by Ha Jin
Mr. Yang paused, looking pale and exhausted, sweat glistening on his nose and a vein in his neck pulsating. Then he said dolefully, “Donkey, Monkey, and Man were all satisfied that day. From then on, human beings can live to the age of seventy whereas monkeys and donkeys can live only thirty years.”
He fell silent, but was still wheezing. I was bewildered by his version of Genesis, which he had poured out as spontaneously as though he had learned it by heart. As I was wondering about its meaning, he interrupted my thoughts, saying, “You’re puzzled by my story of Genesis, aren’t you?” Without waiting for my answer, he went on, “Let me tell you its moral.”
“All right,” I mumbled.
“Comrades,” he resumed lecturing, “entangled with Monkey’s and Donkey’s lives, Man’s life cannot but be alienated from itself. In his first twenty years, Man lives a monkey’s life. He capers around and climbs trees and walls, doing things at will. This period, his happiest, passes quickly. Then comes the next twenty years, in which Man lives a donkey’s life. He has to work hard every day so as to carry food and clothes to his family. Often he is exhausted like a donkey after a long, arduous trip, but he has to remain on his feet, because the load of his family sits on his back and he has to continue. After this period Man has reached forty, and human life begins. By now his body is worn out, his limbs are feeble and heavy, and he has to rely on his brain, which has begun deteriorating too, no longer as quick and capable as he thought. Sometimes he wants to cry out in futility, but his brain stops him: ‘Don’t do that! You have to control yourself. You still have many years to go.’ Every day he presses more thoughts and emotions into his brain, in which a good deal of stuff is already stored but none is allowed to get out so as to accommodate new stuff. Yet day after day he squeezes in something more, until one day his brain becomes too full and cannot but burst. It’s like a pressure cooker which is so full that the safety valve is blocked up, but the fire continues heating its bottom. As a consequence, the only way out is to explode.”
I was amazed by his wild interpretation—it was as though he’d been talking about his own life and about how he had gone out of his mind. He tilted his head back and rested his neck fully on the pillows; he was exhausted, but seemed relieved. Silence fell on the room.
Again I thought about his biblical story, whose source baffled me. Probably he had made it up himself, combining some folktale with his own fantasies. Why was he so eager to tell me it? Never had he shown any interest in the Bible before, though in secret it must have occupied his mind for a long time.
He began snoring softly; his head drooped aside. I went over, removed the pillows from behind him, and slid him carefully back into bed. He moaned vaguely.
Soon he sank back into sleep. I picked up my Japanese vocabulary cards and started to review them. Despite not enjoying Japanese, which sounded to me like ducks’ quacking, I had to fill my brain with its words and grammatical rules for the Ph.D. candidacy, which required a test in a second foreign language. My Japanese was weak because I had studied it for only a year. English was my first foreign language, in which I was much more proficient.
A bent old nurse came in to check on Mr. Yang. She was a mousy woman with a moon face, and her bony hands suggested gigantic chicken feet. She introduced herself as Hong Jiang. Seeing that my teacher was sleeping, she didn’t feel his pulse or take his temperature and blood pressure. I asked her if he could recuperate soon, and she said it would depend on whether a blood clot in his brain could be dissolved. If not, no treatment could really cure him. “But don’t worry,” she assured me, leaning down to pick up the spittoon by the bed-post. “Lots of people have recovered from a stroke. Some have lived more than twenty years afterward. Your teacher should be able to get well.”
“I hope so,” I sighed.
“For now, what’s most important of all is to keep him calm. Don’t disturb him. If he gets too excited, he may break a blood vessel in his brain. That’ll cause a hemorrhage.” Holding the white spittoon with one hand, she with her other hand piled together the soiled plates, bowls, and spoons on the bedside cabinet, then placed a pair of lacquered chopsticks on top of them. I stood up to give her a hand.
“Don’t bother. I can manage this,” she said, and unwittingly tilted the spittoon toward my belly. I stepped aside and barely dodged a blob of the yellowish liquid that fell to the wood floor.
“Whoops! Sorry.” She grinned and lifted the stack of bowls and plates carefully. With a stoop she gingerly turned to the door. She was so skinny, she reminded me of a starved hen. I opened the door for her.
“Thank you. You’re a good young man,” she said, shuffling away down the hall. I took a mop from behind the door and wiped the blob off the floor.
Her explanation of Mr. Yang’s stroke consoled me to a degree. I used to think a brain thrombus was caused by a ruptured blood vessel. Thank heaven, his case was merely a blockage.
2
Once again I bicycled to the hospital to relieve Banping Fang. Thanks to the scalding sun, the asphalt street had turned doughy; automobile tires had left tracks on its cambered surface, from which a bluish vapor rose, flickering like smoke. I felt drowsy, not having slept well the night before. I pedaled listlessly. If only I could’ve taken a nap at noon as I used to do every day.
On arrival, I heard somebody speaking loudly inside the sickroom. I stopped at the door to listen. It was Mr. Yang’s voice, but I couldn’t make out his words. He sounded strident, panting and shrieking by turns, as if he were arguing with someone. I opened the door and went in noiselessly. Seeing me, Banping nodded and put his forefinger to his lips, his other hand supporting our teacher’s back. It looked like he had just helped him sit up.
“Kill them! Kill all those bastards!” Professor Yang shouted.
Banping’s mouth moved close to his ear, and he whispered, “Calm down, please!”
Mr. Yang’s head hung so low that his chin rested on his chest. “Why did you interrupt me?” he asked with his eyes still closed. “Hear me out, will you? When I’m finished you can raise questions.” He sounded as if he were teaching a class. But whom had he yelled at just now? And who were the people he wanted to wipe out? Why did he hate them so much?
Banping smiled at me with some embarrassment and shook his head. I sensed the meaning of his smile, which showed sympathy for me probably because of my relationship with the Yangs. He gestured me to sit down on the wicker chair and then turned to make our teacher lean back against the headboard.
The moment I sat down, Professor Yang broke into speech. “All the time he has been thinking how to end everything, to be done with his clerical work, done with his senile, exacting parents, done with his nagging wife and spoiled children, done with his mistress Chilla, who is no longer a ‘little swallow’ with a slender waist but is obsessed with how to lose weight and reduce the size of her massive backside, done with the endless worry and misery of everyday life, done with the nightmares in broad daylight—in short, to terminate himself so that he can quit this world.”
I was shocked. Banping smiled again and seemed to relish the surprise on my face. Mr. Yang continued, “But he lives in a room without a door or a window and without any furniture inside. Confined in such a cell, he faces the insurmountable difficulty of how to end his life. On the rubber floor spreads a thick pallet, beside which sits an incomplete dinner set. The walls are covered with green rubber too. He cannot smash his head on any spot in this room. He wears a leather belt, which he sometimes takes off, thinking how to garrote himself with it. Some people he knew committed suicide in that way twenty years ago, because they couldn’t endure the torture inflicted by the revolutionary masses anymore. They looped a belt around their necks, secured its loose end to a hook or a nail on a window ledge, then forcefully they sat down on the floor. But in this room there’s not a single fixed object, so his belt cannot serve that purpose. Sometimes he lets it lie across his lap and observes it absentmindedly. The belt looks like a dead s
nake in the greenish light. What’s worse, he cannot figure out where the room is, whether it’s in a city or in the countryside, and whether it’s in a house or underground. In such a condition he is preserved to live.”
I couldn’t tell where he had gotten this episode. When did it happen? And where? Was it from a novel, or was it his own fantasy? Since the man’s mistress had a rather Westernized name, Chilla, the story might be set in a city. That was all I could guess. Professor Yang was so well read that I could never surmise the full extent of his knowledge of literature. Maybe he had made up the whole thing himself; otherwise he couldn’t have poured it out with such abandon.
He interrupted my thoughts, speaking again. “All the time he imagines how to stop this kind of meaningless existence. Mark this, ‘all the time.’ He can no longer tell time because there’s no distinction between day and night in this room. He has noticed some kind of light shimmering overhead, but cannot locate its source. He used to believe that if he could find the source, he could probably get out of his predicament by unscrewing the lightbulb and poking his finger into the socket. But by now he has given up that notion, having realized that even if he identified the source, the light might not be electric at all. He’s thus doomed to live on, caged in an indestructible cocoon like a worm.” Mr. Yang paused for breath, then resumed: “The only hard objects in the room are the plastic dinner set—a bowl, a dish, a spoon, and a knife. There’s no fork. He’s deprived of the privilege of piercing his windpipe with a fork. Time and again he picks up the knife, which is toothless and brittle. Stropping it on his forefinger, he grunts, ‘Damn it, I can’t even cut my penis with this ! ’ ”
Banping chuckled, but stopped right away, his buckteeth on his lower lip. He straightened up and put his notebook and fountain pen into his breast pocket.
I didn’t find anything funny in Mr. Yang’s story, which actually saddened me. My throat was constricting as I avoided looking at Banping.
On leaving, he whispered almost in my ear, “Come over for dinner tonight, will you? We’ll make dumplings. Weiya’s coming too.”
I nodded to agree. He and I were classmates and friends of sorts, and his one-room home in a dormitory house near the campus was a place where we often got together. Weiya Su was the other graduate student who had Professor Yang as her adviser. This year our teacher directed only the three of us in our graduate work, though he was on almost every master’s thesis committee in the department.
In his delirium Mr. Yang continued making noise. He was unusually agitated today. His head jerked as he went on groaning and gnashing his gums. In addition, the rhythm of his respiration changed drastically—one moment he breathed evenly, and another moment he panted as though running a race. What’s more, he seemed frightened by something or somebody, whining piteously every now and again. He mouthed some unintelligible words, which sounded like complaints or curses. His right hand kept rubbing his thigh, and his motion made the bed shake a little.
He might hurt his brain if he continued like this, so I decided to put him into bed, hoping he could fall asleep after he lay down. I went over and inserted my left arm under his legs, wrapped my right arm around his thick waist, and slowly moved him down. He didn’t seem to feel the downward movement and never stopped muttering and squirming.
It took me about five minutes to slide him back into bed. Sitting on the chair again, with my right leg over its arm, I began to review Japanese vocabulary. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t concentrate on the flash cards, distracted by Mr. Yang, who seemed to be quarreling with someone now. He sounded bellicose and from time to time gritted his teeth, which I knew indicated he was holding back his temper.
Despite my effort to focus on my work, I couldn’t help but observe his sweat-streaked face. Half an hour later, out of the blue, he burst into song. His singing baffled me, because to my mind he was born to teach seminars and deliver lectures. Who could’ve expected that Professor Yang would be singing this particular nursery rhyme?
To wear a flower
You pick a big red one,
To ride a horse
You mount a sturdy steed,
To sing a song
You praise great deeds,
To obey orders
You listen to the Party.
The song jolted me, and I felt the hair on the back of my head bristling. I hadn’t heard it for a long time. In spite of his gusto, Mr. Yang was no singer and sounded more like he was crowing.
No sooner had he finished singing than he added a shrill operatic chant, imitating drums, gongs, and cymbals: “Dong— chang, dong—chang, dong—dong—chang, chang—chang— chang, dong—dong—chang . . .” He then let out a resounding belch, and his stomach growled as he clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He seemed to be enacting a snatch from a Beijing opera, which had no bearing on the nursery rhyme.
I was actually more disturbed than baffled, as I remembered singing the rhyme with other children in the kindergarten over twenty years before. At that time it had been commonplace for us to chant such a song in raptures, but Mr. Yang’s singing now was so anachronistic and so out of context that it sounded ludicrous. Luckily for him, nobody but I had heard it.
Then, as if mocking my discomfort, he hit on another song. Eyes ablaze, he boomed:
The Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Is good, is good, is good, is good!
Workers are masters again.
Landowners, rich peasants,
Reactionaries, evildoers, rightists
Have no place to hide—
All will be swept away.
He bellowed the whole thing out as if he were under some kind of spell. His ferocious voice seemed to belong to someone else. I couldn’t imagine that an equable scholar like him would have anything to do with such a silly song. His singing made my scalp itch as I remembered hearing Red Guards chant it in my hometown. By so doing, those big boys and girls had contributed their little share to the revolution; but that had been two decades before, and now the song was no more than an embarrassing joke.
How had Mr. Yang learned this piece? I had been told that when the Cultural Revolution broke out, he was turned into a Demon-Monster, a target of the struggle, who would not have been entitled to sing such a progressive song together with the masses. Perhaps he had learned it on the sly, or he had heard others chant it so many times that it stuck in his mind.
Eyes shut, he resumed crooning the tune of the song, though its words were now disjointed and garbled. His singing sickened me. I put the flash cards on top of my bag that leaned against the leg of the chair, wondering how to stop him. He gave me the creeps. I looked at my watch— it was just past two o’clock. This was going to be a long afternoon.
“My heart is still good, pure and warm!” declared Mr. Yang. Without a pause he started another song. This time he not only was caroling but also seemed to be dancing around. His body wriggled a little as he mimicked a feminine voice:
There’s a golden sun in Beijing.
It brightens whatever it shines upon.
Ah, the light does not come
From the sky but from
Our Great Leader Chairman Mao!
While singing he flexed his toes, heaved his belly a little, and twisted his lips into a puerile smile. The instant he was done, he cried cheerfully, “See, I can sing it as well as any one of you. I can dance to it too. Let me show you.”
I went to him and placed my palm on his forehead, which was sweaty and burning hot. I patted his shoulder, but he turned his head aside and shouted ecstatically, “Don’t get in my way! Look, I can do it!” His right leg kicked, though he couldn’t raise it.
Should I wake him up? Though ridiculous, he seemed happy, grinning like a half-wit and licking his parched lips to wipe away the foam.
I decided to let him enjoy his hallucination for a while and returned to the wicker chair. By now he had calmed down a little, but he went on humming the tune of the song through his pink swollen nose.
I remembered that about twenty years ago some kids, who were Small Red Guards and five or six years older than myself, had often performed the Loyalty Dance to this very song at restaurants, bus stops, inns, department stores, and the train station in my hometown in the Northeast. Chanting those words, they capered and sidled about, waving their hands above their heads; they kicked their heels, swung their legs, and bent their waists. Too young to participate, I watched them enviously. In hindsight they looked like crazed frogs wearing red armbands; yet at that time some of the kids were so sincere that, if asked, they would have sacrificed their lives for Chairman Mao without second thoughts. But Mr. Yang was a reactionary intellectual then and must have been forbidden to join the revolutionary masses in any celebration and propaganda activities. Could he really know such a dance? I didn’t think so.
“Ah, who can tell I always have a loyal heart!” he said and smacked his lips. “Come, just watch me.” He started the tune again, his legs kicking slowly and his arms jerking on the crumpled sheet. Not only the bed but also the floor, whose boards buckled in places, creaked now. He wiggled more and more rhythmically while a radiant smile broke on his face. He seemed beside himself with joy.
“Yes, I can raise my legs higher than that, no problem,” he said with a wide grin. “I always love Chairman Mao. For him I dare to climb a mountain of swords and walk through a sea of fire. Why don’t you believe me? Why?” His head rocked from side to side.
I was puzzled by his assertion of loyalty to the Great Leader. When he was in his right mind, Mr. Yang had never expressed any deep feelings for Chairman Mao in front of me. Did he really love him? Was this a subconscious emotion that had at last surfaced once his mind failed? Chairman Mao had died twelve years ago; why was Mr. Yang still obsessed with him? Did he really worship him in his heart?