The Storyteller

The town of Qingluo lies in the crook of the Luo River. Past this stretch the water grows lazy and will not hurry downstream; it only winds about the town into a half-moon bend and takes the grey-tiled, white-walled houses into its mouth, and every year the damp carries a fishy reek. The town is small, barely two streets and a half; the half by the river is the busiest and the dankest. When it rains, a slick green moss climbs the flagstones and the lamp-shadows waver in it, as if someone had soaked half the street in murky water. My late grandfather lived on the old east lane, in a two-court timber house whose beams were hung with the fishing nets and straw capes he had gathered in life. I came from the provincial city to compile a little book of his old stories and, along the way, record the tales the townsfolk told — my grandfather used to say the idle talk on either bank of the Luo was heavier than elsewhere's, that it made a sound when it fell into the water.

When the townsfolk spoke of tales, their tongues always turned to the Listening Rain Pavilion. The pavilion stood at the water's edge, built of bamboo and timber, with a string of bronze bells at the eaves that clattered in any wind, sounding like someone counting coins beneath the water. Inside was an old storyteller named Yan, said to keep the last true voice on either bank of the Luo. The first time I heard his name was from the blind shoemaker at the lane's mouth; he said, "If you want a true tale, go to the Listening Rain Pavilion; when Yan opens his mouth, the dead sit up to listen." The blind man was driving an awl through a shoe as he spoke, and each thrust rang a bell, as if stamping the words.

The night I arrived it rained. I crossed the floating bridge under my umbrella, the planks creaking underfoot, a few wild river-lanterns floating on the black water beyond. Far off I heard the crack of a waking-block, sharp as a stone dropped into water, or bone knocked on bone. Following the sound, I came to the pavilion. A dim yellow lamp burned within; the bamboo blinds were half-rolled and the damp crept through the gaps, blurring the lamplight into a smear. Yan sat at the edge of the stage, not tall, in a grey robe washed pale with a frayed collar; in one hand a half-opened folding fan, its old plain-silk leaf faintly painted with a curve of water; before him a block of blackwood the size of a palm, worn slick by his palm, its corners rounded. A dozen listeners sat below — boatmen, fishmongers, a grandmother with her grandson — each with a cup of tea, the steam and the damp mixing so the figures looked unreal.

There was a set of rites before opening the tale, which I came to understand later. Yan first cleansed his hands, then his mouth, then drew three thin sticks of incense from his sleeve and lit them at the lamp, setting them in a chipped coarse-ware censer at the stage's corner. The smoke rose straight and did not scatter. He closed his eyes and muttered something too low to hear, though from where I sat I caught the drawn-out tail of four characters: "founder and great sage." This was the invitation of the god — inviting the patron sage of storytellers to hold the stage, lest a slip summon something that ought not come. When done he opened his eyes, snapped the fan wide, and tapped the block lightly on the table:

"Enough of idle words. There was once a mute girl on the Luo, named Ling..."

The whole hall's noise was pressed down into the water as if by one hand.

I would learn later that he had told this tale, "The Mute Girl's Crossing," for a full thirty years. It is not long in itself: Ling had been a girl who could speak, pretty, with a clear bright voice the townsfolk said could "still the river wind" when she sang a fishing song. Her brother Shi was a boatman who, drunk on the eve of the Duanwu festival, was caught in a midnight squall; boat and man overturned in the eddy and never rose. Ling screamed on the beach until her voice broke, and the river gave no one back; she herself went mute, her open mouth only a breath. An old ferryman said a river-god lived beneath the Luo who took human voices — lend him your voice and he would return the one you longed for, for three nights; if the three nights passed with no return, the voice belonged to the water forever. Ling believed it. On the night of the Hungry Ghosts' feast she walked to the water with three sticks of incense and gave her voice, and a green thread, down to the god, to trade for her brother. Three nights passed; the brother did not return, and Ling vanished, leaving only one soaked shoe upon the pebbles, a silver bell at its toe that clattered in any wind, as if still calling someone back. Ever after, on that feast night, a woman's voice sang at the river's bend — the tune of "Crossing the River" — yet the singer sounded like someone trying very hard to speak and finding the mouth would not open. Those who heard it said the voice was not in the ear but in the bone, setting the back teeth on edge.

Yan told it beautifully. When he reached Ling offering the incense he laid the fan upon the block and the hall fell silent; when he came to the lone shoe on the pebbles he paused, sipped a mouthful of cool tea, and only then said, "If you would know what follows, listen to the next installment." He told other tales too — once "The Lamp-Granny Troubles the Beach," once "The Clam-Spirit Begs a Hairpin" — small stories of the Luo's bank, true-sounding yet not frightening. But whatever the tale, he closed each on that same "next installment," as if one rope had its head and tail tied to the pavilion's stage. He kept the old rules to the letter: the block was struck twice and never a third time — the old folk said a hot-headed outlander once struck the third for him, took a fever that very night, raved that "Ling has come for my voice," and drowned in the eddy three days later, his mouth sewn when they pulled him up; before opening the tale he must cleanse his mouth and light three sticks; the word for death was never spoken in his hall, and when it could not be avoided he said "gone," not even "breathless" allowed. In thirty years Yan changed partners three or four times — string-players and drummers came and went — but he and his block seemed nailed to the stage.

I went seven nights running, transcribing for him. The first few I took as amusement; then I felt the wrongness — Yan told it word for word each night, even the pauses, the tea-sips, the sighs identical, like a tune recorded and replayed. On the seventh night a fine rain fell; as I wrote the "shoe" passage a chill ran up my neck and I turned — outside the blind stood a shadow, not tall, like a woman, or only vapor; I blinked and it was gone. I took it for a trick of the eye.

On the eighth night the trouble came.

The rain had stopped and a thin mist rose on the water, the lamp-shadows shattered into silver flecks. Yan went through the rites as always, opened the fan, and reached the part where Ling offers the incense — then he faltered. He frowned, as if he had forgotten the words, or as if he heard a sound no one else could; he tilted his head toward the vapor beyond the blind, as if someone were prompting him from behind it. A voice from the floor reminded him softly to break for the night, but he shook his head, turned the fan half a circle in his palm, and spoke a passage I had never heard:

"...the mute girl, steeped in water thirty years, no longer knows her own face. She follows the river up to where there are lamps and people, and stands inside the shadow of the listeners. She opens her mouth and no sound comes. So she asks the front row: Will you lend me your voice?"

The hall went still enough to hear the lamp wick pop. My brush paused; nothing of the kind was in the seven nights' drafts. Yan finished, sipped his tea as usual, broke for the night as usual, as if the extra passage had always belonged there. After the hall emptied I caught him and asked where that passage came from. He stared, then said, "Just now? Did I say that?" — as if he truly did not remember.

The next morning the tofu woman knocked at my window: the porter Lao Gou could not make a sound this morning — his mouth opened and not half a word came, as if something had been drawn from his throat. Lao Gou was a regular, front row every one of those seven nights, and there again last night, dead center. I went to see him; he gaped, sweat on his brow, his hands clawing the air as if to catch a wisp of smoke already drifting away; his wife wept, saying he had been well when he lay down, woke in the night for a drink of water, and from then could only hiss. Toward evening he went out alone, saying he would walk by the river, his shoes on the wrong feet, and did not return.

The third day, someone pulled a river-lantern from the eddy below the town — bamboo frame, cotton paper, a candle inside, drifting downstream yet against the current, as if pushed from beneath. The child who fetched it said something was wrapped within, like a person curled up. The townsfolk gathered and peeled the paper — it was Lao Gou, soaked through, his mouth sewn shut with a green thread, neatly, like embroidery, the stitches the same as on Ling's shoe. His eyes were open, holding the lamp's reflection; no terror in them, rather a look of relief.

A cold ran down my back. That green thread was the very one Ling gave the god in Yan's tale.

I went to Mistress Zhou, who had kept the pavilion forty years, longer than Yan, a silent woman missing the little finger of her left hand, burned, she said, putting out a fire when young. She listened, was silent a long while, then drew a stack of old manuscripts from under the counter, the pages gone brittle and yellow, the corners eaten by insects. "You think Yan was the first to tell 'The Mute Girl's Crossing'?" She pushed the papers to me. "In this hall storytellers came one crop after another; each told this tale, and each, toward the end, added a new 'borrowed-voice' passage. The front-row listener who heard the new passage lost his voice, then vanished, then came back as a lantern. The storyteller before Yan ended the same way."

I turned the stack. The earliest bore a name, the ink so bled it was only faintly a "Xie"; later books carried the colophon "Yan"; and after that the corner was left blank, as if kept for someone to fill. On the last page of each, a "new chapter" appeared that was not in the book before, yet the hand seemed always the same — as if the chapter had not been written by anyone but grown of itself. Most chilling: at the end of Xie's book, a line had been added in small characters — "The next storyteller had best be a little hoarse, so he talks less; named Yan, he suits Ling's taste." And those two characters "Yan" were fresh ink, as if added later.

Following Zhou's words I went to the old house by the west river to trace Xie's trail. The house was long empty, its lintel askew, a waist-high thicket of wild cattails in the yard. The altar in the main room wore an inch of dust, yet enshrined a small waking-block no different from Yan's, only smaller, like one made for a child. In the altar's drawer lay a torn page, Xie's last writing: he said he dreamed nightly of Ling standing in the shadow borrowing a voice, and dreaming it so long he woke to find he too was adding characters to the manuscript, characters never of his own thought; he wrote, "The story picks a man, and the man opens his mouth for it; the voice it borrows is not the water's but the listeners'. Until it has gathered enough it cannot leave the scroll." At the foot of the page he had written a name — Yan's. Standing in that empty house, hearing the Luo's water beyond the window, I suddenly understood: this pavilion, this tale, this block, were one mouth, carried these thirty years by changing men, holding the hall's lamps aloft on the night road, and when the lamp-oil ran low it went to the listeners' throats to beg.

That night, back in town, I went again to the pavilion and heard Yan still telling within, but the new passage had already grown to ask the second row. I took the stack of manuscripts home unnoticed, meaning to burn them by lamplight and cut off the "borrowed-voice" at its root. I struck a match; the flame neared the page — the paper would not catch, only burned my fingertip, as if something had bitten it. I looked close: in the flame's light, in the blank colophon of the manuscript, two characters were slowly surfacing — Shen Yan. The ink was wet, running down the grain of the paper like tears. I let go; the pages scattered; the lamp flickered and the two characters were gone, leaving only blank.

In the nights after, Yan aged before my eyes. His fan trembled in the air before it fell; his hand shook as he cleansed his mouth, spilling ash down his sleeve; when he reached the "borrowed-voice" passage his throat would suddenly crack, as if another voice were pushing to get out. The new passage grew nightly — asking the second row, then the third; those it asked lost their voices the next day and a few days later came back as lanterns, all sewn with green thread. The townsfolk began to shun the pavilion, yet always someone went — the tale is like the Luo itself; you know something is caged beneath and still you lean close to look, to see if you will be the next whose voice is borrowed.

My own transcribing hand changed. One late night, reading the earlier drafts, I found my name written into the margin — "Transcribed by Shen Yan" — though I had not written it; I turned every page and nowhere had I added it. More chilling: at the end of that "borrowed-voice" passage, someone had added a line — "The next storyteller has a bright voice and a good memory; he suits Ling's taste." The characters I knew, but the hand was neither mine nor Yan's, rather very like the hand on Xie's page.

I laid the manuscript before Yan. He read a long time, the light in his eyes dimming like a lamp low on oil. "You should leave," he said; his voice was still fine, but I heard a hollow in it. "This hall knows strangers; the clearer it knows you, the easier you are written into the scroll. You have transcribed too much; it takes you for its own." I asked him of Xie, of the small block. He smiled bitterly: "Xie was my master. The year he was taken he gave me this pavilion, this tale, this block, saying 'Hold on, never strike the third.' I held thirty years." He said that three strikes seal the scroll; the tale gains its head and tail, and Ling walks out of the pages and takes the last storyteller's voice, to tell in his place. He struck only twice each night, leaving the story hung in midair, forever "to be continued," starving it and caging it. "But a tale starved enough grows its own mouth," he said, watching the vapor beyond the blind. "It does not grow on paper; it grows in my mouth. What I tell is no longer what I would tell."

"What is it, then?" I asked. He pointed at the block on the stage. "Words. When a man dies his words do not; set down on paper they are characters, held in the mouth they are voices, sunk in the river they are waves. What lives beneath the Luo takes not voices but unfinished words. 'The Mute Girl's Crossing' has gone thirty years unfinished; in the scroll it has kept Ling alive, waiting for one who dares strike the third time and complete the words, to let her out. I was to be the one who completed the words; now I have become the one whose voice is borrowed."

That night I stayed against his wish, to see how Yan would hold. He did not.

Past midnight the river mist thickened beyond pushing aside; the bells fell silent; even the water sounded muffled. Yan reached the part where Ling offers the incense; the fan met the block again — his hand slipped, the block left the fan and fell of itself, true and square, the third time.

Crack.

Every lamp in the hall dimmed for an instant. When they lit again, a shadow stood in the mist at the stage's edge: not tall, in a soaked old robe, head bowed, hair loose, a green thread clutched in her hand. She lifted her face — white, without line or feature, as if the water had soaked the features away; yet on that dissolved face flickered faintly the image of Ling's silver bell, brightening and dimming with her breath. She looked at Yan and moved her mouth, soundlessly.

Yan's fan dropped to the floor. He opened his mouth to speak and made only the lightest breath, like a leaking bellows. He clutched his throat, eyes wide, then folded in on himself like a paper figure drained of its frame, and did not rise. The shadow bent, as if to his lips, and sucked once; then it straightened, its throat moved, and gave out one very faint sound — the "Ah" of a girl trying her voice for the first time. She turned to the floor, her gaze swept the empty seats, and settled on me, pausing. I turned and ran, and behind me heard the Luo's water mixed with the tune of "Crossing the River," trying to speak and finding the mouth would not open.

When I threw myself back to the stage the shadow was already gone, leaving only a spread of water on the floor and, by Yan's feet, the block, its third mark still warm.

By daylight the town forgot Yan. The pavilion closed; Mistress Zhou was gone, as if in thirty years the hall had never held a second soul. I carried the manuscripts back to my grandfather's house and opened the very last book — the one with the blank colophon — and found two characters filled in at the end: Shen Yan. The hand was gentle, as if written long ago, waiting only for me to turn to that page.

Lately a coldness rises in my throat, as if another's voice were trying to open there. At night I often hear the Luo's water mixed with a woman's "Crossing the River," trying to speak and finding the mouth will not open. I know it is Ling; she knows my bright voice, and my good memory — they suit her taste. I have tried not to open my mouth, but the tale pushes in my throat like a fish in shallow water, determined to leap out.

Tonight I sit again at the stage of the Listening Rain Pavilion. The hall is empty; I lit the lamps; I cleansed the mouth and lit the incense. The block in my hand is Yan's, still carrying the warmth of his palm. The fan opens; the mist climbs from the river, exactly as that year. Beyond the blind there seems to stand a shadow again, not tall, like a woman.

I have not struck the third time. But I understand: either the tale starves forever and eats me hollow from within, or I strike, and let Ling walk out and take my voice, to tell the next one herself.

The fan turns half a circle in my palm. I remember Yan's words — enough of idle words, let the tale begin.

So I open my mouth, for Ling and for myself, and say the line:

"To be continued."

A note from the Midnight Records.