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

The nurse finished speaking and went back into the hospital. The boy’s parents turned around and, taking the boy by the hand, cautiously crossed the street and arrived outside Lin Deshun’s kiosk. The father released his grip on his son’s hand, walked up to the window, and took a look inside. Lin Deshun saw a face covered with stubble, a pair of eyes swollen from lack of sleep, and the grubby collar of a white shirt. “Can I help you?” he asked.

The man looked at the tangerines on display right in front of him. “Give me a tangerine,” he said.

“One tangerine?” Lin Deshun thought he had misheard.

The father reached out a hand and took a tangerine. “How much?”

Lin Deshun thought for a moment. “Let’s say twenty fen.”

When the man’s hand laid twenty fen on the counter, Lin Deshun noticed several threads from his sweater protruding from his sleeve.

After buying the tangerine, the father turned around to find that mother and son were holding hands and playing a game on the sidewalk. The boy was trying to step on his mother’s foot and she kept skipping out of the way. “You can’t get me, you can’t get me …,” she would call.

“I’m going to get you, I’m going to get you …,” the boy cried.

The father stood to one side, tangerine in hand, watching their boisterous game, until finally the son stepped on his mother’s foot and gave a triumphant cry: “I got you!”

That was when the father said, “Come and have some tangerine.”

Lin Deshun now got a clear view of the boy’s face. When he raised his head to take the fruit, Lin Deshun saw a pair of luminous dark eyes, but the boy’s face was frighteningly pale — even his lips were practically as white as chalk. Now the family was just as quiet as they had been when standing on the other side of the street. The boy peeled the tangerine and began to eat it as he walked away, parents on either side.

Lin Deshun knew they must have come to register their child as an in-patient, but today no bed was available, so now they were going back home.

Lin Deshun saw them again the following morning, standing outside the hospital just like the day before. What was different was that this time only the father was gazing in the direction of the hospital, while mother and son, hand in hand, were happily playing their skipping-and-stepping game. From his side of the street, Lin Deshun could hear them calling:

“You can’t get me, you can’t get me …”

“I’m going to get you, I’m going to get you …”

Their cries were full of delight, as if they were on a park lawn, not by the hospital gate. The boy’s voice rang clear, instantly recognizable amid the entrance hubbub and the clamor of vehicles in the street.

“I’m going to get you, I’m going to get you …”

Then there emerged the same plump nurse as the day before, and the skipping-and-stepping game came to an end. Parents and son followed the nurse into the hospital.

It was another morning, about a week later, that Lin Deshun saw the young couple emerge from the hospital. They were walking slowly; the husband had his arm around his wife, and her head rested on his shoulder. Slowly, quietly, they crossed the street and came toward Lin Deshun’s kiosk, then stopped. The husband disengaged his arm and walked over. He placed his unshaven face close up to the window and looked inside. “Do you want a tangerine?” Lin Deshun asked.

“Give me a bun,” the man said.

Lin Deshun gave him a bun, and after taking the money from him inquired: “Is the boy all right?”

The man had turned to leave, but on hearing this he swiveled round and looked at Lin Deshun. “The boy?”

His eyes rested on Lin Deshun’s face for a moment. “He died,” he said in a low voice.

He rejoined his wife and gave her the bun: “Have some of this.”

His wife’s head was bowed, as though she were looking at her feet. Her loose hair concealed her face, and she shook her head. “I don’t want it.”

“Have a little, at least,” her husband persisted.

“I don’t want it.” She shook her head again. “You have it.”

After a moment of hesitation, he clumsily bit off a mouthful of bun. He extended his arm toward his wife, and she compliantly laid her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her, and slowly and quietly the two of them walked off in a westerly direction.

Lin Deshun could no longer see them, for the merchandise blocked his view, so he went on looking across the street at the entrance to the hospital. He noticed the sky had darkened, and looking up he knew it was about to rain. He didn’t like rain. On an evening many years ago, when it was pelting down, he had rushed up the stairs to close the windows, clutching his overcoat; halfway up he suddenly lost his footing, and from then on he was paralyzed. Now he sits in a wheelchair.

When I decided to visit those friends of mine, I was with my mother, arranging things in the kitchen of the new apartment, and my father was calling me again and again from his study, wanting me to help him organize his huge pile of musty books. I’m their only son. The kitchen needed me, the study needed me, both my parents needed me, but there was just one of me. “Better get a cleaver and chop me into two,” I said.

“Take this box of kitchenware we don’t use and put it up there out of the way,” my mother said.

“Come and help me move this bookcase,” my father called from the study.

“Better get a cleaver and chop me into two,” I kept on repeating, while I put the box of kitchenware away for my mother and helped my father shift the bookcase. After repositioning the furniture, I became Father’s property. He grabbed me by the arm, wanting me to take books that he’d sorted out and set them down row by row on the bookcase. My mother called to me from the kitchen, wanting me to bring down the box of unused kitchenware that I had just put away, because she was unable to find a spoon that she needed and she wondered whether it could be in the box. Just at this moment my father handed me another pile of books. “Better get a cleaver and chop me into two,” I said.

It was then I realized neither of them was listening to what I was saying. I had made this remark several times, but I was the only person who seemed to have heard it. I made up my mind to leave, for I felt I just could not keep muddling through like this. A week had passed since we’d moved from our original home to this new apartment, and every day I was spending all my time getting things organized, and the whole place was full of the smell of paint and the dust was getting up my nose. I am just twenty-four, but here I was, busy the whole week through like someone in middle age. I can’t be parted too long from the youthful life, so I took up a position halfway between the kitchen and the study and announced to my parents, “I can’t help you any further. I have to go out and attend to some business.”

They heard this all right. My father came to the door of the study. “What business?” he asked.

“Something important, of course.”

For the moment I was unable to find a compelling justification for leaving, so I could only make this evasive response. My father stepped out of his study and persisted with his question. “What’s so important?”

I waved my hand and persisted with my vague excuse. “Whatever it is, it’s important.”

At this point my mother chipped in. “Are you trying to get out of things?”

“He’s trying to get out of it,” she told my father. “He’s always been like this. After dinner he wants to go to the bathroom, and it’ll be two hours before he comes out. Why? To avoid doing the dishes.”