by Lu Xun
After groping for the silver, Shuan held it tremblingly out at him, recoiling from the object offered in return. ‘What’re you afraid of? Just take it!’ the man shouted impatiently. As Shuan continued to hesitate, the man in black snatched the lantern from him, ripped off its paper cover, wrapped it around the bread, then thrust the whole thing back. Grabbing the money, he gave the packet a squeeze then strode off, muttering ‘Old fool…’ to himself.
‘Who’s that for – who’s ill?’ Shuan vaguely heard someone ask. Whoever it was, he ignored them. His mind was now focused on one object alone, as if he held in his hands the single heir to an ancient house; all else was shut out. His only thought was to place this elixir inside his son, and enjoy its blessings. The sun was now fully risen, painting in light the road home, and the faded gold characters of a battered old plaque at the junction behind: ‘Crossing of the Ancient — Pavilion’.
II
By the time Shuan returned home, the main room at the tea-house had been cleaned and tidied, its rows of tables polished to an almost slippery shine. No customers, only his son, sitting eating at one of the inner tables, fat beads of sweat rolling off his forehead, thick jacket stuck to his spine, the hunched ridges of his shoulder blades almost joined in an inverted V. A frown furrowed Shuan’s forehead. His wife rushed out from behind the cooking range, wide-eyed, a faint tremble to her lips.
‘Did you get it?’
‘Yes.’
The two of them returned to the stove and, after a brief discussion, Hua Dama left the room, returning shortly afterwards with an old lotus leaf, which she spread out on a table. Shuan opened out the lantern paper and rewrapped the crimson bun in the lotus leaf, by which point the younger Shuan had finished his breakfast.
‘Stay there,’ his mother called quickly out to him. ‘Don’t come over here.’
After firing up the stove, Shuan stuffed the jade green parcel and the torn red-and-white lantern paper inside. A reddish-black flame flared up, filling the room with a curious fragrance.
‘Smells good! What treats have you got in there?’ The hunch-back had arrived. All day, every day he spent in the teahouse, always the first to arrive and the last to leave. Today, he had chosen the corner table nearest the street. Everyone ignored him. ‘Crispy rice?’ Still no reply. Shuan hurried over to pour him some tea.
‘Come in here!’ Hua Dama called her son into the back room, where he sat down on the bench in the middle. His mother brought him a round, pitch-black object on a plate.
‘Eat up,’ she told him softly. ‘It’ll make you better.’
The boy picked it up and studied it. The strangest thing: as if it were his own life he were holding between finger and thumb. He broke it carefully open: a jet of white steam escaped from within the burnt crust, leaving behind two halves of a white steamed bun. Soon enough, the whole thing was swallowed down, its taste forgotten, leaving only an empty plate before him. His parents stood to either side, watching, an odd gleam to their eyes – as if they wanted to pour something into him, and take something out in return. His heart started to pound. He pressed his hands to his chest; another coughing fit began.
‘Go and have a nap – then you’ll feel better.’
Her son obediently coughed himself to sleep. Once his breathing had steadied, Hua Dama lightly covered him with a patched quilt.
III
The teahouse was now full. Dark circles under his eyes, Shuan moved busily between customers, filling their cups from his copper kettle.
‘Are you all right?’ a man with a grey beard asked. ‘Not ill, are you?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Really?’ his interlocutor murmured. ‘You look cheerful enough, I suppose.’
‘He’s just busy. If his son – ’
A man with a fleshy, overbearing face rushed in, interrupting the hunchback’s diagnosis. He wore a dark brown shirt, unbuttoned and bunched carelessly at the waist with a broad black belt.
‘Has he had it?’ he shouted at Shuan. ‘Is he better? You’re a lucky man, Shuan! Lucky I keep my ear to the ground…’
One hand on his kettle, the other clamped by his side, Shuan listened respectfully, his face split wide open into a smile. Everyone else followed his example. Smiling just as brightly, Shuan’s wife – her own eyes shadowed by exhaustion – bustled out with a bowl and tea leaves. Once she had added an olive, Shuan poured on the hot water.
‘He’ll be better before you know it! Guaranteed!’ the fleshy face blustered on. ‘A miracle cure! Right? Get it hot, eat it hot.’
‘Without your help, Mr Kang – ’ Hua Dama gratefully began.
‘Guaranteed! Eat it hot. That consumption of his won’t stand a chance, not against a bun dipped in human blood!’
Paling at the word ‘consumption’, Hua Dama smiled all the more valiantly, before walking off, mumbling some excuse, to conceal her discomfort. Oblivious, Mr Kang raised the volume of his voice a notch, squeezing a further coughing fit from the Shuan boy asleep in the back room.
‘What a stroke of luck. Soon he’ll be right as rain; no wonder old Shuan can’t keep the smile off his face,’ the grey-beard echoed, approaching Mr Kang. ‘I heard it was the Xia boy – is that right?’ he lowered his voice deferentially. ‘What happened?’
‘It was Mrs Xia’s son, all right! The rascal!’ A feeling of exceptional well-being rushed through Mr Kang as he observed his rapt audience, the folds of his flesh seeming to swell with delight. ‘He threw his life away, the idiot,’ he went on, even louder. ‘No doubt about it. Didn’t get anything out of it myself, of course – not like our friend Shuan here. Red-Eye the prison guard got his clothes, while the boy’s uncle cleaned up with a twenty-five-dollar reward. Straight into his pocket!’
The younger Shuan slowly made his way out of the back room, both hands pressed against his chest, unable to stop coughing. Walking over to the cooking range, he filled a bowl with cold rice, poured on hot water, then sat down and began to eat. ‘Feeling any better?’ his mother murmured, following behind. ‘Still as hungry as ever?’
‘Guaranteed!’ Mr Kang glanced at the boy, before turning back to his audience. ‘Sharp as a tack, that uncle of his. If he hadn’t informed when he did, the authorities would have gone for the whole family – root and branch. Instead of which, he’s made a mint! That boy – you wouldn’t believe it, he even tried to get his jailer to turn against the government.’
‘Unbelievable,’ spat a furious-looking young man, around twenty, in the back row.
‘When Red-Eye went to sound him out for bribes, he tried to talk him round. The empire, he said, it belongs to every one of us. Ever heard anything like it? Mad! Red-Eye couldn’t believe how poor he really was – even though he’d known all along there was only an old mother back home. He lost his rag completely when he found out there wasn’t a drop to be squeezed out of him. Gave him a couple of good slaps round the face – and quite right!’
‘That would’ve given him something to think about.’ The hunchback in the corner suddenly revived.
‘Ha! Not a bit of it. He just said he felt sorry for him.’
‘Sorry for hitting a fool like that?’ the man with the grey beard asked.
‘You weren’t listening,’ Mr Kang smirked contemptuously. ‘The boy felt sorry for Red-Eye!’
His listeners’ eyes suddenly went blank, their chatter fading away. His eating done, the sweat was steaming off the Shuan boy.
‘He felt sorry for Red-Eye – crazy! He must have gone crazy,’ the man with the grey beard illuminated.
‘Crazy – crazy,’ the man in his twenties echoed, identically inspired.
Life – and the power of speech – returned to the other customers. As the teahouse buzzed with noise once more, the Shuan boy began coughing desperately. Mr Kang strode over to thump him on the back.
‘Guaranteed!’ Mr Kang told him, thumping him on the back. ‘No need to cough like that, Shuan my boy. Guaranteed!’
‘Crazy,’ the hu
nchback nodded his head.
IV
For as long as anyone could remember, the land beyond the western gate in the town wall had been common ground, bisected by a narrow, meandering path tramped out by the shoes of short-cutters. To the left of this natural boundary line were buried the bodies of the executed and those who had died in prison; to the right lay the mass graves into which the town’s poor were sunk. Both sides bulged with grave mounds, like the tiered crowns of steamed bread with which wealthy families celebrated their birthdays.
The weather that April – the month on which the Grave-Sweeping Festival fell – was unusually cold, with buds no more than half the size of rice grains daring to peep out on to the willow branches. Not long after daybreak, a weeping Hua Dama set four dishes of food and a bowl of rice in front of a new grave. After burning some funeral money, she squatted there blankly, as if waiting for something – what, she couldn’t say – to happen. A light breeze ruffled her short hair, noticeably greyer than it had been last year.
Another woman – her hair also grey, her clothes ragged, carrying an old, round basket lacquered in vermilion, from which a chain of paper money hung – approached slowly along the narrow track, pausing every few steps. Suddenly noticing Hua Dama’s gaze, she hesitated, a flush tingeing her pale face, then forced herself to walk on: to a grave to the left of the boundary, in front of which she set down her basket.
The grave was directly across from the Shuan boy’s, the two plots separated only by the narrow path. Hua Dama watched the woman lay out four dishes of food and a bowl of rice, weep a while, then burn her paper money. ‘Her son must be buried there, too,’ she thought to herself. After she had paced aimlessly back and forth, a tremble suddenly took hold of the second woman’s hands and feet. She took a few unsteady steps back, her glazed eyes staring ahead.
Fearing that the woman was almost maddened by grief, Hua Dama rose to her feet and crossed over. ‘Try not to upset yourself,’ she murmured. ‘Why don’t we take ourselves back?’
The other woman nodded, her eyes still staring ahead. ‘Look,’ she mumbled. ‘What’s that?’
Looking in the direction indicated by the other woman, Hua Dama found her gaze drawn to the unkempt grave before her, its patchy coverage of grass interrupted by scraps of yellow earth. But when she looked a little closer, she shivered with surprise: across the grave’s rounded peak lay a wreath of red and white flowers, clearly visible even to eyes long cloudy with old age.
Though not the most extravagant or the freshest of wreaths, it was tidily woven. Hua Dama glanced across at her son’s grave, at other graves, scattered only with hardy little bluish-white flowers undaunted by the cold. She was unaccountably troubled by a sense of dissatisfaction, or inadequacy. Taking a few steps closer, the second old woman studied the wreath more closely. ‘Cut flowers,’ she observed, as if talking to herself. ‘They couldn’t have grown round here… Who might have left them? Children never play round here… my relatives haven’t visited for ages… What are they doing here?’ She sank deep into thought.
‘Yu’er,’ she suddenly cried out, her face streaming with tears. ‘They murdered you! And you can’t forget – you’re still suffering! Is this a sign from you, to me?’ She looked about her: a lone black crow stood perched on the bare branch of a tree. ‘I know,’ she went on. ‘They’ll be sorry, Yu’er, they’ll be sorry they murdered you. Heaven will have its revenge. Close your eyes, rest easy… If you’re here, and can hear me, send me a sign – make that crow fly on to your grave.’
With the ebbing of the breeze, the stems of withered grass now stood erect, rigid as copper wire. Her thin, tremulous voice faded away, leaving only the silence of the grave. The two women stood among the clumps of grass, staring up at the crow perched, as if cast in iron, amid the rod-like branches, its head drawn in.
Time passed. Other mourners, of various ages, appeared, weaving in and out between the graves.
Hua Dama felt somehow relieved, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from her shoulders. It was time to go, she thought. ‘Why don’t we take ourselves back,’ she urged again, moving to leave.
Her companion sighed and began listlessly collecting together the dishes of food. After a final, brief hesitation, she slowly walked off, still muttering, ‘What are they doing here?’ to herself.
After a couple of dozen paces, a loud caw broke the silence behind them. They looked back, their skin prickling: its wings spread, the crow crouched for take-off, then flew off, straight as an arrow, towards the horizon.
April 1919
TOMORROW
‘Can’t hear a thing – what’s wrong, d’you think?’ Lifting his bowl of rice wine, Red-Nosed Gong made a face in the direction of next door.
‘Ah, give it a rest,’ Blue-Skinned Ah-wu muttered, putting down his own bowl to punch him hard on the back.
Back in those days, Luzhen was still an old-fashioned backwater of a place: by around seven in the evening, most of the town had locked their doors and taken themselves off to bed. Only two establishments kept their lamps burning into the small hours. One was the Universal Prosperity, where a few comrades in cups clustered around the bar to eat, drink and generally be merry; the other the home of one Mrs Shan, a young widow of two years’ standing, who lived next door. Rude economic necessity – the need to make a living from spinning for herself and her three-year-old son – also kept her up late.
But for the last few days, no spinning had been heard. Since only two adjoining establishments stayed awake into the night, only Gong and his fellow drinkers would hear any noise that was to be heard from Mrs Shan’s; or fail to hear it, in its absence.
After submitting to the blow, Gong took a great, easy slug of his wine, and began crooning a popular love song.
At this moment, Mrs Shan next door was sitting on the edge of the bed, cradling her son, Bao’er, as the spinning wheel stood silently by. The dingy lamplight illuminated the pallor beneath his crimson flush. She had drawn lots, she had beseeched the gods, she was thinking to herself; she had even given him medicine. What else was there left for her to do? The only person she hadn’t yet tried was Dr Ho Xiaoxian. But maybe Bao’er was always worse at night; once the sun came up, his fever would subside, his breathing get easier – it was often like that with illnesses.
Mrs Shan was a simple, uneducated sort of a woman, the sort who didn’t understand the terrifying powers of the word ‘but’: its marvellous ability to transform the bad into good, and to perform the same trick in reverse. Not long after the sentimental cadences from next door died away, the darkness began to pale over to the east, and the first, hopeful silver light of dawn crept in through a crack in the window, drawing the short summer night to a close.
Mrs Shan found waiting for dawn much harder than other people: each of Bao’er’s laboured breaths seemed to last a year. But eventually the brightness of day overpowered the lamplight. Bao’er’s nostrils, she now saw, shuddered with each intake and out-take of breath.
She let out a faint cry of terror; he looked worse than she had feared. What can I do? she thought to herself. I have to take him to Dr Ho. Although she was a simple, uneducated sort of a woman, she was capable of taking a decision. Standing up, she removed from her wooden cupboard the thirteen silver dollars and hundred and eighty coppers that daily economies had enabled her to stockpile. Pocketing them, she locked the door and rushed off towards Dr Ho’s, carrying Bao’er in her arms.
Even though it was still early, the doctor already had four patients waiting for him. Four silver dollars bought Bao’er fifth place in the queue. Ho Xiaoxian uncurled two fingers – both nails a generous four inches long – and felt his pulse. Surely this man can save Bao’er, marvelled Mrs Shan to herself.
‘What’s wrong with Bao’er, doctor?’ she asked nervously.
‘His stomach’s blocked.’
‘Not serious, is it? He – ’
‘Take two of these.’
‘He can’t breathe properly, his
nostrils shake every time he takes a breath.’
‘That’s because his Fire is vanquishing his Metal.’
His verdict delivered, Ho closed his eyes; Mrs Shan felt it would be rude to press him further. A man in his thirties, seated opposite the doctor, had already scribbled out a prescription.
‘You won’t get the first item, the Baby Life-Saver Wonder Pill,’ he said, pointing at one line of characters, ‘anywhere except Jias’ Welfare Pharmacy.’
Mrs Shan took the prescription and walked off with it, thinking to herself. Though she was only a simple, uneducated sort of a woman, she knew that Dr Ho’s surgery, the pharmacy and her own home formed the three corners of a triangle; naturally, her most expeditious course would be to buy the medicine before going on home. And so that was where she headed. The shop assistant, his warped fingernails as overextended as the doctor’s, slowly read the prescription then, just as slowly, wrapped the medicine. As Mrs Shan held Bao’er in her arms while she waited, the boy suddenly tugged on a tuft of his dishevelled hair, a movement she had never seen him make before. She was stupid with terror.
The sun was now high in the sky. Walking along with the medicine and a fidgeting child in her arms, Mrs Shan began to feel the weight of them; home began to seem ever more distant. Eventually, she sat down to rest at the threshold of one of the village’s better establishments, her clothes clinging clammily to her – she suddenly realized she was covered in sweat. Bao’er seemed to have fallen asleep. Up she got, and went slowly on her way.
‘Let me take him!’ said a voice – remarkably similar to Ah-wu’s – in her ear.
Turning, she discovered a drowsy-looking Blue-Skinned Ah-wu behind her.
Although Mrs Shan had indeed been hoping that Heaven would send down a guardian angel of some kind, her strong preference would have been for someone other than Ah-wu. But here he was, and after a few attempts to demur, she submitted. Out stretched his arm, insinuating itself down between her bosom and her child, until Bao’er was secured. Mrs Shan’s breast surged with heat, the flush spreading across her face, and back to her ears.