Yu Hua - To Live

It was then that the small child said, “Let’s run!”

It still didn’t hit me what had happened. The child managed to stay out of sight by keeping close to the wall before slipping away. As soon as the door opened a man dressed in servant’s clothes appeared. Taking one look at the clothes I was wearing, he just pushed me away without saying a word. I never expected he would do that, and with that one shove I lost my balance and fell down the steps. I picked myself up, and while initially I just wanted to forget it and be on my way, the servant followed me down the stairs to kick me, adding, “You dare come begging without taking a good look at what kind of place this is!”

All at once my temper flared, and I cursed him. “I’d rather gnaw at the rotten bones in your ancestors’ graves than beg from you!”

He jumped on me and began hitting me. I took a blow to the head, but not without kicking him. There we were wrestling in the middle of the street. This guy was sly, and seeing that he couldn’t beat me he tried kicking me in the groin. Me, I kicked him in the butt a few times. Neither one of us really knew how to fight, so we just wrestled around for a while until a voice from behind yelled, “What a pathetic sight! Two animals grappling about — it’s pathetic as all hell!”

We stopped fighting and turned around to see a brigade of Nationalist troops in yellow uniforms standing behind us. There were about ten cannons the size of doors being pulled by horses. The man who had just yelled had a pistol on his belt; he was an official. The servant really knew how to kiss up. As soon as he saw the official he immediately nodded and bowed. “Senior officer, greetings senior officer.”

The official waved his hands at us, saying, “Two stupid mules that don’t even know how to fight. Come on and pull this cannon for me.”

As soon as I heard this, the hair on my head stood on end — he was going to conscript us. The servant was also nervous. He walked forward and said, “Senior officer, I’m from the house of the county magistrate.”

The official said, “The son of the county magistrate should be even more willing to serve his country.”

“No, no.” The servant was so scared he began to stutter. “I’m not the magistrate’s son. Beat me to death and I still wouldn’t dare claim to be his son. Platoon leader, I’m the county magistrate’s servant.”

“Fuck you!” the official cursed. “I’m the company commander!”

“Yes, yes, company commander, I’m the county magistrate’s servant.”

No matter what the servant said it was not only no use, but it started to annoy the company commander. The commander stretched out his hand and gave him a wicked slap across the face. “Stop with the fucking bullshit and go pull the cannon!” he ordered. He looked at me: “You, too!”

I had no choice, so I grabbed hold of one of the horses’ reins and went with them. I thought, when the time comes I’ll find an opportunity to escape. The servant was still up front pleading with the commander. After walking a ways, the commander surprisingly granted his wish.

“Okay, okay, you can leave,” he said. “Little bastard’s annoying the hell out of me!”

The servant was so happy, I thought he was going to kneel down and kowtow to the commander. But he didn’t kneel, he just kept wringing his hands as he stood before the commander. The company commander said, “What the hell are you waiting for? Get the hell out of here!”

The servant said, “Yes, yes, I’m just leaving.”

As the servant finished he turned around and left. The commander took his pistol from his holster, and, straightening his arm and closing one eye, took aim at the servant. The servant had taken over ten steps when he turned around to take a look. What he saw shocked him, and he stood there without moving. Like a sparrow in the night he let the commander take his aim. It was then that the commander said to him, “Get going! Walk!”

The servant thumped to the ground. kneeling, he called out through his tears, “Company commander, company commander, commander.”

The commander fired a shot at him. It didn’t hit him, but a ricocheting rock cut his hand. His hand started to bleed. The commander waved his gun at the servant saying, “Stand up, stand up.”

He stood up, and the company commander said, “Get out of here, go!”

He cried repentantly, stammering as he spoke, “Commander, I’ll pull the cannon.”

The commander extended his arm again and for a second time took aim, saying, “You’d better start running!”

And then, as if the servant suddenly understood, he turned around and began to run like hell. Just as the commander fired off a second shot, the servant ran into an alley. Looking at his gun, the commander cursed, “Fuck, I closed the wrong eye.”

The company commander turned around and, seeing me standing behind him, approached me with his gun held out. He pressed the barrel of the pistol against my chest and said, “You can leave, too.”

My legs began to tremble uncontrollably. I figured even if he closed both eyes this time, he’d still send me to heaven with a single bullet. I pleaded, “I’ll pull the cannon, I’ll pull the cannon.”

With my right hand I grabbed the reins; with my left I firmly grasped the two silver coins in my pocket that Jiazhen had given me. As we left the city I saw some thatched huts in the fields that looked like mine. I lowered my head and began to cry.

I went north with this cannon battalion, and the more we walked the farther away we got. A month later we arrived in Anhui province. The first couple of days all I wanted to do was run away, and at the time I was not the only one with desertion in mind. Every couple days, one or two familiar faces would be missing from the battalion. I wondered if they really had run away, so I asked a veteran soldier called Old Quan.

“Nobody gets away,” explained Old Quan.

Old Quan asked me if I heard those shots fired at night while we were asleep, and I said I’d heard them. He told me, “Those are your deserters. Even the lucky ones who aren’t shot end up being caught by other units.”

As Old Quan spoke, my heart froze. Old Quan told me he was conscripted during the War of Resistance. When his troop set out for Jiangxi he deserted, but within a few days he was conscripted again by the troop going to Fujian. By then he had been in the army six years and had yet to fight the Japanese. All he’d fought were communist guerrilla detachments. During his period of conscription, Old Quan had run away seven times, and each time another unit had captured him. The last time he tried to escape he had made it within a hundred li of his home, and then he ran into this cannon battalion. Old Quan said he didn’t want to run away anymore.

“I’m sick of running,” he said.

After we crossed the Yangtze River we wore cotton-padded jackets. And as soon as we passed the Yangtze, my dream of deserting also died. The farther I got from home, the less courage I had to attempt escape. In our company we had about a dozen fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boys. Among these soldiers was a kid named Chunsheng, from Jiangsu province. He would always ask me if there was really fighting to the north, and I’d say there was, but actually I didn’t know. I thought, if you’re a soldier then fighting should be inevitable. I was closest with Chunsheng. He would always be next to me, pulling my arm, asking, “Do you think we’ll be killed?”

“I don’t know,” I’d reply.

As he asked me this my heart would feel wave after wave of pain. After we crossed the Yangtze, we began to hear the sound of cannons and guns. In the beginning it would echo from far away, but after walking two more days the gunfire grew louder and louder. It was then that we arrived at a small village. There weren’t any animals in that village, let alone people — there wasn’t a living being anywhere in sight. The company commander ordered us to set up the cannons, and I knew that this time we were really going into battle. Someone walked over and asked the commander, “Commander, where are we?”