chapter 6

chapter 6

My name was Nan Tao.

I was fated never to escape.

In truth, there had never been such a thing as a ginseng-fruit tree, nor any natural ginseng fruit.

Peach trees bore peaches. Plum trees bore plums. But whatever a tree had once been, the moment someone transplanted it here, it became a ginseng-fruit tree.

I had been a peach tree in the south. Someone transplanted me here, and I became a ginseng-fruit tree.

There had once been a flowering plum tree here too. It was transplanted and became another ginseng-fruit tree.

A customer came to buy ginseng fruit, but none of the fruits pleased him. So the seller led him directly into the garden and offered to sell him a tree.

The man walked among them, picking and choosing. “You call this a ginseng-fruit tree? It doesn’t look like one. This is plainly a flowering plum!”

The seller could only admit, “It used to be a flowering plum, but now it is a ginseng-fruit tree. Take it home and it will bear ginseng fruit all the same.”

“Are there no natural ginseng-fruit trees?”

“There are, but we’re not allowed to grow them here. They grow only in foreign lands. Ginseng fruits are rare treasures reserved as offerings to the Jade Emperor and Queen Mother of the West. Mortals like us must settle for fruit grown on a flowering plum.”

After much persuasion, the man bought the flowering plum and planted it at home to produce ginseng fruits. His family, people said, was poor and lazy. They did no farmwork and expected the tree to support them all.

At first the tree tried to run home and become a flowering plum again.

But its buyer bound it, nailed it, and suppressed it.

For twenty-four years, it failed to escape.

Over those years, it bore eight crops. Its buyer tore the fruits away and ate them. Each became an evil creature that turned back to hack at the tree that bore it.

Later, the flowering plum vanished. Some said the holy monk rescued it. Others said that as soon as the monk and his three disciples left, the tree was chopped down.

After twenty-four years, it could no longer bear ginseng fruit anyway.

Another household also bought a ginseng-fruit tree. Theirs had not begun as a flowering plum, but as a peach tree from the south.

This family was neither poor nor lazy. They owned considerable wealth.

Their only problem was that Madam could not bear a child.

Master was forever straying outside. To keep his heart, Madam devised an ingenious plan.

She bought a young maid, promising at first that the girl would do nothing but sweep and clean.

One day, while the maid washed Madam’s feet, Madam struck her unconscious with a candlestick.

When the maid awoke, Master was pulling up his under-trousers.

“Do not blame me,” Madam said. “If I had not done this, Master would have cast me aside.”

The maid refused to submit. She screamed that she would report them to the magistrate. She remembered the egg-eating women in the empty room and saw her own end before her.

Master and Madam alternated threats with promises. One moment they claimed they would treat her as family; the next, they held her bond of servitude over her head.

At last they locked her away. They tied her up, beat her with sticks, and doused her in cold water until she could no longer resist.

Even then, the maid did not conceive Master’s child.

So one night another man opened the door to her room.

This time it was not Master.

The maid became pregnant. A forced coupling planted the seed; pregnancy bore its fruit.

Only then did Master discover that Madam was not the barren one.

He was.

But that made no sense. Years ago, Madam had given birth to a stillborn child.

A physician had examined her, declared the fetus female, and given her a pill that would turn it male.

If Master could father no children, whose child had Madam borne?

He worried the question until the tangled threads in his head twisted into a rope.

The next day, one end of that rope encircled Madam’s neck.

The other hung from a branch of the tree in the courtyard.

Madam’s feet swung in the air, striking the trunk again and again.

If she had not secretly conceived another man’s child, why would she have rushed to marry this penniless one?

She had handed him her family fortune. Now she had surrendered her life as well.

After her death, what woman would enjoy all that wealth? The maid still carried a child. If it was a son, everything would fall neatly into her hands.

Madam hanged from the peach tree. The tree stood lifeless. Its blossoms withered, yet it continued to bear ginseng fruit.

Ten months later, the maid gave birth to a beautiful daughter.

Master did not want a girl.

He decided to bury her beneath the tree.

Madam was already buried there.

No one could blame him, he thought. If the baby had been a boy, he would certainly have kept it. The child would have inherited his surname and kept his incense burning.

But it was a useless girl.

So bury it. It was not his daughter anyway.

When the maid learned that her daughter was to be buried, she dragged her ruined body from the birthing bed and decided to fight one more time—for her child, and for escape.

That night, when Master ordered the baby buried, the maid said, “She is flesh fallen from my body. Please let me bury her with my own hands.”

At first he refused.

Then the maid promised to bear him a son.

Master considered this and agreed.

She carried her daughter beneath the tree while Master watched from behind. Gathering all her courage, she whirled and struck him with the shovel.

Years of hunger and terror had left her body as frail as a torn kite.

Her blow lacked strength. Master fell, but he did not die.

Clutching her daughter, the maid ran through the gate. Her confinement month was not over. Something inside her seemed to tear, and a warm, sticky fluid ran down the legs of her trousers.

She looked back.

Master, his face covered in blood, was climbing to his feet.

She could not escape.

She would never escape.