The First Leg by Water

When the boat left Yunjin, Gu Qing was looking for the little packet of salt. She had put it somewhere so handy she couldn't find it. She bent over and lifted two layers of dry clothes, and suddenly the floor lurched beneath her. By the time she looked up, the people carrying shoulder loads on the bank had shrunk to a little string, and a shining gray strip of water lay between the boat and the wharf. She hadn't seen the last line untied. It was as though the most important door of the day had opened by itself while her head was down.

Shen Su held on to the cabin entrance and watched the shore without hurrying her. Auntie Chen had already seen them off and gone back to washing cloth, and Zhou Jiping had walked with them only as far as the mouth of the lane. There was no one on the shore waving for her to see. Gu Qing felt a little hollow at first. Then she recognized the patch of gray roof tiles beyond the west gate, already slipping behind her, and realized she didn't have to turn and answer anyone. She tucked the packet of salt back where it belonged, sat beside her grandmother, and listened to the water slap the boat, again and again.

The wind on the twelfth of the fifth month was not cold, but it still felt different on her face from the wind in the courtyard, coming straight toward her without passing a corner of the wall. Aboard were a married couple selling combs, a woman taking weaving equipment back to her parents’ home, and two boys going to join relatives in Nanpu. The noisiest passenger was a goose in a bamboo cage. The comb seller dodged it whenever he passed, while the goose delighted in stretching its neck after him. Shen Su suppressed a smile. At first Gu Qing feared her grandmother would be pecked, and only relaxed too after the boatman moved the cage to the rear.

They paid the remaining hundred and sixty cash for the outward journey. Their berths were on the inside, just within reach of the wooden post that had been freshly nailed firm. Gu Qing set down the footrest. Grandmother settled herself and loosened the outer knee wrap a little to let some air in. The cabin smelled of damp wood and cooked beans, hardly pleasant. Gu Qing thought of the dry flower paper at home and suddenly wanted to open the window wider, only to find that the narrow window was already as open as it would go.

Their first meal was hurried. The boat stopped at a small landing where soup was sold on the bank. The boatkeeper was only stopping for about half a quarter of an hour. Gu Qing bought two bowls, and since the bowls were borrowed from the vendor, they had to be returned when they finished. Afraid of holding things up, she took a mouthful so hot it numbed the tip of her tongue. Shen Su ate at her ease, lifting a piece of tofu out of the soup to let it cool and asking Gu Qing what the hurry was. She didn’t have to chew her way through the whole half-quarter hour as well. In the end Gu Qing finished first and carried Grandmother’s bowl back ashore for her.

At night the planks were harder than the ones at home, and she could hear her own clothes rustle whenever she rolled over. Someone snored, someone called for a child half asleep, and the goose kept perfectly quiet. Gu Qing woke three times, each time reaching first to see if her grandmother was still there. The third time, the old woman caught her hand. “Your hand's cold.” Gu Qing drew back, but her grandmother laid the hand on top of her own quilt and told her to stop marking the hours by feeling for her.

They stopped at Shixian on the thirteenth. Luo Yi's new shop was close to the landing. From the side of the boat Gu Qing could see the color of its sign, but she stayed aboard. The boat was stopping only to unload, and her grandmother hadn't slept enough the night before. She expected to feel cheated, but when the water turned and a row of houses hid the storefront, she felt surprisingly little. The comb seller beside her said she'd bought powder at that shop and it smelled lovely. Gu Qing only said the flowers were made in Yunjin too, without feeling she had to say whose hands had made them.

In the afternoon the boat reached a broad stretch and the two banks suddenly drew far away. Shen Su leaned against the cabin entrance and was quiet for a long time. Gu Qing asked whether she was tired. She shook her head and said after a while, “So if you keep going, the water gets wider.”

Gu Qing wanted to say that it had already been a river back there—how could the explanation be so simple? But seeing half the old woman’s face lit by the bright shimmer of water, she swallowed the words. She herself had never looked at a stretch of water at this hour, from this place, without needing to cross it at once. A few trees on shore seemed to drift slowly backward, pushed by the wind, while the boat moved less quickly than she had imagined. She watched too, until the flickering light made her eyes ache.

A small following wind came up that afternoon. The water broke the shadows beside the boat into fragments, and Shen Su remembered a tune from somewhere and hummed a couple of notes under her breath. It sounded familiar to Gu Qing, who asked if it was something she used to sing in the kitchen. The old woman said she had never sung it and couldn't carry a tune. Gu Qing insisted she remembered one line and tried to take it up. Her notes wandered so far that people in the cabin turned to look. She stopped at once, but Shen Su seemed finally to recognize a little of it and said that wasn't how it went. The first note had to be low.

They corrected each other for ages without recovering the tune, though each got a very clear look at the other's refusal to admit singing it wrong. Finally Shen Su laughed and said to let it go; even if the wind heard, it would not come demanding the next line. Gu Qing reached outside the cabin and let the wind support her palm for a while, then drew it back. She rarely left something unfinished like this without feeling she owed someone, but just now all she wanted was to hear the old woman hum another note, even a wrong one.

The woman sharing their cabin, who was carrying loom parts, came and sat by them and asked Shen Su if she was from Nanpu. At first the old woman nearly nodded again. Her lips moved, but she changed her mind and said no, it was her first time going. The woman said oh, then told her which landing was cheaper and which river mouth had the most mosquitoes, taking her just as seriously as before. When Gu Qing heard those words, ‘头一回’ (‘first time’), she lowered her head to hold down the corner of Grandmother’s robe where the wind had lifted it, a little smile she couldn’t hide at the corner of her mouth.

Early on the fourteenth, Shen Su’s knee was stiff as she got off the boat, and she held on to a post for a good while before stepping onto the gangplank. Gu Qing went ashore first and held out her hand. The old woman reached the middle of the plank, saw the water shimmering and rocking below, and stopped dead. People were waiting behind her, and Gu Qing wanted to hurry her along, but the woman running the boat raised a hand to hold them back and told Shen Su to look at the wooden post on the bank and keep her eyes up. Shen Su fixed her gaze on that spot and finally brought her other foot across.

Once she was on shore, her forehead was covered in sweat. Gu Qing wanted to ask if she regretted it, but saw that the old woman’s right hand was still gripping hers and let the question wait. They sat at a food stall. Her grandmother ate only half a bowl of porridge and looked at the boats coming and going. After a long while she said she didn't want to step onto that swaying plank again today. Gu Qing saw that their boat was about to cast off and thought of the six-day journey to Nanpu. The toe of her shoe moved toward the landing, then drew back.

They took their luggage off at Ludu and chose to stay the night. The original boat would sail on, and changing boats for the next leg would cost a little more. Gu Qing paid according to the terms she had already asked about and spared the boat operator an argument about how far one ticket ought to take her. As the boat pulled away, the goose started honking again and stuck its long neck out of the side of the cage. The comb seller waved to them. Shen Su sat watching from the bank and suddenly said to Gu Qing, “That one’s braver than I am.”

She meant the goose. Gu Qing laughed so hard she nearly dropped the bedroll, and the old woman laughed too. Afterward she let out a long breath and said there was finally something under her feet besides water. She felt no great fondness for the little landing. Here she could simply sit still. A woman was calling for travelers to stay at her inn. Gu Qing went to look at the bed and stove, then came back and asked Grandmother to see for herself. The low step at the door was easier to cross than the boat’s gangplank, so the old woman chose to stay there.

At night in Ludu, there were frogs calling. The travelers’ inn had a hard bed, but the quilt had been aired in the sun and held a rough sort of sun-warmed smell. Gu Qing changed the warm cloth by her grandmother’s knee and leaned against the side of the bed, suddenly so sleepy that even her speech slowed. Shen Su told her to climb up and rest. She didn’t have to wait until the cloth was cold. They lay down one after the other. Strangers walked past the window, neither of them known to anyone outside, and there wasn’t a single flower waiting for Gu Qing to wire it before she put out the lamp.

Gu Qing woke late the next morning and sat up in alarm, thinking they'd missed the boat. Her grandmother was combing her hair. The innkeeper had asked around, she said, and the next boat wouldn't come until the afternoon. They'd still have time after breakfast to look at the bamboo baskets by the bridge. When Gu Qing went out the sun was already warm, and the landing was still there, late as she'd slept. At a stall she picked out a small bamboo tube for her flower patterns, ran her hand over it, and set it down again. She went to choose two hot cakes instead. That morning she ate sitting down.

Her grandmother took a fancy to the pattern on a bamboo basket and drew her close to show her where it looked like thread wound around a stem. The stallkeeper laughed and said it was a fish eye he had woven, not a flower. Shen Su took no offense. She bent her head, ran her hand along the bamboo strips, and left without buying it. Gu Qing looked at the white hair held down beneath her hat brim and suddenly wanted very much to remember the whole scene, though she knew she might not be able to say afterward which way each strip of bamboo ran.

They boarded again on the afternoon of the fifteenth. Shen Su still feared the plank and pressed her lips tight, but her feet didn't stop for as long. Gu Qing waited on shore until Shen Su reached the near end before reaching out to her, while the boatman supported her on the other side. She had help getting across. Once seated, the old woman felt her knee, then the solid post beside her, and remarked that the wood on this boat was lighter than on the last one.

There was no goose on the new boat, and Gu Qing felt, to her surprise, as though someone she knew were missing. At dusk they passed Willow Bend. On the bank, children ran after the wind with a thin pole flying a scrap of red cloth that always streamed the other way. Gu Qing watched, spellbound, until Shen Su called her and she realized someone had asked for a little salt. She brought out the packet she had been unable to find on the first day and pinched some out for the woman sharing their cabin. This time she got to it without turning over two layers of dry clothes.

On the night of the sixteenth the boat moved slowly. The boatman told the passengers to stay away from the sides until they'd made it through the shallows. Gu Qing sat back down inside the cabin and heard the sound of water beneath the hull thin out, then gradually deepen again. Her grandmother woke from a short nap and asked if they were almost there. Gu Qing said tomorrow, tomorrow if the waterway was clear. Shen Su closed her eyes and said very quietly that she was already a little homesick, then added that she still had to see the lotus flowers.

Gu Qing sat at the foot of the bed. She let her grandmother miss home without urging her to hold on a little longer or telling her how far they’d come. She handed her the warm water, waited until she had drunk it, and put the bowl in a recessed wooden cubby. Behind her, a small square of night showed through the cabin window. Lights on the shore came and went. The boat kept going south, and the part of them that missed home could travel with them for one more night.