The Indigo Dyer

The town of Wudu sat by the water, and the water ran dark all year, which gave the place its name. The families there had worn the same homespun cloth for generations, a glowing indigo, as if the whole of night had been steeped into the cotton. Outsiders, on first arrival, suspected the cloth was dyed with ink. The old folk only laughed: not ink, they said, but blue — indigo blue, a living color wrung from the indigo plant. The plant must be grown three years before it yields dye, soaked forty-nine days before it ferments, raised with ash in a vat tended through a whole dog-day summer; it cannot be hurried. When the women of Wudu spoke of blue, there was reverence in their eyes, as though it were not a color but the town's very life.

Lan Jiu's teacher had been an old man surnamed Weng, one-eyed, said to have fled downstream from Indigo Alum Village, who knew the old art of raising indigo. Lan Jiu had come to him at thirteen and for three years was permitted only to carry water, lay out the grass, and watch the fire — never to touch a vat. Master Weng said the indigo vat has eyes; if your heart is not clean, it knows you first. Lan Jiu did not believe it, until one night, while the old man was drunk, he secretly lifted the lid of an idle vat and a reverse-blue rose on the surface — a blue handprint, dark as soot, fingers clear — and he dared not go near the dye-house for three days. Weng said nothing in anger when he sobered, only: remember, what is trapped in the vat is what could never sink. When Weng died, Lan Jiu dyed the soul-cloth by custom, yet the reverse-blue did not leave with the master; it moved into the main vat. Only then did Lan Jiu understand that some things remember a person — touch them once, and they know you for life.

At the east end of town stood the old dye-house, its rotting lintel nailed with a board carved "Nine Vats," the strokes nearly eaten away by rain. Inside, nine great earthen vats stood in a row, bound with three iron hoops each, half-filled year-round with indigo liquor. The nine vats were never empty; if one ran dry, Lan Jiu could not close his eyes all night. The vats have souls, he said; lose one, and Wudu's water turns on you.

Lan Jiu was seventy-three and had dyed for fifty-eight years. His surname was Lan, but no one used his given name; they called him Lan Jiu, Master Lan. He was spare and bony, his hands forever stained blue from the liquor, a layer of blue under the nails no washing could reach, as if a second set of sinews grew beneath the skin. Children fled at sight of him, saying Grandfather Lan's hands were blue and glowed at night. He did not mind, only tucked his blue hands into his sleeves and smiled slowly, and the smile pleated his eyes with bluish lines, like two pools of indigo that would never thin.

Wudu kept an old rule known to no outsider. When someone died, the family must bring a white under-shift the dead had worn in life to the Nine Vats, where Lan Jiu steeped it into deep indigo — this was called the "soul-dyeing cloth." Once dyed, the dead one's spirit sank with that band of blue into the weave and rested, and did not become a wild ghost in Wudu's waters. If the cloth were long delayed, or dyed incompletely, the spirit would linger in the creek-mouths and seize the ankles of the solitary, so you could not tell whether you had slipped on slick stone or been pressed under by something. Lan Jiu said the rule had passed down so many generations no one could say when; they only knew Wudu lay by deep water, and beneath it many people — tend them, or the town would not rest.

He named three taboos of soul-dyeing. First, never open a vat and see a reverse-blue: a blue handprint on the surface none but the dyer can see; at once you must seal the vat, scatter fresh lime, and whisper "sink, sink" — delay, and the trapped spirit climbs out along the indigo. Second, never let wind rise at the vat's edge; still water that wrinkles of itself means someone turning over below. Third, never work a vat after the hour of Hai; after that the water wakes, and stirring disturbs the sleepers at the bottom. Fifty-eight years he kept these — all but once.

Fifty years ago, Wudu flooded, and talk of a river-devil ran the town: an old coffin sunk in the water, its tenant restless, pulling the living down for company. The great Shen family led the "river-calming," and commissioned Lan Jiu to dye a vat of calming cloth — forty-nine lengths, first-draw indigo, dark enough to press down whatever lay beneath. They paid richly and promised the dye-house exclusive custom for fifty years. Young and newly master of his craft, hungry for a name, Lan Jiu agreed at once.

He kept the vats day and night. Qiao had been an orphan girl fled from Indigo Alum Village, sold to the Shens at eleven, six years a drudge — washing, chopping, emptying slops. The second young master was a brute who, finding her fair, teased her cruelly; one night, drunk, he pawed at her; she broke free and overturned his tea, and was beaten for it. That same night she threw herself into the creek. When they pulled her up, she still clutched a white under-shift — her mother's only keepsake; she had gone back to the servants' quarters, folded it, and held it, thinking death at least meant going clean in her mother's cloth.

By custom the family should have brought it for soul-dyeing, but Qiao had no family, so the Shens tossed the shift at the dye-house door: since it's Master Lan's work, dye it too. Lan Jiu looked at that shift and a greedy thought rose in him. Old Weng had said that if a wronged spirit were trapped in the vat, it became an "indigo-lead," and the cloth dyed took a deeper, brighter blue that even the river's filth feared. The calming cloth lacked exactly that ferocity. He stared at Qiao's hand clenched about the shift, white as glass, river-mud clogged in the knuckles, and thought: she has no one to do the rites; her spirit will be a water-ghost anyway — might as well borrow her.

He performed none of the soul-dyeing rites — no lime, no sinking verse — only pressed the shift to the vat's bottom and dyed Qiao's grievance and her very spirit into all forty-nine lengths of calming cloth. The water went still at once, not a ripple, as something settled and was quiet. Cold sweat broke on Lan Jiu's brow, yet he did not draw back until the shift was wholly swallowed by indigo; then he closed the lid and dared not open it that night. Later he regretted it and burned paper money for her by the river, muttering scriptures of passage — but the money touched the water and sank without a bubble. He knew then: her spirit was in the cloth; the paper could not reach the vat's bottom. She would not return.

After that, the Nine Vats' indigo shone strangely bright, and when the Shen family's calming cloth went into the river, the water indeed lay quiet for years, and the old-coffin talk faded. Lan Jiu's name rose; itinerant dyers came to learn, and he refused them all. Only he knew that every time he opened a vat, the reverse-blue floated up — dark, fingers clear — Qiao's hand, knocking at the bottom, one knock at a time, as if asking: you pressed me in; when will you let me out?

In the early years it rose only deep at night, and lime pressed it down for a few quiet days. As the years deepened he aged, his hands softened, his sealing grew weak. The reverse-blue came earlier and earlier — from Hai back to Xu, back to You — until once, opening a vat by daylight, he looked down and the blue print lay upon the back of his own hand, cold to the bone, and washing only drove it deeper into the seams.

Worse were the cloths. The deep-indigo from the Nine Vats carried a faint blue mark like a ripple, visible only by moonlight. Those who wore it heard water at night — a voice calling from the creek-mouths, or a dream of sinking into a vat full of blue that choked the breath. Lan Jiu warned them not to let the blue cloth meet night dew, not to dry it on the bank; the townsfolk took it for old superstition and wore it still.

The first true death came ten years ago. Old Zhou's granddaughter, in a blue-stitched jacket, went to wash at the river and vanished; only a dark pool remained on the stones, finger-prints clear, as if a hand had closed on her ankle from the water. Three days of searching found no body, only the jacket, dripping, heavy as stone. Lan Jiu burned it in secret and knelt before the vats all night whispering "sink, sink." The next spring, the smith Tiesuo, in a blue apron, slipped at the pond and drowned, blue at the mouth and ears as if he had drunk a vat of indigo. Another year, the ferryman Fubo heard a woman humming on the river, leaned to look, and fell in with his pole; they found him in the back-eddy, clutching a strip of blue cloth. Lan Jiu collected the body and sat half a night before the vats, not daring to light the lamp — afraid that if he did, the reverse-blue would be smiling up at him. Then the widow Wang, guarding her dead husband's blue-lined coat, dreamed each night of a fair girl wringing wet cloth at her bedfoot, the water dripping onto the husband's tablet; she stuffed the coat in a camphor chest, yet blue seeped from the bottom she could not scrub away, and fled the town with it. In ten years, seven wearers of blue cloth were lost to the water, none with whole bodies. The reverse-blue could no longer be sealed.

Last autumn a cloth-buyer came, a peddler paying triple for old indigo cloth — and taking only the Shen-family calming lengths, marked by the Nine Vats' secret stitch. He was surnamed Qiao, pale, slow of speech, with eyes like lamps floating in deep pools. He sat in the dye-house studying the nine vats as if to see their bottoms, and said his sister had thrown herself into Wudu's river fifty years before; he had walked eighteen ferry-ports downstream and up to Indigo Alum Village, asking for a fair girl who could sing the indigo-picking song, until in a pawnshop he saw a length whose corner-stitch was unmistakably the Nine Vats' — his sister had once sewn him a blue pouch, and he had kept the stitch in memory fifty years.

At that Lan Jiu's hand jerked and indigo splashed his trouser-leg, a blue that would not fade by half a day. That night he could not sleep. He found the old Shen account: forty-nine lengths listed, but one extra — "maid Qiao, carried on her person" — had been dyed into the vat and never counted. So Qiao was not only at the bottom; she was in that one unremembered length, hidden in every household's chest. He found the cloth, folded it neatly, meaning to return it. But when Qiao the peddler unfolded it, the moonlit ripple began to move, as if someone swam within. "My sister feared water," he said, "yet now she seems to live in it." Lan Jiu touched the mark and heard a faint sigh rise from the weave — not wind, not water, but a woman, across fifty years of indigo, whispering: cold.

That night the rain began, and did not stop for half a month. The river backed into the low dye-house and the nine vats overflowed with indigo. Lan Jiu sealed them three times with lime and verse, but the water only rose, something pushing hard from below. On the second night he heard, not water but the sound of beating cloth — knock, knock, knock — as if someone below were pounding Qiao's little white shift, driving grievance into the weave. All nine surfaces bore reverse-blues now, nine handprints in a row, opening toward him.

The indigo drew back from the rims and showed the bottoms: in each vat a shadow in a white shift, indistinguishable — Qiao, or the seven drowned, or older things the vats had swallowed. They climbed the walls slowly, without retreat, as if fifty years of strength had been saved for this one night. Qiao the peddler stood behind him, holding that extra length, rain running from his chin though he seemed lifted from water. "Master Lan," he said, "my sister says the vats are full. It is time to give back." At his words the nine vats sounded together, a sigh from the bottom, cold and long, climbing Lan Jiu's ankles. He reached to seal the rim, but the blue climbed his arm and his hand took root and would not pull free. He tried to cry out; his mouth filled with indigo, salt, neither swallowed nor spat. He watched his own blue hands brighten to match the prints in the vat, and thought: so I was to sink too; fifty-eight years was only keeping the gate, waiting for this one mouthful. The lamp died; in the rain only nine empty vats knocked, softly, one after another.

At dawn the rain stopped. The dye-house stood open; the nine vats were empty, not a drop left, the hoops slack as if spent. Lan Jiu was gone, leaving only a dark pool on the floor, shaped like a curled man with hands over his chest, still hugging the white shift. The townsfolk thought the water had taken him, sighed, and went their ways, none daring to enter or touch the empty vats.

Yet since then a strange thing troubles Wudu: whoever keeps a blue-stitched cloth in the chest hears it stir at night, as if lifted dripping from water. By morning the cloth is wet, oozing a pool of blue from the corner no sun can dry. Children say they hear Grandfather Lan calling from the vat — not a name, but the verse, "sink, sink" — and the voice comes not from the dye-house but from the cloth in their own wardrobe, close at the ear.

The old still bring the dead's white shifts to be dyed; with no master, the work passes to Lan Jiu's mute granddaughter, A-Lan, whose hands are clever and whose blue runs deeper than her grandfather's, the moonlit ripple swimming livelier. Only on rainy nights, when she opens a vat, a reverse-blue rises — dark, fingers clear. She does not start, only scatters lime and whispers: sink, sink. And the vat is quiet again, something sinking back down, waiting for the next time.

Wudu's water stays dark. Its people still wear blue. But no one dares walk the bank alone after the hour of Hai, and no one dares look twice into the nine empty vats.

A Note from the Midnight Record: In the southern riverside country the old custom of "soul-dyeing cloth" used indigo to gather the dead, that the spirit might sink with the blue and not become a water-ghost. Yet the indigo vat is fathomless; if the craftsman, in greed, makes a wronged soul his indigo-lead, the brighter the color the deeper the doom. The matter of Wudu's Nine Vats is only village talk — set down here in brief, as warning to dyers hereafter: the vat has eyes and knows a man; the handprint stays, and cannot be returned. It is further said that old dyers, at the end, covered their faces with blue cloth, to beg pardon of the guests within the vat. Today the Nine Vats of Wudu stand empty, and nightly the sound of cloth comes from men's chests; all who hear it feel their hairs stand. Let this be told: indigo may dye cloth, and may dye the soul; the fairer the color, the heavier the debt — and what is owed is always repaid, on some night.