Yu Hua - Cries in the Drizzle

“Who the hell wants to have anything to do with you?” they said.

After this, I had to bear the consequences of my reckless declaration. Guoqing and Liu Xiaoqing turned their backs on me as they said they would. But I found that I lacked the determination needed to carry through with my threat. There were two of them and only one of me: that was the problem. They could steadfastly ignore me, but I could give them the cold shoulder only at great expense to my nervous system. I was now a loner, standing at the doorway to the classroom, watching them running joyfully around the playground. I was green with envy. Every day I hoped that they would come over and propose reconciliation, for in that way I could both maintain my integrity and have my friends back. But when they walked past they would be rolling their eyes or laughing their heads off. It was clear that they were ready to carry on like this indefinitely, for it cost them nothing. But I was paying a heavy price: when I walked home alone after school, it was as though I had a chinaberry in my mouth, bitter and hard to swallow.

I was stubbornly resolved to preserve my self-respect, but at the same time my wish to be with them intensified. These two contradictory impulses canceled each other out, until I hit upon an alternative form of intimidation.

I chose a spot on Guoqing's regular route home for delivery of this new threat; I ran ahead as fast as I could to wait for him there. As Guoqing approached my observation post, he — true to his proud nature — defiantly looked the other way. But I shouted with all the ferocity I could muster: “You stole your dads money!”

His confidence crumbled. He turned around and shouted at me, “No, I didn't! What a load of rubbish.”

“Oh yes you did,” I retorted. I reminded him of that time he asked for five cents from his father and took ten.

“I took those five cents for you,” he said.

I didn't care about that. Instead I shouted out my most potent line: “I'm going to tell your dad!”

My classmate went deathly pale. He bit his lip and did not know what to do. That's when I spun on my heel and left, striding along with my nose in the air like a rooster at daybreak. My heart filled with a sinful joy, stirred to elation by the look of despair on Guoqing's face.

Later on I was to threaten Wang Liqiang in much the same way. What I realized was that if there is something you really want you have to be prepared to stop at nothing to get it. My threat allowed me to reclaim our friendship and still keep my self-respect intact, so I felt that practical results were being achieved, however underhanded the methods.

The following morning, Guoqing sidled up to me and asked in a conciliatory tone if I wanted to go to his house and look at the scenery from the second floor. I said yes right away. This time he didn't invite Liu Xiaoqing; it was just the two of us. On the way there, he begged me not to tell his father about that earlier act of deception. But by this time, of course, he and I were already friends again, and I no longer had any desire to reveal his secret.

ABANDONED

One morning when he was nine, Guoqing woke up to find that he held his destiny in his own hands. Though far from being an adult and still under his father's sway, all of a sudden he was independent. Premature freedom made him carry his fate on his shoulder the way he might carry a heavy suitcase, staggering along a busy street, not sure which way to go.

My poor classmate was wakened that morning by a chaotic din. It was early autumn, and when he went to the door, still in just his underpants, his eyes heavy with sleep, he found his father and a couple of other men busily packing up household effects.

Guoqing at first was thrilled, for he assumed they were moving to a brand-new house. His joy was much like mine when I was leaving Southgate, but the reality that he was about to encounter was far worse.

Guoqing asked his father, in a voice as fresh as the morning itself, if they would be moving to a place where he'd see white horses with wings. His father, always so stern, saw nothing charming about this flight of imagination; on the contrary, he thought his son's question too ridiculous to deserve an answer. All he said was “Don't block the hallway.”

Guoqing returned to his room. He was the most worldly of the children in our class, but given his age at the time he could not possibly have anticipated what was about to happen. He set to work speedily organizing his possessions: his clothes, neither new nor old, as well as miscellaneous items like his screw nuts, his little scissors, and his plastic pistol. He was able to neatly pack them all into a cardboard box. He performed this task cheerfully against a background of bangs and thumps, often running out to the front door to watch with admiration as his father displayed his muscle power, shifting furniture. Then it was his turn. Although the box was about the same size as he was, he managed to lift it off the floor. He moved it slowly, edging along, brushing against the wall on the other side, for he knew the wall was a hand too, and a strong hand at that. Although he was fast running out of strength, there was a proud glint in his eye as his father came up the staircase. But his father said to him coldly, “Put that back where it came from.”

My friend had no choice but to make the reverse journey, straining with effort, having achieved nothing. His hair was dripping with sweat, and even after he patted it down it was still a disorderly clump. At this moment he really did not know what to do, and he sat down in a little chair to ponder the question. But it was impossible for him to envision his future in bleak terms, for life had not trained him to think along those lines. His thoughts bounced around like a ball on the playground and did not stay fixed on his father for very long. As his mind wandered, he looked happily through the window at the sky outside. Perhaps he was still imagining a white horse as it sailed through the air, its wings outstretched.

Grunts and thuds descended the stairs time and again. Guo-qing must have heard all this racket but he did not realize that the furniture had now been deposited on three flatbed carts, and he did not hear the wheels begin to turn. His thoughts had been whirring around like a bat, and when they finally stopped his father was in his room, and harsh reality faced him.

Guoqing did not give us a detailed account of what happened, and in any case Liu Xiaoqing and I were too young to understand. It was subsequent events that really drove home to me the fact of his abandonment. This was not the only reason I disliked his father. I had seen him on a number of occasions, and each time his manner was so severe as to give me the shivers. Now, as I try to recall him, I feel that there are some similarities between him and my grandmothers father. The first time I met him, he questioned me so closely about my background he might as well have been cross-examining me. When Guoqing tried to answer for me, he interrupted him, saying, “Let him speak for himself.”

His aggressive stare made me quake. When he entered Guo-qing's bedroom that day, I'm sure he fixed his son with the same stare. But his tone may have been calm, perhaps even gentle. He told Guoqing, “I'm going off to get married.”

Guoqing had to understand the change this entailed, which was very simple: his father could not possibly look after him anymore. Guoqing was too young to appreciate all the grim implications, and he just looked at his father in bewilderment. The heartless bridegroom-to-be left his son ten yuan in cash and twenty pounds’ worth of grain coupons, picked up a couple of baskets, and went downstairs. In the baskets he had put the last few items he was taking with him. My friend glued his face to the window, squinting in the sunlight as he watched his father saunter off.