The April 3rd Incident

by Yu Hua

  ALSO BY YU HUA

  The Seventh Day

  Boy in the Twilight

  China in Ten Words

  Brothers

  Cries in the Drizzle

  Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

  To Live

  The Past and the Punishments

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Allan H. Barr

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  The stories in the book were originally published in Chinese in the following publications: “As the North Wind Howled” in Beijing wenxue (1987, no. 5); “The April 3rd Incident” in Shouhuo (1987, no. 5); “Death Chronicle” in Shanghai wenxue (1988, no. 11); “In Memory of Miss Willow Yang” in Zhongshan (1989, no. 4); “Love Story” in Zuojia (1989, no. 7); “A History of Two People” in Hebei wenxue (1989, no. 10); and “Summer Typhoon” in Zhongshan (1991, no. 4).

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Yu, Hua, [date], author. Barr, Allan Hepburn, translator.

  Title: The April 3rd incident : stories / Yu Hua ; translation by Allan H. Barr.

  Description: First edition. New York : Pantheon Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018011375. ISBN 9781524747060 (hardcover : alk. paper). ISBN 9781524747077 (ebook).

  Subjects: LCSH: Yu, Hua, [date]—Translations into English. Short stories, Chinese—20th century.

  Classification: LCC PL2928.H78 A2 2018 | DDC 895.13/52—dc23 | LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/​2018011375

  Ebook ISBN 9781524747077

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  Cover design by Tyler Comrie

  v5.4

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Yu Hua

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Translator’s Note

  As the North Wind Howled

  The April 3rd Incident

  Death Chronicle

  In Memory of Miss Willow Yang

  Love Story

  A History of Two People

  Summer Typhoon

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Translator’s Note

  This volume brings together seven stories published in China between 1987 and 1991, during the opening phase of Yu Hua’s career. To readers whose first encounters with Yu Hua’s fiction have been through later works that adopt a more familiar storytelling manner, these early pieces may seem a little disorienting, but in their own way they reflect the same interest in testing the boundaries of contemporary Chinese literature that we find in Brothers, Yu Hua’s ambitious novel of 2005–2006.

  In the initial stage of post-Mao liberalization in China in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chinese writers devoted their energies to broaching topics that had been off-limits during the Mao era and broadening subject matter beyond the few themes permitted or prescribed during the era of radical politics. Literary form, however, remained largely conventional and predictable. It was this conservatism of form that Yu Hua and a number of other young authors set out to challenge in the years leading up to the student-led protests of 1989.

  Then in his late twenties, Yu Hua was inspired by both the modernist fiction of such authors as Kafka, Faulkner, and Borges and the theoretical writings of Alain Robbe-Grillet, champion of the French New Novel. Like Robbe-Grillet, Yu Hua sought to break with the tradition of classical realism in favor of a new narrative mode that defied commonsense conceptions of order and logic, avoided definitive judgments, and prioritized the subjectivity of his protagonists. In keeping with these aims, Yu Hua’s language at this time is often elliptical, indeterminate, and oblique, suggesting multiple possibilities and inviting a range of interpretations. The stories experiment with a variety of narrative strategies, here alternating between first- and third-person narrative, there blurring the line between author and narrator or between real life and nightmare. “In Memory of Miss Willow Yang” traps the reader in a labyrinth of temporal fractures, repetitions, and inconsistencies.

  Given the focus in this collection on the individual psyche rather than society at large, politics is generally kept at a distance. Although the “April Third Incident” in the title story might sound like the name of a watershed episode in modern China such as the May Fourth Incident of 1919 or the April Fifth Incident of 1976, Yu Hua’s narrative actually has nothing to do with any major historical event, probing instead the acute sensitivity of its anonymous hero.

  This is not to say that these stories are detached from contemporary Chinese affairs. “Summer Typhoon,” for example, is clearly rooted in the author’s observations of life in his hometown in 1976, following the huge earthquake that leveled the northern city of Tangshan that July. Fearing another such tremor, people throughout much of China abandoned their homes and moved into makeshift shelters in any available open space; in the absence of reliable news, rumor held sway week after week. But while vividly evoking the anxiety and uncertainty of that last summer before the death of Mao, this story too is ultimately less a documentary account than an exploration of adolescent longing and inner worlds.

  I would like to thank Yu Hua for patiently responding to my queries. I also thank my wife, Peng Xiaohua, for her advice and support.

  As the North Wind Howled

  Sunlight had sneaked in through the window and was creeping toward the chair where my pants dangled. I was lying bare-chested in bed, rubbing away some gunk from the corner of my right eye. It must have collected while I was sleeping, and to just let it stay there seemed inappropriate. At the same time I felt there was no need to be rough, and thus I was prying it out rather delicately. In the meanwhile my left eye was idle, so I gave it the job of looking at my pants. I had taken them off when getting ready for bed the night before, and now I regretted tossing them so casually over the chair, where they lay crumpled beside my jacket. As my left eye inspected them, I began to wonder whether while sleeping I had shed, snake-fashion, a layer of skin, for that’s just what my jacket and pants looked like. At this point a skein of sunshine reached my pant leg; the little splotch of leaping light made me think of a golden flea. And so I felt itchy all over and had my idle left hand make itself useful by scratching, but there was so much work for it to do that I had to bring in my right hand to help out.

  Someone was knocking on the door.

  At first I thought the person was knocking on the neighbor’s door, but the noise was obviously intended for my ears. I was thrown for a loop. Who would come knocking on my door? I was the only person with a reason to come here, and I was already in bed. Someone must have come to the wrong place. So I decided to ignore the knocking and continue with my scratching. I thought about how whenever I came back after being away I would always give the door a good knock, and get my key out only when I was sure nobody was coming to open it. Now the door was making a colossal noise, as though it was about to cave in. The person outside, I realized, had to be knocking not with his hand but with his foot, and before I had time to think of a response the door fell to the floor with such a crash that it sent
shock waves through me.

  A brawny fellow with whiskers on his face charged over to my bed. “Your friend’s dying, and you’re still not up?” he yelled.

  I’d never seen this man before and had no idea where he’d come from. “Have you come to the wrong address?” I asked.

  “No chance of that,” he answered.

  His blithe self-assurance made me wonder whether I had somehow gone to sleep in the wrong bed. I jumped up and ran out into the corridor to check the number on the door. But of course the door was now lying on the floor of my apartment. So I dashed back in again and looked for the number on the fallen door. On it was written: 26 Hongqiao New Village, Apt. 3.

  “Is this the door you just kicked down?” I asked.

  “Yes, it is,” he said.

  So this was my apartment. “You have definitely come to the wrong place,” I told him.

  Now it was my confident manner that confused him. He stared at me for a moment. “Are you or are you not Yu Hua?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, “but I don’t know you.”

  He gave a roar of rage. “Your friend’s dying!”

  “But I don’t have any friends!” I was roaring too.

  “That’s nonsense, you little philistine!” He glared at me.

  “I’m no philistine,” I said. “You can see the proof of that in the books that fill my room. If you’re trying to off-load this guy on me, I absolutely refuse, because I have never had a single friend. However…” I softened my tone. “However, feel free to donate him to my neighbor in apartment four. He’s got a lot of pals and I don’t think he’ll mind if you toss in another.”

  “But he is your friend, don’t try to deny it.” He inched closer, as though he wanted to gobble me up.

  “Who is this friend you’re talking about, anyway?”

  He said a name I had never heard in my life.

  “That name means nothing to me!” I shouted.

  “You fickle little philistine!” He stretched out an arm as thick as my calf and tried to pull my hair.

  I shrank back to the corner of the bed, shouting desperately, “I’m not a philistine—and I’ve got the books to prove it. If you call me a philistine one more time, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  He reached across and with his firm, cold hand grabbed my feeble, warm foot. Then he hauled me out of bed and dumped me on the floor. “Hurry up and get dressed,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll drag you all the way there just as you are.”

  I knew it was pointless to argue any further with this guy, because he was at least five times stronger than I. He could throw me out the window with as little effort as he would toss out a pair of pants. “Since a dying man wants to see me,” I told him, “of course I’m happy to go.” I hauled myself up off the floor and began to get dressed.

  So that’s how, on this lousy morning, a muscleman kicked down my door and lumbered me with a friend I had no interest in having—and a friend who was about to die, on top of that. What’s more, the north wind was howling like a banshee outside. I had no overcoat or scarf, no gloves or hat—all I was wearing was a thin jacket as I went off with the big fellow dressed in full winter gear, to visit this friend I knew absolutely nothing about.

  Once we were in the street, the north wind blew me and the big fellow to the friend’s house just as quickly as it would blow a couple of leaves off a tree. The doorway was piled high with wreaths. The big fellow turned to me and said dolefully, “Your friend is dead.”

  Before I had time to consider whether this was a cause for rejoicing or an occasion for grief, I heard a loud chorus of weeping, toward which the big fellow proceeded to push me.

  A crowd of tearful men and women surrounded me. “Don’t take things so hard,” they said to me solicitously.

  All I could do was nod and put on a show of being sad, because now there was no point in saying the things I really wanted to say. I gently patted them on the shoulder and patted their hair, showing my appreciation for their condolences. I also shook hands forcefully and at length with several burly men, at the same time promising not to take it so hard.

  Then an old lady tottered forward and grabbed my hand as tears poured down her face. “My son is dead,” she sobbed.

  “I know,” I said. “I am very sad, because it all happened so suddenly.” I even thought of telling her that her son and I had watched the sunset together just the day before.

  My comment had the effect of opening the floodgates still further, and her wails were now so piercing my hair stood on end.

  “Please don’t take it so hard,” I said.

  Her crying seemed to subside a little and she began to dry her tears with my hand. Then she raised her head and said, “You need to take it in stride too.”

  I nodded reassuringly. “Oh, I will do that. But you must take care of your health.”

  Again she mopped her face with my hand, as though it were a handkerchief. Her muddy, scalding tears made an awful mess, and I would have grabbed my hand back at once had she not been clutching it so tightly. “You need to mind your health too,” she said.

  “I will mind my health—we all must do that,” I said. “We must transform grief into strength.”

  She nodded. “My son closed his eyes before you could get here—you don’t blame him, do you?”

  “No, I’d never do that,” I said.

  Once more she burst out sobbing. After a while she recovered enough to say, “He was the only son I had, but he’s dead. You’re my son now.”

  Tugging desperately, I was finally able to retrieve my hand, on the pretext that I needed it to wipe away my own tears—though my eyes were completely dry. Then I said, “Actually, I’ve thought of you as my mother for a long time now.” I had no choice but to say that.

  These words provoked her to an even greater cascade of tears. There was not much else I could do but pat her gently on the shoulder, and by the time she finally turned off the waterworks my hand was aching. She took it in hers and led me to another room, saying, “Go in and keep my son company for a bit.”

  I pushed open the door and went inside. The room was empty apart from a dead man lying on a bed and covered with a white shroud. The chair next to the bed seemed to be meant for me, so I sat down.

  I sat there for a good long time before lifting the shroud to see what the man looked like. I glimpsed a pale face that gave little indication of age, a face I had never seen before. I put the shroud back and thought, So that’s my friend.

  There I sat, next to the corpse whose face I had just seen but then instantly forgotten. It wasn’t my idea to come here—I came simply because I couldn’t think of a way to get out of it. Although the man’s death had delivered me from a friendship I refused to recognize, this had not relieved me of my burden, for his mother had simply taken his place: an old woman whom I did not know and had no feelings for had become my mother. However distasteful it was that she treated my hand as her handkerchief, I had no choice but to let her dry her tears with it. And in the future, whenever she needed it, I’d have to offer it to her respectfully, without voicing the slightest complaint. It was only too clear what I had to do next. I’d have to fork out twenty yuan to buy a big wreath, I’d have to don sackcloth and wear mourning and guard his coffin, I’d have to weep and wail for ages, and I’d have to parade through the streets with one arm around the cremation urn and the other propping up his mother. And after all that was over, I’d have to sweep his grave every April, not to mention carry on his unfinished labors and perform the duties of a filial son. But the first order of business—and the most important thing as far as I was concerned—was to find a carpenter and get him to rehang the door that the big fellow had kicked down. Right now, however, all I could do was stay with this confounded corpse.

  The April 3rd Incident

  1

  Sta
nding by the window at eight in the morning, he looked out and seemed to see a lot of things, but none of them really registered—he was conscious only of a bright yellow patch on the ground. That’s sunshine, he thought. Then, putting his hand in his pocket, he felt a cold, metallic sensation. This rather startled him, and his fingers began to tremble, surprising him all the more. But when his fingers slowly advanced along the side of the metal, the strange sensation did not develop further; it became fixed. So his hand, too, ceased all movement. Gradually the metal lost its chill—it grew warm, as warm as lips. But before long the warmth dissipated. The object seemed to have merged with his fingers, and so it was as though it no longer existed. Its impressive little show was already a thing of the past.

  It was a key, its color much like that of the sunlight outside. Its irregular, bumpy teeth somehow conjured the image of a potholed, arduous road, a road that he might one day have to take.

  Now he needed to think: To whom was the key related? It would unlock the door. When the key turned in the lock, what would happen? If one imagined a paper fan unfurling halfway like an accordion, that would resemble the arc of the door as it opened—an elegant and unhurried arc, no doubt. At the same time it would make a sound like an accordion’s first, fluttering note. If one proceeded to anticipate what would happen next, surely it would be him entering the room from outside. And he would smell a sweaty odor, an odor that was his. At least he hoped it was his, and not his parents’.

  As he was imagining himself pushing the door and stepping inside, his body had actually done quite the opposite: to put it simply, he had exited the room and now was standing outside. He stretched out an arm and pulled the door shut. At the final moment he tugged sharply and the door banged against the frame. The noise was so blunt and powerful, it made him—go out.

  Without question, he was now walking in the street. But he didn’t have the sensation of walking—it was rather as though he were still inside the house, next to the window. In other words, he only knew and did not feel that he was walking along the street. This realization took him aback.