Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [129]
When they saw it was docking at their insignificant little village, people came running to see who it was, staring respectfully at the important-looking man in his grand blue-silk robes. Some kowtowed before him as he stepped down the gangplank and stood at last on his home ground. Lai Tsin did not look into their faces as he flung a shower of coins in their direction and walked by, but he heard them scrambling, fighting for his largesse as he set his feet on the familiar path to his village, the very same path along which they had driven the poor little white ducks on their way to the river and their deaths in Nanking.
The road was hot and dusty, a yellowish clay ribbon stretching through the drab, hazy landscape of gray-green rice fields. He saw the children still paddling the big wooden waterwheels, wading through the mud with their heavy baskets, following the water buffalo, planting the new shoots and praying for a good crop.
The fung-shui grove was on the outskirts of the village to the west and it was there he went first. He walked slowly, searching for the place where the body of his favorite little brother, Chen, had been left for the dogs and birds to take. Even after all these years the terrible night was so indelibly imprinted on his mind that he recognized the very tree, and he knelt before it and bowed his head, offering a prayer to the gods for the soul of his baby brother, who had been considered too young to have one—though Lai Tsin had known better.
After a while, he left the fung-shui grove and made his way toward the village. Nothing had changed. To the left was the village lord’s reedy pond with the same white ducks and a man tending them. Lai Tsin glanced at him as he walked by, but it was not his father’s face. He did not recognize him and so walked on, reminding himself that his father had been an old man of more than sixty years when he had left and that he must be long since dead.
The village of baked-yellow-clay houses rose from the flat, featureless landscape identical to a thousand other villages along the Yangtze, but he knew every inch of it. His eyes darted this way and that, seeking out the familiar places, the strange gnarled willow that grew where there was no water, the wooden temple with its carved cornices and curved eaves, its red paint worn to a vague brown. There was the same pack of scrawny dogs circling the houses looking for food, the same poor children dressed in their elder brothers’ cast-offs, the same tattered red-paper slogans pasted over the entryways and the same desolate little stalls selling minute portions of meat and spices, incense and charcoal. The clay walls that had once enclosed the village were crumbling, disappearing back into the earth from which they came, and many of the small houses stood empty. The few people about stopped to stare at him, looking distrustfully at the grand stranger in their midst, and he nodded politely and bade them good day.
The house of his father, Ke Chungfen, was at the very end of the tiny village and his footsteps slowed as he approached it. A child of about three years was playing in the dirt by the door and the sound of voices raised in argument came from the house. He paused and listened. It was not his father, but it might have been; it was the same haranguing tone, the same violent, careless words, the same harsh threats. He walked to the door and called out the name “Ke Chungfen” and there was a sudden stunned silence. Then a voice shouted, “Ke Chungfen went to his ancestors many years ago. Who is it that calls out his name?”
“It is the son of the mui-tsai, Lilin,” he replied calmly. “Lai Tsin.”
There was a crash from inside and then the door was hurled open and Ke Chungfen