Yu Hua - Brothers

During those days, Song Gang never left the house and instead started cooking like a chef. Song Fanping had once taught the boys how to cook, and while Baldy Li had completely forgotten everything, Song Gang remembered his lessons. When Baldy Li returned home dejected, his stomach growling, he'd find that Song Gang had prepared dinner, had set out their rice bowls and those two pairs of chopsticks of the ancients, and was sitting at the table waiting for him. When he saw Baldy Li walk in swallowing his saliva, Song Gang would start his rasping. Baldy Li knew that he was saying, "You're finally home." The moment Baldy Li stepped inside, he would grab his rice bowl and gulp everything down.

Baldy Li had no idea how Song Gang passed his days — how every day he would stand at the stove and light a match in order to ignite the strip of cotton, and how each day he'd have to pull the cotton out a little farther as it burned shorter and shorter. He worked himself up into a huge sweat, his hands coated in charcoal and his fingernails black, only to serve Baldy Li a pot of half-cooked rice. Baldy Li ate the rice as if he were chewing on kernels, crunching and gnawing until his stomach hurt. The vegetables that Song Gang stir-fried tasted extraordinarily foul. When Song Fanping made them, they were glistening and green, but Song Gang's always came out yellow and wilted, like pickled cabbage. Moreover, the greens would be speckled with black, charcoal-like specks and would always be either too salty or too bland. Baldy Li had stopped speaking to Song Gang, but he would lose his temper at mealtimes, complaining bitterly, "The rice is still raw, and the greens are wilted. You are a landlords son."

Song Gang would turn beet red and rasp a string of unintelligible words. Baldy Li said, "Stop rasping, you sound like a mosquito farting or a dung beetle crapping."

By the time Song Gang regained his voice, he had learned how to cook the rice evenly. The children had long finished the last of the greens that Song Fanping had left behind for them and had almost emptied the rice barrel. Song Gang put the well-cooked rice in a bowl and placed a bottle of soy sauce next to it. When he saw Baldy Li come in, he exclaimed with surprise, "This time its fully cooked!"

Song Gang had indeed succeeded in cooking the rice so that each grain was round and glistening. This was the best bowl of rice Baldy Li could remember ever having eaten, and though later in life he would have many far better bowls of rice, he always felt that they could not equal the one Song Gang made on this occasion. Baldy Li thought this was a case of blind luck on Song Gangs part, sheer accident that he had produced such a perfect pot of rice. After several days of half-cooked rice, they finally sat down to enjoy the real thing. They didn't have any greens, but they did have soy sauce. The boys poured the soy sauce on top of the steaming hot rice and stirred it in. The rice glistened as if lacquered with red and black paint, and the fragrance of soy sauce mingled with the steaming hot rice, filling the entire room.

By this point it was dark. The children ate their fill of this delicious, oily concoction. Moonlight shone through the window, and a breeze slid past the rooftop. Song Gang started speaking in his raspy voice, his mouth full of soy-sauce rice: "When do you think Papa will come home?"

Tears began to stream down his face even before he finished speaking. He put down his bowl and bent over, sobbing, as he continued swallowing bites of rice. Then he wiped his eyes and began wailing, his raspy voice sounding like a weak siren, a long wail followed by a short one, until his entire body shook.

Baldy Li also lowered his head, feeling terrible. He wanted to say something to Song Gang, but in the end he kept silent, merely telling himself, He is a landlord's son.

After fixing such an extraordinary pot of rice, the next day Song Gang once again prepared a half-cooked one. The moment Baldy Li saw the dull specks of grain in the bowl, he knew it was over, that they had to eat raw rice again. Song Gang had been seated at the table, engaged in a science experiment. He had carefully sprinkled some salt in one bowl of rice, then carefully poured a bit of soy sauce in the other. He had then tasted each bowl, one after the other. By the time Baldy Li got home, Song Gang had obtained his results. He happily announced to Baldy Li that rice sprinkled with salt was much tastier than the raw rice mixed with soy sauce, and that the salt should be sprinkled on after each bite. By the time the salt dissolved into the rice, it would have lost some of its flavor.

Baldy Li shouted furiously at Song Gang, "I want cooked rice, I don't want raw rice."

Song Gang looked up and told him the bad news: "We're out of charcoal. The fire went out halfway through."

Baldy Li's anger faded as he had no choice but to sit down and eat the half-raw rice. No charcoal meant no fire. Baldy Li thought to himself that it would be great if only Song Gang could piss out some coal or fart out some flames. Song Gang instructed Baldy Li to sprinkle some salt on the rice and then immediately gulp it down. Baldy Li tried this, and his eyes lit up. Chewing the salt crystals and the rice kernels together produced a nice, crisp taste, and each time Baldy Li bit down on a salt crystal, a burst of flavor would fill his mouth. Baldy Li understood why Song Gang told him to eat the raw rice before the salt melted; it was like rubbing sticks together to make a fire, as the saltiness burst forth at the instant of crunching. Once the salt dissolved, the savoriness disappeared and only a stale taste of salt remained. For the first time Baldy Li found that half-raw rice wasn't half bad. But then Song Gang told him the other bad news: "Now we're out of rice, too."

Come evening, the two boys were still eating the half-cooked rice sprinkled with salt left over from lunch. The next morning they got up after the sun woke them shining on their bare bottoms. After getting out of bed, they ran to a corner outside and took a piss, then fetched a pail of well water and washed their faces. Only then did they remember that they didn't even have a fart left to eat. Baldy Li sat on the front step for a while. He wanted to see how Song Gang was going to figure out how to get something to eat. Song Gang rummaged first through the toppled armoire and then through the clothes on the floor, but he couldn't come up with a single thing to eat. Song Gang could only swallow his saliva and consider it breakfast.

There wasn't much for Baldy Li to do but to swallow his own saliva and continue roaming the streets and alleyways like a stray dog. At first he still had some spring in his step, but by noon he was like a deflated balloon. Eventually the hungry eight-year-old Baldy Li was transformed into a decrepit eighty-year-old. Even if he ignored his faintness and dizziness or the weakness of his limbs, there were the endless hiccups coming from his completely empty stomach. Baldy Li sat under a wutong tree beside the street for a very long time, tilting his head and watching the people walk past. He saw someone walk by him eating a meat bun, saw the meat juice on that person's lips, and even saw with his own eyes that person licking away the juice with his tongue. Then there was the woman who walked by eating watermelon seeds and spitting the shells right into his hair. But what infuriated Baldy Li the most was a stray dog, since even it was carrying a bone in its mouth.

Baldy Li had no idea how he made it home that evening. He only knew that he was starving. He didn't expect to find any food at home and only wanted to lie down in bed. But when he reached the front door, he suddenly spotted Song Gang sitting at the table, eating. At that moment Baldy Li was ecstatic, and though he was faint with hunger he propelled himself forward.