Binu and the Great Wall of China. Su Tong,
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now on?’
Binu replied, ‘Without Qiliang by my side, whether I live or die does not concern me.’
Then the women asked, ‘Who are you going to get to carry that wonderful bundle to the other side of Great Swallow Mountain?’
‘If no one else will take it,’ she said, ‘I will.’
The women were convinced that Binu’s mind had become confused, that she had no idea that Great Swallow Mountain was a thousand li away.
Binu said, ‘If I have a horse, I’ll ride it. If I have a donkey, I’ll ride that. If I have neither, then I’ll walk. An animal can walk that distance. Are we not superior to animals? Who says I cannot walk a thousand li?’
The women, rendered speechless, ran out of Binu’s hut holding their hands to their breasts, not stopping until they were well clear. They turned to look back at the quivering figure of the woman in the hut, and many of them felt a deep sadness. She may have stopped searching for Qiliang’s straw sandal, they said, but her soul has not returned. One envious woman, wanting to hide her feelings, said cynically, ‘A thousand li just to deliver a winter coat? Does she suppose she is the only woman who loves her husband!’
Another woman could not really say if she had been struck by the power of emotion or if she had been stung by something Binu said, but she was no sooner out of the hut than her head began to ache. In order to dispel her mental and physical discomfort, she spat several times in the direction of Binu’s hut. The others followed her example, and the noise drew a chorus of barking from the village dogs, who howled at Binu’s hut all that night. Children got up out of bed, but were sent back, their little heads clasped firmly in their parents’ hands.
‘The dogs are not barking at us,’ the adults told them. ‘They are barking at Binu. Her soul left her the day Qiliang left.’
Binu went to see the sorceresses of Kindling Village, bearing gifts, and told them of her plan to travel north to find her husband. She was anxious to know how to reach her destination before winter set in, so she could take him some winter clothing. The sorceresses revealed that they had travelled great distances north on spiritual wanderings, and one said she had used the feather of a crow as a compass. Every night she had roamed the three great cities of the north. Another said she had passed over North Mountain by hitching a ride with a caravan carrying tribute to the capital, secretly pasting a strand of her hair on the tribute chest, allowing her to watch the people feasting in Longevity Hall in the light of day.
The sorceresses cleverly avoided giving Binu an answer; instead, they examined her tongue and cut off a lock of her hair, which they held over a flame with a pair of tongs. She did not know what it was the sorceresses saw, but they knelt on a straw mat, placed bleached tortoise shells in an earthen vat, and then emptied them back out, all the time chanting incantations. Binu stared at their gaunt faces, their expressions a mixture of fear and joy.
‘Do not go,’ they said. ‘If you do, you will not return, but will be struck down by illness on the road and die on the plain.’
‘Will I die on the way there,’ Binu asked, ‘or on the way back?’
The sorceresses blinked rapidly as they examined the pattern created by the tortoise shells on the mat. ‘Do you not fear death?’ they asked. ‘Is it your wish that you will die on the way back?’
Binu nodded. ‘If I can deliver winter clothing to Qiliang,’ she said, ‘I will die happy.’
The sorceresses of Kindling Village had never before met a woman like this. With censorious looks in their eyes, they said, ‘What sort of men’s winter clothing is worth dying for?’
‘Winter clothing for my husband, Qiliang, is worth dying for,’ she replied.
The sorceresses were speechless. Then, one last time, they placed the tortoise shells into the earthen vat and emptied them out onto the mat. They fell in the shape of a horse. ‘Since you are willing to sacrifice your life,’ they said, ‘then go. Do not forget that you must hire a Blue Cloud horse, for only a Blue Cloud horse can bring you back home.’
So Binu went to hire a horse at Banqiao, only to discover that the domestic animal market there had closed down. An autumn flood had caused the river to overflow its banks and swallow up temporary bridges erected by the horse traders. Their riverside thatched sheds stood empty, and the fodder and the smell of livestock had drifted off on the wind, leaving only posts standing askew as they forlornly awaited the return of the horses, though indications were that they would not be coming back.
Water and straw merged to reclaim the riverbank and, in the wake of the plunder, Blue Cloud Prefecture was waterlogged and bleak. Binu stood at the water’s edge, recalling how she and Qiliang had passed through Banqiao on their way to Cinnamon City to sell their silk. There had been many, many horses in the livestock market that day. The half-naked horse traders used to lead the animals down to the river to drink, all the while calling out to the women tending distant paddies, ‘Big Sister, Big Sister, come and buy my horse.’ That is what Binu had come to do, but traders from the Western Regions or from Yunnan were nowhere to be seen. All that was left of their presence was a large, cast-off, chipped vat in front of one of the sheds, filled half with rainwater and half with the remnants of burnt straw; a raven was perched on the rim.
Binu followed the riverbank, hoisting up the hem of her robe – pink flowers on a blue background – until she met up with the old pig tender, Sude, who stared at her in wonderment. ‘Are you trying to hire a horse? That, I’m afraid, is out of the question. There are so few of them left in Blue Cloud Prefecture that you could try for the next ten thousand years and not be able to hire one.’
She walked on in despair, thinking of the sorceresses’ prophecy, and was just stepping through a profusion of wild chrysanthemums when a frog hopped out from the water and, inexplicably, began to follow her. She stopped. ‘Why are you following me?’ she asked. ‘You’re not a horse and you’re not a donkey, so go, go, go back into the water.’ The frog hopped back to the river, landing on a raft bobbing lightly on the surface. Someone had cleaved the raft in two, and the surviving remnant was rotting away, its wooden planks sprouting a bed of musky green moss that was home to the frog. Binu recalled how, during the summer, a blind woman had poled that raft downriver, wearing a bamboo hat on her head and the black attire favoured by women who lived in the mountains. As she sailed downriver she called out a name, but no one in the neighbourhood could understand her North Mountain accent. She was like a black egret that lived on the water, never on land. Eventually, the women who went down to the river to gather lotuses came to understand that the blind woman was searching for her son. But no one had ever seen her son, and nearly all the men of Blue Cloud Prefecture had been taken north as forced labour. Some people wanted to tell her that she should not be drifting downriver if she wanted to find him, that she should pole her raft up north. Others wanted to advise her that the first flood would soon arrive, making the river treacherous. But she stubbornly let the flow of water take her downriver, perhaps not understanding the language of those on the riverbank or maybe not knowing how to leave her raft; and she continued calling out for her son, first to this bank, then to the other. For the blind woman, the difference between day and night did not exist, so there were times in the dark early-morning hours when her shrill, mournful cries swirled above the riverbanks as her raft ploughed through, disturbing the crows in their treetop perches and interrupting the sleep of egrets on the sandbars. This night-shattering din startled people out of their pre-dawn sleep, the sounds from the river bringing them an indescribable sense of unease in the darkness. And their discomfort was justified: the autumn floods arrived early, and everyone said it was the blind woman who had set them loose. After the waters receded, there on the riverbank they saw the wooden raft, now torn in half. The raft was empty, the rafter gone, like a single drop of water in a surging river.
Binu had not expected that what awaited her at Banqiao was neither a horse nor a horse dealer, but a frog. It might well have been waiting there for some time, on the riverbank or in