Chapter 42

She could just make out a black statue, like a Buddha with two faces.

…A two-faced Buddha?

Wasn't it a Land God temple?

The chief: "The Daoist priest comes tomorrow morning. Did you buy the cigarettes? The twenty-yuan kind, four cartons."

Liu Zhiyi didn't take her eyes off the Zhuan Temple.

"I did. For the Four Guardians, when the time comes?"

In her grandmother's village they called the four men who carried the coffin the Four Guardians.

The chief: "You've got the cash ready too? When the priest chants, you give a bit of money as is fitting."

Liu Zhiyi nodded; she didn't understand a lot of the country customs, and could only follow the old people's lead.

The chief pulled the car up onto the threshing ground.

As a child she hadn't understood it — she'd only heard the grown-ups say daochang, daochang, and going by sound alone it seemed like "ritual ground," so Liu Zhiyi had thought the countryside so particular it even built a place for Daoist rites.

Later, watching people dry their grain there, she learned it was the threshing ground.

The chief: "I've found you a cook. Have you got the cigarettes and liquor ready for the tables?"

Liu Zhiyi: "All bought."

There weren't many relatives in the city — most were out in the country — so the funeral banquet was set in the village.

Liu Zhiyi thought it over, and still couldn't set her mind at ease about the two-faced Buddha in the Zhuan Temple.

"Chief… does the village worship a two-faced Buddha now?"

The chief: "It's always worshipped a two-faced Buddha."

Liu Zhiyi frowned. "But I remember it used to be a Land God temple."

"You must be misremembering." The chief didn't make much of it. "Sorry to trouble you to keep watch one more night."

Liu Zhiyi: "That's hardly any trouble…"

Two more elderly men stood on the threshing ground, and once the chief pulled the car door open they came up to lift the stretcher her mother lay on.

Seeing how old they were, Liu Zhiyi hurried to put out a hand.

"Let me, let me."

"You can't manage it." The chief gently pushed her hand aside, then gripped the edge of the stretcher with both hands.

The chief: "We're used to farm work — you might not even be as strong as me."

That morning Liu Zhiyi had worn herself out, dragging and hauling to get her mother down the stairs, and now she watched three old people carry the body down easy as anything, striding along briskly.

Liu Zhiyi: "…"

Liu Zhiyi supported her grandmother and followed behind.

Though the dungeon had improved her grandmother's body a little, so she no longer wobbled as she walked, she still couldn't go fast.

Liu Zhiyi slowed her steps, taking a look around out of the corner of her eye.

She hadn't been back to the old home in so long; her memory of it was still muddy roads after rain, white walls and gray tiles, the pond, and the open-air outhouse.

But this time, a public toilet had gone up at the village entrance, and even the pond's edge had been laid with a cement path and railings.

For all the heavier modern air about the village, there were fewer people.

Just inside the village she saw a collapsed brick house; looking out, she saw a big field near the edge of the village.

She dimly remembered that last time she'd come back, the field had been full of golden rice.

Now the earth was a scorched yellow, overgrown with weeds — no telling how long it had been left fallow.

The chief: "The young ones go off to work and buy houses out there now, and don't come back."

Liu Zhiyi felt a touch of melancholy, but no more than that.

Her grandmother's house was near the pond, a tree by the door — a fruit tree, probably, though she couldn't tell the kind.

Back after so many years, Liu Zhiyi found everything she saw unfamiliar.

But her grandmother eased; though the sorrow on her face hardly faded, she still drew a deep breath and sighed.

"The air's better at home after all."

Her grandmother pointed at a little shed by the side of the pond, on the verge of collapse.

"Remember this pigsty?"

Of course Liu Zhiyi remembered.

When she was small, before her grandmother had moved to the city, she'd loved raising chickens and pigs.

For all its fat, a pig was nimble and very fast when it ran.

She could never catch one.

But that wasn't what had stuck with her most.

Grandma: "You got covered in flea bites back then."

"They say cats and dogs get fleas — who knew pigs got them too."

As a child Liu Zhiyi hadn't caught the pig, and had gotten a body full of fleas besides.

Her grandmother smiled. "You hated coming back so much when you were little."

It was strange, really — in her childhood memory nothing in the countryside was any good: no snacks, no good friends, only a stinking open-air toilet and the not-so-pleasant smell of chickens and pigs.

It was as if everything in the countryside was hateful.

But looking back now, all that was left was climbing the hills hand in hand with her mother, splashing about in the stream, picking mushrooms in the hills, and her grandmother finally catching a chicken from the yard to stew a fragrant pot of mushroom chicken.

Liu Zhiyi: "I don't hate it now."

Her grandmother's house had been redone, an extra bathroom put in.

The living room — out here they called it the hall — was still as it was in her childhood memory: cement floor, white walls, wooden beams overhead and a few skylight tiles.

But the bathroom was very modern, tiled, with a heat lamp.

A coffin had already been set in the hall.

And her mother had been laid inside it, covered with a red-faced quilt.

Her grandmother tugged at the corner of the quilt, then pulled it open, looking at her mother's face over and over, never tiring of it.

"The coffin was meant for me. I never thought you'd be the one to use it."

Liu Zhiyi sat to one side; she opened her mouth, feeling she ought to say something, but in the end nothing came out.

Her grandmother went on talking to her mother, head bowed, and by the end had begun to weep low.

Liu Zhiyi: "Grandma…"

Her grandmother raised a hand and waved it.

"Never mind me. Go out and find somewhere to walk about — never mind me…"

Liu Zhiyi paused, said nothing more, stood, and withdrew from the room.

When a person is grieving, no amount of comfort from others goes in.

Liu Zhiyi could understand the feeling.

Outside the door two round tables had already been set out, and not far off a little shed had been put up, holding some cooking gear.