Cries in the Drizzle

by Yu Hua

  The extravagance of my grandmother's wedding was inflated in her imagination after thirty or more years of poverty, and then reported to me through the unreliable medium of my grandfather. So it was that my head resounded with the din of gongs and drums and a particularly loud horn, and in my mind's eye the entourage carrying the trousseau was so long it trailed completely out of view. My grandfather always stressed that the bride was conveyed in a large sedan carried by eight porters, but at six years of age I could hardly have taken in just how magnificent that was. Granddad's description was so vivid that it created a chaotic impression in my mind, and the worst thing was that the sound of the horn, which Granddad imitated most effectively, was as unnerving to me as the howl of a dog in the night.

  My grandma was sixteen that year, and her face was like an apple about to fall from the tree, but she applied a thick coating of rouge to it all the same. As she was welcomed in from the sedan chair that afternoon, her face gleamed in the sunlight as brightly as an earthenware pot.

  The dourness of the groom took my grandmother by surprise. Throughout the ceremony he wore what he considered to be a sedate smile, a smile so fixed and immobile that it could have been smeared on with paint. This fellow with his artificial grin did not maintain his gentlemanly profile in the latter part of the evenings activities. Once the candles had been lit in the nuptial chamber, the groom proved amazingly deft, and after a moment of shock my grandmother discovered that she was not wearing a stitch of clothing. He wasted no time with preliminaries, but did everything that could be expected of him without a word having passed his lips. When he woke the following morning he found that the bride had disappeared into thin air, and searched around frantically until he finally thought to have a look in the wardrobe. She was crouched there, stark naked, trembling from head to toe.

  But he was a decent fellow. That, at least, was my grandma's final appraisal. I find it hard to imagine, but after traumatizing the bride on her wedding night he then delved deeper into his bag of tricks and provided the solace she needed. In the two years that followed, she greeted each night with equanimity and acquitted herself well. My grandfather Sun Youyuan claimed that her first husband was a man who knew how to treat a woman, but I suspect this is an image reconstructed by my grandmother over many years of remembrance. So continually did she harp on the past that no amount of meekness and humility on Sun Youyuan's part could gain much appreciation from her.

  In the summer my grandma's mother-in-law sat in the reception room, wearing a black silk dress, fanned by a maid dressed in cotton. She maintained a grave demeanor as she discussed the illnesses that afflicted her. She could not tolerate the slightest moan in the house, not even her own, for she believed such sounds to be just as pernicious as the outbreak of unruly laughter. My grandmother found herself immersed for long stretches of time in her mother-in-law's accounts of her various pains and aches; you can imagine what a joyless atmosphere prevailed. But psychologically my grandmother was not so profoundly affected by the prevailing gloom, for her father had already administered an education that was not all that different in tone. The deadness of family life was relieved only in the evening, when her husband's brief fervor in bed invested the proceedings with a certain animation. But my grandmother felt perfectly at home and took it all in stride, and until she clambered onto my grandfather's back she could barely have imagined that a family might operate any differently. In the same way she had no clue that her face was really very pretty, and it took my grandfather's constant reassurance and earnest compliments to finally convince her of this point, something that her father, husband, and mother-in-law had always kept tightly under wraps.

  I cannot shed much more light on my grandmother's life in that household, for their experiences, like they themselves, are long dead and gone. But in the first few years after my grandmother's death, loneliness and sorrow filled Granddad with enthusiasm for her past, and when a light shone in his gray eyes my grandmother came alive again in his retelling of her story.

  The turning point in my grandmother's destiny came on a fine, clear morning. She was young and beautiful then, not the wizened old lady I saw later. Although she herself possessed a staidness compatible with the family into which she had married, she was only eighteen, and a young woman who spends her days in a dark mansion is easily drawn to the singing of birds outside. Dressed in a red tunic, with embroidered slippers on her feet, she stood on the stone steps. The early morning sun lit up her healthy complexion, and her delicate hands hung charmingly by her sides. A pair of perky sparrows chirped on a tree in the courtyard and unveiled a little repertoire of actions that she found captivating. In her ignorance, she did not realize that they were engaged in courtship, and was deeply touched by their intimacy and ardor. Her absorption in the wonderful mood of that morning rendered her completely unaware of her mother-in-law's ponderous steps approaching. As the sparrows continued to posture and preen, the unsmiling mother-in-law could not allow her impropriety to continue one minute longer, and frightening words suddenly resounded in my grandmother's ears. The old lady said to her coldly, “Time to go inside.”

  My grandmother was never to forget the shock she experienced at that moment. When she turned around, it was not just the usual dourness that confronted her; she saw instead, in her mother-in-law's keen and complex gaze, her own uncertain future. She was smart enough to realize immediately that the splendid little show put on by the sparrows must actually be a very shady piece of business. She returned to her room with a premonition that she was now in deep trouble, and her heart thumped in her chest with the awareness that the very course of her life had been thrown into doubt. She listened as her mother-in-law shuffled into another room, and soon other, sprightly footsteps approached, those of a maid. The maid entered the study and summoned her sleepy husband.

  A silence ensued, as though nothing whatsoever had happened, but my grandmother's unease expanded by degrees, and with time a certain element of anticipation combined with her misgivings. She suddenly looked forward to the punishment coming sooner rather than later, for suspense could only make her more nervous.

  At dinner my grandmother sensed right away that misfortune was about to befall her, for her mother-in-law was unusually nice to her and on occasion became quite red around the eyes, while her husband seemed doleful. Her mother-in-law had her stay behind after the meal and launched into a lengthy disquisition, reviewing their impeccable family history, emphasizing that—whether in terms of scholarship or government service— theirs was a heritage of which their posterity would be proud. What is more, their ancestors had produced a paragon of female chastity, the recipient of an official honor from a Qing emperor who had a soft spot for women. Here she really hit her stride, and waxed so lyrical on this subject that she could hardly drop the topic. In the end, however, she got to the point and told my grandmother she should get her things together. She could hardly have made it more obvious: a bill of divorce was on its way.

  For my grandmother it was an unforgettable night. Her remote husband for once expressed affection for her, not by saying anything to her, but (according to what she later told my grandfather) by showering her with caresses—Granddad did not mention tears. It was perhaps on account of this evening that she always remembered him, and so later, as described by my grand-father , this dissolute character took on the virtues of a man who knew how to look after a woman.

  My grandmother's mother-in-law lived at the tail end of the old order, and was not as despotic as her progenitors, for she did not tell her son what to do but gave him a choice, even though she knew all along what his choice would be. The next morning my grandmother rose early; her mother-in-law, even earlier. When her husband arrived in the reception room, he resumed his customary aspect, and my grandmother was hard put to find in his expression any trace of the previous nights sorrow. They had breakfast together. What was going through her mind in those moments? Still so young, she felt completely lost. Disaster was about to overtake
her, there was no question about that, but before its arrival my grandmother felt dizzy, and everything in front of her swayed in an inchoate blur.

  Then all three of them left the house, and my grandmother's mother-in-law, in her black clothes, led them to the highway. She instructed my grandmother to go west, while she for her part headed east. At this time the din of the Japanese war machine was steadily growing closer, and scattered clumps of refugees could be seen moving along the road. The matriarch committed to upholding the family's honor headed off toward the sunrise, while my grandmother set out in the other direction and the sun's first rays illuminated her back. As he had his last glimpse of her receding figure, her husband was stricken with grief, but his decision to follow his mother east was unhesitating.

  My grandmother carried a heavy bundle on her back; inside were her clothes and jewelry, as well as some silver dollars. Her face exhibited a ghastly pallor; in the thirty years that followed, it would never again be rosy pink. The morning breeze blew her hair into disarray, but she did not have time to notice this as she was sucked into the flow of refugees. Joining them was perhaps a comfort to her, because it obscured her status as a divorced woman, and the helpless misery on her face could be seen on other faces too. My grandmother was like a leaf swept along in the current; she lumped together her misfortune and the others’ exodus. It was unthinkable that she return to her father's home and throwing in her lot with the horde of evacuees took the edge off her agonized consideration of her future.

  My grandmother, who had been raised in such a sheltered environment, now found herself on the road during a full-blown war, but the trauma she suffered was quite unrelated to the outbreak of hostilities. Her darkest moment came when she ran into a man identifiable now only as a butcher. My grandmother recognized him as such on the basis of the pork grease and raw stench that his body exuded. In the decades that followed, she would tremble and shake at the smell of uncooked pork. This brute ravished my grandmother as briskly as if he were chopping meat.

  In the war-torn twilight my grandmother had unwisely parted from the throng of refugees and gone down to the river to wash her now weather-beaten face. The figures moving along the highway grew sparser, then faded from view altogether while she squatted by the riverside, lost in sentimental musings. She had to face the butcher alone. Beneath the darkening sky she kneeled at his feet, the sound of her entreaties quivering in the evening breeze like her body itself. She opened her bundle, offering its contents to him in exchange for her honor. The butcher gave precisely the kind of boisterous laugh that her mother-in-law abhorred. “Sure, I'll take these things off your hands,” he said to her, “but I'm going to fuck you too.”

  The day my grandmother sat in her sedan chair, soon to become someone's wife, my grandfather, twenty-three-year-old Sun Youyuan, was on his way to a place called Northmarsh Bridge along with his father, the famous Stonemason Sun, and a team of apprentices. They were going to build a large stone bridge with thirty arches. It was a morning in early spring, and my greatgrandfather had rented a wooden boat to carry him and his assistants down the broad river. He sat at the stern, smoking a pipe and watching his son with a twinkle in his eye. Sun Youyuan stood at the prow, his jacket open, his chest flushed red in the cold breeze. The bow gently rose and fell, cleaving the river like a knife and propelling the water into rapid retreat.

  That winter an official in the Republican government had announced his intention to return home and visit his family. Years ago, after setting fire to the house of some moneybags, he had swum across this wide river when fleeing the area, and had later gone on to make his fortune. Now, as he prepared to go home in a blaze of glory, the county administrator could not possibly expect him to swim across the river one more time. So some Republican silver dollars were transferred to the hands of my great-grandfather. He knew it was an important assignment and enjoined his subordinates: “This time it's a government bridge we're building, so I'm expecting your best effort.”

  They arrived at their destination, which despite its name had no bridge at all. My great-grandfather was in his fifties then, a man with a lean build and a loud voice. He walked back and forth along the riverside, beginning the job in a seemingly offhand manner; close behind him walked my energetic grandfather. As he surveyed the local topography, my great-grandfather constantly looked back and—just as my great-grandmother might yell at chickens in her yard—barked out instructions to his apprentices. From time to time my grandfather would pick up a handful of soil and squeeze it between his fingers or test it with his tongue. After they had finished assessing the lay of the land on both banks and drawing up plans, Great-grandfather told the apprentices to put up a construction shed and start extracting stone, while he and my grandfather slung tools and provisions over their backs and headed into the hills.

  Their mission was to extract the dragon-gate stone. These two ancestors of mine scurried across the slopes like feral cats, tapping away with their hammers and for three whole months giving the hills no rest. In those days, a stonemason's skill found its fullest expression in the dragon-gate stone, the keystone that at the culmination of the whole project was placed at the very center of a bridge, joining the two sides; it could not afford to be one inch too big or one inch too small.

  My great-grandfather was the smartest pauper of his age; compared to my grandmother's father, he was dynamic and accomplished. He had spent his life roaming far and wide; he possessed both an artist's free spirit and a peasant's stolidity. My grandfather, whom he had sired and reared, was a remarkable man in his own way. The two of them extracted from the hills a square dragon-gate stone, and on its facade they carved a relief of twin dragons vying for a pearl; two stone dragons, their bodies writhing in the air, fought fiercely for the spherical stone pearl in the center. They were not the kind of masons content simply to lay a slab across a ditch; the bridge they were about to construct would be so exquisite that it would lord itself over their posterity.

  After three months of work, having quarried all the stone required, the apprentices went into the hills to fetch my two ancestors. On a sweltering summer day my great-grandfather sat erect on the dragon-gate stone as the eight apprentices lugged it down from the hills on their shoulders. He was naked to the waist, puffing away at his pipe, contentment apparent in his squinting eyes, but he was not in the least triumphant, for this was all perfectly routine as far as he was concerned. My ruddy-faced grandfather Sun Youyuan marched steadily alongside, crying every few paces, “Here comes the dragon-gate stone!”

  But this was not the most stirring moment. That came later, well into the autumn of that year, when the day finally came to close the gap in the middle of the bridge. Decorated archways were set up at the two ends, their colored bunting flapping in the wind like tree leaves; there were deafening peals of music and clouds of incense; a noisy hubbub rose from the ranks of country folk who had flocked to the scene from many miles around. Not a single sparrow was to be seen, the frightening din having driven them all to seek anxious refuge on trees far away. It has always surprised me that Sun Youyuan, having witnessed this splendid scene, could in his final years be so awed by my grandmother's wedding. Compared with this, her wedding was a nonevent.

  It would never have occurred to my great-grandfather that his career would take a nosedive at this particular juncture. He had always been able to depend on his wits and his skills as he made his way in the world, but here in Northmarsh Bridge he came upon a cropper. He had in fact noticed that the soil was porous and that the bridge was subsiding. But he was a bit too confident, a bit too fixed in his judgment, thinking on the basis of past experience that some settling was inevitable. However, as the completion date grew closer, the rate of subsidence increased. By overlooking that point, my great-grandfather condemned himself to a miserable old age.

  Although it was to end a fiasco, the sight of the eight apprentices carrying the dragon-gate stone onto the bridge was inspiring at the time. They marched proudly up to
the apex and their work song died away. As they carefully lowered the dragon-gate stone toward the breach, the music hushed and the spectators went completely quiet. That was when my great-grandfather heard a grating scrape rather than the resounding clunk that he had anticipated, and knew, sooner than anybody else present, that disaster had struck. He had been watching from the decorated arch, and the unanticipated crisis left a smile frozen on his face. When that awful jarring noise reached his ears, he sprang to his feet, like a fish about to go bottom up—as my grandfather was later to tell us—with the whites of the eyes exposed. But he was after all a veteran of many adventures, and before the crowd had cottoned on to just what was amiss he had already come down from the decorated arch and walked away with his pipe pressed against his back, as though he was heading off to a tavern. He made straight for the hills, leaving his son and the team of apprentices to shoulder the disgrace.

  The dragon-gate stone was tightly wedged inside the breach, and though the eight burly youths turned red in the face in their efforts to raise it out of its awkward position, it remained lodged there, immobile. As a wave of hisses swept over them, their eight faces shone like pig livers in the scorching sun. The dragon-gate stone lay tilted like a seesaw, unadjustable, unremovable.