Free Binu and the Great Wall of China by Su Tong Page B

by the water and rubbed her eyes, recalling how bright and beautiful they had been. But her fingers, strangers to those eyes, were driven away by an assault from her eyelashes. She then felt her nose. The women of Peach Village all envied her dainty, well-shaped nose. But it too rebuffed her touch with indifference, even releasing a bit of snot onto her fingers as an added display of mischief. She dipped her fingers in the water and rubbed them across her lips, recalling that they had been Qiliang’s favourite feature; he had told her often how red and sweet they were. Now they were tightly compressed, rejecting the water she brought to them. All her features seemed to be upbraiding her. ‘You have forsaken everything, including your eyes, your nose and your lips, the totality of your beauty, all for Wan Qiliang.’
    Binu could feel the sticky dust of spent tears when she touched her hair, and she realized that she had notwashed it since leaving Peach Village. So she removed the hair ornaments and plunged her black tresses into the moat. Even with her face lying right up against the surface of the water, she still could not see her reflection. Little fish swam up to her, for they had never before seen a woman performing her toilet in the moonlight, and they thought that her hair was a new kind of water plant. They began to nibble passionately on her floating hair. Binu wanted to see what the little fish looked like, but Qiliang’s face emerged from the water and she felt his nimble fingers stroking her hair in the water, out of sight. She could not recall what she looked like, but Qiliang could never be forgotten. She remembered how his face glowed in the sunlight beneath the nine mulberry trees, filled with optimism and ardour; in the dark, however, he was like a little boy, childish, bashful and occasionally a bit morose when he thought about what the future might hold. She remembered his hands. In the daytime they were coarse and strong, ideal for handling farm tools and tending the mulberry trees; but when he came home at night, her body became his mulberry tree, and the sweetest harvest began. When he got too rough, she slapped his hands, and they deftly moved on. When his hands became tired, she slapped them to bring them back to life, more passionate thanever, more daring. Binu missed Qiliang’s hands, missed his mouth and his teeth, missed his mud-caked toes, missed that special part of his, which was sometimes wild and unmannerly, at other times fragile and needy. It was his second son, the secret one, one that rose in the night to light up her dreary body, bit by bit. She recalled how Qiliang’s body emitted scorching hot sunlight in the dark of night, and this indelible memory illuminated the dark sky above the strange land around her; it also lit up the road north. Binu got to her feet beside the moat and gazed along the road to where a forest grew; she knew that the one and only road leading to the north was hidden among those trees.
    Binu started walking and soon came upon a ragged array of thatched huts deep in the forest; some were tall, others were squat, but they were all dark, and they shuddered in the night winds, which carried towards her the stink of human and animal waste, and the snores of exhausted sleepers. A lantern hung outside one of the huts, and Binu wondered if that might be Lord Hengming’s stable. Guided by the light, she approached the stable and peered in, only to find it empty, except for three horses eating hay from a trough; their silvery manes radiated a noble, somehow watery light in the darkness. As she pushed open the door, a shadow flashedbefore her eyes, and something made of metal captured her hand and held it secure. It was the hooked end of a scythe. When she recovered from the shock, she saw an old groom, naked from the waist up, hunkering down in a dark corner; the scythe was his.
    ‘I’ve told you people you are not allowed in the stable. The next time I catch you