Yu Hua - Brothers

"Don't say that again!" Lin Hong cried. "That's all you can say, and I'm tired of hearing it."

Song Gang didn't dare say anything else. Instead, he bowed his head and stood in a corner, as his father, Song Fanping, had done when he was being struggled against during the Cultural Revolution. Lin Hong cried as she spoke, and Song Gang stood there without showing any reaction. Lin Hong felt angry and hurt and wanted to give Song Gang the cold shoulder, so she lay down on the bed and muffled herself with the covers. He stood silently for a while and then began to move around the room. Lin Hong heard the sounds of pots and dishes and knew that he was fixing dinner. The room gradually grew dark as he finished dinner, took it to the table, and then prepared the bowls and chopsticks. Lin Hong thought that he should come over and say something, but he merely sat down at the table. The room fell once again into deathly quiet. Lin Hong fumed as the room became pitch-dark but still he just sat there without moving, as if he were waiting for her to wake up and have dinner with him.

Lin Hong knew that Song Gang was capable of sitting like that forever; if she remained in bed until the sun came up, he would sit there until morning. Even his breathing was almost imperceptible, as if he were afraid of waking her up. Lin Hong began to feel sorry for Song Gang, thinking of all his good qualities, his love for her, his honesty and loyalty, as well as his good looks… Upon thinking of his good looks, she grinned and couldn't resist calling out to him, "Song Gang."

He stood up, but she didn't say anything more. He hesitated a moment, unwilling to sit back down. When Lin Hong saw his hesitation, she once again couldn't help grinning and said softly, "Song Gang, come over here."

He walked to the bedside and leaned over. Lin Hong continued with a quiet voice, "Song Gang, sit down."

He carefully sat on the edge of the bed. She took his hand and said, "Come closer."

He sat closer, and Lin Hong held his hand to her breast, saying, "Song Gang, you are too softhearted. In the future, I won't be able to give you any more money."

Song Gang nodded in the dark. Lin Hong placed his hand on her face and asked, "You aren't angry, are you?"

Song Gang shook his head. "No."

Lin Hong sat up, pulled over his other hand, and told him tenderly, "I don't want to say anything bad about Baldy Li. And even if he were a good person, the problem is that we still wouldn't be able to support him. How much do we earn each month? In the future, we might have children and will have a responsibility to raise them, and therefore we can't afford the added burden of having to support him. Now that Baldy Li is unemployed, if he can't get by, he will become completely dependent on you. Song Gang, it's not the present I'm worried about; it's the future. Please, for the sake of our future children, you need to cut off relations with Baldy Li."

Song Gang nodded again in the dark, but Lin Hong couldn't see him clearly and asked, "Song Gang, did you nod?"

Song Gang nodded again and said, "Yes, I nodded."

Lin Hong paused, then asked, "Am I right?"

Song Gang nodded. "You are right."

After the storm that evening, everything returned to a state of calm, and in the days that followed Song Gang began to avoid Baldy Li. When Song Gang got off work and went to the knitting factory to pick up Lin Hong, he had to go past the gate to the county government building where Baldy Li was holding his sit-down protest. In order to avoid him, Song Gang took the long way around, thereby making Lin Hong wait a long time at the factory. It used to be that he would be waiting there as soon as she walked out the door, but now she would sit there waiting, craning her neck this way and that, and it was not until long after her workmates had already gone home that he hurriedly biked over. One day she finally lost her temper and sat gloomily on the back of his bike, not saying a single word the entire ride. When they got home, she started to upbraid Song Gang, saying that she was very anxious waiting there at the gate, worried that something might have happened to him and thinking that perhaps he had crashed into an electrical pole and cracked his skull open. Song Gang hemmed and hawed as he tried to explain that he was late because he had taken the long way around in order to avoid Baldy Li. Hearing this, Lin Hong responded loudly, "What are you afraid of?"

Lin Hong said that the more people were afraid of someone like Baldy Li, the more he would bully them. She told Song Gang that, in the future, he would go right past the door to the county government.

"You shouldn't go see him. Just act as if he isn't there."

Song Gang asked her, "And if he calls out to me?"

"Act as if you didn't hear him," Lin Hong answered. "Act as if he doesn't exist."

BY THIS POINT, Baldy Li had accumulated a small mountain of scrap in front of the entranceway to the government building. He had also adjusted the style of his sit-in, sitting cross-legged in the center of the courtyard only during peak periods, when people were coming to and from work. The rest of the time, Baldy Li could be found bent over, tirelessly sorting through the scrap, his butt lifted up above his head. He painstakingly made his way through it several times and then back again, as though he were panning for gold. But when he heard the bell announcing the end of the workday, he dashed back to the entranceway and, with a heroic air, once again assumed his solitary post. Spotting him as they filed out, the government workers chuckled and said that Baldy Li sitting there looked even more self-important than the county governor when presenting a report at a countywide meeting. Baldy Li was quite satisfied with this assessment and lauded the workers as they passed, "Well said!"

He hadn't seen Song Gang in more than a month. When Song Gang once again rode his Eternity bicycle past the entranceway, Baldy Li ignored the fact that he was in the middle of a sit-in and sprang up and waved both hands, shouting, "Song Gang, Song Gang!"

Song Gang pretended he hadn't heard him, but it seemed as if each of Baldy Li's cries was a hand tugging him back, preventing him from pedaling away. After a brief hesitation, he turned around and slowly rode toward Baldy Li. Song Gang was very nervous and didn't know whether he should tell Baldy Li that he didn't have a single cent in his pocket. Baldy Li excitedly greeted him, pulled Song Gang down from his bicycle, and announced mysteriously, "Song Gang, I've struck it rich!"

Baldy Li took an old watch from his pocket, and with his other hand he tapped Song Gang on the head, asking him to inspect the watch carefully. Baldy Li said excitedly, "Do you see the foreign words on the front? This is a foreign watch, and the time it keeps is not Beijing time but, rather, Greenwich Mean Time. I found it among these scraps."

Song Gang couldn't see the watch hands and asked, "Why doesn't it have any hands?"

"I'll attach three pieces of wire to serve as hands," Baldy Li said. "I just need to spend a little bit of money repairing it, and then the Greenwich Mean Time will run smoothly!"

Then Baldy Li placed the foreign watch in Song Gang's pocket, saying magnanimously, "It's for you."

Song Gang hadn't expected that Baldy Li would give him something that he, Baldy Li, prized so much. He embarrassedly took the watch out and handed it back, saying, "You keep it."

"No, you take it," Baldy Li insisted. "I found this watch ten days ago and have been waiting for you to come by ever since so I could give it to you. Where did you disappear to this past month?"

Song Gang blushed bright red and didn't know how to respond. Thinking that he was still worried about accepting the watch, Baldy Li placed it directly into Song Gang's pocket and said, "Since you take Lin Hong to and from work every day, you need a watch. I don't need one. When the sun rises in the morning, I come here to do my sit-in, and when it sets, I return home to sleep."