Yu Hua - Brothers

They finally arrived at her front door. Song Fanping placed Baldy Li on the ground and emptied the cloth sack into the rice barrel. He glanced at the bed, made up with the same coverlet and sheets that he had seen three years earlier. The Double Happiness character on them had faded, its embroidery frayed. As he was about to leave, the man told Li Lan his name was Song Fanping and he was a teacher at the middle school, adding that if they ever needed help with anything, she should let him know. After he left, Li Lan let her son play outside by himself for the first time and locked herself in her room, doing who knows what. She didn't open the door again until after dark, by which time Baldy Li had fallen asleep leaning against the door.

Baldy Li remembered how, when he was five, Song Fanpings wife died of an illness. After Li Lan heard the news, she stood at the window for a long time, her teeth chattering, until the sun had set and the moon had risen. Then she took her son by the hand, and together they walked silently under the night moon to Song Fanpings house. Li Lan didn't dare enter his home; instead she stood behind a tree watching as people sat and walked around under the dim light inside. A coffin sat in the middle of the room. Baldy Li held on to the hem of his mother's clothes and listened to her chattering teeth. When he lifted his head to look at the moon and stars, he saw that his mother was crying and wiping away her tears with her hand. He asked her, "Mama, are you crying?"

Li Lan nodded and told her son that someone in their savior's family had died. Li Lan stood there a little longer, then took Baldy Li by the hand again and walked silently home.

When Li Lan came home from the silk factory the next evening, she sat at the table making paper coins. She made a great pile of paper coins and paper ingots, stringing them onto two strands of white thread. Baldy Li sat by and watched with great interest as his mother first cut the paper into squares and then folded the paper ingots one by one. She wrote GOLD on some of them and SILVER on the others. She took a "gold" ingot and explained to Baldy Li that at one time this would have been enough to buy a mansion. Baldy Li pointed at a "silver" ingot and asked her what you could buy with this. Li Lan replied that you could also buy a mansion, but perhaps a smaller one. Baldy Li looked out at the "gold" and "silver" ingots piled up on the table and calculated how many mansions you could buy with all of them. Having just learned his numbers, he counted the ingots one by one; but he knew how to count to only ten, so every time he reached ten, he would have to go back to one again. As the pile of ingots on the table grew he worked up a headful of sweat but still couldn't come up with a total. Nevertheless, he continued struggling until his counting even brought a smile to his mothers face.

Once Li Lan had a huge pile of paper ingots, she started making paper coins. First she cut circles out of the paper, then cut little holes out of the centers. Finally, she carefully drew lines on the paper circles and wrote a line of characters on each. Baldy Li felt that making a paper coin was much harder than making a paper ingot, so he wondered how many houses you could buy with a paper coin? Could you buy an entire row of houses? His mother dangled a long string threaded with paper coins and said, "You could probably buy only a piece of clothing with this." Baldy Li fretted over this until he had worked up another headful of sweat trying to figure out how clothing could cost more than a mansion. Li Lan explained that even ten strands of coins would not come close to equaling one ingot. Hearing this, Baldy Li was confounded yet again. If ten strands of coins couldn't equal one ingot, then why was his mother going to such efforts to make coins? Li Lan said that this money was not to be spent in this world but, rather, in the next; it was travel money for the deceased. Baldy Li shuddered at the word deceased, and shuddered again when he glanced at the darkness outside. He asked his mother which dead person this money was for. Li Lan put down what she was working on and replied, "It's for our savior's family."

On the day Song Fanping's wife was to be buried, Li Lan placed the strands of paper money and ingots into a basket. Then, holding the basket in one hand and Baldy Li's hand in the other, she stood waiting on the street. That morning was the first time Baldy Li could remember his mother lifting her head in public. As she stood there waiting for the funeral procession, some of her acquaintances passed by and peered into her basket. One of them even lifted out the strands of ingots and coins and complimented her on her craftsmanship, then asked, "Did someone else in your family die?"

Li Lan bowed her head and softly answered, "No, not in my family…"

There were only a dozen or so mourners in the funeral procession. The coffin had been placed on a cart, which creaked and rattled over the cobblestone road. Baldy Li observed that the dozen or so men and women in the procession all had white cloths tied around their heads and waists, and they wept as they walked by. The only person he recognized was Song Fanping, from whose shoulders he had once looked down at the whole world.

Song Fanping walked alongside Song Gang. As they walked past the Lis they paused, and Song Fanping turned to nod to Li Lan. Song Gang imitated his father and nodded to Baldy Li. Li Lan then took Baldy Li by the hand and followed along at the end of the funeral procession, which marched slowly down the stone paved roads out of Liu Town and onto the dirt road in the countryside.

Baldy Li and his mother followed those weeping people for a very long time, until they eventually arrived at an open grave. As the coffin was lowered into the ground the soft weeping became loud wails. Li Lan stood with her basket and Baldy Li to one side and watched while the mourners shoveled the dirt into the grave until it became a mound. The wailing once again became soft weeping, whereupon Song Fanping turned around, came toward Li Lan and Baldy Li, and gazed at Li Lan through tear-filled eyes as he took the basket from her hands. He then returned to the grave and placed the paper ingots and coins on top of the fresh grave and lit them with a match. Once the paper money started burning brightly, the weeping broke out again. Baldy Li saw that his mother was also weeping, as though her heart were broken, as she remembered her own misfortunes.

Then they all walked a very long way until they finally got back to town. Li Lan was still carrying her basket and holding her sons hand, following behind everyone. Song Fanping, up front, repeatedly turned around to look at the mother and son. When they neared Li Lan s alley, Song Fanping paused and waited for Li Lan and Baldy Li to walk up. He spoke to Li Lan in a low voice, inviting them to come to his house for a tofu meal in memory of the deceased. This was a custom of the town.

Li Lan shook her head hesitantly, then walked with Baldy Li down their alley and into their home. After having walked for almost the whole day, Baldy Li fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. Li Lan sat alone, staring out the window. At dusk someone knocked at the door. Waking from her reverie, Li Lan went to open the door and found Song Fanping standing outside.

His sudden appearance startled Li Lan. She didn't notice the basket in his hand, and even forgot to ask him to come in. Out of habit, she lowered her head. When Song Fanping took food out of the basket and handed it to her, she saw that he had brought them the tofu meal. She timidly accepted the dishes that Song Fanping placed in her hands and deftly poured the food into her own bowls. She quickly rinsed out the dishes, but when she returned them to Song Fanping, her hands began to shake again. Song Fanping put his plates in his basket and turned to leave, and once again Li Lan bowed her head. Only when Song Fan-pings footsteps could no longer be heard did she realize that she hadn't even asked him in. By the time she lifted her head, Song Fanping had disappeared from sight.