‘How about you?’ he asked.
Stone You fell silent.
Fourth Wife You tapped her husband on the shoulder and said, ‘He’s asking you.’
Only then did Stone You stammer, ‘My father had epilepsy, and when I was three years old he suddenly had an episode while ploughing the ridge, and fell into a ravine and died.’
Fourth Wife You’s face hardened.
The doctor sighed and said, ‘You should return home. This illness can skip a generation, and there is no cure. You have four children and all four are idiots. You could have eight, and you’d have eight idiots. If you were to have a hundred children, they would all be idiots as well. You should go home and think hard about how you’ll care for your four children for the rest of their lives.’
The parents left without saying a word, and returned to their village in the depths of the Balou Mountains. On the way home, Stone You carried their son as he followed his wife. After leaving the town they exchanged a few words, but as the sun began to descend in the west, they stopped speaking. They were both exhausted, and the child on Stone You’s shoulders drooled as he slept. As they approached the banks of Thirteen Li River just below the village, Stone You glanced over at the flowing water, then back at the child on his shoulders. His son seemed to be grinning at him in his sleep. Suddenly, he began to tremble, and his eyes rolled back into his head. The sight startled Stone You, but the child’s unnatural appearance quickly disappeared as he fell back asleep – half-crying and half-laughing.
Stone You continued standing next to the river, staring intently at his idiot son’s face.
Stone You’s wife – who by this point had already walked away – turned and shouted, ‘Come… quickly… otherwise the heat will be the death of us.’
He said, ‘Why don’t you carry our son over to the tree up ahead, to rest in the shade? I’ll get a drink and then catch up with you.’
Fourth Wife You took the child to a chinaberry tree and waited beneath it. She waited for what seemed like months, like years, until dusk fell and the earth grew dark, but still there was no sign of her husband. She walked along the river, shouting, ‘Father of our child… father of our baby… where have you gone? Where have you gone, father of our child?’ She walked several hundred steps and then, next to a pool, she saw Stone You, the father of her four idiot children. After he jumped into the river and drowned, his corpse had floated up to the riverbank like an old log. She sprinted down to the water’s edge and dragged him to shore. She placed her hand under his nostrils to see if he was breathing and then, after a long pause, she galloped down to the village to report his death.
Her man had killed himself, terrified of the future.
After her husband died, the light vanished from Fourth Wife You’s life. When she was working in the fields there was no one to bring her shovels and sickles, and when she was resting there was no one to chat with. When the cistern froze over and cracked in the winter and she needed to bind it with wire, she had no choice but to do it herself.
During that year’s wheat harvest, Fourth Wife You tied her four idiot children to a tree at the head of the field as though they were dogs, then placed some grasshoppers, sparrows, stones, and tiles in front of them for them to play with while she was harvesting the wheat. She worked from dawn until noon, at which point she returned to the tree to rest – and discovered that her children had pelted the grasshoppers and sparrows with stones, pounding the sparrows on the tiles like crushed garlic until their heads were shattered and their blood was everywhere. The children were eating the sparrows’ legs, wings, bodies, and heads, and their own mouths and faces were all smeared red. Everything reeked of sparrow blood.
Fourth Wife You stared in horror. Eventually, she began sobbing – sobbing as though there was no tomorrow. Facing the mountain ridge where she had buried her husband, she cursed, ‘Stone You, you should have been tortured to death, but you’ve gone off to enjoy yourself, leaving me and our children to suffer in this world all alone.’
She added, ‘You call yourself a man? You’ve ruined me, and ruined our four children.’
She continued, ‘Did you think that death would be the end of it? That you’d be able to rest in peace? I’m telling you, I won’t let you rest until our children have their own families and their own jobs.’
She continued, ‘Come back here! You’ve abandoned us in this world and gone off somewhere else.’
She continued, ‘Come back here and kneel in front of me – kneel down and see your four children, then see how much wheat I harvested all by myself.’
As Fourth Wife You cursed her husband, her voice grew weak and hoarse as her expression changed from one of fury to one of resignation. She dissolved into silence, but continued staring out at an empty space in front of her. In an open space right between the wheat fields and the mountain ridge, there was an area that resembled a reed mat, full of rocks and weeds. Weeds grew out of the cracks between the stones, completely covering them with vegetation. Sure enough, her husband was kneeling in the clearing, crushing the wild grass beneath him. His grey shadow, thin as a cicada’s wing, swayed between the green grass and the yellow stones. The other villagers who were out harvesting had already returned to the village to have lunch and sharpen their scythes, and then they left the village again, heading toward their own fields. Some of them were spreading the freshly harvested wheat to dry in the sun. Her husband knelt there, at first looking up at her, and then down at the ground.
He said, ‘In all my life, I’ve never disappointed anyone as badly as I disappointed you.’
He said, ‘I left you behind to endure pain and exhaustion.’
He said, ‘Come what may, you must raise our children. When they have families and jobs, life will be easier for you.’
As Stone You mentioned their children, Fourth Wife You looked behind her. Her four idiot children were still eating live sparrows and grasshoppers, and her look of pain gradually faded and the colour returned to her face. Abruptly, she picked up her scythe and began beating her husband like a madwoman, striking his head, his face, and his arms – whatever she could. The mountainside was filled with the sound of her blows, echoing from one side to the other. The sunlight was sliced into pieces by her blade, as was the long, cool breeze into burning hot segments.
The following year, she harvested the summer wheat but was unable to plant the autumn crops. Other families’ autumn crops had already begun to sprout, but her own fields were still bare. Each family’s plough oxen worked endlessly day and night, and Fourth Wife You had no choice but to take advantage of the moonlight to hoe her field. She placed a mat on the ground, where her four idiot children could sleep, then took off her shirt and proceeded to hoe the field from one end to the other and back again. The freshly-hoed soil had a moist and earthy smell that resembled dark crimson. The wheat sprouts gleamed in the moonlight, producing a warm and alluring white aroma. The red and white odours mixed together in the night air, like smoke and fog, and the sound of her hoeing and the sound of her snoring children trickled lazily through the watery moonlight. Fourth Wife You continued working until she was exhausted, but as soon as she sat down on the cool earth to rest, someone approached from the mountain ridge. It was a middle-aged man from a neighbouring village, who came over and stuck his shovel in the ground at the head of the field. He looked at the topless Fourth Wife You and said,