An Empty Room Read online

  An Empty Room

  Mu Xin

  Translated from the Chinese by Toming Jun Liu

  A New Directions Book

  Contents

  The Moment When Childhood Vanished

  Xia Mingzhu: A Bright Pearl

  An Empty Room

  Fong Fong No. 4

  Notes from Underground

  The Boy Next Door

  Eighteen Passengers on a Bus

  Quiet Afternoon Tea

  Fellow Passengers

  Weimar in Early Spring

  Halo

  Tomorrow, I’ll Stroll No More

  The Windsor Cemetery Diary

  Translator’s Afterword

  AN EMPTY ROOM

  The Moment Childhood Vanished

  if a child knows what he should know and does not know what he should not, his childhood will be very happy. But when I was a child, I did not know what I should know, and I knew what I should not, hence all kinds of bewilderments continue to follow me today.

  Before I was ten years old, I already knew the nuanced differences between the seven types of Buddhist temples: si, miao, yuan, chan, guan, gong, and an. That year I followed my mother and the whole retinue of my paternal and maternal aunts to Mount Mo-An for a Buddhist service. I didn’t complain when we passed a temple at the foot of the mountain or when we reached another one halfway up. But when we neared the Shizi Mian An (Sleeping Lion Nunnery) close to the peak, I asked, “Is this the place?”

  “That’s right, we’re here,” said a porter who was carrying our luggage on a shoulder pole.

  I turned to my mother. “So nuns will perform the rites for us?”

  “Oh no,” she said, “the leading monk here is a great master. Believe it or not, he’s in charge of eighty-two temples around here.”

  I was even more puzzled. “Then, how can he live in a nunnery? The Sleeping Lion An?”

  She was silent, then said softly, “Well, perhaps . . . perhaps they recently moved here from somewhere else.”

  The temple gate was plain, but once we stepped inside the grandeur expanded: after the First Mountain Pass was the Second Mountain Pass; then there was the Palace of Great Majesty, the dining hall, meditation rooms, and the guest house. Indeed it was a magnificent temple in the ancient style! With so much to explore, I soon forgot the mystery of the temple’s name.

  My family never failed to honor the Buddha. It was for the purpose of worshipping our ancestors and burning shu-tou that my mother had decided to make this trip. As far as I could explain then, shu-tou was the written penance sent to the dead ancestors “by water route and by land route,” the entire rite involving an elaborate performance. Or, as I understood it, a kind of bank check with a high monetary value acceptable in the other world, an otherworldly currency for penance. People in the world of Yang supposedly paid for the benefit of the people in the world of Yin. Many monks were involved in this extravagantly observed rite of complicated procedures as if it were a grand drama acted out in sequential segments with monks reciting the scriptures and kowtowing on the ground. In the splendor sustained by bright candles, endlessly burning incense, and incessant Buddhist music and chants, the service continued for seven times seven days and nights in order for the prayers to be completed in a formal fashion.

  For a child, it was a curious spectacle to observe at first. But after seven days I grew weary. There was only so much to see on the mountain, and I only had to look at the Buddhist vegetarian meals to feel repulsed. I even got tired of teasing a crazy monk who was locked up in a cave behind the temple. So I sighed deeply, thinking how very difficult it was to release your dead ancestors.

  I pestered my mother about going home every day until she replied, “Soon, soon. We’ll go home the day after we receive shu-tou.”

  That day was finally about to arrive. I was giddy at the thought of eating regular food, kicking balls, flying kites. At the same time I worried about the instructions I had received from a hunchbacked monk. He had told me that I would kneel in the Palace tomorrow, carrying a wooden plate. He said that my hands should be extraordinarily clean and I should quietly hold the plate while waiting for the head monk to finish his shu-tou chant. Out of frustration I asked, “How long do I have to kneel?”

  “About as long as it takes for someone to smoke a cigarette.”

  “What brand of cigarette?”

  “Something like Golden Mouse or Beauty.”

  I felt better, relieved that it wouldn’t take as long as the burning of an incense stick at the altar. I even laughed, imagining the hunchbacked monk hiding in a room and smoking a Golden Mouse or Beauty.

  The receiving of shu-tou came and went. It didn’t seem to take as long as smoking a cigarette, but I itched all over while I kneeled, holding the redwood plate while monks’ robes and temple flags surrounded me. I felt it a great injustice that I should be suffering for ancestors whom I had never known. Still, the recitation of a monk standing to my right piqued my interest: “. . . aai . . . the twenty four altitudes . . . aai . . . in the Clear Breeze Village of the . . . aai Phoenix Tree and Mulberry County in the . . . aai Luck River Province in the Capital . . . aai . . . of the King of the Under . . . ai-hi-yi-ai . . . world, ai-hi . . .”

  I was amused. So on the large folded yellow paper called shu-tou was written an address? But what could he mean by the twenty-four altitudes? Was it where shu-tou was sent to or sent from? Was there really an underworld? Was the underworld also measured by altitudes? As I considered these strange thoughts it was over before I knew it. I felt relieved to stand and straighten my back. As soon as I received shu-tou in a large envelope with a large seal on it, I rushed over to my mother.

  “There is an address on shu-tou. It’s the twenty-four altitudes in the Clear Breeze Village of the Phoenix Tree and Mulberry County in the Luck River Province. And it’s addressed to the King of the Underworld,” I told her with pride.

  My aunts stood around my mother, not letting their opportunity to tease me slip by.

  “Aha! A ten-year-old can understand a monk reading scripture. Who knows what lies in store for him in the future!”

  “At least he’ll be the favored disciple of a great scholar.”

  “Well, it seems he’ll enter the world of Dao and be in charge of eighty-two temples.”

  My mother said with a smile, “He should at least know the difference between a village, a county, and a province. Otherwise how can he find his way home?”

  I had not meant to show off and felt their teasing was unjust. After all, I knew not only the difference between a village, county, and province — I could also name seven different types of temples.

  It was time to go home!

  Porters carried our luggage on their backs or with shoulder poles. My female relatives were dressed in bright red and green and draped with lustrous jewelry. I followed everyone out of the gate. Taking a last glance back, I once again saw the lintel inscribed with those words: Sleeping Lion An. How could monks live in this place meant for nuns? Such a temple shouldn’t be so big. And why didn’t my family ask even a single question?

  Our family teacher was an erudite scholar who had passed the imperial exam of the Manchu Dynasty with high honors. I was a piece of stone too hard to be carved into any desired shape. As he taught me, I would nod just to make the days go by. It wasn’t that I couldn’t memorize books or write poetic couplets. It was that I always wanted to read books that were classified as inferior. In those years, especially in my family, “forbidden books” covered such a wide range of writings that even Tang and Song poems were excluded — they were simply “not for someone your age.” Precisely for that reason, I particularly enjoyed the sound and sense of two lines of Li Bai from a collection of annotated poetry, which read: “When rain stops the sky clears / Where clouds open colors merge.” One day I was staring at a pale pottery vase on my teacher’s desk and somehow murmured these two lines. My teacher heard and scolded me: “Where did you learn that? Remember, sentimental poems weaken your will!” Frustrated, I suddenly felt that in his dark study the rain would never stop and the sky would never clear. I dipped my middle finger in water and wrote the word “escape,” though I had no strategy as to how to accomplish this. All I could do was watch the character dry up. A sour vindication filled my heart.

  More than anything else I dreaded writing essays. Topics for assignments were so dry: “On Great Courage and Small Courage,” or “Su Qing Tries to Persuade King Hui of the Qing on the Need for an Alliance but the King Does Not Accept: An Essay in Assessment.” I know now that the idea was to deform the mind of a child as foot-binding deformed girls’ feet. I had to improvise without any confidence. After a while, I would count words. If I had about a hundred words, I would feel relieved. With about two hundred words, I would feel like Li Bai’s “boat sailing light, leaving behind a thousand mountains.” My essays would be handed back to me all marked in red, like “a pink face mirroring a peach blossom.” I would feel embarrassed, and
then vengeful. The teacher’s heavy editing of my essays made it seem that he was writing about the topics he had assigned himself. In case my mother asked to see these essays, I always made clean copies, leaving out the teacher’s negative comments. After reading one, she would smile and say something like, “Well, you are capable of making something out of nonsense, although I must say it still lacks depth.” I was secretly amused that my teacher was really the one whom my mother alluded to unknowingly as “capable of making something out of nonsense” and who lacked depth.

  A boat full of people were waiting in excited anticipation to leave when I suddenly realized I had left my special bowl in the temple.

  At home each of us had our own cup-and-bowl set. If someone accidentally took another’s during tea or a meal, we would wait until the mistake was rectified. I was even given my own tea cup and rice bowl during our stay in the mountains. My tea cup was designed with one of the twelve zodiac symbols corresponding to the year of my birth. I didn’t particularly care for the cup. But my rice bowl was a different story. As I didn’t like Buddhist meals, the elderly master gave me a small bowl fired in a famous kiln as a gift. The bowl had a delicate cobalt-blue glaze. Any food served in it somehow became more appetizing.

  “The master is a master after all,” my mother said. “He knows the temperament of this little monkey.”

  I recited in reply, “When rain stops the sky clears / Where clouds open colors merge.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “This bowl is part of a long tradition of ceramic making. Look at its color. Only a master monk can afford such an extravagant gift. Make sure you don’t drop it.”

  After each meal I would wash it in a brook and carefully put it away. The night before we left, I had wrapped it in soft cotton paper and placed it next to my pillow. But I woke up dazed the next morning as everyone hurried to prepare for departure. Somehow I forgot to pack the bowl. It would have been better if I had completely forgotten about it. Now that I did remember, the boat was about to leave shore.

  “The bowl!” I said.

  “What is it?” My mother didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “That bowl, that special bowl, the gift.”

  “Where did you put it?”

  “Next to my pillow.”

  My mother knew I could never forget about a lost object that meant so much to me. The only way to ease my mind was to possess it again.

  “We can buy another one when we get home.”

  “No, we can’t. It wouldn’t be the same one.” I was certain that the bowl was unique.

  “What then? Must someone go back and get it?” She implied that I should forget about it since it was impossible that the boat should wait for one person to climb to the temple and back.

  I walked across the landing plank, sat on the stump to which the boat was tied, and lowered my head to stare at the river.

  People in the boat were stunned and started whispering to each other. No one came ashore to talk to me. They waited for my mother to force me aboard. She did nothing of the kind, and instead whispered to a muscular young boatman who picked up his padded jacket, flew across the landing plank, and ran up the mountain path.

  Mountain dwellers call azaleas “red reflections of the mountains.” Azaleas — mostly red ones, some white — were in full bloom. I wandered to a bush, picked a flower, and sucked it. A honey-like taste stung my tongue. In this way I waited.

  The whisperings in the boat faded. Each found something to do — some played chess or cards, others ate sunflower seeds. A few opened the fruit boxes that the monks had given them and beckoned me to eat with them on board. I waved a “No thanks.” There were plenty of interesting things along the shore: pebbles of myriad hues, green snail shells, transparent gray shrimp shells. . . . I felt a pang of regret. I didn’t think it would take so long.

  Mountain partridges cooed and cooed in the distance. It had rained last night.

  “I’m coming . . . ! Coming . . . !” rose the voice of the young boatman, although we couldn’t see him.

  He emerged from a small path and slowed to a stride. As he neared, I saw him empty-handed and felt defeated — the bowl was lost! Perhaps he couldn’t find it or it had broken.

  With a broad smile he slipped one hand inside his padded jacket that was tied with a belt and took out the bowl. The cotton paper was torn and soaked with sweat but his face was free of any perspiration. I received the bowl with both of my hands, thanked him, and walked across the plank, holding it carefully.

  The boat rocked slightly until there was a gradual, rhythmic evenness of rowing. The river unfolded like a huge expanse of silk. The pace of the boat breaking the waves and the occasional words exchanged between the boatmen at the oars created a rare tranquility. I didn’t feel like going into the cabin and sat alone at the bow. It had indeed rained heavily last night. I remembered hearing thunder. Mountains, now refreshingly green in the distance, blurred in the water reflections. A mild breeze caressed my face. Where was my mother?

  Slowly the river became even broader and the mountains flat. I thought I should wash the bowl.

  With so many people on board, the waterline was quite high. I barely had to bend my arm to touch the river. So I filled the bowl with water and poured it skyward. In the sunlight, drops of water looked like pearls. I stood up and tried to throw the water a bit farther away when my fingers slipped and the bowl dropped.

  In the swirling river, the bowl, face up, was a lotus leaf separated from its stem, floating up and down, quickly disappearing toward the stern, further and further away. . . .

  I watched something vanish, as if I was in a dream from which I couldn’t wake.

  What could I say to my mother? And to the boatman?

  She emerged from the cabin, carrying a saucer with dim sum.

  I told her what happened.

  “Someone will find it. Even if it sinks, someone in the future will recover it as long as it doesn’t break. . . . Eat something. No need to think about it. When you are done with your snack, come inside for some hot tea. . . . Such things won’t be rare occurrences in the future.”

  She spoke the last sentence very softly. What could she mean?

  Looking back, I find my mother’s words an ominous prophecy. Such things are indeed no rare occurrences in my life. Many things and people, far more precious than that bowl, have been lost. Some broken.

  At that moment, with the floating bowl, only my childhood vanished.

  Xia Mingzhu: A Bright Pearl

  when my father was in his prime, a wealthy married man taking a mistress was “legitimate” in the eyes of the public. Besides, our ancestral home was in a remote and ancient village, and my father’s business was in a faraway, bustling metropolis. While my mother, my sister, and I guarded the ancestral home, my father was alone in the city, dealing with his business competitors and partners. It thus seemed reasonable that he should have a woman there who could help him with domestic and social matters. Nevertheless, my mother, knowing that Miss Xia and my father had been living together for many years, never asked him about her. If my father had boasted of it as a romantic affair, my mother would most likely not have tolerated it.

  I remember our winter vacations — snow in the ancient village, the opera singing during temple festivals — everything was joyful while we spent the New Year with Mother. During our summer vacations, my sister and I would travel by boat and train to the city. Father would let us stay in the extravagant hotel he owned and managed. My sister was a smart girl, and brave, too. She would always explore the vicinity of the hotel to find open areas for us to play, expanding our territory. Everyone in the hotel, from upper management to the staff, took care of us. Everything we asked for, though we hardly asked, was provided. Father seemed to think that nothing could go wrong. He barely had time for us anyway. It was Miss Xia who would come in her car to see us and take us to her villa for dinner. She had all kinds of questions for us, and if our conversation went well, she would ask us to call her “Second Mother.” Sister and I would just smile and look at her. It wasn’t that our mother had told us not to call her that — we just felt uncomfortable. Everything about her was enchanting: her European-style beauty, her good manners, her amiable personality, her hospitality. But there was only one mother for us and we couldn’t accommodate a second one. Plus, she didn’t look anything like our mother. She looked more like, well, a flower. Sister and I would sometimes make faces behind her back, and call her “a social flower,” knowing it wasn’t very nice of us to say that. Sister told me that Miss Xia was a top graduate of Zhejiang-Jiangsu (Z-J) Academy of Physical Sciences. “Top graduate” I understood. Apparently she was one of three with the highest GPA. But I had only heard about a certain Z-J governor by word of mouth, never a Z-J Academy of Physical Sciences. Sister told me that in the Academy, which was run by both Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, Miss Xia was also a star swimmer and a star tennis player. Suddenly my esteem of Miss Xia ballooned. But this esteem quickly deflated when I learned of a different title she possessed. “Do you remember that huge beauty salon across the street?” Sister once said. “Well, Miss Xia is the lady b
oss of the White Rose Beauty Salon.” I hated all lady bosses. So every time I saw her, I tried to secretly tell which of her gestures and smiles were those of a lady boss and which of a star athlete, until I got confused and tormented by my lack of insight. Why care? Sister said. I just eat the yummy roast duck liver she brings and wear the skirts she buys; it’s dad’s money anyway. I, too, ate the duck liver; I also wore strap pants and leather boots — all purchased with father’s money. (But it was Miss Xia who took us to the store, made selections for us, and had our clothes custom made. If we had gone on our own, the store owner wouldn’t have been so patient in letting us try them on so many times. He even sent our new purchases to the hotel.) As soon as we stepped into the store, Miss Xia would say, “You like this kind of leather boot, don’t you?” It was amazing. I felt pleased and would ask her, “How did you know?” “You look really handsome in them, like a military officer.” I was won over as she knew my thoughts. She also knew Sister’s thoughts. Miss Xia envisioned her as a young dancer, and had many dancing costumes of light gauze made for her, each outfit arriving one after another like a magician’s trick. I almost complained that I couldn’t be a girl. Since soft dancing steps weren’t my style, I clicked my boots to make loud sounds. If we were walking on the road, I certainly attracted more attention than Sister.