Yu Hua: Cries in the Drizzle

The girl was quite average in looks. She lived in a two-story house in a village nearby; below the rear window of her house flowed the river that had claimed my little brothers life. As her family had been the first in the area to put up a house of more than one story, reports of their wealth had spread far and wide. Sun Guangping did not have his eye on their money for it was just a year after the house went up, and he knew that they still had loans to pay off and would not be in a position to offer an impressive dowry. Rather, this match was a gift presented by the village matchmaker, a woman who despite her bound feet hopped about as briskly as a flea. That afternoon when the matchmaker came walking over, her face wreathed in smiles, Sun Guangping knew what was about to happen, and knew too that he would agree to whatever was proposed.

My father was excluded from the negotiations preceding the engagement, and it was the widow, not Mother, who informed him of the outcome. On hearing the news, he realized at once that it was his responsibility to conduct an inspection. “What does she look like, this girl who's going to be sleeping with my son?” he asked.

Sun Kwangtsai set off at a brisk pace that morning, beaming happily as he walked, leaning forward with his hands clasped behind his back. He could see the fiancee's imposing home from quite some distance away, and the first thing he said to her father was, “He's a lucky bastard, that Sun Guangping.”

My father sat down in the girl's house as relaxed and at ease as if he was sitting on the widow's bed. Coarse language flowed from his lips as he conversed with her father. Her brother slipped out, bottle in hand, and brought it back full to the brim with spirits. Her mother set to work in the kitchen, and the noise of her preparations made my father's juices flow. He had already forgotten that the purpose of his visit was to inspect my future sister-in-law. Her father, however, had not.

He raised his head and called a name that Sun Kwangtsai forgot as soon as he heard it. The daughter, my might-have-been sister-in-law, called back from the second floor, but she was clearly reluctant to show herself. Her big brother ran up the flight of stairs and returned a few moments later with a smile on his face. He told Sun Kwangtsai, “She won't come down.”

My father showed himself to be a broad-minded man, saying airily, “That's all right, no big deal. If she won't come down, I'll go up.”

He poked his head into the kitchen for a moment and then went up to view the young lady. I think I can say with certainty that he tore himself away from the kitchen only with great reluctance. Not long after he had gone upstairs, the family down below heard a bloodcurdling shriek. Father and son remained glued to their seats in astonishment while the lady of the house rushed out of the kitchen in alarm. As they puzzled over what could possibly have precipitated that scream, Sun Kwangtsai came down the stairs with a big grin on his face, muttering, “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

From upstairs could be heard sobs so muffled it was as though they had been buried under a deep layer of cotton.

My father sat down unconcernedly by the table and as the girl's brother dashed upstairs Sun Kwangtsai said to her father, “Your daughter is really well put together.”

His host nodded uneasily, at the same time scanning Sun Kwangtsai's face with suspicion. “Sun Guangping is so damn lucky!” my father went on.

No sooner did he say that than the girl's brother careened down the stairs and with one enormous blow knocked Sun Kwangtsai to the ground, along with the chair he was sitting on.

That afternoon Sun Kwangtsai returned to the village with his face all black and blue, and the first thing he said to Sun Guangping was, “I canceled that match for you.” My father was outraged. “Those people are so unreasonable!” he cried. “I was just trying to look out for my son and make sure the girl was in good health. Can you believe how bad they beat me up?”

The reports that came from the neighboring village offered a different interpretation of the incident, according to which my father's first gift to his future daughter-in-law had been a breast massage.

My mother spent the whole day after the visit sitting by the kitchen stove, wiping away tears with the hem of her apron. Sun Guangping did not, as the locals were expecting, come to blows with Sun Kwangtsai, and his reaction was simply not to speak to anybody in the village for several days in a row.

In the two years that followed, my brother was never again to see the matchmaker approach him, her face wreathed in smiles. During that period he would think of his father only in bed at night, gnashing his teeth. Sometimes, as dawn approached, his thoughts would turn to his brother, far away in Beijing. I would often receive letters from him in those days, but they said nothing of substance and their vacuous contents made me realize how empty he felt.

When he turned twenty-four Sun Guangping married a Southgate girl. Yinghuas only family was her father, confined to bed after a stroke. The pond played a role in their union. Late one damp afternoon Sun Guangping looked out through the rear window and saw Yinghua washing clothes there. She was crouched down in her patched clothes, so overwhelmed by the hardships of life that she had constantly to wipe her tears away. The sight of her shivering in the chilly winter breeze triggered the same kind of heartache that his own plight inspired in him. The couple reached an understanding without the help of the matchmaker, who made a point of ignoring them.

Sun Guangping's marriage took place a year or so after he glimpsed Yinghua at the pond. The wedding arrangements were so skimpy that the older villagers were reminded of how a landlord s hired hands used to get married in the old days. Though meager, the wedding was not without its comic aspects, since the bride waddled about with a big belly. Before sunup the next morning Sun Guangping borrowed a flatbed cart and took Yinghua to the obstetric ward in the town hospital. For newlyweds, morning in the bridal chamber is normally a time of blissful cuddles, but Sun Guangping and Yinghua had to brave the piercing cold and rush into town to tap on the doors and windows of the hospital, still locked tight at that hour of the day. Two o'clock that afternoon, protesting furiously, a boy later to be named Sun Xiaoming came into the world.

Sun Guangping had entangled himself in a web of his own design. After his marriage he was duty bound to provide for his bedridden father-in-law. At this point in time, Sun Kwangtsai had not yet completed his career as a deliveryman, but to his family's relief he had restrained some of his impulses and was no longer in the habit of ostentatiously transferring property from our house to the widow's home. He did, however, reveal a new talent, an aptitude for pilfering things on the sly. Sun Guangping's financial and domestic difficulties continued for some years before his father-in-law — embarrassed, perhaps, at being such a burden — closed his eyes one night and never opened them again. For Sun Guangping, the greatest challenge was not his father-in-law's infirmity or his father's thievery but the period following Xiaoming's birth. During that time he was seldom seen just walking around the village, for he was in a blur of constant motion, scurrying from the fields to Yinghua's house, then to his own home, as nervous as a rabbit.

His father-in-law's death came as a relief to Sun Guangping, but a peaceful life remained far out of reach. Not long afterward Sun Kwangtsai was up to his old tricks again, reducing Yinghua to tears for a full three days.

This was in the summer of the year that Xiaoming turned three. As my father sat on the threshold and watched Yinghua fetch water from the well, he saw how the flowers imprinted on her shorts tightened and then loosened over her fleshy buttocks, and how her thighs gleamed in the sunlight. Worn out by the widow and by his advancing years, my father now had as little vitality as the dregs of an herbal medicine, but Yinghua's robust figure triggered in him a recollection of his exuberant energy of yore. This memory was not summoned up through mental effort as much as by a quirk of his withered body, which suddenly saw a revival of his once so irrepressible lust. As Yinghua walked over, bucket in hand, my father flushed and gave a loud cough. Although villagers were walking by not far away, the incorrigible lecher put his hands on the big red flowers on Yinghua's shorts and on the flesh underneath. My nephew heard his mother give a shocked screech.