The Ancient Ship. Zhang Wei
the way to go,” he said, offering a cup to Jiansu, who took it and drank. Buzhao wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He slurped his liquor; Jiansu never made noise when he drank. Sui Buzhao had often eaten raw fish aboard ship, washing it down with strong liquor to smother the fishy smell. Jiansu, who seldom drank, accompanied his uncle for nearly an hour, with grievances and anger burning inside him.
Suddenly Buzhao’s bowl fell to the floor and shattered, the sound causing Jiansu to break out in a cold sweat. “Jiansu,” his uncle asked, “did you hear Gimpy play that flute of his? You must have. Well, the damned thing keeps me awake at night. I’ve spent the last few nights wandering through town, and I feel like I’m ready to die. But how could I expect you to know?” He grabbed his nephew’s shoulder; Jiansu wondered what was troubling his uncle as Buzhao drew back his hand and massaged his knees. Then, without warning, he put his mouth up to Jiansu’s ear and said loudly, “Someone in the Sui clan has died!”
Jiansu stared blankly at his uncle. Even in the dark he could see two lines of shiny tears running down the old man’s face. “Who?”
“Sui Dahu. They say he died up at the front, and it might be true…I’m the only person in Wali who knows.” The old man’s voice had a nasal quality. Though a distant younger cousin, Sui Dahu was still a member of the Sui clan, and Jiansu took the news hard. The old man went on: “What a shame, he was quite a man. Last year, before he left, I went over to drink with him. He was only eighteen, didn’t even have the hint of a moustache.” Shrill notes from Gimpy’s flute came on the air, sounding as if the player’s tongue was a frozen stick. With the flute music swirling around Jiansu, the hazy image of Dahu floated up in front of him. Too bad! Dahu would never again set foot in Wali. As he listened to the icy strains of flute music, Jiansu had a revelation: We’re all bachelors, and Gimpy’s flute plays our song.
Sui Buzhao was soon so drunk he fell off his kang, and when Jiansu picked him up he discovered that the old man was wearing only a pair of shorts; his skin was cold to the touch. Jiansu laid him out on the kang as he would a misbehaving child.
Not until three days after his ferocious drinking bout did the old man finally wake up. Even then he spoke gibberish and kept tripping over his own feet. So he propped himself up against the window and informed anyone who would listen that a large ship had pulled up to the pier, with Zheng He himself at the tiller, and he wondered why he was still in the town of Wali. Jiansu and Baopu watched over him; Han-zhang cooked for him three times a day. When Baopu began sweeping the floor and removing cobwebs from the window, his uncle stopped him. “No need for that. I won’t be here long. I’m getting on that ship. Come with me, and we’ll sail the seas together. Or would you rather die in a dead-end town like this?”
Nothing Baopu said could change his uncle’s mind, so he told him he was sick. “I’m sick?” the old man shouted, his tiny gray eyes opening wide. “It’s this town that’s sick. It stinks. Can’t you smell it?” He crinkled up his nose. “At sea we deal in nautical miles, which equal sixty li, although some stupid bastards insist it’s only thirty. To test the depth, measured in fathoms, you drop a greased, weighted rope into the water, it’s called a plumb…” Baopu stayed with his uncle and sent Jiansu to get Guo Yun, a doctor of Chinese medicine.
Jiansu left and returned with Guo Yun.
After feeling the old man’s pulse, Guo Yun left a prescription that would bring him around in three days. Hanzhang sat at the table watching, and when Guo Yun stood up to leave, he turned, spotted her, and froze. Her brows looked penciled on, two thin black lines. Her dark eyes shone, though her gaze was cold. The skin on her face and neck was so fair, so snowy white, it was nearly transparent. The elderly doctor stroked his beard, an uncomprehending look on his face. He sat back down on the stool and said he’d like to feel Hanzhang’s pulse. She refused.
“You’re not well, I’ll bet on it,” he said as he turned to Baopu. “In nature growth is inevitable, yet moderation is essential. Without growth there can be no maturation, and without moderation growth is endangered.” Baopu could make no sense of that, but he urged Hanzhang to do as the doctor said. Again she refused. Guo Yun sighed and walked out the door. They watched his back until it disappeared.
In the end Sui Jiansu quit his job at the factory, surprising many people, since a Sui had never before given up the calling. For him, however, it was an easy decision. After visiting the commerce office and checking with the Gaoding Street Party secretary, Li Yuming, and Luan Chunji, the street director, he received permission to open a tobacco and liquor stall. A month later he found an empty building just off the street, ideally located to expand his business into a shop. He went to the mill again to talk his brother into joining him in the venture, but Baopu shook his head. “Well, then,” Jiansu said, dejected, “since your calligraphy is so good, will you paint a shop sign for me?”
The old millstone rumbled. Baopu took the writing brush. “What’s it called?”
“The Wali Emporium.”
So Baopu laid a sheet of paper on the stool, but his hand shook uncontrollably when he dipped the brush into the ink, and he could not write the sign.
Ultimately, Jiansu was forced to ask the elementary school principal, Wattles Wu, to write it for him. The principal, a man in his fifties who had layers of loose skin on his neck, refused to use bottled ink; instead he had Jiansu make traditional ink on his long ink stone. It took Jiansu an hour to liquefy the ink block, after which the principal picked up a large, nearly hairless brush, soaked it in the ink, and began writing on a sheet of red paper. Jiansu watched as three thick veins rose on the back of the man’s slender hand, and when they retreated, the words “Wali Emporium” appeared on the paper. The characters for the word “emporium” were truly unique and, for some strange reason, conjured up the image of rusted metal. After Jiansu pasted it over the doorway he leaned against the door frame to look up at the sign. This was going to be an unusual shop, he was thinking.
The first week he was open, Jiansu sold only three bottles of sesame oil and a pack of cigarettes. Sui Buzhao was the first customer to step through the door of his nephew’s shop, but he merely looked around. On his way out, he recommended that Jiansu sell snacks to go with cups of liquor straight from the vat. He also urged him to paint a large liquor vat on the wall. Jiansu not only accepted his uncle’s suggestions, he went further by pasting posters of female movie stars on the outside wall. All Wali elders had been in the habit of going over to the local temple to drink, and the painted liquor vat invited nostalgia. As a result, most of his early customers were older, but the younger folks weren’t far behind. The place quickly became a hub of social activity.
One day, after business had started taking off, an elderly woman, Zhang-Wang, who coupled her maiden name with that of her deceased husband, entered with a request for him to begin stocking her handicrafts.
By “handicrafts,” she meant things like homemade sweetened yam-and-rice balls on sticks, clay tigers, and tin whistles, things she had been making and selling for decades, even during difficult times. She also told fortunes, some openly, others on the sly, to make a little extra money. Already in her sixties, she was a chain-smoker; the corners of her mouth were sunken, making her look older than her years. She had a thin neck and a pointed, turned-down chin, and her face was forever dirty. Her back was bent, her legs shook, and she made constant noises even when she wasn’t speaking. But the things she made were of the highest quality. Take, for instance, her clay tigers. She fashioned them so they had the same down-turned mouth as she, giving them an elderly yet proud, kind and gentle appearance, like their maker. And she kept making them bigger and bigger, until some were the size of pillows, toys that needed to be shared by two children at a time. She suggested that they be displayed on top of the Wali Emporium counter on consignment.
With a broad smile, Jiansu stared at the dust that had gathered on her thin neck and chatted with her casually, while she removed cigarettes from a rack and smoked them one after the other, never taking her eyes off Jiansu. He was by then in