Chapter 3: Knock on the coffin, ask three questions

Translator's note: curious about why I'm working on the earlier chapters? You can find an explanation in the translator's note on the ninth chapter. Life is picking up a bit, so from now on out I'll endeavour to post a chapter per month.

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Suddenly, the narrow space was quiet, and it was then that the coldness and eerieness of the stone tomb appeared. The slow sound of the water’s movement, the circling of the ripples subsiding, seeming as if to ebb and gather towards the back of the coffin. The gathered water scattered in every direction, revealing the dingy white^[1] flagstone of the floor beneath, and from near the corner of the coffin, light pooled secretively from where the smoking pipe had been washed out by the water. With a sudden clear expression in her eyes, Li Shiyi moved forward hurriedly and gathered it, still not straightening her body, listening to the gurgling from within the coffin, the sound vibrating in waves.

The groaning sounds seemed as if to be that of pulling tendons and loose bones, as well as having the violence and rhythm of pumping water, and gave Tu Laoyao, who had wrapped the infant girl in cloth, an unending sense of fear, his legs weak and paralysed, unable to move a single step, and saw Li Shiyi supporting herself with her right hand, perching herself like a swallow^[2] on the edge of the coffin, grasping at the smoking pipe and scooping out a spoonful of glutionous rice out from within her bag, her wrist turning as she leaned forward to fasten it, and then press a fingernail-sized grain of rice to one cun^[3] above the space between the woman’s brows. She pursed her lips, ring finger trembling with a gentle knock, and the woman’s corpse, which had been quivering, stilled, and, without speaking, laid down within the coffin.

When the course of actions were completed, Li Shiyi’s sharp jaw retreated slightly, and she leisurely lifted her body, hooking long legs over the edge of the coffin, and put the smoking pipe upright, and then knocked twice, crisply and efficiently, upon the wood twice.

Too…fucking cool!^[4][5]

Tu Laoyao looked towards Li Shiyi’s raised eyelids and the brow ridge which had not moved a hairsbreadth, and supported himself on numb knees,^[6] staring with wide, awed eyes.^[7] “Zong, zongzi?” Tu Laoyao asked cautiously. In grave robbing trade, the phrase “zongzi” meant a risen corpse that became a cadaver.^[8]

Li Shiyi nodded, then shook her head, without any desire to be talkative, just took the smoking pipe and held it in her hand, then leaped down to the stone step and leaned over to pick up the glass lamp, and indicated to Tu Laoyao to retreat. Tu Laoyao pushed himself up off the ground, and held the baby girl to his chest, and prepared to go back up as Li Shiyi had indicated. But his right shoulder was pressed back by a slander opium pipe, and Tu Laoyao quickly retreated half a step, and saw Li Shiyi looking at him and then at the baby girl, before she raised her right brow. Tu Laoyao instinctively tightened his grip on the baby girl, and said, “Are we not…are we not bringing her along?” He cast a look at the pale, pouting child, and found he couldn’t bear putting her down.

Rather than expressing anger, Li Shiyi smiled instead, and said, “Switch one, and take one, is it that you want to go to jail for a third time?”

Tu Laoyao’s eyes widened, and he explained, “This is a living baby, how could it be the same!”

“Living?” Li Shiyi sneered.

“Living!” Tu Laoyao held the baby out to Li Shiyi, and seeing she was indifferent, clutched the hand in her sleeve and pressed it against the infant’s chest, and briefly applied pressure as he added, “Look, peng peng peng. Feel beneath the layers of the clothes, it’s warm.” His voice fit perfectly with the beat of her heart, and Li Shiyi’s palm vibrated slightly, as if by the flow of vitality the same as blood vessels flowing, that vitality also rarified and minute, like an intermittent fragrance, carrying a weakness that made one feel tenderness.

Li Shiyi looked at the innocent^[9] infant, and her lacquer-dark pupils sank downwards, not knowing why they looked towards her hands, shallow breaths hitting her fingertips, like the autumn wind brushing against the rails,^[10] tender and lovely.

Damn it.^[11] Li Shiyi opened her eyes and took her hand back, and was met with Tu Laoyao’s jubilant face, as if he was holding a candy figure,^[12] babbling and pouting as he played with the baby.

“If you want to take her then you take her.” Li Shiyi tossed out the sentence, and lifted the lantern, walking the way they had come.

Tu Laoyao, suddenly roused, quickly ran a few steps to block the stone path, and said, “Me taking her back, that’s not possible.”

Li Shiyi rapidly turned over the almanac in her mind, and carefully recalled whether today was meant for abstaining from medding in others’ business. Urgently, Tu Laoyao added, “That wife of mine already suspects I’m secretly fucking prostitutes, and if I come back this time with an infant, it’ll turn the heavens over. Your younger brother’s wife^[13] is heavily pregnant, and anxious, and a woman can die with her child—a woman can die with her child, ah!”^[14] Tu Laoyao’s face was gathered with wrinkles, seamlessly switching his appeal. “Also, your nephew will be born in a few days, and my home only has four bare walls, where could I raise two children? That would be a hardship!”

Li Shiyi watched him lazily with eyes like clear waters. “Most importantly, this daughter is of an unidentified origin, if there was an issue, the trouble would be great. Your^[15] ability with magic^[16] is outstanding, in the heavens and beneath the earth, you’re experienced and knowledgable, think about it, only you can stand it. Looking at it one way or the other, this is also a great accumulation of virtue, not even burning incense at an altar table would bring it,” Tu Laoyao finished, smiling shamelessly, and thrust the baby into Li Shiyi’s embrace, bowing solemnly with clasped hands.

Li Shiyi’s brows furrowed, and she instinctively reached out her hands in support, taking the soft infant, who weighed almost nothing, almost the same as the kitten she had held, though warmer than the kitten by a bit, like coals warming her hands. Remaining unmoved, she quietly shifted her fingers, and then brought the crook of her arm upright to offer a bit of support, unknowingly using her posture to embrace the baby properly. Tu Laoyao shot a furtive look at her complexion, and saw that she had opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something and then hesitated, while the infant girl had reached out a tangyuan^[17]-sized fist, gripping softly yet precisely at Li Shiyi’s little finger.

Tu Laoyao could see the goosebumps behind Li Shiyi’s ear clearly, where they were dispersing rapidly across her smooth skin. He laughed inwards secretively and drew his neck back. The proper woman was afraid of being wrapped around by the youth? This ordinary one^[18] wouldn’t say anything, but Li Shiyi was a young woman, while this was like molten iron poured into a lock, and that was the truth of the matter.

Li Shiyi stared into the infant’s small eyes with her own large ones, and they went back and forth two or three times before she brought the soft, small body back and bundled it against her chest and bowed her head in thought, before suddenly changing her direction, pursing her thin lips as she walked towards the depths of the tomb.

“Ai, ai!” Tu Laoyao stumbled along after her from behind.

Li Shiyi stood in front of the coffin, and gently placed the infant aside on the stone step, before rummaging through her pockets, before fishing out a dark red silk brocade bag, and from that took out a handful of thin tobacco strips that gave off an unusually sweet scent, and pressed it into the mouth of the smoking pipe, and with a ka cha lit a flame, touching it to the tobacco.

“What are you doing that for?” Tu Laoyao sat next to her inquisitively.

Li Shiyi remained taciturn for a moment, watching the smoke curl up from the smoking pipe, bringing with it a quiet and strange subtle fragrance, before she said, “Since you want to take her, in that case we should first ask about her origins.”

“Ask who?” Tu Laoyao hadn’t smelled this peculiar smoke’s scent before, and he leaned in to really get a good breath of it. Li Shiyi put the smoking pipe upright in front of the coffin, and her thin eyelids raised.

“To inquire with the coffin.”

Tu Laoyao looked at her with an earnest expression, the fine hairs behind his ears standing up, and for the first time, he felt as the nonsense he had come up with truly was reasonable, that this woman before him perhaps really was skilled with magic, one who went to great lengths, knowledgeable and omnipotent. His neck became rigid, and his saliva disappeared without a trace from his throat.

The smoke was hazy, and it enveloped the front of the old-fashioned wood like water vapour, and then began to rise, and then in midair, it began to gather, like a sly thought, a densely alluring fragrance, a sense of pervading disorder and distortion. The sound by the ear covered up everything, and the five senses were all dominated as if they had been firmly sealed, and only the cloud of fog which seemed like nothing remained on the catafalque,^[19] the call of an altered state of mind, overturning life and death. From the smoke, a pair of spottlessly, jade-white hands emerged horizontally, slender and soft, plated with an exquisite halo of moisture, four fingers grasping into an lax fist, the index finger crooked, and knocked gently against the coffin three times. A soft voice, repeating, as if lightly pressing a door open. Knock on the coffin, ask three questions: one asking after the life, another asking about the death, and then asking about a matter of the mind.

Tu Laoyao fixed his attention on her hand, finally understanding that there were still people like Li Shiyi in the world, only needing one hand to make the appearance of the skin and the figure irrelevant, her wrist like her finger, arcing with the utmost care, flesh jadelike wine and bone like an ice sculpture, finer than the most invaluable treasures within a tomb by a thousand measures. In the movement of this hand, he lost his spirit, captivated as he listened to Li Shiyi ask, “From where did you come?”

Tu Laoyao’s eyelids jumped as he saw, clearly, the vapour above the coffin condense and form into a faint set of small characters: “The fifty-third year of Kangxi,^[20] Beijing.” The characters expressed themselves very slowly, as if a young child struggling to recall memories.

Li Shiyi’s eyes flicked down, before she asked again, “Where did you go?”

The characters’ forms were scattered by the wind in an instant, and the smoke gathered together shyly, and before long another line of characters appeared, from top to bottom: “Thirteenth department outside the Wojiao stone.”^[21] This answering text appeared much more rapidly, nimble as if it had picked up on the thread of the conversation.

The corners of Li Shiyi’s lips drew together, and her gaze swept aside over the infant, and she finally asked the question that had been in her mind: “That baby girl, what’s her origin?”

The smoke pulsed, spreading long and circuitous like the waters of the mountains and the rivers, and for a moment Tu Laoyao didn’t dare to take in a deep breath, before the top indistinctly expressed a “nine”.

“Nine?” Tu Laoyao was startled, and he cast a glance at Li Shiyi’s face, and saw that she had a pensive look as she pressed her index finger against her lower lip, silent for more than a dozen moments, before reaching out to retrieve the smoking pipe, and shook it clean of tobacco, before taking out a piece of rough silk and carefully wiping it clean, and only then did she put it back in her pocket and stand up.

She seemed exceedingly weary, her eyelids drooping discontentedly, left hand supporting the back of her neck, her head turning in a slow circle, and only once she had moved her muscles did she stoop and lift the yawning baby into her embrace, moving back the way they had come without stopping.

With the light of the lamp gone, Tu Laoyao’s spirit finally returned, and he hurried to catch up. Li Shiyi followed the robber’s hole and climbed upwards, her left hand embracing the infant girl, four fingers protecting the top of her head. Once they reached the surface, before even a shichen^[22] had passed, Tu Laoyao quietly gathered everything up, and followed after Li Shiyi towards the city. He had something he wanted to ask her, but seeing that her expression wasn’t very good, considered it again, and only chose the most indifferent critical points. “Shiyi-jie.”

Li Shiyi inclined her head to look at him. “You’re like this,” Tu Laoyao said, and held up his thumb. Li Shiyi gave him a cold look, but didn’t stop walking. Tu Laoyao, however, keenly noticed her relaxation, and smiled apologetically, circling her, and asked, “This ‘nine’, what does it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then, then,” Tu Laoyao repeated that ‘that’ a few times, and suddenly arrived with luck at quick-wittedness, “perhaps it’s her name.” He laughed gently, and reached out towards the infant, and said, “From now on, you’ll be called A Jiu,^[23] how about that?”

Li Shiyi’s steps became sluggish, and she stopped, her expression towards him not a pleasant one. “What…what is it?” Tu Laoyao licked his lips, carefully looking her up and down.

Li Shiyi tilted her head and pinched her brows, and said, “I’m Shiyi, she’s A Jiu.”

“That’s right.” Tu Laoyao nodded, not understanding.

Li Shiyi smiled coldly. “And who’s older?”

Tu Laoyao let out a breath—so apparently this was what she cared about. After a two or three moments he came up with a solution, and said, “Then we’ll call her Shijiu.^[24] Shijiu Shijiu, Shiyi Shijiu, hearing them, it sounds like a family, right?”

Li Shiyi’s expression cleared slightly, and she resumed her walk forward, listening to Tu Laoyao ramble, “Now there’s a name. What about a family name? Li? Li Shijiu?”

“Song.”^[25] Li Shiyi gave her comment without explanation.

“Why?” Tu Laoyao was confused.

Li Shiyi glanced down at her and answered, “She was delivered by opening the coffin.”

Tu Laoyao coughed a couple of times, shaking his neck. Alright, if the young woman said it then it was; he quickly stretched his shoulders, and facing rising sun and Li Shiyi’s back, walked forward. With a broad grin, he called out, “Song Shijiu.”

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Translator's notes:

[1]: 鱼肚白 (yudu bai) is a type of white paint made from the guts of dried fish, and is used to refer to dusty white colour of the dawn sky.

[2]: The raws say 飞燕搬翻身坐 (feiyan ban fanshen zuo), literally “turning over and sitting in the manner of a swallow”, which I have chosen to interpret as “perching”.

[3]: In modern times the term 寸 (cun) is usually translated as an inch, but is traditionally the width of the thumb at the knuckle.

[4]: 他娘的 (ta niang de) is a profanity identical in meaning to 他妈的 (ta ma de), used similarly to “fuck” or “damn”. The only difference between the phrases is the usage of the more formal 娘 (niang) in place of 妈 (ma).

[5]: While 帅 (shuai) is usually translated as “handsome”, it can also be used to express that something is “cool” or impressive.

[6]: The term 膝盖 (xigai) literally means “knee”, but can also be used to invoke the image of (or the literal action of) kneeling in admiration.

[7]: The literal phrase used is 黄豆眼儿 (huang dou yan’r), which translates literally as “soybean eyes” but figuratively is used to describe the state of a character’s eyes in an animated cartoon (such as chinese donghua) where the eyes turn into dots, or “beans”, to express surprise or awe.

[8]: The phrase QXHS uses is 指尸变的尸身 (zhi shi biande shi shen), and I’ll be honest, I’m going off my best guess as to the meaning for the first half of this phrase—I assume that 指尸 is a grave robbing genre-specific phrase, because I can’t find any record of it anywhere else, and have translated it literally as “risen corpse” as 指 can be used to refer to something standing (usually of hair).

[9]: The phrase 天真 (tianzhen) literally means “true heavens” but is used to refer to people perceived as being naive or innocent.

[10]: As far as I can tell, the phrase 春风拂槛 (chun feng fu jian/kan) is a reference to the poem 清平调 (qing ping diao) by Tang poet Li Bai. The character 槛 is polyphonic, and can be pronounced as either jian or kan, meaning either threshold, cage, or banister. Here I have rendered it as “rail” in an attempt to give a unified meaning from all possiblities.

[11]: 要命 (yao ming) literally translates as “to cause death”/”to take life”, but is used to express irritation or exasperation at something, and so I’ve chosen to go with the English usage of “damn it” as a translation.

[12]: Candy figures, known as 糖人儿 (tang ren’r), are a type of Chinese street food made by blowing heated sugar to form shapes, much-beloved by children.

[13]: 弟妹 (di mei) can mean younger siblings, but it can also be used to refer to the younger brother’s wife. Given the context, I’ve gone with the second interpretation.

[14]: The term used, 一尸两命 (yi shi liang ming) literally means “one corpse and two lives”, but is used to refer to the death of both the mother and the child.

[15]: Here Tu Laoyao switches back to the formal second person pronoun 您 (nin).

[16]: While I’ve translated 法术 (fa shu) as magic for simplicity, it’s more associated with Daoist practice, such as the usage of fulu talismans, which isn’t exactly comparable to the Western usage of the term “magic”.

[17]: 汤圆 (tangyuan) are a type of Chinese desert made with glutinous rice balls, sometimes filled with a sweet filling, typically served syrup. They’re often served during the Lantern Festival, the New Year, and at weddings, and are typically about the size of a large marble, though the size can vary.

[18]: 郎不郎 (lang bu lang) is part of a larger phrase, 郎不郎秀不秀 (lang bu lang, xiu bu xiu), from the Ming dynasty usage of 郎 to denote low status and 秀 to denote nobility—in other words, one who is neither lowly nor noble, but rather average.

[19]: The catafalque, or 灵台 (lingtai), is a platform upon which a coffin or cinerary casket is placed.

[20]: The fifty-third year of the reign of the Emperor Kangxi was 1714.

[21]: As far as I can tell, the Wojiao Stone is an element of Huayan Buddhist belief, related to the judgement of the dead. It’s probably connected to the five holy mountains, most likely Mount Tai, as it is believed that the spirits of the dead returned to Mount Tai to be judged by the spirits of the mountain.

[22]: The 时辰 (shichen) is the traditional Chinese two-hour period of measurement.

[23]: A Jiu is written as 啊九, derived from the word 九, or “nine”.

[24]: 十九 (shijiu), meaning nineteen, is thus bigger than 十一 (eleven).

[25]: The character 宋 (song) is the same as the Song in the Song Dynasty of 960 CE to 1279 CE, the Song Dynasty of the Southern Dynasties (also known as the Liu Song, of 420 CE to 479 CE), and the Song vassal state of the Zhou Dynasty (1046 BCE to 256 BCE).