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

By the time the trolley approached the entrance to Shi Zhikang’s factory, he had already pushed his way into the middle of the bus, and his arms were wedged vertically into the gaps left by bodies pressed up against him. The bus didn’t stop outside the factory but drove right on past. Of the forty workers who had been waiting there, only five or six were left, along with seven or eight people he didn’t recognize, so one or two other buses must have come along. The three women had evidently been unable to cram aboard, for they still were waiting at the stop, the one with the bad heart in the middle, the two with kidney disease on either side. They stood in a tight clump in their dumpy padded coats, each with a black woolen scarf around her neck. The chill wind blew their hair every which way, and the deepening darkness blurred their features, as though their faces had been charred by fire. As his trolley passed them, Shi Zhikang noticed how their heads turned to follow it. They watched as the bus he was on sailed away from them.

After nine stops Shi Zhikang got off the trolleybus and walked back thirty yards to another stop, where he would board another bus. By this time the sky was completely dark; the streetlamps cast only a feeble glow and it was more the bright lights of the stores on either side of the street that illuminated the sidewalk and the area around the bus stop. Many people were already waiting, and those closest to the front were practically standing in the middle of the street. As Shi Zhikang made his way into the crowd, a minibus came along and, when the door opened, a young man with a canvas satchel hanging from his neck poked his head out and yelled: “Two yuan, two yuan …”

Two men and a woman boarded the minibus, as the conductor continued to shout, “Two yuan …”

At this point a bus turned a corner away in the distance and came into view. Seeing it, the conductor quickly ducked back inside and the minibus accelerated away from the waiting throng, as the bus rumbled toward them.

Shi Zhikang swiftly pushed his way to the front and spread his arms a little, pressing backward as the bus approached, pushing the people behind him back onto the sidewalk. As the front door of the bus slipped past, he monitored the bus’s speed and calculated that he should be perfectly in line for the middle door. But what happened was that the bus came to an abrupt stop, leaving him a yard or two away from his target door. He’d lost his position in the front row, and now he found himself on the outer edge of the crowd.

When the door opened, only three people got off. Shi Zhikang took a couple of steps into the crowd and thrust his arms into a tiny gap left by the people in front. As he pushed his way forward, he made good use of the upper-body strength acquired in his long years as a fitter. He steadily widened the gap, then squeezed into the space created, and began to work on opening a gap farther ahead.

Shi Zhikang plowed his way through the line and launched himself into the space by the door, exploiting the impetus of the people pressing from behind. Just as he planted one foot on the step of the bus, someone grabbed the collar of his overcoat and dragged him backward. He landed heavily on the ground and his head hit a leg. The leg retaliated with a kick, and he looked up to find a young woman glaring at him.

By the time Shi Zhikang was back on his feet, the doors had closed and the bus was beginning to move off. A woman’s handbag was trapped in the door, leaving a corner of the bag and part of the strap sticking outside, so that it swayed back and forth with the motion of the bus. He turned around, determined to find out who had pulled him back. Two youths about the same age as his son were watching him with a cold glint in their eyes. He looked at them and at others who had failed to squeeze onto the bus. Some returned his gaze, some did not. He was tempted to let off a swearword or two, but thought better of it.

Later, two buses arrived at the same time, and Shi Zhikang boarded the second. Today he did not get off at the stop closest to his home, but two stops earlier, where a man with a flatbed cart sold bean curd that tasted better than what you could buy in the shops. Shi Zhikang’s wife, who worked in a textile mill, had asked him to pick up a couple of pounds on his way home from work, because today was Saturday and their son, a junior in college, was coming home for the weekend.

After buying the bean curd, Shi Zhikang did not try to catch another bus and simply walked the rest of the way home. It was almost seven o’clock, but there was no sign of his wife. This upset him. His wife should have got off work at four thirty, and she did not have such a long commute. Normally his wife would have dinner practically ready by this time, but today he had to set to on an empty stomach, washing vegetables and slicing meat.

His wife, Li Xiulan, came in the door with a bag of fish. “Have you washed your hands?” was the first thing she said.

Shi Zhikang was not in a good mood, so he answered curtly. “Can’t you see my hands are wet?”

“Did you use soap?” she asked. “There’s flu going around, and pneumonia too. You need to wash your hands with soap as soon as you get home.”

Shi Zhikang snorted dismissively. “Then shouldn’t you come home sooner?”

Li Xiulan dumped the two fish in the sink. She told Shi Zhikang they cost her only three yuan. “They were the last two. He wanted five yuan, but I wouldn’t go higher than three.”

“Does it take so long to buy a couple of dead fish?”

“They haven’t been dead long.” She showed him the gills: “See, the cheeks are still red.”

“It’s you I’m talking about.” He raised his voice as he pointed at his watch. “It’s after seven already!”

Her tone also went up a register. “So what? What’s the big deal about me coming home late? Every day you get back later than I do — do I complain?”

“Do I finish work before you do? Is my factory closer to home than yours?”

“I fell down,” said Li Xiulan.

She flung the fish back in the sink and stamped into the living room. “I fell off the bus,” she said, “and it was ages before I could stand up again. I had to sit there on the side of the road for thirty or forty minutes. I practically froze to death.”

Shi Zhikang set down the cleaver he’d been using to slice the meat and walked over to her: “You fell? So did I — someone tugged my collar.”

He didn’t finish the story, for now she had rolled up her trouser leg and he could see there was a bruise as big as an egg on her knee. He bent down to touch it. “How did it happen?”

“When I was getting off the bus, there were too many people behind me. They pushed so hard I lost my balance.”

Just then their son arrived home, dressed in a red down jacket. Seeing his mother had suffered a fall, he bent down like his father had done. “Did you trip?” he asked with concern. Then he took off his jacket. “You should be taking a calcium supplement,” he went on. “It’s not only babies who need calcium, older people need it too. Every day your bones lose calcium, and that makes you prone to injury … If I got pushed off a bus, there’s no way I would end up with such a large bruise.”

Their son turned on the television and plumped himself down on the sofa. He put on the earphones of his Walkman and began to listen to some music.

“Are you watching TV?” Shi Zhikang asked. “Or listening to the radio?”

His son looked at him, but almost immediately turned away again, not having understood the question. “Have you washed your hands?” his mother asked.

He swiveled his head and removed an earphone from one of his ears. “What did you say?”

“Go and wash your hands,” Li Xiulan said. “There’s flu going around now and it’s easy to pick up germs on the bus. Go wash your hands, and be sure to use soap.”