Once upon a time, there was a mountain.
On the mountain, there was a temple.
In the temple, there was a young monk.
The young monk grew up and became an old monk, which is what happens to young monks if they wait long enough or have nowhere else to go. In his case, it was both.
These were the years that were hard to make sense of and harder to live. The Communists came, then left. The Nationalists came, then left, leaving behind thick coils of smoke rising from where the villages had been. The Japanese came. In 1938, the monk heard airplanes for the first time, a sound so foreign he thought it belonged to a gigantic droning wasp. He hurriedly set down the pail in his hands. When he made it to the cliff’s edge, the planes were already gone, leaving behind three trails of thick, gray clouds. Below, near the river bend, a bloom of fire unfolded gently, like a plump mushroom.
The monk was 34 and lived on his own. Yet he had the whole mountain as his family, every animated thing as his playmate. He still caught butterflies every spring, still cuddled with the fat orange cat (who descended from the original cat), still chuckled more than he ought to. But who decided what each of us ought to do, anyway? He was aware of the vast, incomprehensible war below the mountain—one that entangled the fate of two entire nations. But he had a temple to take care of, courtyards to sweep, and persimmon trees to talk to.
He was alone, but was he lonely? Only the persimmon trees knew.
The planes stopped in 1945, but only briefly. Another pack of planes began circulating the fields. Then in 1949, everything went still.
One sunny afternoon, a band of young men in grey uniforms climbed the mountain. They catalogued the temple’s contents in a ledger, asked if the monk was its sole occupant, and wrote something down. The old monk was so happy to finally see other souls that he brought out the finest fruits and vegetables to treat them. They were polite. They did not take anything and left.
A few months later, another group came, less polite, and informed him that the temple and its land now belonged to the people. The monk, who had never thought of the temple as belonging to anyone, including himself, nodded. This is the Buddhist principle of prizing harmony above all, he silently said to himself. In truth, he didn’t know how to say no.
The monk was still allowed to live in the temple, from which he observed the changes in the village below the mountains. The old field boundaries dissolved, and the plots merged into larger shapes. Someone built a blast furnace at the edge of the village, and for a season, the air tasted of iron. The furnace went cold. For three years, the fields were barren and the trees stripped of their bark. First it was only the trees near the bottom of the mountain, but then the trees near the temple could not be spared. And the persimmons? They disappeared as soon as the green fruit poked out from the flower buds. The monk hadn’t seen a ripe persimmon for three years.
In 1966, some children came, a line of red dots ascending the trail. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old. They called themselves Red Guards. They came up the mountain with crowbars and red armbands, and they smashed the altar and broke the bell and tore the books and cut the persimmon trees. (The monk didn’t understand what was wrong with the persimmon trees.) The Red Guards left. The monk came out of hiding, standing in the courtyard facing the temple that was so familiar and yet so strange. He picked up the pieces of the bell and set them against the wall. He swept the courtyard. He found a rotten persimmon in the corner, examined it closely, and noticed moisture on its surface. It turned out to be his own tears. He wiped the water off and planted it where the old trees had been.
Twelve years later, the monk once again got to eat persimmons he’d grown himself, red and big and sweet. That year, 1978, was also the year the boy arrived.
The boy was alone at the gate when dawn broke. His arms were wrapped around a sack of rice, on top of which sat a set of brand-new clothes. The monk picked up the clothes and the rice, turned around, and set them down. Then, he studied the boy carefully, cautiously. He was around ten, chubby, but with clear signs of having been starved thinner. His face was visibly bloated like a balloon half-deflated, yet swollen. He was missing a finger on his left hand.
He doesn’t look like a bad person, the old monk sighed and said to himself. But no matter what, the old monk would have let the little boy into the temple. He was too soft-hearted in the end.
The first year was difficult. The young monk did not speak much. He swept the courtyard, ate his meals, and stared at the valley. At night, he could not sleep. The old monk could hear him shifting on his mat—the rustle of cloth, like the sifting of wind through the persimmon tree.
One night, the old monk went to the young monk’s room, candlestick in hand, and sat beside his mat.
“Do you want me to tell you a story?” the old monk asked.
The young monk said nothing. The old monk interpreted this as a yes.
“Once upon a time,” the old monk began, the candle flame flickering gently, “there was a mountain. On the mountain, there was a temple…”
“Stop,” said the young monk. “Why is the temple on the mountain? Why is the temple not below the mountain?”
The old monk, surprised that the boy had spoken, explained, “Temples are supposed to be built on mountains. Mountains are supposed to support temples. Such is the way of heaven and earth.”
That kept the young monk’s mouth shut for a while.
The old monk continued, “In the temple, there was an old monk and a young monk.”
“Wait,” the boy interjected, as if something had just clicked. “Why is the mountain’s function to support the temple? The mountain exists on its own, for itself. It can support a temple if it wants. It can grow a persimmon tree if it wants.”
The old monk was speechless. This was not how the story was supposed to go. The flame on the candlestick held itself straight and still, like a punished child made to stand. The old monk scratched his smooth, bald head and thought for a good while, then made something up: “The heavens move in constant ways; they did not persist for the sake of Yao, nor did they perish for the sake of Jie. Such is the Dao of the world.”
It was the young monk’s turn to scratch his smooth, bald head. The old monk, having bought himself a momentary relief, moved on:
“One day, the young monk said to the old monk, ‘Tell me a story.’
And the old monk said, ‘Once upon a time…’”
The young monk interjected again, “That’s it?”
“What do you mean ‘That’s it?’”
“As in, that’s the end of the story?”
“Practically, yeah. It then repeats itself. Goes on and on.” The old monk sighed and resigned. He wasn’t a particularly engaging storyteller, unlike the previous old monk.
“Why does the young monk want a story from the old monk?” The young monk asked.
“I don’t know…He wanted to hear something interesting, he wanted attention from the old monk, he wanted to feel cared for and feel loved…”
“And was he loved?”
The old monk froze. Did the previous old monk love him? Of course he did. Why else would he tell him a story at the same hour every night, night after night, without fail? Why else would he set aside the biggest, reddest, sweetest persimmons each harvest? Why else would he take him out every spring to chase butterflies? The old monk replayed these images in his mind, as if wrapping himself in a layer of honey.
The fire died, leaving the old monk and the young monk engulfed in darkness.
“OK, OK. Now, go to bed.” The old monk had lost the interest to continue telling the story. The candle had gone out anyway, so he simply hurried the little monk off to sleep.
He retreated to his study that night to think. The night was so quiet he could hear persimmon leaves rub against each other. He thought for a long time before he decided to go to bed. But he couldn’t fall asleep, either, so he rose and thought some more.
Eventually, he burst out laughing. He was laughing so loud he roused every snake and spider and many-legged thing on the mountain, and they all came alive in a soft skittering.
The next day, when the young monk woke up, he found a big, red—and, upon tasting it, sweet—persimmon on his bedside table.
Alpha Zhang is a contributing writer for the Nassau Weekly.