Yu Hua - To Live

“Kugen’s getting heavier,” he would boast to me.

When I went into town to visit them I’d often see Erxi, covered in sweat, pulling his cart down the street. Kugen would be in his backpack with just his little head sticking out, bopping from side to side as Erxi walked. Erxi appeared beyond the point of exhaustion. I tried to convince him to let me bring Kugen to the country and take care of him for a few days, but Erxi wouldn’t let me.

“Dad, I can’t bear to be apart from Kugen,” he said.

It was a good thing that Kugen grew fast. Before we knew it he was walking, and that made things much easier for Erxi. While Erxi was loading and unloading he’d let Kugen play off to one side, and when it was time to go he’d pick Kugen up and put him in the cart. When Kugen got a little bigger he figured out who I was. After hearing Erxi call me Dad enough times, it stuck with him. Every time I’d go into town to visit them, little Kugen, sitting in his dad’s cart, would immediately look up at Erxi and scream in that sharp voice of his, “Dad, your dad’s coming!”

While he was still on his dad’s back, Kugen had learned how to curse. When he was angry, his face would turn bright red, and his little mouth would make all kinds of strange sounds, “pssh, pssh, paaa, paaa.” No one could understand what he was trying to say. Only when bubbles of saliva flew out of his mouth would Erxi realize what was going on.

“He’s cursing somebody,” Erxi explained to me.

Once Kugen could walk and had learned a few words, it got even better. As soon as he saw the other kids playing with something that looked fun, he’d giggle and wave them over with his hand. “Come, come, come!” he’d repeat, all the while frantically waving his hand.

When the other children came over he’d reach out and try to steal their toys. If they refused to hand them over, Kugen would lose his temper and push the other children away, saying, “Go, go, go!”

Erxi never got over the loss of Fengxia. He was never a man of many words, but as soon as Fengxia died he spoke even less. Other people would say things to him, but he’d just grunt and that would be it; only when he saw me would he open up a bit. Kugen became the core of our lives. But the bigger he got the more he resembled Fengxia and the more he resembled Fengxia, the harder it was for us to look at him. Sometimes after Erxi looked at Kugen for a while, tears would begin to trickle down Erxi’s face. As his father-in-law, I would try to console him: “It’s been a while since Fengxia died. You should try to forget her if you can.”

By then Kugen was three. He sat in his stool rocking back and forth. His eyes were wide open as he tried as hard as he could to understand what we were saying. Erxi tilted his head to the side in thought. After a while he finally said, “My memories of Fengxia are my only happiness.”

Later, I had to get back to the village and Erxi had to get back to work, so we left together. Keeping to the wall, Erxi bolted off the moment we got outside. With his head tilted, he moved like lightning, as if he were afraid someone was going to see him. He pulled Kugen by the hand, practically dragging him. Kugen tripped and stumbled, his whole body aslant. It was not my place to say anything to Erxi — I knew that he had become like that only after Fengxia had died. But as soon as the neighbors saw him they yelled, “Erxi, you’d better slow down! Kugen’s going to fall.”

Erxi acknowledged them with a grunt, but he continued walking just as fast as before. Being pulled by his dad, Kugen’s body would twist about, his eyes rolled around to take everything in. When they got to the corner I told Erxi, “I’m heading back.”

Only then did Erxi stop and raise his shoulder to look at me. I said to Kugen, “I’m going.”

Kugen looked at me and, waving his hands, said in a sharp voice, “Get going.”

Whenever I had some free time I’d head into town. With both Erxi and Kugen there, I couldn’t stand staying at home — I felt that my true home was in town. When I returned all alone to the village, I couldn’t relax. A few times I brought Kugen back with me. Kugen loved it; he’d happily run all over the fields. Once he wanted me to help him catch a sparrow. I asked him how I was supposed to catch one, and he pointed up at a tree and said, “You climb up.”

“I’ll break my neck!” I protested. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“No, I’m not trying to kill you. I’m trying to catch a sparrow!” he replied.

Kugen seemed to be very much at home in the country, but it was hard for Erxi to be away from his son. Going one day without seeing Kugen was unbearable for him. Every day after work he’d be so exhausted he could barely move, yet he’d still walk over ten li to come see Kugen. And then he’d have to get up the next morning and walk back into town to work. I realized that continuing like this was no solution to anything, so from then on I’d see Kugen home before it got dark.

After Jiazhen died I didn’t have any other attachments, so when I got to town Erxi would say, “Dad, why don’t you stay over?”

And so I’d stay in town a few days. If I had wanted to move in with them, Erxi would have happily obliged. He kept saying that having three generations under one roof was better than two. But I wasn’t willing to rely on Erxi to take care of me. I was still good with my hands and quick on my feet, still able to make a living. Having the two of us working and making money, Kugen would have an even better future.

Things went on like this until Kugen was four. That’s when Erxi died. Erxi was crushed between two slabs of cement. As a porter it’s common to get bumped or scraped up a bit, but to lose one’s life — Erxi was the first. It seems like everyone in the Xu family had a tough fate. The day of the accident, Erxi and the rest of them were moving cement slabs into carts. Erxi was standing in the cart in front of a pile of cement slabs while the crane was lifting four more of them. I don’t know what went wrong, but suddenly they all fell on him. No one had even noticed Erxi standing there; they suddenly just heard a loud scream: “Kugen!”

Erxi’s buddies told me the sound of that final shriek had scared the hell out of them. They had never imagined Erxi could have such a powerful voice — it was as if his chest had exploded. By the time they got to Erxi, my crooked-headed son-in-law was already dead. He was lodged between the pile of cement slabs, and except for his head and feet his whole body was crushed flat. They couldn’t find a single unbroken bone, and the blood and flesh were spread like a thick paste over the cement slabs. They said that when Erxi died his neck suddenly stuck out straight and his mouth opened wide — that was the moment he called out to his son.

Kugen was beside the nearby pond throwing pebbles into the water when he heard his father’s last scream. He turned around and said, “What does he want?”

He paused for a while, and since he didn’t hear his dad call him again, he went back to tossing pebbles into the water. Only after Erxi’s coworkers brought his remains to the hospital and he was officially declared dead did someone go tell Kugen, “Kugen, Kugen, your father’s dead.”

Kugen still didn’t quite know what death was. He turned around to answer, “I know.”

After that he just ignored the guy and went on throwing stones.

I was in the field working when one of Erxi’s coworkers ran down to tell me, “Erxi’s dying! He’s in the hospital. Hurry!”

As soon as I heard something had happened to Erxi and that he was in the hospital, I immediately began to cry. I yelled over to Erxi’s coworker, “Hurry up and get him out of that hospital. You can’t leave him in that hospital.”