I chose a name for her – Ni Niuniu, same as myself.
That night after dinner, I was totally tired out.
When I went to my room and started writing in my diary, I couldn't stop yawning. The words in my diary, strung together like my yawns, were all awry and uneven, as illegible as the magic scribblings of a ghost. My head felt heavier and heavier, and all my bones seemed to have been pulled from my body so that I slumped in my chair.
At that moment my mother's image wavered into view before me. What was odd was that she hadn't called to me as she entered my room like she usually did, but had waited until she was beside me to call me quietly and mysteriously. Even more strange was the anachronistic sequence of actions: she was already beside me when I heard her knock at the door. But the knock was definitely my mother's. She tapped the door with her middle and index fingers, as if she were plucking a lute, not two or three times, but four times, in a very distinctive way. So that knock could not have been anyone else's.
Frightened, I shrank back.
Mother said, "Niuniu, I want you to come with me to the Ges' courtyard. Mrs. Ge has died, but there's nothing to be afraid of."
I said, "Why would I be afraid? Dead people's yards are safer than living people's."
Then I flew next door to see.
The courtyard had become a brightly lit funeral scene. Green bristlegrass, lilies, "never-die" portulaca, and sunflowers vied in the brilliance of their reds and golds, filling the space with such a rioting blaze of color that everything in the yard shimmered with glowing hues. The scene was dominated by a huge black wooden coffin so high that it blotted out half the wall of the house behind it. When I got closer, I saw that it was the propped-open lid that made it look so high.
One of the men in the Ge family was standing stiffly beside it, holding a small book in his hand. He raised his head to look around at the crowd of people, then look into the coffin again, and finally wrote something in the little book, showing absolutely no sign of grief.
When I came up to the coffin and looked in, I saw a female figure buried in a welter of brightly colored brocade. Her head, covered with a piece of white cloth, was resting on a pretty lotus-pink pillow with a floral border. Looking at her, I was very upset, but I wasn't really frightened.
Then I noticed that the body in the coffin appeared to be breathing. Under the white cloth covering her face, just below where the nose would be, there was a mouth-shaped oval indentation that was rising and falling rhythmically. I jumped back, scared out of my wits.
At that point, the lady in the coffin extended a long, emaciated arm and grasped my hand. I was astonished to find that her hand was warm. Then with her other hand she lifted a corner of the white cloth covering her face to reveal an eye, or, to be more precise, half an eye.
She smiled at me and very softly and weakly said, "Don't be afraid."
I said, "You haven't died yet?"
She said, "No, I haven't died yet. I'm conducting an experiment."
"Experiment?"
"I'm not too inclined to believe in people, including my husband. Look at him. All he's doing is making a list of the funeral gifts. He doesn't look the least bit grief-stricken; on the contrary, he actually looks quite happy. No doubt he's happy because he's gained a new chance."
"What kind of chance could your death give him?"
"The chance to choose a new, young bride."
I said, "He doesn't know you haven't died?"
She said, “No, he doesn’t know. It’s a secret. Only you and I know, and you mustn't tell anyone else. All I wanted was to know, while I was still alive, who was saddened by my death and who was happy, who would truly grieve for me and whose tears were false, and whose silence was truly out of grief."
She paused to take a breath, then continued, "One person's place in another person's heart is revealed by how much of that person's heart consists of tears. All I want to do is measure the amount and quality of the tears people shed over my death."
I heaved a long sigh. "Anyway, I'm glad you're not dead. I'll stay with you. I'm not afraid."
She continued her one-sided conversation. "Everywhere you go in this world there is filth and deception. I can't stop worrying about where my coffin will be buried. Look at this eulogy. It says that during a certain incident in the struggle to cleanse class ranks in a certain year, I took a firm position, identifying what was correct, what incorrect, and that I gave the enemy no quarter, thus revealing my fearless spirit. You probably think that this was meant to praise me. Actually, it slanders me, since that was a particularly ruthless and bloody incident."
"Really? Why would they want to do that?" I asked uncertainly.
"Because everyone has ten mouths, and the only one of them that's sincere is the one that's silent in sleep." The more she talked, the feebler her breathing became. Every word that she spoke floated through the air of the crowded, chaotic courtyard like a thready note from a long-silent ancient lute.
"When you die, I promise I won't slander you," I said.
"Oh well, my real burial place will always be in my own heart," she said.
She smiled at me for a moment, then added, "Don't worry about any of this. When you're my age, everything will be perfectly clear. What do you think of my funeral gown? Isn't it lovely?"
She let go my hand and began removing the colorful material covering her and the fragrant blossoms that filled the coffin so that I could see her funeral gown, and finally she lifted the white cloth from her face.
Only at this point did I see that the body in the coffin was not Mrs. Ge at all. Through the fresh blossoms and pear branches, the woman I saw emerge from under the burial clothes was a different person altogether. The woman I had been staring at all this time was the Widow Ho, who was now gazing wearily heavenward.
When I realized I was looking at Widow Ho, I was at first frightened, but then, stricken with grief, I started to cry, fiercely and silently. Standing alone beside the coffin, I shed my inconsolable tears, but I didn't want anyone in the courtyard to know. It was as if Ho and I cherished a special secret.
I was awakened by my own sobbing to find that I was lying with my face in my exercise book, its pages wet with my tears.
Just at that point, the wind outside my window began to howl as if it had gone mad, with such intensity that it seemed it would blow itself out. Sitting up straight, I tried to concentrate, but my mind was too confused. I could make no sense of what had just happened. In the end, I was so unsettled that I ran over to see Widow Ho.
There was no moon and it was very dark out, with only the dim light reflected from the snow on the ground. I made a wild dash from our courtyard through the raging blizzard to pound on her door.
When she opened the door, she looked as alert and cautious as a cat, but when she saw that it was me, she gave a sigh of relief and suddenly looked tired and sleepy. She lay down on her bed again, looking rather ill.
"What's wrong, Niuniu?" she asked me in a husky, tired voice, as she was lying down. It was as if the words came only with great effort, not from her lips but from somewhere deep within her body, because her lips did not seem to have moved at all.