Cuicui sat beneath the white pagoda behind her house as dusk fell,watching wispy clouds in the sky burned

peach-blossom pink by the setting sun.The fourteenth of the month was market day at Middle Stockade.Many merchants from town went to that village fair to buy native products from the mountains,so ferry passengers were particularly abundant.Grandpa workcd on the ferryboat without rest.As nightfall descended,the songbirds fell quiet:only the cuckoos sang on without cease.The mud on the boulder had dried in the sun the day long,and so had the trees and grasses.Now they were giving back their heat.The air smelled of damp soil, of the grasses and the trees,and also of beetles.Watching the pink clouds in the sky and listening to the jumble of voices from the merchants touring the countryside,Cuicui felt faintly despondent.

The dusk was as serene as always,just as beautiful and

peaceful.Yet anyone in this situation would feel faintly

despondent.And so the days became a time of unhappiness.

Cuicui felt that she was missing something,As she saw the

days pass before her,she seemed to want to be caught up in a

new kind of human relationship,yet it was beyond her.Life

scemed too dull and ordinary.She could bear it no longer.

“I want to sail a boat down past Taoyuan,across Lake

Dongting.Let Granddad search for me all over town with a

lantern,beating a gong and calling out my name.

Letting her imagination run wild with this impossible

development,she seemed purposely angry at Grandpa.She

went on to imagine him searching for her everywhere to no

avail,until finally he would lie down in his boat in defeat.

Someone would shout,"Ferry me across,uncle.What's

wrong with you?Youre not doing your job!""What's wrong:

Cuicui is gone,she's gone down to Taoyuan County!""What

are you going to do about that?”“You know what?T'm goingto

pack a knife and catch a boat downstream,so I can kill her!'

Cuicui became as frightened as if she had really heard

such a conversation.She shrilly called out for her grandpa,

running from the ridge to the creek where the ferry landing

was.When she saw Grandpa in midstream,tugging his ferry-

boat while the passengers talked softly on board,her littl

heart leaped up and down

“Grandfather,pull the boat back to this side!”

The old ferryman didn't understand what was on her

mind.Thinking she wanted to take over for him,he said

“Cuicui,wait a little,I'll be back over!”

“Why aren't you coming back now?”

“I'm coming right away!”

Cuicui sat by the stream bank,observing everything out on the creck,which was now enveloped by the dusk.She also looked at the crowd of passengers on the ferryboat,including one who knocked the ashes out of his long-stemmed tobacco pipe by striking it against the side of the boat before lighting it with a sickle-shaped steel striker.She suddenly began to cry.

When Grandpa pulled the boat back to shore,he saw Cuicui sitting on the stream bank,staring into space.He asked what was the matter,but Cuicui didn't reply.Grandpa wanted her to light the fire and prepare supper.Afrer thinking about it,Cuicui felt foolish for having wept.She went alone back into the house.She sat down in the pitch-black kitchen and lit the fire,then went back outside onto the high bluffs and called out for her grandpa to come home.But he did not come ashore.The old ferryman was too serious about his job for that.He knew that his passengers were all hurrying back to town for their meals.He ferried them as they came,one by one if necessary,so they wouldn't have to wait alone on the riverbank.Standing in the prow of the boat,he told Cuicui to stop yelling at him,to let him do his job.When he had got his passengers across,he would return home and eat supper.

Cuicui again begged Grandpa to come,bur he paid no

attention.She sat on the bluffs,feeling quite put out.

If was now completely dark.Blue light shone from the

tail of a big frefy that fHew past Cuicui in a burst of speed.

She thought,"Ler's see how far you can Hy!"She followed the

light with her eyes.Cuckoos began to sing again.

“Grandfather,why don't you come back?I want you

here!”

When Grandpa heard her sweetly pleading voice,which

bore a measure of reproach,he answered her grufly:“Tm

coming,Cuicui,T'm coming”Meanwhile he mumbled,

under his breath,“Cuicui,when your grandfather is gone,

what will you do then?'

When the old ferryman returned home,the kitchen was

completely dark,lit only by flames from the stove.Cuicui was

sitting there on a low stool,her face in her hands

When he came closer,he realized that Cuicui had been

crying for quite a while.Usually when Grandpa came home,

stooped from pulling the boat all day long,with sore hands

and an aching back,he'd smell vegetables stewing in the wok

and see Cuicui dashing about in the lamplight,preparing

supper.Today was a little different

Grandpa continued,“Cuicui,I came in late,but is that

any reason to cry?What if I were dead?”

Cuicui said nothing.

Grandpa went on:“No more crying!Act like an adult.No

crying,no matter what.You have to be a little tougher,a little

stronger,to get through life on this earth!”

Cuicui uncovered her eyes and cuddled up to Grandpa.

“I've stopped crying.”

While the two made supper,Grandpa told Cuicui some interesting stories.This led to talk of Cuicui's deceased

mother.

Afrer they'd finished their meal by the light of a soybean- oil lamp,the old ferryman,tired from his day of work,drank half a bowl of liquor.This picked up his spirits.He went out- side with Cuicui and told her some more stories under the moonlight out on the bluffs.He told her about how lovely and good her poor mother had been,and also about her stub- born streak.Cuicui found it wholly absorbing.

Listening in the moonlight next to her grandpa,with her arms wrapped around her knees,Cuicui asked for more sto- ries abour her poor mother.Sometimes she would sigh,as if something heavy were weighing on her heart that she could move away with her breath.And yet she had no way to relieve her anxiety.

The moonlight was silvery and it shone everywhere.The bamboo stands in the mountains appeared black under the moon.From the thickets of grass came the chirping ofiasects, thick as rain.Occasionally,a warbler suddenly twittered from some hidden place,until the little bird seemed to realize that it was too late to be making noise and closed its eyes to go peaccfully to sleep.

Feeling in good spirits this night,Grandpa kept telling

Cuicui his stories.He told of how the local people's songs,

twenty years ago,werefamous throughout the bordetlands of

Sichuan and Guizhou.Cuicui's father was the best singer of

them all,able to summon up every kind of figure of speech

to explain the travails of love and hate-he told herall about

that,too.He also told her how her mother had loved to sing,

how she and Cuicui's father had sung love songs to cach other

in broad daylight before they ever met,one while cutting

bamboo on the mountain,the other while tugging the ferry-

boat across the stream.

Cuicui asked:“Then what happened?”

Grandpa answered:“That would take a long time to tell.

The important thing is that these songs gave us you.”

Afrer that,Grandpa fell silent.He did not add,“The

songs gve us you,and then they took away your father and

mother."