The End of the River: Finale
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The next day, Emerald found her friend’s photo in the front page of the local newspaper, which was brought by Sir Yi, a salt merchant, one of her customers. Her hands slightly paused as she caught the sight of the unnoticeable photo when she gave a message on his shoulders. The front page was half covered with a huge photo of the execution the day before, in which Lord Mei was easily recognized in the center with a strikingly scarlet cross over his face. Plum’s photo was posited in the corner, which Emerald immediately spotted.
It was a half-length photo, in which Plum was clad in the royal blue school uniform, unsmiling, with a frosty and stern look in her face. Her eyes were cold and sharp, so penetrating that at one time, Emerald had an illusion that she was being gazed by this impassive girl in the photo. This flickering of thought made Emerald’s body slightly shudder. She withdrew her sight and resumed the message. Sir Yi languidly lay on the reclining chair and leafed through the newspaper, with his cheek stuffed with the roast chestnut.
“Master Yi, could you please read a piece of news for me?” Emerald screwed up her courage and asked tentatively.
“Whew! Never imagined that you little chick are concerned about the state events!” Sir Yi turned his head toward her and grinned, “Which one? The Suppression, I suppose?”
“No,” Emerald blushed and lightly waved her head, with her finger pointing at the news in the corner of the left column in the front page, “this one.”
Sir Yi leaned forward and closely looked at the news, “Mei Jing’e…” He squinted his eyes and followed the lines, “daughter of the chief special agent Mei Yuting…claims that she has formally severed her relationship with her father…and…aha, she announces that she has willingly joined the Communist Party!”
The news had so greatly pounded her heart. Emerald vacantly stared at the photo and muttered dully, “Sever the relationship…You mean she has cut off the father-daughter relationship? Why should she do so?”
“My good Heaven! It’s as pain as the nose on your face! Of course for survival! Can’t you see she is an arch criminal’s daughter? Dynasty has changed. This world is no longer named after Chiang Kai-shek but after Chairman Mao now! Don’t you know that in the course of history, the descendents of remaining forces of the previous dynasty can never escape from being punished, even executed? This girl’s got no choice.”
Struck numb by Sir Yi’s words, Emerald speechlessly paused, with her eyes fixed upon the girl’s face in the photo. The face was still gazing at her. At one moment, it appeared extremely strange, as if she had never seen such a face before, as if her memory concerning this face had eternally sunk under the waves of her heart…
“Harder. Rub harder on the right side,” Sir Yi spat the rind of the chestnut on the ground and complained, “Use your strength! Your hands are as weak as a bean sprout!”
Dragged back to reality by the man’s grumble, Emerald hastily apologized, and concentrated her strength with all her might on the firm and rigid muscle of the man’s shoulders again.
The next morning, when Sir Yi finished clothing, grabbed a handful of roast chestnuts in his pockets and was about to leave the boat, Emerald asked him to leave the newspaper for her. After he went ashore, Emerald flattened the newspaper on her dressing table, and put out a pair of small silver scissors out of her dresser drawer. She held the scissors, gazing at the photo in the left column in a daze, and for one moment, she hesitated. Her eyes softly delineated each line of her friend’s face, with her fingers lightly touching the fuzzy texture of the photo. Then she silently read her friend’s announcement besides her photo, one word after another. After she read it four times round and round as a cow chewed the cud, she determinedly bit her lips and cautiously cut the photo off along the edge. After a deep breathe, she withdrew her lingering eyes and carefully doubled up the photo and put it in an embroidered sachet. Finally, she locked it in the deepest recess of her dresser drawer.
One drizzly afternoon, when Emerald came back from the street market to her boat, she found a glass bowl lying on the windowsill beside the lantern. In the bowl, two water lilies quietly floated on the surface of water, with the roots concealed in some little pebbles in the bottom. She stopped and starred at the flowers for a while. The pinky purple petals, kissed by the drizzle, shimmered placidly with a haze of silver. It was so beautiful. She thought. For moment, she wanted to figure out who put it here. But when she softly touched the petal, its smoothness gave her a very unusual feeling, as if her fingers were gently caressed and the dust over her heart was lightly whisked off. She didn’t say anything, but carefully put it on her dressing table and watched it absorbedly. The two flowers tenderly nestled together, with the petals intertwined, circled by a small ripple.
The other day, when she came to Mama Zhao’s boat to hand in her weekly money, Emerald heard of one thing. Mei Jing’e, Lord Mei’s daughter had been betrothed to a peasant’s son in a faraway north village and left the town the day before. “A peasant’s son!” Mama Zhao repeated twice, puffing off a ring of smoke, “Can you believe it? That Lord Mei’s daughter?” Master Qian, lying on a smocking couch, gave a languid laugh and said, “Time’s changed, that’s the way it goes. Anyway, there is nothing to be worried, my Mama. No matter when it is, our business is always the same, isn’t it?”
Emerald sat aside and peeled a green orange without a word. She slowly tore up the rind one after another, vacantly watching out of the window. The pungent odor of freshness and a little acerbity hung in the thick air, and the shinning juicy particles subtly floated in the beans of the sunlight. Outside of the window, the morning mist had been clearly cast away. The river was as calm as ever, with thin grass swaying with the shadowy reflection of the clouds and hills. Some waterfowls skittered over the surface of the water, and dragonflies stopped at the stalks of the reeds. Emerald stared vaguely at the farthest point in the north, the convergence of the river, hills and sky. She plucked a piece of the orange flesh and put it into mouth. Yet it tasted terribly sour. The unripe orange. The bitter sourness screw up her face, set her teeth on edge, and bit her stomach. Tears out. As if possessed, she swallowed the rest orange at one gulp. The acerbic juice permeated from her tongue. She gaped her mouth, with stuffed cheek, as if about to utter something. Yet not a word was squeezed from her lips but a sad and uneasy smile.
