Yu Hua - To Live

After a while we saw Chunsheng running with his back arched, and he was carrying a pile of rubber shoes. The kid was so happy his face was bright red. He tumbled into the tunnel and, pointing at the rubber shoes that covered the ground, asked us, “Did I get a lot or what?”

Old Quan flashed me a confused look and asked Chunsheng, “Can we eat them?”

Chunsheng said, “We can use them to cook rice.”

We thought about it and immediately realized that Chunsheng was on to something. Seeing there wasn’t a single mark on Chunsheng’s face, Old Quan said to me, “This little bastard has got one up on both of us.”

From then on we didn’t fight over flatbread; we followed Chunsheng’s method. When everyone was piled up on one another fighting over bread, we took off their shoes. Some didn’t flinch, while others would kick wildly. We carried a steel helmet with us and would viciously hit those naughty feet with it. The feet that took our beatings would twitch a few times and then become stiff, as if they had been frozen. We carried the rubber shoes back to our cave to start a fire. At least we had rice, and this way we could avoid getting our asses whipped. As we cooked our rice we watched those barefoot guys half-walking, half-hopping around in the middle of winter. We couldn’t stop laughing.

The sounds of the guns and cannons came closer and closer, and it didn’t seem to matter if it was night or day. We stayed in our tunnel and slowly grew accustomed to the noises outside. Often a bomb would explode nearby. All of the cannons in our company were destroyed; we never got the chance to fire even a single shot, and already they had become a pile of worthless steel. We became increasingly bored. After a few more days, Chunsheng wasn’t even scared anymore — being scared was no use. The gun and cannon shots got closer and closer, but we always thought they were still far away. The worst was that it was growing colder by the day. At night we could only sleep a few minutes at a time before we would wake up freezing. The cannon explosions outside would shake the ground and leave us with our ears ringing.

No matter what anyone said, Chunsheng was still a child. On one occasion he was sleeping like a baby when a bomb exploded nearby, jolting him awake. After jumping out of his makeshift bed, he went outside and stood on top of our tunnel, yelling angrily in the direction of the explosions, “Quiet the fuck down! You’re so noisy I can’t get any sleep!”

As I rushed to pull him back in, bullets were already flying back and forth above our tunnel.

The Nationalist front was getting smaller by the day. Unless we were starving, in which case we would sneak out to look for something to eat, we didn’t dare climb out of our cave. Every day thousands of wounded were carried away. Our unit was stationed in the lower area of the front, so it became a haven for the wounded. During those days we spent holed up in our tunnel, Old Quan, Chunsheng and I would stick our heads out to watch the wounded soldiers being carried over on stretchers, their arms missing and legs broken. Before too much time could pass, another long string of stretchers would come by. The guys carrying the stretchers would arch their backs and, running over to an empty space on the ground near us, yell, “One, two, three.” When they got to three they’d turn the stretchers over as if they were dumping out garbage, then throw the wounded on the ground and leave them. The wounded were in so much pain they screamed out in agony — string after string of their screams and cries reached us. Old Quan eyed those men carrying the stretchers, and as they walked away he cursed them. “Animals!”

There were more and more wounded soldiers. As long as there were explosions on the front, there were more stretchers headed our way. Yelling, “One, two, three,” they’d drop the wounded on the ground. At first the injured lay in different piles, but before long the piles all ran together. They continued screaming out in agony. As long as I live I’ll never forget the sound of those tortured screams. As Chunsheng and I watched we felt wave after wave of bitter cold drive into our hearts — even Old Quan knit his brow in anger. I wondered how we were supposed to fight this battle.

As soon as night fell it began to snow. For a long time there were no more gunshots. We only heard the cries of the thousands of wounded men left for dead outside the cave. Their screams seemed like a combination of crying and laughter. That sound of unbearable pain — I never again in my life heard such a terrifying sound. The snow was like a floodwater rushing down over us, one large flake after another. In the darkness we couldn’t even make out the falling snowflakes — there was only the feeling of our bodies becoming damp and cold. The soft snowflakes would melt slowly in our hands, but before long another thick layer would accumulate.

Hungry and cold, the three of us huddled up together to sleep. By then the planes rarely came, so it was very difficult to find things to eat. Any hope of the Generalissimo coming to save us was dead; from that point on no one knew if we would survive. Chunsheng pushed me and asked, “Fugui, are you asleep?”

“No,” I whispered.

He then nudged Old Quan, who didn’t respond. Sniveling, Chunsheng said to me, “This time we’re not going to make it.”

As I heard this I could feel my tears welling up inside. It was only then that Old Quan opened his mouth. Stretching his arms he said, “Don’t talk about this depressing stuff.”

He sat up and said, “I’ve been in dozens of battles since I was a kid, and each time I say to myself: I’ve got to live. Bullets have brushed by every part of my body, but they’ve never hurt me. Chunsheng, as long as you believe you won’t die, you’ll make it.”

After that no one said a word, but we were each lost in our own thoughts. All I thought about was my family. I imagined Fengxia sitting by the door holding Youqing, and I pictured my mom and Jiazhen. I thought and thought about them until I was all blocked up inside and couldn’t breathe. It felt as if someone were holding my nose and covering my mouth.

After midnight, the cries of the wounded outside the tunnel gradually faded. I thought that most of them had fallen asleep. There were only a few left still moaning in pain. Those sounds, one phrase at a time fading in and out, sounded like someone talking: You ask a question, he answers. The dreary voices didn’t seem to come from the living. And then after a while there was only one voice left crying. That voice was so soft it seemed like a mosquito buzzing back and forth around my face. After I listened for a while it didn’t seem to be groaning, but rather singing a short melody. All around it was so silent that not a sound could be heard, only that voice, eternally twisting and turning. I listened until tears fell from my eyes. After the tears melted the snow on my face, they trickled down my neck, making it feel like a cold wind had blown in.

When the sun came up there was not a sound. We stuck out our heads to look; the thousands of wounded troops who had been calling out the night before were all dead. They lay there in disarray, not moving a muscle, covered by a light blanket of snow. Those of us hiding in the tunnels who were still alive stared blankly at them for what seemed like an eternity. No one said a word. Even a veteran like Old Quan, who had seen god-knows-how-many corpses, stared dumbfounded for a long time. Finally he sighed and, shaking his head, said to us, “It’s terrible.”

As Old Quan spoke he climbed out of the tunnel and walked over to the field of the dead. Bending as he turned over this one and picked up that one, Old Quan walked among the dead. Every now and again he’d squat down to wipe someone’s face with the snow. It was then that the firing resumed, sending a series of bullets flying our way. Chunsheng and I immediately snapped out of our daze and called out to Old Quan, “Get back here, quick!”