Crossing the Blood River

Midnight Register — A Long Tale

The Red Abyss River never floods in an ordinary year. The old folk say it keeps count of the years—the year the water is to take new ghosts, that is the year it turns on them, and in a single night it swallows the stone landing, soaks the riverside reeds into black fluff, and bleeds a moss-green stink of rot into the steps. In such years the riverside households hang a bundle of mugwort over the doorframe and tuck a red cloth of hearth-ash under the children's pillows, said to weigh down the river's "longing." But longing can be weighed down; water cannot. This year is a year of drowning.

Qingtang Village lies where the Red Abyss bends, wrapped on three sides by water, like a grain of rice held in the river's mouth. A village such as this has known the temper of water for generations. When A-Yan was small his grandfather told him that beneath the Red Abyss lies a "spine"—not a fish, not a stone, but the grievances of those long ago drowned and never climbed ashore, layer upon layer, packed into the riverbed. When the water rises, the spine turns in its sleep; when it falls, the spine sleeps again. The old men said this always in the lowest of voices, as if the river truly could hear.

A-Yan came back to Qingtang on the third night, in the rain.

He should not have come back. Three years before he had passed the exams and gone to study in the provincial city; on the night he left, his mother had pressed a packet of hearth-ash into his arms at the landing and said, "There are things on the river—don't look back." He had not looked back, and had gradually forgotten the river. Until the letter came home: his grandfather was gone—fallen in the water, fished up only after three days, swollen beyond recognition, black mud packed under every fingernail, strands of something—weed or hair, no telling which—still wound about his body.

Beneath the old locust at the village mouth stood a few white-draped cars; spirit money, soaked by the rain, clung to the mud like a shed of faded scales. A-Yan knelt before the coffin and smelled not incense but the stink of water: from his grandfather's coffin rose the smell of the river itself, damp and cold, sweet with the rot of silt, as if the whole Red Abyss had been poured inside. He reached to touch the wood and found his fingertips beaded with fine water, cold to the bone—the coffin might have been pulled from the river that very hour.

His second uncle, keeping the vigil, drew him aside and lowered his voice: "Your grandfather was 'invited' into the water."

"What do you mean?"

"The Red Abyss has risen this year. Uncle Gou's boat has come out again."

A-Yan remembered the gossip of his childhood: the Red Abyss had no bridge, only a black-canopied boat, whose master was an old man surnamed Gou, called Uncle Gou. That boat ferried no living soul; it carried only "those who should cross"—the ghosts of the drowned, or those about to drown. No one had ever seen Uncle Gou set foot on shore, no one had ever seen him take a coin. He appeared only in years of drowning; when the waters fell, boat and man vanished together, as if they had never been. The village children all feared him, yet in summer they would sneak to the landing to catch a glimpse of the boat, and come back with endless frightening talk.

"How many has Uncle Gou ferried this year?" A-Yan asked.

The second uncle did not answer, only jerked his chin toward the river, his face gray as paper in the candlelight.

A-Yan followed his look. Through the rain-curtain the Red Abyss shone black, and on its surface floated a layer of dark red, as if someone had stirred cinnabar into the water and the night had thinned it to a scab of blood. The far shore should have been bare shoal, yet now lights flickered there—one star, two, arranged in a crooked line of streets, like a market set upon the water, but without a single human sound, not even a dog's bark. Wind came off the river carrying an indistinct stink; A-Yan shivered, feeling that within the stink, as if wrapped in many mouths, something was breathing, all at once, toward the village.

"That is the Water Market," said the second uncle. "Where the drowned gather. A living soul who goes there does not come back."

II. The Straw Cloak

On the fourth night the rain stopped and the fog rose.

A-Yan could not sleep. The vigil candle lit his grandfather's portrait in fits and starts; the old man in the photograph smiled stiffly, as if afraid of disturbing something. He threw on his clothes and went out, meaning to catch some air at the landing. His feet on the slick stone steps, he only then realized he had already walked down to the water's edge, and when he pulled his shoe from the mud it came free with a wet plop, like someone sighing in the mire.

Upon the river floated a point of dim yellow light.

It was that black-canopied boat.

At the bow stood a hunched figure in a straw cloak and conical hat, a long oar in hand; the blade entered the water without a sound, like a knife through oil. As if bewitched, A-Yan descended a few more steps; cold water closed over his ankles before he started, and found himself standing at the bow—and the stretch of stone steps beneath him had, without his noticing, already been swallowed by the water.

"Come aboard," came a voice from beneath the hat, rasping, like sandpaper on pottery.

A-Yan stepped in without thinking. The cabin was low; from the roof dripped water that landed on the nape of his neck, and he flinched from the cold. In the cabin sat a coarse clay bowl, at its bottom a few grains of uncooked rice steeped in half a bowl of murky water, a film of fine oil floating on top. Only when he sat did he smell it—the very water-stink from his grandfather's coffin, mixed with the aged smell of tung oil and a sweetness he could not name, like a rotting lotus root, dizzying the longer he breathed it. He stole a glance at Uncle Gou's feet: beneath the straw cloak showed a cuff, wet, yet no watermark spread on the planks—those feet, it seemed, did not belong to this boat at all.

"Uncle Gou?" he ventured.

The hat lifted a little, revealing the lower half of a face. The flesh was shrunken, the cheekbones high, the lips dark as if soaked too long in water. Yet the eyes were exceedingly bright, bright beyond any living man, like light reflected up from the bottom of a deep pool—cold and still, and enough to make a man's heart panic. A hand came up to steady the hat; the back of it was a tangle of blue veins, and black mud filled the nails, the same as under his grandfather's.

"Your grandfather—I ferried him," said Uncle Gou. "He should not have died. But the water is high this year, and a few living names were written extra onto the list of those who should cross."

"What list?"

Uncle Gou did not answer, only gave the long oar a push, and the boat left the shore without a sound. A-Yan looked back and saw the lights of Qingtang shrink to a small warm yellow, being swallowed mouthful by mouthful by the fog, like a lamp about to go out. He felt a sudden panic and reached for the gunwale; his knuckles met not wood but something cold and wet, like skin and yet like water, and he snatched his hand back—yet the gunwale was sound, its grain clear, as if it had been his own imagining.

"Where are you ferrying me?" his voice tightened.

"I am not ferrying you," said Uncle Gou. "You have not yet come to the time you should cross. I only… carried you along to look."

"Look at what?"

"Look at the far shore."

III. The Riverbed

Only when the boat reached mid-river did A-Yan truly see the Red Abyss.

It was not a river; it was a gash. Beneath the surface undercurrents twisted through undercurrents, whirlpools nesting one within another, like countless hands clenching and loosening on the river floor. The water-stink was bitter with concentration; with every breath his throat held a mouthful of rust. The oar sounded thud, thud, thud, slow enough to fray the heart, each stroke like a knock on someone's coffin board, and like a counting of something—one, two, three; at the eleventh stroke Uncle Gou's oar would always pause the merest instant, as if afraid of missing someone.

"The Red Abyss floods only in years of drowning," Uncle Gou said suddenly. "Do you know why?"

A-Yan shook his head, his eyes fixed on the water. He saw something drift past the boat—a pair of shoes, children's shoes, the laces still tied, empty, that turned twice in a whirlpool and sank. His stomach clenched.

"Because something is pressed down at the bottom. For every person drowned, the river rises an inch, pressing that thing down the tighter. This year more have drowned than any year—three villages upriver, two towns down, forty-some floating corpses pulled up alone. The water rose too fast; it cannot be held." As he spoke Uncle Gou's blade lifted a handful of water and flung it back; where it fell, a fine string of bubbles rose, like someone sighing below.

"What is pressed down?"

Uncle Gou's oar paused. "Those who were never finished crossing, in years past."

A-Yan did not understand. But Uncle Gou spoke as if to himself: "A hundred years ago I was a ferryman too. That year was also a year of drowning, the water higher even than this. I carried a boatload across to the far shore; at mid-river the rope snapped and the boat overturned. Eleven souls in that boat, myself among them, all drowned in the Red Abyss. I deserved it—that boat should never have carried the living."

"You, then…"

"I drowned," Uncle Gou said flatly. "Yet I did not cross over. The Water Market on the far shore will hold drowned ghosts, but not a ferryman who 'should have crossed yet did not.' I was caught in between—could not climb ashore, could not cross the river—so for a hundred years I have rowed this river's boat, sending over all who should cross, to repay a debt. Each I send over loosens the spine at the bottom an inch; yet each inch it loosens, the river writes new names to fill it back. This debt cannot be repaid."

A-Yan went cold down the back. He stared at Uncle Gou's dark-purple lips and suddenly understood what the second uncle had meant by "invited into the water": this year the water is high, extra living names written on the list, and Uncle Gou's debt must be filled with living lives. And that "spine" at the river's bottom feeds not only on the drowned but on the living marked by its name.

"Your grandfather," Uncle Gou went on, "his name is on the list because he stood in once for you. The night three years ago you left the village, something on the river meant to drag you down; it was he who scattered hearth-ash into your shadow and drew that thing onto himself. This year, it was his turn."

A-Yan's tears struck the planking and spread a small dark patch. He thought of his mother's "don't look back," of the packet of hearth-ash his grandfather had pressed on him, tossed and forgotten in a dormitory drawer, never used—he had not even known of the blow his grandfather took for him at the last. So the river had never wanted one or two people; it wanted generation after generation, trading the living into the water, bit by bit.

IV. The Water Market

The boat came against the far shore.

A-Yan dared not step off, only clung to the gunwale and looked up. The Water Market lay before him—a warren of streets steeped in water, houses half-sunk and half-floating, in their window-grilles swung lamps of a ghastly green, and the shadows beneath the lamps were drawn long, wavering on the water's face. There were no living on the street, only shadows: dripping human shapes, heads bowed, walking slowly, dragging long watery trails from their feet, and at the street's end dissolving into fog, as if swallowed by the water. Now and then one lifted its head, and A-Yan would see a face bloated white, its features blurred—then the face would turn and be gone, as if it would not even be clearly seen.

"These are all drowned ghosts?" A-Yan's voice trembled.

"All of them," said Uncle Gou. "Raised by the Red Abyss. The water rises an inch, one more joins; it falls an inch, one fewer—the one fewer is the one who repaid his debt and was permitted to cross. Look closely at the far end of the street: an old man in a blue cloth gown sits every day by his own door, waiting for his son to fetch him. He has waited sixty years; his son sank long ago downstream, but he does not know, and the river will not tell him."

A-Yan followed the gaze and indeed saw a hunched shadow seated on a platform of half a door-panel, empty hands spread on his lap as if waiting to be given something. When the wind passed, the shadow rocked, but still sat, unmoving, as if it had sat itself into a fixture of the Water Market.

"Then the far shore… has no place a living soul should go?"

Uncle Gou gave him a look, as if stating the plainest thing. "A living soul who comes becomes a drowned ghost. The Water Market does not choose; it takes all who come. The very street you stand on was once a living village; flooded, it became a stretch of the Market. The far shore has no place a living soul should go—because the moment a living soul steps ashore, that place is no longer one a living soul can bear. The lamps are lit to show the way to those who come after."

A-Yan thought again of the second uncle's words: a living soul who goes does not return. His stomach churned, and the rust-taste rose in his throat. He understood at last "the far shore has no place a living soul should go"—not that there is no place, but that once the living arrive, that place ceases to be one the living can inhabit; it takes souls, not men.

"Uncle Gou," he gathered his courage, "you have rowed a hundred years—is the debt still not repaid?"

"Never," said Uncle Gou, resting the oar on the gunwale, its blade dripping, ticking fine sounds on the water. "Each I ferry over, the list writes a few more living names. This river knows the dead and not the living; what it wants was never one man's repayment—it wants whole villages, to fill that gash. I row only to count the heads for it, one by one, and send them down beneath these lamps."

"This year, then?"

Uncle Gou was silent a long while. Fog crept from the far end of the Market and ate the ghastly green lamps one by one, as if someone beneath the water were blowing them out.

"This year," he said at last, "the last crossing to be made is to carry a whole village of the living to the far shore."

A-Yan's breath stopped.

"Qingtang, with five villages up and down the river—the lists are written. Let the water rise one more night, and before dawn the boats will come to each shore and take all the living across. Those who go willingly, board; those who will not…" Uncle Gou paused; another drop fell from the blade, "the river will reach out its own hand. Where it has reached, none is left un-taken."

V. The Old Debt

On the way back A-Yan asked the question he had been holding: "Uncle Gou, you have rowed a hundred years—did you never think of… not rowing?"

The eyes beneath the hat blinked, as if at something vastly funny. "Not row? The night a hundred years ago I overturned at mid-river, my wife lit a lamp on the shore and waited for me. The lamp-oil burned dry three times; she did not leave. Later she went into the water herself, to find me. I could not ferry her—a ferryman may not ferry his own. She became, in the Water Market, the brightest lamp, and the loneliest. If I did not row, her lamp would go out. Do you understand? This debt was not forced by the river; it is one I owe myself. The river only keeps the tally for me."

A-Yan could find no words. He thought of his mother, and of what would become of her if the river marked his name—would she too light a lamp, and burn until the oil was dry?

"And the eleven?" he asked softly. "The boatload you carried."

"All in the Market. Every year as I ferry the new ones over, I meet them at the street's mouth, heads bowed, not knowing me. I owe them more even than I owe my wife. Yet I cannot even pass a word of 'forgive me'—in this river words are heavy, and spoken, they do not float up."

The boat slid back to Qingtang on the water's skin; the fog had thinned, and A-Yan saw the two vigil lamps still burning at the landing, dim and yellow, like the one his grandfather had never been willing to blow out in life. He suddenly wanted home very much, and suddenly feared it very much—home was still there, but the people in it were being marked, one by one, by the river's name.

VI. The Summons to Cross

A-Yan was woken by a gust of cold wind across the face.

He found he had fallen asleep on the boat, and it had already returned to Qingtang's landing. The sky was near dawn; the fog had thinned, yet the Water Market's lamps burned brighter, as if in urging. He stumbled back to the village and knocked door to door, saying the Red Abyss meant to ferry the whole village. But no one believed him. The second uncle said he had nightmared; the village head said the Red Abyss rises every year, what year does it not take someone, why the panic. Only a few old folk turned pale and silently bolted their doors, and one even pasted a hearth-ash talisman to the frame—the paper gone soft in the night's damp, its corners curling like a drooping ear.

At noon the first to board was Granny Cui, the madwoman from the east end. Her husband and son had drowned in the Red Abyss ten years before; she had been mad all these years, running daily to the river, and the village children all avoided her. This day she was suddenly clear, had combed her hair and put on clean clothes, even washed her shoes white, and smiled at A-Yan: "My man called me. I'm going to the Water Market to find him, and fetch my boy home while I'm at it." With that she walked down the steps herself, stepped into the cabin; Uncle Gou gave the oar a push, and she was gone into the fog without so much as a splash, as if she had belonged to that fog all along.

A-Yan moved to pull her back, but the second uncle seized him hard, nails digging into his arm. "You cannot hold her. Those who should cross, none can stop. Your grandfather tried once—held you, but not himself."

In the afternoon a few more boarded. There was the old woman who had lost her only grandson and wept herself blind, led by the hand yet walking steady, saying "my grandson waits for me there, he's afraid of the cold, I must go warm him"; there was the wastrel who owed gambling debts and meant to dodge them, who even spat toward the shore before boarding, yet the moment his foot touched the planks his swagger left him and he sat meekly; and the carpenter freshly widowed, hugging the plane his wife had used in life, who looked back once at the village as he boarded—reluctance in his eyes, and relief. They boarded with a strange calm, as if keeping an appointment long made, and one even turned and smiled at the shore before stepping in. A-Yan stood on the bank and watched the boat shuttle back and forth; with each return the Water Market brightened a degree, and Qingtang's living breath dimmed a degree, as if someone were drawing the village's lamps down, one by one.

He understood at last Uncle Gou's "never repaid." This was no debt of one man; it was a debt the Red Abyss levied on all the living. The Market must be filled, the gash must be stopped, and the living become drowned ghosts one by one, keeping watch over what had been pressed down a hundred years. And Uncle Gou was only the one caught in between, counting heads for the river—counting a hundred years, until he too became a section of that spine at the river's bottom.

At dusk Uncle Gou brought the boat back to the landing and said to A-Yan: "The last trip. Every living soul of the village must board tonight."

"I will not board," said A-Yan.

Uncle Gou looked at him, and in those pool-deep eyes appeared, for the first time, something near to pity. "Your grandfather stood in for you once. But a debt does not vanish into thin air—it only moves elsewhere. If you do not board, another boards in your place. Perhaps your second uncle; perhaps the girl next door who always saves you a piece of tofu. The river wants a name, not specifically yours."

A-Yan thought of something sudden and ran home. His mother was pushing his grandfather's portrait to the bottom of a chest; at the sight of him her hands trembled.

"Ma," his voice came out hoarse, "the hearth-ash?"

His mother said nothing, only closed the chest, like closing a small coffin. But he had seen it—through the chest's seam showed a edge of red cloth: the packet of hearth-ash pressed into his arms three years before, which his mother had kept, unable to throw away, and afraid to tell him.

VII. Leaving the Shore

At midnight the fog was thick as paste.

Nearly all the living of Qingtang had gathered at the landing. Some wept, some cursed, some stood in a numb queue, as if waiting to be given something. Uncle Gou's boat rode the water, its cabin already half-full with those "invited" from the villages up and down—A-Yan recognized a few neighboring faces, heads bowed, hems wet, quiet as if already arrived. The Water Market on the far shore blazed now, its ghastly green lamps strung into a sheet, like a net opened to receive.

A-Yan wedged himself behind the crowd and saw his second uncle shoved aboard by others' hands, saw the village head step in with bowed head, saw the always-smiling tofu girl pushed into the cabin by her father—she did not cry, only clutched the unsold slab of tofu to her breast, as if clutching the last warmth. The cabin filled; the boat sat deeper, its gunwale nearly level with the water, yet not one cried crowded, not one looked back—they seemed to have accepted their fate, only waiting for the oar to sound and to go.

"Come aboard, A-Yan," Uncle Gou called from the bow, his voice mixed with the oar's, near or far impossible to tell, as if risen from the river floor.

A-Yan gripped the packet of hearth-ash in his pocket—he had after all pulled it from the bottom of his mother's chest, the paper gone soft with sweat, the red cloth faded. He thought of his grandfather, of those dripping shadows, of the Water Market's ghastly green lamps, of the soft sound when his mother closed the chest, of the brightest lonely lamp Uncle Gou had spoken of. He did not know whether hearth-ash could weigh down the river's longing, but he knew that if he boarded this boat, his mother too would become one who lit lamps on the shore.

He took a step forward, then stopped.

"Will you board or not?" Someone pushed him from behind. He could not see who, only felt a cold wet force press to his back, like a hand risen from the river floor, its fingertips the chill of silt, crawling up his spine. He tried to struggle, but the force clung, as if it had marked him.

The boat left the shore.

The oar sounded thud, thud, thud, and the fog swallowed Qingtang's lamps mouthful by mouthful. A-Yan stood in the shallow water at the bank, shoes and socks soaked, teeth chattering with cold. He watched that point of dim yellow boat-light shrink smaller and smaller until the fog ate it, like the brows and eyes his grandfather's year had been eaten by the river. A few lamps still burned on the shore, dim and yellow; one of them he knew—the one in his own window. His mother was likely still sitting there, waiting for him to come back, or waiting for him not to.

He did not know whether he had boarded.

He only remembered that at the moment of leaving, the cold wet force at his back loosened—yet the water at his feet was deeper than when he came, deep enough that it seemed the Red Abyss had already marked him down, only the time he should cross had not yet come. The water crept over his ankles, over his shins, the cold climbing inch by inch, and still he stood unmoving, as if sucked by that gash, and as if held by the breath he had left behind. A few lamps still burned on the shore, dim and yellow, like waiting for one who, sooner or later, must go into the water.

A Note from the Midnight Register

Year after year the Red Abyss floods, year after year men drown. Uncle Gou has rowed a hundred years, repaying a debt the river swallowed, and repaying too the debt of his own—that brightest, loneliest lamp. As I set down this tale the waters stand at their highest this year; upriver two more floating corpses are reported, and downriver a child is lost from a town and has not returned, his shoes the very match of what A-Yan saw. I went myself to Qingtang; the villagers would not speak of it, and only an old man pointed across the river and said: "In there, the lamps are still lit."

For whom do the Water Market's lamps burn? The living who go become those beneath the lamps; the ferryman, caught between life and death, repays a debt that cannot be repaid, unable even to pass a word of "forgive me." Whether A-Yan boarded or not, none can prove—those on the shore say they did not see him board; those on the boat say they recall such a youth; yet tonight one more lamp burns across the water, brighter than the rest, standing lonely at the Market's street-mouth, as if waiting for one who must come, sooner or later.

The Recorder says: common men fear ghosts mostly for their shape; but the terror of the Red Abyss is that it never shows a shape. It only rises, only fogs, only lets those who should go walk down by themselves. If you ask what lies on the far shore—the far shore holds nothing at all, except those who should have been on this shore. Hearth-ash may weigh down a little longing, but it cannot weigh down a river that knows the dead and not the living. Those who should cross will cross in the end; those who should not only move the debt to the next year of drowning, onto the next one who still lights a lamp and waits for you to come home.

(The end.)