Yu Hua - Cries in the Drizzle

My brothers’ laughter served to buttress my grandfather's position, although that was not what they intended. My father, normally brimming with self-confidence, found himself at sea. Bereft of the rage he needed to deal with the still-wailing Sun Youyuan, he retreated feebly toward the door, at the same time waving his hand and saying, “Okay, I give in. Just stop all that wailing, will you? You win, all right? I'm no match for you, I admit. Just stop that damn wailing!”

But once he was outside the house Sun Kwangtsai flared up once again. Pointing at his family inside, he swore, “You're such sons of bitches, the whole lot of you!”

There was one lunchtime when I — an adult now — found my attention drawn to a charming performance by a brightly dressed little boy. He stood on the sidewalk in the full sunshine, stuck out a pudgy arm, and very intently executed a whole series of gestures that suggested a rich imagination, simple though they were. In the middle of this routine he suddenly stuck his hand into the crotch of his pants and scratched an itch, although his face continued to maintain a blissful smile. Undistracted by the din of the city streets, his mind still reveled in a fantasy world.

Later, when a troop of primary school pupils passed by, he discovered that he wasn't as happy as he thought. He watched agog as these older children walked off into the distance. Even without seeing the look in his eye I could feel his despondency at that moment. Satchels, slung casually over their owners’ shoulders, swayed in a gentle motion as the class moved off, surely a dispiriting sight to a boy who had not yet reached school age, and the fact that the children were walking in pairs can only have sharpened his feelings of envy, leaving him vexed and dissatisfied with life. He turned and stomped off down an alleyway, wearing a long face.

Twenty or so years ago, when my big brother strutted off with his satchel and my father issued his parting injunction, I realized for the first time how unfortunate I was. A year later, when I went off to school with a satchel on my back myself, I was no longer in a position to listen to any advice that Sun Kwangtsai might have had for me, and received another kind of counsel altogether.

By that time it was six months since I had left Southgate. The burly man who escorted me away from Southgate had become my father, while my mother, a petite woman with a blue-checked headscarf who used to walk briskly across the fields, had been replaced by the pale and listless Li Xiuying. One morning my new father gripped the handles of a heavy wooden trunk, effortlessly shifted it to one side, and from the trunk underneath brought out a brand-new green military satchel, which he said was mine from now on.

Wang Liqiang's perception of country boys would have been amusing were it not so annoying. Perhaps because he was himself a peasant's son, he never altered his conviction that village children, like dogs, were liable to answer the call of nature wherever they felt like it. During his first full day of parenting he underscored repeatedly the importance of the chamber pot. His concern about my excretory functions remained uppermost in his thoughts even as I was putting the satchel on my back, a moment that to me was sacred. He told me that once I was at school I could not just go to the toilet whenever I felt like it; first I needed to raise my hand and secure the teacher's permission.

I felt proud to be so neatly dressed, green satchel dangling from my shoulder, escorted by Wang Liqiang in his army uniform. That was how I arrived at school on my first day. A man who was busy knitting a sweater chatted quietly with Wang Liqiang, but I dared not laugh at his incongruous hobby because this man was to be my teacher. Then a boy my age ran toward us waving his satchel. He and I exchanged glances, and a cluster of children nearby took a good look at me. “Why don't you go and join them?” Wang Liqiang suggested.

I walked toward those unfamiliar faces. They eyed me inquisitively and I studied them with equal curiosity. I soon found that I had a significant advantage over the other children, for my satchel was bigger than any of theirs. But just when I was feeling rather pleased with my superior status, Wang Liqiang came across on his way out and delivered a loud reminder, “If you need to pee or drop your load, don't forget to raise your hand.”

My nascent self-esteem instantly bit the dust.

My five years of town life were spent in the company of an ill-matched couple, one all muscle, the other frailty personified. I had not been selected by the town because I was so adorable, nor was I, for that matter, so enthralled by the town; the crux of the matter was that Wang Liqiang and his wife needed me. They were childless, the reason being, according to Li Xiuying, that she was not strong enough to breastfeed. Wang Liqiang put it differently, telling me categorically that if Li Xiuying, with all her ailments, were to give birth, this would kill her right away — a remark that seemed quite shocking to me at the time. Neither of them liked babies, and they opted for a six-year-old like me because I could do some work around the house. To be fair, they were expecting to be parents to me their whole lives through, for otherwise they could perfectly well have adopted a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy whose performance of chores would have been more satisfactory. The problem was that a fourteen-year-old would already have well-formed habits that might give them a lot of trouble. Having chosen me, they fed and clothed me, saw me off to school, scolded and beat me, just like other parents would. And so I, the product of another marriage, became their son.

During the whole five years I lived with them Li Xiuying went out of the house only once, and after that unprecedented excursion I never saw her again. It was always a mystery to me exactly what was wrong with Li Xiuying, but I was left in no doubt about her devotion to sunlight. It was as though, without exposure to sunshine, this second mother of mine was shrouded in a perpetual drizzle.

The first time Wang Liqiang conducted me into her room, I was astonished to see the floor dotted with little stools, on which were draped an immense number of undershirts and underpants, illuminated by the sunshine that came in through the window. She seemed completely unaware of our entrance. Her outstretched arm was groping for the sunlight, as though tugging on a slender cord. As the sun's rays shifted their position, she would move the stools so that her motley collection of underwear would always be bathed in sunshine. So absorbed was she in this monotonous and barren activity that I must have stood there for quite some time. When she turned around, I saw a large pair of eyes so hollow that I draw a blank when I try to picture their expression. Then I heard a sound so thin it was as though a thread was passing through my ear, the way it might pass through the eye of a needle. She was telling me what would happen if she wore damp underwear: “I'd be dead in a second.”

I was startled to find this languid woman speaking about death with such finality. I had left the familiar and intimate surroundings of Southgate and parted from my parents and brothers who were all so full of life, and now, no sooner did I get here than the first thing this unnerving woman said to me was that she could die at any moment.

Later I came to feel that Li Xiuyings remark was not so exaggerated. During those periods when it rained day after day, she would run a fever and lie in bed mumbling. She looked so desperately ill at such moments that I often felt she was about to vindicate her own prognosis. But when sunlight shone through the window and illuminated her rows of stools, she accepted her survival with equanimity. She had an uncanny sensitivity to moisture and could even gauge the humidity in the air with her hand. Every morning when I pushed open her door and went to clean her window, she would extend a hand from her blue floral mosquito net and pat the air, just as if she was stroking something solid, in this way testing the dampness of the day that was just beginning. At first this scared me out of my wits, for her body was entirely obscured behind the mosquito net and all that could be seen was a white hand, its five splayed fingers in sluggish motion, like a severed limb floating in the air.