Yu Hua - To Live

“Poor Fengxia,” said Erxi.

But after a while I realized something was wrong: Fengxia was mute — she couldn’t scream. I mentioned this to Erxi, and his face instantly turned pale. He ran up to the delivery room door, yelling, “Fengxia, Fengxia!”

Two doctors came out and, glaring angrily at Erxi, yelled, “What the hell are you screaming about? Get out!”

Erxi was wailing like a baby.

“How come my wife still hasn’t come out?” he asked.

Someone else in the waiting room told us, “Some deliveries are fast, and some are slow.”

Erxi and I looked at each other, thinking maybe this guy was right. We sat back down, but my heart was still pounding. Before long a doctor came out to ask us, “Do you want the big one or the little one?”

Her question left us both utterly stupefied.

“Hello, I’m talking to you,” she said.

Erxi fell at her feet. Kneeling before her, he pleaded through his tears, “Doctor, please save Fengxia. I want Fengxia.”

Erxi was on the ground crying uncontrollably. I helped him up and tried to get him to calm down, telling him to take it easy or he was going to hurt himself.

“Just as long as Fengxia pulls through everything will be okay,” I told him. “You know there’s a saying: ‘As long as the green mountain remains, there’s no reason to worry about firewood.’ ”

Erxi was still crying as he said, “My son’s gone.”

So was my grandson. I lowered my head and began crying uncontrollably. But around noon a doctor came out and said, “She delivered. It’s a boy!”

The second Erxi heard this he got anxious. Leaping forward he yelled, “I said I didn’t want the little one!”

The doctor said, “The big one’s okay, too.”

Fengxia was okay. I suddenly began to feel dizzy — I was getting older, and my body couldn’t take this kind of stress anymore. Erxi was as happy as could be. He sat down beside me with his body shaking. He was shaking because he was laughing too hard. I said to Erxi, “Now we can finally relax. I’m going to get some sleep. I’ll be back in a while to take your place.”

But who could have guessed that the moment I left, something would happen to Fengxia? Just a few minutes after I went out the door, a whole army of doctors ran into the delivery room, some of them even carrying oxygen tanks. After Fengxia gave birth she started hemorrhaging and lost a lot of blood — before dusk she was gone. My two children both died during childbirth — Youqing during someone else’s delivery, Fengxia during her own.

The snow was especially heavy that day. After Fengxia died her body lay in that tiny room. I went to see her, and as soon as I saw the room I couldn’t bring myself to go in. Ten years earlier, Youqing had died in that same room. I stood in the heavy snow, listening to the echoes of Erxi’s voice calling Fengxia. The pain in my heart was so great I had to squat down on the ground. I could barely see the entrance to the room with the heavy snowflakes falling. All I could hear was the wrenching sound of Erxi’s cries. Only after I called Erxi a few times did he finally respond. He came to the door and said to me, “I wanted the big one, and they gave me the little one.”

“Let’s go home,” I said. “This hospital and my family have a score left over from another life. Youqing died here, and now so did Fengxia. Erxi, let’s go home.”

Erxi lifted Fengxia onto his back, and the three of us headed home. By then it was completely dark out. The road was covered in a thick blanket of snow, and there was not a soul in sight. When the western wind blew, snowflakes beat against our faces like pellets of sand. After getting part of the way home, Erxi raised his voice, which had grown hoarse from his constant crying.

“Dad, I can’t go on,” he said.

I told him to give Fengxia to me, but he wouldn’t let me take her. Then after walking a few more steps he squatted down, saying, “Dad, my back’s so sore I can barely take it.”

That was because of his crying. He had cried so hard that he had hurt his back. When we got to Erxi’s place, he put Fengxia down on the bed and sat on the edge of it gazing at her. Sitting there, Erxi’s body looked like it had shriveled into a little ball. I couldn’t look at them; just seeing their shadows on the wall was unbearable. Their looming shadows were dark and large. One was lying while the other looked like it was kneeling. Neither moved. The only things moving were Erxi’s tears — I kept seeing those large black drops falling from one shadow to the other. I went into the kitchen to boil some water to warm up Erxi. By the time the water had boiled and I’d brought it out, Erxi had dozed off — now they were both asleep.

That night I sat in Erxi’s kitchen until dawn. The wind outside howled, and for a time sleet pattered wildly against the doors and windows, but there wasn’t a sound from Erxi and Fengxia sleeping in the other room. The cold winter wind snuck in through the crack in the door, bringing a draft that made my knees feel cold and sore. There was a numbness inside of me like ice. Just like that, my two children had left me. I wanted to cry, but there were no tears left. I thought of Jiazhen, who was at home, probably with her eyes glued to the door waiting for me to bring the news. When I left she kept reminding me over and over to hurry home as soon as Fengxia gave birth to tell her if it was a boy or a girl. But how was I to tell her that Fengxia was dead?

When Youqing died, Jiazhen almost went with him. Now that Fengxia was gone, how would she be able to bear it? The next day, carrying Fengxia on his back, Erxi went home with me. It was still snowing, and Fengxia’s body was almost completely shrouded in white, as if it were covered in a blanket of cotton. When we got home I saw Jiazhen sitting in bed, her head leaning against the wall and her hair a mess. The moment I saw her like that I knew she understood that something bad had happened to Fengxia. It had already been two days and two nights since I’d left home. My tears came down in waves, and Erxi, who had already stopped crying once, couldn’t hold himself together either. The moment he saw Jiazhen’s baby-like tears, he called out, “Mom, Mom. ”

Jiazhen’s head was no longer resting against the wall, but it didn’t move. Her eyes remained fixed on Fengxia draped over Erxi’s back. I helped Erxi put Fengxia down on the bed, and Jiazhen lowered her head to look at her. Jiazhen’s gaze was so intense, it was as if her eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. I never imagined Jiazhen would have that kind of reaction. She stopped crying and just stared at Fengxia, caressing her face and hair. Erxi was crying so hard that he had to stoop down and rest against the side of the bed. I stood to one side looking at Jiazhen, not knowing what she would do next. That day Jiazhen didn’t cry or scream; from time to time she’d just shake her head. The snow on Fengxia’s body slowly melted, soaking the whole bed.

Fengxia was buried alongside Youqing. The snow stopped falling, the sun beamed down from the heavens and the western wind grew even fiercer, its whistling roar almost completely drowning out the sound of the rustling leaves. The wind was blowing so hard that after we buried Fengxia, Erxi and I had to hold on to our hoe and shovel to keep our balance. The ground was covered with snow, and under the sun the white radiance was almost blinding. The plot of land where Fengxia was buried was the only area in sight free of snow. Staring at that patch of damp earth, neither Erxi nor I was willing to walk away. Erxi pointed to an empty plot of land beside Fengxia’s grave and said, “Dad, when I die, bury me there.”

I sighed as I told Erxi, “This spot is for me. Besides, no matter what happens, I’ll die long before you.”