* * *
The first story that occurred to me was a fascinating true story, which took place in the mountains about fifty years ago.
A woman peasant carrying a three-month-old baby on her back went up a steep mountainside to work in a pineapple orchard over there. When they just reached the orchard, some strange noises suddenly came out from behind dry leaves of pineapples. (The dry leaves were piled up here and there and meant to be natural fertilizer.) The unpleasant hissing and rubbing sounds quickly got across a few rows of pineapple plants and, in just one second, disappeared at the edge of the field. The mother did not see the escaping animal clearly at first, but she learned from experience that it must have been a snake.
Without being troubled too much, the mother worked on the mountainside all day long. She paused regularly, every one hour or so, to feed her daughter; and yet most of the time she left her pretty tiny baby lying under a mango tree nearby.
The orchard work always took more days to do than expected. As the woman returned to the pineapple field the next day, she was astonished to see the same snake again. Now she saw clearly that it was a grayish snake, very big and long indeed, and that it had an oval head. (This is important! Most poisonous snakes have their heads in the shape of a triangle; in contrast, snakes with an oval head are usually harmless.) At the mother and daughter's approach, the frightened creature dashed away soon, but seemingly at a lower speed.
The third day, the fourth day, and many other days following, the mother and daughter returned to the pineapple orchard. They came across the same snake time and again. The snake seemed to be better acquainted with them. Finally, as they approached, the snake no longer hurriedly "fled for its life" but just had a graceful look at them and then "made way for them" by crawling away at its own pace.
Apparently, the snake and the two humans had become "good friends." They shared the same piece of land; they had been living or staying there in peace. The woman thought that the snake was not only harmless to her and her daughter but also very useful to the pineapples that she was growing---because it would kill rats that caused damage to the orchard.
Then, one chilly morning, the mother stopped working at around ten o'clock to take care of her baby, who was fast asleep in the shade of a tree. She was so very shocked to see that "orchard-keeper" also sleeping there, with its long body curled up next to her. "Oh! My goodness! What can I do about it?" the poor mother hesitated. She dared not move forward, or backward, in quite a few moments, thinking that any wrong action might annoy the snake so much that it would bite her baby daughter.
* * *
"What did the mother do after that?" I asked earnestly.
"As it happened, the mother succeeded in rescuing her daughter," said Shīxiōng, who was the one that told me the above story.
Shīxiōng's wife, whom my wife and I called Shījiĕ, smiled and said, "Of course she did. If she had failed to rescue that little baby, Shīxiōng would have lost his younger sister."
"Wait a minute!" I broke in. "Do you mean the mother in the story is Shīxiōng's mother?"
"Yes," both Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ replied.
My interest in those good old days was aroused. I asked Shīxiōng some personal questions and learned that he was born and grew up in Nántóu County, the identical region where I spent my happy childhood. He and I had experienced the same lifestyle in those remote villages in the mountains many years ago. For example, we were barefooted most of the time; we went fishing in the brooks, hunting in the woods; we saw different kinds of snakes, and killed some of them.
I shared with Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ how I killed snakes. I was proud of myself when I recalled my "heroic" actions in those years. In fact, I had killed a dozen snakes before I was twelve. My principle was: If I was not very sure I could succeed in killing a snake in front of me, I would rather let it go, quietly. I thought that a snake once hurt by a human being would become savage and cruel. It would repay anyone in the way a deadly attack!
"You killed snakes, Mr. Liáng?" Shījiĕ asked me, in a tone suggesting that she didn't believe me.
"I did. I did!" I said.
"But you're a very gentle man!" said Shījiĕ.
"Well, I was not, then." I laughed.
* * *
Lying on a specially designed single bed, I was receiving the traditional medical treatment called "wēn-jiŭ" in Chinese.
My wife, who says that my health needs some sort of maintenance, had wanted me to come to Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ for the wēn-jiŭ treatment. I was reluctant to come at first, but then I became more and more interested in coming. As my wife proclaimed, Shījiĕ and her husband (Shīxiōng) were really the best wēn-jiŭ doers in the Dàlĭ-Wùfēng area. Presently, my wife took the treatment twice a week and I came every Monday evening.
When Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ were "massaging" me (from head to foot) with two pairs of jiŭ-sticks, they kept on chatting with me, on a wide variety of topics.
"How are you going to spend your winter vacation?" asked Shījiĕ.
"Winter vacation?" I replied. "It's so short---only three weeks plus an addition week for the Chinese-New-Year holidays. But I'll have to go to work all day, you know, except one week just before the Chinese-New-Year holidays. During that week I'll have to work every morning, and take turns to be on guard in the afternoon."
"Is it because you are Dean of Students?"
"Well, besides the school administrators, many teachers are asked to teach during the vacation as well."
"So school teaching is now very different from it was in the past," Shījiĕ seemed to have understood.
I assured her and her husband that times had been changing rapidly. "For example," I explained, "in the past, elementary-school students all over the country used the same textbooks, so-called 'standard edition,' so everyone was taught the same stories such as 'The old man Yú Gōng moves a mountain,' 'Sūn Shú-áo kills a double-head snake,' and 'The story of Yuè Fēi.' But now, many different versions of the text are available. Well, apart from the wider generation gap, people on this island appear to have much less in common."
Shīxiōng said, "It's a pity for a society to have little 'common language.'"
"Mr. Liang!" Shījiĕ put in. "You said your father speaks the Hakka dialect and your mother speaks Taiwanese. What's the common language in your home?"
"They're bilingual," I said, smiling. "But neither of them speaks Mandarin or English!"
* * *
Sūn Shú-áo lived in Chŭ, one of the well-known "states" during the Chūnqiū period (770-476 BC) in the Chinese history.
Sūn was born in a poor family. His mother, a very kind woman, taught him to be good and kind to others. When Sūn was ten years old, one day he saw a snake with two heads crawling on the footpath. He remembered what he'd been told: "Whoever sees a double-head snake will die soon in no more than three days." The boy was extremely scared and sad. Then, suddenly, he found himself obligated to save others from seeing such an ill-omened thing. He lifted a stone and killed the creature, which he buried deep before returning home. As he wept sadly and told his mother the story, his mother comforted him, saying, "You've done a very good job! Being such a smart and kind-hearted boy, you'll by no means be cursed, anyway."
Years later, Sūn became a successful man. He took the high post of lìngyĭn (that is, prime minister) in the state of Chŭ. And he was a good and kind and able official who was highly respected by people.
* * *
Shīxiōng, Shījiĕ, and I---all of us remembered the above story, one of the inspiring stories we had learned in the core subject "Guó Yŭ" (national language) in elementary school.
We were all from the same background. We had quite a lot to share with each other. Speaking of venomous snakes, Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ said they had once found a very long yǔsănjié (banded umbrella snake) in the kitchen. I told them that fifteen years ago our study had also been intruded into by a guīkéhuā (turtle-designed snake).
It was early in the morning. My son Tony, a second-grader then, walked into the study for his schoolbag. He didn't switch on the light. He just sensed that there was something moving in the room. "Dad, dad, come quick!"---When I heard him call, I rushed into the room and saw a guīkéhuā beside the wooden bookcase in the corner. I asked my wife for a stick. She came quickly with a rattan cane. But I failed to take the snake with that cane because it was thin and soft. The snake crawled into a narrow gap between the wall and the wooden furniture. It never cropped up again.
That guīkéhuā’s intrusion might have left a deep scar on my son. From then on, he repeatedly dreamed that he was surrounded by tens or hundreds of snakes.
As for me, my permanent memories include the accident that a guīkéhuā bit my father on the foot when I was small. (That was my first time helping to kill a snake. I really hated the guīkéhuā that attacked my father!)
Besides unpleasant experiences as above, I shared something enjoyable with Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ. When I was small, my grandmother, an excellent storyteller, told me a number of snake stories. She retold the local folktale "Shé Lángjūn" (snake husband) and the Chinese legend "Báishé Zhuàn" (Lady White Snake) for many times. These stories were familiar to Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ as well, who regarded them as the most beautiful snake stories in the world.
"What would you say about the serpent in the Bible?"
"Is Satan the cause of the original sin?"
Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ knew that I was a Christian, and they were curious about how I looked at Satan from my point of view. I was eager to talk about the Christian faith, but it was no easy job for me to explain such things as "Satan and the original sin."
As a matter of fact, Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ were very religious. They were both devout Buddhists.
* * *
Here is a Zen story about the snake:
One day, the tail of a snake said angrily to the snake's head, "I should be moving ahead of you." The head replied, "Usually I go first. How come you have such a peculiar idea?" Without paying attention to the tail, the head kept on going ahead. The tail was unwilling to follow; instead, it stuck itself to the trunk of a tree, trying to stand up to the head. The head pulled the tail forcefully, but in vain. Eventually, the head gave in and let the tail go in front of it. The tail was so happy to win the "long struggle" that it started moving as fast as possible in the direction that it regarded as "ahead."
However, the tail failed to see the way ahead---it had no eyes at all. It led the whole of the snake into a fiery pit just beside the road. What a poor snake! It was killed right in there!
* * *
Shījiĕ raised a question after she finished telling the above story. "Do you think there was such a crazy snake somewhere?"
"Of course, this is just a fable," Shīxiōng smiled. "One of the interpretations that I've heard is this: You may take the snake's head and tail as two kinds of people, one being smarter (or wiser) than the other. The leaders of a society should be wise; otherwise the whole society would be brought into a dreadful disaster!"
"I agree!" I quoted from the Bible, saying, "When one blind man leads another, both fall into a ditch." [Matthew 15:14b, purposely quoted out of context.]
"Another interpretation," Shīxiōng continued, "sounds more sensible to me: You may take the head and tail as two different types of mental power, that is, good and evil, wise and foolish, healthy and ill. From time to time man has some sort of conflict in himself. Am I right?"
"You can say that again, Shīxiōng!" I was excited to hear him comment. He was a good interpreter of Zen stories. He must have got an intimate knowledge of Buddhism.
Suddenly, Shījiĕ had a special idea. "If there were such a crazy snake [as in the Zen story], it would be suffering from 'split personality.'"
"Well, it's hard to say!" Shīxiōng responded, "But suffering from some sort of mental disorder, anyway."
* * *
My wife had told me that Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ were very devout Buddhists. Indeed, they were strict vegetarians, eating neither meat nor fish. They lived very, very simply. They held fast to the religious disciplines that teach them to refrain from tān, chēn, chī---that is, greed, anger, and stupidity.
I found some similar teachings in the book of Proverbs, and I remembered St. Paul's teachings on faith, hope, and love---called "xìn, wàng, ài" in Chinese. I told Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ that according to St. Paul, "love" is the greatest of the three.
"Mr. Liang, what's sānwèi-yìtĭ?" Shījiĕ asked me to explain the Trinity.
"It refers to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spririt."
"When I was small, I often heard my mother say sānwèi-yìtĭ. She talked about it quite often, but I haven't understood it up to now."
I was surprised to learn that Shījiĕ was from a semi-Christian family. Actually, she was a daughter of her aboriginal parents. She converted to Buddhism when she got married with Shīxiōng. (My wife says she converted to Christianity just for me!)
"No matter what kind of religion you follow," Shīxiōng seriously said, "follow it with all your heart and with all you mind. In this way, you'll gain, or accomplish, a perfect life: a life of zhēn (truth), shàn (goodness), and mĕi (beauty). Am I right?"
.bmp)
I didn't say "I agree," but I agree to pursue a true, good, and beautiful life. I argued that such a zhēn-shàn-mĕi life could be diagramed as a triangle, with three "corners" representing "zhìhuì" (wisdom), "àixīn" (love), and "jiànkāng" (health) respectively. And I formulated my ideas in a few words: "Without wisdom, one cannot find the Truth; without love, one cannot see the Goodness; similarly, without health, one cannot enjoy the Beauty."
It was one of the most wonderful evenings that I'd ever had. Shīxiōng, Shījiĕ, and I had another long and happy "free chat" while they were doing the wēn-jiŭ treatment on me. I thought to myself: They had been improving my "health" to some extend. How about my "wisdom"? And how about my "love"?
Suddenly I thought of a very good story written by Jesse Stuart (1906-1984).
"I enjoy reading short stories very much," I said. "You know what I like best among all I've read? The story is entitled 'Love' and it's about snakes…"
* * *
When I retold Jesse Stuart's "Love" to Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ, I changed the story's narrator "I" (the first person) into "the boy" (the third person).
One afternoon, a boy and his father walked around the new cornfield to plan a fence, so as to keep the cows from eating or trampling the young plants. Their dog Bob walked in front of them. When they heard a ground squirrel whistle somewhere nearby, the father made Bob go to take it, for ground squirrels are also harmful to corn.
The father kept asking Bob to kill the ground squirrel. However, when the boy and his father ran to the place where Bob was jumping and barking, they did not see any ground squirrel, but a snake. "It's a big bull blacksnake," said the father. "Kill him, Bob! Kill him, Bob!"
Bob was jumping and snapping at the snake. He knew how to kill a snake. He had killed twenty-eight copperheads that spring. But the boy didn't want to kill the snake. He said, "A blacksnake is a harmless snake. It kills poison snakes. It kills the copperhead. It catches more mice from the fields than a cat."
Apparently, the snake didn't want to fight the dog. It wanted to get away. Why had the snake come from the chestnut oak woods over the bank? Why was it crawling toward a heap of black loamy earth at the bend of the hill? The boy wondered. And then he discovered that it was not a bull blacksnake, but a she-snake. (A female blacksnake has a white patch on her throat.)
The father insisted on killing the snake. "A snake is an enemy to me," he cried. "Kill it, Bob!" Bob obeyed him and took the snake by the throat. He cracked her long body like an ox whip in the wind. Then, something hit against the boy's legs like pellets. They were the snake's eggs!
The boy hated to see Bob kill the beautiful mother-to-be snake. He was sorry for those immature eggs (slung from the snake's body). "Well, Bob, I guess you see now why this snake couldn't fight," the boy said with a sigh, "It is life. Weaker devour the stronger even among human beings. Dog kills snake. Snake kills birds. Birds kill the butterflies. Man conquers all. Man, too, kills for sport."
On the way home, neither father nor son spoke. Their dog, walking ahead of them, looked rather tired. Then the sun was setting, a lark was singing, and the red evening clouds floated above the pine trees on their pasture hill. The father stood beside the path. His black hair was moved by the wind. His face was red in the blue wind of day. His eyes looked toward the sinking sun.
"And my father hates a snake," the boy thought. He thought about many things, including how women would fight to save their children.
The next morning the boy and his father returned to the cornfield. Bob didn't go with them. In the place where Bob had previously killed the snake, the boy saw something. It was moving, like a huge black rope winding around a windlass. It was the bull blacksnake.
"Take a good look at him!" the boy said. "He is lying beside his dead mate. He has come to her. Perhaps he was on her trail yesterday."
The male snake had trailed her to her doom. He had come in the night, under the roof of stars, as the moon shed rays of light on the quivering clouds of green. He had found his lover dead. He was coiled beside her, and she was dead.
The bull blacksnake lifted his head and followed the father and son as they walked around the dead snake. He would have fought them to death. "Take a stick," said the father, "and throw him over the hill so Bob won't find him." The boy took a stick and threw him over the bank into the dewy sprouts on the cliff.
* * *
"What a lovely story!" Shījiĕ cried. "Is it true that a bull blacksnake would accompany its partner that way?"
"I believe so," I replied. "When I was small, one afternoon, my father was bitten by a guīkéhuā on the foot. The snake was next to the kitchen door of our thatched cottage. We killed it on the spot. That was my first time to helping to kill a snake. You know, my father told us to be very careful the next few days. He thought another guīkéhuā (the dead snake’s partner) would probably appear soon. It was true! Four or five days later, my grandmother found another guīkéhuā in the bathroom."
"Incredible!" Shījiĕ turned to Shīxiōng, saying, "Venomous snakes also know about love."
"So they do," Shīxiōng said. "But there are different types of love in this world. Some are instinctive reactions, such as a simple desire for food and drinks, and some are more complicated feelings…Well, forgiveness is another form of love."
Shīxiōng's comments were comprehensible.
I told Shīxiōng and Shījiĕ that my pastor, Chén mùshī, had mentioned four levels of love, the highest level of which is God's "unconditional love"---called "agape" in Greek.
* * *
But I didn't say anything about my cousin's friend Cháng-Chóng at all. He is running a brand-new snack bar in Wùfēng, only 500 meters away from my house. Since my cousin introduced him to my family and me before this winter vacation, Cháng-Chóng has frequently invited us to his snack bar, and he has also visited us several times.
According to my cousin, Cháng-Chóng has been a mysterious man. Though looking handsome and gentle in his 40's now, he was jailed for ten years. "Was he a murderer? Did he sell something illegal?" Even my cousin could not tell the whole story. I learned from Cháng-Chóng himself that he had recently divorced his wife "to make her have a peaceful life" and that many years ago he hid himself somewhere in Pŭlǐ, in Nántóu County.
"I've wasted lots of my days," he concluded. "But from now on, I'll be pursuing a new and meaningful life!"
"May your dream come true. I'll pray for you as well." I said.
In private, I told my son and my wife to be cautious about the relationship between Cháng-Chóng and us. And I silently prayed that Cháng-Chóng would not be a "cháng chóng" (a long worm; or a snake). ＜The End＞
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