DIVINATION
Qingqu is a small county in the south. Developers have not had their way with it yet, so the buildings keep their own flavor. Along the river and the lanes rise rows of blue brick and green tile. Most are self-built, not tall, two or three stories at most, each with a little courtyard. Some courtyards are used for parking. Others grow scallions, ginger, garlic, or roses and begonias, all depending on taste.
At first light, Xun Ruosu stood in her own yard. In her left hand she held an old-style pocket watch. The bronze face, well cared for, had still taken on a thin green patina over time. Its hands were not accurate; it felt more like a keepsake. In her right palm rested a gold ingot folded from paper. It looked light, yet when the wind passed it did not stir at all.
In the middle of the courtyard sat a pure pine coffin. Black ink lines had been snapped across its lid. At the true north end of the lid hung a palm-sized spirit bell. The coffin’s four corners were raised off the ground, propped on bowls filled with water. A white vigil lamp burned in front. The whole setup looked as if they feared whatever lay inside might sit up.
Suddenly someone knocked. The courtyard was old, and even the gate showed its age. It was redwood, newly repainted with vermilion lacquer. The person outside was knocking hard. Xun Ruosu took two steps and opened the door.
Outside stood a full funeral troupe. There was a chanting monk, suona players, and even the mourners along the way had changed into their mourning attire. The one knocking was the manager, about thirty, dressed in a sharp suit. People in Qingqu and the nearby counties are quite superstitious. The funeral trade thrives and pays well. His suit was not cheap.
He craned his neck for a look into the yard, then drew his gaze back to Xun Ruosu.
“My condolences, miss. May you find peace. May I ask who in your family has passed?” He stepped aside and pointed at the thirty or forty people waiting outside. “This is the full service you ordered. We will see your loved one off lively, never alone on the road. And when we retrieve the ashes for burial, we’ll include hell money, gold ingots, and a paper house at no extra-”
The manager broke off. When he first came in, he had only glanced at the courtyard. Now, speaking, he looked again, carefully, at Xun Ruosu and that coffin. The words stuck in his throat and would go no further. His face froze. He looked a little scared.
“Then… miss, exactly who in your family has died?” A pine coffin raised on bowls, ink lines, a vigil lamp. Even to ward off ghosts you would not go this far.
“No one is dead yet.” Xun Ruosu yawned. She smiled at the manager. “That coffin is for me.”
As if the line were not chilling enough, her last syllable drifted, a thread of cold slipping into the ears of the whole team. The manager’s knees knocked. Behind him came sharp intakes of breath.
It was all the manager’s fault for raising the price, splitting the money from the deceased, and relying on a verbal agreement without a contract. He called three times before dawn and dragged Xun Ruosu out of bed, saying, “The funeral is tomorrow. Your deposit is paid. It’s too late to find someone else. Add three thousand and I will arrange everything perfectly.”
Xun Ruosu was a light sleeper plagued by dreams. If someone forced her awake, the resulting morning grumpiness could drag on from the small hours all the way to midnight.
Creepy as it was, this was a big order, and the manager only handled arrangements, not the coffin itself. In broad daylight he steadied himself and forced a grin. “How could you joke about something like that? No living person lies in a coffin. It is terribly inauspicious.”
“Oh?” Xun Ruosu turned the paper ingot between her fingers. “You did not notice I am wearing shouyi, burial clothes?”
He was about to pee himself. Please, for heaven’s sake, stop talking, he thought.
His eyes slid back to Xun Ruosu.
She didn’t get out much, so her complexion was a bit pale. Her features weren’t dull for it. Far from it. She was a rose, beautiful and thorny. Her eyes particularly, languid and deep. Most pupils show brown or gray in the sunlight. Hers were a bottomless pit, black without a ripple.
She wore a dark indigo qipao. The cut was formal, with the faint shimmer of embroidered peonies. It was not something one would normally wear out.
She flipped the pocket watch in her hand, and only then did the manager notice that the back was a compass. A compass itself was nothing strange, but every engraved line had been traced over in cinnabar, a blood red that looked abrupt and eerie against her pale fingers.
The manager stepped back. “M… miss, how about I drop that three thousand, all right? It is broad daylight. Please do not scare me.”
Xun Ruosu smiled, reached out, and took his wrist. She gave a light tug. She did not use much force, yet it set him straight and still less than half a meter from her. “Manager Hu, no need to be nervous. I am only a fortune teller.” She curled her fingers in and smoothed his palm. “Let me give you one hexagram. ‘Your name was written long ago in the Book of Merit. Do not cheat the dead, thinking they will not return.’”
The manager clearly didn’t get it. When Xun Ruosu drew back her hand, a chill seemed to skim the back of his head; gooseflesh sprang up and all he wanted was to rattle off the essentials and get out of this trouble spot.
Xun Ruosu did not push him. She was never the type to worry about others’ life and death. She let go of the manager. The rest of this I will handle myself. It is not convenient to have guests at home, so I won’t keep Manager Hu for tea.”.
“Too kind, too kind.” Manager Hu’s legs moved in a pumping motion as he squeezed into the van and turned the key. Only then did he get up the courage to yell in the direction of the door, “I’ll be back at noon tomorrow to collect the individual. Meanwhile, miss, you’re responsible for meals!”
Before the words were out, the van had already shot off, and he made the narrow alley out front feel like a racetrack.
The people he’d dumped there traded looks. It would be a lie to say no one was afraid, when it touches life and death, even the staunchest materialist feels a little awe. All the more so with a lot like this, fake monks and hired mourners posing as sons1, who made their money off the dead. Once Manager Hu left, only two were in charge: the chanting master and the suona elder.
Their trade runs on rules and hierarchy; unless the host invites you, you don’t cross the threshold. So while Manager Hu was talking to Xun Ruosu, they were all queued outside. Even after he left, she still didn’t say “please come in.” Arms folded, she leaned against the doorframe and let out another sleep-starved yawn.
“May I ask, miss, is your surname Xun?” The speaker was the master in monk’s robes, dharma name Yuanjue. He wasn’t a real monk, but he took the work seriously: any Buddhist classic he could borrow, he would copy and memorize. He believed in gods, Buddhas, and ghosts, and he liked to read tales of marvels.
Yuanjue had heard there was a Xun family in Qingqu County who lived by fortune-telling-nine readings out of ten were dead on, and the tenth was unspeakable. The pity was they never lived long. Some said it was Heaven’s punishment.
This job shouldn’t have come to him at all, but curiosity got the better of him. He even offered to forgo pay just to hitch a ride to the Xun household.
Xun Ruosu lifted her thin lids. There were two things she dreaded most in life: people who were too enthusiastic, and problems that refused to resolve.
Yuanjue wasn’t young, and delight was written all over his face; his voice even trembled a little with excitement, squarely the “too enthusiastic” type. Out of courtesy she gave him a small nod, perfunctory as it was.
The Xuns were known across Qingqu County; even if you hadn’t met them, you’d heard of them. A dozen years ago they moved from the county seat to the city and fell silent. Only in the last two years had they returned to the old house-where the hosts had changed from a couple in their thirties to a lone young woman.
Xun Ruosu had inherited the family craft and ran a small stall for readings, but she only did three a day, and only for happy occasions, not funerals.
Joyous red affairs are festive to begin with; it’s the kind of gig where skill hardly shows and no one can say if you were accurate or not, so there weren’t many neighbors eager to sing her praises. Some days she couldn’t even fill the three readings and had to do what she was doing today: give one away.
Yuanjue’s interest in the old house and its occupant was mostly for the Xun ancestors’ reputation.
He’d come buzzing with curiosity, but the thrill of visiting a supposed wonder-worker vanished on sight. Xun Ruosu was simply too real, nothing about her looked mystical.
Rumor had it the Xun bloodline was blind. Xun Ruosu clearly wasn’t. She looked like any ordinary person. If she had anything “special,” it was that she was beautiful, stunning enough to seem a little otherworldly. She kept people at arm’s length and wasn’t easy to approach, yet because of that face, talking to her felt oddly refreshing.
Yuanjue lowered his eyes and murmured, “Amitabha.” “From what you said to our manager just now, is the one being sent off today… you, miss?”
She didn’t look like someone about to stop breathing. In all his years in the trade, even the childless had collateral kin-uncles, aunts, cousins-to help. He had never seen a client arrange to send herself off. The thought of it felt bleak.
Xun Ruosu handed Yuanjue a paper gold ingot. He accepted it without thinking. The cheap gilt rubbed off wherever it touched. She sighed. “Just how short on virtue is Manager Hu, to throw a bunch like you together.”
…Yuanjue had the sense that wasn’t a compliment.
Xun Ruosu truly was in a hurry to lie down in the coffin-longing for the long sleep that comes after.
She’d scraped together only three or four hours of broken sleep last night, and Manager Hu was the sort who would even shear wool off the dead. He’d sworn everything was arranged, yet of the thirty or forty people outside, half cast no shadow even in daylight, their yin chill fixed on her in rictus grins, each one thrusting out a beggar’s hand right under her nose like kids at New Year angling for hongbao (red envelopes):
Even the living get paper gold ingots – why don’t I?
The Xuns could read Heaven’s will and even divide the hour of their own death, yet never gauge how low people would stoop for money. Looking at the coffin already prepared in her courtyard, Xun Ruosu suddenly had the feeling that her journey to the Yellow Springs could be rough, that she might not die peacefully.
1 the word here was used “Filial sons, true sons” (孝子, xiaozi): like they are paid mourners who act as the deceased’s sons or male kin in traditional funerals, wearing plain white mourning clothes and performing duties like kneeling and wailing.