by Yu Hua
When my little brother left the house that fateful summer day, his leave-taking was entirely routine—he must have left the house a thousand times before in just the same way. But because of the outcome of this particular departure, my memory has altered the particulars of that moment. When I traverse the long passage of memory and see Sun Guangming once more, what he was leaving then was not the house: what he exited so carelessly was time itself. As soon as he lost his connection with time, he became fixed, permanent, whereas we continue to be carried forward by its momentum. What Sun Guangming sees is time bearing away the people and the scenery around him. And what I see is another kind of truth: after the living bury the dead, the latter forever lie stationary, while the former continue their restless motion. In the stillness of the dead, we who still roam can see a message sent by time.
A village boy, eight years old that year, waited outside the door for my little brother, basket in hand. I had noticed subtle changes in Sun Guangming. No longer did he tag along behind my big brother, for he preferred now to rub shoulders with other boys of seven or eight who were beneath Sun Guangpings notice, thereby enjoying the same kind of prestige among the village children that my older brother was himself accustomed to command. As I sat by the pond, I often saw kids who were still unsteady on their legs clustered around Sun Guangming as he bustled about self-importantly
That day I watched from the rear window as my little brother walked toward the river in my father's huge straw sandals, throwing up clouds of dust as he proceeded along the path, his angular behind and tiny head propelled forward by his oversize footwear. As he reached the house so recently vacated by the Su family, he balanced the basket on the top of his head with the result that his body, normally so unruly, suddenly acquired a stiff and erect posture. Sun Guangming hoped to maintain this balancing act all the way to the river, but the basket would not cooperate, tumbling into the rice field adjoining the path. He simply glanced back briefly before continuing his advance. His eight-year-old companion clambered down into the paddy and retrieved the basket. Sun Guangming walked complacently toward his demise, while the boy behind, who would have many more years to live, carried a basket in each arm and trailed wearily in the footsteps of his ill-fated mentor.
Death did not elect a direct approach but established contact through this intermediary. While Guangming stuck close to the riverbank as he foraged for snails, the other boy, unable to resist temptation, made a rash plunge into a spot where the water was deeper. In a second he lost his footing and tumbled headfirst into the river. As he struggled he gave a desperate cry, a cry that was to be my brother's ruin.
Sun Guangming drowned trying to save him. It would be going too far, of course, to present this as an act of heroic self-sacrifice. My little brother had not reached a level of such lofty.virtue as to be willing to exchange his own life for someone else's. It was his authority over the other boy that prompted his action. When death threatened his sidekick, he jumped to the conclusion that saving him would be easy.
The rescued boy was unable to recall what actually happened, and all he could do was stare dumbfounded at his questioners. Several years later, when people raised the topic with him, he seemed unconvinced that the accident had ever occurred, as though the story was all cock-and-bull. If one of the villagers hadn't witnessed the incident, people might well have thought that Sun Guangming drowned all by himself.
When it happened, the villager was crossing the wooden bridge. He saw how Sun Guangming gave the boy a shove and how the boy splashed his way frantically to the bank, leaving Sun Guangming to struggle in the water. When my brother stuck his head out for the last time, he gazed at the blinding sun with his eyes wide open, maintaining that posture for several seconds before he sank beneath the surface. Several days later, after my brother's burial, I sat by the pond at midday and attempted to look straight at the sun, but the glare forced me to avert my eyes. So I discovered a difference between life and death: a clear view of the sun is inaccessible to the living—only people who are about to die can see the sun as it is.
When the horrified onlooker came running over, I did not yet realize what had happened. His cries exploded in the air like shards of glass. Sun Guangping had been peeling a sweet potato with his sickle and was just about to eat it. He flung the tool aside and charged out the door. As he ran he called my father, who dashed from the vegetable plot, and the two of them raced toward the riverside. My mother also appeared on the road, and the scarf that she was clutching in her hand fluttered as she ran. I heard my mother's piercing wails and somehow they gave me the impression that even if my brother was still alive, he would die all over again.
I had always worried about some kind of disaster affecting our family. My eccentricity in operating outside the family circle was already taken for granted by the villagers, and as far as I was concerned it was better this way, better to be forgotten. If something went wrong at home, on the other hand, this would make me stand out and again be the object of peoples attention. So as I watched the villagers run toward the river, I felt a huge pressure bearing down on me. It would have been perfectly natural for me to have run to the riverside too, but my fear was that this would give both my family and the villagers the impression that I was actually rejoicing over misfortune. My best option at this point was to keep well out of the way, and only late that evening did I finally return home. At nightfall, when I went down to the riverside, the river gently murmured as it tossed a little flotsam about on the current, and the water's babble was just as soothing as it had always been. The river that had just swallowed up my little brother seemed as placid as ever. I saw village lights in the distance, and the breeze brought a hubbub of voices to my ears: my mother's intermittent wails, accompanied by sympathetic sobs from other women. There in the background was a scene of grief and lamentation, while in the foreground the river, fresh from its lethal exploit, behaved as if nothing had happened. It was at that point that I realized that the river was itself alive: it swallowed up my brother because it needed another life to supplement its own. The wailing women and grieving men off in the distance likewise needed other lives to enhance theirs. They were harvesting vegetables that had been happily growing just a moment ago, or they would slaughter a pig, taking lives just as offhandedly as the river flowing past me.
Sun Kwangtsai and Sun Guangping dove into the river, and between them they brought Sun Guangming up to the surface. They found his body under the wooden bridge, and when he was dragged onto the bank his face was the color of grass. Sun Kwangtsai, though already exhausted, grabbed Sun Guangming by the feet, slung him headfirst over his shoulder, and took off down the path on the run. Sun Guangming's body swayed violently on Father's back, his head knocking rhythmically against my father's shanks. My big brother ran along behind. On that summer day three bodies seemed to merge into one as they raced down the path, enveloped in clouds of dust. Behind them came my mother, still sobbing, still clutching her scarf, and a swarm of villagers.
As my father ran, his head gradually lolled back, he breathed more and more heavily, and his pace slowed. Finally he came to a complete stop and called Sun Guangping. My big brother slung Sun Guangming's body over his back and set off again at a smart pace. Sun Kwangtsai, now falling behind, shouted in short bursts: “Run … Don't stop … Run!”
My father had seen drops of water falling from my little brother's downturned head and he thought Sun Guangming was perhaps coughing up water, not realizing that my little brother was already gone.
After running some thirty yards or so, Sun Guangping began to stagger but Sun Kwangtsai kept on shouting, “Run! Run!”
In the end Sun Guangping collapsed on the ground and Sun Guangming tumbled down beside him. Sun Kwangtsai picked up his son once more and set off again at a running pace. Though he swayed from side to side, he was able to maintain an astonishing speed.
By the time Mother and the villagers arrived at our doorstep, it was already clear to my father that his so
n was dead. Utterly spent, he knelt on the ground retching. Sun Guangming's body lay sprawled underneath an elm tree whose leaves shielded it from the fierce summer sun. Sun Guangping was the last to arrive, and when he saw Father retching he fell to his knees not far away and followed suit.
At this moment, only Mother was expressing grief in a normal fashion. As she shrieked and sobbed, her body bobbed up and down. My father and brother, their retching over, remained on their knees, dumbly watching her ululations.
My dead brother was laid on the middle of the table, an old straw mat underneath him and a sheet on top.
As soon as my father and brother recovered, the first thing they did was to go to the well and fetch a bucket of water. Taking turns, they drank the whole bucketful and then each grabbed a basket and headed into town to buy bean curd. As he left, Father, grim faced, told the bystanders to take a message to the family of the boy whose life had been saved: “I'll go and see them when I come back.”
That evening the villagers sensed that something bad was likely to happen. When my father and brother returned and invited everyone to the wake, practically all the villagers went. Only the family of the rescued boy failed to make an appearance.
It was after nine o'clock that evening that the boy's father finally arrived. He came alone, without any of his brothers in attendance, prepared, it seemed, to bear all the consequences himself. He entered the room with all due ceremony, knelt in front of the body, and knocked his head on the floor three times. Then he stood up and said, “I can see everyone is here.” He acknowledged the presence of the production team leader. “Team Leader is here too. Sun Guangming died rescuing my son, and I am deeply grieved. There is nothing I can do to bring Sun Guangming back to life. All I can do is give you this.” He groped in his pocket and thrust a wad of bills in Sun Kwangtsai s direction. “This is a hundred yuan. Tomorrow I will sell everything in the house that is worth anything and give all the proceeds to you. We're neighbors, and you know how little money I've got—I can only give you as much as I have.”
Sun Kwangtsai stood up and found a stool for him, saying, “Please sit down.”
My father began to speak in impassioned tones, like a town official. “My son is dead, and nothing can bring him back to life. No matter how much money you give me, it cannot compensate for the loss of my son. I don't want your money. My son died saving someone else's life. He is a hero.”
Sun Guangping elaborated on this theme with equal fervor. “My brother was a hero, and my whole family is proud of him. We don't want anything you could give us. All we want is for you to spread the word so that everyone knows about my brother's heroic deed.”
Father rounded things off by saying, “Go into town tomorrow and have the radio station broadcast the news.”
Sun Guangming's burial took place the following day. He was buried between the two cypresses behind our house. During the funeral I kept my distance. Isolation and neglect had practically negated my existence as far as the village was concerned.Under the hot sun Mother's wailing cries pierced the air for the last time; the grief of my father and brother were not clearly visible to me from where I stood. Sun Guangming was carried out, wrapped in the straw mat, while the villagers stood in clusters along the road from the village to the burial ground. My father and my big brother laid Sun Guangming in his grave and covered him with earth. This was how my little brother officially terminated his stay in the world.
That evening I sat by the pond behind the house, gazing at the hump of my brother's grave in the quiet moonlight. He lay a ways off but somehow I felt he was sitting right next to me. In the end both of us had put a distance between ourselves and our parents, our older brother, and the village folk. We had taken separate paths, but the outcome was much the same. The only difference was that my younger brother's departure seemed much more decisive and carefree.
My alienation had kept me away from the scenes surrounding his death and burial, and I was anticipating that I would now be the object of even more forceful censure at home and in the village. But many days passed and nobody said or did anything different from before, which took me rather aback until I realized with relief that I had been utterly forgotten. I had been assigned to a position where I was recognized and at the same time repudiated by everyone in the village.
On the third day after the funeral the radio station publicized the heroic exploits of Sun Guangming, a young boy who had sacrificed himself to save another. This was the proudest moment for my father. During the three days leading up to it, whenever there was a local news broadcast Sun Kwangtsai would grab a stool and sit down right next to the radio. Now that his long wait had been rewarded, he was so exhilarated that he ambled about like a happy duck. That afternoon, when people were taking a break from work, homes throughout the village echoed with my father's resounding cry: “Did you hear?”
My older brother stood under the elm tree by the front door watching my father, his eyes gleaming. Thus began their splendid but short-lived days of glory. They felt sure that the government would immediately send someone to call on them. This fantasy originated at the district level, but in its more elaborate forms went all the way to Beijing. Their most impressive moment would come on National Day, when as the hero's closest kin they would receive an invitation to join the dignitaries at Tiananmen. My brother proved more astute than my father, for although his mind was filled with equally vacuous illusions, a fairly realistic thought occurred to him as well. He alerted my father to the possibility that my little brother's death might well elevate them to some kind of official status in the county. Though he was still in school, there was nothing to stop him from being groomed for public office. My brother's comments brought some substance to my father's dizzying fantasies. Sun Kwangtsai rubbed his hands with glee, scarcely knowing how to contain his excitement.
So elated were they that father and son shared their highly unreliable notions with the villagers on a variety of occasions. Thus it was that reports of the Sun family's imminent departure soon spread around the village, the most unnerving version of the story being that we might well be moving to Beijing. These speculations in turn were relayed back to my family, and one afternoon I heard my father gloating to my brother, “No smoke without fire! If this is what the villagers are saying, it must mean that the officials will soon be here.” My father had broadcast his own fantasies to the villagers and then used the ensuing gossip to reinforce his own illusions.
As he awaited the new title of “Father of a Fallen Hero,” Sun Kwangtsai decided his home needed a makeover. Such a disorderly household, he realized, might compromise the government envoys’ assessment of our credentials. The makeover began in the clothing department: with money he had borrowed, my father had a new outfit made for each of us. This made me an object of attention, and how to deal with me became a real headache for Sun Kwangtsai. More than once I heard him say to my brother, “It would all be so much simpler without him in the way.”
After ignoring me for so long, my family now acknowledged my existence, only to discover that I was a millstone around their necks. Nonetheless, one morning Mother came up to me, a set of new clothes under her arm, and asked me to put them on. Absurdly, we all wore the same color. Accustomed as I was to going around in tattered old clothes, I felt ill at ease the whole day through in this stiff new outfit. After gradually having faded from the consciousness of my neighbors and classmates, I once again was noticed. When Su Yu said, “You're wearing new clothes,” I was thrown for a loop, even though he delivered this line so calmly as to make me feel that nothing was wrong.
A couple of days later my father realized that his approach had failed to reap the expected dividends. He now felt that thrift and fortitude were the family virtues that ought to be showcased, and the most threadbare clothes in our possession emerged from hiding. My mother sat bent over under the oil lamp for a whole night, and the following morning we donned clothes with patches all over, like scales, and like four ridiculous fish we
ventured out to greet the new dawn. When I saw my brother set off reluctantly for school, for the first time I felt that there were moments when he and I had the same reaction to things.
Sun Guangping lacked Sun Kwangtsai's unswerving confidence in the arrival of good fortune. He was the butt of so many jokes for wearing his ragged clothes to school that he refused to go on wearing them, even if their continued use should qualify him to become emperor. My brother thought up a compelling justification for his abandonment of this costume, telling my father, “To wear the kind of clothes that one could find only in old China is an insult to the new communist society.” This remark left Sun Kwangtsai quite rattled, and for the next several days he was constantly explaining to the villagers that we had just one purpose in dressing as we did and that was “recalling the bitter to think of the sweet”: “When we think of the miseries of the old society, we are all the more aware of how wonderful life is in the new society.”
The government representatives, so eagerly awaited, failed to show even after a month had passed. As a result, public opinion shifted, and this boded ill for my father and brother. Now, in the slack season, the villagers had more than enough time to get to the bottom of things, and they realized that all the reports they had heard ultimately emanated from my family. My father and brother came to be seen as comic figures and were made the target of their banter. Everyone would ask Sun Kwangtsai or Sun Guangping, in tones of exaggerated solicitude, “Did the officials come yet?”
The fantasy shrouding my family began to come apart at the seams. Sun Guangping was the first to retrench. With the ruthless practicality of youth he felt, sooner than my father, that none of it would ever materialize.
In the first few days of his disenchantment, Sun Guangping seemed glum and subdued, and often he just stayed in bed. Since my father remained firmly ensconced in the fantasy world, relations between the two of them became increasingly distant. Father had developed the habit of sitting by the radio with a foolish expression on his face, saliva dribbling from his half-open mouth. Sun Guangping clearly was tired of seeing him making such an ass of himself and once he said with exasperation, “Stop thinking about it!”