Yu Hua - The Seventh Day

“Were you crushed to death?” the little girl asked.

“I think that’s maybe what happened, yes.”

“His face has been altered,” the little boy said.

“You’re right.”

“Are we pretty?” the little girl asked.

I looked awkwardly at the thirty-eight skeletons arrayed in front of me, unsure how to respond to the girl’s blunt inquiry.

“Everyone here says I keep getting prettier,” the little girl said.

“That’s true,” the boy said. “They say everyone who comes here just gets uglier, and we’re the only ones who get prettier.”

I hesitated for a moment. “I wouldn’t know,” I answered in the end.

The voice of an elderly person sounded among them. “We were so charred in the fire that when we got here we were like thirty-eight knots of charcoal. Later, the burned bits peeled off, leaving us as we are now. That’s why people say this.”

He recounted their story as the other thirty-seven listened silently. Now I knew their history, how, on the day of my father’s disappearance, that department store half a mile from my little shop caught on fire and was reduced to a pile of blackened ruins. The city government had reported that seven had died and twenty-one were injured, of whom two were in critical condition. On the Internet some said over fifty had perished, and some even claimed the death toll topped one hundred. I looked at the thirty-eight skeletons in front of me: they were the deleted dead. But what about their relatives?

“Why did your families not make a fuss?”

“They received threats, and they accepted hush money as well,” the old one answered. “We’re already dead, and just so long as our relatives can go on living an undisturbed life, we’ll be content.”

“But the children? Won’t their parents—”

“We’re the kids’ parents now,” the old man interrupted me.

Holding hands, one next to the other, they silently slipped past me and went on their way. They moved on in a tight throng, and even the strongest wind could not have blown them apart.

In the far distance I spotted a couple, still fully fleshed, emerging from a lush stand of mulberry trees. They were dressed very skimpily, in garments that looked more like simple coverings than real apparel. As they came nearer, I realized that the woman was dressed in only a black bra and panties and the man in blue underpants. The woman wore a shocked expression and walked with a slight crouch, her hands folded across her thighs as if to screen them from view. The man bent down and put his arm around her protectively.

As they arrived in front of me, they scanned me carefully, as though searching for a familiar face. Disappointment gradually registered on their features, for they had decided they did not recognize me.

“Are you a new arrival?” the man asked.

I nodded. “And you are, too? Husband and wife, I take it?”

They nodded simultaneo usly.

“Did you see our daughter?” the woman asked pathetically.

I shook my head. “There’s such a multitude of people over there,” I said, “I don’t know which of them is your daughter.”

The woman bowed her head in distress. The man patted her on the shoulder. “There will be other new arrivals,” he comforted her.

“Yes, but there’s such a multitude of people over there,” the woman answered, repeating what I’d just said.

“There’s bound to be someone who has seen Xiaomin,” the man said.

Xiaomin? I seemed to have heard this name before. “How did you come to be here?” I asked.

A wisp of fear crossed their faces as the shadow of their ordeal in that departed world projected into this one. Their eyes evaded my glance — or perhaps it was their tears that made them appear to do so.

Then the man began to recount their terrifying experience that morning on Amity Street. The city had been determined to demolish the three apartment buildings, but the residents had refused to move out, resisting all pressure for a good three months, until forcible demolition was authorized. The couple came home early one morning after getting off the night shift, woke up their daughter, and prepared breakfast for her. She went off to school, her satchel on her back, while they went to bed and fell asleep. In their dreams they heard a loudspeaker outside delivering one warning after another, but they were just too tired to wake up properly. In the past they had heard other such warnings and seen bulldozers lined up in combat readiness, but after the confrontation with the residents, the loudspeakers and bulldozers had retreated. So they thought this was simply another round of intimidation and went on sleeping. They were shaken awake only when the building began to sway violently amid a clamorous din. The man jumped out of bed, tugging his wife by the hand, and ran toward the door. Just as he opened it, she ran over to the sofa to collect her jacket. He dashed back to pull her away — and the building collapsed with a crash.

His account came to an abrupt halt, and she began to weep.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t say that.”

“I shouldn’t have tried to get my jacket—”

“We didn’t have enough time anyway. Even if you hadn’t gone back, we wouldn’t have had time to escape.”

“If I hadn’t tried to pick up the jacket, you would have got out alive.”

“Even if I’d got out, where would that have left you?”

“Well, at least Xiaomin would have a father.”

I realized now who their daughter was — the little girl in the red down jacket who sat amid the chaos of steel and concrete, doing her homework in the cold wind as she waited for her parents to come home.

“I’ve seen your daughter,” I told them. “Her name is Zheng Xiaomin.”

“Yes!” they cried together. “That’s her name.”

“She’s in fourth grade.”

“That’s right. How do you know?” they asked.

“We’ve talked on the phone,” I told the man. “I’m the one who promised to do the tutoring.”

“You’re Teacher Yang?”

“Yes, I’m Yang Fei.”

The man turned to the woman. “This is Teacher Yang. I told him we didn’t make much money and he immediately lowered his fee to thirty yuan an hour.”

“That was kind of you,” the woman said.

To hear thanks in this context made me smile wanly.

“How is it you’re here too?” the man asked.

“I was sitting in a restaurant when the kitchen caught fire, and then there was an explosion. I arrived on the same day as you, just a few hours later. I called you from the restaurant, but you didn’t pick up.”

“I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“You were buried in the ruins then.”

“You’re right.” The man looked at his wife. “The phone was probably crushed.”

“How was Xiaomin?” she asked impatiently.

“We had arranged that I would come to your apartment at four p.m. When I got there, the three buildings were no longer standing….”

I hesitated for a moment, and decided not to tell them how their deaths had been hushed up. A story would be concocted about how the two of them had died. Their daughter would receive an urn in which other people’s ashes had been placed, and would grow up believing in a beautiful lie.

“How is Xiaomin?” the woman asked again.

“She’s well,” I said. “She’s the most levelheaded girl I’ve ever met. You don’t need to worry about her. She knows how to take care of herself.”

“She’s only eleven,” the girl’s mother moaned. “Every time she leaves the house to go to school, she’ll stop after a few yards and call, ‘Dad,’ and ‘Mom,’ and wait for us to respond. Then she’ll say, ‘I’m off now,’ and head off to school.”