by Cao Wenxuan
Today, as Sunflower walked home with Nainai, her grandmother looked different. Sunflower wasn’t sure why. She kept wondering what it could be.
“What are you looking at?” Nainai smiled.
Eventually Sunflower realized that Nainai wasn’t wearing her earrings. Her hand hovered in the air as she pointed to one ear and then the other. Nainai said nothing, just smiled.
Suddenly Sunflower ran on ahead. “Nainai’s earrings have gone!” she cried as soon as she saw Baba and Mama.
So that was where Nainai had been all day! They pressed her to tell them which pawnshop she’d taken them to, but she wouldn’t. She had only one thing to say: “We have a home to build!”
Mama looked at the money on the table and burst into tears. “You’ve worn those earrings all your life. You can’t sell them.”
“We have a home to build.”
Mama wiped away her tears. “You’re too good to us. How can we ever repay you?”
“Don’t talk nonsense!” said Nainai impatiently. Then she wrapped her arms around her grandchildren and smiled up at the moon in the sky. “Let’s build a big house for Bronze and Sunflower!”
Baba borrowed a large boat and early one morning he and Bronze set out from Damaidi. Nainai, Mama and Sunflower went to the river to see them off.
Sunflower waved at them until the last bit of the boat disappeared round the bend of the river, then she walked home with Nainai and Mama, looking back after each step. And they began to wait.
All day and all night, Baba and Bronze steered the boat down the river to the sea, adjusting the sail to take the wind. Two days later, early in the morning, they reached the sea. It didn’t take long to rent a decent plot, and everything seemed to be going well.
By now it was autumn and, as they had hoped, the frost had turned the cogongrass a beautiful golden red. The straight stems looked like copper wire. When the wind blew, they moved against each other, producing a metallic sound. Waves crashed on either side of Baba and Bronze – white waves on one side, copper waves on the other.
Bronze spotted a wild animal he had never seen before. Baba said it was a river deer. It looked straight at Bronze and his father, then dipped low into the grass and disappeared.
They started to build a shelter, and by the time they had finished there was a bright moon in the sky. They sat in the entrance to the shelter eating the dry food they had brought with them from home. There was a light breeze. It was quieter at night: the sea was calmer, and the cogongrass rustled gently.
There seemed to be a lamp shining far in the distance.
“Can you see?” said Baba. “Over there. Perhaps they’ve come to cut grass too.”
The coast was so vast that the tiny light flickering in the distance was a source of comfort to them; they were glad to know they were not completely alone. It had been a long and tiring journey. With the waves lapping against the shore, and Damaidi in their thoughts, they soon fell fast asleep.
The next morning, they were up before sunrise, all set to cut grass. Baba had a big scythe, with a long curved blade and an even longer handle. He kept the end of the handle at his waist, holding it tight with both hands, then moved his body with a steady rhythm. The blade sliced through the air and into the grass.
Bronze’s job was to gather up the cut grass, tie it into bundles and stack them up.
The scythe danced ceaselessly in Baba’s hands. Soon his clothes were drenched, and beads of sweat dripped from his forehead onto the grass.
Bronze was soaked too.
They urged each other to rest, but neither would stop. As they looked out over the vast grassland around them, they thought of the house they were going to build: a big, tall house, with a golden-red roof. And as they worked, they pictured it towering before them in the sky.
Their life by the sea was simple: they ate, they cut grass, they slept. Every so often, they would down tools and bathe in the water, which was still warm from the summer. It was so different from swimming in the river. Here they felt light, they floated. Just the two of them, father and son, in the huge sea.
When Baba saw Bronze having such fun, it brought a lump to his throat. He felt he’d never done enough for his son, especially after Bronze lost his speech. But life was hard, and they were always so busy that they seldom had any time to spend with him. What else could they have done? Time had passed and he’d grown up. Bronze didn’t have what other children had, but he had never complained about anything – in fact he always tried to find ways to help the family.
“That child suffers!” Nainai had told Baba and Mama, again and again. Now Baba had taken his son away from home to this lonely wilderness. It pained his heart. He drew Bronze near and briskly began to brush the dust and dirt off him. The boy was so thin it brought tears to his eyes.
“We’ll spend a few days here, then we’ll have enough grass to build the house, a really big house, with a room for you, and a room for Sunflower.” The words seemed to catch in his throat.
“And one for Nainai,” Bronze said with his hands.
“Of course.” Baba washed the dirt off his son with clean water.
The sun shone warmly over the sea, and a few gulls circled gracefully above the surface of the water. The days passed and Bronze began to miss Mama, Nainai and Damaidi, but, most of all, Sunflower. He was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the vastness of the sea and the enormity of the grassland. Sometimes he would stand with a bundle of grass in his arms, wishing he was a bird and dreaming that he could fly back to Damaidi. The grass would rustle as it slipped to the ground, and Baba would say, “Come on, we’re nearly there.”
Behind them stretched the bare ground they had already stripped. And by the sea towered two gold mountains of grass they had already cut.
Bronze had another job to do every day. He had to take an iron bucket across the high sea dyke and fetch a pail of fresh water. It felt such a long way, and when Baba disappeared from view, he felt all alone – as though the sea would swallow him up.
But one day something wonderful happened. As he was walking along, he saw a boy about the same age, also climbing up the dyke with an iron bucket.
The boy was delighted and surprised to see Bronze. Bronze put down his bucket and waited. The boy stopped for a moment, then ran up to the top of the dyke. They stood there, facing each other, like two wild animals weighing each other up.
“Where are you from?” the boy asked first.
Bronze blushed, and used his hands to show that he couldn’t speak.
The boy pointed to his mouth. “You’re a mute?”
Bronze nodded with embarrassment.
Then they sat on top of the enormous dyke and began to talk. It wasn’t easy.
Bronze used a stick to write the two characters of his name on the ground:
Qingtong
Then he patted himself on the chest and pointed to the boy’s chest.
“You’re asking my name?”
Bronze nodded. The boy took the stick from Bronze’s hand and wrote the two characters of his name on the ground:
Qinggou
With his finger, Bronze drew a line under the first character of his name, and the first character of the boy’s name, and laughed. Qinggou laughed too.
He told Bronze that he’d also come here with his father, to cut grass to take home and build a house. “Those are ours,” he said, pointing to two haystacks in the distance. They were about the same size as the ones Bronze and Baba had made.
When the boy stood up to go, Bronze gestured to him to stay a while longer.
“I can’t,” said Qinggou. “I’ve got to get back with the water. If I take too long, my father’ll lose his temper.”
Bronze was taken aback. It had never occurred to him that a boy could be scared of his own father.
“See you here tomorrow, same place, same time?” said Qinggou.
Bronze nodded, and reluctantly they went their separate ways.
Bronze walked back to the shel
ter with a spring in his step. He couldn’t wait to tell Baba that he’d met a boy on the dyke.
Baba was delighted. “Really? That’s wonderful!” He’d never expected his son might meet another child here.
From then on, the two boys met on the dyke every day. Bronze learned that Qinggou had no mother, only a father, who had a foul temper. He wanted to tell Qinggou how kind his father was, but he didn’t. In any case, it would have been very hard to explain. On one of their last meetings he was shocked to learn that Qinggou’s mother had abandoned him before his first birthday, eleven years previously, and gone off with an opera singer. Apparently, when she’d married Qinggou’s father he’d promised to build her a three-roomed house with a thatched roof, but he’d never been able to do it. His father had told him that she was very beautiful, and that when she was leaving, he’d been on his knees with Qinggou in his arms, begging her to stay, promising that the house would be built within three years. She’d just laughed at him, and off she’d gone. But Qinggou didn’t hate her for it.
Bronze realized how lucky he was to have such a warm and loving family. As he was picking up the grass and tying it in bundles, he couldn’t help glancing at Baba. He was a generous, kind man, and just thinking about this made Bronze work even harder.
Eventually, they had made a third haystack. That evening, as the sun set over the sea, and the glow from the water filled the air, Baba rolled the long handle of the scythe in his hands and wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked up at the sky, let out a long sigh and looked at Bronze. “Son, we’ve got enough.”
Bronze stared at the three haystacks bathed in the evening sun. He felt like dropping to knees and touching his head to the ground to worship them!
“Tomorrow, go and say goodbye to the boy and then we’ll go home.”
On their last night by the sea, the sky was clear, the moon was bright, the breeze was light and the sea was calm. It felt more autumnal than when they had arrived, and the sound of insects all around seemed plaintive, as though they were singing their last song. Bronze and Baba were exhausted, and soon fell asleep.
In the early hours, Baba stepped out of the shelter to relieve himself and caught sight of something in the distance: three large fires were burning away, as high as the sky. The colour drained from his cheeks. He wondered if he was dreaming, but when he took a second look, the fires were still there. He rushed into the shelter and woke Bronze. “Get up! Get up! There’s a fire!”
Baba dragged Bronze outside. The three mountains of fire were raging in the sky – they were Qinggou’s haystacks. Bronze thought he could hear his friend shouting for help.
The fire had started in the shelter while Qinggou and his father were sleeping. His father had been drinking that evening and had fallen asleep smoking. The cigarette had slipped from his fingers and landed in the grass. Luckily, the fire had woken Qinggou, and he’d quickly woken his father. They had got out in time, but the shelter had gone up in smoke. The fire had hissed and wriggled like snakes heading for the haystacks.
By the time Bronze and Baba arrived, the mountains of fire had more or less died down, and in the dark light they saw Qinggou and his father walking towards the sea.
That evening, as Bronze and Baba set sail for home in their boat piled high with cogongrass, Bronze stood at the front looking towards the shore. He spotted Qinggou at the water’s edge in the chill sea breeze, and at that moment felt he was the luckiest child in the world. He waved to his friend, but could barely see him through the tears in his eyes. He wished him and his father good luck, over and over again. He wanted to tell him that everything would be all right.
Since Bronze and Baba had set out on the boat, Sunflower had been counting the days till their return. Every morning when she got up, the first thing she did was chalk another line on her counting post. Baba had said they’d be away for a month.
After school, instead of going straight home, she would go and stand on the bridge and look down the river that led to the sea. How she longed to see Bronze and Baba and their boat full of grass appear in the late afternoon light. She would stay there such a long time that Nainai had to come and fetch her.
“Let’s go home,” she’d say. “They won’t be here yet.”
The last few nights, Sunflower had been calling out Bronze’s name in her sleep, which had woken Nainai and Mama. Nainai made a game of talking to her while she slept.
“Where’s Bronze?” she’d ask.
And Sunflower would answer in her sleep, “He’s on the boat.”
“And where’s the boat?” Nainai would ask.
“It’s on the river.”
As Nainai continued asking questions, Sunflower’s answers would become more and more vague and indistinct, until there was only the sound of her little mouth opening and closing, and then no sound at all.
“Look at her, answering questions in her sleep!” Mama would say.
One day, Sunflower was sitting on the bridge as usual, looking into the distance where the river bent to the west. The sun was inching its way down into the river, and the western sky was a rosy pink. Birds circled in the evening light, their shadows making beautiful silhouettes in the sunlight as they searched for food.
All of a sudden a mountain of grass appeared at the bend in the river. At first Sunflower was not sure what it was, but when she saw the sail, she knew. Baba and Bronze were back! She leapt to her feet, her heart pounding with excitement. As the boat sailed up the river, the mountain of grass grew higher and higher, the sun disappearing from view.
Sunflower ran home, shouting at the top of her voice, “They’re sailing up the river! Baba and Bronze are here!”
Mama slipped her arm through Nainai’s and walked with her to the river. The boat drew closer and closer. Bronze was sitting on the top of the enormous mountain of grass, as high as the buildings on either side of the river. As the evening sun fell on the cogongrass, it dazzled like a boat filled with gold, lighting up the faces of the people watching from the bank.
Bronze took off his jacket and waved it around in the air – at Damaidi and at Nainai, Mama and Sunflower.
The Ice Necklace
The new house was finished just as the swallows were leaving. It was a large house, quite magnificent to behold both at close quarters and from a distance, and the villagers kept coming to take a look. There were few houses to compare with it, and it made the villagers feel that the poorest family in Damaidi was on its way to prosperity.
Then Baba did something that almost scared the life out of Bronze and Sunflower. He climbed onto the roof, struck a match, held it up for everyone below to see, then tossed it onto the roof. A thin line of fire broke out and immediately tore from one side of the roof to the other, burning everything in its way.
Bronze leapt about in panic on the ground.
“Baba! Baba!” shouted Sunflower.
Bronze was beating his fist into his chest, and Sunflower bit into her hand so hard that she left a line of teeth marks. But Baba stood on the roof laughing at them, as though it was the most normal thing in the world. Then, one after another, the people on the ground started to laugh too. Bronze and Sunflower were confused. Had the adults gone mad?
Nainai explained, “There’s enough cogongrass on that roof to cover two houses. The stalks are pressed together so tightly that there’s not a hair’s breadth between them. Just now when the fire tore across the roof, it wasn’t burning the cogongrass, it was burning off the crumbs. Tightly packed cogongrass doesn’t catch fire in the same way as wheat straw. And it looks so much better when it’s been burned.”
Sunflower looked up at the roof. Baba was holding a broom and sweeping away the ash. And, just as Nainai had said, the roof looked better after the fire. It shone and glistened in the sun.
Baba sat down on the roof. Bronze looked up at him, a little enviously. When Baba beckoned to him to join him, Bronze ran up the ladder and pulled himself onto the shiny cogongrass.
Sunflower waved fro
m the ground. “I want to come up too!”
“Can she?” asked Bronze, looking at Baba.
Baba nodded.
The adults helped Sunflower up the ladder, and Baba put out his big hand and pulled her onto the roof. She was scared at first, but Baba put his arm around her, and soon she wasn’t afraid any more.
More people gathered round and stood gawping up at them.
“My goodness, look at them all!” said Mama.
Bronze and Sunflower had a fabulous view from the roof. Even sitting down, they could see the whole of Damaidi: the windmill on the other side of the village, the Cadre School across the river and the reeds that went on for ever and ever.
“Nainai, come up here!” Sunflower called down.
“Don’t be silly!” said Mama.
No matter how many times Nainai and Mama told them to come down, the three on the roof stayed exactly where they were, side by side, quietly looking at the village and the countryside all around.
They had done it – they had built the house before winter arrived.
That night, the family was so tired they could barely move. When it started to rain they came inside, locked the door and went to bed without bothering to eat. They slept right through to the following evening.
Nainai woke first. She made some food, then woke the others. Bronze and Sunflower were so sleepy they could barely sit up straight, and kept yawning as they ate.
Baba turned to Mama and said, “The children have been working so hard lately. They’re so thin, too. They should rest, and then we should let them play and have some fun.”
Bronze and Sunflower did indeed need to rest. It was several days before they had enough energy to do anything.
Then, not long after, someone passing through Damaidi brought news that the travelling circus was in Daoxiangdu, and there would be a show that night. When Sunflower heard this, she ran all the way home and told Bronze.