Yu Hua - Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

Xu Sanguan left the hospital and sat down in a sunny corner sheltered from the wind. He sat for nearly two hours with the sun’s rays shining into his face and across his body. When his face grew hot from the sun, he stood up and went back to the blood donation room at the hospital.

The blood chief saw him walk in but didn’t recognize him as the same man who had come in earlier. “You’re all skin and bones. A nice gust of wind, and you’d be flat on the ground. But you do have good color. Your face is nice and ruddy. How much blood do you want to sell?”

“Two bowls,” Xu Sanguan replied, pulling a bowl out from his sleeve to show him.

The blood chief said, “You can fit about ten ounces of rice in two bowls like that. How much blood that works out to, I don’t know.”

“Four hundred milliliters,” Xu Sanguan offered.

“Go to the end of the hall and have the nurse in the clinic take your blood.”

A nurse wearing a white face mask drew four hundred milliliters of blood from Xu Sanguan’s arm and then watched as he slowly steadied himself and stood to leave. As soon as he had managed to stand up, though, he tumbled to the floor. The nurse cried out in alarm, and they carried him to the emergency room. The doctor on duty in the emergency room laid him out on a gurney and began to examine him. He rubbed his temples, held his hand against the arteries on his wrist, lifted his eyelids, and then checked his blood pressure. When he saw that Xu Sanguan’s blood pressure had fallen to sixty over forty, he said, “He needs a blood transfusion.”

And so it was that the four hundred milliliters of blood Xu Sanguan had just sold to the hospital found its way back into Xu Sanguan’s bloodstream. Only after the doctor supplemented this first transfusion with an additional three hundred milliliters of someone else’s blood did Xu Sanguan’s blood pressure return to one hundred over sixty.

When Xu Sanguan came to and discovered to his fright that he was laid up in the hospital, he immediately slid out of bed and made his way toward the exit. But they stopped him before he could get away and told him that although his blood pressure had returned to normal, he needed to stay an extra day for further observation because the doctors hadn’t yet been able to determine the reason for his illness.

“I’m not sick! I just sold too much blood.”

He told the doctor that he had sold blood a week ago at Lin’s Pier and again three days later in Hundred-Mile.

The doctor gazed at him aghast and, after a moment of silence, spat out a question. “So you’re suicidal?”

“No, no, I’m not suicidal. It’s my son—”

The doctor cut him short with an abrupt wave of his hand. “Get out of here.”

The hospital in Pine Grove charged Xu Sanguan for seven hundred milliliters of blood, plus emergency treatment, which amounted to roughly the same sum he had earned from his last two blood-selling transactions.

Xu Sanguan went to find the doctor who had accused him of being suicidal and complained, “I sold you four hundred milliliters of blood, and you sold me seven hundred milliliters. Let’s forget about the blood that you gave back to me for now. But I never asked for someone else’s blood. Let me give those three hundred milliliters back to you.”

The doctor said, “What in the world are you trying to say?”

“I want you to take back three hundred milliliters of blood.”

The doctor said, “You’re sick .”

Xu Sanguan said, “I’m not sick. It’s just that I sold too much blood and got cold. You sold me seven hundred milliliters of blood. That’s about four bowls. And now I don’t feel cold anymore. In fact, I feel kind of hot, too hot, really. So I want to return three hundred milliliters to you.”

The doctor pointed one finger at his own head. “I meant that you are mentally ill.”

Xu Sanguan said, “I’m not mentally ill. I just want you to take back the blood that isn’t mine.” He looked around at the people who had gathered in a circle to listen and pleaded, “People should be even-handed when it comes to doing business. When I sold you my blood, everything was aboveboard. So how come you never even asked me how much blood I wanted back?”

The doctor said, “We saved your life! You were in shock. If we had waited to tell you what we were going to do, you’d be dead by now.”

Xu Sanguan nodded. “I know you were trying to save my life. And it’s not like I want you to take back all seven hundred milliliters. All I want you to do is take back the three hundred milliliters that don’t belong to me. I’m almost fifty years old now, and I’ve never taken anything that doesn’t belong to me.”

When he looked back toward the doctor, he realized that he had already left and that the people standing around him had broken into a gale of laughter. He realized they were making fun of him, then fell silent, stood for a moment, turned, and left the hospital.

It was almost dusk. Xu Sanguan walked through the streets of Pine Grove for a long time, until he came to the banks of the river. He walked until the railing by the water blocked his path forward. He stopped and watched as the setting sun dyed the river red. A tugboat approached from far in the distance, its wood-burning engine chugging noisily as it moved down the waterway. Xu Sanguan watched it pass, watched as the waves rippling from from its stern slapped noisily against the stone piles along the embankment.

He stood for a while until he began to feel the chill. Then he squatted down next to the trunk of a tree. After he had squatted for a while, he extracted all his money from inside the lining of his jacket and began to count. The total was thirty-seven yuan and forty fen. He had sold blood three times but had only two bowls’ worth of blood money to show for it. He carefully folded the bills and put them back in his inside pocket. He felt wronged. Tears welled up in his eyes, and a cold wind blew the tears down to the ground, so that by the time he tried to wipe his eyes, they were already dry. He sat for a little while longer and then got up and continued to walk. He thought to himself that it was still a long way to Shanghai. He knew he would still have to pass through 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 before he got there.

Xu Sanguan decided that he could no longer afford to take passenger ferries. He figured that it would cost him three yuan and sixty fen to get to Shanghai from Pine Grove by boat. Since he had sold blood twice to no avail, he couldn’t spend his money so carelessly anymore. And that was how he decided to hitch a ride on a concrete river barge loaded with silk cocoons manned by two brothers called Laixi and Laishun.

Xu Sanguan had caught sight of them as he stood on the stone steps by the river. Laixi was standing at the prow brandishing a bamboo pole used for pushing the boat down the river, while Laishun stood at the stern waving a long oar. Xu Sanguan waved and asked where they were headed. They said they were going to Seven-Mile Fort. There was a silk factory in Seven-Mile Fort to which they would deliver their cargo of cocoons.

Xu Sanguan said to them, “We’re going in the same direction. I’m going to Shanghai. Do you think you could give me a lift to Seven-Mile Fort?” By the time he explained himself, the barge had already glided past him.

Xu Sanguan ran along the bank of the river in pursuit of the barge. “One more person won’t sink the boat. And I can help you row. Three people rowing is bound to be easier than just two. And I can help out with your food expenses. It’s cheaper for three to eat than two — everyone can eat an extra bowl or two of rice, and you don’t need any more vegetables.”