it, and sew it into the cuff of my sleeve."
"What is all this talk about death? You're still young."
"Don't forget," said Great-Grandmother.
"All right," I replied.
"It doesn't matter how long you live-as soon as you open your eyes, it's time to close them," Great-Grandmother said, smiling. "If you talk about long life, then it will be among the shadows. Remember-a piece of cloth. Don't forget."
Great-Grandmother's hundredth birthday was slowly drawing nearer. My house was shrouded in fear like the dust that silently covered the table and porcelain.
That night, Father's twelve brothers gathered at our house. I sat to one side. In my imagination, Great-Grandmother's teeth emitted a sound like breaking ice. The men smoked quietly. In their preoccupation was the solemn atmosphere of having arrived at a juncture in history. No one spoke. At a silent juncture in history, the first conclusion is the direct equivalent to the outcome of history. This is our accustomed way of doing things. At that moment, a rumble was heard outside. The sound reminded me that the road home had sent me back to the Ming dynasty, which caused me to tremble even more.
Finally, Father lifted his head in the smoke and said firmly, "Pull them." He turned to look at me. His look made me feel that I couldn't bear the weight of history. I smiled. But even I didn't know what I was smiling about. On many important occasions, I wore a foolish smile, my heart empty as the wind. I suspect that many of those present saw my foolish smile.
After things had quieted down, my wife complained, "Why are things such a mess? Why is your family such a mess? The boy's hands are always twitching."
"He'll be fine soon," I said. "He'll be fine in a couple of days. He'll calm down soon."
"I can't find the boy's shoes," my wife said.
"How could they disappear? Who'd want such little shoes?" I asked.
My wife said she couldn't find his red shoes. I looked everywhere. A little impatiently, I said, "If they're gone, they're gone. Just buy another pair tomorrow."
"That's ridiculous," said my wife. "Yesterday you lost a pair of Nikes, and today the boy's are gone. Ridiculous."
"Why make such a fuss over it?" I asked. "If Mother heard you, there'd really be trouble."
Pulling Great-Grandmother's teeth constituted a unique page in the history of my life. A drizzle was blowing that morning. You really couldn't call it rain-it was like rain and like mist but also like wind. The sky secreted a viscous historical atmosphere. The plot in our house got quickly under way. Only Great-Grandmother, who was the object of the plot, was left in the dark. We were prepared, nobody said a word. There was a sense of taking fate in our hands and of participating in the excitement of a historical mission, and there was the exhilaration of committing a crime. This is the way humanity commonly approaches history. Great-Grandmother was sitting at her window, easy as a dream, like an uneventful period in a historical record. All around her, we were motionless and silent, waiting for the signal to stand up and cast the shadow of ambush onto the ground.
Around noon, Fifth Uncle came to the house. He looked nervous and worried. Fifth Uncle called for Father. Standing under the eaves and facing Father, he said, "We can't get any anesthetic; it's too tightly controlled by the hospital."
Father's face darkened, looking like the moss on an ancient brick.
"Are we going to pull them or not?" asked Fifth Uncle.
Father said nothing. Facing Great-Grandmother's little garret, Father lowered his head and said, "Grandmother, you will just have to suffer."
It was damp everywhere. The accumulated dust swelled. For a long time, I was unable to wipe away the gray streaks from this part of my memory. All afternoon, my uncles sat in the central room, drinking. The table full of wine had been prepared for Great-Grandmother, so the old lady came downstairs especially early. She was all smiles. She couldn't see well, her eyes hidden behind an inauspicious shroud. Normally, her face wore a somewhat confused expression. As soon as Great-Grandmother sat down, my uncles toasted her. My father said, "Grandmother, you will be one hundred soon. May you outlast South Mountain and be more prosperous than the Eastern Sea."
Great-Grandmother laughed. "I can't live much longer," she said happily, holding her glass. "If I live much longer, I'll become a demon." Then she drank down the wine.
The faces of my uncles darkened, looking perplexed and alarmed. The wine glasses in their hands appeared heavy; they hesitated. Fortunately, Great-Grandmother couldn't see.
I have no recollection about the moment of silence that followed. Perhaps it was just a few minutes, or perhaps another layer of dust had settled on Great-Grandmother's shoulders-it has never been clear to me. At the end of that moment of silence, Father and his twelve brothers got up from their seats and knelt before Great-Grandmother. Her lips were slightly parted, and every tooth seemed to smile. Great-Grandmother said, "Get up, get up, my darlings, we haven't observed that custom in ages." The dark shapes of her darlings stood up. Fifth Uncle held a rope, Ninth Uncle gripped a pair of pliers, and Seventh Uncle held a redwood tray. They pounced on her and held her fast. In a few minutes, Great-Grandmother's teeth were all lying on the tray; the roots of her teeth were covered with bloody shreds of flesh. I stared at Great-Grandmother's teeth; in them, I saw humanity's direct intuition of time. It is our fear of time that makes us draw a link between teeth and their loss. Seventh Uncle handed the redwood tray to me. The thought vanished, and I can't remember much. Later, I was unable to recall what I was thinking at that time. All I remember is the swift, violent, harsh, and painful psychological experience. Later, I smelled the dynamite-the odor of the dynamite burned like ice. I was bitten by the odor.
Tenth Uncle said, "Elder Brother, I can't stop the bleeding. Should we take her to the hospital?"
Father said, "We can't. The doctor will know what happened as soon as he sees her."
Great-Grandmother had collapsed on the brick floor, her lips deeply sunken. Teeth are funny things. When they are there, they can't be seen, but as soon as they are gone, the face changes beyond recognition. Great-Grandmother's hundred-year-old blood spread around her lips and flowed more disorderedly than time. Great-Grandmother lay on the floor, breathing heavily. Her throat gurgled and creaked like oars. Her skin was slowly losing color and resembled traditional rice paper.
Ninth Uncle said, "She's fading fast."
Fifth Uncle said, "Get her some water. What are you doing standing around?"
Seventh Uncle tried several times; he lifted her head and shook it several times. It was no good, the water wouldn't go down.
At that moment, my son started crying in the west wing. I ran over and asked my wife, "What's going on? Can't you even take care of the child?"
My wife said, "If he wants to cry, what can I do? What's all that racket in there?"
I said, "It's none of your business. You are not to come out unless I call you."
While coaxing our son, my wife said, "Being in your house is like being in the eighteenth level of hell. One can barely breathe here."
I frowned and asked, "Are you finished?"
Father said, "Take down a door; the floor is too cold."
A bunch of old men scrambled to lay the very old lady on the door. I walked over and lifted her eyelids. The world of Great-Grandmother's life lay shrouded in darkness behind her cataracts. Softly, I called, "Old Ancestor, Old Ancestor." Her head slid from my elbows to my hands.
Her thirteen grandchildren all knelt at the same time. Their bowed backs made their kneeling look pious.
Great-Grandmother was laid out on the lid of her coffin. The coffin was at least thirty years old. Many familiar and unfamiliar people came to offer their condolences. They walked down the dark, dank passageway to bring funeral money and to eat a mouthful of the noodles prepared to celebrate Great-Grandmother's birthday. My father and his twelve brothers as well as the thirty-seven male members of my generation took turns burning funeral money. The ashes floated all around my house, and the smell of death from the money swirled around the people who walked through the house. The smell of death was so alive. Even the rats came out of their holes and skittered away, seeing that no one was paying attention.
Kneeling before Great-Grandmother, I felt my heart go numb. Being the son of her eldest grandson, I caught a relieved look in the eyes of my father's generation. They buried Great-Grandmother's teeth separately, eliminating the chances of her becoming a demon after death. I tried to imagine what Great-Grandmother would look like as a demon, but my imagination could not break through conventional human patterns and styles, and that left me disappointed. Several times, the flames from the burning funeral money painfully licked my fingertips. I knew that money from the underworld could burn the fingers just as the money from this world was ice-cold and thus not easily touched. Father cooked the noodles, one pot after another. Everyone from the village was there-not sure of what he or she wanted to see. Many of the people removed the paper from Great-Grandmother's face. Her mouth was ghastly looking. Death always fixes the mouth of the dead at the worst moment, making death seem hideous. People came and went, each one about the same. They came, striding over the threshold into our Ming-dynasty house; leaving, they strode over the threshold and down the ancient alleyway to leave the Ming dynasty. Everyone should have had this hallucination from the moral point of view, against which the powerful explosions were powerless.
Putting Great-Grandmother into the coffin a little early was a clear expression of how flustered my father and uncles were. The coffin housed my great-grandmother. A coffin is like a classic text that records the mysteries of life and death. My father said to us, "Hold a three-day wake for Grandmother's soul." When Father pronounced the word wake he touched the coffin. My heart jumped when I heard the word. What is a wake? In my imagination, a soul is more alive than life itself. This way of thinking left me worried, but I couldn't say it out loud, for that would spell disaster. The strip of yellow cloth from my son's clothes became a banner fluttering before my great-grandmother's soul. She relied on that vigorously waving banner to make her way with ease through the underworld where ghosts, big and small, could do nothing.
Father said, "Great-Grandmother's bad luck can be turned to good." Father was better at dealing with the affairs of the underworld than with those of this one. All members of the older generation are like that.
The most shocking event occurred at midnight. On that blue night filled with the odor of dynamite, my house fell into an utter life-and-death confusion. We held a wake according to Father's orders. Great-Grandmother's coffin was placed in the central hall on two supports. I slept under the coffin; a soy-oil lamp flickered weakly in front of the coffin all night. A number of white candles dozed amid long coils of incense. Uncooked noodles, steamed bread, and cubes of tofu and bean jelly were covered with lead-colored ash. The sound of a pile driver could be heard outside, vigorous as a cow but a little breathless. My ancient home seemed in decline, filled with an atmosphere of death. Just after midnight, nearly everyone holding the wake fell asleep. A few of my uncles were sitting around a small square table, their eyes shining with a green light. They were playing mah-jongg. Each piece they placed on the table sounded as heavy as a coffin.
"Two."
"Eight ten-thousands."
"Match."
My ears were filled with the shouting that followed as they played. Dreams like bats fluttered at dusk, their bodies flitting nervously. I don't know if I slept or not. I'm not sure. Those days when I slept, I seemed to be awake, and when I was awake, I seemed to be asleep. And the dreams I dreamed-half the time I couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. I heard Seventh Uncle say, "Last game. After we finish this hand, let them take over." Then came the sound of shuffling mah-jongg tiles like a summer rain falling on Lake Taihu stones. Hearing these sounds, I was as if in a trance, but I clearly heard the sounds that followed. Betokened by the gods, I heard a sharp sound coming strangely from the edge of heaven. I propped myself up and barely missed hitting my head on the bottom of the coffin. I smelled the strange odor of the coffin and heard the sound of fingernails on the wood. I shook my head. It was completely quiet. Apparently, they heard something. We exchanged a look of terror. We clearly heard the sounds coming from the coffin, which functioned like a bass drum, amplifying the criticism and dissatisfaction of Great-Grandmother's fingernails against the coffin. My hands went slack, a number of my uncles looked at me, and their eyes shone to their biological limits. The scratching of her fingernails on the coffin was weak but frenzied, like the sharp, doomed cries of a rat in the mouth of a cat. Full of death's fervor, Great-Grandmother must have opened her cataract-covered eyes in the darkness and, at the same time, opened her toothless mouth. Great-Grandmother longed for light and space. Great-Grandmother's tiny three-inch bound feet-her golden lotuses- must have burst with energy as they kicked out twice, decisively opening a crack behind us as a cold wind blew in from eight hundred miles around.
Fifth Uncle said, "Open it up. Hurry! Open it up." Actually, Fifth Uncle didn't express himself in such a clear manner-his tongue was stiff as salted meat.
At first, Third Uncle didn't utter a word. Then he said, "Why weren't her fingernails clipped?"
We suddenly remembered Great-Grandmother's pointed gray nails. This threatening material became the most frightening part of a future countryside legend. We all held our breath, all our energy focused on listening. The sounds grew weaker and weaker, the pauses longer and longer. Finally, dead silence. To this day, I still believe that Great-Grandmother's left index finger was sticking up. We all knew she had her reasons for not prying with her nails, but we still waited a long time.
After the funeral procession, Great-Grandmother's descendants strode over the torches. In the field, the torches formed a wall between life and death. No, that's not accurate. After you've stepped past the torches, you've crossed over the screen between life and death. Flames blazed between each person's legs, and purplish smoke fled into the sky, where it formed a variety of hieroglyphs like difficult-to-decipher prophecies left by the ancients. All I know is that half were written on sheepskin, the other half in the sky.
Entering the passageway at home, we just had to pause. I said, "Let's take a look at Great-Grandmother's garret."
Father said, "Everyone else stay put. He and I will go up alone."
We opened the door, and a cold wind from the last century spread its long hair and long nails toward us. Her garret was devoid of furniture, save for a bed and a dressing table. Father and I were at a loss. Our curiosity was like a free-falling body in reality.
Father said, "Shoes. Your son's little red shoes." I stepped forward. My son's red shoes were under her bed, toes pointing toward the bed plank. I also saw my old, beat-up Nikes. Behind my Nikes, arranged in order of age, were a pair of green army shoes, a pair of cotton shoes, a pair of cotton slippers, and a pair of wooden clogs. I noticed that the shoes, which were laid out in a spiral, seemed to gaze at one another with a light-footed expression. Confident yet ridiculous. It was at that moment that the illusion occurred. I saw the arrival of the ranks of my clan in a long spiral procession. They greeted me in our local dialect and the inherited manner of our clan. Like time, they were toothless, their eyes clouded with cataracts.
Father said, "What's this? What's going on here?"
I was on the point of asking my father the same question. But hearing his voice, I held my tongue.
Translated By John Balcom