Yu Hua - Cries in the Drizzle

My grandmother's father maintained a scholarly posture all the way to the bridge, but once he got there he promptly announced that it was beneath his notice, saying sharply, as though he had been insulted, “Such a lousy crooked bridge, and you ask me to think of a name for it!” And he went off in a huff.

My grandfather carried on crisscrossing the country north and south. He and his team trudged long distances amid the gunfire of Nationalists and Communists, through scenes of famine; in such times as these, who would think of raising money to have them demonstrate their skills? Like a band of beggars, they tried to drum up business everywhere they went. My grandfather was stirred by an ambition to build bridges, but he lived at the wrong time, in an era infatuated with destruction. In the end his motley crew had little choice but to compromise their initial innocence and take on any work available, even cleaning corpses and digging graves, for only by such means could they ensure that they themselves did not die by the roadside. In that dire hour, Sun Youyuan somehow managed to induce them to follow him on his aimless and futile travels; I have no idea what kind of blandishments he used to persuade them. Finally one night, mistaken for Communist guerrillas, they were fired upon by Nationalist troops, and these stonemasons, so steeped in out-of-date ideals, were forced to go their separate ways, alive or dead.

At that time my grandfather and his band of paupers were sleeping on a riverbank. After the first wave of shots rang out, Sun Youyuan was unscathed, and he propped himself up and yelled, “What do you think you are doing, letting off firecrackers?” Then he saw that the face of an apprentice next to him had been shot to pieces, reduced in the moonlight to a gruesome mess, like an egg that has been smashed on the ground. My bleary-eyed grandfather took to his heels and ran, yelling and screaming as he tore along the bank. But he soon hushed when a bullet whistled through the crotch of his pants. “Damn it,” he thought, “my balls have been blown away!” He continued to run for his life all the same. When he had run a good ten miles, he felt that his crotch was completely soaked through. It didn't occur to him that it could be drenched with sweat and he felt sure that he was losing all his blood, so he came to a stop and reached in a hand to press down on the wound. In so doing, he brushed against his testicles. At first he was startled, thinking, “What the hell is this?” But more careful examination confirmed that the family jewels were intact and unharmed. Later he sat down under a tree, toying with his sweaty testicles for a good long time and chuckling away. Only when he was absolutely sure of his own safety did he give any thought to the band of apprentices on the riverbank. The memory of the youngster s shattered face reduced him to tears and wails.

For Sun Youyuan to try to keep the family business afloat was clearly no longer an option. At the age of twenty-five, he felt the same bleak hopelessness that had beset his father on his retirement. As Spring Festival approached, wearing the careworn expression of an old man, my young grandfather stepped onto a dust-blown highway and set off for home.

My great-grandfather had fallen seriously ill after he returned home the previous year, and though my great-grandmother spent all their savings she was unable to return him to his former vigor and had to pawn everything of value in the house. Eventually she found herself bedridden too. On the last day of the year, when my grandfather returned home ragged and penniless, his father had already breathed his last, and his mother lay sprawled next to his lifeless body, on the verge of death. Racked by illness as she was, she could greet her son's return only with a rasping, hurried breath. My grandfather had brought poverty back to a poverty-stricken home.

This was the darkest hour in my grandfather's early years. By now there was nothing left in the house worth pawning and during the holiday season no way to sell his labor to earn rice and firewood. At his wits’ end, braving a piercing wind, he ran toward town on the morning of the Chinese New Year, his father's body over his shoulder. He had come up with the idea of leaving his dead parent at the pawnshop, and as he ran he constantly apologized to the corpse on his shoulders, at the same time racking his brains to think of an excuse that would make him feel better. My great-grandfather's body had lain frozen for two days and two nights in the drafty thatched cottage, and was then carried by my grandfather for ten miles through the howling north wind. When he set it down on the counter of the pawnshop in town, it was as stiff as a board.

Tears welling up in his eyes, my grandfather threw himself on the mercy of the pawnshop proprietor, explaining that it wasn't that he was an unfilial son, but there was simply no other recourse open to him. He told the pawnbroker, “My dad is dead, and I have no money for his burial; my mom is alive, but ill in bed at home with no money for treatment. Do a good deed, will you? I'll redeem my dad in a few days’ time.”

The pawnbroker was an old man in his sixties; he had never in his life heard of using a corpse as collateral. Covering his nose with his hand, he waved him away. “No, that won't do, I'm afraid. We don't accept gold bodhisattvas here.” On the first day of the New Year he wished to strike a propitious note, and so he elevated Great-grandfather to the rank of a priceless treasure.

But my grandfather, refusing to take no for an answer, persisted with his entreaties, and so three clerks came forward and shoved my great-grandfather down off the counter. He fell as rigid as a flagstone, hitting the ground with a resounding thud. Sun Youyuan hastened to pick his father up and inspected him fearfully to see if any damage had been done. A spray of cold water then descended on his head, for without waiting for him to leave the shop the clerks had begun to clean the counter soiled by the unwanted pledge. This incensed Sun Youyuan, who swung a heavy fist in the face of one, knocking him to the ground with the force of a pellet hurled from a slingshot. My grandfather used his enormous strength to overturn the counter, but when several more clerks descended on him, cudgels flying, the only thing he could think of was to raise his father's corpse aloft, to ward off their blows and take the battle to them. In that chilly morning he brandished the rock-hard carcass and turned the pawnshop upside down. Brave Sun Youyuan gained strong support from his father's cadaver, beating the clerks till they did not know what to do. None of them dared to touch the corpse for fear of incurring a whole year's worth of bad luck, and the superstitions of the day, combined with Sun Youyuan's audacity, ensured that he encountered practically no resistance. But when my grandfather swung his father around and lashed out at the ashen-faced proprietor, it was Sun Youyuan's turn to be horrified, for in so doing he knocked his father s head against a chair. An awful noise awoke him to the realization that he had committed a monstrous sin, using his father's remains as a combat weapon. His father's head had been knocked askew, and after a moment of shock my grandfather hoisted him onto his shoulder, dashed outside, and set off at a run through the icy wind. In the end he did, like a proper son, weep bitter tears— he was sitting under a winter elm then, cradling my damaged ancestor. It took a great deal of effort to twist his father's head back into its original position.

Sun Youyuan buried his father, but he had not buried poverty, and in the days that followed he could only dig up some herbs and boil them in a broth for his mother to drink. These were little pink and green plants that grew at the foot of the wall— motherwort, though Sun Youyuan did not know that. He was overjoyed to find that his ailing mother, after drinking the broth, was able to get out of bed and walk around. My slapdash grandfather found this a revelation, thinking naively that he now understood the true state of affairs, that those miracle-working physicians actually had no special skill at all, that there was nothing more to it than harvesting a pile of herbs and medicating a patient the same way you would feed a sheep. So he abandoned the idea of going to town to work as a laborer, and after being a mason all his life he decided he would now devote himself to health care.