An old voice emerged from the crowd that was circling Mouse Girl. “My child, you should bathe,” the voice said, as Mouse Girl bowed her head and wept and sewed her dress.
Mouse Girl raised her tear-stained face and looked in astonishment at this skeleton with the old voice.
“Soon you’ll be interred,” the old voice continued. “So you should bathe now.”
“I haven’t finished the dress,” Mouse Girl said.
“We’ll do it for you,” many women’s voices said.
Dozens of female skeletons came up to Mouse Girl and dozens of pairs of hands reached out to her. Mouse Girl lifted the unfinished dress, unsure into which pair of hands she should place it. “We used to work in a clothing factory,” two voices said to her.
Mouse Girl passed them the unfinished dress, then looked up at the old skeleton standing in front of her and asked with some embarrassment, “Can I keep my clothes on?”
The old skeleton shook his head. “You can’t bathe if you’re dressed.”
Mouse Girl lowered her head and in a slow movement let her outer clothes leave her body, then her underwear. When her legs emerged among the grasses and the blossoming wildflowers, she was completely unclothed. Lovely Mouse Girl lay on her back among the grasses and wildflowers, and after putting her legs together she folded her hands across her chest, then closed her eyes, as though entering a dreamlike serenity. The grasses and wildflowers growing so profusely around her lowered their heads and bent at the waist as though lost in admiration, their gaze concealing her body from onlookers. Thus she was hidden from view, and we saw only the grasses spreading and the wildflowers blooming.
“People over there make distinctions between family and strangers,” the hoary old skeleton continued, “but there are no such demarcations here. With interments over there one needs to be bathed by one’s kith and kin, but here we are all her family and we all need to bathe her. People there use bowls of water to bathe a body; here we cup our hands to make a bowl.”
Saying this, the old skeleton picked off a tree leaf, cupped it in his hand, and walked over to the stream. The crowd circling Mouse Girl made an orderly line, each one picking a leaf and cupping it in his or her hands, creating a long, long line of cups made of tree leaves, following the old skeleton to the riverside. Like a strand pulled from a ball of thread, they stretched out in a longer and longer arc. The old skeleton was the first to squat down, and after scooping up water in the bowl made by the tree leaf cupped in his hand, he got up and came walking back, and the people who followed him did the same. The old skeleton went up to where Mouse Girl lay, and after opening his hands sprinkled the water from his leaf bowl on top of the grass and wildflowers that covered Mouse Girl’s body. The grass and the flowers, sprinkled with the river water, trembled and shook, moistening Mouse Girl.
The old skeleton now began to walk off, holding the wet leaf in his left hand and wiping his eyes with his right, as though wiping away tears when parting from a loved one. Those behind followed suit, walking over to Mouse Girl with their leaf cups and sprinkling her with the cleansing water. They trailed behind the old skeleton, the line of them stretching away into the distance like a serpentine path. Some carried a leaf in their left hand, some in their right, and the leaves dripped their final droplets in the gentle breeze.
The thirty-eight victims of the department store fire had been walking back and forth in a group, but now they separated, each squatting down to scoop up water, then one by one walking over to Mouse Girl and sprinkling the grass and flowers so that her body was washed from head to toe. The little girl began to sob, and so did the little boy, and the other thirty-six gave sympathetic sobs of their own. Although they moved separately, their sobs reminded us that they were a tight-knit group.
Tan Jiaxin and his family were also in this long procession. They too gathered river water in their cupped hands and slowly approached the spot where Mouse Girl lay, and they sprinkled their benediction as Mouse Girl prepared to go to her resting place. As Tan Jiaxin’s daughter moved on, she wiped her tears with both hands and her body gave a little tremor; the leaf in her hand drifted to the ground. Where was her resting place going to be? she wondered. Tan Jiaxin stretched out an arm and patted her on the shoulder, saying, “So long as everyone is together, one place is as good as another.”
Zhang Gang and Li, the two board game enthusiasts and inveterate arguers, also arrived. They piously filled their leaf cups and sprinkled the contents over Mouse Girl’s grass-and-flower blanket. Noting a wistful look on Li’s face, Zhang Gang patted his skeletal shoulder with his own skeletal hand. “Don’t feel you have to wait for me — you can go on ahead, you know,” he said.
Li shook his head. “We haven’t finished our game.”
The crowd of people who had left after bathing Mouse Girl’s body now formed several long lines stretching into the distance, while people in other long lines continued to queue up to bathe Mouse Girl — it seemed that this ceremony had a long way to go. Zheng Xiaomin’s parents also arrived, her mother still ill at ease, huddling herself up, her hands on her thighs, her father sticking close to his wife, hugging her as though eager to cover her. They separated, however, to pick leaves and scoop up water, and then the man, closely followed by his wife, led the way, as they moved along in the queue.
Again the nightingale song burst forth, but only in brief snatches. Li Yuezhen walked over slowly in her white clothes, with the twenty-seven babies forming a line and singing as they followed behind her. Perhaps the grass was tickling the babies’ necks, for giggles often interrupted their beautiful song. Li Yuezhen carried the babies one by one to the broad tree leaves beside the river. As the babies lay on the leaves that swayed in the breeze, their song was no longer intermittent, but flowed freely like the river water itself.
Mouse Girl, surrounded by grass and flowers, heard the nightingale chorus rising and falling on all sides, and without conscious effort she began to sing the babies’ song. Mouse Girl became the lead member of the choir. She would sing a line and the babies would follow; she would sing another line and they would follow that; and the lead and the chorus would repeat themselves over and over, as though they had rehearsed this in advance, and Mouse Girl’s and the babies’ songs rose and fell, rose and fell.
My footsteps, originally heading on a path toward the funeral parlor, toward my father, still lingered here.
THE SEVENTH DAY
“I have never been so clean as I am now,” Mouse Girl said. “I feel almost transparent.”
“We have bathed you.”
“I know, many of you have done that.”
“Not many of us — all of us.”
“It felt as though all the water in the river was washing me clean.”
“Everyone lined up to bathe you.”
“You’re so good to me.”
“Here we’re good to everyone.”
“And you’re seeing me off as well.”
“You’re the first to leave here to rest.”
We walked along the road, thronging around Mouse Girl as she proceeded to the funeral parlor. The road was a broad wilderness, so long and wide you could not see its end, as vast as the sky above our heads.
“When I was over there,” said Mouse Girl, “I liked spring best, and hated winter. Winter was too cold, so cold it made my body shrink, whereas in spring the flowers blossomed — and my body bloomed as well. But here I like the winter and was dreading the spring, thinking my body would rot when spring arrived. But now everything’s fine — I don’t need to worry about the spring.”