Nie Xiaoqian

Ning Caichen was a man of Zhejiang. He was open-hearted and generous, and strict in his own conduct. He would often tell people, “In all my life I have never had eyes for a second woman.”

He happened to be going to Jinhua, and outside the north wall of the city he set down his baggage at a temple1. Its halls and pagoda were grand and beautiful, but the weeds grew taller than a man, and it seemed no one ever came there. The monks’ quarters to the east and west stood with their double doors pulled to but not fastened; only one small room, to the south, had a lock that looked new. Looking again, at the east corner of the main hall he saw bamboo as thick as two hands could span, and below the steps a great pond where the wild lotus was already in flower. The quiet and seclusion of the place pleased him very much. The education commissioner2 had just arrived to hold the examinations, and lodgings in the city were dear, so he thought he would stay here, and strolled about waiting for the monks to come back.

At sunset a scholar came and opened the south door. Ning hurried over to greet him and told him what he had in mind. “There is no landlord here,” said the scholar. “I am only lodging here myself. If you can put up with the desolation, I shall be glad to have your company and your teaching morning and evening.” Ning was delighted. He spread straw for a bed and propped up a board for a table, settling in for a long stay.

That night the moon was high and pure, its clear light like water. The two of them sat knee to knee on the veranda of the hall and told each other their names. “My surname is Yan,” the scholar said, “and I am styled Chixia.” Ning took him for one of the licentiates come for the examinations, but his speech did not sound at all like Zhejiang. When Ning asked, he said, “I am from Qin3.” He spoke very plainly and sincerely. After a while they ran out of things to say, and they bowed and parted for bed.

Being in a new place, Ning could not get to sleep for a long time. He heard voices murmuring north of his room, as if a family lived there. He got up and crouched under the stone window in the north wall to peep out. Beyond a low wall was a small courtyard, where a woman of forty or so and an old crone were talking together under the moon. The crone wore faded crimson and had a tall ornament stuck in her hair; she was bent and doddering with age.

“Why is Xiaoqian so long in coming?” said the woman. “She should be here any moment,” said the crone. “She hasn’t been complaining to you, Granny, has she?” said the woman. “Not that I’ve heard. But she does seem unhappy.” “The little wench doesn’t deserve to be treated kindly!” said the woman.

Before she had finished speaking, a girl of seventeen or eighteen came slowly up, a great beauty, as far as he could make out. The crone laughed. “Never talk about people behind their backs! The two of us were just speaking of you, and here you come creeping up without a sound, you little imp. Lucky we weren’t saying anything bad about you.” And she said, “The young lady is lovely as a girl in a painting. If this old body were a man, she would have stolen my soul away too.” “If you won’t praise me, Granny,” said the girl, “who else will call me pretty?” Then the woman and the girl said something more that he could not make out. Ning supposed they were the family of some neighbour, and went back to bed without listening any further. After quite some time all was silent at last.

He was just drifting off to sleep when he felt someone come into his room. He got up quickly to look: it was the girl from the north courtyard. Startled, he asked what she wanted. The girl laughed. “It is a moonlit night and I cannot sleep. I would like us to make love.”

Ning’s face grew stern. “You should beware of gossip, and I fear what people will say. One slip, and all sense of honour and shame is lost.”

“No one will know at night,” said the girl. Ning scolded her again. She hung about as if she had more to say. “Get out!” Ning shouted. “If you don’t, I’ll call the scholar in the south room.” The girl took fright and left.

She got as far as the door, came back, and laid an ingot of gold on his bedding. Ning snatched it up and flung it out onto the courtyard steps. “Ill-gotten things shall not foul my purse!” he said. Ashamed, the girl went out and picked up the gold, saying to herself, “This fellow must be made of iron and stone.”

Early the next morning a scholar from Lanxi arrived with a servant to wait for the examinations and took lodging in the east wing. That night he died suddenly. In the sole of his foot was a small hole, as if pricked with an awl, oozing a thin thread of blood. No one knew the cause. After another night the servant died, with the same signs.

Toward evening Yan came back, and Ning asked him about it. Yan thought it the work of an evil spirit. Ning had always been bold and upright and paid it little mind.

At midnight the girl came again. “I have seen a great many men,” she said to Ning, “but never one with a heart as unbending as yours. You are truly a sage, and I dare not deceive you. I am Xiaoqian; my family name is Nie. I died young, at eighteen, and was buried beside this temple. A demon has me in its power and drives me to do its lowly work. Showing my face to men without shame is no pleasure to me, truly. Now there is no one left in the temple to kill, and I fear it will send a yaksha4.”

Ning was horrified and asked what he should do. “Share a room with Yan and you will be safe,” said the girl. “Why don’t you bewitch Yan?” he asked. “He is no ordinary man. I dare not go near him.”

“How do you bewitch people?” he asked. “When a man takes his pleasure with me, I secretly prick his foot with an awl. He falls into a daze, and I draw his blood for the demon to drink. Or else I use gold — though it is not gold but the bone of a rakshasa5, and if he keeps it, it can cut out his heart and liver. Both are only ways of playing on what men want.”

Ning thanked her and asked when he should be on his guard. Tomorrow night, she answered. As she was leaving she wept. “I have fallen into a dark sea and can find no shore. Your sense of honour reaches the clouds; surely you can pull me out and save me from my suffering. If you would gather up my rotting bones and take them home to bury in some peaceful place, it would be as good as giving me life again.” Ning firmly promised, and asked where she was buried. “Just remember: the white poplar with a crow’s nest in it,” she said. With that she went out of the door, scattered and was gone.

The next day, afraid Yan would go out, Ning went early to invite him. By mid-morning he had laid out wine and food, and he watched Yan closely. When he proposed that they sleep in the same room, Yan declined, saying that by nature he liked to be alone. Ning would not listen, and carried his bedding over. Yan had no choice but to move his bed to make room. “I know you are a true man,” he warned him, “and I admire you deeply. But I have reasons of my own that I cannot explain just now. Please do not open my box or my bundle to look inside. If you do, it will go badly for both of us.” Ning respectfully promised.

When they had each gone to bed, Yan set his box on the windowsill. Soon after his head touched the pillow he was snoring like thunder. Ning could not sleep.

Toward the first watch6, the shadow of someone appeared faintly outside the window. Soon it came up to the window and peered in, its eyes glittering. Ning was frightened. He was about to call Yan when something split the box and burst out, gleaming like a length of white silk. It broke the stone bars of the window, shot out in a flash, and at once drew back in, like lightning going out.

Yan woke and got up. Ning pretended to be asleep and watched him. Yan picked up the box and examined it, took something out, and sniffed it and looked at it in the moonlight: a gleaming white light, about two inches long and as wide as a blade of chive. Then he wrapped it up tight in several layers and put it back in the broken box. “What kind of old demon would be so bold,” he said to himself, “as to break my box?” And he lay down again.

Ning was greatly amazed. He got up and asked about it, and told him what he had seen. “Since we are friends who care for each other,” said Yan, “how could I hide it from you? I am a swordsman7. If not for the stone bars, the demon would have died on the spot. Even so, it is wounded.” “What is it you have wrapped up?” Ning asked. “A sword. When I sniffed it just now, it smelled of demon.” Ning wanted to see it, and Yan readily took it out to show him: a tiny sword, gleaming bright. From then on Ning thought all the more highly of Yan.

The next day he looked outside the window and found traces of blood. Then he went out north of the temple and saw graves heaped one after another in the wilderness. There, as she had said, was a white poplar, with a crow’s nest at the top.

When his business was done, he packed to go home. Yan gave him a farewell feast and showed him every warmth of friendship. He gave Ning a worn leather bag. “This is a sword bag,” he said. “Keep it safe and it will keep goblins and demons away.”

Ning wanted to stay and learn his art. “A man as true and upright as you could do it,” said Yan. “But you are still a man meant for wealth and rank, not for this path.”

So Ning pretended that a sister of his was buried there. He dug up the girl’s bones, wrapped them in grave clothes and a shroud, hired a boat and went home.

Ning’s study looked out on open country, so he made a grave and buried her just outside it. He made an offering and prayed: “In pity for your lonely soul, I have buried you near my humble home, where we will each hear the other sing and weep, so that you need not be bullied by male ghosts. Here is a bowl of thin drink. It is neither clear nor sweet, but I hope you will not mind.”

He finished his prayer and was going back when someone behind him called, “Wait, let us walk together!” He turned to look: it was Xiaoqian. Full of joy, she thanked him. “You kept faith with me. Ten deaths would not repay you. Let me go home with you and pay my respects to your parents. I would not regret being your concubine or your maid.”

He looked at her closely. Her skin glowed like rosy evening cloud, and her feet tapered up like slender bamboo shoots8. Seen in broad daylight, she was more lovely still. He brought her to his study, asked her to sit and wait a little, and went in first to tell his mother.

His mother was astonished. At that time Ning’s wife had long been ill, and his mother warned him not to say anything, for fear of frightening her. While they were still talking, the girl came lightly in and bowed down on the ground. “This is Xiaoqian,” said Ning. His mother stared at her in alarm, at a loss what to do.

The girl said to his mother, “I am all alone in the world, far from my father and mother and brothers. Your son has sheltered me like the dew, and his kindness has reached my very skin and hair. I wish to serve him as a wife, with dustpan and broom, to repay his great goodness.”

Seeing how graceful and lovable she was, his mother at last dared to speak to her. “Young lady, that you look kindly on my son makes this old woman happier than I can say. But he is the only son I have ever had, to carry on the family line and keep up the offerings to our ancestors. I dare not let him have a ghost for a wife.”

“I truly have no other thought in my heart,” said the girl. “I am one from beneath the Yellow Springs9, and since you cannot trust me, mother, let me serve him as an elder brother. I will stay by you and wait on you morning and night. Will that do?” His mother pitied her sincerity and agreed. The girl wanted to go and bow to Ning’s wife at once, but his mother excused her because of the illness, and she did not.

At once the girl went into the kitchen and did the cooking in the mother’s place. She went in and out of the rooms as if she had always lived there.

At dusk his mother, who was afraid of her, told her to go home to sleep and did not make up a bed for her. The girl saw what the mother was thinking and went off at once. Passing the study, she was about to go in but drew back, and lingered outside the door as if something frightened her.

Ning called to her. “There is the aura of a sword in the room,” she said. “It frightens me. That is why I did not show myself to you on the road.” Ning realized it was the leather bag, and took it and hung it in another room. Only then did the girl come in and sit down by the candle.

For a while she said nothing at all. After a long time she asked, “Do you read at night? When I was young I used to recite the Surangama Sutra10, but now I have forgotten more than half of it. May I ask you for a copy? In the evenings when you have time, brother, you could correct me.” Ning agreed.

She sat on in silence. The second watch was nearly over, and still she said nothing about leaving. Ning urged her to go. Sadly she said, “A lonely soul in a strange land — I am so afraid of that wild grave.” “There is no other bed in the study,” said Ning, “and besides, a brother and sister ought to avoid any cause for talk.” The girl rose, knitting her brows as though about to cry. Her feet faltered, reluctant to move. Slowly she went out of the door, stepped down from the steps and vanished.

Ning secretly pitied her. He wanted to let her stay the night on another bed, but he was afraid his mother would be angry.

Every morning the girl came to greet his mother, bringing the basin and pouring water for her to wash, then went down from the hall to do the work. In everything she followed the mother’s wishes. At dusk she would take her leave, and always stopped at the study to recite sutras by candlelight. Only when she sensed that Ning was ready for bed would she sadly go.

Before this, with Ning’s wife ill and bedridden, his mother had been worn out beyond bearing. Since the girl came she had an easy time of it, and in her heart she was grateful. Day by day they grew closer, until she loved the girl as her own child. She quite forgot that the girl was a ghost, and could not bear to send her away at night, but kept her with her to sleep and rise together.

When the girl first came she never ate or drank, but after half a year she began to sip a little thin gruel. Mother and son both doted on her and never spoke of her being a ghost, and other people could not tell either.

Before long Ning’s wife died. His mother secretly thought of taking the girl as her son’s wife, but she feared it would do him harm.

The girl caught a hint of this, and when the chance came she said to the mother, “I have lived here more than a year. By now you must know my heart. It was because I did not want to bring harm to travellers that I followed your son here. I have no other purpose. Only, your son is open and upright, admired by Heaven and men alike, and truly I wish to help him for a few years, so that through him I may win an honour from the court11, to bring glory to me beneath the earth.”

His mother knew, too, that she meant no harm, but feared she could not give him sons to carry on the line. “Children are given by Heaven alone,” said the girl. “In the register of fortunes your son is set down for three sons who will bring glory to the family. That will not be taken from him because his wife is a ghost.”

His mother believed her and talked it over with her son. Ning was delighted, and they laid on a feast and announced it to their relatives.

Someone asked to see the new bride. The girl readily came out in her finery, and the whole room stared. Far from suspecting she was a ghost, they took her for an immortal. After that the women of all the related families came bearing gifts to congratulate her, and vied to make her acquaintance.

The girl was good at painting orchids and plum blossom, and she would give a small painting in return. Those who received one wrapped it many times over and treasured it as an honour.

One day she sat by the window with her head bowed, downcast as if she had lost something. Suddenly she asked, “Where is the leather bag?” “You were afraid of it,” said Ning, “so I put it away somewhere else.” “I have taken in the breath of the living for a long time now,” she said. “I should not be afraid of it any more. You ought to fetch it and hang it at the head of the bed.”

Ning asked her what she meant. “These three days my heart has been fluttering without a moment’s rest. I think the demon in Jinhua hates me for escaping so far away, and I fear it will find me any day now.”

Ning did bring the leather bag. The girl turned it over and over, studying it. “This is what a sword immortal keeps men’s heads in. To be so worn and tattered — who knows how many men its owner has killed! Even looking at it today, my skin crawls.” Then she hung it up. The next day she had him move it and hang it over the door.

That night they sat facing the candle, and she made Ning promise not to go to sleep. Suddenly something dropped down like a falling bird. The girl, frightened, hid between the double curtains.

Ning looked: the thing was shaped like a yaksha, with lightning eyes and a blood-red tongue, glaring and clawing as it came on. At the door it stopped and drew back. It hung about for a long while, then crept up to the leather bag and reached out its claws to take it down, as if to tear it apart. Suddenly the bag gave a crack and swelled as big as two baskets put together. Something ghostly seemed to thrust half its body out and drag the yaksha in. Then all was silent, and the bag at once shrank back to what it had been.

Ning was aghast. The girl came out too, overjoyed. “We are safe now!” They looked into the bag together: there was nothing in it but a few pecks of clear water.

Some years later Ning did indeed pass the highest examinations and became a jinshi12. The girl bore him a son. After he took a concubine, each of them bore another son, and all of them became officials of good name.