Binu and the Great Wall of China Read Online Free PDF Page A

lonely wandering ghost?
    Binu anxiously made her way home. At the village entrance, she changed direction and led the frog toward the nine mulberry trees. They had been submerged under the flood waters, yet all nine stood there calm and composed, looking as if they’d been planted in a paddy field. ‘You see how fine those nine mulberry trees are? Even after being under water, they’re as good as ever,’ she said to the frog. ‘Those nine trees have fed vast numbers of precious silkworms, but now they belong to someone else.’ She waded through the water up to the largest tree and stood there, pointing to the gourd vines wrapped around the trunk. ‘See that,’ she said to the frog. ‘That is Qiliang and me: one is a mulberry tree,the other a gourd. You are the lucky one, your spirit can go wherever it wants on those frog’s legs. Qiliang and I need a place where we can put down roots together. I’m not sure if mulberry trees grow up north, or gourds, and I wonder if there’s a place where we can settle down.’
    As she stood beneath the tree, Binu took one last look at the limbs and branches of all nine trees; seeing them was like seeing Qiliang. The image of him washing his face early in the morning materialized out of thin air as the sun was setting; though it was autumn, she could see him as if in winter. Though she had not been able to hire a horse, she saw him riding down the slope of North Mountain on a great Blue Cloud horse, wearing the new winter coat she’d taken him. How handsome and valiant he looked! Could there be another Peach Village man dressed as smartly? A blue cotton coat crafted by the seamstress from East Village, brocaded hemp shoes from Hailing Prefecture, and a phoenix-patterned sash that cost half a bushel of rice. The sash had a jade-inlaid hook on which he could hang anything he wanted.
    Binu picked a gourd from the ground around the mulberry tree. Tears flowed from her palms when she did so. The tree and the gourd cried too, wetting her hand. The gourd had been taken from the heart of themulberry tree, just as Binu had been torn from the heart of Qiliang. The vine was unhappy, the tree was unhappy and the woman was unhappy. But she knew that, whatever her feelings, the gourd had to be picked, for she needed to settle the matter of her reincarnation before she left. The sorceresses of Kindling Village had revealed another strange fate, and the memory of that dark prediction made her tremble with fear. ‘You were once a gourd,’ they cautioned menacingly, ‘so you should not casually leave the safety of your home. People are buried in the ground all over the world, but for you, Binu, no grave awaits. If you die in a foreign land, your ghost will turn back into a gourd, discarded at the side of a road, just waiting for a passerby to pick you up, cut you in half and give one half to this family, the other to that family, both of whom will throw you into a vat and use you as a ladle!’

Peach Village
    Mud covered the ground in Peach Village, partially obscuring its boundaries. As the flood slowly receded, the unique circular huts of Blue Cloud Prefecture rose out of the water, each looking like half a human head embracing the joy of having survived a disaster. They appeared to be searching tirelessly for their owners, but the inhabitants, afraid of the water, were not ready to leave the temporary residences on the mountain slope to which they had fled. With their many silkworm racks, pottery, farming implements, and a small number of pigs and goats, they darkened the congested incline; exactly what they were waiting for was unclear – even to them – perhaps a total retreat of the water or perhaps just the passage of time. Time was now submerged in the water and would remain so until the water retreated. Only then would time be diverted to the leaves of mulberry trees and the white bodies of silkworms, and the innate rhythms of life would return to Peach Village.

    The people on the