Yu Hua: Cries in the Drizzle

As my father ran, his head gradually lolled back, he breathed more and more heavily, and his pace slowed. Finally he came to a complete stop and called Sun Guangping. My big brother slung Sun Guangming's body over his back and set off again at a smart pace. Sun Kwangtsai, now falling behind, shouted in short bursts: “Run … Don't stop … Run!”

My father had seen drops of water falling from my little brother's downturned head and he thought Sun Guangming was perhaps coughing up water, not realizing that my little brother was already gone.

After running some thirty yards or so, Sun Guangping began to stagger but Sun Kwangtsai kept on shouting, “Run! Run!”

In the end Sun Guangping collapsed on the ground and Sun Guangming tumbled down beside him. Sun Kwangtsai picked up his son once more and set off again at a running pace. Though he swayed from side to side, he was able to maintain an astonishing speed.

By the time Mother and the villagers arrived at our doorstep, it was already clear to my father that his son was dead. Utterly spent, he knelt on the ground retching. Sun Guangming's body lay sprawled underneath an elm tree whose leaves shielded it from the fierce summer sun. Sun Guangping was the last to arrive, and when he saw Father retching he fell to his knees not far away and followed suit.

At this moment, only Mother was expressing grief in a normal fashion. As she shrieked and sobbed, her body bobbed up and down. My father and brother, their retching over, remained on their knees, dumbly watching her ululations.

My dead brother was laid on the middle of the table, an old straw mat underneath him and a sheet on top.

As soon as my father and brother recovered, the first thing they did was to go to the well and fetch a bucket of water. Taking turns, they drank the whole bucketful and then each grabbed a basket and headed into town to buy bean curd. As he left, Father, grim faced, told the bystanders to take a message to the family of the boy whose life had been saved: “I'll go and see them when I come back.”

That evening the villagers sensed that something bad was likely to happen. When my father and brother returned and invited everyone to the wake, practically all the villagers went. Only the family of the rescued boy failed to make an appearance.

It was after nine o'clock that evening that the boy's father finally arrived. He came alone, without any of his brothers in attendance, prepared, it seemed, to bear all the consequences himself. He entered the room with all due ceremony, knelt in front of the body, and knocked his head on the floor three times. Then he stood up and said, “I can see everyone is here.” He acknowledged the presence of the production team leader. “Team Leader is here too. Sun Guangming died rescuing my son, and I am deeply grieved. There is nothing I can do to bring Sun Guangming back to life. All I can do is give you this.” He groped in his pocket and thrust a wad of bills in Sun Kwangtsai s direction. “This is a hundred yuan. Tomorrow I will sell everything in the house that is worth anything and give all the proceeds to you. We're neighbors, and you know how little money I've got — I can only give you as much as I have.”

Sun Kwangtsai stood up and found a stool for him, saying, “Please sit down.”

My father began to speak in impassioned tones, like a town official. “My son is dead, and nothing can bring him back to life. No matter how much money you give me, it cannot compensate for the loss of my son. I don't want your money. My son died saving someone else's life. He is a hero.”

Sun Guangping elaborated on this theme with equal fervor. “My brother was a hero, and my whole family is proud of him. We don't want anything you could give us. All we want is for you to spread the word so that everyone knows about my brother's heroic deed.”

Father rounded things off by saying, “Go into town tomorrow and have the radio station broadcast the news.”

Sun Guangming's burial took place the following day. He was buried between the two cypresses behind our house. During the funeral I kept my distance. Isolation and neglect had practically negated my existence as far as the village was concerned.Under the hot sun Mother's wailing cries pierced the air for the last time; the grief of my father and brother were not clearly visible to me from where I stood. Sun Guangming was carried out, wrapped in the straw mat, while the villagers stood in clusters along the road from the village to the burial ground. My father and my big brother laid Sun Guangming in his grave and covered him with earth. This was how my little brother officially terminated his stay in the world.

That evening I sat by the pond behind the house, gazing at the hump of my brother's grave in the quiet moonlight. He lay a ways off but somehow I felt he was sitting right next to me. In the end both of us had put a distance between ourselves and our parents, our older brother, and the village folk. We had taken separate paths, but the outcome was much the same. The only difference was that my younger brother's departure seemed much more decisive and carefree.

My alienation had kept me away from the scenes surrounding his death and burial, and I was anticipating that I would now be the object of even more forceful censure at home and in the village. But many days passed and nobody said or did anything different from before, which took me rather aback until I realized with relief that I had been utterly forgotten. I had been assigned to a position where I was recognized and at the same time repudiated by everyone in the village.

On the third day after the funeral the radio station publicized the heroic exploits of Sun Guangming, a young boy who had sacrificed himself to save another. This was the proudest moment for my father. During the three days leading up to it, whenever there was a local news broadcast Sun Kwangtsai would grab a stool and sit down right next to the radio. Now that his long wait had been rewarded, he was so exhilarated that he ambled about like a happy duck. That afternoon, when people were taking a break from work, homes throughout the village echoed with my father's resounding cry: “Did you hear?”

My older brother stood under the elm tree by the front door watching my father, his eyes gleaming. Thus began their splendid but short-lived days of glory. They felt sure that the government would immediately send someone to call on them. This fantasy originated at the district level, but in its more elaborate forms went all the way to Beijing. Their most impressive moment would come on National Day, when as the hero's closest kin they would receive an invitation to join the dignitaries at Tiananmen. My brother proved more astute than my father, for although his mind was filled with equally vacuous illusions, a fairly realistic thought occurred to him as well. He alerted my father to the possibility that my little brother's death might well elevate them to some kind of official status in the county. Though he was still in school, there was nothing to stop him from being groomed for public office. My brother's comments brought some substance to my father's dizzying fantasies. Sun Kwangtsai rubbed his hands with glee, scarcely knowing how to contain his excitement.

So elated were they that father and son shared their highly unreliable notions with the villagers on a variety of occasions. Thus it was that reports of the Sun family's imminent departure soon spread around the village, the most unnerving version of the story being that we might well be moving to Beijing. These speculations in turn were relayed back to my family, and one afternoon I heard my father gloating to my brother, “No smoke without fire! If this is what the villagers are saying, it must mean that the officials will soon be here.” My father had broadcast his own fantasies to the villagers and then used the ensuing gossip to reinforce his own illusions.