Extra 2: Meng Po (II)

A Yin rose, looking in the direction of the sound, but she only saw the foggy shores of the Yellow Springs, a burst of wet wind blowing, easily darkening the sun. From a distance, the sound of a strange ringing rose intermittently, as if a woman who had dropped a long-decocting pot, and was quietly wailing; A Yin turned her head to look; it was a ghostly official bringing along a gaggle of wandering ghosts, muddle-headedly crossing over the Naihe Bridge.

Those wandering ghosts had blank faces, their eyes like two inlaid marbles, rubbed lustrous by sandpaper, confused and muddied. A Yin shuddered.

It was as if she were waking from a dream, for the first time realising that the Taishan Prefecture was different from the mortal realm..

Amongst the group, there was a woman in her thirties, wearing a dusty, worn, blue aozi, her hair half white, her movements slower than the others. She'd just stepped onto the Naihe Bridge when she was halted by the sound of the ghostly official's call, who came forward to ask a couple questions, and after a short amount of time, a thirteen or fourteen year old girl came over, tugging her back.

A Yin was bewildered by this scene, and asked Tu Laoyao, "What's this?"

Tu Laoyao didn't understand either, yet he still explained in the same voice as he had before: "Her hun is lacking about a qian, and so she can't cross the Bridge; she was taken to go make up for it, and only then can she reincarnate."

"One qian?" A Yin turned her head; the fog had grown denser, as if having drifted over from the sea; as she wiped at her palms with her handkerchief, A Yin pushed aside the fog and headed over, yet she saw a woman sitting on the shore.

Well, she'd said a woman, but she also didn't seem to be. She wore a sky-blue outfit, the layers lof her skirts falling in the waters, the surface of the waters as if a good wine that had been stirred, and her clothes were the fine liquor that poured down into the jar in torrents, and was spilling out. A Yin loooked at the material of her clothes; it seemed both like and unlike muslin, like cloth yet unlike cloth, crowding softly around her body like that. A Yin had used the term "crowd around" because she was truly incredibly attractive; at the corner of her eye, there was a teardrop birthmark, expressing a worry as it fell.

Covered in the fog, even her melancholy was indistinct, as if having been drawn by a light brushstroke. That woman tilted her head slightly, looking at her; waves shifted beneath the waters, and, unexpectedly, a fish's tail, half as long as a person, became exposed; the lustrous white scales gave off a pale light, like first-rate blue and white porcelain. The fish's tail flicked out of the waters, and then fell in once more, causing her waist to unhurriedly shift, moving both leisurely and smoothly. "You are?" the fish-tailed woman asked, looking carefully at A Yin, her thoughts unclear.

A Yin hadn't heard her clearly, her misgivings from just then rushing forth, and she asked her, "Short one qian, what does that mean?"

That woman laughed lightly, and said, "A mortal has three hun and seven po, and together they weigh four qian and two li; that woman from just then, for who knows what reason, was lacking her hun spirit of bright alertness, alongside the three po souls of love, hatred, and desire; as a result, she was lacking about a qian."

A Yin blinked; this truly was strange. "Saying it like this, the Naihe Bridge, it's actually a scale?"

The woman lowered her face, gazing at the fog-saturated surface of the waters. "It weighs the past, passion and enmity; doesn't that make it a scale?"

Her melancholy descended once more, like that hazy fog that enveloped her entire figure; A Yin couldn't help but come over, sitting down by her side, and asked her, "Who are you?" Unexpectedly, the Taishan Prefecture had this sort of thing, yet she'd never heard A Luo mention it before.

The fish tail, surrounded by the skirts, swayed a few times, and only then did the woman say, "I'm called A Jiang."

A Jiang, A Jiang; the tips of A Yin's brows piled up, yet she heard Tu Laoyao, behind her, tug at her sleeves, and say quietly, "Meng Po."

Meng Po? A Yin's eyes widened, looking disbelievingly at Tu Laoyao.

Tu Laoyao's eyes were too small, and they were separated by the fog; he couldn't easily meet her gaze; A Yin chased after for a bit, before giving up, and pinched Tu Laoyao's thigh, denying it. "Bullshit. A Luo told me before, Meng Po is an old woman; when I was crying by the Naihe Bridge, it was that old woman…that old woman…" She bit at the back of her hand, hesitantly taking in A Jiang through her peripheral vision.

From the corner of her eye, A Jiang laughed quietly. "That's me."

A Yin grew confused, but she heard A Jiang say, "Just now, you mentioned A Luo. You and her…" The depths of implication stopped in her mouth, and, at A Yin's biting of her lip, the corners of her mouth twitched into a smile.

Fuck, A Yin cursed in her mind. A Luo had said only that she couldn't tell beauty and ugliness; looking at this situation, she feared that distinguishing age and youth was also a problem.

A Jiang was graceful and elegant as an orchid, and shook her head. "Meng Po is truly an old woman; I am Meng Po, but Meng Po is not me. Meng Po is a ghostly official in the Life and Death division of the Yellow Springs, who judges the purity of the past; but, once this duty is done, she looks for hun spirits with predestined paths and obsessions to act as messengers; every day, they take on the form of an old woman to keep an eye out, carrying bowls of soup and sending ghosts on."

"Since that's the case, why be called Meng Po, and why the need to take on an old woman's appearance?"

"Because the first person assigned to be Meng Po was an old woman, her family name Meng.^[1] Or, perhaps, an old woman's soup is more easily swallowed, and her words more easily listened to," A Jiang said.

A Yin nodded, more or less having understood somewhat, and asked again, "The, what's the reason behind this fish tail of yours? Are you not human?"

A Jiang shook her head. "Originally, I was. But, since I acted as Meng Po, I'm not the same as a typical hun spirit, because I've had to remain in the underworld for so long; I'm not the same as a typical ghostly messenger either, because in the end, I'll reincarnate. Ling Heng-daren granted me this fish's tail; in the night, I rest in the waters, and in the light of day, I take on human form; once I've finished giving soup, I will emerge from the Yellow Springs, losing the fish's tail and returning to human form, and then I'll enter the wheel of reincarnation once more."

It truly was a bit interesting; A Yin stuck her head out and took measure of the fish tail, and asked her, "Then this job of yours, how long have you done it?"

A Jiang raised her head and thought for a bit. "From the Qin dynasty until now, it's been a good number of years."

A Yin covered her chest, shocked; more than two thousand years, and only a single phrase of "a good number"? She supported herself with a palm on the ground, and took stock of A Jiang's expression, as if she were taking stock of cadaver that had been dug out from underground. But it was Tu Laoyao who couldn't hold back from butting in. "Then how did you come here? Who called you here? And why haven't you run away?"

A Jiang's gaze shifted over, and she looked lightly and mildly at Tu Laoyao, holding back a smile as she nodded in what could count as a greeting, and then turned around once more, to gaze at the light of the skies in the distance. It had grown dark, and seemed to have no end, the layer of fog having also gradually disipated; the Taishan Prefecture hadn't originally had stars, but the resplendent Milky Way merged into the middle of the Yellow Springs, and swayed and glimmered on the brilliant, vibrant surface of the waters.

The dark of night could always breed secrets, and it was also the easiest to divulge them, because in the endless, boundless darkness, secrets were light, and it grew in one's heart, and it was held back in lonely speech.

A Jiang said, "You've probably heard my story before. I may as well say it; my family is also Meng, my name Zhongzi, my nickname A Jiang."

Meng Jiangnü? A Yin raised her hand, propping up her jaw.

Tu Laoyao wasn't too certain, and he asked in a small voice, "The one who cried the Great Wall down?"

A Jiang smiled softly, though her eyes were still downturned, both sorrowful and artless. "My husband and I were newlyweds when he was arrested and forced into corvée labour, heading North to build the Great Wall. I waited, suffering, for a year; my husband had an indefinite sentence, and so I headed North alone to look for him. Arriving at the foot of the Great Wall, I heard that he'd lost his life the month before, and his body was buried within the Great Wall. I wept in sorrow day and night, unwilling to leave, and unexpectedly, the tears toppled that Great Wall, exposing his body. The sorrow entered the very bottom of my heart, and before long, I jumped into the river to die for my love."

The story of Meng Jiangnü was one that he'd listened to since childhood, yet, hearing it from Meng Jiangnü's own mouth for the first time, Tu Laoyao felt deeply moved, such that he actually was dazed for a good while.

"I entered the underworld to search for him, yet the ghostly officials weren't willing to tell me where he'd gone, merely ordering me to reincarnate; my husband and I had had pledged to each other from early on, and waiting on the Naihe Bridge for a hundred years, how could that be let down? So I cried beneath the Naihe Bridge, refusing to enter the wheel of reincarnation." Seeing A Yin's expression had gone strange, she said with a smile, "It's also because of this reason that, later on, I met you, and spoke a bit."

A Yin rubbed her handkerchief, unwilling to twist further, and asked, "And then what?"

"And then, Ling Heng-daren came. Daren said to me, if I wasn't willing, then I could not reincarnate, and had me wait at the foot of the Naihe Bridge. At that time, by chance, Meng Po's duty was without anyone to fill, and so I began to ladel out the soup in her place. That amount of waiting, it was a full five hundred years. The day that I finally saw him, but he wasn't as I'd imagined him; he was a hun spirit who had just arrived, old and grey-haired, his back stooped, and by his side, he brought along an old wife, whose face was covered in wrinkles."

The two had come hand in hand, a pair of old people in their seventies, facing a soup-ladling old woman, facing the tearful, youthful soul beneath Meng Po's body.

"But that's not right!" Tu Laoyao called out. "Didn't he die young? How could he be old, then?"

A Jiang lowered her head, smiling. "I only learned afterwards, but he'd actually never died in corvée labour, but had escaped it and married a new bride; the new bride's family had some means, and life passed peacefully. He'd feared I'd come looking, and so had colluded with another labourer to trick me."

The bones beneath the Great Wall, they weren't her husband's at all.

A Yin sighed, clutching at her handkerchief, and stroked her chest.

"By then, I'd given up; I told Ling Heng-daren, I was willing to act as Meng Po, guiding spirits into people, and helping people forget their pasts." Her voice fell, retreating like a wave; A Jiang gazed into the vast darkness, her tail picking up the glimmering starlight.

When A Yin returned to Futi Hall, the moon had already risen three poles; Wu Qian led her into the bed chambers in the back; though they were called bed chambers, they were only a single siheyuan, the furniture within actually Western in style; a long leather sofa, a walnut wood, four-legged dinner table, and atop the coffee table, fresh fruits were laid, merely a Western-style lampshade there, causing the black and white tableau so become somewhat lively.

A Luo was still working, and had yet to return, yet A Yin unexpectedly saw Li Shiyi in the drawing room. She'd changed out of her cheongsam, and was wearing an outfit that went well with the room, a woman's blouse and light blue Western trousers, leaning against the sofa's arm and reading. Her long hair seemed to obstruct her view, and she extended a hand to tuck it behind her ear, and then put the book down, tilting her face to call out a greeting to A Yin. "You've returned."

"Were you waiting for me?" A Yin was somewhat surprised

Li Shiyi closed the book, and placed it on her thigh, shaking her head. "Waiting for Shijiu." Just then, Song Shijiu had said she hadn't seen A Yin in a long while, and had gone looking for her, wanting to bring her over.

A Yin nodded, sitting stiffly on the armchair on the lefthand side, propping up her forehead and lazily speaking.

Li Shiyi cast a glance at her worn out appearance, and then thought of the sounds of mahjong, heavens-shakingly loud, during the day, and asked her, "Weren't you diverting attention away from covert actions? How come you set out a great banquet?"

Her words were as gentle as the breeze and as light as the clouds, without any tone of cricism; A Yin, eyes widening, looked her over from bottom to top, and said somewhat remorsefully, "I forgot. I took so much trouble to come for a day; if I stay for too long, my body would die, and when the time comes, it would be a great hassle; just thinking that the time was urgent, I finished all the matters that needed to be handled." A Yin spoke of the romance, and was unexpectedly quite frank; now, she could narrate in full detail and reflect on her own faults, and could even earnestly explain it to others to listen to.

Li Shiyi shook her head, smiling, and picked up the book, about to leave.

She'd just stood up when she heard a rustling sound from the back of the sofa, heels sounding twice, and A Yin called out to halt her: "A Heng."

She called out A Heng, not the usual Shiyi; Li Shiyi raised half a brow, and turned to look at her. Yet she saw A Yin looking pensively at the shadows on the ground, sluggishly raising the back of her hand; behind her, she tugged at the handkerchief, and said, "I chatted with Meng Po all day, and I suddenly realised, you've lived thousands of years." In the shadows, her eyelashes were gilded with a layer of frost, suppressing her cleverness, making her appear incredibly meek. "But I, I've only known you for ten or so years." In her mind, she'd broken off a finger, and no matter how much she added or calculated, she couldnt' count two full hands. "I counted it; ten or so years versus a few thousand, it's an even smaller proportion than a fingernail; it can't compare, but—"

But you indulge me, and listen to me.

"But, I only know one A Yin," Li Shiyi picked up.

The rest of her words, A Yin couldn't manage to speak; she suddenly felt that she herself was quite a remarkable woman; Yama was her lover, and Fujun was her dear friend, and there was also Shijiu, Tu Laoyao, and Wu Qian. She'd originally wanted to say to Li Shiyi, although to her, ten years was only a fingernail, to her herself, it was incredibly long, so long that occupied half of her lifetimes, and so, she'd been confident in her convictions, had been arrogant and commanding, had worried the character of "thanks" in her mouth, but had never been able to speak it.

This was also her shortcoming.

She didn't raise her head, only hearing Li Shiyi laugh once more, and said, "If you truly want to thank me, in the future, don't keep agreeing to be a substitute for others."

A Yin raised her head; Li Shiyi sighed, and said she'd go rest early, and, supporting her neck, returned to the room.

The Western clock struck twelve times; in A Luo's residence, A Yin was having an enchanting yet twisting dream; in the Taishan Prefecture, overlapping with every dynasty, she wore beautiful clothes, as if performing in an opera, was gifted lanterns for the Lantern Festival, listened to the Sogodian Whirl dance, tried soft, delicious wontons, and, in the bamboo forest, chased a feast of wine, the bamboo leaves falling onto her neck, itchy and ticklish, causing her to muzzily awaken.

A Luo was sitting before her, the hand stroking her neck the bamboo leaves, her eyes the wine. A Yin looked at her, beneath the light and shadow of the lanterns, and there was nothing in her mind at all, only missing her.

So, she encircled A Luo's neck, pressing her lips, half the rouge gone, there; she felt as if she were only a walking corpse, only gaining vitality when A Luo's breaths brushed against the tip of her nose; and yet, that superficial vitality was sucked out by the lips that had pressed against her, killing her once more.

So, Yanluo-daren was someone who could control life or death.

In the drawing room, the fine sound of gasps rose; A Luo pushed A Yin down onto the sofa, her hands unfastening the buttons one by one; her left hand rose up from her collar, and her right hand from her thigh, as if unhurriedly opening a gift she'd received countless times; even her fingers, fitted between the buttons and teasing, were neat and methodical.

Yet A Yin extended a hand to press against her chest, and asked her in a husky voice, "If you didn't want to talk so much, then why did you speak with me for that long during the day?"

A Luo's breaths rose and fell, her voice unable to contain her overflowing desire. "If I didn't speak casually with you a bit, I fear I wouldn't have been able to fulfill my duties." But although the chatter had been idle, from A Yin's mouth, it caused her mind to ripple and shift, and she couldn't pick up a brush and write.

A Yin sat up; her collar was half open, revealing sharp and deep, lustrously pale dips; the side of her qipao was half parted as well, and her smooth, soft thigh was revealed; she straddled A Luo, her eyes glossy, like leaves that had been rained on a full night, like translucent dewdrops slipping down, causing one to want to look at the depths of the foliage, and figure out whether or not it was wet.

It was.

A Luo's passion was hard to restrict, and she tilted her head, about to kiss, when A Yin retreated as an advance, and asked her softly, "Do you want to do it here?"

This was the drawing room; although it was in the dead of night, in the end, she feared someone might see.

"Don't worry," A Luo said, stroking her chin. She extended a hand, forming a barrier; although it was colourless intangible, those outside couldn't hear within, nor could they see within.

"Is the barrier reliable?" A Yin asked.

"It is," A Luo said, stroking her hair.

A Yin smiled broadly. "Then, that's good."

In a flash, she grew spirited; the bashful shyness of just then, along with the fear, seemed to have been a pretence; one hand pushed A Luo down against the sofa, the other exploring beneath her clothes, covering the softness that she'd coveted already for so long; she murmured the consolation that she had just spoken into her ear: "Don't worry."

Her braid laid over the sofa's arm, swaying in time with the urgent breaths; the moonlight, which had furtively crept in, saw the utterly bare bodies on the sofa, her rising and falling curved outlined just perfectly, seducing one into searching further, controlling.

The halo of the barrier grew stronger and weaker along with its creator's consciousness, swallowing the moans of ecstasy gnawing at her bones clean, not letting out the slightest bit of that which was secret. The uninhibited fragrance of sweat was the final actor to emerge on the stage, singing to completion the vivid colours and fragrances; A Yin's clothes were half shed, and she nestled in A Luo's embrace, and she spoke idly with her.

Her voice was weak and without strength, the lingering effect that of the ebb and flow of the side. "When I reincarnate, can I not drink Meng Po's soup?" She remembered Meng Po from the day.

A Luo breathed faintly, and only spoke after a while. "No."

"But why?" A Yin asked, unsatisfied. "I want to remember you; in the next life, and the life after that, and the life after that."

A Luo was still organising her thoughts, yet she suddenly heard a familiar voice say earnestly, "If you always carry the memories, in your mother's womb, and when you're born, wouldn't that be incredibly frightening?"

A Yin's complexion went pale, and she clutched at the clothes, covering A Luo up, and then sat up to cover her chest, looking towards the corner, and said, voice trembling, "Shi…Shijiu? How come you're here!" Her had never been this shrill before, and joined with her messy bun and smudged rouge, it was as if she'd been ruthlessly attacked.

Song Shijiu held a cup of water, emerging from the shadows, yet her face was expressionless, only her ears so red they were about to bleed; she gazed into the fruit laid out on the coffee table. "I've been here the entire time." She set the water, down, and softened her voice a bit. "I was pouring some water to drink, and the barrier trapped me within." She was utterly guiltless.

A Yin grew angry. "How come you didn't turn on a light while getting water?"

Song Shijiu blinked. "Zhu Long's eyes are a bit better in the dark." Her initial meaning was that she didn't necessarily need to turn on a light, but when A Yin heard it, it wasn't like that.

A Yin grew silently, still unsatisfied. "Then why didn't you make a sound?"

"I did," Song Shijiu said, quite aggrieved. "Probably you were being too loud, and didn't hear." Whether it was that A Luo had been too tired, her mind entirely A Yin, or that her own skills had improved a bit, and she'd actually hidden her presence this well, when she'd been enclosed by the barrier, she'd thought to herself that it was no good.

Well, she'd truly never not thought of breaking through the barrier and leaving, but she'd feared that the two, in the midst of intimacy, would have this shadow cast on them, and could only fall silent and not make a sound, hiding her face and repeating herself that to not look improperly, drinking her water. Halfway through, the condition of the barrier had been unstable, and she'd extended a hand to fortify it a couple times.

Song Shijiu gazed at A Yin, who'd grown dazed, opening and closing her mouth, and wanted to comfort her; it could be said that it was somewhat similar to the experience and knowledge of "the little beasts atop Mount Zhongshan mating, not confining themselves to a single place, but this doesn't mean anything", but, in the end, this wasn't the same; she thought it over for a while, and determined not to speak, only placing the water that had just been boiled onto the dining table, and bid goodbye, returning to her room.

Yanluo-daren hadn't spoken the entire time, though it wasn't clear whether, in the future, she'd kill the dragon to prevent her from divulging the secret.

The second day, Li Shiyi had only just woken, when she was tugged out the door by A Yin, her belongings tidied up and bundled up neatly, glancing behind her, and seeing it was empty, finally relaxed, and told Li Shiyi she wanted to return to Shanghai. She also said, since Shijiu had gone to sleep late the night before, they wouldn't disturb her.

It had only been a day; Li Shiyi had assumed that she'd be reluctant to part, and delay for two or three days. But, once A Yin spoke of trustworthiness, Li Shiyi was naturally without objection, and immediately told Tu Laoyao to take her back; A Yin was astonished, and asked, "Don't you need to use the Shentu token?"

Li Shiyi said mildly, "Taking a little ghost out, if I still had to use the Shentu token to cover it up, then I've acted as Fujun in vain."

A Yin's eyes widened. "Then yesterday—" she'd rushed Tu Laoyao for nothing?

"Your comment," Li Shiyi said.

A Yin cursed in her heart as she had the day before, feeling that emotional moving from before had been unnecessary.

Today, the weather wasn't too good; luckily, it was windy, and when crossing along the edge of the Yellow Springs, there wasn't any fog on the waters; A Yin thought of Meng Po's story from the day before, and wanted to look at her beautiful fish's tail again before leaving; she passed through the shallows, and sure enough, she saw A Jiang sitting on the shore, her tail in the water, her back to them, piling up sand. A Yin didn't want to disturb her, and walked over quietly; yet A Jiang, strangely, didn't notice, as if, focused on the matter at hand, she'd fallen into a daze.

A Yin gazed at her; she'd piled the sand into a small Great Wall, her fingers poking at it, pushing a small bit of it over. She gazed at that collapsed bit of sand, and then raised her head to gaze at the surface of the water, and suddenly spoke quietly to herself. "If, then, the body I'd cried out were truly you, it would be well."

A Yin's eyelashes trembled, and she thought of when she'd spoken with A Luo this morning, and the words she'd asked her: "When will Meng Po finish sending spirits on, and be able to reincarnate?"

A Luo had said, "Once she herself forgets."

A Yin remembered the Jinjiang Baojuan^[2] she'd read before, which said: In the underworld's Meng Po Manor, a beautiful woman sells tea and soup.

So, the physician couldn't treat herself; so, the soupmaker couldn't forget.

-

< LAST | HOME | NEXT >

 

-

Translator's notes:

[1]: The name Meng Po is literally a combination of the surname Meng (孟) and the shortening of the word "old woman" (婆子) to form Meng Po (孟婆).

[2]: Baojuan (宝卷), also known as "telling scriptures".