The Plantain Spirit

In the south, where the rains are long and the air hangs warm and wet, lived an old widow surnamed Zhou, in a narrow lane on the city's western edge. In her courtyard she had planted a stand of plantains. She had but one daughter, called A-Jiao, who fell ill and died three years past at sixteen. Grieving without end, Zhou dug up a clump of plantains from the girl's grave and set them by her window, watering them each year, saying, "Let the plantain grow an inch, and my child return an inch." The neighbors thought her foolish; she paid them no mind.

Lin Huaijin, a quiet youth from Kuaiji, came south to seek an uncle and found no one. His money spent, he rented Zhou's side room. Of a still nature, sparing of words but quick to notice, he saw the old woman alone and aged, and often drew her water and swept her court; she was grateful.

It was the plum-rain season, weeks without a clear sky. One night the rain came hard and the wind slanted, the plantain leaves turning like palms beating the window. Lin sat reading, not yet asleep, when he heard a voice in the court — soft, a girl's, as if answering the old woman in talk. Thinking Zhou had risen, he slipped to the window and looked. In the dim lamplight stood a maiden in green, leaning against the tallest plantain; her form was half transparent, the lamp shining through her like water. Zhou sat beneath the eaves, telling over and over the small things of A-Jiao's childhood, and the maiden answered low, "Do not grieve, mother; the leaves are still green, and I am beneath them." A gust passed; the leaves whispered; the maiden was gone, leaving only the plantain's shadow swaying.

Lin was afraid, yet for the old woman's sake held his tongue. After that, on every rainy night, he listened in secret, and came to know the maiden was the plantain's own spirit, moved by Zhou's sorrow to take a shape from the leaves and ease her loneliness. His heart pitied them both. So when none were about, he loosened the soil, led water to the roots, and bound bamboo to prop the drooping leaves. Zhou, seeing the plantain flourish, told her neighbors, "My child knows I miss her, and so she grows green." Lin only smiled and said nothing.

Late that autumn a typhoon crossed the coast; black clouds pressed the eaves, and the rain poured as from a tilted bowl. Zhou's old ailment returned, fever and chill together, and she cried A-Jiao's name in delirium. Lin sat by her bed the whole night; medicine went in, but she did not wake. Near the fourth watch the wind and rain eased a little, and Lin went out to the plantain. The great stalk was near uprooted, its leaves torn. As he reached for a rope, the green maiden appeared, her face drawn. "You have sheltered me three seasons," she said. "Now I repay. Her sickness is not for medicine. Take the dew that rests on the plantain's heart and brew it with this song; she will be well." She traced a word in his palm with her fingertip, then sang a tune, clear as rain on a young lotus. When the song ended, her shape thinned and sank into the heart of the plant.

Lin did as she bade. At dawn he took the tender leaf at the plantain's core, caught the last of the night's dew upon it, and brewed a broth for Zhou. She drank, broke into sweat, and woke, asking, "Who sang the Plantain Maiden's song? I saw A-Jiao stand by my bed." Lin answered lightly, "The wind carried a child's singing from the next court." Zhou wept, and asked no more.

Half a year passed; his uncle's letter came, and Lin went to him. On the eve of leaving, the rain had stopped and a thin moon showed. He took his leave of Zhou and stood once more beneath the plantain. The leaves stirred; a single tender leaf drifted into his sleeve, warm to the touch, with the print of dew upon it, like a tear, like a smile. He kept it, and did not sleep that night.

Some years later Lin, now an official returning south, passed again through the old lane. Zhou was long dead, and strangers owned the house, but the plantain in the court still stood, taller than the eaves. He stood in the rain; the wind came and the leaves whispered as before. Listening closely, he seemed to hear an old woman's murmur and a girl's soft reply, the two voices braided into the rain, none to tell apart. Lin stood silent a long while, then turned away; the old leaf in his sleeve was still green.

The Chronicler of the Strange would say: The spirits of things are not without feeling; the thoughts of men can reach the unseen. One grief of old Zhou could turn a withered plantain into a daughter; three seasons of Lin's quiet care won spring back from a single leaf. The world seeks gods in temples and forgets that every grass and tree keeps the soul of where it came from. Alas — a mother's longing is known to the plants; a wanderer's kindness is remembered by wind and rain. In the loud cities of the age, who now listens a whole night to the sound of plantains?