Translated by Karen Gernant

Not until dawn did the noise subside and all turned quiet. Tide fell asleep. He dreamed of a tortoise whose claws were scratching his cheek softly, soothing his startled heart. Although the sequence never changed, the frequency and intensity of the crying did change. Sometimes, the sound of weeping faded away, and the weeping person invariably recounted some things. Tide could only grasp one or two words of what was said. Over time, Tide figured out that the old person and the woman were actually one person—an old person who tightened his throat and pretended to be a woman crying. When he realized this, he was even more frightened. He wondered if this was a ghost of someone who had lived in the house or if it was an outsider who had squeezed into the house.

The main road was just outside, and Tide had often heard rumors of ghosts wandering there. He thought things like this were fascinating. In the courtyard, clusters of chrysanthemums were growing, and beside them was an earthen jar. Inside it squatted a tortoise. Sometimes at night, it climbed out and walked everywhere in the courtyard. When Tide saw its lonely, rather hesitant figure, drowsiness overcame him. He was so happy to come across the tortoise in his dreams. In the night air, some little beetles also whizzed by; they were unable, however, to bring the serenity that the tortoise bestowed on Tide. He felt that these long-winged little creatures were making efforts that were futile.

Because the ghosts made such an unbearable disturbance, Tide couldn’t sleep. His eyes were swollen, and he moved the camp bed back inside. Somebody knocked on the door: it was Auntie Ming—an overweight pastry chef.

“I could have not come. After thinking it over, I’ve come anyway. All families go through problems, and no one can tell anyone else what to do.”

Tide had a premonition, and he said haltingly: “Auntie Ming, truly. . .”

Giving him a quick, probing look, Auntie Ming laughed heartily.

“Are you afraid? Fear is useless. I’ve only come to take a look. You—ah, you’d better turn on the lights in all the rooms, and you mustn’t sleep in just one room. Sleep in this room for a while, then in that room for a while, so that no one can figure out your schedule.”

She inspected the rooms and ordered Tide to take the large portrait down from the wall in the study and keep it in the basement. It was a portrait of Tide’s paternal grandparents.

When they went to the basement together, Auntie Ming looked sleepy. Tide bent down and put two large picture frames into the bottom of a storage cabinet. When he turned around, he saw that Auntie had fallen asleep on the dusty chair. Tide switched the lights on at once. His heart was thumping non-stop. He thought that Auntie’s face resembled a dead person’s. Her mouth was crooked, and her eyes were half-open—totally different from her usual appearance. Tide hadn’t slept the whole night and was utterly exhausted. Leaving Auntie Ming there, he turned the lights off and felt his way up the stairs.

He had no sooner gone to his bedroom than he heard weeping again: this time, it came from the basement room. Several women were weeping—and complaining as they wept. Tide couldn’t open his eyes; he covered himself with a quilt and went to sleep. Not long after, a noise awakened him. Auntie’s hair was disheveled and she looked scary. Tide immediately covered his head with the quilt and didn’t look at her. Auntie Ming sat beside his bed for a few minutes, then stood up and left. Tide heard her go into the courtyard and then she went out. The strange thing was that the women in the basement room continued weeping. Tide lacked the energy to think very hard about this, and as soon as he closed his eyes, he fell asleep again. He dreamed that someone invited him to visit for a while in the living room. From the rear, he could see that the man was wearing a long gown. After taking a seat, the man lifted his two wide sleeves, and Tide saw white smoke escaping from the sleeves. He circled around in front of the man, intending to look at his face. But—who knows what was going on here?—he could still see him only from behind. It was hard for Tide to make any sound. After struggling for a long time, he finally shouted, “Where did you come from?”

“The basement room. Didn’t you hear me crying?” the person laughed roguishly. “I live there, and now I want to go back. You have to watch carefully.”

Long Gown was moving about: Tide couldn’t see his feet. He moved to the top of the staircase leading to the basement room, and suddenly dropped down.

Tide thought, probably Auntie Ming is right: he shouldn’t sleep in the courtyard. That would amount to being estranged from this family. But he didn’t dare sleep in his bedroom, either: that dreadful night had terrified him. That time, several guys had forced him into a corner. One of them had stretched out his arm and was using a chokehold. It seemed that he would be suffocated to death. Mustering all of his strength, Tide struggled for a while. He didn’t really expect the guy to loosen his grip, but after he struggled some more, the guy let go of him. The ones who had been watching let out a collective sigh, and then they said softly in unison, “Go over there.” Tide then saw their figures lower themselves until they disappeared completely from the floor. Although it was frightening at the time, afterward it could still excite his curiosity. Since they said “go over there,” it was clear that these ghosts wandered all over the place, but why did Long Gown also say that he lived in the basement room? The way he was dressed made it clear that he was a man, but then where did the sound of a woman weeping come from? It was also possible that he wasn’t the only one living in the basement room; there must be many of them.

Once upon a time, when Young Tide was still a child, Dad had often stayed in the basement room. Young Tide had looked for his dad in one room after another and had found him there. Back then, the portrait of Grandpa and Grandma had hung on the wall in that room. As soon as he turned on the light, the expressions in their eyes scared Young Tide so much that his legs were shaking. Mama had taken the portrait to the study and hung it there. As soon as the people in the photograph were moved to the study, their expressions turned dull and lifeless. When Auntie ordered him to take the portrait back to the basement room, was this a way of letting them go “home”? She was right: he didn’t need to be afraid; he had to confront them. When he reached this point in his thinking, he made up his mind not to sleep in the courtyard again. This was his home, and he had to clarify the situation in this home: he couldn’t avoid this.

In the past, his family had had a nursemaid, hired especially to take care of Young Tide. All day long, she would wander around outside with Young Tide in her arms. She was never willing to go inside; she said the “yin” energy was too strong. Maybe she had seen some thing. One day, Mother asked her to get two bottles of wine from the basement room. Tide remembered very well how crazy she had been then. She took the wine from the cupboard and told him to go upstairs with her, Young Tide in front and she behind. All of a sudden, she began calling out plaintively and then fell down the stairs. She landed on the concrete floor, and the shattered glass bottles cut her cheek. Young Tide saw a person covered with blood and smelling of wine make threatening gestures in his direction. With every bit of his strength, he fled upstairs. Then he fainted in his mother’s embrace. The nursemaid disappeared from their home, and no one ever mentioned this woman again.

Tide made up his mind to do as Auntie Ming had ordered, and take turns sleeping in the various rooms. He stayed with the tortoise in the courtyard until deep in the night before going inside. Once inside, he didn’t turn on the lights. Cat-like, he bent over and slunk into the bedroom that had been his father’s and climbed into the large wooden bed. He burrowed under the quilt. Just then, the light turned on automatically. A woman stood at the head of his bed: it was Auntie’s younger sister Lotus. How had she gotten in? Or had she been hiding in this room all along? Tide recalled that this Auntie Lotus was an invalid with a wan face, yet her cheekbones were a brilliant red. Ordinarily, she stayed home, seldom going out.

“You’re occupying my bed, and I have nowhere to sleep,” she said with a smile that revealed her black teeth.

“You. . .” Tide was unable to say anything.

“Yes, I come here to sleep every day. Staying home is boring. People with goals don’t just stay at home.”

Tide thought, Good lord, she’s even referring to “goals.” What on earth was happening? He himself had no goals. How could he acquire goals? He noticed the two balls of fire on Auntie Lotus’s face; her face was glowing. Tide sat up, and as he got dressed, he muttered, “This is your bed. Go ahead and sleep here. I’ll go over there.”

He walked into the dark corridor, uncertain which room he should enter. Should he go back and ask Auntie Lotus? She hadn’t turned the light off; a ray of light shone under the door. He turned back and opened the door: Auntie Lotus was missing. The quilt was spread out as if someone were sleeping under it. Tide didn’t dare call out; he went back to the corridor and entered the study, intending to sleep on the floor that night. He remembered that blankets were packed in the trunk beside the door. He took out a blanket, wrapped himself in it, and slept on the floor. Before falling asleep, he vowed that he must become a person with goals. Nothing disturbed his sleep, because heavy drapes blocked any light. He slept straight through until noon before waking up. Then he remembered what had happened the night before, and he ran again to his father’s room to see Auntie Lotus. She had also just arisen and was getting dressed; she looked haggard.

“Do you come here every day, Auntie Lotus? Why haven’t I ever seen you—not even once?”

“Shhh. Don’t talk so loud. This is a secret. You mustn’t tell Auntie Ming.”

Tide was depressed; he was quietly watching Auntie Lotus get dressed and slip out noiselessly. He bent over and smelled the quilt on the bed; not even a hint of a human scent clung to it.

Tide was hungry. He rushed to the kitchen and washed his face and gargled. After boiling a bowl of noodles for himself, he picked up a bucket of water and went to the courtyard to change the tortoise’s water; he also took some noodles with him. In the distance, he saw that it had climbed out and was squatting under the cluster of chrysanthemums. Tide saw tears in its eyes and wondered if it wanted to leave. It had kept him company for an entire summer; they had dreamed together. Now he had moved inside, and it felt snubbed.

“Oh, Tortoise, Tortoise, I can’t always be near you, can I? This is my home; I have to go inside. And you know, summer won’t last forever. As soon as winter comes, I’ll have to move back. Isn’t that true? And now, many people have gone into the house, and I have no way of knowing whether they are human or ghosts. If I don’t go in, I’ll have no home to return to,” he explained earnestly.

After the tortoise—motionless—had heard him out, it climbed out along the courtyard wall. Tide knew that it was dark, and he was apprehensive: this tortoise had spent the whole summer with him.

Head bent, Tide went into the bakery. Behind the counter, Auntie Ming said to someone, “Look: just as we were talking about him, he shows up.”

When Tide heard this, for some reason he blushed. He glanced at the man and all at once he felt chilled to the bone. Because it was a “rear view” of that person, he couldn’t see his head. Did these ghosts also come and go freely in the daytime? He heard Auntie Ming laugh as she threw a bag of bread—thump!—onto the counter. Tide picked up the bread fearfully and bent his head and left. Not until he had taken several steps did he glance back. In the sunlight, Auntie Ming’s bakery was giving off a familiar aroma, yet the painted words on the establishment’s sign—“Ming’s Bakery”—were peeling off. You had to guess what they said. Two more people went into the bakery: Why didn’t they think anything was unusual? In Tide’s imagination, there was a surge of countless ghosts in his home, and their weeping resounded to the heavens.

Tide returned to the house and opened the drapes in his father’s bedroom. Then he opened a window. He heard something fly out. Was it a bird or a bat? The quilt was still spread over the bed, and he couldn’t see that anyone had slept there. Something on the floor was shining; he picked it up: to his surprise, it was a tie clip that belonged to his father. The tie clip had been lying in the middle of the room, apparently having just been dropped here—because it hadn’t been here yesterday. As Tide gazed at the shiny clip, he felt a little feverish. He thought, Is it possible that Dad came back for a while? The old magpie on the tree outside the window called to him once. The magpie looked ferocious. He had heard of this kind of bird taking small articles of jewelry. Maybe back then, it had made off with Dad’s tie clip. But why would it have wanted to bring it back? Ah, sure enough, the thing that had just flown out must have been a magpie. Facing in the magpie’s direction, Tide waved the clip. Unexpectedly, the magpie pounced toward him. Of course, it didn’t actually pounce on him, but turned back halfway. Tide gave this some thought and then placed the clip back on the floor. The room was spotless. Was it Auntie Lotus who had swept it, or was it someone else?

Although it was broad daylight, Tide felt overcome by sleepiness. He went to bed, covered up with the colorful quilt, and was asleep in no time. Not until he woke up did he realize that he hadn’t dreamed at all. This was unusual. As he got dressed, he noticed that the clip had disappeared again. And so he was certain that it was the magpie’s ghost that was responsible. He sank into reveries: in the past, his father had always suffered from insomnia. Still in his nightclothes, he had walked from the corridor outside to the courtyard and had also awakened Young Tide. The two of them had stood under the tree admiring the full moon. Tugging at his dad’s hand, the bewildered Young Tide had stood there. It was as though he was still dreaming. A nocturnal bird was calling out from a tree—so energetically that it seemed it would bleed from its throat. Most likely, this bird was the magpie. Thinking about it, he realized that Dad had frequently interacted with it on nights like this. Seeing the natural world while half-asleep was always frightening, a little like that bird. He wanted to hide at his dad’s breast, but Dad wanted him to learn to face this. Sometimes, Dad was dissatisfied with him and sent him back to his room, and then he would emerge again on his own.

Back then, Young Tide really wanted to understand Dad, but Dad was too mysterious. In his memories of Dad, only these nights were distinct. When he wrestled with drowsiness, Dad would often slap him in the face, so that he would awaken briefly. Tide didn’t inherit his dad’s vigor and energy, and maybe because of this, he had always been timid. He couldn’t break away from the entanglement of dreamland. Especially at night, he thought that he had weak willpower. If Dad were still here, Dad would surely be enormously disappointed in him. In clear-headed moments, he heard the clamor in the house—so many people wanted to rush out of the house. And Mother would go from room to room closing the windows. Back then, the main door was also tightly closed. But as soon as he was asleep, the windows opened again and—her head in her hands, laden with grief—Mother stood in front of the study window.

When Tide went to the kitchen, he saw Yumiao cooking at the stove. The door was bolted—so how had she gotten in? He thought back to the most recent occurrences and recalled that almost none of the people had come in through the door (because it was always bolted); it seemed they had all flown in. But they themselves said that they had always been in this house.

“I’ve lived in your home for a long time. Didn’t you notice that I ate all the macaroni in your bucket?”

Yumiao was hoarse. Young Tide thought, she must have cried herself hoarse during the night.

“Are other people living in my home, too?” he asked.

“Must be, but I can’t see them. You understand this situation better than anyone else.”

Yumiao called Tide to eat noodles with her. After eating, she tidied up and picked up a spray bottle and went out to the courtyard to water the chrysanthemums. But by the time Tide went out to the courtyard, Yumiao had disappeared. When Young Tide thought about Yumiao, he felt uneasy. This young girl had tried to kill herself three times. Every day at dusk, she floated like a kite. It seemed that just by thinking about it, she could lift her feet from the ground. When she floated back and forth, her haggard mother stood at the door and yelled weakly, “Yu . . . miao! Yu . . . miao!” Young Tide thought that Yumiao’s mother made this seem routine. Young Tide opened the main door and saw Yumiao’s figure in the distance. She was walking fast on the main street—walking decisively. He was puzzled: Had Yumiao actually attempted to kill herself or not? He decided that the next time he saw her, he would ask her. When Dad was alive, Yumiao had not come over here: she was afraid of Dad. Was this because she resembled Dad too much? The two of them were easily excitable; they didn’t sleep much. Tide bolted the door, went back to the courtyard, and saw to his surprise that the jar had fresh water in it. And macaroni, too. Had Yumiao done this? How could Yumiao multi-task? And had the tortoise come back? On the ground were fresh traces of it crawling, but Tide hadn’t seen it yet. Yumiao had probably seen it, and so she’d given it some macaroni.

Tide slept in the washroom one night. After moving to that room to sleep, he no longer heard the women crying, but nonetheless the night was not at all peaceful. If he opened the window, he always sensed something flying in. Even if he was lying down, a feathery thing would brush over his face, then brush past. When this made him jittery, he did what his father had done in the past—paced the corridor. Often, after walking one lap, he would see the light on in a certain room. But when he entered the room, he saw nothing. It was because these rooms made him too keyed up that he came up with the idea of sleeping in the washroom. It was spacious, with camp beds in the center of the room, surrounded by bathtubs, basins, and chamber pots. Water trickled from all manner of faucets. Tide turned on the faucets a little in the bathtubs and sinks, so that he could go to sleep to the sound of dripping water. But his dreams weren’t peaceful: his dreamland was a scorching desert, and his lips split open in wide gaps. Dad also appeared in the desert. His dad reproached him, saying that he was wasting a lot of water. Blaming himself and feeling despair, he sat unmoving on the sand. The sizzling sun overhead sucked the moisture from his body.

He slept three nights in a row in the washroom, and every night he dreamed of Dad. The washroom seemed to be Dad’s domain. Dad was always sternly reproaching him, saying he didn’t value water, saying that he was “digging his own grave.” On the fourth night, he repaired all of the faucets and turned them off tightly. That night, Dad did not show up in his dreams. He dreamed of a lake; growing in the middle of the lake was a large tree reaching to the welkin. Many old trees and old vines grew at the lakeside. The branches of the ancient trees reached the lake’s surface, and the purple vine dipped into the water. This was scenery that he had never seen before. He was so moved that he shed hot tears. Someone shook him hard, waking him. A man whose face was covered with moles stood over him.

“I came here during the last half of the night. Look, the sun is already high in the sky. Time flies in this house of yours!”

Tide remembered that was Fourth Uncle. When Young Tide was eight years old, Fourth Uncle had fallen into a well, and his corpse was never recovered. Later, the well was sealed shut. Extending a paper-white hand, he touched Tide’s face. Tide was so frightened that he nearly stopped breathing. Luckily, he didn’t feel the hand. He remembered that in his dream just now, he had actually felt this man’s shove: he was incredibly strong.

He seemed to know what Tide was thinking. He said, “This—my arm—is the result of years of exercise. Think about it—Just by using the strength of my arm, I was able to climb up from the narrow well that was ninety feet deep. That was really hard to do!”

“Fourth Uncle, how did you fall into the well?”

“Out of curiosity. Just like you—Tide, do you like the water?”

While Fourth Uncle was speaking, his body began twisting. Tide got out of the way, and stared with eyes wide open. He saw him gradually become shorter, finally turning into a piece of cloth spread out on the floor. Tide bent and touched this blue wool cloth; it still held Fourth Uncle’s body warmth.

“Tell me: Do you like the water?” Fourth Uncle’s voice interrogated him from the air.

“Yes, hmm.” Tide spoke a little hesitantly.

“It’s springtime now. Go and find the water, Young Tide.”

“Where should I go?”

“Inside the house. This house has everything! Doesn’t the courtyard still have an ancient abandoned well?”

Tide was shaking from head to foot, so scared was he. He walked out of the washroom and came to Mother’s bedroom. He bolted the door shut so that Fourth Uncle couldn’t catch up with him. On his mother’s bedside cabinet was a large box holding her needles and thread. Inside it were all kinds of thimbles, sewing needles, and buttons, along with all colors of threads. The many kinds of thread were dazzling—more than ten kinds of yellow from light to dark, and reddish-gold, jade-green and many more—all shades of every color. Several hundred colors surrounded his mother during her lifetime. When she embroidered, she had trouble choosing the right threads. “Young Tide, I can’t see very well. Choose a blue for me, a blue with a little smokiness in it, but not gray: it must be a true indigo blue. I might need to mix two kinds of thread to achieve this color,” she had said. But Young Tide didn’t understand at all what she meant. He looked and he looked, and what he finally chose was not indigo thread, but two spools of peach-colored thread. Mother was happy and praised him for his good eye. How could a sandalwood case holding needles and thread be so large? Inside it was one layer after another, with countless small compartments. Besides the necessities for tailoring, there were such things as parts of watches and lenses for nearsighted glasses.

Young Tide was afraid that the damp air would discolor the threads, and so he brought them out—layer after layer—into the fresh air. When he took them down, his fingers touched something stiff—the corpse of a scorpion. It was lying on its back, and it looked very pretty in the midst of the threads shimmering in the golden light. Tide was enraptured. He put the threads back where they came from and covered the case. He gasped: he felt as if he had captured a certain secret idea from his mother’s lifetime.

The window in his mother’s room was open only a crack, but the curtains were moving, and the breeze pushed in. Even after closing the window tight, Tide could hear the wind howling outside. His mother’s wooden bed was so narrow and small: sleeping in it was like sleeping in a coffin. The bedding that he took from the trunk gave off a faint fragrance, as if his mother were still alive and handling it herself. It wasn’t yet light. Tide guessed that Fourth Uncle hadn’t left the house: Was he standing outside the door? As he was about to fall asleep, he thought once again: Mother had been full of unusual and wonderful ideas!

Tide asked Auntie Ming: Was there ever an old abandoned well in the courtyard? Auntie Ming said yes. Years ago, it had been filled in by a beggar.

“He looked frightfully sinister; your parents didn’t dare provoke him. He brought earth over here on a handcart, and worked for an entire week to fill in the old well. He covered the top of the well, too. Your parents hid behind the window and watched his every movement.”

“Where is the well located?” Young Tide asked.

“It was originally at the courtyard wall on the west side, but your parents excavated there one time and found that any traces of the well had disappeared. That’s the way some things are on this earth.”

Auntie Ming was panting, and steadying her huge body by hanging onto the side of the table. She said she wanted to take Tide to the courtyard to look around.

They walked together to the courtyard wall on the west side, where clusters of green celery wormwood were growing—about as tall as a person.

“Did anyone know the beggar?”

“Your mother said that he was a friend your Fourth Uncle had made somewhere else. When he filled in the earth, your Fourth Uncle helped him. I always thought that later, your Fourth Uncle falling into the well had something to do with this beggar.”

Auntie Ming was suddenly overcome with grief. She was moaning as she sat down amid the green celery wormwood. The sun shone on her, and her complexion was awful. Tide thought to himself, she has such a vivid memory of things that happened years ago. She gestured to him and said, “You sit down, too.” Tide sat down near her.

“Look at the sun,” she commanded.

Tide glanced up, and shut his eyes at once.

“Take another look! Young people must suffer a little.”

Tide saw a black circle. He was on the verge of tears. When he looked at the sun, Tide thought that he was disintegrating. He was no longer a single entity, but had become three. One was sitting amid the green celery wormwood here. One was wandering in the house. And one was standing at the main entrance, unable to decide whether or not to go out to the main road.

“Tide!” Auntie Ming yelled in an overbearing manner.

“Hey!” the in-three-places Tide responded together, so that his voice filled the entire courtyard.

When he drew his gaze back from the sun, the three became one again, still sitting amid the green celery wormwood.

“Your mind is wandering.” Auntie Ming smirked. “Tell me the truth: How’s everything at home?”

“Fine,” he answered mechanically.

“That’s good. That’s good. Your parents’ painstaking effort wasn’t in vain. I am also going to retire.”

“Retire?”

“I meant that I’m not going to come to your home again. Your parents casually entrusted you to me. In all the world, what parents can do this? Who can take on this responsibility? Fortunately…”

Tide felt that Auntie Ming’s annoyance was an affectation and that she was laughing up her sleeve the whole time. She missed Tide’s home so much that she had to come over almost every other day. Sure, this wasn’t completely because of him, nor was her younger sister Auntie Lotus coming over because of him. The two of them liked the atmosphere of this empty house; they were people who enjoyed pretending to be ghosts. Then what on earth did his house have? Why did the living and the ghosts all like to come here? Tide gave voice to this question. Auntie Ming stood up and answered:

“You can figure this out for yourself. Everything is here, isn’t that so? You must have thought about going far away. You don’t have to think aimlessly. All you have to do is look more often at the sun and your heart will be calm. It’s so wonderful here. When I make bread, and hear the nightingales sing in your courtyard, the shadows carrying lanterns shuttle back and forth amid the thoroughwort. In this city, this is the only place that’s peaceful.”

A long time after she left, Tide could still smell the aroma of bread on her body. She was a woman filled with the fragrance of life. Every time she entered this house, she brought the bakery’s human aroma with her. For this, Tide was grateful to her.

He kept changing the water in the tortoise’s jar, but he didn’t see it again. It seemed to have come back, but that must have been when he was asleep inside. When he didn’t sleep in the courtyard, it didn’t keep him company. It was an animal in touch with the spirits.

Tide thought, although his home had a door, it might as well not have had one: everyone could come in. It was because of this that Auntie Ming had said that his home had everything. Apparently, it was exactly like this when his parents were alive, and probably one could trace this back even further. Even further.