Day of the Dead

By Freakjoy

Translated by Sabina Tang

The young lady Xiang died at twenty. Before her death, Lord Xiang's good fortune had been the object of universal admiration. The young lady was known far and wide for her talent: she had been educated as a boy, and was accomp- lished in all the arts of lute, chess, calligraphy and painting. At sixteen she was married to a favorite student of her father's, a match made by Lord Xiang himself. The husband and wife were harmonious as lute and zither in concert. The poems that they dedicated to each other in the privacy of their chambers were often smuggled out of the household by tutors and visitors into broader circulation. As for her younger brother, he was endowed with scholarly elegance, graceful of appearance and quick of mind; in the eyes of his tutors, destined most certainly for a brilliant future.

But now when the Xiang house came up in conversation, all shook their heads and clucked tongues. Ever since his sister was drowned by accident, a mysterious illness had confined the young lord to his bed. Lord Xiang extended invitations to skilled physicians from all quarters, but the consultations proved fruitless. Everyone said the boy must be in shock; his love for his sister had run deep since childhood, and such a malady of the heart could not be cured by conventional means. Others noted as well that the young lord had been ill for nearly a month. The ritual forty-nine days after a death were drawing to a close, and the day of the young lady's soul-return was near. Could it be that the dead was unwilling to leave the living behind, and would on soul-return come to claim her brother for the journey ahead? Lord Xiang was a renowned scholar and a man of reason, who should hold no belief in such unlucky talk. But with the death of a beloved daughter, faced with a son-in- law in tearful mourning and a son in his sickbed, he weakened so much as to request a fortune from the Xiangguo Shrine outside the city.

That fortune had as well not been told, for it was one to inspire fears not calm them. That day when Lord Xiang gazed upon the words on the bamboo tablet, his withered eyelids closed tightly before reopening; he set down tablet and payment in silver with a trembling hand and limped away. The fortune-telling monk took up the tablet and read: a clear prediction of great misfortune, with a premonition of bloody disaster.

Lord Xiang had a few ceremonies of propitiation said at the Shrine. In order to get away from the noise and bustle, the abbot of the Shrine brought his chess set to a mountain pavillion just outside the pass, and was amusing him- self thusly when a young woman in white came slowly up the steps, leaning on the banister as she walked. The abbot asked the lady-donor the reason for her journey; he was answered, "to attend a banquet to which she had been invited". The woman smiled faintly when she saw the chess game, and taking up the stones she set out a new problem. The abbot examined the board and saw that black was filled with a murderous aggression, matched move by move with white's own fury. So he said to the woman, "The true pleasure of the way of chess lies in balance and harmony. How is it that milady is so uncom- monly pure of visage, but her method in chess is wicked and dangerous?" The woman gave a sigh and said with sadness, "The workings of the heart differ much from water - great waves may arise from what is deep and still." The abbot was astonished. Upon consideration of these words he remembered that life was said indeed to resemble a game of chess, and could not help but be troubled at heart. He gazed at the board for a long while, unable to puzzle his way to the problem's solution; when he lifted his head the young woman had vanished without a trace.

The young lord seemed to recover somewhat after the ceremonies, and at the end of the month was for the first time able to come to his brother-in-law's study for idle conversation. The widower was ever fond of his wife's likeable young brother, and pity stirred in his heart to see the pale sick face so like to his dead spouse.

At the time, he had been by the window, playing with a jade hairpin. It was an heirloom of his family's, his engagement gift to his wife. The young lord took up this ornament that had been his sister's favorite in life, and with great naturalness wound it into his own hair.

His brother-in-law felt the inappropriateness for a moment - but the youth's eyes were as stars or lightning, his beauty its own light; the green jade in his ink-dark locks could not have suited him more. So with the hand he had ex- tended in protest, all unthinkingly he tidied a few stray wisps of the boy's hair that had come loose.

That night they conversed in joyful intimacy. True soulmates were hard to come across in the world, and both had the sensation that they would rather share a death than share a life. The brother-in-law suggested that they should scatter earth as an oath to each other, with the oathbreaker to die an ignomi- nous death.

The young lord, laughing, said it was unnecessary: his family had in its possession a mirror with the ability to reflect human hearts. Hand-in-hand the two came to the storage room of the household, and opened a case that had not been touched for uncounted years. The mirror was of ordinary bron- ze, and did not appear to be of great antiquity. On the back were sculpted tortoises upon lotus leaves, with fairy musicians at left and right, and a pair of phoenices dancing. Words were carved thereupon: "Phoenices paired, a plated band of gold. Ying and yang have their match, the sun and moon meet eternally. So the lotus box of white jade, the belt of green feathered mala- chite. Those of the same heart, shall find their hearts drawn together. Mirror your soul and courage to last a thousand springs." The young lord brushed the accumulated dust from the surface with his sleeve, and hung it carefully on the wall.

He pulled his brother-in-law to stand together before the mirror.

Both trembled at the same time, as if with cold. The brother-in-law saw the young lord that day as he pushed his own birth sister into the water, and watched by the lake until she had drowned.

The young lord saw for his part many years into the future, by which time the Xiang house had lost its prestige, and his brother-in-law had made another advantageous marriage. Fearful of entanglements, the man plies him with wine and strangles him in his sleep, disposing of his corpse in the same cursed lake water.

The young lord asked his brother-in-law what he saw; the other man answered that he saw nothing. The brother-in-law returned the question; the young lord only shook his head. His body swayed, there was a sudden sweetness in his throat and fresh blood came to his lips.

It was late into the night, dark and still of human sound. The young lord pinned up his long hair with the green jade pin, and with difficulty dressed and walked into the courtyard. A cold moon was in the sky, and amidst the scent of flowers drifted from time to time the scattered notes of a silk- stringed zither.

The young lord lit three sticks of incense, and knelt on the slate paving. He kowtowed three times with great sincerity and implored the moon: "Sister, even if you do not come for your revenge, I will soon receive my due. To have this person I would give up my all: neither life nor death, right nor wrong have a place in my thoughts. And finally to die by his hand - that too I am willing. For love of the womb that bore us both, give me these few years; what I owe you I will repay, in the next life and all the others to come."

Little by little, the incense burned to ashes and fell. The young lord knelt on the ground for an unmeasured time. Shadows shifted with the moon's passage across the sky; the sobbing notes of the zither fell slowly silent, and in the night only the faintest sigh sounded.

The seven times seventh night finally came. Following tradition, the Xiang household set out scented lamps and food offerings to welcome the dead, and opened all the doors and windows in the dwelling. Aside from the young lord in his feverish slumber, from the Lord down to the servants there was none who could sleep. Local legend had it that the dead would take the form of a cat or a dog to feast upon the food, and to visit beloved relatives. So the common PRACTICE on the night of soul-return was to scatter a thin layer of coal dust on the floor of the house: if in the morning tiny prints could be seen, then the dead had returned in the night. The younger servants were afire with a mix of dread and curiosity; every chamber was lit bright as day by oil lamps, and in the end no one had the nerve to peek.

After a full night on watch, aware that the sky was lightening, the servants gradually began to exchange words and to chatter.

The young lord heard in his dreams voices calling out severally: "The dawn is here! All's well with the household!" He started up abruptly and looked out the window. The night was receding but not yet gone; a beautiful young woman in white stood before the pane. The young lord opened his mouth, but found that he had no words after all. Twin rivulets of tears tracked down his face in silence. The woman gave a tiny nod, and her lowered brows and edged gaze faded slowly from view.

The young lord rose to his feet before he could think, to chase after her. There was a clear ringing tone: a jade hairpin had dropped from his pillow, and lay broken in two on the ground.

At the Shrine, the abbot was still brooding over the chess problem he had been posed. That day he said to himself in brusque realization, "If the solution cannot be found, there is no sense in forcing the issue. I would never have thought that after all these decades of spiritual study, a chess problem would gain the best of me." He lifted his hand to shuffle the pieces, and saw suddenly that one of the black stones had - who knew when? - broken into powder. One piece gone: life stolen away gives rise to life again, but the game already was different.