by Yu Hua
ALSO BY YU HUA
Boy in the Twilight
China in Ten Words
Brothers
Cries in the Drizzle
Chronicle of a Blood Merchant
To Live
The Past and the Punishments
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Translation copyright © 2015 by Allan H. Barr
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies. Originally published in China as Diqi tian by New Star Press, Beijing, in 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Yu Hua.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yu, Hua, [date]
[880-01 Diqi tian. English]
The seventh day : a novel / Yu Hua ; translated from the Chinese by Allan H. Barr.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-8041-9786-1 (hardcover : alk. paper). ISBN 978-0-8041-9787-8 (eBook).
I. Barr, Allan Hepburn, translator. II. Title. III. Title: 7th day.
PL2928.H78D513 2014 895.13'52—dc23 2014018468
eBook ISBN 9780804197878
www.pantheonbooks.com
Cover design by Linda Huang
v4.0
ep
Contents
Cover
Also by Yu Hua
Title Page
Copyright
The First Day
The Second Day
The Third Day
The Fourth Day
The Fifth Day
The Sixth Day
The Seventh Day
About the Author
The fog was thick when I left my bedsit and ventured out alone into the barren and murky city. I was heading for what used to be called a crematorium and these days is known as a funeral parlor. I had received a notice instructing me to arrive by 9:00 a.m., because my cremation was scheduled for 9:30.
The night before had resounded with the sounds of collapsing masonry—one huge crash after another, as though a whole line of buildings was too tired to stay standing and had to lie down. In this continual bedlam I drifted fitfully between sleep and wakefulness. At daybreak, when I opened the door, the din suddenly halted, as though just by opening the door I had turned off the switch that controlled the noise. On the door a slip had been posted next to the notices that had been taped there ten days earlier, asking me to pay the electricity and water bills. In characters damp and blurry in the fog, the new notice instructed me to proceed to the funeral parlor for cremation.
Fog had locked the city into a single, unchanging guise, erasing the boundaries between day and night, morning and evening. As I walked toward the bus stop, several human figures appeared out of nowhere, only to disappear just as quickly. I cautiously walked ahead for a distance, but found my passage blocked by some kind of sign that appeared to have suddenly grown out of the ground. I thought there ought to be some numbers on it—if the number 203 was there, then this was the stop for the bus I wanted to take. But I couldn’t make out the numbers, even when I felt for them with my hand. When I rubbed my eyes, I seemed to see the number 203, suggesting that this was indeed the stop. But now I had a strange feeling that while my right eye was in the original place, my left eye had moved outward to my cheekbone. Then I became aware that next to my nose a foreign object had attached itself to my face, and something else was caught underneath my chin. When I felt around with my hand, I discovered that my nose was next to my nose and my chin next to my chin—somehow they had altered their locations.
The fog was now even more dense. Amid the murky figures and ghostly buildings I heard sounds of life rising and falling like ripples of water. Then, as I took a few tentative steps farther on, hoping to penetrate the gloom, I heard cars crashing into each other. The fog had drenched my eyes and I couldn’t see the collisions—all I was aware of was a series of violent impacts. A car burst out of the fog behind me and sped past and into the sounds of life, and the sounds churned and popped like boiling water.
I stood there uncertainly for a little while, but soon realized that if there was a pileup on this stretch of road, the No. 203 bus would not arrive anytime soon and I should go on to the next stop.
As I walked on ahead, snowflakes came billowing out of the fog. They seemed to glow like patches of light, and when they landed on my face, my skin felt slightly warmer. I stood still, watching the snowflakes fall through the air and settle on me. My clothes gradually stood out more clearly against the snow.
This was an important day, I realized—my first day of death. I hadn’t washed and I hadn’t dressed in funerary costume—I was simply wearing my ordinary clothes, with a baggy old overcoat on top, as I headed toward the funeral parlor. Stricken with sudden misgivings at my sloppy attire, I turned on my heel and headed back in the direction from which I’d come.
The falling snow had brought some light to the city and the thick fog seemed to slowly dissipate as I walked, so that I could faintly make out pedestrians and vehicles going to and fro. As I reached the bus stop I had left shortly before, a scene of utter confusion met my eyes: the road was completely blocked by a chaotic tangle of over twenty vehicles, with police cars and ambulances ringing the perimeter. There were people lying on the ground and others being pulled from cars that were twisted completely out of shape; there were people moaning and people crying and people who made no sound at all. I stopped for a minute, and this time I could see clearly the number 203 on the sign. I made my way past.
When I got back to my bedsit, I undressed, walked naked over to the shower enclosure, and turned on the faucet. As I filled my palms with water and began to wash, I found that my body was covered in wounds, and I gingerly removed the bits of gravel and splinters of wood that were embedded in the open lesions.
Just then my mobile phone started to ring. I found this strange, because service had been disconnected two months earlier for nonpayment, and here suddenly it was ringing again. I picked it up and pressed the listen button. “Hello?” I said quietly.
A voice responded. “Is that Yang Fei?”
“That’s right.”
“Funeral parlor here. Where are you now?”
“I’m at home.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m washing.”
“It’s almost nine o’clock now! How can you still be washing?”
“I’ll be there soon.” I felt embarrassed.
“Hurry up, then, and be sure to bring your reservation slip.”
“Where will I find that?”
“It’ll be on your door.”
Then the caller hung up. I wasn’t very happy about this—why was there such a rush? I put down the phone and renewed my efforts to clean my wounds. I picked up a bowl, filled it with water, and used it to wash out the remaining grit and splinters. This helped to speed things up.
Still dripping wet, I walked over to the wardrobe and opened it, in search of a funerary costume. But I could find nothing answering this description; the closest thing was a pair of white silk pajamas with a low-key flower pattern and the characters, now faded, that Li Qing had embroidered in red thread on the chest—a souvenir of my brief marriage. She had carefully chosen two pairs of traditional Chinese-style pajamas for us one day, and had sewn my name on hers and her name on mine. I had never worn these pajamas since our marriage broke up, but now, when I put them on once more, their color seemed as warm as that of snow.
<
br /> I opened the door and carefully studied the funeral parlor notice posted on the outside. On the slip was written A3—a reservation number, by the look of it—so I detached it, folded it carefully, and put it in my pajama pocket.
As I was about to leave, I had the feeling I’d forgotten something and stood for a moment in the swirling snow to ponder. Then I remembered—a black armband. I was a single man, parentless and childless, with nobody to come and mourn my passing, so it was up to me to wear one.
I went back into my room and riffled through the wardrobe for some black cloth. After a prolonged search all I could find was a black shirt so worn that it was now turning gray. I cut off part of the sleeve and placed it over my left arm. My mourning attire clearly left something to be desired, but I felt tolerably satisfied with the effect.
Once more my phone rang. “Is that Yang Fei?”
“Yes, hello.”
“Funeral parlor here. Are you still planning to get cremated?”
I hesitated for a moment. “Yes, I am.”
“It’s nine-thirty now—you’re late.”
“Is it so important to be on time?” I wanted to do things right.
“If you want to get cremated, you need to hurry it up.”
Entering the funeral parlor, I found the waiting room spacious and deep. The fog outside had gradually dissipated but the waiting room itself was still wreathed in mist, and some widely spaced wall sconces in the shape of candles gave off a pale glow, also the shade of snow. Somehow I felt warmed by the color white.
The right side of the waiting room was taken up by rows of plastic chairs bolted to the floor, while on the left side was an armchair zone with chairs arranged in several rings and with plastic flowers laid out on the coffee table in the center of each circle. On the plastic chairs many people were waiting, but there were only five seated in the armchairs. Those in the armchairs sat comfortably, with a foot resting on the opposite knee, looking very pleased with their accomplishments, while everyone in the rows of plastic seats sat stiffly and properly.
As I entered, a man wearing a faded blue jacket and a pair of old gloves walked toward me. He was so thin that his bones were like sticks and his face seemed little more than a skull, for it had hardly any skin and flesh.
Seeing my face with its altered features, he greeted me softly. “Good morning, sir.”
“Is this the crematorium?” I asked.
“It’s not called the crematorium anymore,” he said. “It’s called the funeral parlor.”
I realized I’d said the wrong thing, a bit like entering a hotel and asking, “Is this the hostel?”
In his voice I detected a weary, jaded tone, and I could tell he was not the person who had called from the funeral parlor earlier. I apologized for my tardiness, but he shook his head gently and consoled me by informing me that late arrivals were not unusual. My reservation number had expired and was no longer valid, so he walked over to the number-dispensing machine at the entrance to pick up a new ticket for me.
I had been pushed back from A3 to A64; according to the ticket, I had fifty-four people ahead of me.
“Will you be able to fit me in today?” I asked.
“There are always some no-shows,” the usher replied.
With a gloved finger he pointed at the plastic chairs to indicate that was where I should wait. Noticing that my eyes were drawn to the armchairs, he explained that they belonged to the VIP zone, and my status qualified me only for a place in the basic seating. As I made my way, ticket in hand, over to the plastic chairs, I heard him muttering to himself, “Another poor guy who’s come here without a face-lift.”
I sat down on a plastic chair. The usher paced back and forth in the pathway that separated the two waiting areas, seemingly lost in thought, his shoes tapping on the floor with the same steady rhythm as that of someone knocking on a door. Late arrivals kept showing up, and he would greet them and hand them a reservation ticket and point a finger in the direction of the plastic chairs. One of the late arrivals was an elite guest, and the usher walked him over to the armchair zone.
The crematees on the plastic chairs talked in low voices among themselves, while the six in the VIP area also chatted, but loudly, like singers projecting lyrics onstage. Our conversations were more like an accompaniment from the orchestra pit.
Funerary clothes and cinerary urns were the central topics of discussion among the VIPs. They were wearing exquisite handmade silk cerements with bright hand-embroidered designs, and they were discussing casually the price of these garments—all of which cost over twenty thousand yuan. The costumes looked splendid to me, like outfits worn in an imperial palace. Then the VIPs switched their attention to their respective cinerary urns, which were made of large-leaf red sandalwood engraved with exquisite designs and priced in the sixty-thousand-yuan range. The urns’ names were equally splendid and imposing: Sandalwood Precincts, Immortal Crane Manor, Dragon Palace, Phoenix Castle, Unicorn Palace, and Sandalwood Mansion.
We commoners were discussing the same topics. In our case the funerary garments were of synthetic silk with cotton trim, and they cost about a thousand yuan. The cinerary urns were either cypress or wood composite, undecorated, the most expensive costing eight hundred yuan, the cheapest two hundred. The names for these urns took simpler forms, such as Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots, or Fragrance Lingering for Time Everlasting.
Whereas the VIP section was focused on the relative expense of the crematees’ garments and urns, among the plastic chairs the focus was more on who got the best value for the money. Two crematees sitting in front of me found that they had bought identical sets of burial clothes at the same shop, but one had paid fifty yuan less than the other. The one who’d been charged more heaved a sigh. “My wife is hopeless at bargaining,” he muttered to himself.
I noticed that the other crematees in the plastic seats were all wearing funeral garments, either traditional cerements in Ming-Qing style or contemporary designs in Mao-jacket idiom or Western fashion. I was the only one dressed in a pair of Chinese clasp-fastened pajamas, but I was glad that I had at least jettisoned the baggy cotton overcoat—although my white pajamas were shabby, they could scrape by here among the plastic seats.
But I had no urn, not even a cheap one like Falling Leaves or Fragrance Lingering. This issue began to vex me—just where would my ashes end up? Should they be scattered in the boundless ocean, perhaps? But that was out of the question. That’s the resting place for the ashes of the great, with an airplane to carry them and a navy warship to guard the route, the ashes consigned to the sea amid the tears and sobs of relatives and underlings. My ashes would be tipped out of the oven and greeted with a broom and dustpan, then dumped in a garbage can.
An elderly gentleman on one of the adjacent chairs turned his head and looked at me in surprise. “You haven’t washed or reshaped?”
“I washed,” I said. “I did it myself.”
“But what about your face?” he said. “The left eye has come out and your nose has got out of position and your chin is so long.”
I realized now, to my chagrin, that I had forgotten about my face when washing. “I didn’t reshape,” I said.
“Your family really has been remiss,” the old man said. “They neglected both the wash and the reshape.”
In fact, of course, I was all alone. My adoptive father, Yang Jinbiao, who had raised me from infancy, had left me more than a year earlier when he realized he was terminally ill, and my birth parents were far away in a northern city, not realizing that at this moment I was already in another world.
A woman on the other side, who had been following our conversation all this time, now studied my outfit. “How come your cerements look like pajamas?” she asked.
“What I’m wearing is funerary garments,” I explained.
“Funerary garments?” She didn’t seem to understand.
“Funerary garments are the same things as cerements,” the gentleman said. “ ‘Cer
ement’ sounds better.”
I noticed that their faces were heavily made up, as though they were about to perform onstage, rather than be cremated.
Someone else in the plastic seats began to complain to the usher. “I’ve been waiting for ages now, but I’ve yet to hear my number called.”
“They’re just in the middle of the farewell ceremony for the mayor,” the usher replied. “They stopped after the first three crematees this morning and we need to wait for the mayor to enter the oven. It won’t be your turn until he comes out.”
“Why do you have to wait for him to be cremated before you do us?” the man continued to wrangle.
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“How many ovens have you got?” another person waiting asked.
“Two—one import and one domestic-brand. The import is reserved for VIPs—you’ll be using the domestic make.”
“Is the mayor a VIP?”
“Yes.”
“Does he need both ovens?”
“He’ll be using the imported one.”
“Well, why are you holding back on the domestic one, then?”
“I’m not clear about that—all I know is that both ovens are currently out of service.”
A VIP in the armchair zone waved a hand to beckon the usher, who walked briskly over to attend to his inquiry.
“How long is it till the farewell to the mayor?” the VIP asked.
“I’m not quite sure.” The usher paused. “It’ll be a little while yet, I imagine. Please just wait patiently.”
A crematee who had just arrived provided an update as he made his way to his seat. “If you add up all the city officials, big and small, as well as those from adjacent districts and counties, that must amount to over a thousand people, and every one of them needs to say goodbye to him, and they can’t walk fast—they need to walk past slowly, and some will want to weep as well.”
“What’s so special about a mayor?” the VIP grumbled.