Autumn Night

Autumn Night

Lu Xun 1924

Tr. Huiwen Zhang 2012

From my backyard, outside the wall two trees can be seen: one is a date tree, the other is also a date tree.

Above these a night sky, strange and tall; all my life I have never seen a sky so strange and tall.  He seems to be taking leave of the human world and going away, so that men will look up and no longer see him.  Yet now he is intensely blue, winking dozens of twinkling stars’ eyes, cold eyes.  At the corners of his mouth appears a smile that seems to consider itself utterly meaningful while sprinkling a thick frost on the wild flowers and weeds of my yard.

I do not know what names those flowers and weeds really have, what names people call them.  I remember one that bloomed tiny dainty pink flowers, one that is still blooming, but the flower is even tinier and daintier.  She, in the cold night air, crouches to dream, dreaming spring’s coming, dreaming autumn’s coming, dreaming a slender poet wiping tears on her very last petal, telling her though autumn comes, though winter comes, still after that spring anew, butterflies flittering, bees all singing spring songs.  She then smiles, though freezing tragically crimson, still crouching.

 The date trees, they have shed almost all their leaves.  Before, there were still one or two children coming to beat down dates left by others; now there is not one left, even the leaves have all been shed.  He knows the tiny pink flower’s dream—after autumn comes spring; he also knows the shed leaves’ dream—after spring comes autumn.  He has shed almost all his leaves, only a trunk left, yet stripping away the arch shape from a time long ago when fruits and leaves were all over the tree, he yawns and stretches quite comfortably.  But there are still a few branches drooping low, nursing the wounds on his skin from the tips of date-beating poles; the straightest and longest branches, however, are silently like iron piercing directly the strange and tall sky, causing the sky to wink twinkling ghosts’ eyes; piercing directly the sky’s full round moon, causing the moon to pale with embarrassment.

The ghost-wink-eye sky has grown all the more intensely blue, restless, as if trying to leave the human world, escape the date tree, and leave behind only the moon.  Yet the moon has also secretly fled to the east.  The naked trunk, however, is still silently like iron piercing directly the strange and tall sky, determined to get a strangle hold on him, regardless of all his various ways of winking many a bewitching eye.

“Caw!”  With this shriek, a night-roving evil bird flies by.

I suddenly hear a midnight laugh, tchi tchi, as if reluctant to disturb sleepers, yet the air all around resonates the laugh.  Midnight, no others about; I recognize right away that the sound is in my mouth, I am also right away expelled by this laugh, back into my own room.  The wick of the lamp is also right away turned up by me.

The glass of the rear window tinkles, ping ping; there are many tiny flying bugs bumping about.  Not long after a few break in, probably through the holes torn in the window paper.  Once they break in, they bump anew on the glass lamp shade and cause it to tinkle, ping ping.  One bumps in from the top, so he encounters the fire, and I assume the fire is real.  Two or three others, however, rest on the paper lamp cover, panting.  The cover is last night’s newly changed cover, snow-white paper, folded in wavy pleats, also painted on one corner a spray of scarlet gardenias.

When the scarlet gardenia blooms, the date tree will dream anew the tiny pink flower’s dream, bent into an arch of tender green ….  I hear anew the midnight laugh.  I hasten to cut short my mood, watching the tiny green bugs grow old on the white paper cover—big heads, small tails, like sunflower seeds, only as big as half a grain of wheat, all over their bodies a verdure—lovable, pitiable.

I yawn, light a cigarette, blow out the smoke, and facing the lamp I silently lay my ritual offerings at the shrine of these exquisite verdant heroes.