Nights When Nothing Happened

Before Liang Cheng became a father, he had been, briefly, a son. His mother died, and he lived with his father and his father’s father in the Shaanxi countryside. During summers, the plum rains pulled down the sky. They fell in drops so big he could dodge them. While Liang danced around the rain in the courtyard, his father slept. Thunder and leaky ceilings did not stir him. With enough yellow wine, he could sleep for days.

At five years old, Liang did not flinch when his grandfather whipped his father with a willow switch to rouse him. Each lash made him stronger, his father said. He also kept a pail by his bed to catch the treasures from his stomach. His breath carried the smell of dead philosophers. He slept hugging a flute carved from the bones of an ancient red-crowned crane. The flute, he told Liang, was over eight thousand years old. Like tea steeped in red clay pots, its sound had grown rich from all the sounds that had passed through it.

Never mind that the instrument was as light as bamboo, that Liang caught splinters when poking his finger through one of the holes. It was enough to sit by his father and listen. The man never looked at Liang for long, but he didn’t shoo him away.

“Your mother lives on the moon,” he told Liang one night.

“But the moon’s right there,” Liang said. “I can touch it.”

What Liang saw outside was a guardian, a friendly