My Mother in Heaven

On the seventeenth day of the first month, the ice and snow on the eaves throughout Sandings River Town had begun to melt. Rainwater joined the thaw, turning the once even streets into a field of clinging mud. After the melt, the cold wind brewed and strengthened over the town, breaking into sharp howls at the street corners before rushing beneath the door curtains into every household.

In the common room of an inn in town, the curtain at the entrance snapped and crackled in the bitter wind. One corner of it was lifted by the gust, as though someone were peering inside.

At that moment, Luan Yi was seated in the inn’s main hall. Beside him, two charcoal braziers blazed fiercely, casting their warm glow across his slightly tipsy face.

He held a pair of bamboo chopsticks, picked up a slice of beef, and put it into his mouth with obvious relish. With one sleeve brushed aside, he used a wooden ladle in his other hand to draw wine from a small cauldron set atop the brazier at his side, then poured it into a bowl. He lifted the pottery bowl to his lips and drank deeply.

The warm, fragrant liquor flowed down his throat and into his body, infusing his chilled limbs with a burst of invigorating heat.

“Fine wine!” he praised loudly, then raised his eyes toward the tall figure pacing back and forth with clasped hands in the hall, that figure occasionally glancing through the slit in the wind-tossed curtain toward the harbor beyond. “Third Brother! Care for a bowl?”

As he spoke, he used the ladle to fill another bowl for Zhang Fei, the sworn brother who ranked third, and set it on the seat opposite him.

At this, Zhang Fei looked once more toward the door, let out a heavy sigh, and strode over to sit across from Luan Yi. He drained the bowl in one gulp and complained with wounded grievance, “We’ve been here three days already. How come not a single ship has come? Stuck in this room all day long—I’m about to get so cramped I’ll grow feathers.”

Zhang Fei was anxious, but Luan Yi was even more so. Deep in his heart, he was still worried about that thunderous peasant uprising that would erupt at the end of summer and the beginning of autumn this year. No one in the world wanted more than he did to return to Jinan as soon as possible. And yet, as if by fate’s design, they had been at Sandings River Town for three full days without a single vessel coming to berth for provisions or unloading, so anxious that blisters had risen at the corners of his mouth.

Though anxious, Luan Yi could not speak of the Yellow Turban Revolt. He could only swallow it down, bury the urgency in his heart, and keep a composed face as he consoled Zhang Fei. “Do not fret, Third Brother. Didn’t I already pray with Brother Dian these past few days to the Holy Mother? I believe it won’t be long before she manifests a sign and sends a suitable ship to carry us onward.”

“The Holy Mother really answers prayers?” Zhang Fei asked, half-convinced. Seeing the affirmative look Luan Yi gave him, he said, “All right then, we’ll wait a while longer. I wonder whether Big Brother and Second Brother have found a ship yet!” His gaze never left the doorway, as though he intended to see all the way through the thick curtain to the harbor. There, Dian Wei and Guan Yu were waiting, straining their necks in the cold wind for a ship to come in. “No, I can’t sit still. I’d better go take another look...”

Just as Zhang Fei was about to rise, Luan Yi caught him and pulled him back down. “Come now, Third Brother. We just traded places with Big Brother and Second Brother. Why go back so soon? Besides, a crowd doesn’t make ships appear. Even if we go, it won’t help. Better sit first, have some warmed wine, and rest a while. We can go again later.”

“But I can’t sit still!” Zhang Fei, restless and unable to bear it, swallowed the bowl Luan Yi had just refilled and, wiping the remaining wine from his lips, rose again to pace the hall, stamping the floor with thudding steps.

Seeing Zhang Fei looking like an ant on a hot pan, Luan Yi could not help laughing aloud. He silently marveled that Fierce Zhang Fei truly had the temper of a blazing fire. In a gentle voice, he said, “Third Brother, anxiety will not solve anything. Rather than pacing about in a flurry, why not sit down and quietly pray to the Holy Mother? Perhaps once she hears your wish, she will immediately dispatch a ship to take us south of the river.”

“Hm?” Zhang Fei blinked. “Does this prayer business Fourth Brother speaks of really work?”

“I, Luan Yi, swear to the Holy Mother that it absolutely works!” After so long at the trade of a charlatan, Luan Yi could say such things without so much as a blush, not missing a beat. In any case, by the logic of the Holy Mother’s faith, if Zhang Fei’s vow did not come true, it could always be explained away as his lack of sincerity, or as his bloodthirsty nature making the Holy Mother unwilling to bother with him, and so on and so forth—dozens of excuses. If it did come true, then it was a miracle. In either case, the Holy Mother was right; that was precisely the advanced wisdom that later generations of Christianity, as a field of theology in the universities, would be studied for so enduringly.

“Then I, Old Zhang, will pray myself!” Zhang Fei plopped down into his seat, recalled the prayer steps and wording Luan Yi had taught him on the road here some days before, and murmured, “My mother in heaven...”

At that opening alone, Luan Yi nearly slid laughing under the table. “My mother in heaven!” The same words, spoken in that Hebei dialect, sounded oddly uproarious no matter how one heard them, adding an invisible abundance of comic flavor.

Zhang Fei seemed to notice Luan Yi’s reaction. He opened his pair of bronze-bell eyes and looked at him in confusion. “What’s the matter? Am I doing it wrong?”

“Right, Third Brother, very right. Go on, go on...” Luan Yi gave a hollow laugh and returned to Zhang Fei the chance to feed his spiritual hunger.

Zhang Fei smacked his lips, closed his eyes, crossed both hands and pressed them together over his beard, and muttered his prayer. “My mother in heaven. My fourth brother says you’re very efficacious, though I don’t much believe it. Still, things just happen to have turned difficult for us. We’re trapped by the river and can’t cross. If you can get us a boat within an hour and carry us over, then I, Old Zhang, will believe in you. I’ll serve you as though you were my own mother, and these more than two hundred pounds of flesh will be yours to command. If you don’t manifest... then don’t blame me if I don’t give you incense money in the future—no, wait, Fourth Brother calls incense money an offering, so I won’t give you offerings. So I think it would be more cost-effective for you to send a boat. Er... all right, that’s enough! Amen.”

He finished, smacking his lips again, only to find Luan Yi staring at him, stunned speechless. So he asked, “What? Did I pray wrong?”

Wrong? Of course it was wrong. Luan Yi’s mind was in a whirl. Since when did anyone pray with that kind of threat? According to Zhang Fei, if the Holy Mother did not answer, she would be the one at a loss? And if no ship happened to pass here, then Zhang Fei would simply stop believing in her?

Though he thought this, he could not say it aloud. After all, this was Zhang Fei’s first prayer; some matter-of-principle mistakes could be forgiven. More importantly, if he truly wanted to bring Zhang Fei into the fold, he had to encourage him to adopt the everyday habits of believers. “Third Brother prayed just right. Perfectly right!”

“Then we wait! I’d like to see whether a ship comes within an hour.”

At that, the smile on Luan Yi’s face stiffened at once. He knew full well that for someone just beginning to accept the faith, this kind of testing prayer was the hardest situation to handle. If the prayer was answered, all was well. If it was not, and the preacher’s explanation proved insufficient, a bad impression would easily take root in people’s hearts—one so difficult to dispel that drawing them into the church afterward would require great effort indeed. And that was exactly the situation he least wanted to see with Zhang Fei!

Thinking of this, Luan Yi’s gaze drifted involuntarily toward the door while his mind kept assembling a defense, searching for the best way to explain things to Zhang Fei if no ship arrived in time.

The curtain continued to flap open and shut in the cold wind. Charcoal in the bronze brazier gave off wisps of blue smoke, and through the drifting haze the embers within slowly sank under the glow, melting away bit by bit.

Waiting always passed slowly. Each minute at the start seemed longer than a year... yet as the hour drew near exhaustion, time suddenly seemed to quicken, so fast that Luan Yi wished he could seize it and keep it from racing to its end.

But time was, after all, insubstantial; even the greatest men in the world could not restrain its advance.

The hour arrived in the blink of an eye. Zhang Fei, who had been pacing the hall, lifted his eyes for one last look at the sky and shook his head with equal parts dejection and relief. “I knew it! The Holy Mother isn’t as miraculous as Fourth Brother made her out to be!”

Luan Yi’s heart tightened. He hurried to explain, “Third Brother, don’t jump to conclusions. Your wish has only just been sent forth. The Holy Mother receives the prayers of tens of thousands each day, and it naturally takes time to handle them one by one. Besides...”

Before he could finish, a brightness flashed at the inn doorway, and then a fierce gust of cold air surged into the room through the entrance, making Luan Yi shiver.

A large, powerful hand held back the half-lifted curtain. Behind it stood Dian Wei’s towering, mighty frame.

On his devilishly ugly face bloomed an angel’s smile, and the words he spoke were as warm as sunlight. “Third Brother, Fourth Brother, a ship has come!”

“Bless the Holy Mother!” Luan Yi let out a long breath and drew the sign of the cross over and over before his chest.

At first Zhang Fei sat in dumbfounded silence; then joy lit his face. “Well I’ll be! She really is efficacious.”

“But... the ship’s owner won’t let us board!” Dian Wei’s next words were like snowmelt in the depths of winter, sending a chill straight through Luan Yi’s bones.

“What?” Zhang Fei was utterly disappointed. “So the Holy Mother doesn’t work? No, that’s not right... If she doesn’t work, how could it be such a coincidence that I prayed for a ship within an hour and one actually came? But if it came, why won’t they let us on?” He slapped his forehead and suddenly understood. “Could it be that when I prayed just now, my tone was disrespectful and angered the Holy Mother, so she deliberately toyed with Old Zhang like this?” The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed, and at once he was overcome with shame. “What are we to do... what are we to do!”

As he was muttering, Dian Wei said again, “The boat owner did not wish to let us aboard at first, but Second Brother went to speak with him. As soon as he gave the name of our leader, the owner changed his mind at once. He said he knew our leader and would be very glad to share a boat with him. He also said there was no need for us to hurry; he would be waiting by the river at any time!”

“Hm?” The situation turned abruptly. After his great disappointment, Zhang Fei suddenly broke into a grin and complained to Dian Wei, “Brother, could you please not stop in the middle of a sentence like that!”

Compared with Zhang Fei, Luan Yi cared more about who this supposed acquaintance on the ship actually was. “Big Brother! May I ask the surname and name of that shipowner? Where did he come to know me?”