Before I was sent to build the Great Wall, I had been trading around Yangzhou, and whenever I returned to my home in Quanjiao, I would walk along the path embraced by yellow rapeseed flowers on both sides. From afar, I saw her leaning against the fence and peering at the intersection. As I got closer, I could see her blushing. She lowered her head and ran into the house. When I entered the yard, it was my mother who came out to greet me. Over Mother’s shoulder, I saw her hiding behind the half-open window.
She was my wife. We should have had a baby, but we hadn’t. But maybe she was pregnant when I left her, and now I could only console myself with this thought.
I had been doing business in Yangzhou for years. A pretty widow lived in an alley there. She painstakingly built me a nest that had no future. However, I had never held out hope for Yangzhou, so I had no hope for her, either. Our relationship was only temporary. My disappearance, like her late husband’s, became another old scar in her boudoir.
Now I had left both women behind and was on my way to the northern frontier.
The road was long and winding. Every day we set out at dawn and walked till night, passing through countless towns and villages. Some of us had already died on the road, and still more were yet to die. Men’s lives were fragile. I had been mentally fighting my fear of death, and I was constantly praying to the gods for their mercy.
The dry north air made my lips crack and peel, and I had difficulty urinating. At the side of a dry well, my tears gushed out.
Finally, when we arrived at our destination in the boundless mountains, we could only sigh. After cutting down trees and clearing away weeds, we found the ruins of the wall’s foundation from a former dynasty. The wall had collapsed long ago and now wild animals came and went as they wished.
2
In the midst of the rocks, the wall builders sat bare backed as they polished the stones. The monotonous sound of the stones being struck made even the sunlight terrifying. People fainted and died every day.
I had not died, yet.
Sometimes, I sang some Southern folk songs to ease the loneliness of group living, and listened to the chorus responding in tears. On autumn nights when torrential rains caused flash floods, I vaguely saw the green of a reed flute in the endless darkness. The performer, a skinny man from Shaoxing, created some dewy and fantastic nostalgia with his music. But a dark figure came up to him, and his music stopped abruptly as the reed flute cracked. Before long, he died.
3
The winter clothes finally arrived.
I wasn’t sure who had sent me the winter clothes. Was it she? Or she? Perhaps neither. Or perhaps they both had, but their parcels got lost long ago on the way, and now what I was holding was something another woman had sent to another me, and the other me was dead. As many people had died, there were many extra winter clothes. So no one could be sure that what he had received was really from his relatives.
Inside the parcel was a letter. But this letter had no words. It was full of circles in various shapes: some were bigger, some smaller; some regular, some irregular; some circles, some not . . . Yes, neither she nor she was literate, but that couldn’t prove that it was from either of them, just as I couldn’t be sure that the winter clothes—even though they fit me—were made by my relatives.
Tears poured down my cheeks, and sleeves could not wipe away my grief.
4
This section of the wall was completed, connecting the eastern and western parts, and towering above us like a dragon stretching to infinity. We were told we’d be able to go home after the imperial inspector finished his work. We cheered loudly at the foot of the Great Wall and prayed for a long life for our emperor. The soldiers and overseers joined us in celebration, and that was a fatal mistake . . .
The chief of the Xiongnu Huns led his warriors to climb ropes to the top of the wall. When one of our men discovered this, it was too late, for an arrow with the feathers of a wild bird pierced his throat before he could cry out. Another man was about to throw his torch to light the warning beacon, but the fierce black wind brought about by the Huns swept over and ruthlessly destroyed him, as if a giant hand had crushed a firefly to death.
Out of nowhere, they were standing among us, their braids tickling my neck. We found almost at the same time that the enemy was advancing into our columns. The hubbub froze all of a sudden, and everything became static, including our relaxed expressions and the dancing flames . . .
A massive slaughter began . . .
5
All the soldiers, overseers, and those who resisted were killed. A fire proved that I was a survivor (and that I hadn’t joined the resistance), as the flames licked my face and I smelled something like scorched chicken feathers. The Great Wall burned with a loud crackling sound and collapsed. To this day I still don’t understand how the Great Wall ignited.
The fire died out at dawn. We were forced to clear the debris. We moved away the stones that we had painstakingly polished and set in place one by one to form the wall, and threw them into the depths under the cliff. Hot tears filled our eyes as we listened to the dull shattering sounds that thudded through the hills.
In the end, a passage opened before us, and thousands of cavalry, who had been waiting out there, poured through the pass like black clouds. We were kept on the ruins to continue dismantling the Great Wall that we had built. The passage became wider and wider, and more and more of the Xiongnu army rushed into the Central Plains. Their messengers ran back one after another, reporting their new victories. Their horses’ hooves kicked up the dust, choking us in coughs and tears.
I didn’t know whether they had conquered Quanjiao and Yangzhou. I didn’t know whether she and she had fled from home to the southeast coast. I refused to think what would have happened if they encountered the Xiongnu, but in my dreams I often heard their heartbreaking cries for help. I was the one who brought nightmares to them and to me.
Slaughter was pressing in on us. Awakened by a nightmare, we made a plan to escape. But when we put it into action, everything went wrong. I didn’t realize that until I stopped running and found myself alone in the wilderness.
6
Now, as I lay by a campfire, my cheek felt the cool dew on the grass. Countless stars twinkled in the high night sky. Looking at the stars helped dispel my fear of the wolves that surrounded me. The wolves’ eyes were like wildfire.
I had confronted these wolves for many days. Many of their families had died under my sword, and then I had skinned and roasted them. They were always looking for revenge. I kept throwing the wolf bones at them to frighten them into delaying their attack. In the cold wind under the moonlight, they howled bitterly.
Those were the facts. It wasn’t so much that I battled them with my sword as that I ripped apart their fragile nerves with the bones of their kind. They lost their confidence.
I couldn’t remember where the sword came from, but I did remember that I blindly killed several men with it on the night of my escape. Perhaps these men were only wounded and hadn’t died, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was how many of my fellow escapees were still alive, and I desperately wanted to join them, or him.
However, after many days of fruitless searching, I knew the chances were slim. I had discovered that I was in the middle of the steppes, instead of on the other side of the Great Wall—the area that we had originally agreed upon.
7
I don’t want to say much about my experience outside the Great Wall. That day, a river flooded the road. As I waded through the shallow water, I was surrounded by a group of herdsmen. They didn’t intend to harm me, but they were cautious because I was a foreign intruder. Their hands trembled as they took away my weapons—the sword and the wolf bones, and shut me in a stable. But it wasn’t long before I had gained their trust. Finally, they accepted me as one of them.
During that time, a Tibetan woman, in her most primitive and passionate ways, expressed her true love for me. So I wore their clothes, learned their language, herded cattle with them, hunted with them, sang and danced with them at harvest time, and had my children. My prairie life went on for many years, maybe ten, maybe twenty. In short, I had inadvertently forgotten myself.
But one night, a dream broke my peaceful life: I dreamed of the path embraced by rapeseed flowers; my wife was leaning against the fence and peering at the intersection, waiting for me to return.
The grasslands were boiling in my bloodshot eyes, and I missed my home every minute. Guilt gnawed at my heart. I had to say goodbye to my Droma and my children, and I comforted them with a lie that I would be gone only a short time. I wasn’t at all sure that I would find my wife when I got home. The thought of that tore me apart and I tried hard not to think about it.
I had to go. I had no choice.
But the Great Wall blocked my way home. I wandered like a trapped animal, searching for any exit. But all the exits had been sealed up by the horrors created by the brutal war. I tried to hurl myself over this man-made obstacle with ropes, but the soldiers everywhere cut the ropes mercilessly, and their sharp arrows were constant warnings. When I tried to communicate with them in my mother tongue which I hadn’t spoken for years, I found that I was now hoarse, and my words unclear and tedious, sounding suspicious even to me. I had become a barbarian. I smelled bad, I was half naked, and my dark, tanned face was covered with a scruffy beard. I had become a totally different person from the young businessman standing many years ago at the ferry crossing on the Yangtze River, in his neat blue gown, with a parcel on his back and an oil-paper umbrella under his arm.
8
Perhaps I broke through the pass during a battle, perhaps I sneaked in alone when my people temporarily took over a part of the Great Wall, or perhaps I took advantage of the soldiers dozing off and climbed over . . . It didn’t matter now. I was inside. I changed clothes, washed my hair, shaved my face, and looked like a normal person again. No one would pay attention to me even if I walked through the bustling market. People can change. Of course, I wasn’t in the mood to enjoy the peaceful scenery. I had to get home as soon as possible.
A few days later I reached Quanjiao—my hometown. But strangely, the path embraced by the rape flowers had disappeared, and only then did I realize that I could not find my own home without finding the path first. It wasn’t because I had forgotten—the reality was that there was nothing here related to my memory. The people here tried their best to prove to me that there had never been a path embraced by the rape flowers, nor a woman leaning against the fence and waiting for her husband. Their expressions and gestures were very sincere, nothing like a deliberate deception. But to me, they had to be lying.
“Really?” I said. “I don’t believe you!”
But I was still unavoidably confused and sad: I was back in my hometown, but there was no place where I could weep!
I wouldn’t stop trying. I dragged my tired body to rush to Yangzhou where the beautiful widow lived.
To my surprise, I found the alley there. But fearing that I might make another mistake, I did not at once recognise the gray house—not until an old man assured me that the widow I sought did indeed live there.
That’s right! I wasn’t mistaken. Those Quanjiao folks either didn’t know, or they had conspired to deceive me for some reason. They thought their collective denial could change the facts.
I did not rush to knock on the familiar door. With tears in my eyes, I looked at the oleander high above the wall of the yard, and a pink morning glory unfolding its beautiful smile. The creaking of the door being opened was accompanied by the twitter of birds and the fragrance of flowers, which made the alley look unusually tranquil. The warm afternoon sun shone on her face.
“You? It’s you! Why are you here? Where is she?” The woman who came to the door turned out to be my wife! And so, I thought there was no need to hide my shameful affairs as I had done before.
“What? What are you talking about? I’m sorry, sir, but you have mistaken me for someone else. I don’t know you.” I must have frightened her, but she didn’t shut the door on me. She smiled to cover her bewilderment. That was exactly how my virtuous and gentle wife would have behaved.
“No, how can you not know me? I am your husband, and you are my wife. And ‘she’ is the widow who lives in this house. Where is she? Please ask her to come out to see me!” I burst into tears. I thought, perhaps I should find the widow first. The widow’s existence would prove my wife’s existence, as well as mine.
She laughed, so beautiful and cold. Her delicate shoulders shook slightly with a porcelain-like shimmer.
“As you said, you are looking for the widow living in this house. Could you please tell me what you want from her? You act like you know her. But I am the widow of this house, and I do not know you! Who are you?”
“I’m—I am your husband!”
“Impossible!”
I fainted and fell to the ground.
9
I woke up in her bed. The furnishings in the room were the same as I remembered. Yet she, my wife, was still claiming that she did not know me, she had never even met anyone like me. I tried to prove our relationship by telling her many things that happened in the long-ago past when we were together, but she gently denied everything I said. Our long discussion didn’t go anywhere. Perhaps the truth was as she said—She had never left this house; she did not know there was a place named Quanjiao; she was not my wife, and she and I had never met before. Yet she was indeed the widow who lived in this house. The whole thing seemed inexplicable, so there was no need to explain.
I couldn’t go on arguing with her. Looking at her still young, beautiful, and slightly pale face, I fell silent.
“Well,” she stopped sewing and said with a sigh, “people say I’m a widow, but that’s not true. I have a husband, though he’s not at home. I’ve been waiting for him to come back. He went to . . .”
“To build the wall?” I jumped up and shouted.
She raised her tearful eyes in surprise, and said, “How did you know? Everybody says he’s dead, but I don’t believe it. As you can see, I’m making a winter coat for him. It is getting cold.” She unfolded the sewing to show me.
“You’ll also send him a letter with only circles in it, because you can’t write words.” I said these words in desperation. I didn’t know what else I could say.
She lifted her tearful eyes again, and looked at me mournfully, like a frightened fawn resigned to fate. I couldn’t stand it, and quickly looked away.
“I . . . I’m going to find your husband for you!” I finally said resolutely. Obviously, this was a ridiculous thing to do, and whether I found her husband or not, I couldn’t break away from my bad luck of losing everything.
10
I went over to that place on the frontier again. The road was still tortuous. In the midst of the rocks, the wall builders sat bare backed as they polished the stones. The monotonous sound of striking the stones made even the sunlight terrifying. People fainted and died every day.
The supervisor walked up to me and kicked me.
“Hey, you, someone is looking for you.”
I rushed over.
I looked up: he was standing right in front of me.
“Ah, it’s you!”
