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I lived with my deaf granny from a very young age and was sent to be with my mother and my father only on feast days and for memorials. Behind Granny’s house was a deep well pond, and it was in that well pond that I first saw the silver tiger. Much of what I’m going to tell you is inextricably bound up with that silver tiger. In physical form, the silver tiger’s paws flexed and sprang as it stepped nimbly through the thickets of my childhood memory, an awe-inspiring presence.
I have to begin this with the well ponds. Well ponds are an ancient form of water storage, still in use in the countryside around Rongtang Town. As the name implies, they are shaped like pools, but are well-like in depth. Well ponds must be kept clean: women are strictly forbidden to scrub chamber pots or wash their undergarments in them. Most well ponds are no more than a dozen metres across, sufficient for only the two or three households that neighbor them. Sometimes they are pressed into service to extinguish fires that break out in nearby grass heaps and pigsties. They say Deaf Granny’s well pond came about in the following way: For many years, a stream had passed by her house, then an abrupt decision was made to fill it in and turn it into a narrow belt of good cropland. But Deaf Granny has always been stubborn, and she wouldn’t go along with the plan, no matter how much her neighbors cajoled and cursed. So, when the villagers filled in the stream, a section a dozen metres long was left behind her house, and she hired some men from outside the village to deepen it. They dug to the depth of a bamboo pole, the water turned a dark, dark green, and it became one more of the area’s many well ponds. The villagers called this the Sun Family Well Pond. But since when was Granny named Sun?
When I was small, that well pond was strictly off limits to me. Deaf Granny always said that water figured in my fate, and she feared that if I fell into the pond there’d be no saving me. But how I yearned for the world of the well pond!
There was another boy in the village, a year older than me, named Dong. Once, he caught a very small turtle and brought it to show me. It was a lovely little turtle. When you turned it over, it would stretch out its head and its legs, and wave them helplessly in the air. It worked itself into a little frenzy, but couldn’t right itself. We summoned a girl from the village to come and play with us. Her name was Juan; she was my age. Juan’s hair was thin and yellowing, and tied at the crown of her head in what they call a joss-stick braid. Juan leaned close to Dong and asked enviously, “A turtle! How’d you catch it, Dong?”
Dong said loftily, “I caught it in a well pond.”
I asked, “Are there more?”
He tossed his head. “Sure, plenty more. When I caught this one, he was covered in black mud. I put him in a brass bowl and washed him clean. See how clean he is!”
“How do you know there are more?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, pushing Juan’s hand away from the turtle. “My mother told me.”
Then Juan said, “I’ll bet it wasn’t Dong who caught it at all. Aunt Ma got it for him.” Aunt Ma was Dong’s mother. We called her Ma not because she was his mother but because her family name was Ma. Aunt Ma was the sturdiest woman in the village, more powerful than a man. In the depths of winter, I’d see her pass my window in the early morning. She was sure to be carrying a big bamboo basket and a heavy net over her shoulder, the bamboo handle shuddering with each step. Granny told me that the net was full of little fish and shrimp she’d caught at the river fork by the village. Catching a turtle in a well pond would be child’s play for Aunt Ma, so I believed what Juan said. But Dong, his pride wounded, was furious. He snatched up the turtle, gave us a nasty look, and left.
From then on, I was even more fascinated by the world of the well pond. When I thought of all the little turtles concealed within the dark-green water, I couldn’t sit still. Many times I decided to sneak off by myself and take a look. Many times I made it as far as the vegetable patch behind the house, just a few steps from the well pond. And many times Deaf Granny dragged me by the ear back into the smoke-wreathed kitchen. She would point at the steaming pot and say, “Ah Yang, my good grandson, I’ve boiled a pot of pork for you. If you fall into the well pond and drown, you’ll never get to taste it.”
For a stretch of time that winter, the weather was unusually clear and warm. Granny decided to have someone trim the branches of the dozen willows that stood around the well pond. She asked hunchbacked Fifth Uncle from the village to help. Fifth Uncle was the most honest man in the village. He was only thirty, but his back was bent like that of a sixty-year-old. Granny chose him because he worked hard and kept silent. “And, what’s more,” she said, “he’s good in the water. Ah Yang can go down by the well pond to play, and even if he falls in there’s no call to worry.” And so I dressed in a big quilted jacket and a cotton hat and followed Fifth Uncle to the well pond I’d been yearning to explore. Behind us, Granny warned, “Fifth Uncle, don’t let Ah Yang play in the water.”
When we reached the well pond’s edge, the sunlight was floating clean and bright on its surface. Sure enough, hunchbacked Fifth Uncle worked hard and silently. He climbed one of the old willows and got busy. I stood below, occasionally helping retrieve a dead branch that had fallen too far away. Standing there with branches in my hands was boring, so I looked up at Fifth Uncle and said, “Dong has a little turtle. It came from a well pond. Do you think there are more?”
Straddling a fork of the tree, Fifth Uncle mumbled, “Sure, plenty more.”
“Why can’t I see them, then?”
Fifth Uncle answered, “They’re hiding under the water.”
After a while, Fifth Uncle climbed another tree. He moved quietly and deftly as he worked. He’d brought a big pair of black iron shears and a handsaw with a wooden handle, and as he employed each tool in turn he gradually lost himself in the job. Ah Yang stood at the water’s edge, dead stick in hand, watching more dead sticks and twigs falling gently from the tree like brown feathers. Ah Yang raised his head to look at Fifth Uncle in the tree, and it seemed as though the twigs were drifting down from inside his bent body.
Fifth Uncle moved from one tree to the next, filled with the pleasure of labor. He hadn’t the slightest inkling that, below him, Ah Yang had already met the water of his fate—he had fallen into the well pond. There were two aspects to what happened that day. One was Fifth Uncle’s pleasure in his work; the other was Ah Yang’s falling into the pond. You were focussed on the former, and so overlooked the latter. Even though, after the fact, you may be able to comb through your memories of the scene and recover the second aspect, the clouding of those memories (like damage to an old photograph) is something you are powerless to prevent. The best you can do is to note that the banks of well ponds are often steep, and in the winter, when the weeds have withered, the well ponds are like nothing so much as enormous, irregular buckets. And the light was good that day. And the dark-green water of the well pond hid so many turtles. And a patch of frozen earth beneath Ah Yang’s feet had melted just enough to loosen. And the smallest and lightest of the falling twigs just happened to brush his eyebrows and lashes. A certain principle will occur to you: though the well pond seems small to an adult, merely an oversized oval bathtub, to Ah Yang it is an ocean, an abyss.
Ah Yang is the one who is speaking now. Ah Yang is the one who wrote all the words you see here. Ah Yang wanted so much to catch a turtle, shrouded in green. Ah Yang wanted to make a hole in its shell and tie it with a string to a willow root at the water’s edge.
Fifth Uncle’s absorption in his work meant that my fall into the well pond went smoothly; there was nothing to hinder my arrival at the water’s surface. But there, on the sunny face of the water, I met with an unexpected setback that halted my progress. I did not, in fact, fall all the way into the well pond—I was rejected at the water’s surface. Wearing my thick, quilted coat and cotton hat, holding a willow switch in my hand, I lay on top of the water. It was as if a strong membrane were stretched tightly across the Sun Family Well Pond, reluctant to give way beneath me. This was the water of my fate. The water of my fate held firm and unbroken beneath me, until a cry rang out from someone passing by.
Later, Aunt Ma would always say to others, and to Ah Yang, “If I hadn’t seen him and given a shout that day, the child would have drowned for sure.” She also said, “The banks of the Sun Family Well Pond are so steep a crab couldn’t crawl out.” Aunt Ma was a sturdy woman; Granny was right to call her coarse. Her voice was as coarse as the rest of her. She couldn’t have known that her shout would consign Ah Yang to such long years of hardship and regret.
That was the first time I saw a silver tiger. As it happened, I lay on the water’s surface for only an instant, but in that instant I saw the most essential silver tiger. What a beautiful tiger it was. It was not an animal of this world, made of flesh and bone and fur. It was only a shadow filled with silver. Or, you could say, it was a silver body: silver fur, silver motion, silver pride, a silver riddle. I lay on the water of the well pond and watched the silver tiger approach from the air above me, drawing closer to my face. The sunlight, passing through it, became variegated and dazzling, dancing, enchanting. Terrified, and yet consoled, I closed my eyes. I felt as if the silver tiger were tenderly swallowing me whole. I felt as if it had already swallowed me into its belly. I felt that I was slowly becoming the silver tiger. Things went on in this way. The transformations were continuous, endless. I remember the last thing I saw: a silver tiger in the process of swallowing the selfsame silver tiger. The child on the surface of the well pond had disappeared completely, as though he had never existed.
Just as Granny said, Ah Yang had always been a sickly and unlucky child. The blind fortune-teller had seen this in the hour of his birth. The fortune-teller could not see faces, but he could see Heaven’s will. What’s more, he had now found his way unerringly to Granny’s house, approaching step by step from a very great distance. He sat on a wooden bench in the kitchen and said, “This child was a nobleman in a former life. Nobles may come calling, but they do not linger. In this child’s fate, there is death by water, by metal, by earth, and by wood. There is no death by fire.”
Deaf Granny kept a tight hold on my right ear, as though I were a rabbit on the verge of bounding off. She pinched my ear and asked the fortune-teller, “Tell us, what can break his curse?”
The fortune-teller lowered his head and stayed that way for a long time, then finally said, “By the time he is nine, this child’s roots will be firm. Keep him alive until he’s nine—once he’s rooted, there’ll be nothing to fear.”
As Aunt Ma passed beneath the trees, she saw me lying on the surface of the well pond, shimmering, about to sink. She gave a cry, then pulled me from the well pond with her own rough hands. Fifth Uncle was already scrambling down from the tree. Aunt Ma raised my soaking body up high and placed me on Fifth Uncle’s bowed back. “Ah Yang,” she said later, “you looked just like a hand towel scooped out of a washbasin, all flowing with water.”
After my rescue from the well pond, I met with another of my childhood misfortunes. This particular misfortune was, from start to finish, confined to my immature manhood: I was unable to pee properly, no matter how hard I tried. Some calamity had beset my member; something or other was blocking it. All day long I was desperate to pee, yet in the course of three days I managed no more than a few thimblefuls. I was very young to suffer such pain. Tears in my eyes, I sought out Dong and Juan and joined in the game they were playing with an iron shovel. I said to Dong, “I can’t pee, and it hurts.”
Dong pointed at the shovel and said, “We’ll sharpen it good and cut off your penis. Then you won’t hurt.”
“Bah!” I said. “You can cut off your own!”
I turned my back on him and said to Juan, “I can’t pee, it hurts.”
Juan said, “Let me look.”
I hastily pulled my split pants closed, concealing my suffering manhood.
Juan became upset. “You’re useless,” she said. “Even the well-pond water spirits don’t want you.”
My eyes reddening, I snapped back, “Stupid Juan, who said that?”
“Aunt Ma. Aunt Ma said it. Are you going to tangle with her?”
Deaf Granny believed that, when Ah Yang fell into the well pond, he had a fright that settled inside his body and stopped him up. She burned several stacks of paper money by the old willow stump at the well pond. As the money burned, she called loudly, “Yang, child, come home to eat. Your granny’s cooking meat.” To this day, I wonder if part of my soul really did get lost in the green depths of the Sun Family Well Pond. Each bill that Granny burned was cut with a beautiful crescent-moon design.
Father took me to the hospital in Rongtang Town, which was next door to a farm-tool factory. He carried me through a heavily curtained doorway and into a dim room. It looked to me like the changing room of a decrepit public bath. The whitewashed walls were marked with messy purple streaks. Someone brought in a hot-water bottle. The bottle was green and very full. Father pressed it to my groin and my member. At first it burned, but after a while it felt nice and warm. “You’ll be fine if we just warm you up,” Father said. I didn’t believe him for a second. I heard a distinct sound of farm tools rattling and banging next door. I guessed that it was the sound of an iron hoe striking a pair of shears. I was afraid that the people at the hospital might use those farm tools on me. Then a skinny man with a yellowish face came in. He wasn’t wearing a white gown. Father bowed to him and asked, “Our turn, Doctor?”
The next room was also dim. A high, narrow iron bed was pushed against one wall. Father put me on the bed, which was covered with tattered grass mats. I suspected that the holes in the mats had been made by people kicking their heels. Father pressed his hand to my forehead and seemed at a loss. The hot-water bottle on my groin suddenly felt cold.
My life before the age of nine was precarious, as if it were a drifting thing that refused to come to rest in my body. My ghastly cries in that hospital disturbed the peace of half the residents of Rongtang Town. At that young age, I knew what it was to curse wildly in an iron hospital bed, to hurl profanities at people who roughly held my limbs. Before the age of nine, I was pressed down on a bed and made to undergo an operation I scarcely dare to recall now. In later days, when I had become an eminent intellectual in Luocheng, I told the story of this suffering to some close female friends and noted their expressions of rapt fascination. But they weren’t like Juan, I thought. They would never say, “Let me look.”
Many people that night tried to steal a glimpse through the window—they were child laborers from the farm-tool factory. These spies at the window told me later that my operation, performed without anesthesia, had been truly horrifying to watch, worse than a woman in childbirth. They heard the discussion between the skinny doctor and my father. The doctor asked, “Should we anesthetize him?,” and my father said, “No, it could damage his brain.” The doctor hesitated. “He may not be able to stand it otherwise.” My father answered, “Stupidity may kill you, but pain never has.” The skinny doctor gave a few dry coughs and rubbed his hands together. “Fine, then, you’ll have to help us hold down his arms.” He called in another, rough-faced man to hold my legs. From a pocket, he produced a length of unusual wire. It was more than a foot long, and one end was flattened and curved; it looked like an oversized ear pick. He weighed it, gleaming, in his hand. He said, “All right, have you got a hold on him?”
The spies at the window could tell you the next part in great detail. They could tell you how the skinny doctor reached out a yellow hand and lightly fingered Ah Yang’s penis, then carefully and deftly inserted the wire into it. Then Ah Yang in pain was like a fish in a frying pan: his belly arched, bucked, twisted. Then his limbs were pressed tightly to the bed by his father and the other man. Then, unable to move, he began to cry and curse. Then the sound he made was almost inhuman. Then great quantities of liquid came flowing from his member, a mixture of piss and blood. Then the mat beneath him was soaked and dyed red. Then his head struck the iron bed with a bang. Then he could make no further sound. Then the piss and blood continued to pour from him, flowing to the edge of the bed and dripping to the floor. Then Ah Yang became limp and shrivelled, as though sleeping.
When I had grown up, my father told me severely, “We didn’t use anesthesia, in order to preserve your wits.” I was silent, though I thought that “wits” were good for little but making one more sensitive to pain. To this day, on my bookshelf there stands an elegant little bottle, with two objects visible inside. One is a tuft of hair, cut from my head when I was a year old; the other is a round stone the size of a pea. The stone in the bottle was plucked from my body by the skinny doctor. There are times when I wonder how an object even rounder and smoother than a pea could have caused me so much pain.
What the spies outside the window did not see was the silver tiger. I saw it. In the extremity of my agony, I saw the silver tiger again. It was a different silver tiger. Or it was the same silver tiger but it had changed its nature. The one on the surface of the well pond had been gentle and bright; the one under the iron hospital bed was fierce and keen. The silver tiger stuck its head out from the shadows under the bed and opened its huge and shapeless mouth, biting down on my right ankle. I felt its teeth sinking deep into bone and sinew. I felt it tearing through the connection between me and the bed with an obscure strength. I felt it trying to drag me into true darkness. I sought to grip the railings of the bed. I even became grateful for the hands that held my four limbs tight. I hoped for a still heavier, more heartless pressure to hold me fast to that hospital bed. I didn’t want to be dragged away. “Help me,” I said. “It wants to carry me away.” Not one person, inside or outside the room, heard what I said. The operation had reached its climax, and they had no attention to spare. My hands grew tired from gripping the railing, but they never loosened their hold.
In fact, I bled from two places during that operation. Ah Yang’s member was bleeding. Ah Yang’s ankle was also bleeding. One kind of pain there, another kind of pain here. Can I speak of it this way? I just want you to understand that the silver tiger was truly there. It has come many times. I bear the marks of its teeth to this day.
I fought the silver tiger for three days and three nights. During those three days and nights I lost all awareness of anything else in the hospital. The iron bed was the arena of the battle, where I resisted the tiger with all my might and was eventually victorious. On the morning of the fourth day, Fifth Uncle arrived and carried me out of the hospital on his hunched back. I lay across his back and saw the wide-open fields outside the hospital. I felt a cold wind blowing from the north, cooling my swollen cheeks. I lay on Fifth Uncle’s back as we passed field after field of cold earth and wheat stubble, until we were back at the village. I saw sparrows flying out from under the eaves of the buildings, in little flocks and groups, the same as they always had.
Deaf Granny stood beneath the eaves, waving to me from a distance. She’d stood there waiting for three days and three nights. She asked everyone returning from Rongtang Town about me. She asked only one question: “Did Ah Yang cry?”
I was brought to my granny draped over Fifth Uncle’s back. I said in her ear, “Granny, Ah Yang didn’t cry. Ah Yang’s back now.” My voice sounded very small and soft to me. I watched as my granny suddenly covered her eyes and began sobbing. She forgot to cover her mouth. Her mouth was very old and very empty, and it opened, huge and round, before me. It wasn’t a nice mouth to see at all.
In later days, when I was an intellectual in Luocheng, I looked for a way to write a record of the thatched house where I lived as a child with my deaf granny. A simple and honest record. If you visit the countryside around Rongtang Town now, you won’t see any such lovely thatched houses. The walls of the house were two feet thick and made of piled earth. Or, rather, of pounded earth. The man who built the house would pile on some mud, then heft a great club and pound it down. Between the piling and the pounding, a single wall took days to complete. I loved the sound of the club smacking the wet earth; that sound signified the countryside to me. The roof was made of a plaited reed mat, thatched with wheat stalks set aside from the autumn harvest. They were piled on thickly and carefully. The builder used a flat block to pat one end of each straw bundle until it was even, then trimmed the other end with shears and carefully plucked out the weeds and the broken fragments. Every stalk of the roof thatching was in perfect order, and the straw kept its fresh yellow lustre for six months or more. I remember the special care the builder took with the shaping of the eaves, never satisfied with his work. And, when it was done, Deaf Granny’s thatched house put all the other houses to shame. It had one door and one small window, which was in the kitchen. Two loquat trees sprouted outside that window, and by the time I was nine years old they had quietly grown tall and luxurious, taller even than the eaves of the house.
I am speaking of an empty thatched house. As everyone knows, when Deaf Granny died she was buried in the vegetable plot outside the house. I, on the other hand, lived past the age of nine and eventually boarded a train and went to Luocheng and established a home. So, in fact, what I’m speaking of is an empty house. There is no one inside it. Granny and I both left it, though I see now that we left it in different ways.
Faced with an empty thatched house, I am uneasy. I must fill its emptiness with things that have no form of their own. Perhaps the fragrance of food would serve. Perhaps the fragrance of boiled pork and corn cakes. Before my ninth year, anytime I became ill, or fell into water, or fell from a tall peach or willow tree, every time I was wounded or struck, or narrowly escaped death, the kitchen of the thatched house would be suffused with the smell of good things to eat. I got to eat my granny’s boiled pork nearly every year. Her handmade corn cakes were tender and delicious, one side seared brown, the other a pale yellow. The marks of her hands on the cakes’ surface were movingly clear. On those fragrant days, the little girl Juan would always come early to play and stay until it was time to eat. My granny would console me: “We should all share, Ah Yang.”
She also said to me, “If Juan catches sight of you while you’re eating a corn cake, you must share it with her. Whenever anyone sees you eating, you have to share with that person.” She explained that food would turn sour if other people stared at it for too long and would give you a bellyache.
I’m quite certain that no one was watching the last time Granny made corn cakes. She lingered in the kitchen, seemingly unwilling to come out. She spent the whole day inside. All day, from morning till night, the stove smoke spiralled up from the kitchen. That day, Granny made five hundred and sixty-one corn cakes. Each one of them was delicious, better than any she’d made before.
For having denied me anesthesia during the operation, for having added to my suffering, my father made a meagre gesture of repentance. From Rongtang Town, he brought me a small copper gong, the size of an ox’s hoofprint, along with a mallet made from a bamboo chopstick, the thick end tightly wrapped in rags. He presented me with the gong and the mallet, saying, “Ah Yang, if you ever feel any pain, you just strike this gong as hard as you can.” I asked why I would do that. Father answered, “If you strike the gong, I’ll hear it, and I’ll come and take you to the hospital.” I just looked at the little copper gong, not daring to touch it. But that day, after she had made the corn cakes, Granny suddenly said to me, “Ah Yang, go into the village at noon tomorrow and strike your gong.” I asked what for. Granny rubbed my ear and said, “Just do as you’re told.”
Behind the thatched house was the vegetable plot, and beyond that was the well pond. In front of the house there were wheat fields—field after field. In winter, there were no haricot beans outside the house; you couldn’t find them if you tried. Everything around the thatched house changed with the seasons. What should have been there in spring was there in spring. What should have been there in summer was there in summer. What should have been there in fall was there in fall. What shouldn’t have been there in winter was not there in winter. Thus, there were no white-and-purple haricot beans.
By the time I was nine, my roots were firm. In the year I was nine, Deaf Granny left me. It was some kind of flux; she nearly died of the shame. She soiled her own clothes and could never get them clean. Everyone said that when she was younger she’d been so clean, so appealing. They were quite right. She couldn’t stand what she’d become, and in the last few days I’d often hear her talking to herself, saying, “I’m filthy, I ought to be dead.”
The sun went down, setting on a distant village. Deaf Granny brought out her corn cakes, making delivery after delivery to everyone in the village. She walked lightly, at a steady pace. Her feet barely touched the earth as she delivered a last gift to everyone. That whole night, the fragrance of corn cakes drifted through the village.
Perhaps it was that heavy scent that kept me awake that night. Granny patted my cotton quilt, saying, “Sleep.” I didn’t want to make her angry; I pretended to be asleep. But, in the midst of childhood darkness, my ears could catch the slightest sound, and my eyes saw all moving objects. I knew that the silver tiger had come, from somewhere outside the village. This silver tiger was different. Or perhaps it was the same silver tiger, and had yet again changed its nature. Its movements were slow and dogged as it approached. It stood outside the door of the thatched house like an old stone bench, cold and heavy.
Those times that I saw the silver tiger, I didn’t know that it was a tiger; nor did I understand its color, its light. The phrase “silver tiger” is something I hit on only later, when I was older, a term I used to describe the experiences of my youth. “Silver tiger” was one of the blessings granted to me by seventeen years of education. It is what’s known as a compound phrase, and, as a compound phrase, it joins with other words and phrases to enrich my speech. Meanwhile, as a visual image, it illuminates the realm of my experience.
Deaf Granny leaned against the loquat tree to the left of the window, stepped on a couple of broken bricks that had fallen from the chimney, and pulled herself with difficulty onto the back of the silver tiger. The tiger was so docile; it seemed even to bow its head and kneel. I shouted, “Granny, don’t go! You can’t let it take you away! Don’t go! Don’t let it take you away!” I shouted, and continued shouting until daybreak.
At noon the next day, I went to the village to ring my gong. I ran all through the village, ringing the gong as I went. The faster I ran the louder I rang it, and the louder I rang it the faster I ran. I was fast, and I was loud. I was nearly mad. I wanted so much to stop, to have Fifth Uncle take me to my mother and my father. I wanted to lie across his hunched back and bid farewell to Dong, Aunt Ma, and the little girl Juan, who would be following behind.
“Don’t let me keep you,” I would say. “Go on back.”
來源：紐約客（2018.06.04&11）
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