Retribution

There was once a boy named Ma whose father taught him at home. From the back window of his upstairs study, Ma could look down onto a terrace belonging to an old man named Wang, who grew chrysanthemums there.

One morning Ma got up early and leaned on the windowsill to watch the sun come up. Old Wang came out onto his terrace and watered his flowers. Just as he finished and turned to go in, a water-carrier came along with a pail hanging from each end of his shoulder pole. He seemed to want to help. The old man, annoyed, waved him away, but the water-carrier kept trying to climb up onto the terrace, and the two of them began tugging at each other at the edge.

It had rained, and the narrow, raised border of the terrace was slick. When the old man pushed the water-carrier back with his hand, the man lost his footing and tumbled down the bank. Old Wang hurried down to lift him, but the two heavy pails had landed on the man’s chest, and he lay there with his legs stretched out, dead.

The old man was terrified. Without a sound, he took the water-carrier by the feet and dragged him out through the back gate to the bank of the stream that ran past the garden. Then he fetched the pails, set them down beside the body, went home, locked the door, and climbed back into bed.

Young as he was, Ma feared becoming involved in a matter where a human life was at stake and decided to say nothing. He shut the window and stepped away.

As the sun climbed, he heard shouting outside: “There’s a dead man on the riverbank!” The constable reported it, and in the afternoon the magistrate arrived to the beat of gongs. The coroner knelt and uncovered the body, but there was no wound. “He slipped and fell,” people said. The magistrate questioned the neighbors, and every one of them said they knew nothing. So he had the body put into a coffin, sealed it, ordered that the dead man’s family be found, and left.

Nine years went by. Ma was now twenty-one and had passed his first degree. His father had died, the family had little money, and in the very room where he had once studied, Ma now taught a few pupils of his own.

With the examinations coming, he rose early one morning to work. When he opened the window, he saw a man with two pails coming slowly up the far end of the lane. Looking closer, he realized with a jolt that it was the water-carrier. “He has come back to pay old Wang out,” Ma thought. But the man walked straight past Wang’s door. A few steps farther on he turned in at the house of the Li family—wealthy neighbors with whom the Mas were on visiting terms.

Puzzled, Ma got up and followed. At the Lis’ gate he met an old servant hurrying out. “Heaven is about to send our mistress a child!” the servant said. “I’m going to buy incense to thank the gods.”

“Didn’t a man carrying two pails of water just go in?” asked Ma. The servant said no one had. Before he had finished speaking, a maid came out. “You needn’t buy incense; I’ve found some. And by Heaven’s favor, the baby has already arrived.”

Ma interpreted this as the water-carrier returning to be born again, rather than immediately taking revenge. He wondered whether the wealthy birth rewarded a good deed—a belief of Ma’s within the tale, not evidence that wealth measures moral worth. He kept it in mind and asked after the child from time to time.

Seven more years passed, and the boy grew. He did not care much for books, but he loved keeping birds. Old Wang was still hale and hearty, past eighty now, and fonder of his chrysanthemums than ever.

One morning Ma rose early and leaned at his window as before. He saw old Wang come out onto his terrace to water the flowers. Up in his own house, young Li sat in an upper room flying his pigeons. Suddenly some of them flew down and settled on the railing of Wang’s flower garden. The boy was afraid they would fly away. He called them, but they would not move. Not knowing what else to do, he picked up stones and threw them at the birds. One went astray and hit old Wang.

The old man flinched, slipped, and fell off the terrace. Time went by, and he did not get up. He lay there with his legs stretched out. The boy was badly frightened. Without a sound, he softly shut his window and went away.

The sun climbed higher, and the old man’s sons and grandsons came out looking for him. When they found him they said, “He slipped and fell.” And they buried him according to custom.

Where this story comes from

“Retribution” is one of the ghost stories in Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, translated by Frederick H. Martens (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1921). Wilhelm notes that he took this little tale from the collection “Sin Tsi Hia.”

He calls it a literary masterpiece because the punishment matches the deed so exactly and arrives so late—long after the act seems forgotten and any danger seems past. The careful echoes are the point: the early morning, the boy at the window, the slippery terrace, the outstretched legs, the silent closing of a window, and the same verdict, “He slipped and fell.”

Read the original: The Chinese Fairy Book, ghost stories section (Project Gutenberg)

Reading guidance: older children with adult discussion. Includes two deaths, concealment of a body and a supernatural interpretation of a later accident. The story’s symmetry does not establish that real accidents are deserved punishments.

Reading the story closely

The repeated details make the deaths look connected, but Ma supplies the interpretation of rebirth and repayment. The later child does not announce any intention to avenge a previous life. Meanwhile, both official explanations omit information that witnesses possess. The narrative’s pattern is stronger than the investigation within its world.

Add a timeline to the repeated-image list: the first death, nine years to the birth, seven more to the second death. At each date, mark what Ma sees directly and what he concludes. How would the account differ if it included only the observations?

Think about it

• Why does young Ma decide not to tell anyone what he saw?
• What does Ma first think the water-carrier has come back to do, and what really happens?
• Find three things that happen the same way in the first and last scenes. Why might the storyteller repeat them?

More stories like this

• The Dangerous Reward — another Wilhelm ghost story with a hard lesson
• The Punishment of Greed — a Wilhelm tale where wrongdoing is paid back
• The Night on the Battlefield — another Wilhelm ghost story built around a frightening encounter