The Maple Spirit

The Green Wall Mountains lie eighty li southwest of the prefectural city. Their peaks rise in tiers, their woods and gullies run deep, and cloud always locks the upper half of the range. Halfway up stands an old temple called Cold Maple. No one knows when it was founded; only two characters, "Hongzhi," survive on a broken stele, which would make it some four or five hundred years old. The temple lies far from the county seat. Of old there was but a woodcutter's trail; only in recent years has a cart track been opened, yet once the rains come and the streams swell, the ruts vanish, and travelers still suffer for it.

The temple is tiny: a single gatehouse, a three-bay hall, two side wings. The images are flaked and dull, cobwebs strung across the brows of the Buddhas. The monks dispersed long ago, and now only one keeper remains. His surname is Shen, his name Yan. A licentiate of the county, he had some literary fame in youth, sat the provincial exam three times and thrice was passed over, then laid aside his scholar's robe, brought a satchel of battered books, and came to sweep fallen leaves and rinse the inkstone—a way, he said, to hide from the world. When people met him in the hills, they saw a man in cloth and straw sandals, his temples already streaked with white. Asked his age, he said sixty-three. Asked why he did not go home, he smiled: "I keep this tree." Asked what was so strange about the tree, he would not answer, but only led the guest to the step and gazed upward a long while, as if speaking with it.

The tree stands southeast of the hall—a maple. It would take four or five men to girdle it; its bark is scaled like armor, its branches twist like dragons reaching for the clouds. The village elders say it was planted in the mid-Ming, more than three hundred years ago. Other maples redden at frost, every year the same, and no one thinks it strange; this one is different. Deep in autumn it does not merely turn red—it reddens heavily and late, from root to crown, spreading like a single torch, so the whole courtyard is lit, and even the iron bells at the eaves and the dust on the walls seem dyed. Travelers abroad at night, seeing a ball of fire in the mountain hollow, take it for a temple lamp; drawing near, they find it is the tree.

For three hundred years this tree has watched the partings and meetings of men. In years of war, refugees slept beneath it; in years of plenty, those who prayed for harvest bowed in its shade. A youth left his mother for distant service and wept at its foot; an old monk died sitting upright with his hand still on its trunk. Shen Yan often said: "The tree has no mind, yet it has seen much. Men think I keep the tree, not knowing the tree also keeps men." The words sound fanciful, yet those who dwell long in the hills mostly believe them.

In autumn Shen Yan would sit beneath the tree with a pot of wine and a book in his lap, from sunrise to sundown, in silence. Wang Si the woodcutter of the neighboring village used to say: "Master Shen looks at that tree more fondly than at people." Shen Yan, hearing this, was not offended, only smiled: "People are easy to betray; a tree is hard to betray."

In the ninth month of the xinhai year, a young scholar named Liu Mingyuan, bound for the capital to sit the spring examinations, passed below the mountain. Liu was the son of a well-to-do family, had studied under a famous master, wrote a polished eight-legged essay, and at twenty had gained the rank of licentiate; the village expected great things of him. That day it rained, and his clothes and shoes were soaked through. Spying a temple in the hills, he rode up to it. Inside the gate he found Shen Yan airing books on the gallery, looking perfectly at ease. Liu explained his wish to lodge, and Shen Yan welcomed him in, lit a fire of knots, and set tea before him. Liu, young and full of himself, having enjoyed the scenery along the way, asked: "Is there anything worth seeing here? Do you not grow weary, living alone?" Shen Yan said: "There is a tree to look at, books to read—what weariness?" Liu laughed: "What is there to see in a tree?" Shen Yan did not argue, only pointed to an old inscription on the wall: "A line left by a predecessor; read it, if you will."

At midnight the rain stopped and the moon rose over the eastern ridge, flooding the courtyard with clear light. Liu could not sleep; he threw on his clothes and stepped out. It was near the fourth watch; all sound had ceased, and only the last drops fell from the leaves, ticking like a water clock. Suddenly he saw a girl standing beneath the maple, robed in red gauze, perhaps sixteen, her profile lovely, gazing up at the tree as if lost in thought. A wind passed and red leaves drifted onto her shoulder; she did not brush them away. Liu thought her a mountain ghost, then a illusion, and held his breath to watch. She turned her head; her eyes were clear and cold as a pool. They met his, without fear, and she slipped silently into the trunk and was gone. Liu's hair stood on end, and he lay awake the rest of the night.

At dawn he told Shen Yan. Shen Yan was brewing tea; at the words his hand paused, and he said slowly: "So you have seen her too." Liu was startled: "You knew of this?" Shen Yan said: "It is the spirit of the tree. I have lived here forty years and see her every autumn; it is no wonder. What you saw last night is the gathered grievance of three hundred years—neither ghost nor immortal, nothing to fear." He sighed: "The old matter of this place has lain buried three centuries. Meeting you today, perhaps it should be told. Sit, and hear me."

And he told Liu the whole of it.

In the Wanli reign of the Ming there was a man of the county, Zhou Shen, styled Jingzhi. Orphaned young, filial to his mother, poor yet pure in purpose, he read by night until the small hours. He once kept school in a monk's cell beside Cold Maple Temple, supporting himself by teaching village children. Below the hill lived a weaver girl, A-jiang; her parents had died early and she lived with an aunt. She wove well and supported herself, quiet by nature, seldom smiling. Zhou passed her door often and, seeing her at her loom by lamplight far into the night, came to respect her. She too heard his reading voice, clear through the window, and after long grew to admire him; yet they never exchanged a word, and their feeling was already silently pledged.

When Zhou was about to sit the provincial exam, his traveling funds fell short. A-jiang secretly sold the red gauze half-sleeve from her trousseau for three thousand cash and sent it by an old neighbor woman, saying: "This is the girl's resolve, not a gift. Go forward, and do not be disheartened by poverty." Zhou would not take it; the woman pressed it on his desk and left. He could not catch her to return it, and holding the gauze wept: "When I rise, I will come for you. If I betray you, may Heaven reject me." A-jiang saw him off beneath the maple, in deep autumn when the leaves were red, and untied the remaining corner of red gauze to bind his wrist. "If you are false," she said, "let this tree bear witness; if you die wronged, let this tree keep the record. I will wait for you, in life or death." Zhou rode off on his lean donkey; looking back again and again, he saw A-jiang standing beneath the maple, her red clothes soaked through, still waving.

That year Zhou topped the provincial list, and the next spring went to the capital for the metropolitan exam. His essays were grave and strange with power; his examiner beat the table in admiration and meant to place him first of the second class. The night before the list was posted, a wealthy young man of the same county, a certain Jia, who had no literary name, had a father rich and connected to the chief minister. The father bribed the copyist to slip Zhou's original paper out by night and substitute Jia's in its place. Zhou had hidden the character "Shen" as a private mark at the end of his policy answer, but the forgery could not be disproved. When the list came out, Jia passed and Zhou failed. Zhou in his anger went to the gate and lodged a complaint; Jia's father in turn accused him of slandering a great man. Zhou was seized, beaten, and banished to the far south. Stumbling on his way, he reached the banks of the Xiang River, where a carbuncle broke on his back and he died in a wayside inn. He had not a coin in his purse; a fellow traveler took pity and buried him in a thin coffin by the road, and his bones never returned home.

A-jiang, at home, first rejoiced to hear Zhou had passed the provincial exam; then hoped as he went to the capital; then doubted when he failed; then was shocked at the banishment; and at last, hearing he was dead, was destroyed. In white mourning she came to the temple, clutched the maple and wept bitterly, dashed her head against the trunk until blood and tears stained the bark, and after a month of fasting died beneath the tree. The villagers honored her fidelity and buried her at the foot of the maple, with no stele but a small stone marked "Faithful Maid." From then on, each deep autumn, when the leaves were wholly red, on moonlit nights a girl in red would often appear standing beneath the tree, gazing up at the crown, and fade after a while. The villagers feared and shunned her, calling her the Maple Spirit. A bold one who peeped saw her face, and it resembled the old accounts of A-jiang.

Shen Yan said: "I too read here in my youth. At seventeen, sitting alone on an autumn night, I saw this girl. I ran in fright to tell my old teacher, who said: 'This is a gathering of grievance; do not go near, or you will be bewitched.' I kept my distance, yet pitied her. Later, failing the exams again and again, my spirit slowly drained; past thirty I laid it all aside and came to keep this tree. Men call me a fool, and I half suspect it myself. Yet each time I see the red leaves I think of A-jiang's crimson heart and Zhou's white bones, and feel that the fools of this world are not only myself. Look at this tree—reddened so—is it merely frost and dew that do it?"

Liu heard him out and sighed again and again, his tears falling for them. That night he went out again and indeed saw the girl. Liu straightened his clothes and made a deep bow: "Your servant Liu Mingyuan has reverently heard the tale of A-jiang and Zhou. Their wrongs have sunk three hundred years beneath the springs; yet you keep this tree alone—what do you intend?" She turned her eyes on him, sorrowful: "I am not A-jiang, nor the soul of Zhou. A-jiang's bones are dust; Zhou's blood is cold. I am the accumulated sorrow of this tree's three hundred years—A-jiang's devotion, Zhou's wrong, the sighs of passersby, all gathered into me. I cannot right the wrong, cannot renew the bond; I only redden these leaves each year, that those who see may know the helplessness of parting and meeting—and that is all."

Liu said: "Then why show yourself, and why meet me alone on this night?" She smiled faintly, her gaze as clear and cold as before: "You go to the spring exam, the same trade as Zhou. I would ask you one thing: is the examination hall of today as it was then?" Liu was startled, pondered long, and said: "The abuses are not wholly gone, yet names are sealed and papers recopied, the guards are strict—it is not as it was. You may believe it." She was silent; the wind passed and the leaves rustled, like an answer, like a sigh, and after a long while she said: "May you believe what is said, and be cautious of what you believe." With that a red leaf slipped from her sleeve to the ground, and she drifted into the tree and was seen no more.

Liu picked up the leaf; on it, faintly, was the character "Shen," its color deeper than the others, as if blood had soaked into the grain. He put it in his case as a marvel.

The next day Liu took his leave. Shen Yan saw him off down the slope and held his hand: "Your talent surpasses Zhou's, yet the world's roads are hard to know. When you return, if you pass this way, pour a cup for me beneath the maple, and it is enough." Liu promised, mounted, and rode off; looking back at the hollow, he saw a cluster of fire, and could not tell if it was the tree or a lamp.

The next spring the Ministry posted its list, and Liu had failed. His young ambition melted in a single morning. Returning south, he detoured as he had promised to Cold Maple. He found the gate half fallen, leaves piled on the steps, and Shen Yan dead sitting beneath the maple, his back against the trunk, his face lifelike, his hand still clutching a red leaf on which the character "Shen" showed clear, no different from the rest yet deeper in color. Liu wept bitterly, poured three libations, and walked three times around the tree, and then understood one thing:

Shen Yan had kept this tree for forty years not to keep the tree, but to keep the character "Shen." Zhou had come to grief through lack of caution—too trusting, too slow to guard against the wicked; Shen Yan had guarded himself with caution, and yet he too failed and came home to keep the tree into old age. Is folly ever spent? One character "Shen" ruined Zhou and made Shen Yan, yet the red leaf never changed its crimson.

Liu bowed again and wrote a poem on the crumbling wall before he left:

"For three hundred years leaf on leaf turns red; / one man, one tree, two fools the same. / Pity that the exam rank is a common thing, / yet yields to the old monk's wind in the green hills."

The strokes were wild, unlike his usual careful hand.

Some years later a wandering monk passed that way and saw a fresh grave beneath the maple, its stele without inscription; only the tree had grown larger and redder, like fire about to burn. The monk pressed his palms together and sighed: "If even the tree is so, how can man bear it?" That autumn, at midnight, a cowherd boy bringing his herd home saw a flash of fire in the tree, as if a sound of weeping; at dawn he looked, and the leaves were heavy with dew like tears, but he could not say what it meant.

The Chronicler says: The world laughs at the keeper's folly, not knowing that the fools under heaven are surely more than one Shen Yan. Zhou came to grief through his writing; A-jiang gave her life for her fidelity; Shen Yan spent his whole life keeping the grief of one tree—all fools. Yet folly is near to sincerity. Had the three been clever and changeable, Zhou might have escaped his doom, A-jiang might have married another, Shen Yan might have wandered the offices of the realm; then the Cold Maple, come autumn, would merely have yellowed and dropped, and never redden across the valley, never hold its crimson three hundred years without fading. Therefore the flourishing and withering of plants depends half on man and half on heaven; and a single point of folly in a man's heart can make a feelingless tree bear feelingful red. Those who call themselves clear-eyed make their choices at the crossroads and forget them by the event—has there ever been in their breasts one point of crimson that could not be taken from them? I do not know. I only remember Liu's poem on the wall; reading it still, I see the fire in the hollow and three hundred years of red leaves, all crimson at once.