Soul Mountain (25 page)

The shaman of Tianmenguan has sent someone to the carpenter’s yard to get the old man to make the head of the Goddess Tianluo. The shaman will come in person on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month to invite the goddess to receive offerings at his altar. The messenger has brought a live goose as a deposit and the work is to be completed on schedule. The old man will then be given a jar of rice wine and half of a pig’s head which will be plenty to see him through to the New Year. The old man is petrified and realizes that he doesn’t have many days. The Goddess Guanyin rules over the living and the Goddess Tianluo rules over the dead: the goddess is coming to hasten the end of his life.

Over the past few years, apart from the carpentry work, he has made quite a number of carvings. For people’s homes he has made the god of wealth, the laughing arhat, the monk gatherer of vegetarian food, and the honest judge; for the exorcist performance troupe he has carved a whole set of masks: the half-man-half-god Zhang the Clearer of Mountains, the half-man-half-animal horse general, and half-man-half-demon goblins; and for people from outside the mountains he has carved the crooked mouthed Qin boy for them to amuse themselves. He has also carved the Goddess Guanyin but no-one has ever asked him to carve the malevolent Goddess Tianluo who controls people’s fates. The goddess has come to take his life. How could he have been so muddle-headed as to agree? He blames himself for getting too old, for being too greedy. As long as people will pay he carves anything they want. Everyone thinks his carvings are like the real thing, one can tell at a glance it’s the god of wealth, the clever official, the laughing arhat, the monk gatherer of vegetarian food, the honest judge, the impetuous general who clears mountains, the horse general, the goblins, or the Goddess Guanyin. He has never seen the Goddess Guanyin, he only knows she is the goddess who brings sons. A woman came from outside the mountains with two lengths of red cloth and a bundle of incense. She had heard that the rock where the mountain people made offerings to their ancestors was efficacious, so she came to the mountains to pray for a son. When she saw he could make figures of divinities, she asked him to make her a Guanyin and stayed the night in his house. She was up early, very happy, and took with her the Guanyin he’d spent the whole night carving for her. However, he has never made the Goddess Tianluo because no-one has ever asked him and because this malevolent spirit is only worshipped at the altars of shamans. He can’t stop shivering and breaks out in a cold sweat all over: he knows that the Goddess Tianluo has already attached herself to his body and is just waiting to take his life.

He clambers onto a pile of timber to get the piece of little-leaf box airing on a cross beam. This wood has a very fine grain and won’t warp or crack, he has kept this piece for some years because he didn’t want to use it on something ordinary. After reaching for the wood, he slips and the whole pile of timber collapses. He is frightened out of his wits but his mind is lucid and, clutching the wood, he sits on the gnarled maple root he uses for chopping hay in the shed. For a small job like this usually he only needs to think a little, then he’d be ready to start. Shavings would start curling up the blade and when he blew it off the face would appear, it was easy. However he hasn’t ever carved the Goddess Tianluo and clutching the piece of wood, he sits there in a daze shivering and feeling chilly spasms shooting through his body. Finally, he puts down the piece of wood, goes into the house, and sits by the fire on the round stump which is black with grease and smoke and shiny from being sat upon. He fears it’s really the end for him and that he won’t get through to the end of the year. On the twenty-seventh of the twelfth month, not waiting until the fifteenth of the first month, he stops breathing. It had been decided that he should not be permitted to pass through the New Year.

He had committed too many wrongdoings, she says.

Did the Goddess Tianluo say so?

Yes, she said he wasn’t a good old man, he was an old man who wasn’t content with his lot.

Maybe.

He knew in his heart how many wrongdoings he had committed.

Did he seduce the woman who came to pray for a son?

The woman was a slut, she was quite willing.

Then it doesn’t count as a wrongdoing, does it?

It can be left out of the count.

Then his wrongdoing was–

He raped a mute girl.

In his shed?

He didn’t dare do that, it was while he was away working. These itinerant craftsmen are out on their own all year round and earn quite a bit of money through their trade. It’s not hard for them to find a woman to sleep with as there are plenty of wanton women about who want money. But he shouldn’t have taken advantage of a mute girl. He raped her, played with her, and then discarded her.

When the Goddess Tianluo came to take his life, was it this mute girl who came into his mind?

Of course. She appeared before his eyes and he couldn’t get rid of her.

Was it retribution?

Yes. Any woman who has been taken advantage of will hunger for revenge! While she lives, and if she can track down the person, she will gouge out his eyes and curse him violently, invoking demons to banish him to the eighteenth level of Hell so that he can be horribly tortured! But this girl was a mute and couldn’t talk. She was pregnant, driven from home, and reduced to being a prostitute and beggar, rotten flesh despised by everyone. Before that she was quite pretty and could have married an honest farmer, had a normal married life, a home to keep out the wind and rain, given birth to sons and daughters, and at death a coffin.

He wouldn’t have been thinking all this, he would only have been thinking of himself.

But her eyes stare unrelentlingly at him.

The eyes of the Goddess Tianluo.

The eyes of the mute girl who couldn’t talk.

Her eyes full of terror as he raped her?

Eyes full of revenge!

Eyes full of pleading.

She couldn’t plead, she wept and tore at her own hair.

She was stupefied, dazed . . .

No, she called out–

But no-one could understand her
yi-yi ya-ya
, they all laughed at her. He mingled with the crowd and also laughed.

Of course!

Of course at the time he knew no fear and he was even quite proud of himself, he didn’t think he could be tracked down.

Fate would avenge her!

She will be here soon, the Goddess Tianluo. He pokes at the coals and she appears in the sparks and smoke.

His eyes close tightly and old tears flow.

Don’t beautify him!

Smoke brings tears to anyone’s eyes. He uses his hand, which is as rough as dry firewood, to wipe off a gob of snot, then shuffles into the shed. He takes the piece of little-leaf box and his axe and, squatting on the gnarled maple root, whittles away until dark. Then taking the piece of wood into the house he sits down on the round stump next to the fire. He clamps it between his legs and feels it with his calloused hands: he knows this will be his last carving and he is terrified he will not finish in time. He must finish before daybreak, and he knows that as soon as it is light the picture in his mind will vanish and that his fingers will lose their feeling. Her eyes, her lips, her upper lip is taut as she shakes her head. Her ear lobes are soft and fleshy and should be wearing big earrings, her flesh is tense but it is rich and supple, her face is smooth and elegant, her nose is straight and not snubbed. He thrusts his hand down under her tightly buttoned collar . . .

In the early morning, villagers on their way to shop for the New Year at the Luofengpo markets passed by his house and called out to him but there was no reply. The front door was wide open and there was the smell of something burning. They went in and saw him slumped in front of the fire, dead. Some said he had a stroke and others said he had burnt to death. At his feet was the head of the Goddess Tianluo he had carved. She is wearing a crown of twigs from the chaste tree. From each of the four small holes on the crown protrudes a tortoise’s head which also looks like an animal crouched in the hole with its head poking out. Her eyelids droop as if in sleep, the bridge of her delicate nose joins with the elegant bones of her brow and there is a slight wrinkling between the brows. The thin lips of her small mouth are tightly pursed as if scornful of human existence and the eyes which can barely be seen emit cold indifference. Her eyebrows, eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, lower jaw and even her long delicate neck all reveal a young girl’s fragile beauty. Only the ear lobes, from which hang copper earrings in the shape of spears, are big, voluptuous and sensual. Her neck however is tightly wrapped in the matching sides of her high collar. The Goddess Tianluo was later installed in the shaman’s altar at Tianmenguan.

I’ve long heard many stories about the renowned and deadly Qichun snake. The villagers commonly call it the “five-steps dragon” and say that if bitten by it man or animal will drop dead before taking five steps, or that if one goes within five steps of where it is one will have trouble escaping with one’s life. This must be the derivation of the saying, “The powerful dragon cannot overcome the snake on the ground.” People say it’s not like other venomous snakes. Even the deadly cobra can easily be detected – when it’s about to strike, it will rear its head, stiffen its body and hiss to frighten its adversary. So, if encountered, a person can defend himself by throwing to its side whatever one happens to be holding or if empty-handed one can throw the hat from one’s head or a shoe one is wearing. When it attacks what has been thrown, one can slip away. However eight to nine out of ten encountering a Qichun snake will have been attacked before detecting it.

In southern Anhui province I hear many myths and legends about the Qichun snake. They know battle strategy and spin a web, finer than a spider’s, over the plants in their territory, and as soon as this is bumped by some living animal, the snake strikes like a flash of lightning. It’s therefore not surprising that in areas where the Qichun snake is found there are all sorts of incantations which they say will give protection when silently intoned. However, the mountain people do not tell these to outsiders. When mountain people go into the mountains for firewood they always strap on leggings or else put on long canvas socks. People from the county town who seldom go into the mountains make the stories sound even more harrowing. They warn that if I encounter a Qichun snake, even if I am wearing leather shoes it will bite right through them; I will need to carry snake antidote, though ordinary snake antidotes won’t work with Qichun snakes.

On the highway from Tunqi to Anqing, I pass through Shitai. At the food stall by the bus stop, I encounter a peasant who had lost a hand. He says he chopped it off himself after it had been bitten by a Qichun snake. He is one of the rare cases of someone surviving an attack. The soft straw hat he is wearing is woven from the pith of the rice-paper plant, it is a dress hat with a narrow rim. This type of hat is normally worn only by peasants who work the wharves, and peasants who wear these hats generally have seen a lot and know a lot. I order a bowl of soup noodles at the stall under the white cotton awning by the highway. The peasant is sitting opposite and holding his chopsticks in his left hand. The stump of his right arm keeps swaying in front of me and makes eating difficult. I correctly guess he might like to chat.

“Older brother,” I ask him, “I’ve paid for your bowl of noodles along with mine. If you wouldn’t mind, could you tell me how you injured your arm?”