Yu Hua - Cries in the Drizzle

Guoqing was so angry he started shaking. At that moment he truly wanted to kill Huilan's parents. He ran home and then set off again for Huilan's house, this time with a kitchen cleaver in hand. A neighbor just happened to be coming out his door, and seeing Guoqing so strangely accoutered he asked him what he was doing. Seething with rage, Guoqing answered, “I've got some killing to do.”

Guoqing had rolled up his sleeves and his trouser legs. With the cleaver resting snugly against his shoulder, he headed toward Huilan's house, a fierce glint in his eyes. His passage along the lane was completely unimpeded, because none of the adults who saw him took the full measure of his grim belligerence. When he told them he was off to kill people, his juvenile tone and callow manner made them chuckle.

Guoqing entered the courtyard of Huilan's house without difficulty. Huilan's father was busy lighting their coal briquette stove; her mother was squatting on the ground feeding the hens. When Guoqing suddenly appeared on the scene, cleaver in hand, they were dumbstruck. Guoqing did not immediately proceed toward his goal, but first pompously explained why he had to kill them. Then he moved forward, brandishing his cleaver. Huilan's father took to his heels, scurrying behind the house, where he yelled, “Help! Murder!”

Huilan's poor mother was frozen in her tracks and watched in horror as the cleaver approached. The chickens rescued her, for although most of these terrified creatures fled in all directions, two of them spread their wings and ran in front of Guoqing. This gave Huilan's mother time to recover her wits and flee out the courtyard gate.

Just as he was about to give chase, Guoqing noticed Huilan, who stood with her hand on the door frame, her eyes wide with alarm. Forgetting about pursuit, Guoqing hurried over to her, but it displeased him to find that she was shrinking back in fear. “What are you so afraid of? I'm not going to kill you\” he said.

His reassurance had no effect. She still looked at him in terror, her eyes so wide they almost looked artificial. Guoqing said heatedly, “If I knew this was how you were going to behave, I wouldn't have gone this far!”

By this time both entrances to the courtyard had been blocked by spectators, and before long police were on the scene. The news that a boy was bent on slaughter had spread through the town like wildfire; people came swarming from all directions. The first policeman to arrive stepped into the yard and said to Guoqing, “Put the cleaver down!”

It was Guoqing's turn to be petrified. He was already alarmed by all the noise outside, and the sight of the policeman made him grab Huilan and put the cleaver to her throat, yelling shrilly, “Don't you dare come in! I'll kill her if you do.”

No sooner had the policeman issued his order than he found himself forced to retreat. Huilan, silent until now, burst out crying. Guoqing said to her fretfully, “I'm not going to kill you, I'm not going to kill you! I just said that to fool them.”

But Huilan went on wailing as before. Guoqing said peevishly, “Stop crying! I'm doing this for you, you know.” His face bathed in sweat, he looked around. “Now it's too late to run away.”

Meanwhile, outside among the milling crowd, Huilan's distraught mother was reproaching her husband for being so selfish, fleeing for his life without the slightest thought for his wife's safety. Her husband, listening to Huilan's wails on the other side of the wall, said to her with tears in his eyes, “This is no time to talk about that when your daughter's life is hanging by a thread.”

Just at this moment a policeman took a good grip on the eaves and in a single fluid movement sprang onto the roof. He planned to creep up behind Guoqing and jump down on top of him. This man enjoyed quite a reputation in Littlemarsh, for once he had succeeded in dealing single-handedly with five hoodlums, tying them up with their own shoelaces and marching them off to the Public Security Bureau like so many crabs hung from a string. The panache with which he leapt onto the roof won the appreciation of the assembled onlookers. He ducked down low and was making his way in catlike silence toward the other side of the building when he unfortunately slipped on a couple of loose tiles and tumbled off the roof, landing first on the grapevine trellis— the people outside heard a chaotic snapping of bamboo canes— before plunging down onto the concrete. Had the trellis not broken his fall, he might well have ended up a paraplegic.

The sight of someone suddenly falling from the sky scared Guoqing so much that he shouted again, “Get out, get out, or I'll kill her!”

The policeman pulled himself to his feet and said feebly, “All right, I'm going, see?”

The standoff lasted until the early evening, when a tall policeman came up with the solution. He changed into plain-clothes and went in through the back gate. When Guoqing screamed at him to get out, he put on a friendly smile and asked in a gentle voice, “What are you trying to do?”

Guoqing wiped the sweat on his forehead and said, “I've got some killing to do.”

“But it shouldn't be her that you're killing,” the policeman said softly, indicating Huilan. Then he pointed outside the courtyard. “It's her parents you should be killing.”

Guoqing could not help but nod. He was beginning to fall for the policeman's line.

The policeman asked, “Can a little boy like you kill two grown-ups?”

“I sure can!” Guoqing said.

The policeman nodded and said, “I believe you. But there are lots of other people outside, and they're going to protect the people you want to kill.”

Seeing that Guoqing was looking unsure of himself, he stretched out his hand and said, “I'll help you kill them, how would that be?”

His tone was so friendly. Finally somebody was offering to help. Guoqing was now completely under his spell, and when the policeman extended a hand Guoqing instinctively passed him the cleaver. The man tossed it aside at once. But Guoqing failed to notice this, for after feeling so misused and so afraid at last he had found support, and he threw himself into the man's arms and burst into tears. The policeman seized him by the collar and shoved him — almost carried him — out the gate. Guoqing tried desperately to raise his head as the tall officer propelled him forward and the crowd parted to let them pass. Even now the fact of his bloodless surrender had not quite sunk in. The policeman tugged so hard on the back of his collar that Guoqing was practically throttled by his top button, and as he gasped for air his sobs turned into a succession of uneven whimpers.

SMEAR

Our teacher was soft-spoken but intimidating. With his glasses he somewhat resembled Su Yu's father, whom I was to meet later. He always looked at us with a smiling face, but he meted out harsh punishments at the drop of a hat.

His wife, it seemed, sold bean curd in a small market town in the countryside. This young woman would visit the school in the first few days of each month, wearing a floral-patterned outfit, sometimes with two brightly dressed little girls in tow. She had a funny habit of scratching her behind. But we all thought she was very pretty, and in her hometown, we heard, she was known as the Tofu Belle. Our teacher would wear a frown every time she came to stay, because he had to surrender to her the wages he had just been given, only a small portion of which she would return to him. At such moments she would admonish him in a sharp voice: “What are you scowling about? You're happy enough to see me in the evening, when you need me, but when I ask for money you look as though you're about to cry.”

At first we couldn't work out why the teacher would smile so much in the evening. We gave his wife the nickname Imperial Army, because she made us think of the Japanese devils and their campaigns of loot and pillage: every month she would sweep in and clean out his money pouch.