by Yu Hua
Later, the results of a DNA test confirmed that I was her son. Then other relatives I had never seen before hurried to join us: my birth father and my older brother and older sister, along with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. The local media had a field day, with “the boy a train gave birth to” achieving the family reunion that all commentators agreed was the ideal outcome. On TV I made a nervous, uneasy appearance, and in the newspaper I saw my awkward smile.
Fortunately, the excitement lasted only two days, for on the third day the TV and newspapers’ love of drama was transferred to an intensive police crackdown on vice and pornography. Under cover of night the authorities had launched spot checks of the city’s sauna centers and salons, detaining seventy-eight people suspected of engaging in prostitution—and one of the hookers had turned out to be a man! This person, by the name of Li, had performed so effectively as a drag artist that not one of the hundred or more clients he had serviced during the course of a year had detected his imposture. This sensation became the new focus of media energies, and the various news platforms all dropped the story of “the boy a train gave birth to” to concentrate on the antics of the cross-dressing prostitute. They drew particular attention to the subtlety of his techniques for delivering sexual gratification, but drew a discreet veil over the details. So people in our city speculated with relish as to what these techniques were.
Sleet fluttered in front of my eyes but did not land on me. I knew that it was leaving too. I stayed seated on the rock, and my memory continued its loop through that topsy-turvy world.
Two months after those new relatives of mine returned to their northern city, I graduated from university. When we met, my birth parents had expressed the hope that after graduation I would pursue a career in their part of the country. My birth father said he could continue as section chief for another four years, after which he would have to retire. Taking advantage of the authority he still wielded, he had lined up several good job opportunities for me. Yang Jinbiao approved of this suggestion, conscious that he was an insignificant figure with no connections or clout, unable to help me find my dream job. He believed that if I moved to that northern city, on the other hand, there was every chance of an excellent future. My birth father had proposed this option rather cautiously, fearing Yang Jinbiao would not be pleased, and he stressed that for me to stay where I was would also be fine—he would find a way to establish connections here and make sure I got a good job. To his surprise, Yang Jinbiao readily accepted his first proposal and expressed heartfelt thanks for everything he was doing for me. This ended up putting my birth father at a loss to know what to say, and when Yang Jinbiao realized his embarrassment, he corrected himself: “I shouldn’t say thank you, for Yang Fei is your son too.”
My birth mother was very touched, and later, when we were alone, the recollection brought tears to her eyes. “He’s a good man—such a very good man,” she said to me.
My father knew that winters were severe where I was going, so he knitted me a thick sweater and woolen underwear and bought me an overcoat and a large suitcase. He started packing clothes for all four seasons into the suitcase, but soon took the old items out again and went into town to buy me new ones—I didn’t realize at the time that he borrowed money from Hao Qiangsheng and Li Yuezhen to buy me them. Then, on a summer morning, I hauled this suitcase filled with winter clothes—that Western suit was in it too—and followed Yang Jinbiao into the train station. After my ticket had been checked, he handed it to me, urging me to keep it in a safe place and reminding me that it would be inspected again on the train. He looked pensive and said not a word as we waited on the platform, but when my train pulled in he raised his hand and patted me on the shoulder. “When you have a chance,” he said, “write me a letter or give me a call to let me know you’re all right. Don’t make me worry.”
As my train left the station, he stood there waving. Although the platform was packed with people, I felt as though he was standing there all on his own.
Later, after he slipped away from me, I would bleakly recall the scene on the platform that summer morning. I had burst into his life all of a sudden when he was just twenty-one, and soon I had filled it up entirely, leaving no space for the happiness that should have been his to squeeze its way in. At last I had reached adulthood, thanks to so much painstaking effort on his part, only for me to abandon him on the platform with hardly a second thought.
In that northern city I began a short and uncomfortable chapter of my life. I saw very little of my birth father, wrapped up as he was in his work and his business engagements. My now-retired mother, however, kept me company morning to night. She took me to every sight worth seeing, combining these excursions with visits to the homes of a dozen former colleagues, to exhibit her long-lost son. They were happy, no doubt, to see us reunited, but I think their primary reaction was simply curiosity. Glowing with elation, my mother would take her hosts through every step in the saga, her eyes brimming with tears when she got to the more stirring moments. On the first few occasions I was very self-conscious, but later I gradually got used to it. I felt like an article lost and then found, and listened unmoved to my mother’s account of the pain of her loss and the joy of her discovery.
When I first arrived in my new home, I seemed an honored guest, for my birth parents, my brother and his wife, and my sister and her husband all regularly asked how I was doing, but by the end of the second week I realized I was beginning to outstay my welcome. We were crowded into a three-bedroom apartment, and the family members who were already there occupied the three bedrooms. I slept on a collapsible bed in the cramped living room, and needed to push the dining table right up against the wall before I could open up the bed. Every morning, my mother would rouse me and ask me to fold up the bed and move the table back into the middle of the room, otherwise people would have no place to eat their breakfast. She apologized for the inconvenience, but assured me that my brother’s work unit was about to assign apartments and my brother-in-law’s unit was about to do the same; after they moved out, I would be able to have a room of my own.
This new family of mine would often get into arguments. Brother and sister-in-law would argue, sister and brother-in-law would argue, my birth parents would argue, and sometimes everyone would argue in such a confused medley that I couldn’t sort out who was arguing with whom. Once, they got into an argument on my account; it happened when I was about to go for a job interview. My brother said I was getting the thin end of the wedge by having to sleep in the living room and proposed that once I had work and a salary I should rent an apartment outside, and my sister said the same thing. My mother got angry. “You both have jobs and salaries,” she shouted, wagging her finger at them, “so why don’t you go rent an apartment outside?”
My father supported my mother, saying my siblings had been working for several years and had some money in the bank, so they should find a place of their own. So then they argued back, detailing how their classmates’ parents had so much pull that they had lined up homes for their children ages ago. My father, livid with rage, cursed my brother and sister for having “wolves’ hearts” and “dogs’ lungs.” My mother delivered a similar accusation but in milder language, cursing them for having no conscience, saying they would never have got their current jobs had my father not pulled strings on their behalf. I stood in the corner and watched in desolation as their argument raged. After this my brother fell out with his wife and my sister with her husband. The two women scolded their husbands for not having enough get-up-and-go, saying how so-and-so’s husband and so-and-so’s husband in their respective work units were so much more resourceful, acquiring in short order house and car and money. The two men didn’t take this lying down: their wives were welcome to get a divorce, they said, and then try their luck landing a man with a house and car and money. My sister ran into her room to draft a divorce agreement, and my sister-in-law did the same. My brother-in-law and brother rushed to put their signatures on the docum
ents. After that there were more tantrums, and threats of suicide. First it was my sister-in-law who ran onto the balcony and prepared to throw herself off, and then my sister followed. My brother and brother-in-law softened at this point, grabbing hold of the two women, appealing to their sense of reason and then admitting their own fault. In front of me, one of the men fell to his knees and the other began to slap his own face. At this point my parents retreated to their bedroom, closed the door, and went to bed, for they were only too familiar with this kind of row.
After all the furor had died down, I stood on the balcony in the quiet of the late evening taking in the splendid night views of this northern city, and I began to miss Yang Jinbiao. Never in his life had he cursed me or beaten me; if I’d acted out of line, he would simply and gently reproach me and give a sigh as though he was the one who’d done something wrong.
The next morning the family reverted to calm, as though nothing at all had happened. After the working members had breakfast and left for their offices, only my mother and I were left sitting at the dining table. She felt embarrassed about the row, but even more she felt misused. She kept complaining, complaining about how my brother and sister and their spouses would eat and drink at her expense, never ever paying a penny for their meals; then she grumbled about how my father had too many parties after work, coming home drunk almost every single evening.
She babbled on and on. “What a mess this family is!” she said. “It’s so exhausting, managing this kind of household!”
I waited till she had finished. Then I told her gently, “I want to go home.”
She looked blank for a moment, before realizing that the home I was talking about was not hers but my other one. Tears trickled from her eyes, but she made no effort to dissuade me. “Will you come back to see me?” she said, wiping her cheeks.
I nodded.
“Things have been difficult for you here,” she said sadly.
I said nothing.
After living in this new home for twenty-seven days, I took the train back to my old home. When I got off the train, I did not leave the station, but hauled my suitcase through the underpass and looked around for my father on one platform after another. I finally saw him at the far end of platform 4, and when I approached, I found he was giving directions to a confused traveler. When the man said “Thank you” and ran to catch his train, I called out to my father, “Dad.”
He froze, and it was only when I called a second time that he turned around and looked at me in astonishment, gazing in equal amazement at my suitcase. He saw that I was wearing the clothes I wore on the day of my departure. I had returned in just the same state as I had left.
“Dad, I’m back,” I said.
He understood what this meant. He nodded slightly and the rims of his eyes reddened, then he quickly turned around and continued with his work. Looking at the clock on the platform, I could tell that he would get off work in another twenty minutes, so I lugged my bag over to the steps leading down to the underpass and stood there watching as he applied himself to his various tasks. He gave directions to several travelers, indicating where their carriages were located, and he carried bags for an elderly traveler and helped him onto his train. Once the train had pulled out, he looked up at the clock and saw that it was time to knock off, so he came up to me and, picking up my bag, went down the steps. I reached out to grab it back, but he brushed me away with his left hand. It was as though I were still a child and not strong enough to lift such a large suitcase.
I was back in my own home. By this time we had already left the shack next to the railroad line and moved into a dormitory occupied by railroad employees. There were only two rooms, but they were rooms free of argument.
My father was quite composed, despite my sudden return. Since he had not expected me back, there was nothing much to eat at home, and he suggested that I have a shower while he went to a restaurant nearby and picked up some take-out food. He seldom patronized restaurants, and for him to come back with four dishes all at once was quite a novelty. He hardly said anything as we ate, concentrating mainly on putting bits of food into my bowl with his chopsticks. I didn’t say much either, telling him simply that I felt this home of ours was the right place for me. I said it wasn’t that difficult for university graduates to find work, and a job that I found here wouldn’t be significantly inferior to the job my birth father had in mind. My father nodded as he listened, but he spoke up when I said I would start looking for a job the next day. “What’s the rush?” he said. “Take it easy for now.”
I learned later from Hao Qiangsheng that after I went to bed that night, my father paid a call on them, bursting into tears as he came in the door and announcing to him and Li Yuezhen, “Yang Fei is back! My son is back!”
In his final days my father believed that the best thing he had ever done in life was to adopt a son named Yang Fei. By that time he had retired and I was a section head in the company. I had saved some money and I planned to buy a new two-bedroom apartment. I spent a weekend with my father looking at a dozen housing developments under construction and took a liking to one particular apartment, so we planned to sell my father’s railroad dormitory unit. It had been assigned to him as one of the perks of his job, and now he was free to dispose of it as he chose. With the funds gained from its sale, combined with the money I had put aside over the years, we could purchase a new apartment cash down, without needing to pay a mortgage. My professional success offered some consolation to my father for the disappointment of my failed marriage.
During this period I had a lot of work-related engagements in the evenings, and when I returned home late I would find my father waiting for me with a full dinner on the table. If I wasn’t home, he would not eat and could not sleep. So I began to turn down as many invitations as possible and instead went home to keep my father company as he ate and watched television. During my vacation that year, I took him to Huangshan for a holiday—the first and last time that he left home for travel. At sixty, my father was still very fit, and while I was soon panting for breath as we climbed the mountain, he moved as nimbly as a swallow and was able to give me a helping hand on the steepest stretches.
Hao Qiangsheng and Li Yuezhen had also retired. Their daughter, Hao Xia, had gone to graduate school in the United States after she finished university in Beijing, then stayed on in America to work, marrying an American and bearing two attractive children. On retirement Hao and Li planned to emigrate to America, and as they waited for their green card applications to be approved they would often come to visit my father—these were his happiest moments. When I opened the door on my return from work and heard peals of laughter from inside, I knew that they were visiting. Li Yuezhen would give me a cheerful greeting, “Hi, son,” when I appeared in front of them.
Li Yuezhen had always called me “Son,” and in my mind she was the only mother I had as I grew up. When I was still sucking my thumb in the cotton sling on Yang Jinbiao’s back, she had come almost every day to our shack next to the railroad tracks to breast-feed me. “Formula is never as good as mother’s milk,” she would say to Yang Jinbiao. In my memory she had always been thin, but according to my father she had once been quite plump—it was from feeding me that she grew slender. My father’s claim sounded plausible to me, for in those penniless days the poorly nourished Li Yuezhen breast-fed two young children.
I had always been just as familiar with their family as I was with my own. Much of my time as a young child was spent in their home, for I would eat dinner and sleep there when my father worked the night shift. Li Yuezhen treated me and Hao Xia as though we were siblings, and on the rare occasions when we had a meat dish for dinner she would slip the last morsel of pork or chicken in my bowl and not in Hao Xia’s. Once Hao Xia burst into tears, saying, “Mom, I’m the one who’s your child!”
“It’ll be your turn next time,” Li Yuezhen said.
Hao Xia and I had been childhood sweethearts and had privately vowed to marry when we we
re grown up, so we could always be together. “You can be Dad and I’ll be Mom,” was how Hao Xia put it. At that point we thought of marriage as a combination of a dad and a mom, but once we understood that marriage is defined more precisely as a partnership of husband and wife, neither of us ever again mentioned our secret agreement and we both forgot it with equal speed.
I never again visited my family in the north, but simply called them on the phone on major holidays. Usually it was my birth mother who picked up, and after quizzing me about my affairs she would always urge me to look after Yang Jinbiao properly, saying with feeling, “He’s such a good man.”
My father fell ill the year after he retired. He lost his appetite and rapidly lost weight; the whole day through he felt drained of energy. He kept me in the dark, unwilling to let on that he was battling an illness; he thought he would slowly recover. When he got ill in the past he wouldn’t go to see the doctor and refused to take medication, instead depending on his strong constitution to see him through, and this time too he was confident he could fight it off. I was busy at work in those days and didn’t notice that my father was losing weight, until one day when I found he was just skin and bones and learned that he had been ill for half a year. I insisted that he go to the hospital for tests, and when the results came out, my hands trembled as they held the report, for my father had developed lymphoma.
I watched helplessly as the malignant cells gradually consumed my father’s life. Radiation treatment, surgery, chemotherapy—all these tormented my once-strong father so that when he walked it was with a crooked gait and it looked as though a gust of wind would be enough to blow him over. As a retired railroad worker he could claim reimbursement for a portion of his medical expenses, but these expenses were so enormous that we had to bear the bulk of them, and I quietly sold off his railroad dorm unit. So as to look after him, I gave up my job and bought a small shop near the hospital. My father slept in the back room, while in the front room I sold daily necessities to customers going by, so as to bring in a little income.