Yu Hua - Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

He was on his way to Shanghai, but before he got there, he would pass through Lin’s Pier, North Marsh, Westbank, Hundred-Mile, Tongyuan, Pine Grove, Big Bridge, Anchang Gate, Jing’an, Huang’s Inn, Tiger’s Head Bridge, Three Ring Cave, Seven-Mile Fort, Yellow Bay, Willow Village, Changning, and New Village. And of these places, only Lin’s Pier, Hundred-Mile, Pine Grove, Huang’s Inn, Seven-Mile Fort, and Changning were county seats. He would go ashore in all six of these towns to sell blood. He would sell his blood all the way to Shanghai.

Around noon that day Xu Sanguan arrived at Lin’s Pier. He walked along the little river that cut through town, between buildings and houses that clustered above the banks with their foundations spilling into the water below. Xu Sanguan unfastened the buttons of his cotton-padded jacket, letting the wintry sunlight shine onto his chest. His time-bronzed skin flushed a deep red in the cold wind. When he saw a set of stone-hewn steps leading down to the water, he went and sat by the river’s edge. A jumble of boats were moored on either side of the river; the steps where he sat offered the only unobstructed access to the stream along the embankment. There must have been a heavy snowfall in Lin’s Pier not long before, for Xu Sanguan saw that the cracks in between the stone steps were filled with veins of unmelted snow that glittered in the sun. Looking across the water at the windows of the houses, Xu Sanguan could tell that the people of Lin’s Pier were eating lunch, because steam had fogged their windows opaque.

He took a bowl out from his bundle, skimmed it below the water’s surface, and drew a bowlful. The water from around Lin’s Pier looked a little greenish in the bowl. He took a sip. The bone-piercingly cold water rolled down into his gut, and his body shivered. He wiped his mouth with his hand, then arched his neck to the sky and drank all of the water in a single gulp, clasping himself with his arms to steady the violent shivers that began almost as soon as he had finished. After a little while he felt his stomach slowly regain its usual temperature, so he skimmed another bowlful of water, drank it, and once again steadied himself against a fit of trembling.

The people of Lin’s Pier, sitting by their windows eating steaming bowls of lunch, noticed Xu Sanguan. They opened their windows and stuck their heads outside to gaze at this almost fifty-year-old man sitting at the bottom step of the stone pier, drinking bowl after bowl after bowl of wintry cold river water and shivering violently with each gulp.

And so they said to him, “Who are you? Where are you from?” “I’ve never seen anyone so thirsty in my life.” “Why are you drinking from the river? It’s winter, you’ll get sick that way.” “Come on up here, come up to my house, I’ll give you something to drink. We have boiled water, and we have tea leaves. We’ll make you a pot of tea.”

Xu Sanguan looked up at them and smiled. “I don’t want to bother you, thanks. You’re nice folks, and I wouldn’t want to trouble you. I have to drink a lot of water, so it’ll be less trouble to drink from the river.”

They replied, “We have plenty of water, you can drink all you want. If one pot isn’t enough for you, then you can have two pots or even three for that matter.”

Xu Sanguan stood, bowl in hand and faced the window through which the invitation had been issued. “I don’t want to use up all your tea. Give me a little salt. I’ve already had four bowls of water, but the water’s too cold, and I can hardly drink any more. Give me a little salt, and then I’ll feel like drinking some more water.”

They found this request somewhat odd. “What do you need salt for? If you can’t drink any more, then you won’t be thirsty anymore anyway.”

“I’m not thirsty. I’m not drinking because of thirst.”

Some of them laughed. One of them said, “If you’re not thirsty, why are you drinking so much water? And why drink cold water from the river? If you drink that much river water, you’ll get a stomachache for sure.”

Xu Sanguan looked up at them. “You seem like nice folks, so I’ll tell you. I’m drinking so much water so that I can sell my blood.”

“Selling blood?” they asked. “Why do you have to drink water to sell blood?”

“The more you drink, the more blood there’ll be. If you drink enough water, you can sell two bowls of blood.”

As he spoke, Xu Sanguan tapped the rim of his bowl and laughed, his wrinkled face folding into a smile.

“But why do you want to sell your blood?”

Xu Sanguan replied, “Yile’s sick. I mean, he’s seriously ill. It’s hepatitis. They’ve already taken him to a big hospital in Shanghai—”

“Who’s Yile?” someone interrupted.

“My son,” Xu Sanguan said. “He’s seriously ill, and only the big hospital in Shanghai can save him. I don’t have any money, so I have to sell my blood. If I can sell blood all the way to Shanghai, I might be able to make enough to pay the medical bill by the time I get there.”

At this point Xu Sanguan began to cry. He smiled wordlessly as tears rolled down his face. Xu Sanguan’s speech had left them speechless, and they could only gaze back at him. Finally, Xu Sanguan lifted his arm toward them. “You seem like kind-hearted folks. Do you think you could give me some salt?”

They all nodded. After a little while one of them brought him some salt wrapped in a piece of paper, while someone else gave him three pots full of hot tea. Xu Sanguan, looking toward the salt and the hot tea, said, “So much salt. I can’t use all of it. Tell you the truth, what with the tea, I don’t think I’ll need any salt after all.”

They said, “If you can’t use the salt now, take it with you, and you can use it next time you sell blood. Have some tea now before it gets cold.”

Xu Sanguan nodded, put the packet of salt in his pocket, sat back down on the stone steps, skimmed half a bowl of river water, picked up one of the teapots they had proffered, and poured it into the bowl. Then he drank this concoction in one gulp and wiped his mouth.

“That tea really tastes good.” Xu Sanguan drank three more bowls of tea.

They exclaimed, “You really know how to drink!”

Xu Sanguan smiled bashfully. “I’m really just forcing it down.” He glanced at the three teapots on the steps. “I have to leave now, but I don’t know who these teapots belong to. Who should I give them back to?”

They said, “You go on. We’ll collect them ourselves.”

Xu Sanguan nodded and looked around at the people in the windows and the people standing next to him on the steps, and he bowed in their direction. “You’ve all been so good to me, and I have nothing to give you in return, except my respects.”

Soon afterward, Xu Sanguan arrived at the Lin’s Pier County Hospital. In the blood donation room at the end of the clinic corridor sat a man about the same age as Blood Chief Li. He sat beside a desk, one arm draped across the tabletop, staring across the hall into a bathroom without a door.

When Xu Sanguan saw that his white coat was every bit as filthy as Blood Chief Li’s, he said, “You must be the blood chief around here. Your white coat’s all black in front and around the sleeves. The front’s like that because you’re always sitting in front of a desk, and the sleeves are dirty because you rest your arms on top of the desk. You’re just like our Blood Chief Li. And the back of your coat’s black too, because you sit on a stool all day long.”

Xu Sanguan sold his blood at the Lin’s Pier County Hospital, then ate a plate of fried pork livers and drank two shots of yellow rice wine at the restaurant in town. Then he began to walk through the streets of Lin’s Pier. The cold winter wind chilled his face, slipped down his collar, and down his neck. He began to feel the chill. Wrapped in the cotton-padded jacket, he felt his body suddenly go cold. He knew it was because he had sold his blood, because he had sold all the warmth in his body. He felt the wind slide down his chest and to his belly, and his stomach muscles contracted from the cold. He grasped hold of his collar, pulling it forward so that it would wrap around his neck. He looked as if he were pulling his body down the road with his collar.