Peach Blossom Paradise Read online

  GE FEI is the pen name of Liu Yong, who was born in Jiangsu Province in 1964. He graduated with a degree in Chinese from East China Normal University in Shanghai, and in 2000 received a PhD from Beijing’s Tsinghua University, where he has taught literature ever since. He first started publishing short stories during the 1980s and quickly established himself as one of the most prominent writers of experimental avant-garde fiction in China. Ge Fei’s scholarly publications include Kafka’s Pendulum and his fiction includes The Invisibility Cloak (available as an NYRB Classic); the Jiangnan Trilogy, of which Peach Blossom Paradise is the first volume; and the novella Flock of Brown Birds. He was awarded the 2014 Lu Xun Literary Prize and the 2015 Mao Dun Prize for Fiction.

  CANAAN MORSE is a translator, poet, and editor. He cofounded the literary quarterly Pathlight: New Chinese Writing and has contributed translations of Chinese prose and poetry to The Kenyon Review, The Baffler, and other journals. He is currently editing two anthologies of Chinese literature and translating a collection of the work of the Taiwanese poet Yang Xiaobin into English. In 2016 he translated Ge Fei’s Invisibility Cloak for NYRB Classics.

  PEACH BLOSSOM PARADISE

  GE FEI

  Translated from the Chinese by

  CANAAN MORSE

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 2004 by Ge Fei

  Translation copyright © 2020 by Canaan Morse

  All rights reserved.

  Published by arrangement with People’s Literature Publishing House Co., Ltd.

  Originally published in Chinese as Ren mian tao hua.

  First published as a New York Review Books Classic in 2020.

  Cover image: Lo Ch’ing, Memories of the Southern Spring Morning, 2013; courtesy of Michael Goedhuis Gallery, London

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ge, Fei, 1964– author. | Morse, Canaan, translator.

  Title: Peach blossom paradise / Ge Fei ; translated from the Chinese by Canaan Morse.

  Other titles: Ren mian tao hua. English

  Description: New York City : New York Review Books, [2020] | Series: New York Review Books classics

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020010224 (print) | LCCN 2020010225 (ebook) | ISBN 9781681374703 (paperback) | ISBN 9781681374710 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PL2872.F364 R4613 2020 (print) | LCC PL2872.F364 (ebook) | DDC 895.13/52—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010224

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010225

  ISBN 978-1-68137-471-0

  v1.0

  For a complete list of titles, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Biographical Notes

  Title Page

  Copyright and More Information

  Translator's Note

  PEACH BLOSSOM PARADISE

  Part One: Six Fingers

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Part Two: Huajiashe

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Part Three: Little Thing

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Part Four: Forbidden Speech

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  PEACH Blossom Paradise gives voice and presence to a brief span of Chinese history in which the millennia-old dynastic government had effectively died but the famous and brutal movements that we frequently weave into China’s tortuous narrative of modernity (the Republican era, the fight against Japanese imperialism, Maoism, the Cultural Revolution, and economic reform) had not yet begun. To the reader, the specter of that history makes this novel’s moment—the span between the failed Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898 and the final collapse of the last dynasty, in 1911—feel like a quiet inhale, a calm before the storm. To that end, the author has blurred the lines between fiction and history even further by annotating significant places and people with information about their life and fate within the whirlwind of twentieth-century Chinese history. The author has placed these annotations in line with the main body of the narrative, as is customary in Chinese novels. We present them here as footnotes.

  PEACH BLOSSOM PARADISE

  Part One

  SIX FINGERS

  1

  FATHER came down from his studio.

  He descended the stone steps and entered the courtyard with a white wicker suitcase in one hand and his cane tucked into the crook of his arm. Every room of the estate was empty, all hands called out for the wheat harvest. Sprigs of pine and poplar that had been hung over the lintels in celebration of the Tomb-Sweeping Festival had long since dried into brittle twigs beneath the summer sun. Likewise, the flowers that once covered the dwarf crab apples in the rock garden had been shuffled off by a flourish of green leaves, and the unswept petals lay wind-scattered across the courtyard.

  Xiumi had no idea how to react. She had sneaked over here to dry a pair of underpants that she clutched in one hand. But now she’d run into Father.

  This was her second time finding blood on her underwear. She had just spent ages crouched by the well, trying to scrub it away. Honeybees had tumbled and buzzed loudly by her head and intensified her anxiety. She had felt an unbearable pain in her stomach like a lead weight sinking right through her, but when she sat on the toilet, nothing came out. She pulled her pants down farther and looked for the source of the bleeding with a hand mirror; when she found it, embarrassment flushed her face crimson and set her heart racing. Confused, she tucked some cotton balls in place, yanked her pants back up, and ran to her mother’s bedroom, throwing herself atop an embroidered pillow and whimpering, “I’m dying, I’m dying, I know I’m dying.” Her mother was away visiting her sister-in-law in Meicheng, and the boudoir was utterly empty.

  But the immediate problem was that Father had come downstairs.

  This lunatic almost never emerged from his chambers. Only on the first day of the New Year would Mother ask Baoshen to carry him downstairs and install him in the stately armchair in the main hall to receive the family’s blessings. To Xiumi he seemed a living zombie—his eyes and mouth weirdly offset; he constantly drooled, and was so weak that even a cough left him wheezing and exhausted. Could that be the same man who just now tripped nimbly down the stairs and stood before her with a bulky wicker suitcase in hand, looking the very picture of energy and presence? He paused under the crab apple tree and calmly took a handkerchief from his sleeve pocket to wipe his nose. It couldn’t be possible that his disease had disappeared completely overnight, could it?

  The wicker suitcase suggested to Xiumi that Father might be setting out on some kind of journey. She glanced reflexively down at the rust-stained wad of clot
h in her fist, and in a jolt of panic, turned toward the front courtyard and yelled, “Baoshen! Baoshen! Cockeye Baoshen!” But no one was home, not even the clerk. The petals, dust, and lifeless afternoon sunlight carpeting the courtyard floor ignored her, as did the crab apples, the pear trees, the moss on the wall and the butterflies and bumblebees perched on it. The blue-green willow leaves outside the front door and the stiff breeze swaying them paid her no mind.

  “What are you yelling about? Stop yelling,” Father ordered.

  Stuffing the filthy handkerchief back into his sleeve, he turned slowly and regarded her through squinting eyes with faint opprobrium. His voice sounded deep and gravelly, as if his throat had been scrubbed with sandpaper. This was the first time she remembered hearing him address her directly. Years of hiding from the sun had left a sooty patina on his skin and tinged his hair a fine corn-silk yellow.

  “Are you going away?” With Baoshen not there, she knew she had to calm down and assemble the courage to deal with him herself.

  “I am,” Father replied.

  “Where are you going?”

  Father chuckled and raised his eyes to the sky. After a pause, he replied, “I’ll admit, at this point, I still don’t know.”

  “Is it somewhere far?”

  “Very far,” he said, his tone evasive. His ashen face stared at her without moving.

  “Baoshen! Baoshen! Cockeye, where are you?”

  Father paid no attention to her raised voice, but stepped slowly over to her and raised a hand as if to touch her face. Xiumi shrieked and dashed away from beneath his fingers. She leaped over the bamboo fence into the garden, then turned to peer at him from a distance, her head cocked and her hands nervously twisting and untwisting her soiled underwear. Father shook his head and smiled. His smile was like ash, or paraffin.

  From her new vantage point, Xiumi watched Father pick up his wicker suitcase once more and shuffle his stooped body out the side door of the courtyard. Her heart was pounding, and her mind fluttered with activity. Moments later, Father returned, poking an otter-like head around the doorway and peering around the courtyard, an embarrassed half smile on his face.

  “I need an umbrella,” he whispered, “it’s going to rain in Puji very soon.”

  Those were the last words Xiumi’s father would ever say to her, though she didn’t know it at the time. Xiumi looked up at the sky: not a cloud in sight, just a vast field of electric blue.

  Father found an umbrella by the hen boxes and opened it up. Worms had riddled the oilcloth canopy with so many holes that the ribs showed through, and a good jostling would have left nothing but a skeleton. Father hesitated, then leaned it very carefully back up against the wall. Picking up his suitcase one more time, he retreated backward across the threshold, closing the door behind him as if afraid of disturbing someone. The double leaves of the side door folded silently shut.

  •

  Xiumi allowed herself a long sigh of relief. After hanging her washed underwear on the hedge, she scurried around the greenhouse and into the front courtyard in search of help. But Baoshen was gone, as were Magpie and Lilypad. The madman had excellent timing: the main hall, side chambers, woodshed, kitchen, and even the outhouse were all deserted, as if he’d planned it with the whole family. Finding no one at all, Xiumi had no choice but to run through the antechamber and out the front gate, where already she could see no sign of Father. Their neighbor, Hua Erniang, was drying sesame seeds in bamboo baskets outside her door, but when asked if she had seen Xiumi’s father, she replied in the negative. When Xiumi asked about Baoshen, Hua Erniang merely laughed. “How should I know? You never asked me to keep an eye on him in the first place.”

  Then as Xiumi was leaving, she called out, “I thought your father was locked in his studio. How could he run away?”

  “I don’t know how he got out either,” Xiumi replied. “Anyway, he’s gone. I saw him leave through the side door.”

  “Then you need to send people to find him right now,” Hua Erniang enjoined with obvious urgency. “He’s so confused, he could walk right into an outhouse hole and drown, just like that.”

  As they were speaking, Xiumi caught sight of Lilypad walking back from the east end of the village with an overflowing basket of daylilies under her arm. Xiumi hurried over to give her the news. Lilypad showed no sign of panic, but remarked, “You said he’s carrying a suitcase, so he couldn’t have gone far. We’ll run to the ford and cut him off. If he crosses the river, he’ll be impossible to catch.” Putting down her basket, she grabbed Xiumi’s hand and took off running for the ford.

  Lilypad’s bound feet meant that running made her body shake hard and sent her breasts bouncing in all directions, a sight that drew open-mouthed, baboon-like stares from Wang Qidan and Wang Badan, the blacksmith’s apprentices. Farther down the road the women ran into a couple of peasants returning home from the harvest; both said they hadn’t seen old Mr. Lu pass. Xiumi and Lilypad turned and ran back, and they got as far as the fishpond before Lilypad’s legs gave out. She flopped down onto the ground, undid the buttons of her vest, and slipped off her embroidered shoes to massage her feet, her chest still heaving from exertion. “Scrambling around like this won’t do any good. If your dad didn’t head for the ford, he must have taken the back road out of the village. But first we’ve got to tell Cockeye.”

  “If only we knew where he went,” Xiumi complained.

  “Oh, I know,” said Lilypad. “I’ll bet you anything he’s playing mahjong at the old lady’s place. Pull me up.”

  Lilypad put her shoes back on and tucked her vest under her arm; Xiumi helped her up, and the two women made their wobbly way toward a large apricot tree in the center of the village. Only then did it occur to Lilypad to ask a barrage of questions: When did the master come downstairs? What did he say? Why wasn’t Magpie at home? Why didn’t Xiumi try to restrain him? Having probed every corner of the case with questions, she felt a sudden anger well up inside her. “I told them not to go leaving the studio door unlocked, but your mother said she wanted him to get some sun out in the pavilion. Now look what’s happened.”

  Beneath the apricot tree, Grandma Meng was spinning cotton. Her wheel was turning too quickly, nearly snapping the fiber, and she accompanied the movement of the machine with a constant stream of muttered curses aimed at herself. Lilypad called to her, “Rest a moment, Grandma, I have a question for you. Did Baoshen come by to play mahjong with you today?”

  “What do you think? Of course he came,” grumbled the old woman. “Won twenty strings of cash from me and then left. Can’t save his own money, so he comes here to steal wood from my coffin. Wins a round and leaves, just like that. Tried to get him to sit for one more, but no dice. Even snatched a couple of my dried persimmons on his way out.”

  Lilypad couldn’t keep from laughing at her story. “Well, Grandma, don’t let him play next time and you’ll be all right.”

  “Who will I play with if not him?” the old lady shot back. “No more than a handful of players in a place this size; if I lose anyone, I can’t fill the seat! And my luck’s just been bad anyway—can’t even spin cotton without breaking the thread.”

  “Did you see where he went, Grandma?”

  “I saw him walk off, eating my persimmons and happy as a clam, toward the far end of the village.”

  “Was he going to Miss Sun’s?” Lilypad asked.

  Grandma Meng smiled but said nothing, and Lilypad grabbed Xiumi and turned to leave. Behind them, they heard the old woman mutter, “I sure never told you he was going to Miss Sun’s.” And she chuckled.

  •

  Miss Sun lived at the far end of the village behind the mulberry orchard in a small house with a courtyard. Her home boasted a small pond ringed by wild roses and honeysuckle. An old man sat basking in the sun outside the front door, which was shut tightly and admitted no noise from within. When he saw the two wom
en draw near, the man rose in alarm and scanned them both with narrow eyes. “Stand by the pond and don’t move. I’m going in to get Baoshen,” Lilypad instructed Xiumi, then strode forward as steadily as she could on her bound feet. Sensing her aggression, the old man raised both hands in a gesture to stop her. “Who are you looking for, Bigmouth?”

  Lilypad ignored him entirely; she pushed open the door and started to walk straight into the courtyard. Caught off balance and out of position, the old man grabbed the lapel of her jacket. Lilypad turned and glared at him with a ferocity he didn’t expect and spat at his feet. “Touch me one more time, you dried-up old bastard, and I’ll drown you in the pond.”

  Though obviously both angry and frightened, the old man managed to screw his face into an ingratiating smile. “Lower your voice a little, my dear,” he whispered.

  “What, out here in the middle of nowhere? Your little whore in there could scream to high heaven and no one would hear her,” Lilypad snorted, raising her voice even louder.

  “ ‘Cursing the lily spoils the lady,’ as the saying goes. Even if you’re not afraid to offend our ears, don’t you worry about soiling your own mouth?”

  “Blow it out your grandma’s ass! I swear, if you don’t let me go, I’m going to burn this cathouse to the ground.” The old man nearly stamped in frustration but had to let her go.

  Just as Lilypad stepped into the courtyard, one of the inner chamber doors opened and a man stumbled out. It was, of course, the very man she was looking for. He approached the front door, making a passing attempt at doing up his buttons. Head cocked to one side as always, he giggled and asked, “Hey, Bigmouth, you think it might rain today?”

  •

  And rain it did, in a heavy downpour that lasted from early evening to midnight. Water collected in the open spaces of the skywell between the outer wall and the courtyard, finally rising beyond the edges of the flower basins and pouring into the hallway. Mother had returned from Meicheng, and was now slouched in the grand armchair in the main hall, staring at the rain and sighing.