Yu Hua - Boy in the Twilight - Stories of the Hidden China

My brother told me to open the surgical kit, while he brought over the big mirror our mother used to check her outfit each morning. Father didn’t know what we were up to. “And Dr. Wang?” he asked. “Dr. Wang wasn’t there either?”

We laid out the surgical kit on Father’s right. I clambered on top of the bed and together we lifted up the mirror. My brother made a point of leaning forward and taking a peek in the mirror, to check that Father could see himself clearly. “Dad, get on with it!” we said excitedly.

By now he was in such pain, his features were contorted. Gasping, he stared at us, still peppering us with questions about Dr. Chen and Dr. Wang. We were getting desperate. “Dad, hurry up,” we cried. “Otherwise it will get perforated!”

“Hurry up … with what?” he asked, weakly.

“Dad, hurry up and operate!” we said.

Now, finally, he understood. He glared at us. “You bastards!” he cursed.

I was shocked, not knowing what we’d done wrong, and looked inquiringly at my brother, who was equally taken aback. Father was in such agony he couldn’t speak, and he stared at us in silence. Returning his gaze, my brother realized at last why Father had cursed us. “We haven’t taken Dad’s pants off yet,” he said.

My brother had me hold the mirror while he tried to pull down Dad’s pants, but our father slapped him across the face and, straining with effort, cursed us again. “Bastards!”

This frightened my brother so much that he scurried off the bed, and I followed suit, quickly crawling over Dad’s legs and onto the floor. We stood there side by side, looking at him as he lay there in a powerless rage. “Can it be Dad doesn’t want to do the operation?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

Tears welled up in our father’s eyes. “Be good boys,” he moaned, struggling to get his words out. “Hurry … hurry and fetch … Mom. Tell Mom to come …”

We’d been hoping Father would operate on himself like a hero, and now here he was, crying! We looked at him a moment longer, and then my brother took my hand and we ran out the door, down the stairs and along the full length of the alley. This time we didn’t think up our own plan of action — we went to fetch Mom.

By the time our father was carried into the operating theater, his appendix was perforated and his stomach was filled with pus. He developed peritonitis and had to spend weeks and weeks in a hospital bed, and then convalesce at home for another month before he could again don a white smock and resume his job as doctor. But he could never again be a surgeon, for his energy was spent: if he were to stand at the operating table for an hour he would grow faint and his eyes would blur. He had gone thin overnight and never regained the weight he lost. When he walked, there was no longer that spring to his stride, and though he might take a big first step he would only go half as far with his second. When winter came, he seemed to have a constant cold. So from then on he could be only a doctor of internal medicine, and he would sit at a desk every day, chatting idly with the patients, scrawling routine prescriptions. After he got off work he would walk slowly homeward, rubbing his hands with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol. When we went to bed in the evenings, we would often hear him grumbling to our mother. “People think you have given me two sons, but appendixes are all they are. At the best of times they are of no worldly use, and when push comes to shove they are practically the death of you.”

On an evening in August, the room was stifling hot. My wife and I were sitting in front of a rattling electric fan. I held the remote in my hand and changed the channels one by one, and then ran through them again in reverse sequence. My back was soaked in sweat and I was in an irritable mood. My wife, on the other hand, was quite composed, sitting there perfectly still. On her shiny forehead I couldn’t see even a bead of sweat, and she seemed to be illustrating the old saying “Your body feels cool, mind calm as a pool.” But I wasn’t happy with things: since I’d got married, in fact, I had begun to be unhappy with things. Cursing under my breath, I banged away at the keys, converting the TV picture into a series of flashes, making my young eyes go blurry. I cursed the summer heat, the TV programs, the lousy rattling fan, the dinner I had just eaten, the underwear drying on the balcony … My wife kept her composure: so long as I was in this room, so long as I was keeping her company, then however much I cussed, whatever crazy thing I did, she would be perfectly at ease. If I were to walk out of this room, leave her and go off on my own, she would be singing a different tune. She would feel uneasy, she would be miserable; she would make a song-and-dance, all upset and tearful. That’s marriage for you. I can never leave her for a second. That’s my job as a husband, till ripe old age and death us do part.

My friend Morning Tang knocked on the door. He used his fingers, his fist, his feet, maybe even his knees — at any rate he made a hammering noise on the door. It was as though I heard a bugle call or a rooster crow, for I jumped up from the floor, opened the door, and saw before me Morning Tang, whom I hadn’t seen in over a year. “Morning Tang, you rascal!” I cried.

Morning Tang was looking very dapper in baggy pants and a rust-colored jacket, but he had a funny smile on his face. He took a step forward, but stopped short. “Come on in,” I said.

He entered cautiously, peering around the narrow hallway as if walking in such pitch-darkness he couldn’t see his own fingers. I knew he was trying to establish my wife’s whereabouts. It was because of her that he hadn’t been to my house for over a year. In her words, Morning Tang is a jerk.

Actually, that’s not true. Morning Tang is a good-hearted fellow, generous and kind to his friends, it’s just there are too many women in his life, and that’s why my wife said he was a jerk. In the past, he would often drop by with a woman in tow. Nothing wrong with that — the problem was, it would be a different woman every time, and this is what made my wife start to feel nervous. She’s firmly convinced that men are influenced by the company they keep, and she felt it was really too dangerous for me to continue to interact with him, or — to be more precise — she felt it was too dangerous for her . She forgot that I am a decent and dutiful husband and began to issue frequent warnings, and her warnings were full of threats: she would tell me that if I behaved like Morning Tang, I would have disaster staring me in the face. She described all the details of what it would be like once disaster struck, or all the details she could think of. The trouble was, she always had a rich imagination in this area, and as a result I was growing more and more timid.

But Morning Tang is a careless, clumsy fellow, and he completely failed to pick up on the fact that my wife was so wary of him. Although I’d dropped hints lots of times, it made absolutely no impression on him. He could be quite obtuse. So it was that one day he sat down on our sofa and said loudly, “I see my friends getting married one after the other. You were first, and then Chen Lida, then Fang Hong, and then Li Shuhai. All four of you did exactly the same thing, marrying the first woman you met. I don’t understand why you were all in such a hurry to get married. Why didn’t you go out with a few more women first? Why not enjoy a free and independent life, like me? Why do you want to find a woman to tie you down, tie you down so tightly you can’t even breathe? Now, all I need to do is just think of you guys and I can’t help bursting out laughing. As soon as you open your mouths now, you’re all so anxious about the reaction, especially you — you can’t say two sentences without looking at your wife. Don’t you get tired of that? But there’s still time — you’re not old yet, after all. You’ve still got a chance to meet other women. Shall I introduce to one sometime?”