Yu Hua - The Seventh Day

“Those of us without graves.”

He nodded, seeming to have understood. “How do you know about me?” he asked.

“Xiao Qing came over, and he told us.”

“Xiao Qing’s here too?” he said. “When did he come?”

“It must be six days ago now,” I said. “He kept getting lost and didn’t get here until yesterday.”

“How did he come over?”

“A traffic accident — it happened in the thick fog.”

“I don’t know anything about fog,” he said, perplexed.

He couldn’t have known, I realized, recalling that Xiao Qing had said Wu Chao was lying in the underground bomb shelter the whole time.

“You were in the bomb shelter then,” I said.

He nodded, then asked, “How long have you been here?”

“This is my seventh day,” I said. “How about you?”

“It seems to me I just came over,” he replied.

“Today, in other words.” I realized that he and Mouse Girl had just missed each other.

“You must have seen Mouse Girl.” An expectant look appeared on his face.

“I did.” I nodded.

“Was she happy?”

“She was,” I said. “But when she realized you had sold a kidney to buy her a burial plot, she wept. She wept her heart out.”

“Is she still crying now?”

“Not anymore.”

“I’ll be able to see her very soon.”

Joy appeared on his face like the shadow of a tree leaf.

“You won’t be able to see her,” I said after a moment of hesitation. “She has gone to rest.”

“She’s left for there already?”

The joyful shadow left his face, to be replaced by a shadow of grief.

“When did she leave?” he asked.

“Today,” I said. “Just as you were coming over, she left. You missed each other.”

He lowered his head and walked on, weeping silently. After walking some distance, he stopped weeping. “If I’d just come a day earlier,” he said sorrowfully, “that would have been perfect — I could have seen her then.”

“If you’d come a day earlier,” I said, “you would have seen a dazzling Mouse Girl.”

“She was always dazzling,” he said.

“She was all the more dazzling on the way to the place of rest,” I said. “She wore a long dress like a wedding dress, which trailed along the ground—”

“She doesn’t have such a long dress. I’ve never seen her in such a dress,” he said.

“It was a dress made from a pair of man’s pants,” I explained.

“I see. I heard that her jeans split — I read about it on the Internet,” he said mournfully. “She must have worn someone else’s pants.”

“Some kind person dressed her in them.”

We walked on in silence. The empty plain was absolutely still, making us feel that our walking was simply walking in place.

“Was she happy?” he asked me. “Was she happy as she went off in her long dress?”

“She was happy,” I said. “She was happy that you had bought her a burial plot and that before the winter was out she could go to rest, taking her beauty with her. We told her she looked like a bride going off to her wedding. When she heard this she cried.”

“Why did she cry?” he asked.

“She thought of how she wasn’t going off to marry you, but going to rest at her burial spot. That’s what made her cry.”

Wu Chao was distressed. As he walked on, he rubbed his eyes with both hands.

“I shouldn’t have deceived her,” he said. “I shouldn’t have tried to fob off a fake iPhone on her. She was so keen to have an iPhone and would talk about this every day. She knew I was broke and couldn’t afford a real iPhone — it was all just fantasy talk. I shouldn’t have tried to fool her with a fake. I understand why she wanted to take her own life — it wasn’t that I’d bought her a knockoff, but that I hadn’t come clean with her.”

He lowered his hands. “If I’d said to her that this is a knockoff, because it’s all I can afford, she would have been pleased, she would have thrown herself into my arms and hugged me, knowing I’d done everything I could.

“She was so good to me, staying with me for three years, three years of hardship. Being poor made us quarrel. Often I lost my temper, cursing her or beating her. I feel terrible when I think about it, for I should never have lost control like that. No matter how poor or hard our life was, she never once mentioned leaving me — it was only when I was mean to her that she wept and threatened to leave me, but after crying she still stayed on.

“She had a girlfriend who was an escort at a nightclub, turning tricks every night, and the girlfriend could make tens of thousands a month, so Mouse Girl wanted to work at the nightclub too, because if she just did that for a few years she’d make enough money to go back home with me and build a house and get married — ma rrying me was her greatest wish, she said. I said no, I wouldn’t tolerate other men touching her, and I beat her, beat her that time till her face swelled up and she wept and screamed that she was going to leave me. But she woke up the next morning and hugged me and said sorry to me over and over again, saying she would never let another man put his hand on her, even if I died she wouldn’t let another man touch her, she would live as a widow. We’re not married yet, I said, and if I die you don’t count as a widow. She said that’s crap, if you die I’m your widow.

“Last winter was even colder than this one, and after we moved into the bomb shelter we’d spent all the money we had and had yet to find new work, so we lay for a day in bed and just drank some hot water, hot water she’d got from a neighbor. In the evening we were so hungry it was driving us mad, and she got out of bed and got dressed and said she was going out to beg for some food. How are you going to do that? I asked. Stand in the street and beg, she said. I said no, that’s begging. She said if you don’t want to, then just stay in bed, I’ll go and get something for you to eat. I wouldn’t let her leave. I’m not going to be a beggar, I said, and I’m not going to let you be one, either. We’re starving, she said, who gives a shit about being a beggar or not? She insisted, so I had no choice but to put on a jacket and follow her out of the bomb shelter.

“It was freezing that night and the wind was strong, gusting down our necks and chilling us to the bone. The two of us stood in the street and she would say to people as they came up, we haven’t eaten all day, can you give us a little money? Nobody paid us the slightest attention. We stood in the icy wind for over an hour, and she said, this is no way to beg, we need to wait outside the door of a restaurant. She took my hand and we walked past a brightly lit bakery, and she turned around and walked me back and told me to stand outside the door while she went in. Through the window I saw her say something to the girl behind the counter and the girl shook her head; then she went over to people sitting there eating baked goods and drinking hot drinks and said something to them, and they too shook their heads. I knew that they were refusing to give her bread. She came out of the shop as though nothing had happened, then took my hand and led me to the entrance of what looked like a very posh restaurant, and she said, let’s wait here: when the people inside have finished eating and come out with boxed leftovers, we can ask them to give us stuff. By this time I was both cold and hungry and could hardly stand up straight in the bitter wind, but she seemed to be neither cold nor hungry, standing there watching one group of diners after another as they emerged from the restaurant. None of them seemed to be carrying leftovers, and one car after another pulled over and took them away. The place was just too ritzy, and everyone who ate there had lots of money and none of them would have dreamt of taking their leftovers home.