The Girl with No Face Read online

No sign this girl had ever had any form of soul.

  TWO

  How?” The word echoed in the quiet room.

  The question ran through me, resounding through my dizzy mind. How was this possible? The contents of my stomach churned. Doubled over, I felt like vomiting; I tasted sour bile rising in my throat. I refused to desecrate this cadaver, so I stepped away from the table.

  My breathing came out chopped, in fast shallow gulps. What had happened to this child? Some Daoshi say humans have three hun, or higher souls; others argue there is one higher soul in three portions; I took no side in the dispute, but whether it was one of the girl’s three souls or one third of her complete soul, something should inhabit the corpse or hover nearby, a remnant of the child’s humanity, a kind of unconscious hum. It was missing. Had it been stolen? Destroyed? Captured somehow? I’d never heard of such a thing.

  I pursed my lips, trying to figure out what to do. Did I know any rituals that could help me find what was missing from her? A thought occurred to me. The Returning Soul Ritual was performed during funerals and the Ghost Festival; this would be outside its intended context, but it might be of use here. I lit some white sandalwood incense, held it straight up toward the heavens, and then I blew my breath upwards, launching the symbol up heavenward with the incense smoke.

  I imagined then the Golden Light Seal Character, and blasted it up to heaven with my breath. Finally I envisioned the Fragrant Cloud Seal Character; and with a final outpouring of breath, I sent that to the heavens as well.

  Then I waited. I listened for a response, like someone tossing a stone off a bridge, waiting to hear it hit land. I felt for a response. But it was as if a law of nature had been broken; as if the dropped stone fell and fell forever, never reaching the ground.

  Had the flowers that grew inside her eaten her soul? The thought made me shudder. I couldn’t get over the hideousness of it. Growing up as the Daoshi’s daughter, I had seen many other cadavers. This object was just meat, unlike any other corpse I’d seen; it was not a dead person, just a dead thing, and it made no sense to me at all.

  I needed another perspective. I needed to hear someone else’s thoughts, to see through another pair of eyes.

  Or perhaps just one eye would do.

  From the satchel where I stored my ritual tools, I withdrew a small bamboo flute called a koudi, and held it in both hands. Though it was only two inches long, when I placed it between my lips and started blowing into its center hole, the whistling that emerged was clean and clear. Using both hands, I piped a brief melody, and repeated it.

  A tiny figure, no longer than one of my fingers, stepped out from behind a candlestick. The spirit resembled a man’s eyeball, with little arms and legs giving him a roughly humanoid shape. He bowed theatrically. “How can I help you, Li-lin?”

  Seeing Mr. Yanqiu made me relax a little. The eyeball spirit had been created for a single purpose: to save me. I’d been comatose, my consciousness trapped in the spirit world; to rescue me, my father created Mr. Yanqiu by gouging out one of his own eyes. Father’s sacrifice meant more to me than I could say, and the spirit of his eye had become my most trusted friend and confidant.

  I filled the eyeball spirit in on the events of the afternoon. He stared in silence at the empty corpse. Eventually I said, “None of it makes sense, Mr. Yanqiu. None of it adds up. All it leaves is a corpse more dead than anything that has ever lived and died.”

  “Let’s return to how she died,” Mr. Yanqiu said, rubbing a hand on the white of his eye. “Flowers grew from her mouth and suffocated her. Suppose this was some kind of demonic plant. Could it have eaten her souls?”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” I said. “Hulijing, or fox spirits, like to devour the yang energy of the living, but they do not eat souls.”

  “I see,” the eyeball said, clasping his hands behind him. He started to pace back and forth on the table. “Li-lin, are you sure you should look into this situation?”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Yanqiu?”

  “I mean, has your boss ordered you to investigate this?”

  “No,” I said.

  “So he might not be happy if you take time away from your duties to try to learn about this girl and her death, when he has not told you to look into it, or even given you permission to try to learn more.”

  I gazed spears at the little spirit. “This matters to me.”

  “Why, Li-lin? What’s so important that you’re willing to go out on your own and risk your boss’s anger?”

  “She is,” I said, indicating the corpse. “She came to this country alone, or was brought her against her will, and she passed like money between one man’s hands and another’s. She lived in this community where nearly everyone around her was male, and she died. Now even her corpse has lost its soul. Someone needs to find out what happened to her. Someone needs to care. She will not be forgotten. I will find out what happened to this girl. If her soul still exists, I will protect her; and if not, I will avenge her.”

  “Li-lin, you speak as if this girl was all alone in the world, but you said yourself that it sounds like Xu Shengdian treated his wife decently, and tried to craft a comfortable life for her.”

  “All true, Mr. Yanqiu,” I said. “But he gave her nothing to aspire to, no more than lending luck to one gambler. Every life needs meaning.”

  “Does it, Li-lin?” His gaze was penetrating. “Where is your life’s meaning?”

  “I protect the living and assist the dead, Mr. Yanqiu.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if that’s enough,” the eyeball said.

  “What do you mean, Mr. Yanqiu?”

  “Li-lin,” he said, putting thought into his words, “isn’t it easier, in some way, to live for the past? You devote yourself to the dead. The dead will never fail you, betray you, or disappoint you. You grieve those who passed, and you wear your mourning like a funereal gown. But you are young, and the grief you feel, Li-lin, it burdens you.”

  “Should I not honor my dead, Mr. Yanqiu? My husband’s greatness, my mother’s sacrifice, you would have me simply forget them?”

  “Forget?” he said. “No, don’t ever forget them. But I know about your nightmares.”

  I suppressed a shudder. Ever since I was a child, a recurring nightmare sometimes afflicted my nights. I called it the Blood Dream; perhaps it was an echo of my voyage in the Blood Pond. The Blood Dream paralyzed me, flooded me with the seeping wounds of all my losses; I saw my mother dead and could do nothing, and now, for the last three years, in my Blood Dream, I powerlessly watched my husband die, over and over.

  “Mr. Yanqiu,” I said at last, “I choose to celebrate the people who meant the world to me, once; the people who cared about me are gone.”

  “You say everyone who cared about you is dead,” Mr. Yanqiu said. “And it’s true your father disowned you. It’s true he never gave you the kind of encouragement you sought. But I think you underestimate his feelings for you.”

  “Still?” I said.

  “Still,” Mr. Yanqiu said. “I am his eye, remember, and my life has a purpose too. My purpose is saving you, even when you’re the one you need to be saved from.”

  I glanced to the corpse on the table. “What was the purpose of her life?”

  Mr. Yanqiu stood stiffly for a few moments, saying nothing. “Maybe we could ask her,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “One of her higher soul portions is supposed to remain with her corpse, is that right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And that portion of her soul is not there.”

  “The soul of her corpse is missing,” he said. “Are the other two soul portions where they are supposed to be?”

  “You, my friend,” I said, “have just earned yourself more time in a warm cup of tea. Thank you for that suggestion.”

  I transcribed Xu Anjing’s Eight Details onto a sheet of yellow rice paper. I drew three check marks at the top, then stamped my chop, three times, in vermilion ink.
r />   I held the talisman up to a candle flame, allowing it to catch fire. Quickly it went up, the flame bright in the dim chamber. The talisman crumbled into ashes, transformed into a spirit message.

  I reached out and touched the spirit message, feeling for the pulses of the spirit paper.

  “What’s wrong, Li-lin?”

  “There’s no sense of attachment here,” I said. “Xu Anjing and her name and details should be drawn to each other; this spirit message should have a kind of pulse of its own, trying to unite with the soul of the person.”

  “And it doesn’t feel that way?”

  “No,” I said. “It feels inert.”

  “So that means something has happened to her soul?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “It could just be that the Eight Details are wrong.”

  “So the girl died, with flowers growing out of her mouth,” he said. “That’s the first mystery. What kind of plant grows inside a human being and suffocates her? Then, her shihun, the higher soul of her corpse, is missing. That’s the second mystery. And now . . .”

  “Now her Eight Details are attached to nothing in the spirit world,” I said. “The third mystery.”

  “Do you have any way to confirm whether the Eight Details are accurate?”

  “Yes,” I said, but I had to wince. “There is someone who can tell me more.”

  The eyeball waited for me to continue, but I said nothing. He stared at me. It felt like a minute went by in silence.

  “You’re going to talk to your father, aren’t you,” he said.

  I did not reply.

  “Are you ready for this, Li-lin?”

  I did not reply.

  He buried his iris and pupil in his little hands.

  THREE

  Ileft Xie Liang territory and headed into the Ansheng neighborhoods. No sign marked the boundary. The same chop suey parlors doling out rice and vegetables with a little meat, the same barbershops, the same little factories where men rolled cigars or made clothing.

  My old home turf felt unreal to me now. I passed a corner where two boys used to spar together, and play shuttlecock, while I would watch. Still walking, I remembered those playful afternoons and those joyful and competitive boys as they once were, in the years before I married one and crippled the other. I turned the corner.

  I walked past men lined up to read the news from China on bulletins pasted to the wall, waited for a horse-and-buggy to clatter past, and kept on walking. I slowed for a moment when I reached the stretch of road that would always be, to me, The Place Where I Climbed Out Of My Bridal Sedan, and continued walking past another location that would forever remain The Place Where My Husband Was Killed. As I passed the men on the street, many glanced toward me, eyes flickering with recognition, perhaps that girl used to live around here or Rocket’s widow or the Daoshi ’s daughter.

  At last I approached the corner of California and Dupont, where a few men gathered to watch my father’s nightly ritual.

  Father threw a paper horse into his bonfire. By firelight, under the first smattering of stars, his expression seemed severe. His graying mustache and eyebrows reflected orange, red, yellow, brightly lit with flame, dark with stark shadows. He was wearing the sand-yellow linen robes of a Daoshi, embroidered with trigrams from the Yi Jing. His black cap sloped upward like a rooftop. People watched him, both living and dead.

  He must have bought a glass eye since the last time we’d seen each other. Glossy, white, and sightless, it lolled in its socket. At his side was a large burlap sack, filled with paper objects he intended to offer to the spirits.

  I watched the paper horse crumble into ashes and become spirit. Standing in the spirit world, the horse looked docile; it had been saddled, bridled, and blinkered. A thin ghost in worn gray linen led the horse away.

  The spirit of Father’s eye watched the dead man and his horse fade into shadows. “That man seems happy.”

  “He should,” I said. “He’s got a horse now, to pull his plow in Hell. And he can ride it when he wants, just like you ride me.”

  Mr. Yanqiu laughed. “My life would be better if you came with reins and a bit.”

  “Careful, little friend, or you might find fish oil mixed in your next teacup.” He pretended to shudder at the empty threat, and then we grew quiet. “Does Father look tired to you?” I asked.

  “How could I know, Li-lin? I’m not accustomed to seeing him from outside.”

  After my father gouged out one of his eyes and sent the spirit of his eye to help me, Father had expected me to destroy the spirit. Destroying it wouldn’t have restored his eye; my father wanted it destroyed simply because it was one of the yaoguai—a strange monster. When I had refused to kill Mr. Yanqiu, Father disowned me.

  I wondered if he ever missed me.

  Ashes drifted past me, borne aloft in a slight breeze from the Bay. This afternoon’s rain had left puddles amid the cobblestones, and ashes floated down to the water, congealing together into a liquid I found all too familiar: when I was young, my father used to make me drink water infused with the ashes of burnt talismans. It had been a futile effort to cure me of my yin eyes. To cure me of seeing things the way I did, and do.

  Scraps of charred paper drifted by, on a cold wind.

  It must have been that cold wind. Because nothing ever distracted my father; his concentration was monumental. So it must have been the cold wind that made him look up, turn his head from the fire, and without any glancing around, his attention impaled me like an arrow to the heart.

  He scowled.

  I swallowed.

  The air between us seemed to stiffen and burn. Mr. Yanqiu ducked back into my pocket, hiding, as if my father could see him.

  My father’s arm reached out. He flexed his fingers, and for a moment, I thought he was performing a hex with his hand, but no, his fingers merely beckoned.

  My feet began moving, taking me to him, and in moments I stood near him, close enough to touch each other.

  Or to kick each other.

  I had thought about him so often in the months we’d been separated. I had prepared a hundred scenes in my mind, rehearsed them in my imagination, and now I had come face-to-face with the great man and I had no idea how to act.

  “Li-lin,” he said, “I know what you are planning, and I will not allow you to carry out your evil schemes.”

  FOUR

  Ido not know what plans you mean, Father,” I said.

  “Do not call me ‘Father,’” he snapped, “you unfilial woman! You have no father, as I have no child.”

  His words cracked like a whip. “Very well then,” I said, “I shall call you Sifu, since I still have much to learn from you, and hold you in the highest regard.”

  He harrumphed, sounding just like Mr. Yanqiu. Which made sense, since the spirit had been his eye, once, and I still did not understand how much of a connection remained between the two of them.

  “But,” I continued, “I assure you, Sifu, I am planning nothing, let alone something evil. All I do with my life is bide my time, fulfill my duties, and honor my husband.”

  His human eye and his glass orb gazed at me. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but stern. “You have undertaken no Major Rites?”

  “I say it again, Father—I mean, Sifu—I am not performing any Major Rite, and I do not even know what Major Rites you are discussing.”

  His human eye looked as hard as the glass one, as he replied, “You are certain of this, Li-lin?”

  I could not keep the anger from my words. “Certain of it, Sifu? You think I would perform a Major Rite and forget I’d done so? Could I have done it by accident, unintentionally memorizing long passages of scripture, chanting them every day at the same time without meaning to? Oh yes, Father—Sifu—let me say, if I had done such a thing, I would be certain I had done it.”

  “Spare me your indignation,” he said. “This is important, Li-lin. Not a time for female emotions.”

  “Is it ever?”

 
; “Enough, woman. If you aren’t behind the rites, then what are you doing here?”

  “A novice came looking for her senior,” I said, “hoping to learn. “

  His chiseled features and white mustache took on a considering look for a few moments. Reaching into his satchel, he rummaged about until he found what he was looking for, then withdrew four wooden rods, each about sixteen inches long. He extended a pair to me, and, hesitant, I took them from his hands.

  He raised a stick in each hand. “You wish to talk? Then spar.”

  The idea made me cringe. I loved sparring because it gave me a chance to get out of my head and allow my body’s intelligence to drive me. The idea of holding a conversation while sparring felt sad to me, though.

  I observed the way his hands held the rods, studied the stance he had taken. “As if they were butterfly swords?” I asked. At his nod I assumed a sideways horse stance and chopped the wooden rods through a butterfly sequence, growing accustomed to their weight and balance.

  We bowed to each other, balanced back, and, centered, we went at it. In swift relentless motions, my father stabbed and sliced at me with his rods, and I parried; the tap-tap-tapping of our wooden implements together sounded like a drum. I knew my father would build rhythms to fool an opponent. The moment his sparring partner believed the rhythm was consistent, Father would break the pattern with a ruthless strike.

  It came, a lash upwards. His rod hit hard and trapped my fingers against my own weapon. I stepped back, wincing and flexing my knuckles.

  If I were in a real fight with real swords, my fingers would have been severed, the sword would have dropped from my hand, and my opponent would have gone in for the kill. I was lucky this was only sparring, with practice swords.

  “You should not be so careless,” he said.

  I lowered my head as he stalked forward. “Ask me your question,” he said, bombarding me with stabs (I dodged) and slashes (I parried).

  “Sifu,” I said, deflecting one of his rods, “are you familiar with a plant that can suffocate people from the inside?”

  Abruptly his defenses left an opening, and I thrust just lightly enough to make contact with his shoulder.