Father’s Palace (Excerpt)
Gods return on New Year’s Eve. Snow falls on earth, casting a silver dream over mountains. Chimneys receive snowflakes and their delivery of the auspicious moment. These blessings from the heavens glaze the rooftops of the poor and destitute with a dazzling white.
Wind gusts into cave houses, howling like a wild wolf, circling the haystacks atop the poor’s wall in hunger. Freezing, the villagers of Huoshao Bay return home and arrange themselves around tiny, pea-sized kerosine lamps. Men shell beans and women cook, settling into a homely comfort. Around them, paper windows are gilded by the caramel of candlelight and overlaid with paper cuttings in celebration of the New Year.
The clock’s ticking cuts through the sweet, pervading scent of potatoes on the stovetop, wiped down to a spotless shine. On top of the stove also sits a tea kettle, now whistling and beginning to boil. Behind the main room hangs a decorative New Year’s picture, promising abundance in all the years to come. There is a fat carp on the print, looking ready to swim off any second.
Night has fallen. Caifeng brings out a basin and begins wiping the household statue of Buddha with clean water. His altar is scarcely dotted with two potatoes and a few pieces of fruit candy in paper wrapping, but the Buddha is accustomed to the poor’s plain offerings. He sits quietly in the corner of the cave, eyes gleaming with kindness and tranquility. A potful of bean stew is bubbling away, stirring the children awake with its fragrance. Caifeng watches the flurries of white outside. She remarks, quietly:
“It’s snowing.”
Snow covers everything, imbuing all that is on earth with an airiness. It disguises roads, boundaries, and alleviates the hardships in the poor’s lives.
As Caifeng prepares for the big dinner, her husband Liu Shijiu traverses the dark night. The wind is biting, cold as a coffin. He lights a match. Sparks fly off and land on a clump of horseweed, setting off blazing flames which rise into the shape of a fox, draped all over in eyes. In drunkenness, Liu Shijiu catches a glimpse of something round and fuzzy rapidly approaching the sole of his shoe.
It startles him. “A wandering spirit of the night!” He thinks to himself, suddenly reminded of what his grandfather used to say, that certain spirits lurk in the darkness to sniff at travelers, and that death shall come swiftly to whomever they catch a whiff of.
Every farmer has a scent given by his guardian beast or bird. He can use mugwort, pachouli, and sow thistles to mask it and hide his tracks from spirits with the good nose. Some farmers give off the musk of wild goats. The green scent of mugwort can offset it. Others are under the protection of the god of cows and smell bitter. For them, the Cang-zhu herb is useless. Hemp leaves conceal the stench of damp feet. They come in handy for those with shoes stinking of quails’ sweat. Farmers returning home after a day’s weeding are protected by owls. They use rehmannia root to cover the muck on their shirts. Rose can hide the thievery of ratty farmers stealing corn from their neighbors. Bugloss erases the trace of stags who come out to court at night. The smell of dog dissipates under the spice of carrot seeds. Ironsmiths carry the musk of tigers, so they ought to wear sow thistles for disguise. Farmers whose sweat drips of swallow should make use of reed and Chinese plantain. Fenugreek is excellent for anyone who smells of hare. Finally, those protected by crows should apply Chinese violet.
“Wandering spirits of the night—” Liu Shijiu stirs awake and finds himself in the graveyard, surrounded by a dense mass of thorny bushes. Snow is coming down harder. Feathery flakes hurry onto his nape, sending chills down his spine. Something dark drifts towards him. By now Liu Shijiu has mostly sobered up. He makes out the shape of an owl, snickering as it lands on a dirt cliff. Liu Shijiu can no longer recall Grandfather’s tales. As he stands up from the graveyard and turns around, he knocks into a tombstone. It just happens to be the one carrying his ancestors’ names.
He hears a few crackling noises from afar. Using them as a guide, Liu Shijiu gropes his way out. He doesn’t make very far before a shadow sneers and jolts him into a halt. It’s Leng Xixi, rummaging through the graveyard for food. Sleeves and front stained with grease, he has pocketed all the sacrificial offerings and fruits laid upon the headstones. Leng Xixi pulls out a single, rumpled cigarette and offers it to Liu Shijiu, who scoffs and walks away.
Head pressed down by wind, Liu Shijiu makes it to an open field and finally catches sight of a few odd gleams from Huoshao Bay. Following the light, he makes it back to the village. Smoke is rising from the roofs. Once he sees the chimneys, he feels a lot better.
At home, Liu Shijiu unloads his pelts and picks up a bundle of firewood from the back. The living room is freezing, but it stays warm in the bedroom. On the windowsill sits a pot of geranium in full bloom, its emerald-green leaves extending calmly. His children have fallen asleep on the bed-stove. They’ve stretched their feet to the edge, exposing the puckering seams on the soles of their shoes. Fire burns bright in the hearth. Next to it, the dog is dozing off. Liu Shijiu strips off his worn coat and puts on cotton-padded pants that Caifeng has freshly sewn for him. They are very warm.
At last, with his new clothes on, Liu Shijiu is restored.
(Father’s Palace by Li Xiaoyang, an excerpt in translation)
原文是李啸洋老师《父亲的宫殿/Father’s Palace》，这里选译了第一节。同时期译的五首诗最近要登上Columbia Journal了，就想到这篇，索性把第一趴发上。
Father’s Palace的情节非常简单: Farmer and hunter Liu Shijiu wants to build a better, brick-and-mortar home for his family to replace the cave house he grew up in, so he sets out to accomplish that. Something wonderful and strange happens along the way: he dreams of ancestors from the shadow realm and encounters animal spirits. But most of what happens is very mundane: he sells pelts, goes to the market, fixes water leakage, has sex, casts seeds and harvests, and lays down the foundation to his house. What makes the story special is this: it is a rare, earnest effort at creating a spiritual home for the Chinese people without—this is crucial—taking recourse to nationalist sensibilities or ethnocentric dialectics that plague the Chinese consciousness today. Liu Shijiu has a strong relationship with his land, labor, family, and ancestry, but it is not construed in terms of conquering nature, claiming ownership of the land, or idealizing the dead. Liu’s relationship with his surroundings is a healthy, tender celebration of family and vitality. His desire to improve his surroundings does not come at the cost of nature, it is not expressed as “taming the wild”. As origin myths go, that’s just kind of rare.
