Soul Mountain. Mabel Lee

       16

      I arrive at Lingyan shortly before night fall after walking the whole day on mountain roads. I have come in through a long and narrow valley, the two sides of which are brown sheer rock cliffs with only some patches of dark green moss growing where there is a trickle of water. The last rays of the setting sun on the ridge at the end of the valley are red, like sheets of flames.

      Behind the metasequoia forest at the foot of the cliff there is a monastery built beneath the thousand-year-old ginkgo trees. It has been converted into a hostel which also takes tourists. I go through the gate. The ground is strewn with pale yellow leaves from the ginkgo trees and there doesn’t seem to be anyone around. I look around downstairs and have to go out to the back courtyard on the left before I find a cook there scrubbing pots. I ask him for something to eat but without looking up he says it’s past meal time.

      “What time does dinner finish here?” I ask.

      “Six o’clock.”

      I show him my watch, it’s only 5.40.

      “It’s no use talking to me, go find the person in charge. I only cook to meal coupons.” He continues scrubbing his pots.

      I make another round of this huge empty building with winding corridors but still can’t find anyone, so I shout out: “Hey, is anyone on duty here?” After I shout a few times, there is a lethargic response, then footsteps, and an attendant in a regulation white jacket appears in the corridor. He takes the money for the room and a deposit for the meals and the key, opens a room and hands me the key, then leaves. Dinner is a dish of left-over vegetables and some egg soup which is quite cold. I regret not having stayed the night in the young girl’s house.

      It was after leaving Dragon Pond that I met her on the mountain road. It was two or three o’clock in the afternoon and the mid-autumn sun was still quite strong. She was walking slowly up ahead with two big bundles of bracken on her carrying pole. She was wearing a floral shirt and trousers and her shirt clung with sweat to the hollow of her spine. Her back was rigid and only her hips and legs moved. I was walking close behind her. She heard me coming and turned her metal-tipped pole to let me pass, but the big bundles of bracken on the pole blocked the narrow road.

      “It doesn’t matter, just keep going,” I said to her.

      Afterwards we came to a small creek and she put down the pole to take a rest. It was then that I saw her flushed cheeks with wet hairs clinging at the sides. She had thick lips. Her face was that of a child, but she had large breasts.

      I asked her how old she was. She said she was sixteen, without the bashfulness of a country girl meeting a stranger.

      “Aren’t you afraid of walking along mountain roads all on your own? There’s no-one around, not even a village in sight.”

      She glanced at her carrying pole with the metal tip and said, “When I set out on my own on the mountain road, I only need to take a pole. I use it to fend off wolves.”

      She said her home was not far off, that it was just down in the hollow.

      I asked if she still went to school.

      She said she had been to primary school, now it was her younger brother’s turn.

      I asked why her father didn’t let her go on with her schooling?

      She said her father’s dead.

      I asked who else was in the family.

      She said there was her mother.

      I said her load probably weighed a hundred and ten catties.

      She said there was no firewood around so they had to use bracken for fuel.

      She let me walk in front. Just over the rise I saw by the road a solitary house with a tiled roof on the slope.

      “That’s my home with the plum tree growing in front,” she said.

      The leaves of the tree have almost all fallen and the remaining few orange-red leaves trembled on the smooth, purplish-crimson branches.

      “This plum tree of ours is quite odd. It blossomed in spring, then again in autumn. The snow-white plum flowers all only dropped a few days ago. But this wasn’t like in spring, this time there wasn’t a single fruit,” she said.

      When we got to her house she wanted me to go in to have some tea. I went up the stone steps and sat on the millstone at the front door. She took the bundles of bracken on her pole to the back of the house.

      Before long she had removed the latch of the door and re-emerged from the hall with an earthenware pot to pour tea into a large blue-rimmed bowl. The pot had probably been sitting in the hot ashes of the stove as the tea was piping hot.

      Propped up in the coir bed of the hostel, I feel quite cold. The window is closed but in this upstairs room the walls are timber and the cold air comes through, it is after all a mid-autumn night in the mountains. I again recall her pouring the tea for me, her looking at me and laughing as she saw me taking the bowl in both hands. Her lips parted and I noticed her lower lip was very thick, as if it were swollen. She was still wearing her sweat-soaked shirt.

      “You’ll catch a cold like that,” I said to her.

      “That only happens with you city people, I wash in cold water even in winter. Won’t you stay the night here?” She saw me give a start and quickly added, “In summer there are lots of tourists around and we take in lodgers.”

      Her eyes persuaded me to follow her inside. Part of the timber wall of the hall was covered with a Fan Lihua colour picture story. I seem to have heard the story when I was young but couldn’t remember what it was about.

      “Do you like reading fiction?” I asked, referring to stories with episodes like these.

      “I’m keen on listening to opera.”

      I knew she was referring to the opera programs on radio.

      “Would you like to give your face a wash? Should I bring you a basin of hot water?” she asked.

      I said there was no need, I could go to the kitchen. She immediately took me to the kitchen, got a washbasin and deftly scooped water from the urn to scrub and rinse it, then ladled hot water from the pot on the stove. She brought it over and, looking at me, said, “Have a look at the room, it’s clean.”

      I had succumbed to her sultry eyes and had already decided to stay.

      “Who is it?” A woman’s dull voice came from the other side of the timber wall.

      “It’s a guest, Mother,” she answered loudly. Then, turning to me, she said, “She’s ill, she’s been bedridden for over a year.”

      I took the hot towel she handed me. She went into the room and I heard them quietly talking. Washing my face brought me to my senses and taking my backpack I went outside and sat down on the