Once on a Moonless Night - By Dai Sijie Page 0,104
told me. ‘Not all Manchurian dunes sing, only a few, outside the West Gate of the small town where your grandfather, Seventy-one, was exiled. Every year on New Year’s Day, everyone went there, men, women, children, the elderly, rich or poor, all dressed in their best clothes. The only time I took you to my birthplace you were four years old. It was your first big ceremony. You’d been excited since the day before. You were frightened of being forgotten, or late. We got up at five o’clock in the morning, without having breakfast, but we took food with us. I dressed you up like a real Prince. Do you remember your robes with the peonies? No? In quilted, aubergine-coloured satin, lined with silk and embroidered with peonies, the New Year flower, with big petals in red, white and blue, green leaves and Tumchooq butterflies fluttering over the flowers in twos or small groups, so delicately embroidered that each of them had different-coloured eyes. The robe fastened on the right, true to the old imperial style, with a long opening at the side, edged with pearl-grey brocade, running straight up as far as the waist and cutting diagonally across to the round collar decorated with three blue silk ribbons, embroidered with little signs meaning happiness. It had wide sleeves, very wide, in black satin, as short as T-shirt sleeves, and coming out from underneath them were the yellow sleeves of your quilted jacket. It was really beautiful and you were so proud of it. We all were. And your silk boots, do you remember them? You looked so gorgeous, walking through the sand! The soles were white silk, the uppers dark blue silk and the legs yellow silk, a bright luminous yellow with pretty damask designs of clouds, in keeping with our rank as a family, the same ones your great-grandfather wore. The top of the boots was curved and the edge was decorated with braid in blue brocade, embroidered with golden dragons dancing in multicoloured waves. You refused to be carried by servants. You skipped about and climbed to the top of a steep dune with the others. The day was only just dawning, the sun was hiding behind the clouds, but there were already masses of people. We sat on the sand and ate sesame fritters. People were sliding down the sides of the dunes, with lots of shouting and laughter; some ran at the sand and ended up knee-deep in it. Others rolled down the slopes. Yes, you have to move and push and shove, or the dunes stay silent. And then the sun shone with a thousand needles of gold, and the dune moved with the shifting of the sand. It gave way. In the first avalanche, blocks of sand broke away, tumbling down the side of the dune where people had been playing. Slabs of sand, at first fairly compact ones, broke away, gathered speed, crumbled, and sprawled in every direction, raising clouds of dust, and from them came strange buzzing sounds, and everyone held their breath and listened. The same phenomenon was happening on neighbouring dunes. The sound produced by the avalanches of sand grew louder and louder and eventually an explosion rang out like a clap of thunder. You were so frightened you cried Mummy! Mummy! and blocked your ears with your fingers.’”
That song of the sands is what I thought I heard, too, as I deciphered the text of the missing part of the scroll, the end of the sutra:
“LET GO,” RINGS A VOICE IN HIS EARS. “THE GROUND IS THERE, BENEATH YOUR FEET.” THE TRAVELLER, TRUSTINGLY, DOES SO AND LANDS SAFE AND SOUND ON A PATH RUNNING JUST A SHORT DROP BELOW HIM.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in China in 1954, Dai Sijie is a filmmaker and novelist. He left China in 1984 for France, where he now lives and works. He is the author of the international best seller Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction prize in the United Kingdom and made into a film) and of Mr. Muo’s Travelling Couch (winner of the Prix Femina).
This Is a Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf
Translation copyright © 2009 by Adriana Hunter
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in France as Par une nuit où la lune ne s’est pas levée by Éditions Gallimard, Paris, in 2007. Copyright © 2007 by Dai Sijie and Éditions Gallimard. This translation originally published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus, the Random House Group Ltd., London.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to The University of Chicago Press for permission to reprint an excerpt from “The Orphans’ Gifts” from Complete Works, Selected Letters by Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Wallace Fowler, copyright © 1966, 2005 by The University of Chicago.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dai, Sijie, [date]
[Par une nuit où la lune ne s’est pas levée. English]
Once on a moonless night / by Dai Sijie, translated from the French
by Adriana Hunter.
p. cm.
I. Hunter, Adriana. II. Title.
PQ2664.A437P3713 2008
843′.92—dc22 2008041089
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27203-4
v3.0