The Frog Spirit

The water in Nan Pond had fallen half a foot. Old Zhou crouched on the ridge and watched the lotus shoots push up through the mud. He had grown lotus root here for forty years, and the pond was his to keep alone. His son lived in the provincial city and came home once a year. On the phone he said, 'Father, come live with us.' Zhou said the pond could not be left.

That year the plum rains lingered. On an evening after the rain he pushed his old wooden tub out onto the water to feel for roots. When he climbed ashore a big green-backed frog squatted on the rim of the tub — sturdier than any he had seen, eyes bulging, perfectly still. Zhou said, 'Come to rest a while, have you?' The frog did not move. He carried the tub home, and the frog rode in it, into the yard.

After that the frog was always there. At dusk, while Zhou weeded the bank, it lay on a tuft of grass, belly rising and falling in a slow song, like a sigh. Zhou talked to it — said the root sold cheap this year, said the night wind off the pond was cold, said his wife had died in just such a rain. The frog never answered, yet every evening when he finished work it waited on the stone at the gate, as if to see him home.

One night he rose and saw a green light floating on the water. He drew near: the frog lay on a lotus leaf, its body damp, no longer quite like a living thing but a held breath of green mist. He said nothing, and went back to sleep. In the morning the frog was there again, on the stone as before.

In summer the insects grew bold and ate the leaves to curling edges. Strange, then, that Zhou's few rows stayed clean. He wondered if the frog led others to eat the pests by night, and wondered if it did not. He gave the frog a name — Qing Ge, 'Brother Green.' Qing Ge came and went as he pleased, and Zhou did not press him.

Autumn came and the pond ran shallow. Zhou lifted the last root and heard no sound from the stone. He searched the ridge, the grass, the sluice — nowhere. He stood on the bank a long while, and the wind blew his old jacket empty.

Later his son did take him to the city. On the day he left, Zhou set a shallow dish on the yard stone, half-filled with rain. He said, 'If Qing Ge comes back, there is water to drink.'

The first year he asked a neighbor to plant lotus root by the pond at Qingming. After that the road was long, and he only sent word each year: do not let the pond go wild.

One year Nan Pond flooded and broke half its bank. When the water fell, someone saw on Old Zhou's old yard stone a great green-backed frog, and beside it a clump of new lotus, leaves bright as if someone were keeping the water green for him.