Cries in the Drizzle

by Yu Hua

  In that moment I had a clear view of her face, now ravaged by time, its wrinkles all too apparent. When her glance skimmed over me, it so lacked animation it was like a cloud of soot floating in my direction. Then she turned back toward the well, exposing her sagging buttocks and thickening waistline. At that point I slipped away, saddened not by Feng Yuqing's having forgotten me, but by my first glimpse of beauty's pitiless decline. The Feng Yuqing who stood combing her hair in the sunlight outside her home would, after this, always be blanketed with a layer of dust.

  So two different jobs occupied her, one by day and one by night. Her night job made her vulnerable to professional rivalries, and the intervention of the police forced a different kind of life upon her.

  By that time I had already left my hometown. Fate had finally smiled on me, and I had gratefully begun a brand-new life in Beijing. At the beginning, I was so enamored of the capital's broad boulevards that when I stood at a crossroads in the evening, the tall buildings on every side made me feel that the intersection was as spacious as a plaza. Like a lost sheep drawn to the green grass on a riverbank, I could hardly tear myself away.

  On just such a night, policemen burst through the door of that ramshackle apartment in my hometown, catching Feng Yuqing completely naked, along with an equally naked client of hers. Lulu, who had been sleeping soundly seconds earlier, was woken by the bright lights and loud accusations, and he opened his big dark eyes to look with perplexity at these sudden developments.

  After dressing, Feng Yuqing said to her son, “Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

  So Lulu lay back down and closed his eyes. But he failed to follow his mother's instructions in full, for he did not go back to sleep. He heard all that was said, he heard the steps descending the stairs, and he suddenly became afraid that his mother might not come back.

  During the interrogation at the Public Security Bureau, Feng Yuqing, normally so sparing with her words, proved quite eloquent. Calmly she said to them, “The clothes you wear, they're issued by the state, and your paychecks too. So long as you're taking care of state business, you're doing your jobs all right. But my vagina belongs to me—it's not government issue. Who I sleep with is my affair, and I can look after my own vagina perfectly well, thank you very much.”

  At dawn the following day, when the gatekeeper at the Public Security Bureau opened the gate, he found that he was being watched somberly by a handsome young boy, his hair dampened by the early morning mist. Lulu told him, “I'm here to collect my mom.”

  Though he claimed to be nine years old, he cannot have been more than seven. Feng Yuqing clearly had been hoping that he could make a contribution to the household income as early as possible, for when he was six she reported his age as eight, so that he could be admitted to primary school. Today he got the idea into his head that he would fetch his mother and take her home.

  Before long, he realized that this goal was beyond his reach. He found himself facing no fewer than five police officers, who tried to cajole him into revealing the details of Feng Yuqing's career as a prostitute. Shrewd little Lulu saw through them straight away. “You're trying to fool me by making everything sound so nice. I'll tell you something,” the boy said vehemently, “I'm not going to tell you anything!”

  Lulu learned that not only would his mother not be coming home, she would be sent to a labor reform camp instead. Tears spilled from his eyes, but he still stayed remarkably calm and protested sharply, “You can't send my mom away.”

  Then, his tears welling up, he waited for them to ask why not. But none of them did, so he had to explain to them himself. “If you send my mom away, who's going to look after me?”

  Lulu used his own abandonment as the ultimate threat; when he was waiting outside the gate he had already seen this as his trump card. He felt sure that in the face of this they would have no choice but to return his mother to him, but of course they did not give a second thought to a threat coming from a little boy like him. His attempt at intimidation did nothing to save his mother, and its only effect was that he was placed in a shelter.

  When his mother was sent off to the camp, he was not informed. Practically every day Lulu would go to the Public Security Bureau and demand to see her; he drove them up the wall. Finally they told him: Feng Yuqing was now at the Seven Bridges labor camp, and if he wanted to see her he would have to go to Seven Bridges. He committed this name to memory. At the same time he was so shocked by the news that he just stood there crying. When they tried to usher him off the premises, he said, “Take your hands off me. FU make my own way out.”

  As he turned around, he wiped away his tears with both hands, and he sobbed as he went off down the corridor, his shoulder brushing against the wall. Then he realized there was something he had forgotten to say, so he went back inside and told them with withering scorn, “Just wait till I'm grown up, and I'll make sure you all get sent to Seven Bridges!”

  Lulu spent only a week at the shelter, in the company of a twenty-year-old blind man, a sixty-year-old alcoholic, and a woman in her fifties. These four misfits lived in a dilapidated courtyard on the west side of town. The alcoholic was always thinking about a woman named Fenfen with whom he slept when he was young, and he'd spend the whole day relating their exploits to the sightless but still vigorous blind man. His account was laced with erotic overtones: according to his description, Fenfen was a real peach. When he talked about how his fingers would caress Fenfen's sleek thighs, he would get quite carried away, unleashing a string of lascivious groans that left the blind man not knowing what to do with himself. Then the alcoholic would ask the blind man, “You've handled flour, right?”

  Hearing an answer in the affirmative, the alcoholic elaborated with relish. “Fenfen's thighs were as smooth as flour.”

  The pale-faced woman had to put up with this kind of thing practically every day, and after protracted exposure to such prattle she developed delusions, becoming convinced that the alcoholic and the blind man were conspiring to do her an injury. When Lulu first arrived, she nervously called him over and pointed at the two men in the next room, whispering, “They want to rape me.”

  She would go to the hospital every morning, hoping that the doctors would be able to identify her illness so that she could be admitted to the hospital for treatment and escape the violation that was being plotted. But every day she would return despondently to the shelter.

  Lulu spent a whole week in this company. Every morning he would go off to school with his satchel on his back, and return at the end of the day all black and blue and caked with dust. His injuries were contracted not from defending his imaginary brother, but because he was standing up for his very much alive mother. He had already decided what he wanted to do, but he did not share his plan with anyone else. In the shelter he learned the location of Seven Bridges by briskly quizzing the woman and the alcoholic. Early one morning he quietly rolled up his sleeping mat, tied it with a piece of string, and hung it on his back, then picked up his satchel and Feng Yuqing's big duffel bag and headed off for the bus station. He was full of confidence about his itinerary. He knew how much the ticket would cost and he knew there was no stop at Seven Bridges. To purchase the ticket, he handed over the five-yuan note that his mother had given him, and then, tightly clutching the remaining three yuan and fifty cents, walked over to a little shop next to the station, intending to buy a Front Gate cigarette to bribe the driver. What he found out was that it cost two cents to buy one cigarette, and only three cents to buy two. My little friend stood there in a quandary. In the end he decided to take out three cents and buy two cigarettes.

  That morning on the verge of summer, Lulu sat in the bus heading toward Seven Bridges, holding in his left hand the remaining money, wrapped in a handkerchief, while his right hand gripped the two cigarettes. It was the first time he had ever been on a bus, but he was not in the least thrilled by the novelty of this experience and gazed solemnly out the window. At frequent intervals he checked with the middl
e-aged woman sitting next to him how far it was to Seven Bridges. Later, when he learned that Seven Bridges was just ahead, he left his seat and moved the duffel bag and bedroll to the doorway. Then he turned to the driver, passed him a cigarette now soaked with perspiration, and pleaded, “Uncle, could you please let me off at Seven Bridges?”

  The driver took Lulu's gift, glanced at it, and then tossed the sodden cigarette out the window. Lulu noted the driver's disdainful expression and bowed his head in vexation. He now planned on walking back from the stop following Seven Bridges. But, as it turned out, the driver did stop the bus and let him off at Seven Bridges. It was almost midday now, and Lulu could see a high wall not far away, the barbed-wire netting on top confirming that this was indeed the labor camp. With the bedroll on his back, carrying a duffel bag that was practically his own size, he set off under a blazing sun.

  When he got to the front gate, he saw an armed soldier on guard there. As he walked up to him, he eyed the cigarette in his hand. Mindful of how the driver had thrown his out the window, he dared not try the same thing with this cigarette, so he just smiled bashfully at the young guard and said, “I'm going to stay with my mom.” Pointing at the bedroll and the duffel bag, he said, “I brought all our stuff.”

  It was afternoon by the time Lulu saw his mother. The guard had passed him on to someone else who delivered him eventually to a man with a beard. The bearded man led him to a small room.

  That is how Feng Yuqing, dressed in her black prison uniform, saw her battle-scarred son. The realization that her little boy had made his way to see her all by himself brought tears to her eyes.

  Despite the rigors of the journey, Lulu, far from being tearful, told her excitedly, “I've quit school. I'm going to study on my own.”

  Feng Yuqing buried her face in her hands and wept, and this made Lulu cry too. Their meeting was very brief, and within a short time a man came to take her away. Lulu hurriedly picked up the bedroll and the duffel bag, planning to go with his mother. When he found his advance blocked, he cried sharply, “What's wrong?”

  The man told him he had to leave. He shook his head emphatically, saying, “No, I'm staying. I want to be with my mom.” He cried to her, “Tell him I'm not leaving!”

  But when she turned around, it was to tell him he could not stay. He dissolved into a flood of bitter tears, and he wailed to his mother, “I brought the bedroll too, so that I can sleep under your bed. I won't take up any room!”

  In the days that followed Lulu began living an outdoor life. He laid the bedroll out underneath a camphor tree, used the duffel bag as a pillow, and lay there reading his textbooks. If hungry, he would take the money his mother left him and go to the snack shop nearby to have something to eat. Always on the alert, as soon as he heard the thud of well-regulated footsteps he would drop his book and sit up, opening his dark eyes wide. When a line of black-garbed prisoners trotted past, hoes on their shoulders, a head would turn to look at him and Lulu s rapturous gaze would meet his mothers eyes.

  Chapter 3

  FAR AWAY

  It's been said that my grandfather Sun Youyuan was a man in a rage, but you need to bear in mind that it was my father who said that. Sun Kwangtsai was a father skilled in evading responsibility and fond of imposing crude discipline, and when a patchwork of welts began to appear on my skin and he was panting from the effort of laying into me, he would invoke the memory of my grandfather, saying, “If it were my dad, he would have beaten the life out of you ages ago.”

  My grandfather had passed away by then, and my father (like other people at the time) was in the habit of sticking tyrant or other such fearful epithets on the tombstones of the dead, while projecting himself as civilized and cultivated. My father's words must have had a certain effect, for when the pain wore off I could not help feeling some gratitude to him. What he said, after all, indicated that he did place some value on my life.

  After I reached adulthood and began to create in my mind a more accurate image of my grandfather, I found it difficult to imagine him as a man in a rage. Perhaps my father was trying to console me by reminding me what hard lessons he had learned in his childhood, as though he were saying, “Compared with the beatings I used to receive when I was young, what you're getting doesn't count as much at all.” If I could have seen things in that light, then my self-esteem would have survived intact even if my body took a beating. But pain made me lose my wits, and apart from howling like a beast I could think of no other way to react.

  In the old days it never ceased to surprise people that my grandfather showed such respect for the woman in his life, but this was his way of expressing—however unconsciously—his gratitude to destiny. My grandmother had been pampered and coddled as a child. At sixteen she was married off, riding a bridal sedan chair and wearing tiny embroidered shoes, but within two years she was forced to leave that grand mansion, slumped drowsily on the back of a pauper. My destitute grandfather led her to a Southgate overgrown with weeds. Her dazzling heritage so overshadowed Sun Youyuan as to make his own life seem dismal and gloomy by comparison.

  My grandmother, who died when I was three, maintained habits that were quite out of keeping with my home environment at the time, as a way of demonstrating that the prosperous and respectable life that she had once enjoyed had not entirely disappeared. Despite our poverty we would light a charcoal fire in the cold of winter, and she would spend the whole day huddled beside it, her eyes almost shut, a blank expression on her face. Before she went to bed she would always bathe her feet in hot water, and after a soaking those misshapen little feet of hers would gradually take on a rosy hue, an image that has printed itself indelibly on my memory. Those feet had never stepped into a rice field, even though she had slept with a peasant for over thirty years. Her indolent, aristocratic air somehow succeeded in wafting unimpeded for decades through our tumbledown house. My grandfather, so prone to fly off the handle (according to my father), in my eyes stood humbly, his hands at his side, before Grandmother's foot basin.

  On a winter morning when she should have risen from her bed my grandmother failed to wake. She died so unexpectedly, without the slightest warning, that my grandfather was immobilized with grief. If he ran into anybody in the village he would greet them with a timorous smile, as though some kind of family scandal had occurred, rather than his wife passing away.

  In my memory the following scene takes shape. My grandfather Sun Youyuan is standing among billowing snowflakes, dressed in a black padded jacket that has no buttons; it is so filthy it has acquired a dull sheen. He is not wearing anything underneath, and has tied the jacket shut with a piece of string; the skin of his chest is exposed to the winter cold. Stooping, both hands in his sleeves, he lets the snow fall and melt on his chest. As he tries to smile, his eyes redden; tears tumble down his face—a vain attempt to communicate his grief to my insensible heart. I faintly recall him saying to me, “Your grandma was ripe for picking.”

  My grandmother's father must have been the least distinguished rich man of his day. My grandfather, with a poor man's deference, never wavered in his esteem for this father-in-law, whom he had once had the privilege of meeting. In his twilight years, as his teeth dwindled in number, Sun Youyuan would often regale us with accounts of my grandmother's former high station, but it was the sighs of admiration—to us so meaningless—punctuating his reminiscences that made the biggest impression on us.

  When I was little I could never understand why Granddad's father-in-law always had to have a ferule in his hand, rather than the string-bound book that I imagined he should have been holding. (Sun Kwangtsai, after all, could impose discipline too— though it was a broom that he clutched in his hand, he was simply using a different instrument for much the same purpose.) This ominous figure applied all the harshness of the old society, using his own pedestrian knowledge to educate his two equally mediocre sons and even, through a wild stretch of imagination, hoping that they would bring honor on their ancestors. Nor did he neglect t
he upbringing of his daughter, making a ritual out of practically every waking moment of her life. My poor grandmother did not view her submission to him as a surrender of the most basic freedoms, but in a spirit of blind happiness complied strictly with her father's rules on when to get out of bed, when to begin embroidering, what posture to adopt when walking, and so on. Later she inherited her fathers prestige during her marriage to my grandfather, and in Sun Youyuan's quaking presence my grandmother savored to the full her own superiority. My grandfather was enveloped all his life by her short-lived wealth and status. The only respect in which she carried herself with modesty was that she always made a point of sitting sideways opposite my grandfather. Her father's admonitions had been so forceful that she continued to be constrained by them long after she had in effect made her escape from his control.

  He prided himself on his rigor, and when it came time to select a husband for his daughter his gimlet eyes immediately came to rest on a man much like himself. On the day that Grandma's first husband appeared stiffly before him, his daughter's fate had already been settled. This fellow, who had to think things over carefully before making the simplest remark, from my perspective today seems practically retarded, and compared to my destitute but vigorous grandfather he was a complete nonentity. But he pleased my grandma's father, and his satisfaction in turn directly influenced my grandma, for every time she mentioned him to my granddad a look of admiration would appear on her face. My granddad was a secondary victim, for the reverence with which he hung on her words made this fellow in a long gown become the yardstick by which he measured his own inferiority.

  The feebleminded fiance, dressed in his silk finery, entered self-consciously through Grandmother's vermilion door, his waxed hair combed to perfection. He raised the hem of his gown with his right hand, crossed the courtyard, and walked into the reception room, skirting a large square table to appear in front of Grandma's father. And that was all it took for him to secure approval for the marriage. When Granddad told me all this, I had just turned six and was about to be placed in other people's care, and his account failed to stir very much interest on my part, just a faint degree of surprise. All you had to do was walk through an open door, make a turn, and a bride was yours for the taking. Well, I could do that too, I thought.