Soul Mountain (26 page)

He then starts to tell me about what had happened. He says he had gone into the mountains to look for Qi wood.

“Look for what?”

“Qi wood – eating it prevents jealousy. That wife of mine really drives me crazy, if another woman so much as says one sentence to me she starts throwing bowls about. I went to get Qi wood to brew a soup for her.”

“Is this Qi wood a folk prescription?” I ask.

“No.” Beneath the dress hat woven from the pith of the rice-paper plant, his big mouth opens wide, showing one gold tooth as he chuckles. It is then that I realize he is having me on.

He says a few of them had gone to chop trees to burn charcoal, at that time it was not like it is nowadays when doing business is all the fashion. If mountain people wanted to get an extra bit of spending money most of them went in for burning charcoal. You could steal timber and sell it for a profit but the timber was under the surveillance of the people in the production brigade and if you were caught it was a criminal offence. He didn’t go in for doing things that were illegal. But even with burning charcoal, you had to know how to make it. He only went after white oak: the charcoal burns with a silver flame and it produces a metallic ring when you strike it. If you can produce it, a basket of this metallic charcoal will fetch double the price. I let him talk on, in any case it was the price of a bowl of noodles.

He says he was holding an axe and walking on ahead while his friends were still smoking and chatting down below. He had just bent down when he felt a cold chill rise from the soles of his feet and he knew instantly something was wrong. He says men are the same as dogs. If a dog out on its own sniffs a leopard it will stop in its tracks so scared that it will whimper like a kitten. He says at the time his legs just went soft: no matter how tough a man is, if he encounters a Qichun snake, that’s the end of him. And right there, he saw this thing coiled on a rock under the branches of a chaste tree, it was mostly grey and drawn almost into a ball, in the middle of which was this head sticking up. Faster than it would take to say it, he chopped at it but instantly his hand turned ice cold and a jarring spasm went right through his body as if he’d had an electric shock. Everything went black before his eyes, even the sun became dark, it was eerie. The sound of the wind, birds and insects vanished, the colour of the gloomy sky darkened and the sun and the trees glowed with a chilly light. Maybe it was because his brain was still working, or that he was fast, or that he wasn’t meant to die or that he was lucky that he took the axe in his left hand and chopped off his right hand. Then holding his back rigid in a
qigong
stance, he went down on his haunches and pressed his left thumb onto the artery of his right arm above the elbow. He says the blood which gushed out sizzled on the stones, immediately lost its redness, and turned into a pale yellow froth! Afterwards, his friends carried him back to the village. They also brought back the hand he’d chopped off. It had turned black: the fingernails, skin and flesh were black and streaked with purple. What remained of his arm also started turning black and it was only by using every sort of snake antidote that the poison was arrested.

I say, “You’re really strong-minded.”

He says if he’d baulked or that he’d been bitten an inch or so higher, he’d have been dead. “To lose a hand to save one’s life, how could I quibble over it? Even a praying mantis will shed a claw to save itself.”

“But it’s an insect,” I say.

“So what if it’s an insect? Humans can’t be inferior to insects. Foxes have bitten off a leg to get out of a trap, surely humans can’t be less intelligent than foxes.” He slaps a ten
yuan
note on the table, he doesn’t want me to pay for his noodles. He says he’s doing some buying and selling now and isn’t making less than an educated person like me.

I keep watching out for Qichun snakes as I go on my journey, then on the road to Fanjing Mountain, in a village called Wenxiao or Shichang, I see dried Qichun snakes tied in coils in the ceiling drying area of a trading depot. They were just as the Tang Dynasty scholar Liu Zongyuan had described them: “Black body with a white pattern.” This is a valuable Chinese medicine which is highly effective for relaxing muscular tension, aiding blood circulation, getting rid of rheumatism, and getting rid of colds. It fetches a high price so there are always brave fellows willing to risk their lives for it.

Liu Zongyuan considered this thing to be more dangerous than a tiger and went on to talk about harsh governments being more savage than tigers. He was a provincial governor whereas I am one of the common people. He was a scholar-official and in his lifetime he put worrying about the concerns of the world first, whereas I am wandering everywhere concerned only with my own life.

Just seeing these processed coils of dried snake isn’t enough, I am keen to see a live one, to know how to identify it, so that I will know how to guard against it.

It is not until I reach the foot of Fanjing Mountain, the kingdom of this snake, that I see two of them. They had been confiscated from poachers and were kept in a wire cage at a ranger inspection station on the reserve. I finally get a proper look at them.

The scientific name is the beaked Pallas pit viper. Both are more than two metres long, not as thick as a small wrist but with a small tail section which is thinner. The body is a nondescript grey-brown with a grey-white triangular pattern, so it also has the common name of chessboard snake. They don’t appear dangerous, and coiled on a rock would just look like a clump of soil. But if one looks closely, the rough dull brown triangular head has a scaly upturned-hook beak and a pair of small, pitiful, and lacklustre eyes. It has a comical greedy look reminiscent of the clownish Seventh Rank Sesame Official in traditional opera. However it doesn’t rely on its eyes to attack its prey. Between the eyes and the nostrils is an indentation which is a unique temperature sensor. This is sensitive to infra-red rays and can detect temperature changes to one-twentieth of a degree within a radius of three metres. If an animal with a body temperature higher than its own approaches, it can stalk and attack it with precision. I learn all about this from a snake-bite researcher on the reserve afterwards when I go to Wuyi Mountain.

It is also on this road, in the upper reaches of the Chen River tributary of the Yuan River, in the still unpolluted and abundant flow of the Jin River, that the water is limpid. The boy cowherders pissing in the water are swept off by the fast-flowing current and are screaming. It is several hundred metres before they are hauled up onto the river-bank: the sounds carry clearly. Below the highway, a young girl is bathing naked at the water’s edge. When she sees vehicles drive past on the highway, she stands there like a white egret, moving only her neck to stare. In the strong noon sun, the sunlight on the water is dazzling. Of course all this has nothing much to do with Qichun snakes.

She is laughing loudly. You ask her why she’s laughing and she says she’s happy but she knows she’s not at all happy and is just trying to look happy. She doesn’t want to let on that she’s actually unhappy.

She says once she was walking along a main street and saw a man chasing after a trolley bus which had just driven off. He was walking on the toes of one foot, half running and half hopping, and shouting at the top of his voice. It turned out that when he was getting off the bus one of his shoes got caught in the door. He must have been a peasant from out of town. From the time she was a child her teachers had taught her not to make fun of peasants and when she grew up her mother warned her not to laugh stupidly in front of men. But she just couldn’t help laughing aloud. When she laughed like this people always stared at her and it was only afterwards that she learnt when she laughed like this it was inviting, and men of wicked intent thought she was flirting. Men always look differently at women, even if it’s not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.

She says the very first time she gave herself, it was to a man she didn’t love at all. When he mounted her and took her he didn’t know she was still a virgin and asked why she was crying. She said it wasn’t because she couldn’t stand the pain but because she pitied herself. He attempted to help her wipe away her tears but these weren’t for him, so she pushed him away. She buttoned up her shirt and tried to tidy her messed-up hair in the mirror, she didn’t want his help, he would only make it worse. He had enjoyed himself on her, he had taken advantage of a moment’s weakness.

She couldn’t say he had forced himself upon her. He had invited her to his room for lunch. She went, had a cup of liquor, felt a bit happy but not really happy, and began laughing like this.

She says she doesn’t completely blame him. At the time she only wanted to see what would happen and drank in one gulp the half cup of liquor he had poured for her. She felt a bit dizzy, she hadn’t imagined the liquor was so potent. She was aware that her face was burning and that she was laughing inanely. Then he kissed her, pushed her onto the bed, no, she didn’t resist, she even knew when he was pulling up her skirt.

He was her teacher and she was a student, and this sort of thing shouldn’t have happened. She could hear footsteps coming and going in the corridor outside the room, people were always talking, people always have so many totally meaningless things to say. It was midday and people were coming back to their dormitories after lunch in the canteen, and she could hear them clearly. In these surroundings it was like being a thief and she felt thoroughly ashamed. Animal, animal, she said to herself.

Afterwards she opened the door of the room and left, chest out and head held high. As soon as she got to the stairs, someone called out her name, and she says at the time she blushed, it was as if her skirt had been pulled up and she was wearing nothing underneath. Fortunately the lighting was poor on the stairs. It turned out to be a classmate who had just come in and wanted her to go with her to see this teacher about choosing courses for the following semester. She made the excuse that she was rushing to a movie and didn’t have time, then went off. But she will always remember the sound of being called, she says her heart almost leapt from her chest. Even when she was being taken, her heart didn’t pound as fiercely as it did then. In the end she got her revenge, in the end she took revenge, took revenge for all those years of anxiety and fear, she avenged herself. She says on the sports field that day the sun had a harsh glare, and in the sunlight there was a heart-rending scream, like a razor blade scratching on glass.

You ask who she is.

She says, her, and starts laughing loudly again.

You become apprehensive.

She urges you not to be like this. She says she is just telling a story, she heard it from a friend. She was a student from a medical college who had come to the operating theatre for practical experience. Afterwards they became friends and talked to one another about everything.

You don’t believe her.

Why is it all right for you to tell stories but not for her?

You ask her to go on.

She says she’s finished.

You say her story ended too abruptly.

She says she can’t tell mysteries like you, and moreover you’ve told lots of stories and she’s only just started.

Then go on telling it, you say.

She says she’s lost interest and doesn’t want to go on telling it.

She’s a fox spirit, you say after some thought.

It’s not only men who lust.

Of course. It’s the same with women, you say.

Why can’t women do what men can? It’s natural to all human beings.

You say you’re not censuring women, you’re only saying she’s a fox spirit.

There’s nothing bad about fox spirits.

You say you’re not criticizing them, you’re just talking about them.

Then talk about them.

Talk about what?

If you want to talk about fox spirits then talk about them, she says.

You say the husband of this fox spirit hadn’t been dead for a full seven–

Full seven what?

In the past when the husband died a woman would have to stay by his corpse for seven times seven equals forty-nine days.

Is seven an unlucky number?

Seven is an auspicious day for ghosts and spirits.

Don’t talk about ghosts.

Then let’s talk about the one who didn’t die. Before she’d taken off the white mourning strips from the tops of her shoes she was like the prostitutes at the Joy of Spring Hall in Wuyizhen, all the time leaning at the gate with her hands on her hips and one foot slightly raised on her toes. As soon as she saw someone coming she’d posture seductively and pretend she wasn’t looking in order to entice men.