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

I didn’t know Kunshan’s last name — nor did many of the locals — but we all knew perfectly well who he was. He was the man who would borrow money from people and not bother to pay them back. When he ran out of smokes, he would stop passersby in the street and cheerfully pat their pockets with his broad palms, and once he had located a pack of cigarettes he would slip a hand into the pocket and extract the cigarettes, offering one to their owner and depositing the remainder in his own pocket. There was nobody in our town who didn’t know about Kunshan, and even babies could sense the tingle of fear that his name evoked. But we admired him too, and when we ran into him in the street we would call out his name at the top of our lungs. I was already doing that by the time I was five, and the habit had stuck with me ever since. Was this why, when Kunshan was walking along the street, he was always beaming with satisfaction? He liked it when people greeted him and would always give a gracious response. He found it pleasing that everyone in town showed him proper respect.

Kunshan now tossed the cigarette butt into the river and gave a regretful shake of his head. “Shi Gang doesn’t show me proper respect.”

“Why do you say that?”

Kunshan fixed his gaze on the thin-faced man with the glasses. Slowly his hand rose to the level of the man’s head and he made the motion of a box on the ear. “He slapped my wife.”

I heard a collective intake of breath and I myself was thrown for a loop, wondering how on earth someone could dare do that. Then somebody asked the question uppermost in my mind. “He had the gall to slap your wife? Who does this Shi Gang think he is?”

“I don’t know him.” Kunshan’s finger stabbed the air. “But now I’m eager to meet him.”

“Maybe he didn’t realize it was your wife he was beating,” the thin-faced man said.

Kunshan shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

Someone else spoke up. “Whether he knew or not, if he beat her, then Kunshan’s going to make him pay for it. How could you even dream of beating Kunshan’s wife?”

“You’re wrong there,” Kunshan said. “My wife deserves a beating.”

He looked at his dumbfounded audience. “Other people may not know my wife, but I sure do. She really deserves a good beating. With her wicked tongue, she’s always going around making a nuisance of herself. If she wasn’t married to me, I don’t know how many times she would have had her ears boxed …”

Kunshan paused for a moment. “But in spite of all that, she’s still my wife. If she’s done something wrong or spoken out of turn, you can come and see me about it, and if she needs a box on the ears then I’ll do it myself. That Shi Gang never breathed a word about it to me, but just went ahead and gave my wife a box on the ears.”

Kunshan picked up the cleaver from the parapet and smiled thinly. “If he doesn’t show me proper respect, he can’t be too surprised if I don’t take it kindly.”

Kunshan took a step in our direction. We cleared a path for him, and when his massive figure began to move down the street it was as though there was a powerful ship steaming up the river, and we people clustered around him were like the waves thrown up by its screw. Together we marched forward, myself in an excellent position on Kunshan’s right. His glinting cleaver swayed back and forth by my shoulder like a swing. This was proving to be an exhilarating lunch break, the first time I had walked among so many grown-ups. By escorting Kunshan, they had become my escorts too. We made a good deal of noise as we advanced and pedestrians came to a halt, watching us curiously and quizzing us. Each time I made sure I was first to answer their inquiries, telling them Kunshan was going to make Shi Gang pay in blood. I drew out the word “blood” especially loud and long, not minding if I made myself hoarse in the process. This attracted Kunshan’s attention, and he would occasionally glance down at me, his eyes glowing with amusement. It was my heartfelt hope at this moment that the street leading to the refinery could be as long as night, because as we went I kept running into classmates and their eyes were round with envy. I realized I was making a name for myself. The sunlight shone down directly in our faces, making my eyes narrow to a crack, and when I looked up at Kunshan, his eyes had narrowed too.

We were now approaching the main entrance to the refinery and from a distance I could see the old man from the reception office standing outside. This time he wasn’t pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back, but craning his head in our direction like a bird. We walked right up to him and, now that it was obvious he saw me, I suddenly felt frightened, thinking he would very likely come over and grab me by the scruff of the neck, just as my father, my teacher, and my older brother often did. A shiver ran down my spine. I looked up at Kunshan, his face flushed red by the sun, and timidly I cried to the old man, “It’s Kunshan!”

To my ears, my voice sounded faint and thin, seeming to quiver like a leaf. But the old man had already retreated to one side, where he watched us with the same curiosity as the other bystanders. Just like that we swaggered in, the old man not making the slightest effort to stand in our way. What a piece of cake, I thought to myself.

We marched along the concrete road, flanked by open workshop doors wider even than the main gate we had just come through. Oil-stained men stood watching us and somebody asked, “Is Shi Gang in the bathhouse?”

“Yes,” I heard.

“He’s in the bathhouse,” somebody said.

“Right, then,” said Kunshan.

Past the workshops we turned a corner and there ahead of us was the cafeteria, and off to one side was the tall chimney of the boiler room, spewing thick smoke that swirled up in billowing clouds before dispersing in the clear sky. Two boiler workers stood watching us, leaning on their iron shovels as though they were walking sticks. We strode past them and on to the bathhouse. Some people had just emerged from the building in plastic flip-flops and clutching their work clothes, their hair still dripping, their faces and feet as pink as if they had been cooked. Kunshan came to a halt. We all came to a halt. Kunshan said to the thin face with the glasses, “Go and check whether Shi Gang is inside.”

The man went inside, while we waited. More people crowded around us and the two boiler workers came over, dragging their shovels behind them. “Kunshan, who are you looking for?” one of them asked. “Who offended you?”

Kunshan said nothing, so someone answered for him. “Shi Gang.”

“What did Shi Gang do?”

This time Kunshan himself replied. “He didn’t show me proper respect.”

His hand slipped into his pocket, felt about a bit, and brought out a cigarette and a box of matches. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, sandwiched the cleaver under his armpit, and lit the cigarette. The thin-faced man emerged. “Shi Gang is inside,” he said. “He’s soaping himself.”

“Tell him Kunshan has come for him,” Kunshan instructed.

“I told him that already,” the thin-faced man said. “He said he would be out shortly.”

“Shi Gang must be scared shitless,” someone said.

The thin-faced man shook his head. “No, he’s just soaping himself.”

A look of regret appeared on Kunshan’s face. I’d seen that look before, on the bridge, when he said he hadn’t been shown proper respect. This time he was disappointed because Shi Gang was not as panic-stricken as he had anticipated. “Kunshan, go in and carve him up,” someone said. “With his clothes off, he’ll be like a plucked chicken.”

Kunshan shook his head. “Tell him I’ll give him five minutes. Any more than that and I’ll go in and fetch him out.”