First Frost

I came back to my home village around the time of the First Frost.

The dirt road into the village had been paved over in concrete. Half the old houses along it had fallen in; on the walls that still stood, slogans had been brushed in white lime. There was hardly anyone in the fields. The rice was long harvested, leaving only rows of blackened stubble. Frost had settled on the dew, a whitish film over everything, and when the sun came up and warmed it, it turned back to mud.

I had come to visit my mother's grave. When it was done, at the mouth of the village I ran into Uncle Fa. Uncle Fa was a generation above even my father — he had been the village carpenter once, and now his back was badly bent, and he was squatting against a wall in the sun. I called out to him. He squinted at me a good while before he knew me, then said: it's the third boy from the Old San family, isn't it — done well for yourself, off in the city. It's nothing much, I said. He nodded, and then said, all of a sudden: you've come back at the right time. Old Defa passed the day before yesterday. The burial's tomorrow. He held you when you were small.

For a moment I could not place who Old Defa was. Uncle Fa reminded me — the one at the east end, the walled house standing on its own, the one whose son is off in Guangdong. Then something came back to me: a tall, gaunt old man who had driven oxen for the production team in the old days, a hard man, who did not say much to anyone.

What illness was it, I asked.

Uncle Fa smacked his lips. No illness, he said. He went on his own. Drank the pesticide.

He said it flatly, the way you might say Old Defa had gone to market yesterday and bought two catties of salt. I was stunned. Uncle Fa saw my meaning and waved a hand. What of it, he said. These last couple of years, in this village he's the third to go that way. The year before last it was the old man of the Zhou family; last year it was Lotus's mother-in-law. Both went on their own. They saw things clearly — not to be a burden on the children, that's a blessing.

I said nothing. The wind came across the empty fields, carrying frost and the smell of rotting straw.

The next day I went to Old Defa's funeral. The courtyard was small; three tables had been set out, and most of those who came were old. The coffin was thin-boarded, standing in the middle of the main room. His son had rushed back from Guangdong, in an ill-fitting black suit, kneeling before the bier. You could read nothing on his face; he only kept handing out cigarettes to the guests, lighting them, murmuring "thank you for coming, thank you." People said quietly that the son had it hard too — away all year round, docked pay for taking leave, and the fares back and forth so dear. Others said, that's just it — the old man was being considerate of his son, went out of his way to go at the busiest time in the factory, when the boy couldn't get leave, so as not to put him in a spot.

I listened, and it turned me cold inside.

The man running things was the village's old accountant, He by surname, who had managed most of the weddings and funerals in the place. He bustled about, reciting the proper order of things under his breath. When he sat down for a drink of water, I went over and asked him a few questions. Accountant He sighed. Defa's affair, he said, was done clean. Half a year back he'd already made his grave-clothes ready, folded them himself, pressed them to the bottom of the chest. A few days before he went, he sold the pig in the pen and split the money in two — one part he pressed on his grandson for schooling, the other he wrapped in red paper and tucked behind the picture of the Kitchen God, set aside to pay for his own funeral. And he cleared every scrap of what he owed over the years — two yuan three for soy sauce at the little shop, a hoe borrowed from next door, a day's wages he owed me — all paid off. The day he went, the house was swept spotless, the quilt folded square, even the empty bottle wrapped in newspaper and thrown into the ditch outside, for fear the fumes would linger in the room.

Accountant He shook his head. This man, he said — a whole life he wouldn't be in anyone's debt, and wouldn't die in debt either.

Did his son know, I asked. Before, I mean.

Accountant He looked at me, and the look said he thought the question a foolish one. Know what, he said. The old man's body was failing — they'd found it out last year, something growing in his stomach. To go to the city hospital and treat it would cost a great deal, and might not cure him even so. He came home and wouldn't go back, said there was no sense pouring money into a sickness that couldn't be cured. The son did call and press him — Pa, go and get it treated, I'll find the money somehow. The old man said yes on the phone, hung up, and went on as before. So did the son know? He knew. And knowing, what could he do.

He could have taken him to the city, I said.

Accountant He gave a small laugh with nothing of laughter in it. Take him to the city, he said, and put him where? The son rents a room from the factory — four of them crammed into one. The grandson has to study, the wife works too. Take the old man there, and who nurses him? Hire someone? A month's wages for that would buy the old man half a year of medicine. That account — the old man reckoned it clearer than anyone. He farmed the land his whole life; what account could he not reckon? He reckoned and reckoned, and in the end he decided he himself was the loss-making account, and closed it out himself.

For a while I could say nothing.

The burial was in the afternoon. The coffin was carried by a few young men of the clan, calling the lifting-chant, but their steps were light. The procession was not long; it crossed the emptied fields toward the slope behind the village. There were already many graves on the slope, new and old, high and low, crowded close together. Old Defa's grave had been dug at the head of his own patch of land, the land he had worked for fifty years. The earth was newly turned, wet and black; the frost had not yet reached it.

When the coffin went down, his son wept. He wept violently, threw himself on the earth and could not get up, and had to be held on his feet by others. I stood at the back of the crowd and watched him, and could not name what I felt. Everyone around was calm. A few of the old men were even chatting under their breath — about this year's harvest, about whose grandson had got into a school. One old woman wiped her eyes and said to the person beside her: Defa was a good man, and he went with dignity too — no suffering, no burden on anyone. The other nodded. That's right, that's right, he said. That's enough.

And all at once I understood what Uncle Fa had meant by "a blessing." Here, for an old man to escape a serious illness, to escape years bedridden, to spend none of his children's money, and to end things himself, cleanly — this counted as a dignified death, one to be praised, even one to be envied.

I started back as it was growing dark. Passing Old Defa's courtyard at the east end, I found the gate ajar, unlocked, no one within. The old persimmon tree in the yard had shed all its leaves; only the fruit was left, a whole tree of it, red and full, no one to pick it, no one wanting it, hanging in the dusk like a tree strung with lanterns.

I stood at the gate a while and looked. The wind rose again; the persimmon branches swayed gently, and one ripe fruit dropped to the ground with a slap and burst. The yard was very still.

Back in the city, life went on as always. One day I telephoned Uncle Fa to ask how the village fared. He rambled on at his end for a good while, and then, at the last, said suddenly: oh — Lotus's father-in-law, the one next door to Old Defa, he took his grave-clothes out to air the other day too. This time of year everyone airs their quilts and their grain, so grave-clothes airing is nothing strange. He aired them a whole day, took them in at night, and folded them neat again, and pressed them to the bottom of the chest.

He said it, still, in that same flat voice.

I held the phone and for a long time made no sound. Outside the window was the city night, blazing with light, cars coming and going below, all of it bustling. Not one person knew that in a village hundreds of li away, an old man was folding his own grave-clothes, over and over, folding them square, pressing them flat.