Yu Hua - The Seventh Day

“Five days after she left home, a woman’s body floated to the surface of a pond a mile from our village. It being the height of summer, the corpse was already decomposed and unrecogniz able. The police called me and my wife’s relatives in to try to make an identifica tion, but none of us could be sure, at most simply noting a similarity in heights. The police said the drowning happened on the day she left home, and to me this suggested strongly that it must be my wife, and her family felt the same. She must have stumbled carelessly into the pond, I thought, for she wouldn’t have realized the danger of drowning. It upset me, for whatever else you say about it, we had been husband and wife for over two years.

“A couple of days later, the policemen came back to ask what I was doing the day my wife left. I’d gone into town that morning and it was evening when I got home and discovered she was gone. The police asked if anyone could testify that I had gone into town. I thought that over and said no. They took notes and left. Her family was convinced I had killed her and the police thought so too, so they arrested me.

“At the outset, my parents and my brother and his wife didn’t believe I killed her, but later, when I admitted I had, they were finally convinced. They were very upset and hated me for shaming them so much — they couldn’t raise their heads. That’s what our village is like: if there’s a murderer in the family, nobody dares to venture out of the house. When the court sentenced me to death not one of them was in attendance, and it was only her family who came. I don’t bear them any grudge. After I was arrested, they wanted to visit me but the police wouldn’t let them. They’re all honest, simple people, and they had no idea I was unjustly accused.

“I had no choice but to say I’d done it. The police strung me up and beat me, insisting I confess, beating me till I was shitting and pissing in my pants. My hands were tied tightly for two whole days and four of my fingers went black — I’d never be able to use them again, I was told. Later, they strung me up by my feet instead, with my head pointing down. When you get beaten that way, it’s not your body that hurts most, but your eyes. Tears are salty, and they can be as painful as a needle stabbing you in the eyes. I thought I’d be better off dead, so I admitted the crime.”

He paused for a moment. “You know why we have eyebrows?”

“Why?”

“To block sweat.”

I heard him chuckle as he smiled to himself.

He pointed at the back of his head, then at the round hole in his forehead. “The bullet came in the back, and this is where it came out.”

He looked down at his black armband. “When I got here, I noticed that some people were wearing armbands for themselves, and I wanted to do the same. I felt nobody back there would wear an armband for me — certainly nobody in my family. I saw someone with a long, loose black jacket. I asked him if he would mind tearing off a piece of sleeve for me. He understood what I had in mind, and complied. With a black armband I feel at ease.

“Someone who came over later filled me in on what happened subsequently. Six months after I was shot, my wife suddenly returned home. Her clothes were ragged and torn, and her face was so filthy nobody could recognize her. She stood outside the front door cackling happily away, and eventually someone put two and two together.

“Everyone finally realized that I had been wrongly convicted. My parents and my brother and sister-in-law all wept for two days straight, so upset were they. The government gave them compensation to the tune of five hundred thousand yuan, and they bought a fine grave for me—”

“You have a burial site?” I asked. “Why are you still here?”

“At first, when I heard the news, I took off my armband and tossed it under a tree, preparing to head there straightaway. But before I’d gone ten yards, I felt I couldn’t bear to leave here, so I went back and put the armband on again. Now I don’t feel like going.”

“You don’t want to go to the place of rest?”

“No, I do,” he said. “My thought at the time was that I have a burial spot all lined up, so there’s no big hurry — I can go there whenever I feel like it.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Eight years now.”

“Is the burial plot still there?”

“Yes, it always has been.”

“When do you plan to go?”

“Sometime in the future.”

We walked to the gathering place of the self-mourners. Before my eyes there stretched a broad river — the gleaming scene had also broadened. A green bonfire was blazing vigorously on the riverbank, and the leaping sparks looked like dancing glowworms.

Already there were many skeletons wearing armbands sitting around the bonfire. I followed my companion into the throng, looking for a spot to sit. Some of those seated adjusted their positions, opening up several vacant spots. I stood there in a quandary, until I saw my new friend sitting down in a nearby spot; I sat down next to him. When I raised my head, I saw others approaching, some along the grassy hills, some along the riverbank; they were blending together the way quiet little streams spill into a wider flow.

The skeleton next to me gave a friendly greeting. “Hi there!”

“Hi there!” seemed to form a little soundwave, veering off, making a circuit around the bonfire, then returning to me before it subsided completely.

“Are they greeting me?” I whispered.

“That’s right,” he said. “You’re a new arrival.”

I felt that I was a tree transplanted back to its native forest, a drop of water returning to the river, a mote of dust returning to the earth.

One by one the armband-wearing self-mourners sat down, and voices gradually reverted to quiescence. We sat around the bonfire, and in the spacious silence there quietly surged a thousand words and ten thousand comments — the sound of many humble lives presenting an account of themselves. Every one of the self-mourners had bitter memories, too painful to recall, of that departed world; every one was a lonely orphan there. Mourning ourselves, we gathered here, but when we sat in a circle around the green bonfire, we were no longer lonely and abandoned.

There was no talking, no movement, just silent, understanding smiles. We sat in the silence, not with any goal in mind, just for the sensation that we were united, instead of being isolated individuals.

In the quiet circle of sitters I heard the dancing of the fire, the tapping of the water, the swaying of the grass, the soughing of the trees, the rustling of the breeze, the floating of the clouds.

These sounds seemed to be pouring out their woes, as though they too had suffered many reverses, ordeals too painful to recall. Then I heard snatches of a song reaching me, a song like that of the nightingale. I would hear a little burst of song, and then a pause, and then another burst of song….

I heard a sound like a whisper in my ear. “So, you’re here.”

When I walked toward this unfamiliar voice, it was like raindrops dripping from the eaves onto a windowsill, clear and light. I could tell that it was a woman’s voice, one that after enduring hardship and heartache had been reduced to twilight’s dim glow, but still retained a distinct rhythm, like a knock on the door — one, two, three. “So, you’re here.”

I was a bit confused. Was this greeting really directed at me? But there was a faraway intimacy — the kind of intimacy you find in the depths of memory — that made me feel this greeting was for me. It was followed by a song like that of the nightingale, rippling toward me, and then that tender greeting reached my ears once more.