by Yu Hua
Xu Yulan said, “Go on, Xu Sanguan. The brigade chief is right. It’s better to harm yourself than to hurt a friend’s feelings.”
Xu Sanguan knew what Xu Yulan meant but could not say aloud. He had to do it for Erle’s sake. Xu Sanguan decided to drink. He would drink for Erle’s sake. He would drink so that Erle could be transferred back to town. He gulped down the liquor.
When this third cup of liquor slid down his throat, his stomach began to pitch like the high seas in the midst of a storm. He knew he was going to vomit. He rushed out the front door, let out a moan, and began to retch. His stomach quivered as he expelled the liquor, and the pain was so sharp that he couldn’t stand up straight. When he was finished vomiting, he knelt on the ground for a minute before slowly rising to his feet. He wiped his mouth and, with tears still streaming down his face, returned to his seat.
As soon as Xu Sanguan returned, the brigade chief poured him another glassful of liquor. “Drink! Better to overdo it than hurt a friend’s feelings. Have another drink.”
Xu Sanguan repeated to himself, Do it for Erle. Even if it kills you. Drink. He took the cup into his hands and drained it in a gulp.
Xu Yulan, seeing the state he was in, grew frightened. “Xu Sanguan, I think you’ve had enough. Something might happen to you.”
Erle’s brigade chief cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Nonsense! Nothing’s going to happen to him.” He poured another glass and handed it to Xu Sanguan. “The most I ever drank at one go was two quarts of liquor. I couldn’t drink any more after the first quart, so I stuck my finger down my throat and vomited it all up. Once I had cleared my stomach out, I was ready for another quart.”
Discovering that the first bottle of spirits was already empty, he said to Xu Yulan, “Go buy another bottle.”
That night the brigade chief drank until he too began to feel intoxicated. He stood and walked unsteadily to the front door. Then he turned to one side and began to pee into the street. When he had finished peeing, he swung slowly around, gazed blearily toward Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan, and announced, “That’s all for tonight. We can drink some more next time I come by.”
After Erle’s brigade chief left, Xu Yulan helped Xu Sanguan to bed, removing his shoes and his shirt and covering him with the quilt. After she tucked him in, she went to clear the table.
Xu Sanguan lay with his eyes shut, disturbed only by the occasional hiccup. After a few minutes his hiccups slowly turned into snores.
He slept until late the next morning. When he awoke, his whole body ached. Xu Yulan had already gone to fry dough. Xu Sanguan slowly picked himself out of bed. His head ached so badly, he thought it might split. He sat by the table and drank a glass of water. Then he remembered Genlong. How was Genlong doing? He had to go to the hospital and find out.
When he arrived at the hospital, the bed Genlong had been lying in the day before was empty. Pleasantly surprised that Genlong had been discharged from the hospital so soon, he asked the other patients in the ward, “Where’s Genlong?”
“Who’s Genlong?” came the reply.
“The man who came in yesterday with a cerebral hemorrhage.”
“He died.”
Genlong dead? Xu Sanguan stood with his mouth hanging open, gazing at the empty bed. There weren’t even any sheets on the bed, just a burlap mattress cover. There was a bloodstain on the burlap that had been there for so long, it had begun to turn black.
Xu Sanguan emerged from the hospital and sat on a pile of bricks outside the door. The winter wind sent chills through his body. He stuffed his hands inside his sleeves and hunched his shoulders so that his collar would shield his neck. He sat and remembered Genlong. And Ah Fang. He remembered the first time the two men had taken him to sell blood. He remembered how they had taught him to drink water before selling blood, and how they had taken him to eat fried pork livers and drink yellow rice wine afterward. He remembered Genlong, and when he was finished remembering, he sat and cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
After Yile returned to the countryside, he grew weaker and weaker by the day, until even the effort of lifting his own arm would leave him panting. At the same time his body began to feel colder and colder. He covered himself with whatever he could find, but he still couldn’t get warm, so he put on a cotton-padded jacket, got under his quilt, and went to sleep. And still when he woke up in the morning, his feet would be icy cold.
This went on for two months. Yile lay in bed, sleeping for whole days on end, eating cold rice and drinking cold water, until he grew so weak that he couldn’t even speak.
It was at this point that Erle came to visit. Erle had departed from his own production brigade that afternoon, traveling by foot for three hours before he arrived. It was almost dark by the time he got there. Erle stood outside Yile’s door, knocking and calling his name. Yile heard him arrive, and he wanted to get up to answer the door but simply did not have the strength. He wanted to say something, but he could not speak.
After Erle called his name, he pressed his face to the door frame and peeked inside. He saw Yile lying in the dark, gazing at the door. His lips were moving, but no sound emerged. Erle shouted to him, “Open the door! It’s snowing out here, and the northwest wind is howling, and the snow is coming down my neck. I’m just about frozen stiff. Let me in! You know I’m here, so why won’t you open the door? I can see you looking at me. I can see your mouth moving, and I saw your eyes. What? Are you laughing at me? This isn’t any time to joke around. I’m just about freezing to death out here. Goddamnit, stop fooling around! My feet are going numb. Don’t you hear me stamping my feet? Yile, open the goddamn door!”
Erle kept on shouting until the sky had gone completely dark and Yile had been swallowed up by the encroaching color of night. And yet Yile refused to get up and open the door. Erle began to feel frightened. He wondered if something was wrong with his brother. He wondered if Yile had poisoned himself with pesticides. He decided to kick open the door. Smashing his foot twice against the lock, the door gave way. Then he ran to the bed and touched Yile’s face. Yile’s face was so hot that it scared him half to death. He thought to himself, Yile must be running a fever of 104 degrees, at the very least.
When Yile spoke, his voice was terribly weak. “I’m sick.”
Erle swept the quilt aside and took Yile into his arms. “I’m taking you home. We can take the night ferry home.”
Erle, struck by the realization that Yile was seriously ill, decided that any further delay might be dangerous. He immediately slung Yile over his back, went out the door, and began to jog toward the ferry pier. The closest ferry pier was nearly three miles away from Yile’s production brigade. Erle carried Yile on his back through the snow and the wind for more than an hour before they reached the pier. The pier was sunk in darkness, and Erle could only just make out the little open shelter near the pier by the weak gleam of the moonlight reflecting on the snow. The road curved around to the left of the shelter, and a long flight of stone steps led down to the river on the right.
They reached the pier. The shelter had been built to shield ferry passengers from the rain, the snow, and the heat of summer. Erle carried Yile over to the shelter and laid him out on a concrete bench that was exposed on all sides to the elements. Then he noticed that Yile’s hair and his back were completely coated with snow. He brushed the snow off Yile’s back with one hand, then wiped the snow from the top of his head. Yile’s hair was soaked, and the moisture had trickled down his neck as well. His entire body trembled as he told Erle, “I’m cold.”
Erle, on the other hand, was so hot from the journey to the pier that sweat ran down his back. It was not until Yile spoke that he realized that the snow was swirling into the shelter from all sides, windblown. He took off his padded jacket and wrapped it around his brother. Yile continued to tremble. Erle asked him, “When will the ferry come?”
He could barely hear what Yile said in reply. Erle bent his ear next to Yile’s mouth before he was a
ble to understand. “Ten o’clock.”
Erle thought to himself, It couldn’t be much later than seven now. If we stay out here in the open for another three hours, Yile will freeze to death. He shifted Yile to the ground instead of the bench so that not quite as much snow and wind would reach him.
“You sit right here. I’m going to run back and get your quilt.”
Erle sprinted toward Yile’s production brigade, running as if his life depended on it, not daring to delay a single second. But because he was sprinting through snow, he tumbled repeatedly to the ground. Waves of pain coursed through his right arm and his buttocks as he continued to run. When he finally reached Yile’s place, he stood for a moment to catch his breath, picked up the quilt, and then began to sprint back to the pier.
By the time he regained the shelter, Yile seemed to be nowhere in sight. Erle, shocked, shouted, “Yile! Yile!” Suddenly he caught sight of something dark and indistinct lying on the ground in front of him. It was Yile lying in the snow. The padded jacket had slid to one side, and only a corner of the cloth still covered Yile’s chest. Erle called to his brother as he reached down and took him into his arms. Yile did not respond. Erle, on the verge of panic, stroked his face. Yile’s face was as cold as his hand.
Erle screamed, “Yile, Yile, are you dead?”
He saw Yile’s head move and, reassured that he was not yet dead, broke into a smile. “Goddamnit,” he said, “you really scared me that time.” Then he told him, “I went to get your quilt. You won’t be as cold that way.”
Erle spread the quilt across the ground, then rolled his brother inside it. Then he wrapped the padded jacket around the quilt. He sat down on the concrete floor of the shelter and took this bundle, with Yile inside it, into his arms. Finally, he leaned his back against the concrete bench so that Yile could lean against his chest.
“Yile, are you still cold?”
Then Erle sensed his own exhaustion. He nestled his head against the concrete bench, feeling that his arms, which were still wrapped tightly around Yile, might fall to his sides any minute. And a moment later they did. Yile felt like a stone pressing against him. He let his hands dangle by his sides for a moment to rest, then propped himself up on the concrete so as to distribute the burden away from the rest of his body.
Erle’s shirt was moist with sweat, and after a short while the sweat went icy cold. The northwest wind whistled down his neck, and his whole body began to shiver. Drops of water began to tumble from his head onto his body, and when he reached up to pat his hair, he realized that the snow on his hair was melting. Patting his clothes, he realized that the snow that had accumulated there was melting as well. His icy sweat was seeping out from underneath his clothes, and the snow melt was soaking into them. It was not long before he was drenched through to his skin.
The night ferry did not arrive until well after ten o’clock. Erle carried Yile on his back onto the boat, which was nearly empty. He walked back to the stern. The engine was directly by the stern, behind some wooden planks. Erle set Yile down in a chair that he leaned against the planks, which were pleasantly warm from the heat emitted by the engine.
The boat arrived in town just before dawn. It was snowing there too, and the streets were coated with a thick layer of icy flakes. Erle hoisted Yile onto his back once more. Because Yile was still wrapped in the heavy cotton quilt, the two boys together were nearly as big as a three-wheeled bicycle cart. The footprints Erle left in the snow wobbled through the streets, sometimes deep and sometimes shallow, their uneven imprints glittering coldly under the electric street lamps.
WHEN ERL E ARRIVED home with Yile on his back, Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan were fast asleep. They heard the front door being banged open from the outside and, emerging from the bedroom to see what was happening, watched as an enormous mountain of snow tumbled through the door and into the house.
Yile was taken to the hospital immediately. By the time the sun rose, the doctor informed them that Yile had contracted a form of hepatitis and that his condition was extremely serious. There was nothing more that they could do for him in town. The only recourse was to send him, as soon as was humanly possible, to the big hospital in Shanghai. Any delay, he added, might be life-threatening.
Before the doctor had even finished speaking, Xu Yulan began to cry. She sat in a chair outside the ward, tugging Xu Sanguan’s sleeve and weeping.
“If he’s this sick now, he must have already been sick the last time he was home. We shouldn’t have made him leave. But we didn’t know he was sick. If we had known, we could have taken care of him, and things would never have gotten so serious. Now they have to send him to Shanghai, and if he doesn’t go, there’s no guaranteeing that he’ll survive. How much is it going to cost to send him to Shanghai? We don’t even have enough money for an ambulance. Xu Sanguan, what are we going to do?”
Xu Sanguan said, “Don’t cry. No matter how much you cry, it’s not going to make Yile any better. If we don’t have the money, we’ll just have to find another way. We can borrow. We can borrow a little from everyone we know. We can always find enough money that way.”
Xu Sanguan went to Sanle’s factory first. When he found Sanle, he asked him how much money he had. Sanle told him they had just given out the payroll four days earlier, so he still had a good twelve yuan. Xu Sanguan asked him for ten.
Sanle shook his head. “If I give you ten, how am I going to eat for the rest of the month?”
Xu Sanguan said, “You can eat the northwest wind for all I care.”
Sanle began to chuckle.
Xu Sanguan shouted, “Don’t fool around with me! Your brother Yile’s about to die, and you’re laughing?”
Sanle stared at him, stupefied. “Dad, what did you say just now?”
Then Xu Sanguan realized that he had yet to inform Sanle why he needed to borrow the money in the first place: Yile was suffering from an advanced case of hepatitis. He hastily explained the situation to Sanle, who gave him the entire twelve yuan.
“Dad, take all of it. You go back to the hospital, and I’ll meet you there as soon as I tell the people at the factory that I’m not coming in for work.”
After Xu Sanguan collected the twelve yuan from Sanle, he paid a visit to Blacksmith Fang. He sat down next to Blacksmith Fang in his foundry. “We’ve known each other almost twenty years now, no? In all that time I’ve never asked you for anything, but today I’m finally going to have to ask a favor of you.”
After Xu Sanguan explained the situation, Blacksmith Fang took a ten-yuan note from his pocket and handed it to Xu Sanguan. “All I can give you right now is ten yuan. I know it’s not nearly enough, but that’s all I can afford right now.”
After leaving Blacksmith Fang’s, Xu Sanguan spent the rest of the morning visiting eleven other families around town. Of the eleven families, eight were willing to lend him some money. Around noon he came to He Xiaoyong’s house. After He Xiaoyong’s death, Xu Sanguan had encountered his widow only very rarely. When he arrived at the doorstep, she and her daughters were just sitting down to lunch inside. Since the loss of her husband, He Xiaoyong’s woman’s hair had gone gray.
Xu Sanguan addressed her from the doorstep. “Yile’s seriously ill. The doctor says he has to be sent to Shanghai for treatment or else he’ll die. We don’t have enough money to pay for it. Do you think you could lend us something to help out?”
He Xiaoyong’s woman gazed toward Xu Sanguan for a moment. Then she turned wordlessly back to her meal.
Xu Sanguan stood quietly for a moment before trying a second time. “We’ll pay you back as soon as we can. We can even write a promissory note.”
He Xiaoyong’s woman glanced at him once more, turned back inside, and continued to eat her lunch.
Xu Sanguan spoke for a third time. “I know I did you wrong before, and I’m sorry for it. Now I’m begging you, for Yile’s sake. Because when it comes down to it, Yile is—”
He Xiaoyong’s woman addressed her daughters. “Ho
w about it? Yile is your big brother, after all. You can’t just stand and watch a drowning man go under. How much money do you girls have? Give the man whatever you have.” He Xiaoyong’s woman gestured toward Xu Sanguan.
Her two daughters stood up from the table and went upstairs to get some money. He Xiaoyong’s woman, in turn, reached inside her clothes and pulled out a bundle wrapped neatly in her handkerchief. Setting it down on the tabletop, she unfolded the cloth, revealing one five- yuan note and one two-yuan note, along with some small change. She picked out the two bills, tucked the change back into the handkerchief, and put the bundle back in her pocket. At the same time her daughters came downstairs and handed her their money.
He Xiaoyong’s woman collated the bills, counted them, stood, and handed the notes to Xu Sanguan. “That’s seventeen yuan all together. Count it.”
Xu Sanguan accepted the money, counted it, and put it in his pocket. Then he told her, “I’ve been to see thirteen different people this morning, and of all those people, you came up with the most money. Let me pay my respects to you.”
Xu Sanguan made a deep bow, turned, and left. He had collected sixty-three yuan that morning. He gave all the money to Xu Yulan and told her to take Yile to Shanghai.
“I know this won’t be enough to cover everything, but I’ll find a way to come up with the rest. All you have to do is take good care of Yile and leave the rest to me. Once I’ve come up with the money, I’ll come and find you in Shanghai. You should get going as soon as possible. This is a matter of life and death.”
THE AFTERNOON after Xu Yulan had set off for Shanghai, Erle got sick. He had caught a nasty cold carrying Yile home from the countryside on his back. Now he was laid up in bed, coughing incessantly. What scared Xu Sanguan was that he was coughing so violently that he sounded as if he were vomiting instead. When he put his hand on Erle’s forehead, he felt as if he were holding it against an open flame.