The Corpse Reader

1

Cí got up early that morning to avoid running into his brother Lu. He could barely pry his eyes open, but he knew that, like every morning, the paddy field would be awake and waiting.

He got up and began putting away his bedding, smelling the tea his mother was brewing in the main room. He entered the room and greeted her with a nod. She replied with a half-hidden smile that he noticed nonetheless, and he smiled in return.

He adored his mother almost as much as he did his little sister, whose name was Third. His other sisters, First and Second, had died very young from a genetic disease. Third was the only one who had managed to survive, though she remained sickly.

Before breakfast, he went over to the small altar the family had erected in memory of his grandfather. He opened the wooden shutters and inhaled deeply. Outside, the first rays of sun were filtering delicately through the fog. The breeze moved through the chrysanthemums in the offering jar and stirred the spirals of incense rising in the room. Cí closed his eyes to recite a prayer, but the only thought that came into his mind was this: Heavenly spirits, allow us to return to Lin’an.

He cast his mind back to when his grandparents were still alive. This backwater had been paradise to him then, and to his brother Lu, who was four years his elder, his hero. Any child would have worshipped Lu. Lu was like the great soldier in their father’s stories, always coming to Cí’s rescue when other children tried to steal his fruit rations, always there to deal with shameless men who tried to flirt with his sisters. Lu had even shown him how to win a fight using certain kicks and punches. He’d taken him down to the river to splash around among the boats and to fish for carp and trout, which they’d then carry home in jubilation. He had also shown Cí the best hiding places from which to spy on their neighbors.

As Lu got older, though, he became vain. At fifteen, he was stronger than ever, as well as boastful, and was unimpressed with anything other than a good right hook. Lu began organizing cat hunts so he could show off in front of the girls. He’d get drunk on stolen rice liquor and crow about how he was the strongest in the gang. He became so arrogant that even when girls were making fun of him he thought they just wanted his attention. Eventually, all the girls began avoiding Lu, and Cí gradually became indifferent to his former idol, too.

In spite of everything, Lu had generally managed to steer clear of any serious trouble, apart from the occasional black eye from fighting or from riding the community buffalo in the water races. But when their father announced his intention to move to the capital city of Lin’an, Lu, who was sixteen at the time, refused to go. Lu didn’t want to move to any city; he was happy in the countryside. In his eyes, the small village had everything: the paddy field, his braggart group of friends, even a few local prostitutes for his amusement. Although his father threatened to disown him, Lu refused to back down. So that year the family split up: Lu stayed in the village and the rest of them moved to the capital, in search of a better future.

Cí had found it difficult adjusting to Lin’an life, though he had a routine. He was up every morning with the sun to check on his sister. He’d make her breakfast and look after her until their mother came back from the market. Having wolfed down his bowl of rice, he’d go to classes until midday, and after that he would run all the way to the slaughterhouse to help his father in his job clearing away carcasses. In the evening, after cleaning the kitchen and praying to his ancestors, he studied the Confucian treatises for recitation in class the next morning. Month after month this was his life. But one day, everything changed. His father left the slaughterhouse and got a job as an accountant for the prefecture of Lin’an under Judge Feng, one of the wisest magistrates in the capital.

Life improved rapidly. The salary his father was now earning meant that Cí, too, could give up the slaughterhouse and dedicate himself to his studies. Thanks to excellent grades, after four years in school Cí was given a junior position in Judge Feng’s department. To begin with, he was given straightforward administrative tasks, but his dedication and attention to detail set him apart, and the judge himself decided to take the now seventeen-year-old under his wing.

Cí showed himself worthy of Judge Feng’s confidence. After just a few months he began assisting in taking statements, interviewing suspects, and preparing and cleaning the corpses of anybody who died under suspicious circumstances. It wasn’t long before his meticulousness, combined with his obvious talents, made him a key employee, and the judge gave him more responsibility. Cí ended up helping with criminal investigations and legal disputes, and thus learned both the fundamentals of law and the basics of anatomy.

Cí also attended university part time, and in his second year Judge Feng encouraged him to take a preparatory course in medicine. According to the judge, the clues to a great many crimes lay hidden in wounds. To solve them you had to develop not a magistrate’s but rather a surgeon’s understanding of trauma.

Everything was going well until, one night, Cí’s grandfather suddenly fell ill and died. After the funeral, as was dictated by Chinese custom, his father was obliged to give up his job as well as the house they had been living in, since the owner, Cí’s grandfather, was dead. Without a home or work, the family had to return to the village, the last thing Cí wanted to do.

They came back to a very different Lu. He had built a house on a plot of land he’d acquired, and he was the boss of a small crew of laborers. When his father came knocking at his door, the first thing Lu did, before he would allow him to cross the threshold, was make him get down on his knees and apologize. He made their father sleep in one of the tiny bedrooms, rather than give up his own, and treated Cí with the same disinterest. Soon after, when Lu realized his younger brother no longer worshipped him and cared only for books, Cí became the target of all Lu’s anger. A man showed his true value out in the fields, Lu maintained. That was where your daily rice came from, not from books, not from studying. In Lu’s eyes, his younger brother was a twenty-year-old good-for-nothing, just one more mouth to feed. Cí’s life became little more than a series of criticisms, and he quickly came to hate the village…

A gust of wind brought Cí back to the present.

Going back into the main room, he ran into Lu, who was at the table beside their mother, slurping his tea. Seeing Cí, he spat on the floor and banged his cup down on the table. Without waiting for their father to wake up, he grabbed his bundle of work things and headed out.

“No manners,” muttered Cí, taking a cloth and wiping up the tea his brother had just spilled.

“And you should learn some respect,” said his mother. “We’re living in his home, after all. The strong home—”

“I know, I know. ‘The strong home supports a brave father, prudent mother, obedient son, and obliging brother.’” He didn’t need to be reminded of the saying. Lu was quite fond of it.

Cí laid the table with the bamboo place mats and bowls; this was supposed to be Third’s job, but recently her chest illness had been getting worse. Cí didn’t mind filling in for her. According to ritual, he lined up the bowls, making sure there was an even number of them, and he turned the teapot so that its spout pointed toward the window. He placed the rice wine, porridge, and carp meatballs in the center of the table. He cast his eyes over the kitchen and the cracked sink all black with carbon. It looked more like a dilapidated forge than a home.

Soon, his father hobbled in. Cí felt a stab of sadness.

How he’s aged.

Cí frowned and tensed his jaw. His father’s health was deteriorating: He moved shakily; his gaze was lowered and his sparse beard looked like some unpicked tapestry. There was barely a shred left of the meticulous official he had been, the man who had bred in Cí such a love of method and perseverance. Cí noticed that his father’s hands, which he used to take such care of, were anemic-looking, rough and callused. He imagined his father must miss the time when his hands had to be immaculate—the days he’d spent examining judicial dossiers, doing proper work.

Cí’s father sat at the head of the table, motioning for Cí and his mother to sit as well. Cí went to his place, and his mother took her seat on the side closest to the kitchen. She served the rice wine. Third didn’t join them because of her fever.

“Will you be eating with us this evening, Cí?” his mother asked. “After all this time, Judge Feng will be delighted to see you again.”

Cí wouldn’t have missed it for anything. He didn’t know why exactly, but his father had decided to curtail the mourning period and return to Lin’an. Cí was hoping Judge Feng would agree to take him back into the department.

“Lu said I have to take the buffalo up to the new plot, and after that I was thinking of stopping in on Cherry, but I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

“Twenty years old and still so naive,” said his father. “That girl has you wrapped around her finger. You’ll get bored of her if you carry on seeing so much of each other.”

“Cherry’s the only good thing about this village,” said Cí, eating his last mouthful of food. “Anyway, you were the ones who arranged the marriage.”

“Take the sweets I made with you,” said his mother.

Cí got up and put the sweets in his bag. Before leaving the house, he went into Third’s quarters, kissed her feverish cheeks, and tucked her hair back. She blinked. Cí took out the sweets and hid them under her blanket.

“Not a word!” he whispered.

She smiled, too weak to say anything.

Walking along the edge of the muddy field, Cí felt goaded by the rain. He took off his drenched shirt and urged the buffalo on with all his might. The beast took its time, as if it knew there would only be another furrow after this one, and after that another, and another. Cí looked up and contemplated the green, watery field.

His brother had ordered him to dig a drainage ditch along its edge, but it was hard going because of the dilapidated stone dikes separating the properties. Exhausted, Cí scanned the waterlogged paddy. He cracked the whip, and the buffalo plunged on through the mud and water.

He’d worked only a third of the day when the plow got snagged.

“Roots.” He cursed.

The buffalo lifted its head and bellowed but wouldn’t move; Cí shook it by the horns to no avail. He tried to make it go backward, but the harness was caught on the other side. Resigned, he looked the animal in the eye.

“This is going to hurt.”

He tugged on the ring in the buffalo’s snout and pulled the reins. The animal jumped forward and the harness creaked. Cí realized it would be better just to dig out the root with his hands. If I break the plow, Lu will give me a real beating.

Taking a deep breath, he sunk his arms in the muddy water until his hands hit a tangle of roots. When after a few yanks he couldn’t dislodge it, he took a knife from his knapsack, knelt down, and began working beneath the surface. He tossed away a few small stumps and started on the thickest, central root. It was then that he noticed he’d cut himself. Though his finger didn’t hurt, he examined the cut with great interest.

From birth, the gods had cursed him with a strange disorder. He first became aware of it when he was four years old and his mother stumbled and tipped a saucepan of boiling oil over him. He had barely felt it—no more than if he were being washed with warm water—and it was only the smell of his flesh burning that had told him something terrible was happening. His torso, upper arms, and hands were scarred, and those scars were reminders that he was different. Though he felt lucky to never experience physical pain, it also meant he had to be extremely careful of any injury. While it wouldn’t hurt if he were ever beaten up, and fatigue barely affected him, he often pushed himself beyond his body’s limits.

Lifting his hand out of the water, he was alarmed now at the amount of blood, which he was sure had to be from a sizable wound. He ran for a cloth to wrap around it. But having wiped the blood away, he discovered the cut was, as he’d first thought, tiny.

“What the…”

Confused, he went back to where he’d hobbled the plow and, parting the roots, saw how red the boggy water had become. He loosened the reins, freed the buffalo from the plow, and moved the animal aside. As he looked at the water, his heart began to pound. The only sound was that of the rain falling on the paddy.

Stupefied and afraid, he walked over to the small crater where he’d left the plow. Nearing the spot, he felt his stomach contract. He almost turned and ran away but contained himself. Then he saw bubbles rising rhythmically to the surface, mingling with the raindrops. He slowly kneeled down in the mud and lowered his face to the water. Another bloodshot bubble floated up.

Something suddenly moved under the water. Cí jumped to his feet, pulling his head sharply back, but when he realized it was only the fluttering of a small carp, he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Stupid thing.”

He kicked at the carp, trying to compose himself. But then he caught sight of another carp, this one with a shred of flesh in its mouth.

“What on earth?”

He began backing away but lost his footing and fell facedown in a whirl of mud and bloody water. Feeling something bump against his face, he opened his eyes. His heart skipped a beat. There in front of him, with a cloth stuffed in its mouth, was a decapitated head floating between the plants on the surface of the water.

He screamed until he was hoarse—but no one came to help.

He remembered that the plot had not been used for a long while, and that the peasants were mainly on the far side of the mountain. He could abandon the buffalo and look for help. Or he could wait in the paddy until his brother came.

Neither option was appealing, but knowing that Lu wouldn’t be long, he decided to wait. There were all kinds of robbers and ruffians on this side of the mountain, and a buffalo was worth much more than one human head.

While he waited, he finished cutting the roots and freed the plow’s blades. Luckily, the plow wasn’t damaged, which meant Lu would only be angry that he wasn’t yet done plowing. At least, that was what Cí hoped. He reset the plow and got back to work. He tried whistling to distract himself, but all he could hear were his father’s words: “Avoiding problems solves nothing.”

Yes, but this isn’t my problem.

However, he plowed only two more furrows before halting the buffalo again.

He cast a wary eye on the head as it bobbed on the water, then looked a little closer. The cheeks were caved in, as if someone had viciously stomped on them. There were tiny lacerations on the bruised skin from the carp bites, the eyelids were swollen, the flesh beside the trachea was in tatters…and there was the strange cloth coming out of the wide-open mouth.

Never in his life had he looked on something so horrifying. He shut his eyes and vomited. Then, with a start, he recognized the face. It was old Shang. The father of Cherry, the girl Cí was in love with.

Recovering a little, he looked at the strange expression, the mouth forced unnaturally wide by the cloth. Taking hold of the cloth’s edge, he pulled and unraveled it, bit by bit, like a ball of string. He placed the cloth in his sleeve and tried to shut the jaw but couldn’t. Cí vomited again.

He washed the face with the muddy water. Then, getting up, he retraced his steps over the plowed land in search of the rest of the body. It was midday before he found it, on the far eastern side of the plot, a few li from where the buffalo had gotten stuck. The corpse’s trunk still had the yellow sash and the five-button gown that identified the man as an honorable person. There was no sign of the blue cap Shang always wore.

Cí couldn’t go on. He sat down in the stone ditch and nibbled at a stale bit of rice bread but found it impossible to swallow. He looked at poor Shang’s headless body, abandoned in the mud like that of some common criminal.

What on earth am I going to say to Cherry?

What kind of person could have cut short the life of someone like Shang, a dedicated family man who was respectful of tradition and performed all the proper rites? All Cí knew was that whoever was responsible didn’t deserve to go on living.

Lu didn’t arrive until late afternoon. He had three workers with him, and each carried a sapling, which meant there must have been a change of plan: they were going to plant the rice without waiting for the field to drain. Cí left the buffalo and ran over to his brother. He bowed in greeting.

“Brother! You won’t believe it—” His heart was beating hard.

“What do you mean, I won’t believe it?” Lu roared, pointing to the untilled plot. “I can see it with my own two eyes.”

“I found a—” Before he could finish, his brother punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground.

“Slacker!” spat Lu. “What makes you think you’re better than everyone else?”

Cí touched the cut on his brow. It wasn’t the first time his brother had hit him, but because Lu was older, according to Confucian customs, Cí was forbidden to fight back. He was the one with the swelling eye, but he still had to apologize.

“Brother, forgive me. I was delayed because—”

But Lu kept going.

“Because the puny little bookworm doesn’t have it in him to do a little hard work! Thinks the rice will plant itself! He leaves it for his brother Lu to break his back!”

“I…found…a…corpse,” Cí managed.

Lu raised an eyebrow.

“A corpse? What are you talking about?”

“There, in the ditch.”

Lu turned toward the spot, where a couple of rooks were pecking at the head. He walked to it and pushed the head with his foot. Frowning, he came back.

“Damn it! You found it here?” He picked up the head by the hair, holding it at arm’s length in disgust. “Confucius! It’s Shang, isn’t it? What about the body?”

“Over there.”

Pursing his lips, Lu turned to the workers.

“What are you waiting for? Go and pick it up! Dump those saplings and put that head in the basket. Damn it! We’re going back to the village.”

Cí went over to the buffalo to take its harness off.

“And what the hell are you up to?” asked Lu.

“Didn’t you say we’re going back?”

“We are,” he spat. “You can come back when you’ve finished your job.”