Yu Hua - To Live

Youqing knew I wouldn’t let him, so he shook his head and said to Wang Xi, “My dad will yell at me. I’ll just cuddle with them.”

As time went by there were fewer and fewer lambs left in the shed, because every few days they’d slaughter another one. In the end, Youqing was the only one who would still bring grass to the lambs. When Wang Xi saw me, he said, “Youqing’s the only one who still thinks about them every day. The others only think about them when they’re hungry.”

Two days after the village dining hall opened, the team leader sent two young men into the city to buy a cauldron for smelting iron. The team leader pointed to the heap of smashed pots and iron sheets that were piled up in the drying field and said, “We ought to hurry up and start smelting that stuff. It’s worthless just sitting there.”

After the two young men, carrying a straw rope and a shoulder pole, went into the city, the team leader accompanied the town fengshui 3expert on a leisurely stroll around the village. He wanted to find an ideal spot with perfect fengshui to smelt iron. The fengshui expert in his long gown walked back and forth with his squinting smile. As he approached each family’s house, the family members inside must all have been holding their breath. All it would take would be one nod from this hunchbacked old man and that family’s house would be gone.

The team leader accompanied the fengshui expert all the way to our front door. I stood outside the door with my heart caught up in an uncertain panic. The team leader said, “Fugui, this is Mr. Wang. He’s come by to have a look.”

“Good, that’s great,” I said, nodding my head.

With both hands clasped behind his back, the fengshui expert looked around in all directions and he said, “This is a great spot, the fengshui here is good.”

As soon as I heard that I felt dizzy and thought I was really done for. It was a good thing that at that moment Jiazhen came out. When Jiazhen saw it was the same Mr. Wang she used to know, she called out to him.

“Well, if it isn’t Jiazhen,” replied Mr. Wang.

Jiazhen smiled. “Come in for some tea.”

Mr. Wang waved his hands saying, “Some other time, some other time.”

Jiazhen said, “My dad said you’ve been up to your neck in work lately.”

“Yes, I’ve been really busy,” Mr. Wang said, nodding his head. “The people who want me to come check out their fengshui are all lining up!”

Saying that, Mr. Wang looked at me and asked Jiazhen, “Who is this?”

Jiazhen said, “This is Fugui.”

As Mr. Wang smiled, his eyes squinted to the point that all you could see was a single thin crack. He nodded and said, “I know, I’ve heard about him.”

Seeing the expression on Mr. Wang’s face, I knew he was thinking back to me gambling away all my family’s property. I just smiled at Mr. Wang, and he put his two fists together in a cordial gesture, saying, “We’ll talk again some other time.”

Finishing, he turned around and said to the team leader, “Let’s go somewhere else and look.”

Only after the team leader and the fengshui expert left did I truly let out a sigh of relief. My thatched hut escaped unharmed, but Old Sun was really up shit’s creek. The fengshui expert took a fancy to his house. The team leader requested that Old Sun and his family vacate the house, but Old Sun squatted down in the corner, crying like a baby. He didn’t want to move. The team leader said to him, “What are you crying about? The people’s commune will build you a new house.”

Old Sun’s two hands clasped his head, and he continued to cry, but he didn’t say a word. By the time dusk fell, the team leader figured there was no other way, so he got a few of the young guys in the village to pull Old Sun out of his house and move everything outside. After they pulled Old Sun outside, he grabbed on to a tree, and no matter what he wouldn’t let go. The two young guys pulling him looked at the team leader and said, “Team leader, we can’t move him.”

The team leader, turning to look, said, “Okay, you two come over here and start the fire.”

Matches in hand, the two young guys got up on a stool and lit a match against the straw on the roof. But the straw was already mildewed, and it had just rained the day before, so it was almost impossible for them to get a fire going. The team leader said, “Fuck, I don’t believe that the fire of the people’s commune can’t even burn down a raggedy old house like this.”

The team leader rolled up his sleeves, getting ready to do it himself, when someone said, “Add some oil. Just a little bit will do.”

After thinking, the team leader said, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? Quick, go down to the dining hall and get some oil.”

I used to think that I was the only wastrel — I never imagined that the team leader was one, too. I stood less than a hundred feet away, watching the team leader and the rest of them take perfectly good oil and pour it over the straw. The oil was being taken right out of our mouths and now, in their hands, was going up in smoke and flames. They poured the oil we were meant to cook with on the straw roof, and the flames whisked upward, dancing in the sky, while the smoke rolled back and forth across the roof. Old Sun was still hugging the tree, his eyes fixed on his burning house. Poor Old Sun — only after his house was burned to ash and the surrounding ground was blackened by the flames did he finally wipe away his tears and stagger away. The people in the village heard him say, “My pot’s been smashed, my house has been burned, it looks like I should probably die, too.”

That night Jiazhen and I could barely sleep. If Jiazhen hadn’t known that fengshui expert, Mr. Wang, who knew where our family would have wound up? The more we thought about it the more we became convinced that it all came down to fate. It was just a shame about Old Sun — Jiazhen kept thinking that we had pushed this catastrophe on him. I also thought so, but that’s not what I said.

“Actually, it was the catastrophe that found him,” I said. “You can’t really say we pushed it on him.”

The iron smelting area was evacuated, and the cauldron they had purchased in town arrived. They had also bought a petrol drum. A whole bunch of the villagers had never seen a petrol tank before, and they all thought it was a really curious object. They asked what kind of gadget it was. I had seen them before during the war so I told them, “It’s a petrol drum. It’s the rice bowl a car uses to eat.”

The team leader kicked this automotive rice bowl and said, “It’s too small!”

The guy who bought it said, “They didn’t have any bigger ones. I guess we’ll just have to smelt one cauldron at a time.”

The team leader was the kind of guy who liked to hear reasonable ideas. It didn’t matter who came up with them. Just as long as they sounded reasonable, he’d believe them. He said, “That makes sense. After all, taking one bite never made anyone fat. We’ll just smelt one cauldron at a time.”

Seeing so many people surrounding the petrol drum, Youqing, with his basket full of grass, temporarily postponed his trip to the livestock shed to come over and see what was going on. His head rubbed and bumped against my waist as he emerged from the crowd. I thought, who could this be? But as soon as I looked down I saw that it was my son. Youqing yelled out to the team leader, “When you smelt iron, you’ve got to add water.”

Everybody laughed when they heard this, and the team leader said, “Add water? This little guy is thinking about cooking meat.”

When Youqing heard this he started to giggle and said, “Otherwise before the iron is smelted you’ll burn a hole through the bottom of the cauldron.”