The Old Well

Chuntao was married into the Zhou house this spring. She is twenty, wed to Zhou Qing, the family's second son—an honest, quiet man with callused hands who treats her well. The Zhous are the village's well-off household: blue-brick tiled rooms, a fenced backyard, and at its southwest corner an old well.

The well dried years ago. Chuntao saw it her first days there: three bluestones pressed across the mouth, the well-rope rotted to wisps over the brick rim. Her mother-in-law, Old Zhou, had warned her: "Keep away from that back well. Dry three years now, and uncanny—makes noises at night." Chuntao nodded, but she was young, and curious.

What noises? The sound of washing rice.

In the deep night, when all other sound slept, from that dry well came a hua-la, hua-la—as if someone crouched at its bottom, rinsing rice in a wooden basin, grain striking the rim, water and grit shushing. A bone-dry well, not a drop in it—where the water-sound? Chuntao buried her head in the quilt, but the sound crept in, and the longer she listened the more it was a person, unhurried, stroke by stroke, rinsing against her own heart.

The first time she couldn't bear it, she crept by moonlight to the backyard and leaned over the rim. The bottom was pitch black, nothing there; wind leaked from the brick seams, cool on her face. She sighed, thinking she'd misheard, and turned to go—

Hua-la. From the bottom, right at her ear.

She looked down. No water in the well, yet she saw her own face.

Not the Chuntao of now. Chuntao of three years past.

Seventeen, two braids, a round face not yet filled out, bright wet eyes, in the blue cloth jacket her mother had made her—long packed away, its cuff mended with her own crooked stitches. The "her" in the well kept her head lowered, rinsing rice in a wooden basin, stroke by stroke, the rice white and the water clear, then raised her face and smiled up at the Chuntao at the mouth, lips moving as if to say: You're back.

Chuntao's legs gave; she crawled back to the room and never closed her eyes.

She dared not tell Zhou Qing. But her mind churned—three years ago, she had nearly died in that well.

That year she was seventeen, promised to Zhou Fu, Zhou Qing's elder brother, a clerk in town, betrothed since childhood. Half a month before the wedding Zhou Fu caught the seasonal fever and was dead in three days. Foolish with grief, Chuntao wept to the skies and one night felt her way alone to the well, meaning to jump after him. Her mother looped a rope about her waist and dragged her back from the rim. After that the well dried, as if her lunge had frightened the water away.

She lived. Later Zhou Qing came to propose; she thought, marry in, stay with the Zhous, near Zhou Fu—and she agreed.

But the "her" in the well was the Chuntao of three years back, the one who would have jumped. That Chuntao was not dragged back—at least not in the well. She had stayed below, rinsing rice, waiting, for this Chuntao who married in, to come back.

After that night the rice-sound came more often. At first only past midnight; then from dusk; sometimes amid the day's kitchen bustle she'd faintly hear it drift from the backyard, mixed in with the pots. Zhou Qing asked why she was always distracted; she said she was tired.

Old Zhou saw something was wrong and added a fourth stone to the three, scattering glutinous rice on the rim to quiet it. The sound eased for a few days, but did not root out.

One sultry night in early summer Chuntao tossed sleepless. The backyard was uncannily still, not even insects. As if led, she rose again, barefoot to the backyard—but instead of the rim she went to the kitchen, dipped half a basin of clear water, squatted by the stove, and set about rinsing the day's unwashed rice.

The basin water rocked, reflecting the bean-oil lamp. She lowered her head to rinse; the grain shushed between her fingers.

She looked up. On the basin's surface floated a face.

Seventeen-year-old Chuntao, braids, blue jacket, mended cuff, gazing up, smiling, lips moving—and this time she read the words:

It's my turn to come up.

Chuntao's hands opened; the basin overturned, water flooding the floor. She squatted in the wet, unable to rise for a long while.

The next day she told Zhou Qing she'd like to visit her mother's a few days. He asked nothing, hatched the ox-cart and took her. Looking back as she left, the Zhou backyard well still wore its three stones—but the glutinous rice on the rim was gone to the last grain, as if someone had picked it up one by one.

She never went back. Yet every time she rinses rice and her fingertips meet cool water, she cannot help but glance into the basin—afraid to see that face, and afraid not to.

The Midnight Record notes: A dry well with no water yet shows a shadow—not water, but the soul hidden within, borrowing water to take form. What Chuntao saw was no mirror but a basin; and what floated in the basin was her self of three years before. The recorder says: when a person's soul falls in a well, life after life she rinses rice, awaiting the one who returns.