The Corpse-Keeper

The mortuary chapel stands on the barren slope beyond the town, its walls packed earth mixed with broken porcelain, looking from afar like a grey bowl tipped upside down. Below the slope runs a half-dried ditch that breeds mosquitoes in summer and frosts white in winter; wind rises from its bottom carrying the smell of rotten roots and year-old earth. The path up is narrow, flanked by waist-high weeds that at night brush against your trouser legs with a dry whisper, as if something were trailing you along the ground. I have kept this chapel for a full thirty years.

The chapel door is two leaves of elm, its hinge rusted so that it cries out whenever it turns, the sound carrying half the slope in the dead of night. Upon it hangs a raw-bronze lock, its key tied to my belt, with me wherever I go. Not for fear of thieves — who on this barren slope would steal the dead — but for fear of the wind. When the wind is high it forces the door ajar, and through the gap comes not light but something pale and ground-dwelling that I cannot name mist or otherwise; I only know that when it enters, the room grows one degree colder.

The year I first came I was still a young man who would carry water bare-chested, shoulders burned to two glossy layers of skin, able to trot up the slope with a full load. Now I wrap myself in two padded coats, bind the cuffs with cloth strips, tuck my trousers into felt socks, and still cannot stop the shivering. People say, Old Cui, you are getting on, you should put on more. I believed them. But age should not be like this — not the way that each year a little of the warmth in my bones is quietly drawn off by someone. At the start of the month only my fingertips are cold; by its end even my heart feels hollow, and at night I curl in the quilt as if sleeping with a block of ice, and wake to find even the bedding cold.

I was not of this town. Years back the pestilence took my family of five and left me alone, without even a proper grave to give them; I buried them hastily and could not even weep. With nowhere to go, someone recommended me to this chapel to fill a post, saying a lone man might as well keep the dead as an empty house. I came, and kept it thirty years. At first I was not afraid, took it for a good deed; only later understood this work is not a man keeping corpses, but corpses choosing a man — they chose one so rootless and free of ties that his yang had nowhere to spend, and borrowed from him grain by grain until he too became one of them.

The chapel is always damp. The plaster flakes from the walls in layers of pale froth that feels cool and clammy to the touch. The blue bricks underfoot seep water year-round; step on them and they cry out with a creak, like treading on someone's throat. The bier is pine, long soaked through with yin until its grain has darkened; one touch and a chill clings to the hand, seeping into the lines of the palm. The dead are covered with white cloth, damp enough to wring water from; it drapes over the ankles and the cold climbs the sinews upward, up to the knees, until a man can no longer stand steady. I have often thought the chapel drinks the living warmth into its walls — the wetter the wall, the drier the man; thirty years of drinking and the wall is full while I am empty.

My first task each day is to light a stick of incense before every corpse. The incense is the cheap yellow-paper kind sold off by the paper-shop in town; lit, it gives a thin blue smoke that will not scatter in the cold room but winds along the beams, only sinking after the third turn. The sound of the ash falling is very small, yet I hear it — like someone flicking a fingernail lightly by my ear, tick, tick, taking my living warmth away grain by grain. I often watch the stick shorten inch by inch, the ash falling joint by joint, and feel myself shortening and lightening with it, until at the end there is only a pinch of cold ash.

Rainy nights are the worst. Rain hammers the chapel tiles, pat-pat, like countless fingernails scratching; yet no rain, however heavy, can cover the tick of ash on the floor. I often cannot tell which is rain and which is ash, only feel the room full of fine falling things, falling on the shrouds, falling on me, dragging me down year by year. When the rain stops the room grows quieter still, so quiet I hear my own heart, and that heart grows lighter each year, as if afraid to wake something. Once in the rain I half-heard someone outside the door call softly, "Old Cui"; I answered, and outside there was only the rain, and even that tick of ash seemed an answering call.

For thirty years I have eaten and slept in this chapel; even the turning of the seasons I have felt only through its damp. In spring a green fur blooms in the corners; in summer mosquitoes slip through the door-crack; in autumn wind slaps dead leaves against the window paper; winter is worst, wind seeping through the wall-cracks to the weakest place in a man. Two meals a day, mostly cold rice with pickles — there is a stove, but I am too idle to light it, and lit it would not warm the room, only waste fuel. At night I huddle in the broken rattan chair in the corner with a foot-warmer at my chest and a charcoal brazier by my feet, yet by deep night that little warmth is gone; I wake to find the warmer cold and the coals dead, and often do not notice, taking it for a cold dream.

The nights are long, and sometimes I cannot help but speak to the corpses. I tell them of the town, of the year's harvest, of whose family has borne a son. Speak long enough and I come to feel they listen; now and then the white cloth stirs, as if one turned in sleep. I dare not look too close, telling myself it is the wind. Yet the wind comes from the door, and the bier stands deepest in the room, beyond its reach.

In thirty years, more nameless corpses than I can count have passed through my hands. The drowned, bloated white, black river-mud still packed under the nails, mud I could never quite scrub away as if it had grown into the flesh. The frozen, curled tight, frost on brow and lashes, lips blue-black, as if still begging for that one watch. The hanged, tongue lolling; when I pushed it back the jaw was cold as a jar just drawn from the well, and each touch chilled my heart another degree. And the old man from some village, dead by the road, no one to claim him, brought in still clutching half a dry biscuit I could not pry loose, so I laid the hand flat and let him keep it, that at least he might cross over not empty-handed.

There were women too. Once a young woman was brought in, said to have thrown herself in the wild pond outside town. She had soaked long, her face swollen beyond recognition, yet about her wrist was a length of red cord with a faded sachet, surely from her family. I wrote in the book "nameless female, pond, awaiting claim" and for seven days no one came. On the eighth I saw the cord had loosened; fearing it would slip I retied it, and my fingers met her wrist — a jolt of cold. Still no one came. When I carried her to the paupers' field I hung the sachet on the bamboo stake at her grave; wind rocked it, as if she were still waiting.

What I could least bear were the children. Once on a snowy night a child of three or four was brought in, frozen stiff, small fists clenched, face white as if pasted with paper. When I changed its cloth my fingers met its brow, and the cold drove straight to my heart. A child in the chapel is the easiest to ensnare a man — they make no fuss, only curl there quiet, as if waiting for a mother to lift them. I set an extra stick of incense at its pillow; it burned the night through and I kept watch the night through, and at dawn found myself asleep upon the bier, a film of white frost on my face, as if it too had taken a little of my warmth.

The first corpse was a pedlar from another place, found dead in the ditch below the slope and carried up. I was young then, my hands still warm, and was not afraid changing his cloth, taking him only for asleep. Before his tablet I lit the first stick of incense of my keeping, its smoke rising straight without winding the beam. Later his sister-in-law came to claim him, wept, and bore him away, and I felt oddly hollow — that first time I thought I kept not a corpse but a kinsman awaiting his own to fetch him. Little did I dream that thirty years on, the one awaiting would be myself.

One spring I truly packed a bundle, meaning to return to my native village, even though no one remained there either. Yet the moment I pulled the door shut to leave, I glanced back at the row of incense on the biers, smoke still curling, and saw that before the foremost nameless corpse the stick had gone out — gone without cause, no wind in, no stick spent. As if led by a ghost I went back and lit it; the instant it caught, my feet would not move, as if a hand from the ground held them. The bundle I left behind the door and never touched again. From then I understood: I cannot leave this chapel. It is not I who keep the corpses; the corpses keep me.

In recent years my body has failed fast. First the fingertips chilled, then the whole hand went numb, and when I take up the brush to fill the book the tip trembles into worm-like squiggles. My knees swell at every cloudy turn, and the climb of that slope takes three rests. Worst is the night, when the room is so still I can hear my own blood flowing at my ear — yet that flow grows thinner each year, like a well-rope let out shorter and shorter, one day to reach the bottom. I press my wrist; the pulse is there, yet so faint it seems to beat through a glove.

For each one I first light incense, then change the shroud, smoothing the creases and tucking the dangling corners tight so no draft may enter. I keep watch, letting no insect or ant draw near, no wild cat chew an ear; when at night I hear a rat scurry across the bier I rise in my clothes, lift the oil-lamp and check each of those tranquil faces. When kin come to claim, I draw a mark in the book and fill in name, cause, day of claiming, stroke by stroke; those unclaimed I carry to the paupers' field, heap earth, set a bamboo stake, so they have a resting place and need not wander a hungry ghost with nowhere to lay a thought.

Yet by degrees I knew something was wrong.

First the memory. In former days I could recite the dozens of names in the book with my eyes shut — which drowned, which frozen, which day brought in. Now I often stand before the bier forgetting which one I have just lit incense for. Once I lit two sticks; the smoke stung my eyes, and looking down I found three sticks already piled before the old man's tablet, ash scattered everywhere, and could not tell which day they were from, nor whether I had not already lit one the night before. The writing in the book grew careless; sometimes a page I turned to still had wet ink, as if just written, though I clearly remembered filling it last year. Once, midway, I found my own name wedged among the dead, written small, as if set down by accident — yet I could not recall when or why.

Then the cold. In summer the townsfolk fan themselves and still complain of heat; I, in padded coats, feel wind boring through the bones. Winter is worst: huddled in the rattan chair, foot-warmer at chest, brazier at feet, my toes are still ice. One year, in a great snow, I took the shakes in the seventh month, teeth chattering; the town physician felt my pulse and said only "deficient, beyond restoring," and prescribed warming herbs that brought no warmth. I asked him, is it age. He shook his head — not age, but the breath drawn out of me, drawn clean away, and no medicine can return it.

Last of all, the shadow.

On a clear noon I set a stool outside to catch what little sun there was. My shadow on the ground was grey and faint, its edges bleeding out like ink dropped in water. I watched a long while and grew afraid — the shadow was thinner than last year, thinner still than the year before. A living man's shadow should be solid, heavy underfoot; however fierce the sun, mine would not darken, only grew each year like a sheet of ash-grey paper about to tear in the wind.

At first I took it for failing eyes, as with the old. But by lamplight the wall-shadow was faint too. The flame swayed and my shadow swayed with it, yet always a notch shallower than it should be, as if something had been drawn off from beneath, leaving only a hollow outline. I reached to touch the shadow on the wall; my fingertips passed through the grey and met nothing. I held the lamp to my feet: the shadow was so faint it scarce connected to my body, like smoke about to disperse.

I began to suspect the corpses.

Each one I kept had borrowed something from me. Not a thing — that undefinable warmth, the living heat that lets a shadow take root on the ground. They neither move nor sound, only lie still and take in the incense I send each day, together with the wisp of yang breath I leak bending to light it. Each time I bend, they take a wisp; each stick I light, another. Thirty years, thirty-odd thousand bows, thirty-odd thousand sticks — the warmth in me they have borrowed near to nothing.

The more I keep, the emptier I become.

One night I slept deep and was woken by a sound all at once. I opened my eyes: every shroud in the room was stirring, not with wind but as if dozens of corpses turned as one, the white cloth swelling and falling like breath. I shrank into the rattan chair, not daring a sound, until near dawn the motion ceased. Thereafter such nights came once or twice a month, and by degrees I grew used to them, even feeling the corpses gathered to confer — conferring how best to settle my last breath of yang into the chapel wall.

The censer is bronze, and over the years its ash has gathered deep; brush the surface and beneath lies still the ash of that very first stick thirty years ago, unchanged in colour, its damp never spent. I often think this ash is my chronicle — stick by stick it records how I was boiled down from a steaming young man to the hollow shell I am. The day the ash overflows will be, I suppose, the day I am to lie upon the bier.

In my idle hours I later took to lighting the lamp and studying those faces, one by one. The drowned, the frozen, the hanged — all had settled. Only the nameless one looked more and more like a living man sunk in sleep, its chest rising and falling as with breath, though I know the dead do not breathe. Once I laid my hand beneath its nose and felt a wisp of warmth — cold, yet warmth indeed. I snatched my hand back, but the warmth clung to my palm, and three washings with soap-nut could not rid it of that damp, yin smell.

Among them is one, the strangest.

I cannot recall what year it was brought in; the book only says "nameless, awaiting claim," and in the column for who received it stands my name, while the date of entry is blank, the ink yet fresh as if written not long ago. It has no tablet, no name, not even a grass tag. The others at least have a cause — drowned, frozen, found by the road — but this one has nothing, merely lies beneath damp cloth, quiet past all reason.

Each time I light incense I give it first. Not out of respect, but fear. Its yin is heavier than the rest, pressing down on the room; the moment I step through the door the hairs on my neck rise, as if a cold hand had laid itself on my spine. Yet strangely it knows me best — when I doze by its bier I often wake to find my hand laid on the white cloth, palm against the icy surface, as if someone held me and would not let go.

Rising at night to relieve myself I would often come upon myself standing before its bier, head bowed over the nameless corpse, muttering something. Asked what I said, I remember nothing — only that beneath the cloth the shape was flat and featureless, neither stout nor thin, neither tall nor short, like a length of water-soaked wood, quiet, waiting for me. Once I took heart and lifted a corner of the cloth for a single look. The face beneath was blurred, the features as if steeped open, no brows or eyes to tell; yet the corners of its mouth turned faintly upward — not a smile, but the ease of one who has at last been met. I threw the cloth back, retreated three steps and overturned the censer; ash scattered, tick-tick, the very sound of lighting incense, and it chilled my spine.

After that I remembered even less. Sometimes I woke at dawn to find myself sleeping on the bier wrapped in that shroud, body cold as hauled from a well, a mouldy taste of damp cloth still in my mouth. I could not tell which night was truly me keeping the corpse, and which the corpse keeping me; whether I lit incense for it, or it counted the days for me. Once I dreamed I lay upon the pine bier beneath white cloth, and someone lit incense at my head — the hand was familiar; I looked down and it was myself. I woke and touched my own face: cold, unable to say which of dream and waking was truer.

Last winter I turned the old book, meaning to learn what year that nameless one had come, that I might find it a resting place. I came to the page, and the ink struck cold to my heart —

Received by: Cui Jiu. Date received: pending. To be claimed by: Cui Jiu.

I stared at the line, hands too shaken to turn the page. The hand was my own — I knew its press and turn, every stroke the script I had written thirty years — yet I had no memory of writing it. Worse, the "date received" stood blank, yet the ink still bled, wet, as if I had dipped the brush only last night, or as if it had never dried, forever stuck on those two words "pending."

I understood something in a rush, yet dared not think it through.

Each corpse I kept had borrowed a little of my yang. Borrowed thirty years, until the warmth left in me was nearly gone, my shadow fading toward nothing, my memory crumbled like the froth fallen on this chapel floor. When that day comes and my own yang is spent, and I fall in this chapel, who will receive my corpse?

No one.

The townsfolk long forgot there is an Old Cui in the chapel. My kin scattered long ago; old friends, no word. When I die I shall be a nameless corpse on the pine bier I kept thirty years, covered with the damp cloth I tucked a thousand times for others, awaiting one who will not come. And that "nameless, awaiting claim" corpse — received by me, to be claimed by me — what it waits for was never another. It waits for me.

What I have kept thirty years is the very corpse that one day will receive my own.

The tablet bears no name, because what is received is myself; no one comes to claim it, and so it stays blank forever, blank beyond even a grass tag. Yet the incense will not cease. The one who lights it each day is me; the one who comes to claim can only be me. Thirty years of ash in the censer, every grain a day of my own, grain by grain measuring me from the ranks of the living to the bier of that nameless corpse.

I closed the book, hands still shaking. Outside the sky was overcast, as if for snow; wind rose from the ditch carrying rotten roots and earth, the very smell of the day thirty years ago I first stepped into the chapel. As always I went to light incense for that nameless corpse; the match failed twice before it caught, blue smoke rose and wound the beams, sinking after the third turn, exactly as the first stick thirty years before. Ash fell, tick, tick, soft, like someone flicking a fingernail by my ear.

I looked down and saw my shadow on the ground fainter than yesterday, its edges bleeding like ink in water. Beyond the chapel the sky was not yet light, a grey haze; I could not tell whether I have days yet to keep, or have already reached the end without knowing it.

I dared not think. I only set the stick firm, withdrew, and pulled the door shut. The hinge cried out, and the sound spread through the cold room, like someone behind me answering, softly, yes.

Zi Ye Lu note: The borrowing of yang is a thing country folk would rather not name; yet the keeper of a mortuary chapel grows one degree colder each year, forgets one thing more, his shadow a notch fainter — all of it counted. While the incense holds, the man has not gone; let it break, and the one who receives the corpse has come.