The Bridegroom

by Ha Jin

  She lowered her skirt, showing him about a dozen purslanes.

  He said with one eye shut, “You’re no good. Look at mine.” He held out his peaked cap, which was full.

  She felt a little hurt, but kept quiet. He turned away to talk to other children, telling them that purslanes tasted awful. He claimed he had once eaten a bowl of purslane stew when he had diarrhea. He would never have touched that stuff if his parents hadn’t forced him. “It tastes like crap, more bitter than sweet potato vines,” he assured them.

  “Not true,” said Weilan, a scrawny girl. “Teacher Shen told us it tastes great.”

  “How can you know?”

  “I just know it.”

  “You know your granny’s fart!”

  “Big asshole,” Weilan said, and made a face at him, sticking out her tongue.

  “Say that again, bitch!” He went up to her, grabbed her shoulder, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her buttocks. She burst out crying.

  Their teacher came over and asked who had started the fight. Shaona pointed at Dabin. To her surprise, the teacher walked up to the boy and seized him by the ear, saying through her teeth, “You can’t live for a day without making trouble. Come now, I’m going to give you a trouble-free place to stay.” She was dragging him away.

  “Ouch!” he cried with a rattling noise in his throat. “You’re pulling my ear off.”

  “You’ll have the other one left.”

  Passing Uncle Chang, Teacher Shen stopped to ask him to keep an eye on the children for a short while. Then she dragged Dabin back to the kindergarten.

  Shaona’s mouth fell open. The boy would be “jailed,” and he might get even with her after he was released. On the second floor of their building was a room, a kitchen used only for storage, in a corner of which sat three bedside cupboards. Sometimes a troublesome boy would be locked in one of them for hours. Once in a while his teacher might forget to let him out in time, so that he had to go without lunch or dinner.

  About ten minutes later, Teacher Shen returned, panting hard as though she had just finished a sprint. She counted the children to make sure nobody was missing.

  Shaona soon forgot Dabin, immersed in looking for more purslanes. For most of the children this was real work. Few of them had ever tasted anything they had gathered themselves, so they were searching diligently. Whenever their little skirts or caps were full, they went over to unload the purslanes into the duffel bag, from which their teacher was busy picking out grass and other kinds of herbs mixed into the purslanes. The children were amazed that in just one and a half hours the bag was filled up, and that they had almost combed the entire field. Their teacher kept reminding them of a proverb they had learned lately—“Many hands provide great strength.”

  When they had searched the field, they were lined up hand in hand behind the pump house, ready to return to the kindergarten. But before leaving, for some reason their teacher gave several handfuls of purslanes to Uncle Chang. With grudging eyes they watched her drop almost a third of their harvest into the old man’s wicker basket, but none of them made a peep. The old man went on smiling at the young woman, saying, “All right, enough, enough. Keep the rest for yourself.” As he was speaking, spittle was emitted through his gapped teeth.

  Shaona’s mind was racing, and she couldn’t wait for dinner. She thought, If purslane tastes real good, I’ll pick some for Mom and Dad. She knew a place in the kindergarten—inside the deserted pigsty—where she had seen a few purslanes.

  To her dismay, dinner was similar to other days’: corn glue, steamed sweet potatoes, and sautéed radishes. There wasn’t even a purslane leaf on the table. Every one of her classmates looked upset. Not knowing what to say, some children were noisily stirring the corn glue with spoons. Shaona wanted to cry, but she controlled herself. She remembered seeing her teacher leave for home with the bulging duffel clasped on the carrier of her bicycle. At that moment Shaona had thought the green bag must have contained laundry or something, because it was so full. Now she understood, their teacher took their harvest home.

  Shaona liked sweet potato, but she didn’t eat much. Anger and gas filled her stomach. Despite their sullen faces and disappointed hearts, none of the children mentioned purslanes. Everyone looked rather dejected, except for Dabin. He had kept glaring at Shaona ever since he was let out of the cupboard for dinner. She knew he was going to take his revenge. What should she do?

  In the dusk, when the children were playing in the yard, Shaona caught sight of Dabin. She called and beckoned to him. He came over and grunted, “What’s up, little tattletale?”

  “Dabin, would you like to have these?” In her palm were two long peanuts. Her father had given her six of them when she was coming back to the kindergarten two days ago.

  “Huh!” he exclaimed with pursed lips, “I never saw a peanut with four seeds in it.” He snatched them from her hand and without another word cracked one. His eyes glittered and his mouth twitched like a rabbit’s while he was chewing the roasted kernels.

  Within a few seconds he finished the peanuts off, then he asked, “Do you have more?”

  “Uh-uh.” She shook her head, her slant eyes fixed on the ground.

  He touched her sweater pocket, which was empty. She had hidden the other four peanuts in her socks. He said, “You must be nice to me from now on. Remember to save lots of goodies for me, got it?”

  She nodded without looking at him.

  Standing below a slide, she watched him running off on his bowlegs to join the boys who were hurling paper bombers and imitating explosions. Behind the cypress hedge, near the closed front gate, a couple of children were playing hide-and-seek, their white clothes flickering and their ecstatic cries ringing in the twilight.

  That night Shaona didn’t sleep well. She was still scared of the dark room. One of her roommates, Aili, snored without stopping. An owl or a hawk went on hooting like an old man’s coughing. A steam hammer in the shipyard on the riverbank pounded metal now and then. Unable to sleep, Shaona ate a peanut, though the rules didn’t allow her to eat anything after she had brushed her teeth for bed. She took care to hide the shells under her pillow. How she missed her mother’s warm, soft belly; again she cried quietly.

  It rained the next morning, but the clouds began lifting after nine o’clock, so the children were allowed to go out and play. In the middle of the yard stood a miniature merry-go-round, sky blue and nine feet across. A ring of boys were sitting on it, revolving and yelling happily. Dabin and Luwen, who was squint-eyed, were among them, firing wooden carbines at treetops, people, birds, smokestacks, and anything that came into sight. They were shouting out “rat-a-tat” as if the spinning platform were a tank turret. Shaona dared not go take a spin. The previous week she had ridden on that thing and had been spun giddy and was sick for two days.

  So instead, she played court with a bunch of girls. They elected her the queen, saying she looked the most handsome among them. With four maids waiting on her, she had to sit on the wet ground all the time. Weilan and Aili were her amazons, each holding a whittled branch for a lance. The girls wished they could have made a strong boy the king, but only Dun was willing to join them. He was a mousy boy, and most of the girls could beat him easily. He should have been a courtier rather than the ruler. Soon Shaona couldn’t stand playing queen anymore, because she felt silly calling him “Your Majesty” and hated having to obey his orders. She begged other girls to replace her, but none of them would. She got up from the ground, shouting, “I quit!” To keep the court from disintegrating, Aili agreed to be a vice queen.

  Because of the soggy ground, many of the children found their clothes soiled by lunchtime. Teacher Shen was angry, especially with those who had played mud pies. She said that if they were not careful about their clothes, she wouldn’t let them go out in the afternoon. “None of you is a good child,” she declared. “You all want to create more work for me.”

  After lunch, while the children were napping, Teacher
Shen collected their clothes to scrub off the mud stains. She was unhappy because she couldn’t take a nap.

  Too exhausted to miss her parents, Shaona fell asleep the moment her head touched her pillow. She slept an hour and a half. When she woke up, she was pleased to find her sweater and skirt clean, without a speck of mud. But as her hand slotted into the sweater pocket she was surprised—the three peanuts were gone. She removed the terry-cloth coverlet and rummaged through her bedding, but couldn’t find any trace of them; even the shells under her pillow had disappeared. Heartbroken, she couldn’t stop her tears, knowing her teacher must have confiscated the peanuts.

  The sun came out in the afternoon, and the ground in the yard turned whitish. Again Teacher Shen led the twenty-four children out to the turnip field. On their way they sang the song “Red Flowers,” which they had learned the week before:

  Red flowers are blooming everywhere.

  Clapping our hands, we sing

  And play a game in the square,

  All happy like blossoms of spring.

  When they arrived at the field, Uncle Chang was not in view, but the water pump was snarling, tiny streams glinting here and there among the turnip rows.

  The sight of the irrigation made their teacher hesitate for a moment, then she said loudly to the children, “We’re going to gather more purslanes this afternoon. Aunt Chef couldn’t cook those we got yesterday because we turned them in too late, but she’ll cook them for us today. So everybody must be a good child and work hard. Understood?”

  “Understood,” they said almost in unison. Then they began to search among the turnips.

  Although most of the children were as high-spirited as the day before, there weren’t many purslanes left in the field, which was muddy and slippery. A number of them fell on their buttocks and had their clothes soiled. Their shoes were ringed with dark mud.

  Yet the hollow of Shaona’s skirt was soon filled with several puny purslanes, and some children had even dropped a load into the duffel, which began to swell little by little. Unlike the silly boys and girls who were still talking about what purslanes tasted like, Shaona was sulky the whole time, though she never stopped searching.

  In front of her appeared a few tufts of wormwood, among which were some brownish rocks partly covered by dried grass. A swarm of small butterflies rested on the wormwood, flapping their white wings marked with black dots. Now and then one of them took off, flying sideways to land on a rock. Shaona went over to search through the grass; her motion set the butterflies in flight all at once like a flurry of snowflakes. Suddenly a wild rabbit jumped out, racing away toward a group of girls, who all saw it and broke out hollering. The animal, frightened by their voices, swerved and bolted away toward the back wall of the kindergarten. At the sight of the fleeing creature, Teacher Shen yelled, “Catch him! Don’t let him run away!”

  All at once several boys started chasing the rabbit, which turned out to have a crippled hind leg. Now their teacher was running after it too, motioning to the children ahead to intercept the animal. Her long braids swayed from side to side as she was dashing away. Within seconds all the children except Shaona joined the chase. The turnip field was being ruined, a lot of seedlings trampled and muddy water splashing from the running feet. Shrieks and laughter were rising from the west side of the field.

  Shaona was not with them because she wanted to pee. Looking around, she saw nobody nearby, so she squatted down over the duffel, made sure to conceal her little bottom with her skirt, and peed on the purslanes inside the bag. But she dared not empty her bladder altogether; she stopped halfway, got up, and covered the wet purslanes with the dry ones she had gathered. Then with a kicking heart she ran away to join the chasers.

  The rabbit had fled out of sight, but the children were still excited, boys huffing and puffing, and bragging about how close they had got to the animal. Dabin swore that his toes, peeping out of his open sandals, had touched that fluffy tail. Luwen said that the wild rabbit tasted much better than the domestic rabbit; a few children were listening to him describe how his uncle had shot a pair of wild rabbits in the mountain and how his aunt had cut them into pieces and stewed them with potato and carrot cubes. Their teacher stopped him from finishing his story. Without delay she assembled the children and led them out of the field, fearful that Uncle Chang would call her names on account of the trampled turnips.

  Before dinner Shaona was worried for fear the chef might cook the soiled purslanes for them. To her relief, dinner turned out to be more of the usual. She was thrilled. For the first time in the kindergarten she ate a hearty meal—three sweet potatoes, two bowls of corn glue, and many spoonfuls of fried eggplant. The whole evening she was so excited that she joined the boys in playing soldier, carrying a water pistol, as though all of a sudden she had become a big girl. She felt that from now on she would not cry like a baby at night again.

  A Tiger-Fighter Is Hard to Find

  We were overwhelmed by a letter from the provincial governor’s office. It praised our TV series Wu Song Beat the Tiger. The governor was impressed by the hero, who fought the tiger single-handedly and punched it to death. The letter read: “We ought to create more heroic characters of this kind as role models for the revolutionary masses to follow. You, writers and artists, are the engineers of the human soul. You have a noble task on your hands, which is to strengthen people’s hearts and instill into them the spirit that fears neither heaven nor earth.” But the last paragraph of the letter pointed out a weakness in the key episode, which was that the tiger looked fake and didn’t present an authentic challenge to the hero. The governor wondered if we could improve this section, so that our province might send the series to Beijing before the end of the year.

  That evening we had a meeting and decided to reshoot the tiger-fighting scene. Everybody was excited, because if the series was sent to the capital, it meant we’d compete for a national prize. We decided to let Wang Huping take the part of the hero again, since the governor had been impressed with him in the first version. He was more than happy to do it. Now the problem was the tiger. First, a real animal would cost a fortune. Second, how could we shoot a scene with such a dangerous animal?

  With the governor’s letter in hand, we obtained a grant from the Municipal Administration without difficulty. Four men were dispatched to Jilin Province to bring back a tiger just caught on Ever White Mountain. By law we were not allowed to acquire a protected animal, but we got papers that said we needed it for our city’s zoo. A week later, the four men returned with a gorgeous Siberian tiger.

  We all went to see the animal, which was being held in a cage in the backyard of our office building. It was a male, weighing over three hundred pounds. Its eyes glowed with a cold, brown light, and its scarlet tongue seemed wet with blood. What a thick coat it had, golden and glossy! Its black stripes would ripple whenever it shook its head or stretched its neck. I was amazed at how small its ears were, not much larger than a dog’s. But it smelled awful, like ammonia.

  We were told to feed it ten pounds of mutton a day. This was expensive, but if we wanted to keep it in good shape, we had no choice.

  Wang Huping seemed a little unnerved by the tiger. Who wouldn’t be? But Huping was a grand fellow: tall, muscular, straight-shouldered, and with dreamy eyes that would sparkle when he smiled. I would say he was the most handsome young man in our Muji City, just as his nickname, Prince, suggested. A girl told me that whenever he was nearby, her eyes would turn watery. Another girl said that whenever he spoke to her, her heart would pound and her face would burn with a tickle. I don’t know if any of that was true.

  A few days before the shooting, Director Yu, who used to be a lecturer at a cinema school in Shanghai, gave Huping a small book to read. It was The Old Man and the Sea, by an American author, whose name has just escaped me.

  The director told Huping, “A man’s not born to be defeated, not by a shark or a tiger.”

  “I understand,” said Huping.


  That was what I liked most about him. He wasn’t just handsome, like a flowered pillowcase without solid stuff in it; he studied serious books and was learned, different from most of us, who merely read picture books and comics. If he didn’t like a novel, he would say, “Well, this isn’t literature.” What’s more, he was skilled in kung fu, particularly mantis boxing. One night last winter, he was on his way back to his dorm when four thugs stopped him and demanded he give them his wallet. He gave them a beating instead. He felled them with his bare hands and then dragged the ringleader to a nearby militia headquarters. For that, he got written about in the newspapers. Later, he was voted an outstanding actor.

  The morning of the shooting was a little windy and overcast. Two Liberation trucks took us four miles out of the city, to the edge of an oak wood. We unloaded the tiger cage, mounted the camera on the tripod, and set up the scene by placing a few large rocks here and there and pulling out some tall grass to make the flattish ground more visible. A few people gathered around Huping and helped him with his costume and makeup. Near the cage stood two men, each toting a tranquilizer gun.

  Director Yu was pacing back and forth behind the camera. A scene like this couldn’t be repeated; we had to get everything right on the first take.

  The medic took out a stout jar of White Flame and poured a full bowl of it. Without a word, Huping raised the liquor with both hands and drank it up in a long swallow. People watched him silently. He looked radiant in the shifting sunlight. A black mosquito landed on his jaw, but he didn’t bother to slap at it.

  When everything was ready, one man shot a tranquilizer dart into the tiger’s rump. Holding his forefinger before Huping’s face, Director Yu said in a high-pitched voice, “Try to get into the character. Remember, once you are in the scene, you are no longer Wang Huping. You are the hero, a true tiger-fighter, a killer.”