by Yu Hua
Wu Quan returned once more, this time heavily laden. “Better get over there!” he yelled as he unloaded bamboo and plastic sheeting from his cart. “Everyone’s buying this stuff.”
But the courtyard was already empty of menfolk, for they had rushed off to the shops a few minutes earlier, so his announcement did not elicit much of a reaction. Only a woman’s voice rang out—it sounded like Wang Hongsheng’s wife. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
Wu Quan pretended not to hear this. His wife was now in the doorway, seemingly not daring to look in the direction of the noise. She took a few steps toward her husband, offering to give him a hand, but he said, “Leave it.” So she stood where she was and watched with bowed head as he measured the ground with his foot.
“Let’s put it here,” he said. “That way, we won’t get crushed if the house collapses.”
She looked around. “I wonder if it’s too much in the middle?” she murmured.
“It has to be here,” he said.
The woman who had spoken earlier spoke up once more. “You can’t put up a shelter there!”
Wu Quan again feigned deafness. He stood on a chair and stuck a bamboo pole into the earth.
“Hey, did you hear me?”
Wu Quan got down off the chair and picked up another bamboo pole.
“The guy has no shame.” It was another female voice. “You ought to leave room for others.”
“Wu Quan!” A woman’s voice once more. “You’ve got to leave space for others.”
It was all women talking, Zhong Qimin thought. Like shards of broken glass. He pressed the flute to his lips. Sometimes music can conquer all before it. Late one night he had stood in a little alley that kept turning this way and that. The silence there was different from that of the vast grasslands or the high peaks—it was a hidden treasure that needed to be savored with care. When he resumed his wanderings, the alley kept turning corners and it was as though his walking was part of an incessant repetition, or an infinite simplicity.
Now it was women’s voices no longer. The air quivered with the cries of Wang Hongsheng, Lin Gang, and the others. They hadn’t taken long.
“If you’re reasonable, we’ll be reasonable too. If you’re not going to be reasonable, you can’t expect us to be reasonable, either.” Wang Hongsheng’s voice carried loud and clear.
Lin Gang prepared to dismantle the shelter that Wu Quan had partially assembled. Wang Hongsheng restrained him. “Don’t take it down yet. Wait till he’s got it all up.”
Li Ying was calling her son now. “Xingxing!”
“That kid keeps disappearing.”
“Xingxing!” she called again.
Music can reign supreme. He had seen photographs of the moon’s surface. In that harsh and desolate landscape there are no trees and no rivers, and no animal stirs. Everything is illuminated by a cold light, a light that is dark and sharp. It roams quietly among the coarse, untidy rocks. It’s a world without a voice, a place where music should make its home.
A fresh-faced young boy was now sitting by his feet—he didn’t know when he’d come in. The boy, target of the cries that could still be heard outside, sat quietly with a finger in his mouth, watching Zhong Qimin with a calm and artless gaze.
He felt he should play a tune that a child would like.
4
A couple of days earlier, the monitor had started working once more. The reason for the breakdown was simple: one of the lines going into the ground had snapped. Bai Shu had discovered the break near a tree on the west side of the sports field.
There, where twenty-four hours earlier scraps of paper were flying, a different spectacle could now be seen. Practically all the teachers in the school were milling around and makeshift earthquake shelters were beginning to appear.
In a yellowing book that had lost its cover, one could find a description of a campground: on a grassy slope, beneath snow-capped mountains, a dressing station for Allied casualties had been set up, and pretty nurses were walking to and fro among the tents.
The physics teacher had erected the frame for a shelter and now was laying plastic sheeting on top. Off to one side the Chinese teacher said, “It’s a bit too low.”
“Safer this way,” the physics teacher replied.
His shelter lay close to the road and leaned against a sturdy tree whose branches spread out above the tent. “They’ll help block flying tiles,” the physics teacher explained.
Bai Shu stood nearby. He looked in befuddlement at the spectacle before him. Under a blue sky, the snow on the peaks was dazzling—that was how he remembered the scene in the book, and he was baffled by the reality that had so suddenly taken shape. He did not move an inch, even after the Chinese teacher left. The physics teacher was busy with the plastic sheeting, so Bai Shu waited for him to finish and made his approach only when the teacher started walking around the tent to inspect his handiwork.
There was nothing wrong with the monitor, he told the physics teacher—it was just that a wire had been severed. He pointed to the spot. “Over there by the tree.”
The physics teacher was surprised to see him. “Why have you not gone home yet?” he said.
He just stood there. “There is no abnormal activity on the monitor.”
“Go on home,” the physics teacher said. He continued to inspect the tent, before adding, “Don’t come back here again.”
Bai Shu stuck his hand in the pocket where he kept the key that opened the door to the little house at the north end. When the teacher told him not to come back, he interpreted this to mean: he wants the key back.
But the teacher said nothing about a key; he said only, “How come you’re still here?”
As Bai Shu headed toward the main gate, he saw the physics teacher’s wife coming his way along the perimeter wall. She was carrying heavy loads in both hands and her body was leaning to the right as the wind blew her black dress to the left.
Just then he heard the loudspeakers broadcasting the news that an earthquake was imminent. But the monitor had given no such signal. He watched as the physics teacher’s wife trudged toward him. He felt sure that the broadcast had got things wrong. The teacher’s wife was getting closer and closer. The loudspeakers were broadcasting an emergency speech delivered by the chairman of the County Revolutionary Committee. But the monitor reading was completely normal. The teacher’s wife was now very near. She threw him a glance and went into the school.
In the street he ran into Gu Lin, Chen Gang, and the others, all in a state of high excitement. “There’s going to be an earthquake at midnight tonight!” they cried. “We’re not going to bother to go to bed.”
He shook his head. “No way.” The monitor was normal, he told them.
They burst out laughing. “Have you told Beijing?”
Then they walked on, shouting as they went, “Earthquake at midnight!”
Again he shook his head, again he said, “It’s not going to happen.”
But none of them heard.
It was nightfall by the time he got home. There was nobody there, and he knew his mother must have moved into one of the tents outside. He stood alone in the dark. The physics teacher’s wife had walked slowly toward him, her body leaning to the right as the wind blew her dress to the left. He went downstairs.
He found his mother in the open lot outside. There were three tents there and his mother’s was on the far right. She was making the bed and Wang Liqiang was picking up dishes. There was just the one bed, and he knew he’d be sharing it with his mother. He thought of that little house on the north side of the school—there was a bed there too. When setting it up, the physics teacher had told him, “In an emergency, there needs to be someone on duty.”
Seeing him come in, his mother was a little embarrassed, and Wang Liqiang stop
ped picking up the dishes. “Ah, there you are,” she said.
He nodded.
“I’ll say goodbye,” Wang Liqiang said. As he stepped out he added, “If you need anything, just call me.”
Bai Shu’s mother thanked Wang Liqiang politely.
Bai Shu thought: Actually, I know perfectly well what’s going on between you two.
His father’s funeral had been a wretched affair. Chang De, the man from the crematorium, had led the way, hauling the flatbed cart on which his father lay, covered by a white sheet. His mother shed no tears but raised her pale face toward the gloomy sky. He tramped along beside her as classmates on the way to school watched them from the sidewalk. It took them a long time to get where they were going.
CHAPTER TWO
1
Only the Tibetan sky can be such a deep, ethereal blue; it shrouds the peaks where no plants grow. The mountains in the foreground sported brown stripes, as though crawling with huge snakes. With the Kunlun mountains now behind, the bus had begun to enter the Tanggula range. A bank of clouds floated toward the baking sun and whittled away its light bit by bit, before finally arriving beneath the sun and challenging its authority. The plain suddenly darkened, as though night was about to fall. In the far distance he saw wild yaks ambling serenely, following their own trail through the tranquil colors of the high plateau.
Amid the drizzle, the flute brought to an end its final melody. As he sat by the window, Zhong Qimin pictured the tune he had just played shuttling through chinks in the rain and into the far distance, where it entered a sky he could not see, a sky in which dawn’s rosy sunshine now fluttered. As the fields unrolled, the trees were the first to receive the sun’s light. Over there, all the sounds of dawn were beginning to rise and merge with the sunshine, spreading everywhere in the pure air, without the least discordant note.
The pitter-patter of rain outside had persisted for days, just like the rumors of an imminent earthquake. Zhong Qimin gazed at the ramshackle shelters in the open lot, as rain beat down on the plastic sheeting under which the occupants were hidden. The concrete surface of the open lot was inches deep in water.
Lin Gang appeared in the one corner that was not yet occupied by tents. “Oh, that feels so good!” he shouted.
He turned around. “Wang Hongsheng! Hey, come over here.”
“Where are you?” Wang Hongsheng’s voice sounded as though it had been wrapped in a cotton sack. He must have stuck his head out of his tent as the rain pelted down.
No earthquake had arrived that night, when it was so confidently predicted. Instead the summer rains had come.
Wang Hongsheng and the others were now standing next to Lin Gang under a crowd of umbrellas, their heads pressed together. They lit cigarettes.
“It does feel good out here.”
“Oh, it’s unbearable in the tents.”
“So incredibly stuffy.”
“The worst thing is that plastic smell,” said Wang Hongsheng.
“What’s up with these cigarettes? They’re so difficult to smoke.”
“You might as well ask: What’s up with this weather?”
It was a time of almost incessant drizzle. Zhong Qimin gazed at the trees in the distance that were shrouded in a damp mist. It was impossible to see the sky. Rain concealed the blueness there ought to have been and blocked access to sunshine. That’s what rain means: the sky is hidden.
“Might there still be an earthquake?” Nobody had seen an earthquake, and so nobody knew what ruins were like. He had once visited the ruins of Karakhoja in Xinjiang. A town that once had prospered, after a millennium of baking in the hot sun and scouring by dust storms, is now a pile of ruins. He knew what ruins were. The vestiges of ancient houses and city walls could still be seen, but now they were half-buried in sand and glinting yellow in the sunlight. Once the sun set, the old town stood tall and chill in the moonlight, recalling the glory and doom of the past. And then music was born. So he knew what ruins were.
“Zhong Qimin!” It was Lin Gang or maybe Wang Hongsheng calling him.
“He really wants to die a martyr.” That was Wang Hongsheng.
By the time their laughter carried to his window, the rain had reduced it to shreds.
“I guess he thinks he’s cool.” This was Lin Gang.
The doors to their houses were all open, he noticed. Why didn’t they go inside?
Li Ying was calling once again. “Xingxing!”
Umbrella open, she appeared next to Lin Gang and the others.
He didn’t know when the child had arrived at his feet.
“That kid is always wandering off.”
The child heard his mother’s shout and pressed his finger to his lips.
“Xingxing!”
Xingxing’s hair was wet through. Zhong Qimin bent down and dried the boy’s face. The boy’s shirt was soaked and his skin was turning white.
“Dawei!” Li Ying began to call her husband.
An answering call emerged from the tent.
“Come out of there!” Li Ying cried, sobbing. Again she shouted, “Xingxing!”
There was a patter of rain.
The boy’s eyes glowed bright. He knew what he was looking forward to.
2
On the ground, water lapped to and fro, and the plastic sheeting flapped in the wind as the rain beat down with a dull, heavy rhythm. From time to time they heard snatches of the conversation between Wang Hongsheng and the others.
“Why don’t you go stand outside for a bit too?” she said.
Wu Quan sat on the bed, his body bent, as sweat dribbled down his face. He shook his head.
She put her hand on his shirt. “Your clothes are all wet.”
His hand was covered with pale wrinkles, as though it had been steeped in water for hours.
“Take your shirt off,” she said.
But he just gazed at the water sloshing about. She reached out a hand to unfasten his buttons. “Don’t do that,” he said wearily. “Any kind of movement tires me out.”
Damp, unruly hair concealed much of her face. She gripped the bed tightly, as though that was the only way to avoid tipping over. Her swollen belly made her lean slightly backward and her legs hung loose, the pale skin on her feet looking as though it had somehow detached from the underlying tissue, like a sheet of paper stuck clumsily on a wall and apt to be blown away at any moment.
Through the rain’s constant patter the voices carried to them, along with the lilt of Zhong Qimin’s flute and the wind’s soughs. Occasionally the wind would make little forays into the tent, stirring movement in the stuffy atmosphere and opening up little cracks of comfortable space.
“Go on out for a bit,” she repeated.
There was such a look of fatigue on her face that he couldn’t bring himself to leave her on her own. He shook his head. “I don’t feel like standing around with them.”
The voices outside were still loud, but the flute had now fallen silent and the wind blew free and easy.
“I’ll come out too,” she said.
They crept out of the tent, unfurled the umbrella, and stood there, sucking in the fresh air.
“It’s like opening a window when you get up in the morning,” she said.
“Xingxing!”
Li Ying’s shout sounded much louder now.
Xingxing emerged from the rain, his head sunk into his chest. He threw a glance at the window and Zhong Qimin waved his flute.
“Xingxing, where have you been all this time?” Li Ying sounded furious.
Her husband noticed that her legs were trembling. “Are you too tired for this?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Let’s go back.”
“I’m not tired,” she said.
“Let’s go.”
She turned around and took a couple of steps toward the tent, only to discover he was making no effort to follow her. “I really don’t want to go back to the tent,” he said with a frown.
She smiled. “Then stay out here a bit longer.”
“What I meant was—” He stopped. “Let’s go over to our house. What I’m thinking is—” he went on. “We’ll go to the house and sit for a bit—just in the doorway, I mean—and after that we’ll go back.” He threw a weary glance at the tent.
CHAPTER THREE
1
The monitor continued to show no sign of a pending earthquake. In the morning the rain became patchy and the sky was no longer a heavy gray. Although black clouds still rolled across the sky, a reassuring pale light began faintly to reveal itself. The drizzle had persisted for three whole days. As he watched a few stray raindrops swirling through the air, he remained convinced that there wasn’t going to be an earthquake.
In the streets, water was sloshing everywhere. That’s what he had told Gu Lin and the others. The shelter occupied by the leader of the Workers’ Propaganda Team stood in the middle of the sports field. Under a blue sky, the snow on the peaks was dazzling. But he could not tell the propaganda team leader that an earthquake wasn’t going to happen; all he could say was, “The monitor is normal.”
“The monitor?”
The team leader sat miserably inside the shelter, mopping the sweat off his bare arms.
“Damn it, why did I never hear about this monitor?”
He remained standing outside in the rain.
The team leader fixed his eyes on Bai Shu. “Does the thing work?” he asked suspiciously.
He had detected signs of the Tangshan earthquake three days before it happened, he answered.
The team leader took another long look at Bai Shu and shook his head. “How can you know ahead of time there’s going to be such a big earthquake? That monitor is just for fooling around.”