Fengxia was buried alongside Youqing. The snow stopped falling, the sun beamed down from the heavens and the western wind grew even fiercer, its whistling roar almost completely drowning out the sound of the rustling leaves. The wind was blowing so hard that after we buried Fengxia, Erxi and I had to hold on to our hoe and shovel to keep our balance. The ground was covered with snow, and under the sun the white radiance was almost blinding. The plot of land where Fengxia was buried was the only area in sight free of snow. Staring at that patch of damp earth, neither Erxi nor I was willing to walk away. Erxi pointed to an empty plot of land beside Fengxia’s grave and said, “Dad, when I die, bury me there.”
I sighed as I told Erxi, “This spot is for me. Besides, no matter what happens, I’ll die long before you.”
After we buried Fengxia we went back to the hospital to bring the baby home. Erxi carried his son over twenty li to our hut. When he arrived he put the baby down on the bed. The boy opened his eyes, looking all around, and frowned. I wondered just what he was looking at. Seeing the kid like that, both Erxi and I laughed. Jiazhen was the only one who didn’t smile — her eyes remained fixed on the child, with her hand resting beside his face. She looked at the child with the same expression she had when she looked at her dead Fengxia. At the time I was really worried. The look on Jiazhen’s face was scaring me; I didn’t know what was wrong with her. Erxi looked up, and the second he saw Jiazhen, he, too, stopped laughing. With his arms lowered, he stood there not knowing what to do. After a while he quietly said to me, “Dad, you give the kid a name.”
It was only then that Jiazhen opened her mouth. When she spoke her voice was hoarse and rough.
“This child has been without a mother from the moment he entered this world. Let’s call him Kugen, ‘Bitter Root,’ ” she said.
Less than three months after Fengxia died, Jiazhen also passed away. In the days just before she died, Jiazhen would often say to me, “Fugui, you buried both Youqing and Fengxia. Thinking that it’ll also be you who buries me, I can rest at ease.”
She knew that she was going to die soon, but she was very much at ease. By then she didn’t even have the energy to sit up in bed; she’d just lie down and close her eyes. But her hearing was still keen — as soon as I’d come through the door after work she’d open her eye and begin to move her mouth, and I’d know that she wanted to talk to me. During those last days she especially loved to talk. I’d sit on the bed and lean over to listen to her— Jiazhen’s voice was as faint as a heartbeat. No matter how many hardships and difficulties people face in life, they always find a way to console themselves when they get close to death. Jiazhen also found a way; she kept telling me, “This life’s almost over for me. Knowing how good you’ve been to me, I’m content. I bore you a pair of children, which I guess you could say was my way of repaying you. I hope that I’ll be able to spend my next life together with you again.”
The moment Jiazhen said she was willing to be my wife again in the next life, my tears trickled down onto her face. After blinking her eyes twice she smiled and said, “Even though Fengxia and Youqing both died before I did, I can still rest easy. I don’t need to worry about them anymore. No matter what, I’m still a mother. Our kids were good to me when they were alive, and just for that I should know contentment.
“You’ve got to keep on living,” she told me. “There’s still Erxi and Kugen to take care of. Actually, Erxi is also our child, and when Kugen grows up he’ll listen and be just as good to you as Youqing was.”
Jiazhen died in the afternoon. After I got back from working I saw her eyes opened wide, but as I passed by her on my way to the kitchen to make her some porridge I didn’t hear her say anything. When I sat down next to her with the porridge, Jiazhen, with her eyes closed, suddenly grabbed hold of my hand. I was shocked. I never imagined she had so much strength. I couldn’t pull my hand away. I quickly put the bowl of porridge down and used my other hand to feel her forehead. Only when I realized she was still warm did I relax a bit. Jiazhen’s face looked peaceful, as if she were asleep; it didn’t look like she was in any kind of pain. But who could have known that before long the same hand that had just grabbed me would begin to grow cold? I felt Jiazhen’s arms, and one at a time they too became cold; by then her legs went cold, too. Her whole body was cold; only a small area around her chest remained warm. I kept my hands on Jiazhen’s chest, where I could feel the warmth from her heart escaping through the cracks between my fingers. Finally her grip loosened, and her hand, which had been holding mine, fell lifeless against my arm.
“It was really nice the way Jiazhen died,” Fugui said. It was late afternoon, and the people working in the fields began heading up to the ridge in small groups. The sun, hanging in the west, wasn’t as hard on the eyes. It now looked more like a red wheel in the sky, spreading out amid the layers of glowing crimson clouds.
Fugui looked at me with a smile. The light from the setting sun made his face look especially spirited.
“It was really nice the way Jiazhen died,” he said again. “When she died it was all so simple, so peaceful. There wasn’t anything left up in the air, unlike with some of the other women in our village, whom people would go on gossiping about long after they’d died.”
Hearing this old man sitting across from me talk like this about his wife, who had passed away over ten years ago, created an almost indescribable feeling of warmth deep within me. Like a blade of grass swaying in the wind, I caught a glimpse of the movement of a distant tranquillity.
After everyone around us left the fields, an atmosphere of unfolding emerged, which seemed so broad, so vast, so boundless. The setting sun was like a pool of water giving off ray after ray of light. Fugui’s hands were resting on his legs, and his eyes squinted as he looked at me. He didn’t look like he was ready to get up, so I knew he still hadn’t finished his story. I thought I’d encourage him to finish his story while he was still resting. And so I asked him, “How old is Kugen now?”
A strange look appeared in Fugui’s eyes — I couldn’t tell if it was sadness or a kind of joyful gratification. His eyes drifted over my head into the distance, and then he said, “If you’re going according to years, he should be seventeen.”
After Jiazhen died, all I had was Erxi and Kugen. Erxi hired someone to make a backpack that would allow Kugen to spend the whole day on his dad’s back. But this made work even more exhausting for Erxi. As a porter, he had to pull a cart filled with supplies and carry Kugen at the same time. Erxi would always be huffing and puffing, completely out of breath. He’d have to carry another bag with him, too — Kugen’s diaper bag. Sometimes when the weather was overcast the diaper wouldn’t dry, and because Erxi only had one diaper for his son he had no choice but to tie three bamboo sticks to his cart, two horizontal and one upright, and hang the diaper on top to dry. The city people would all laugh when they saw this. But Erxi’s coworkers knew how difficult things were for him, and as soon as they saw people laughing they’d yell, “What the fuck’s so funny? You keep at it and I’ll really give you something to laugh about!”