Su Tong: Madwoman On the Bridge and Other Stories

‘You’re a good-for-nothing, too.’ She gave her son a vicious glance and said, ‘When you grow up, you’ll be even more useless than your uncle.’

Forced back into silence, her son gazed around the rubble and saw that the lights of evening were turning on in Licheng. He looked past the ruins of the house and saw an even greater expanse of rubble, hazy with dust, shrouded by the colours of the gloaming. This was his mother’s city, his mother’s rubble, and her son didn’t feel any close connection to it. He felt exhausted and, bending down to hug his knees, he curled up like a cat. He spoke to his mother in an attitude of great passivity, ‘Just call me when you’ve seen enough, and you’re tired of wallowing in the past. I’m going to have a nap.’

Her son heard her rustling about, doing something with the cabinet; he didn’t even lift his head, which meant, ‘Go ahead, do what you want, it’s nothing to do with me.’

But Yongshan suddenly shouted at him, ‘Get up, quick! Help me carry the cabinet out.’

She had the cabinet bound with hemp rope and several packing strings, so that it resembled a piece of luggage. There was even a length of rope by which to haul it along. Who knows where Yongshan had found the ropes. She stood by the cabinet and looked at her son with some pride. ‘It’s all properly tied together. I’ve tried it; it’s not heavy at all. We can take it away.’

‘Are you mad?’ said her son. ‘Why on earth would you drag this old thing off? Maybe you’ve gone mad, but I haven’t. And I’m not going to take it.’

‘I don’t care if you want to or not; you have to.’ Yongshan’s voice became sharp, and there was also a tremor in it. ‘You really make my blood boil sometimes. Don’t you have any feelings at all? This is the last memento we have of your grandparents. I can’t just leave it here!’

Her son stood up, but turned away. He didn’t move, but there was the sound of snorting. They stood like that, in a stalemate, for about two minutes, and then he heard his mother stamp her foot. She said, ‘If you’re not going to help me, I can do it without you. I’ll take it out myself!’

On that May Licheng evening, Yongshan and son, having returned for a family visit, were walking down the street. Yongshan was in front, rolling a suitcase, but the thing her son was dragging along puzzled the passers-by: it seemed to be a piece of furniture. Everyone looked back to examine it as it chafed against the road surface, emitting occasional piercing sounds, creaks and groans. People of a certain age recognized it as a five-drawer cabinet, which had been popular in the seventies, and there were some who called out, ‘Look! A five-drawer cabinet!’

They had still failed to meet anyone Yongshan knew. The last time she had returned, seven years earlier, she had encountered old neighbours and elementary school classmates on the streets of Cabbage Market, and even run into someone who had played the accordion with her in the Children’s Palace, but this time she hadn’t seen a soul. Yongshan led her son along the streets of Licheng, and it was as if they were in an unfamiliar city. The cabinet had, to a large extent, relieved her helpless, distressed mood. Every now and then she looked back at her son and the cabinet he dragged behind him. ‘Watch out; don’t let the string break,’ she said. ‘Don’t pull that long-suffering face at me. There’s nothing wrong with a boy of your age getting a little exercise. Hang in a little longer; you just have to take it to your auntie’s on Mahogany Street.’

Her son didn’t take great care at all. When he heard one of the packing strings snap, he said nothing; soon afterwards another packing string snapped and he heard the clatter of the lock. Then, just as he had hoped, the cabinet refused to budge. He stopped and said in an almost delighted tone, ‘It’s snapped. They’ve all snapped. I told you the strings would snap!’

Not only had the string snapped, but the cabinet door had broken from the shock, and two of the drawers creaked to be let out. Yongshan ran over and smacked her son on the head. ‘You did it on purpose,’ she said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t do a good job of it. If you won’t take it, then I will.’

One of the drawers fell out of the cabinet. It was empty and exuded the smell of mothballs. The newspapers that covered the bottom were from 1984. Yongshan squatted down and looked at what was written in the newspaper. ‘Eighty-four,’ she said to her son. ‘You weren’t even around yet, then.’

He looked at his mother and said, ‘Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more embarrassing! Can’t you see that people are staring?’

Yongshan ignored his complaints. ‘Your grandma used to like to put the residence permit and grain stamps underneath,’ she said as she removed the old newspapers. A photo abruptly appeared before their eyes. It was a family photo of four people — a man, a woman, a boy and a girl — sitting in two rows. All of them were wearing army uniforms and, except for the little boy, who looked miserable, the other three were smiling stiffly. The background could be instantly identified as a painted curtain; it depicted Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

The photo from the past century tickled him: ‘A photo like this is cool, man.’ He tried to take it out of his mother’s hand, but she threw the photo back into the cabinet as if it had scalded her.

Her expression was very strange. She said, ‘I made a mistake. This photo isn’t of our family.’

He couldn’t absorb this information right away and, lifting the photo up to have a look, he said, ‘No wonder. I didn’t think the girl looked like you.’

Yongshan’s lips were trembling, as if she were afraid she might burst into tears. Suddenly she covered her face. ‘I’ve made a mistake,’ she said. ‘How could this be? This isn’t our cabinet.’

All at once, her son realized the full extent of the injustice he had suffered transporting the cabinet and shouted, ‘And so after all that, you were making me lug somebody else’s stuff around town! You’ve got to be kidding, right?’

‘How could this be?’ she squatted down and looked vacantly in the direction of Cabbage Market saying, ‘I wonder who left the cabinet there? It was in our house, and it looks just like the one we had.’

Her son produced some derisive hooting noises. Having thus finished mocking his mother, he relaxed and took a closer look at the strangers’ family photo. ‘Whose picture is this? It must be some neighbour’s. Man, do they look lame; so lame, it’s almost cute. Do you know these people?’

Yongshan scanned the photo blankly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I left here a long time ago. They might be people who moved to Cabbage Market later; I don’t know them.’

Now that he’d been relieved of his onerous burden, her son joyfully dragged the cabinet to the side of the road. He put it next to a ceramic garbage can that was about half the size of a person, with a tiger’s head and a huge mouth to throw the garbage in. Once he’d finished this bit of business, he took a step back and examined how the garbage can and the cabinet stood, so to speak, shoulder to shoulder: an old piece of furniture with an unknown owner and a majestic garbage can. Underneath the pale light of the street lamps, the garbage can looked like a bodyguard protecting the cabinet. The son looked at his mother who was squatting on the ground and seemed to tacitly agree to the disposal of the cabinet. Her son was very pleased with himself, and giving himself a clap he said, ‘Cool, man! Modern art!’

Yongshan didn’t look at the cabinet again. She stood up slowly and, as she rose, her eyes welled up with tears. The lights were on in the windows of Licheng, and the newly paved road glimmered with an orange and white glow that seemed to flow like a river. Yes, her eyes welled up with tears, for she felt that she had now truly left her native city far behind, and it her. Besides some memories, the city had left her nothing, and she knew in her heart that she had bequeathed it no part of herself. Yongshan fished out her handkerchief and wiped away the tears. She heard her son say, ‘Where are we going to go now?’