by Cao Wenxuan
“What are you making?” she asked. “It smells wonderful.” As she lifted the lid of the pan, a cloud of white steam escaped, blurring everything before her eyes. It was a while before she could see the pan clearly again. The soup bubbled away, and the delicious smell filled their nostrils.
Bronze handed her a bowl of soup. “Here, take this. I caught a duck. It’s still cooking, but have some soup first.”
“Really?” Sunflower’s eyes lit up.
“Go on.” He blew on the soup to cool it.
She held the bowl with both hands, and breathed in the wonderful aroma. “I’ll wait till Nainai and the others come home.”
“Go on, there’s plenty more.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go on!”
She took a tiny sip, and pushed out her tongue. “Oh, oh, oh, it’s wonderful!”
She glanced at Bronze, and without caring how hot it was, she held the bowl to her lips. Bronze stood quietly and watched her. She’d grown so thin. As she swallowed one mouthful after another, he silently willed her to finish up so he could fetch her another bowlful!
And as he watched, his eyes seemed to mist over, perhaps because of the hot air rising from the pan, perhaps because of the tears that were welling up in his eyes.
At lunchtime the next day, Gayu and his father turned up at the house. Gayu’s father wore a long face, and it was clear in Gayu’s hateful eyes that he had come to pick a fight. Bronze’s father invited them to come and sit inside.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
Neither Gayu nor his father answered. Gayu’s arms were folded across his chest. His head was twisted to one side, and his lips were pursed.
“Has our Bronze been fighting with you?” Baba asked Gayu.
“Hmpf,” Gayu snorted.
“Is there a problem?” Baba asked again.
“Are you saying you don’t know why we’re here?” said Gayu’s father.
Gayu glanced at Bronze and Sunflower, who were writing out their characters, and repeated what his father had just said. “Are you saying you don’t know why we’re here?”
Baba rubbed his hands together. “If there’s a problem, then tell me!”
Gayu’s father narrowed his eyes. “You really don’t know?”
“We really don’t know,” said Baba.
“How was the duck?” Gayu’s father asked coldly.
Gayu jumped out from behind his father. “Yes, how was the duck?” he said, looking at Bronze and Sunflower.
Baba smiled. “Oh, you mean the wild duck?”
“Wild duck?” said Gayu’s father, curling his lip.
“Yes, it was a wild duck,” said Baba.
Gayu’s father smiled, a crooked smile. Gayu saw his father smile, and he smiled too, another crooked smile.
“So, what brings you here?” asked Baba.
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Gayu’s father.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Gayu chimed in, shooting a sideways glance at Bronze and Sunflower.
“No, it’s not.” Baba was beginning to get annoyed.
“Well, it should be obvious to your son,” said Gayu’s father.
“It’s obvious to your son,” said Gayu, pointing at Bronze.
Baba stepped forward. He pointed his finger at Gayu’s father. “If you have something to say, then say it, and if not –” Baba pointed to the door – “then get out.”
Nainai and Mama came over. Gayu’s father looked at them and shook his finger.
“If there’s a problem, then tell us,” said Nainai coldly.
“One of our ducks is missing,” said Gayu’s father.
“One of our ducks is missing,” repeated Gayu, leaping into the air.
“A drake,” said Gayu’s father.
“A drake,” said Gayu.
“And what’s that got to do with us?” asked Mama.
“You might well ask!” said Gayu’s father. “If it had nothing to do with you, do you think we’d be here?”
“Right, say what you’ve come here to say,” said Baba, grabbing Gayu’s father by the collar with one hand and pointing a finger in his face.
When Gayu saw this, he ran out to the road and shouted, “There’s a fight! There’s a fight!” There were a lot of people out on the road at that time, and they all came running over.
Gayu’s father struggled to break free. “One of our ducks is missing,” he told the crowd.
But Baba was much stronger than Gayu’s father. He dragged him outside by the collar. “If one of your ducks is missing, then go and look for it!”
Gayu’s father dug his heels in and yelled, “Someone in your family stole it! And you ate it!”
“WHAT did you just say?” Baba challenged. By now, Gayu’s father had drawn quite an audience.
“People saw what happened. Your Bronze caught our duck in his fishing net.”
Mama was furious. “We did not steal their duck!” she told the crowd. She hauled Bronze over and asked him in front of everyone, “Did you steal their duck?” Bronze shook his head.
Sunflower was standing behind him. She shook her head too.
“Bronze did not steal your duck!” Mama declared.
Suddenly Gayu leapt forward, holding the lotus leaf bundle that had been tucked under the haystack. He tossed it to the ground and the leaf unrolled to reveal the duck feathers. The crowd was silent. The breeze blew a few of the feathers into the air and up towards the sky.
Nainai dragged Bronze to the front of the crowd. “You need to tell all these people what happened.”
Bronze broke into a sweat. He tried to explain using hand gestures. But the crowd didn’t understand.
“He says it was a wild duck,” explained Nainai. Bronze continued.
“He says he caught it in the reeds. He says he caught it in his net… He waited in the reeds for hours, then caught it in his net.”
Bronze darted through the crowd to fetch the net. He held it up with both hands and invited everyone to take a look.
Someone in the crowd said, “You can tell by the feathers whether it’s a wild duck or a farm duck.”
Some of the villagers crouched down to inspect the feathers. The rest kept quiet, waiting for the verdict.
But the villagers inspecting the feathers couldn’t tell. All they could say was, “They’re feathers from a drake.”
“And the one we are missing is a drake!” shouted Gayu.
“The people who saw the duck in Bronze’s net said it was a drake,” Gayu’s father added.
“It’s not so easy to catch a wild duck in a net,” someone muttered at the back of the crowd.
“Well, if you say you caught that duck with a net, let’s see you catch another one!” Gayu’s father struggled to break free from Baba’s grip. “If you wanted a duck so badly, why didn’t you just ask?” he said with a snort. “Oh, of course, you can’t.”
When Nainai heard Gayu’s father talking like this, she slipped one hand around Bronze’s hand and the other around Gayu’s, and stepped up to face him.
“Can you hear what you’re saying? How can you talk like this in front of the children, including your own son? You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Gayu’s father pulled himself up as tall as he could, straining his neck and opening out his chest. “I should be ashamed? I’m not the one who’s stolen the duck!”
He had barely finished what he was saying, when Baba raised a fist and punched him in the face. The moment he let go of Gayu’s father’s collar, the other man fell backwards and landed hard on his backside.
Gayu’s father took a moment or two to come to his senses and get back on his feet. Then he leapt into the air with a massive roar, and hurled himself at Baba.
“First you steal a duck, then you steal a punch!”
Baba was ready for a fight, but the crowd rushed in to separate them.
“Stop it. Don’t fight.” There was mayhem in front of the house.
Mama cuffed the b
ack of Bronze’s head. “Look where greed gets you!” Then she grabbed Sunflower’s hand. “Let’s go inside.”
But Bronze wouldn’t move. Mama had to push him in, then she closed the door behind them.
The crowd was split, one half supporting Bronze’s family, the other half supporting Gayu’s.
Nainai was shaking. Someone took her arm and said, “Don’t get angry! Everyone in the village knows you are a good family. And we all know what Gayu’s father is like. There’s no reckoning with him.”
Others were comforting Mama. She wiped her tears on the corner of her jacket. “He tramples all over people. It’s not right. Yes, we’re poor, but we’re not thieves or cheats.”
“We know,” said the women, trying to calm her, “we know.”
Others were urging Baba to keep calm.
Gayu and his father were dragged away. People told them, “You see it from up here, they see it from down there. Don’t make a big fuss about it. What’s one duck, when you’ve got so many?”
“I could give them a duck, I could give them ten ducks, but they can’t go round stealing!”
“Maybe you’d better stop saying it was stolen. Did you see it? Do you have any proof?”
“You saw the pile of duck feathers! Are you saying they didn’t look like a drake’s?”
Some of them had seen Gayu’s drake, and thought there was a similarity, but they didn’t say anything.
At that moment, a gust of wind blew the nice neat pile of feathers up into the air. They were so light that they went wherever the wind blew them.
When Gayu’s father saw them, he stamped his feet and roared at Bronze’s family. “That was our drake!”
Eventually the crowd dispersed and the family was on its own. No one said a word.
Every now and then Baba glared at Bronze out of the corner of his eye.
Bronze had done nothing wrong, but the look on Baba’s face made him feel as though he’d committed a crime. He was wary of provoking him any further. Sunflower daren’t look at Baba either and followed Bronze wherever he went. Occasionally she stole a glance at Baba, but when he looked back at her, she would begin to shake and quickly look away, or hide behind Nainai or Mama.
Baba’s face was dark and heavy. He didn’t utter another word that day, but it was clear that this was the calm before the storm. Like the bird that knows when bad weather is on its way and hurries to find a tree, Bronze sought a refuge. Maybe his tree was Nainai and Mama. But if the storm came with full force, that particular tree would not necessarily be able to protect him.
He didn’t know what to do.
Sunflower was even more worried. If Bronze had done something wrong, it was all because of her. She wanted to tell him to run away and lie low for a while.
Baba could see that the villagers had started to look at his family in a different light, and he was shaken to the core. No one in this family – no one – had ever stolen anything, not so much as a cucumber from a vegetable plot. No family in the village cared more about their reputation than his did.
Once Baba had been walking past a persimmon tree when one of the persimmons had fallen off. He’d picked it up off the ground, put it on the wall and shouted across to the owner, “One of your persimmons just fell from the tree. I’ve put it on your wall.”
“Oh, take it. Eat it!” came a voice from the other side.
But Baba had refused, saying, “I can’t do that. But I’ll call at your house sometime and eat some with you.”
This was how Nainai had brought him up.
But now, Gayu’s family had accused them of stealing their duck! And the entire village had come to watch. What was worse, the matter had not been resolved. Baba had to get to the bottom of it. He needed to know: was it a wild duck or a farm duck?
Later that day Bronze went out in search of Nainai, Mama and Sunflower. He thought they were in the vegetable garden at the front of the house, but they were collecting firewood round the back. Without making a sound, Baba followed him outside. He saw a stick on the ground, picked it up and held it behind his back.
Somehow Bronze sensed Baba was following him. He wished he’d stayed inside. Baba was quickening his pace. Bronze could have run for his life, but he didn’t. He stopped. He didn’t have the strength to run. And he didn’t want to. He turned round to face Baba.
Baba was out of breath and almost out of his mind with rage. As he came closer, brandishing his stick in the air, Bronze fell to his knees.
“I want the truth. Was it a wild duck or their duck?” Baba slammed the stick on the ground, shooting up clouds of dust. Bronze didn’t answer. Two lines of tears rolled down his thin face.
“The truth! A wild duck or their duck!” He slapped the stick across Bronze’s backside.
Bronze fell forward onto the ground.
Sunflower was struck by a sudden anxiety. She dropped what she was doing, left Nainai and Mama and ran inside. When she saw Baba and Bronze weren’t there, she flew outside, shouting, “Bronze! Bronze!”
Nainai and Mama heard her shouts and followed her.
Sunflower saw Baba and then she saw Bronze lying on the ground. She ran over as fast as she could, cradled his head in her hands, and used all her strength to help him to his feet.
“Baba… Baba…” She looked at him, her eyes filled with tears.
“Get away,” he said, “or you’ll be next.”
Sunflower hugged Bronze tightly. Just then Nainai and Mama arrived. Nainai was shaking. She flew at Baba. “Come on! Hit me! Hit me! Come on, what’s the matter with you? Hit me! Beat me till I die! I’m old! I’ve had enough!”
Nainai crouched down, and with her hard, wizened hands wiped the tears and dirt and bits of grass from Bronze’s face. “I know it was a wild duck!”
Then she looked at Baba. “Not once has this child ever told a lie. Not once. And you beat him. And you’d have carried on beating him. Shame on you!”
Bronze shook uncontrollably in Nainai’s arms.
Early the next morning, Bronze went to sit by the river. The water had been calling him since the moment he woke up. He didn’t know what his mind was up to, but fortunately his legs seemed to know what they were doing.
The summer sun glowed red and yellow. Its reflection shimmered on the water. The crops on either side of the river were growing and ripening, and at the same time they were tormenting the hungry villagers, who couldn’t wait for the crops to become food.
By now Bronze was used to feeling hungry. As he sat by the river, he tore off a few blades of young grass, put them in his mouth and chewed slowly. It was a bitter taste, but there was also a sweetness to it. A few magpies flew across to the other side of the river, then back, and then to the other side again, where they headed for the Cadre School. Bronze looked at the Cadre School’s red-tiled roofs. They would soon be swallowed up by the reeds, which were growing like crazy.
A weaver-girl grasshopper on a reed leaf was singing a pure and lonely song, the sound made by the insect rubbing its wings together. It was a clear, quiet sound amid the buzz and hum of summer.
Bronze sat cross-legged, looking at the river as though waiting for something to appear.
The villagers saw him there, looked at him for a moment, then walked on. They had never been able to work him out. There was something about Bronze. He was different from the other children somehow, they couldn’t put their finger on it.
Bronze sat there on the riverbank till midday. Sunflower came to tell him it was lunchtime, but he wouldn’t leave and she had to go home without him. Mama put two vegetable dumplings in a bowl and asked Sunflower to take them to him. Bronze ate the dumplings while she watched, then he headed into the reeds, where she heard pee spattering in the water. Then he sat down again in the same place. Sunflower couldn’t stay with him; she had to go to school.
As the villagers dozed in the early afternoon, something appeared on the river in the east. Bronze watched as the black dot approached. It seemed to be a duck, swi
mming closer. Bronze wasn’t the least bit excited; he wasn’t even curious. It was as though he’d been sitting here all this time, waiting for it.
The duck was heading straight for Damaidi. Every now and then it would stop and look in the water for something to eat. But it knew where it was going, and as soon as it had eaten, it would swim on. It swam closer. It was a drake, a handsome drake. Bronze did not take his eyes off it. The duck seemed to be aware of his attention and began to swim a bit hesitantly.
Bronze recognized it as the duck that had gone missing from Gayu’s flock. He had no idea where it had been or how it came to be swimming all by itself on the river. This duck had some nerve!
The day the drake had gone missing, Gayu had met another flock of ducks while he was driving his flock home. The two flocks were heading in different directions, and for a while they became one enormous group of ducks, some facing east and some facing west. Gayu didn’t worry; he knew the ducks would eventually sort themselves out and rejoin their own flock.
Sure enough, that’s what happened.
This particular drake, however, had taken a fancy to one of the females in the other flock, and followed that flock home. It was a dark and gloomy day, and Gayu didn’t notice that he was a drake short, and the owner of the other flock didn’t notice that he had an extra drake.
Gayu’s drake spent the night with the other flock, wandered around with the ducks all day, and then spent a second night in their pen. It was a big flock, and the owner still hadn’t noticed the newcomer. But some of the other drakes had. They tried to scare him off and make him leave, but he kept brazenly pestering the females, until the drakes could stand it no more. They surrounded him, attacked him with their flat beaks and drove him out of the flock. A little worse for wear, Gayu’s drake remembered his original flock and started swimming back towards Damaidi.
As the drake drew closer, Bronze stood up. He saw that his feathers were similar in colour to those of the wild duck. He followed him from the bank. Just as he was about to reach the village, Bronze leapt into the water. The drake flapped his wings and surged forward, quacking.