by Yu Hua
Yile said, “Nonsense.”
He Xiaoyong’s woman swung around toward Xu Yulan. “All I can do now is beg. You’re his mom after all. Say something to him. Make him cry. Make him call for He Xiaoyong’s soul to come home.”
Xu Yulan stood motionless for a moment before replying, “There are so many people watching. What exactly do you want me to say? I’ve already lost any face I might ever have had in their eyes. They’re all laughing at me inside. What am I supposed to say to him? I’m not going up there.”
He Xiaoyong’s woman sank to the ground and began to frantically bow and scrape in Xu Yulan’s direction. “I’m down on my knees in front of you. I’ve lost just as much face as you. And if they’re laughing, it’s me they’re laughing at first and foremost. I’m on my knees. I’m begging you. Please go talk with Yile.” Tears poured from her eyes as she pleaded with Xu Yulan.
Xu Yulan said, “Stand up. When you bow like that, I’m the one who loses face, not you. Stand up. I’ll go talk to him.” Xu Yulan stepped forward, raised her face to the roof, and called out, “Yile! Yile, turn this way. It’s me, your mom. Please just cry a little bit, shout a few times. That’s all you’ve got to do to bring He Xiaoyong’s soul home. When he’s back, I’ll take you home. Come on now.”
Yile said, “Ma, I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to shout.”
Xu Yulan said, “Yile, you’ve got to cry now. You have to shout. More and more people are coming to watch us, and I’m losing face. If any more people show up, I’ll never be able to show my face again in this town. Go on and shout for his soul. After all, He Xiaoyong’s your real dad.”
Yile said, “Ma, how could you? How could you say he’s my real dad? Don’t you have any shame?”
“What did I do in my last life to deserve this?” Xu Yulan cried and wheeled around to face He Xiaoyong’s woman. “Now even my son’s saying I’m shameless. It’s all because of what He Xiaoyong did to us. If he’s going to die, let him. I don’t care anymore. I really can’t be bothered.”
Since Xu Yulan refused to help, He Xiaoyong’s friends said to his woman, “We’d better go get Xu Sanguan. Maybe if Xu Sanguan shows up, Yile will cry for him.”
Xu Sanguan was at the silk factory pushing his cart when two of He Xiaoyong’s friends came running up to him. “Yile refuses to cry or to shout for the soul. All he’ll do is sit up on the roof and say that He Xiaoyong isn’t his real dad, that you’re the only dad he’s ever had. When Xu Yulan tried to make him cry or call out, he told her that she was shameless. Xu Sanguan, would you come and see what you can do? This is a life-or-death situation.”
Xu Sanguan listened to their description of the situation and set his silkworm cart to one side. “That’s my boy.”
When Xu Sanguan arrived at He Xiaoyong’s house, he looked up at the roof and said, “You’re a good son, Yile. You really are a very good son to me. I’ve raised you these thirteen years, and all my efforts have paid off. After what you said today, I’ll be happy to take care of you for another thirteen years.”
When Yile saw that Xu Sanguan had come, he said, “Dad, I’ve been up here long enough. Come get me down. I’m too scared to get down on my own. Dad, come up and get me down.”
Xu Sanguan said, “Yile, I can’t come up and get you just yet. You haven’t cried and you haven’t called out, so He Xiaoyong’s soul hasn’t come back yet.”
Yile said, “Dad, I’m not going to cry. I won’t shout either. I want to come down.”
Xu Sanguan said, “Yile, listen to me. Just cry a little and call for him a couple times. That’s all you have to do. I’ve already given my word that I’d help out, and when you promise something, you have to follow through. You have to keep your word. And after all, He Xiaoyong really is your dad.”
Yile began to cry. “Everyone says you’re not my real dad. Mom said you aren’t my real dad either. Now you’re saying the same thing too. That means I don’t have a dad. I don’t have a mom either. I don’t have a family. All I have is me. I’m coming down on my own.”
Yile stood and took a couple of strides across the roof until, frightened by the steepness of the incline, he stopped, sat back down on the tiles, and burst into noisy tears.
He Xiaoyong’s woman shouted up toward the roof, “That’s it, Yile, good job! You’ve finally started to cry. Now you can shout!”
“You shut up!” Xu Sanguan roared at He Xiaoyong’s woman. “Yile’s not crying for that bastard husband of yours. He’s crying for me.”
Xu Sanguan lifted his head up to look at Yile. “Yile, you’re a good son. Once you’ve shouted, I’ll come up and get you. Then I’m going to take you to the Victory Restaurant to eat fried pork livers.”
Yile sobbed, “Dad, come up and get me.”
Xu Sanguan said, “Yile, all you have to do is shout a few times. Once you shout, I’m going to be your real dad. Just shout a few times, and when you’re done, that bastard He Xiaoyong will never be your real dad again. From now on I’m your real dad.”
When Yile heard what Xu Sanguan said, he lifted his face to the sky and shouted, “Dad, don’t go. Dad, come back.”
When he was finished, he looked back down toward Xu Sanguan. “Dad, come up and get me.”
He Xiaoyong’s wife said, “Yile, shout it a couple more times.”
Yile glanced down toward Xu Sanguan, who said to him, “Just two more times, Yile.”
Yile shouted, “Dad, don’t go. Dad, come back. Dad, don’t go. Dad, come back.”
Yile said to Xu Sanguan, “Dad, come up and get me.”
He Xiaoyong’s woman said, “Yile, you have to keep on shouting. Mr. Chen said you had to shout for half an hour. Yile, shout!”
“Enough already!” Xu Sanguan barked to He Xiaoyong’s woman. “That Mr. Chen’s a real bastard too. Yile’s done his part. Now it’s up to He Xiaoyong. If he lives, fine, and if he dies, he dies.”
Then he said to Yile, “Yile, hang on. I’m coming up to get you.”
Xu Sanguan climbed the ladder and clambered onto the roof, told Yile to hold on to his neck, and then carried him on his back down the ladder.
When they reached safety, Xu Sanguan lowered Yile to the ground and said to him, “Yile, stay right here and don’t move.”
Xu Sanguan proceeded to walk straight into He Xiaoyong’s house. He emerged seconds later with a vegetable knife in hand. Standing by the door of He Xiaoyong’s house, he lifted the blade to his face and sliced his own cheek. Then he stuck out his hand, rubbed it with the blood running from the gash, and announced to the crowd, “You saw what I just did, right? I cut my own face with this knife. From now on, if any of you”—he paused to point toward He Xiaoyong’s woman—“and I mean you too. If any of you ever dares to say that Yile is not my real son, I’ll do the same to you.”
When he was finished speaking, he tossed the knife to one side and took Yile by the hand. “Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
One summer day Xu Sanguan came home and said to Xu Yulan, “On the way back it seemed like no one who lives in our lane was at home. Everyone’s in the streets. I’ve never seen so many people in the streets before in my entire life. There are people with red armbands, and people marching, and people writing political slogans, and people pasting up big-character posters. The walls on the main street are covered with big-character posters. They paste them up one on top of the other, thicker and thicker, until it looks like the walls are wearing cotton-padded jackets. And I saw the county secretary, that fat guy from Shandong. He used to think he was really something. Whenever I used to see him, he would be holding a nice cup of tea in his hand, but now he’s got an old metal washbasin in his hand, and he keeps banging on it and cursing himself, saying he’s a dog through and through.”
Xu Sanguan said, “Have you heard? Do you know why the factories have shut down, and the stores are closed, and why there are no classes at the schools? You know why you don’t have to go fry dough? Why some people have hung
themselves from trees, and some people are locked up in ‘cow sheds’ and beaten half to death? Do you know why? Do you know why as soon as Chairman Mao says something, people take what he said and make it into a song, and paint his words on the walls, and on the pavement, and on cars and ferry boats, on their sheets and pillowcases, on cups and cooking pans, and even on bathroom walls and the sides of spittoons? Do you know how it was that Chairman Mao’s name grew so long? Listen to this: He’s the Great Leader Great Teacher Supreme Commander and Helmsman Chairman Mao May He Live Ten Thousand Years! That’s fifteen words in all, and you have to say it in one breath, without missing a beat. You know why that is? Because the Cultural Revolution has arrived.”
Xu Sanguan said, “I’m only just now starting to understand what this Cultural Revolution is all about. It’s actually just a time for settling old scores. If someone offended you in the past, now’s the time to write a big-character poster about him and paste it on a wall on the street. You can accuse him of being an unreconstructed landlord, or a counterrevolutionary, or whatever. You can say whatever you like. There aren’t any courts or police these days anyway. There’s just a lot of different crimes. You can pick any one you like, put it up on a poster, and sit back and watch everybody hound whomever you’ve accused to death. These days when I lie in bed, I think to myself, maybe I should find an enemy too, write a poster, and settle some old score. But the only enemy I ever had was that bastard He Xiaoyong, and he was hit by a truck and killed three years ago. I’m a good man, and I haven’t made any other enemies all these years. That’s good, because at least I don’t have to worry about someone putting up a poster denouncing me.”
Before he had finished, Sanle pushed open the front door and rushed in with a shout of alarm, “Someone put up a poster on the wall of the rice store saying that Mom is a ‘broken shoe.’ ”
Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan, frightened out of their wits, immediately ran over to the rice shop to see the poster on the wall. Sanle had not been mistaken. Among many other posters, there was indeed one that singled out Xu Yulan, saying that she was a “broken shoe,” a shameless tramp, saying that she had become a prostitute at the age of fifteen, saying that you could sleep with her for just two yuan a night, saying that the men she had slept with would fill up ten whole trucks.
Xu Yulan pointed at the poster and broke into a string of curses. “It’s your mama who’s the real ‘broken shoe’! Your mama’s the real tramp. She’s the one who’s a whore. Ten truck-loads? She’s slept with so many men the whole earth couldn’t swallow them all!”
Xu Yulan wheeled around to face Xu Sanguan and began to cry. “Only someone who’s had no sons and no hope of grandsons, who’s got boils growing on his head and running sores on his feet, only someone like that could be capable of spitting out this kind of venom.”
Xu Sanguan said to the people standing next to him, “This is slander, pure and simple. It says Xu Yulan became a prostitute at fifteen. Bullshit! You think I wouldn’t know if that were true? The night we got married, Xu Yulan left this much blood on the sheets.” Xu Sanguan drew a circle in the air with his hands. “If Xu Yulan was a whore at fifteen, you think I would have seen any blood on our wedding night?” Seeing that the other people in the store hadn’t replied, Xu Sanguan answered his own question, “Of course not!”
That afternoon Xu Sanguan called Yile, Erle, and Sanle to him and told them, “Yile, you’re already sixteen now. And Erle’s fifteen. Go out to the street and copy one of those posters. Doesn’t matter which one. Just copy one of them, and then paste it over the poster about your mom. Sanle, you’re still a snot-nosed little brat, so I guess all you can really do is carry a bucket of paste for the other two. Now remember, you can’t just tear down a big-character poster. These days, if you tear one of those things down, you’re a counterrevolutionary. Don’t even think about tearing them down. Just copy out a new poster and paste it over the other one. I can’t very well take care of this myself, because everybody will be looking. If you kids go, you won’t draw as much attention. You brothers better go get the job done before it gets dark.”
When night came, Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “Your three sons have pasted over that poster, so you can relax now. I doubt very many people saw it. There’re so many posters out there that no one could possibly get around to all of them. And they’re putting up new ones all the time. Before you can finish the first one, someone’s put another one on top of it.”
TWO DAYS LATER a group of people wearing red armbands came to Xu Sanguan’s house and took Xu Yulan away. They were planning to hold a massive struggle session in the town square. They had already found a landlord, dug up a rich peasant, located a rightist, caught a counterrevolutionary, and gotten hold of a capitalist roader in a position of power. They had everyone they needed except a prostitute. They said they had spent three days looking for a prostitute, and since there was only half an hour left until the meeting was to begin, they had finally found one. They said, “Xu Yulan, come with us. We need your help. This is an emergency.”
She didn’t come back until later that afternoon. When she returned, the hair on the left side of her head was all gone, but the hair on the right remained untouched. They had given her a “yin yang” haircut, neatly shaving half of her hair at the part, so that it looked like a rice paddy midway through the harvest season.
When Xu Sanguan saw her, he let out an involuntary cry. Xu Yulan moved over to the window, picked up the mirror from the sill, and after seeing herself in the mirror, began to sob.
“Now that I look like this, how can I show my face? How am I going to live? When I was walking home, they were all pointing and laughing at me. Xu Sanguan, I didn’t know how ugly I was yet. I knew they’d cut off half my hair, but I didn’t know it would be this ugly. I didn’t know until I looked in the mirror. Xu Sanguan, what am I going to do? Xu Sanguan, they cut off my hair at the struggle session. I heard the people below me laughing, and I saw my hair falling by my feet, so I knew they’d shaved my head, but when I tried to feel it with my hand, they slapped my face so hard my teeth hurt, and they said I wasn’t allowed to touch. Xu Sanguan, how am I going to go on living? It would be better to die. I don’t have anything against them, and they didn’t have anything against me. I don’t even know them. So why did they shave my head? Why didn’t they just let me die? Xu Sanguan, why don’t you say something?”
“What am I supposed to say?” Xu Sanguan said. Then he let out a long sigh. “There’s not a whole lot we can do now. You’ve got a ‘yin yang’ head. Nowadays women with hair like that are supposedly either ‘broken shoes’ or whores. There’s nothing much you can say, now that you’ve been made to look like that. No one will believe what you have to say for yourself. You couldn’t wash yourself clean even if you jumped into the Yellow River. You can’t go out anymore. You’ll have to stay in the house.”
Xu Sanguan helped shave off the other half of Xu Yulan’s hair, then kept her inside the house. Xu Yulan herself was perfectly willing to stay in, but the people in red armbands were not willing to let her. They would come and take her away every few days, dragging her along to their struggle sessions. At almost every struggle session held in town, no matter how big or small, Xu Yulan was always standing to one side. Most of the time she was just playing a supporting role.
Xu Yulan said to Xu Sanguan, “They’re not after me. They’re attacking other people. I just stand to one side and keep the ones who are being attacked company.”
Xu Sanguan told his sons, “Actually, they’re not attacking your mom. Your mom is just keeping those capitalist roaders and rightists and counterrevolutionaries and landlords company. She just stands to one side and pretends to be participating. Your mom is just playing a supporting role. What do I mean by a supporting role? Well, she’s like MSG. You can add MSG to any kind of dish, and it makes everything a little tastier.”
Later, they made Xu Yulan bring a stool out into the busiest part of the shopping street and stand on
top of it. She stood atop the stool with a wooden sandwich board around her neck. They had made the sign especially for her. It read simply: XU YULAN, PROSTITUTE.
They escorted Xu Yulan to her spot, watched as she put the sign around her neck and stood up on the stool, then left. After they left, they forgot all about her. She stood there all day, looking left and right, waiting for them to come back. When the sun went down and the streets emptied, she began to wonder if they had forgotten that they had left her there. Only then did she make her way home, carrying the stool in one hand and the sign in the other.
She was left to stand on the street all day long many times. When she got tired of standing, she would sit down on the stool and pound her legs and rub her feet until she was ready to stand once more on the stool.
The place where she stood was quite a distance from the nearest public toilet. When she had to go to the bathroom, she would walk two blocks to the public toilet next to the rice shop, with the wooden placard still dangling around her neck all the while. Everybody would watch as she walked by, clasping the placard and, with averted eyes, remaining as closely as she could to the side of the road. When she arrived at the toilet, she would take off her sign and lean it against the wall. When she was finished, she would replace the placard around her neck and move back to her spot.
Standing on the stool was very much like participating in a struggle session. She had to stand with her head bowed in front of her, because criminals were expected to bow their heads in just such a manner. Xu Yulan stood on the stool with her head bowed, staring at her feet. But if she stared at one spot for too long, her eyes would start to get sore, so every once in a while she looked up at the people walking up and down the street.
She noticed that no one paid any attention to her. Some of the people who went by would glance in her direction, but only a very few of them gave her a second look. This made Xu Yulan feel much better, and she told Xu Sanguan, “When I stand on the street, I’m just like a telephone pole for all anyone cares.”