The driver didn't reply. The interior of the taxi was steaming up; the sound of the windshield wipers snapping back and forth was unnerving.
“Where are you taking us?” He was nearly shouting.
“Take it easy!” the driver shot back angrily. “You said you wanted to go to Yuanming Gardens, didn't you?”
“Why are you taking us this way?”
“Which way would you like me to take you?” the driver asked coldly as he slowed down. “Come on, tell me, which way do you want to go?”
“How should I know? But this way seems wrong.” Then, softening his tone of voice, he said, “You're the driver, you know the way better than I do.”
“I'm glad to hear you say that,” the driver replied scornfully. “This is a shortcut. It'll shorten the trip by at least three kilometers.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“I was going to knock off for the day to go home and get some sleep,” the driver said. “Who in his right mind would be out in weather like this? I just felt sorry for you folks…”
“Thank you,” he repeated. “Thank you.”
“I'm not out to cheat you,” the driver said. “Just give me an extra ten yuan. It was your good luck to run into an honest man like me. Now if… if you think you're paying too much, get out now and you don't owe me a cent.”
As he looked out the window at the gray sky, he said:
“It's only an extra ten yuan, isn't it, driver?”
The taxi sped out of the small street and turned into an even more deserted dirt road with deep muddy puddles. The car raced madly along, splashing water on the roadside trees. The driver was cursing under his breath, either at the road or at the people, hard to tell. Meanwhile, he sat there biting his tongue, his mind filled with ominous premonitions.
The taxi forged its way off the dirt road and onto a gleaming asphalt street. With one last curse, the driver swerved around another corner and screeched to a halt in front of an open gate.
“Is this it?” he asked.
“It's a side entrance. The Western Garden is down the way a bit,” the driver said. “I could tell that's what you two wanted to see.” He looked down at the meter, added ten yuan to the amount, and handed it through a hole in the wire divider.
“I can't give you a receipt,” the driver said.
He ignored him as he opened the door and got out. Then he held the door for her, but she climbed out the other side.
The cabbie turned his car around and drove off. He cursed softly to himself, but once the curse was out, instead of harboring ill thoughts toward the driver, he actually felt grateful to him.
It was still raining. Leaves shone on the roadside trees, clean and incredibly appealing. She stood there in the rain, her face pale as she gazed blankly off into the distance. Taking her by the arm, he said:
“Let's go, dear. Here's your Shen Garden.”
Submissively, she let him lead her through the gate into the garden, where peddlers manning stalls along the way shouted out invitingly:
“Umbrellas, umbrellas here. Beautiful, sturdy umbrellas..
He walked up to one of the stalls and bought two umbrellas, a red one and a black one. Then he walked up to the ticket counter, where he bought a pair of admission tickets. The ticket seller had a large, doughy white face. Her penciled eyebrows looked like two thick green worms.
“What time do you close?” he asked her.
“We never close,” doughface replied.
Holding their umbrellas over their heads, they walked into Yuanming Gardens, he in front holding the black umbrella, she following with the red one. The rain beat a steady tattoo on the plastic skins. Clusters or pairs of people passed by in front of them. Some were strolling casually, gaudy umbrellas in hand, while those without umbrellas were scurrying along in the downpour.
“I thought we'd be the only miserable souls…” He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. So he quickly changed directions. “But this is special. If it weren't raining so hard, the place would be packed. It always is.”
He felt like saying, “Today Yuanming Gardens belong to just you and me.” But he caught himself just in time. Together they strolled along the winding path, which glistened like glass. Half-grown lotus leaves and cattails floated on top of the pond off to one side, where frogs leaped along the water's edge.
“Wow, isn't that something!” he shouted excitedly. “Now if only there were a water buffalo grazing by the pond and a flock of white geese gliding on the surface, it would be perfect.” Lovingly, he looked at her pale face and said, his voice filled with emotion, “You always sense what's best. If not for you, I'd never have had a chance to see Yuanming Gardens like this.”
With a heavy sigh, she said:
“This isn't my Shen Garden.”
“You're wrong, this is your Shen Garden.” He felt like a stage performer. In a tone of voice pregnant with meaning, he added, “Of course, it's my Shen Garden too. It's our Shen Garden.”
“How can you have a Shen Garden?” The sudden sharpness in her eyes made him feel as if he had no place to hide. She shook her head. “Shen Garden is mine, it's mine. Don't you dare try to take it away from me!”
The excitement of a moment before turned to ashes; the scenery around him lost its appeal.
“You're squashing them!” she shrieked in alarm.
Instinctively, he jumped to the side of the path, as she cried out even more shrilly, “You're squashing them!”
When he looked down, he saw an army of tiny jumping frogs. No bigger than soybeans, they were fully formed, little pocket-sized amphibians. Countless numbers of the little things lay squashed on the path, forming perfect outlines of his footprints. She squatted down and moved the little carcasses around with her finger, which was nearly bloodless, with a gray fingernail and an accumulation of dirt. Feelings of disgust, like dregs of filth, welled up from the bottom of his heart.
“Little miss,” he said mockingly, “I didn't squash any more than you did. That's right, you didn't squash any fewer than I did. Sure, my feet may be bigger than yours, but you take more steps, so you squashed at least as many as I did.”
She stood up and muttered, “That's right, I squashed at least as many as you did.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “Froggies, froggies, how come you're so small?” Then she burst into tears.
“Enough of that, little miss,” he said almost jokingly to mask his disgust. “Two-thirds of the people in this world are struggling against deep waters and raging fires, you know!”
She stared at him through her tears.
“They're so small,” she said, “but their bodies are perfectly formed!”
“Perfect or not, they're only frogs!” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her forward. But she threw her umbrella to the ground and, with her free hand, tried to peel his hand away
“We can't spend the night here all because of a few frogs!” he said angrily as he shook off her hand. But he could see in her eyes that it was futile to try to get her walking again, if she was going to have to squash more frogs in the process. So he picked up her umbrella, took off his shirt, and used it like a broom to shoo the disgusting things off the path ahead. Scattering madly, the little frogs eventually opened up a narrow lane for them. “Hurry up,” he said with a tug, “let's go.”
Ultimately, they wound up in front of an area covered with rubble. By then the rain had all but stopped and the sky was clearing. After folding their umbrellas, they climbed to the top of a huge boulder that had, sometime in the past, been carefully chiseled by stonemasons. He wrung out his rain-soaked shirt, then shook it out and put it back on. He sneezed, putting as much effort into it as possible to win her sympathy; it didn't work. Shaking his head in mockery of himself, he stood atop the rock and, like all mountain climbers who have reached a summit, thrust out his chest and gulped in the clean air. His mood turned bright and sunny, like the sky, now that the rain had stopped. The air is so clean and fresh here, he was about to remark to her. But he didn't. It was as if they were the only people anywhere in that vast garden, and to him that seemed almost miraculous. Now that he was in a good mood, he took another look at the rubble-strewn ground around him. The huge chiseled rocks were so famous, so evocative, had been framed in so many lenses and shown up in so many poems, yet now they were as common as rocks anywhere. They stood silently, yet somehow seemed to be unburdening themselves of thousands upon thousands of words. They were, in the end, silent stone giants. There in front of the ruins, a pond over which a fountain had sprayed water two centuries earlier was virtually covered by waterweeds, sweet flag, and reeds. Wild grasses he couldn't name flourished in the cracks between rocks.