by Yu Hua
That stocky middle-aged man was cordial and friendly. He was different from Gu Lin and the others: he would believe what Bai Shu said.
He entered the County Revolutionary Committee compound, and there in the middle, among the many temporary shelters, was that biggest shelter of all. When the chairman walked through the streets he was regarded with awe by passersby, but to Bai Shu he was friendly and cordial.
He saw the chairman now: he was sitting on the bed and he looked exhausted. The man who had been at his side four days earlier was with him again, dialing the phone. Bai Shu stood at the entrance to the shelter. The chairman saw him but paid no attention, his eyes fixed on the phone.
He hesitated for some time before saying, “The monitor reading is normal.”
The call went through, and the man talked into the receiver.
The chairman seemed to have recognized him, for he nodded. The other man finished talking on the phone and hung up. “Well?” the chairman asked brusquely.
The assistant shook his head. “They haven’t lifted the warning, either.”
He cursed under his breath. “Damn it, when is this going to end?” Only then did he ask, “What did you say?”
“For the last four days the monitor reading has been normal,” he said.
“The monitor?” He looked at him for a long time, and finally said, “Very good, very good. You must definitely continue to monitor. This is important work.”
He felt a few droplets in his eyes. “Gu Lin and the others accused me of making things up.”
“That was unfair,” the chairman said. “Go on back. I’ll tell your teacher to criticize the classmates who accused you.”
The physics teacher had said the monitor could predict earthquakes.
He was walking in the street once more, this time confident that he was believed. Then he realized he had forgotten a key point, that the monitor had definitely detected the tremor of four days earlier, but he had simply not been present at the time.
Tell him later, he said to himself.
The physics teacher’s wife was sitting in the shelter; through the pouring rain he could see her watching him. They had spoken on a bright afternoon, but now the sports field was empty and desolate and he walked alone toward the main gate of the school.
“Is this your satchel?” Her voice had filled the field with flowers in bloom. The sight of her walking toward him was what had led him to forget the satchel.
“Bai Shu!”
Rain was spinning through the air. The shout had come from beneath the dripping eaves. Chen Gang was sitting in front of an ancient black door. “Have you seen Gu Lin and the others?”
Chen Gang sat on the doorsill, his body hunched.
Bai Shu shook his head. The slanting rain separated him from Chen Gang.
“Could there still be an earthquake?”
Bai Shu rubbed the raindrops off his face. “The monitor is normal,” he said. He didn’t say there wouldn’t be an earthquake.
Chen Gang rubbed his face too. “I’m sick,” he told Bai Shu.
A gust of wind blew, and Chen Gang shivered. “I have a fever.”
“Better go back inside,” Bai Shu said.
Chen Gang shook his head. “I’m not going back to the shelter, even if it kills me.”
Bai Shu continued on his way. Chen Gang was sick, but the teacher would soon reprimand him. He couldn’t blame them for what happened four days earlier. He shouldn’t have told the committee chairman what they had done.
Wu Quan’s wife appeared out of the rain, pushing a flatbed cart. Its wheels sent water spattering in all directions as they rolled along the street, and the wind made her raincoat flap wildly. As the cart passed, a gust of wind blew the shroud to one side, revealing Wu Quan’s face, now eerily serene. The spark of life had died just as suddenly in Bai Shu’s father’s eyes, before a tranquil expression appeared on his face too. Wu Quan’s wife struggled on, pushing the cart with all her might.
At dusk many years earlier, as sunset spread its colors across the sky, Wu Quan’s wife was young and pretty. In those days nobody knew who she was going to marry. She and Wu Quan stood together on the bridge, as a wooden boat swung toward them and tree leaves and cabbage leaves floated on the water beneath the houses with their windows open. He happened to be crossing the bridge then with a bottle of cooking oil in his hand and he watched them from a distance, just as others did.
The wooden bridge had later been torn down and replaced by a concrete one. But now it was the wooden bridge that he saw.
2
The physics teacher’s wife gazed at the wall of the old house that faced the earthquake shelter. Rain spilled down the wall, scattering in all directions like rays of light. A scene from long ago had taken on a new life. For the old wall was almost as green as grass, and as the rain spurted the wisps of light reminded her of a morning many years earlier when she sat at a table and saw how the windblown grass was bending away from her.
“The sun came up.” The teacher read the text aloud.
“The sun came up.” The class repeated.
“And cast its rays everywhere.”
“And cast its rays everywhere.”
The rays of sunrise grew on the tips of the grass, and the wisps of light were bending away from her. That morning long ago had come back to life, here by the old wall as the rain poured down.
The jubilant exodus of four days earlier had been just a passing glory. Once news came that there would be no earthquake, the PE instructor was the first to leave the shelters, soon followed by her husband and her, but they got no farther than the old wall. She could already see in the distance the cream-yellow door of home, only to have to turn around again.
Her mother, who lived behind another cream-yellow door, liked talking to her cat. “If you keep on being naughty, I am going to have to trim your fur.”
She heard a moan nearby. Her husband’s moans were as regular a fixture now as the patter of rain on the tarps.
When would the wind and rain end? When would sunshine come out of the textbook?
“And cast its rays everywhere.”
“Illuminating the earth.”
Where did that tearing sound come from?
Her husband sat by the entrance to the kitchen, tearing old pieces of cloth into strips.
“Making a mop,” he said.
She turned and saw her husband tearing a shirt into pieces. Damp for so long, the shirt was well on its way toward disintegrating. He laid the pieces neatly on his leg.
She put her hand on his. “Don’t do that,” she said.
When he turned toward her, she saw a smug smile on his face.
He continued to tear up the shirt. She felt her hand drooping, and though she raised it once more it did not stay up.
“Don’t do that,” she repeated.
The smile spread across his face and he gazed at her defiantly as he tore another strip. He was trembling from the effort, and soon he stopped and his smile disappeared. Breathing heavily, he gripped the edge of the bed.
She looked away, and the old wall with the rain pouring down appeared once more.
“Where is Beijing?” she had asked.
Only one student raised his hand.
“Kang Wei.”
Kang Wei stood up and pointed to his heart. “Beijing is here.”
“Who else can answer?”
No other pupil raised a hand.
“Everyone now recite a lyric: ‘I love Beijing’s Tiananmen…’ ”
The bed shook as her husband rose to his feet. He knocked his head against the plastic tarp as he stepped out of the shelter and into the pouring rain. He stood there for a moment, his tattered shirt flapping in the wind and his rain-soaked back
blocking her view of the old wall. Then he moved off and the wall reappeared.
That morning, rays of light had been slanting away.
“Liu Jing’s dove,” Father had said.
A white dove flew toward the rising sun, its feathers showing wisps of sunrise color.
The old wall was blocked once more, as a boy’s figure appeared. He looked at her hesitantly. “I came to tell the physics teacher,” he said, “the monitor has been normal throughout.”
“Come in,” she said.
The boy came in. His head knocked against the tarp but did not push it up. His coat was dripping.
“Take your coat off,” she said.
He took it off, but remained standing.
“Have a seat.”
The bed shook as he sat down on the end farthest away from her. Now another person was sitting on the bed. On days when late afternoon sunshine shone in through the window, it was warm there.
Had she already told him that the physics teacher would be back any minute?
Rain poured down the old wall.
A little flower called a lilac, its colors subdued, had quietly blossomed by the threshold of her house.
“It’s a lilac,” her sister had said.
That’s how she learned that lilacs are not so very attractive.
“It’s not as pretty as its name.”
CHAPTER SIX
1
Late in the afternoon, Dawei came back alone. Li Ying’s voice rang out forlornly in the rain. “You couldn’t find him?”
“I went all over town.” Dawei splashed his way toward her. And then there was no sound at all.
“I know where Xingxing is,” Zhong Qimin said.
Wu Quan’s wife lay in bed. Zhong Qimin sat in the chair by the window, his eyes fixed on her bulging midriff. In the murky light, it cast a shadow that rose and fell ever so slightly on the wall. Before long, a child would appear in the courtyard, toddling along with hesitant steps, one hand on the wall, and soon he would grow big, just as big as Xingxing.
Xingxing was not coming back.
“I know where he is,” Zhong Qimin repeated.
When Wu Quan’s wife returned from the crematorium, she did not go back to the shelter but went home instead, and in his mind Zhong Qimin went to see her there.
The flute music floated toward the rain outside. It was linked to a scene in which sunshine skimmed over water and brightly colored butterflies flitted about on a nearby lawn. But there was no child walking on the grass, for the child had not yet been born.
Zhong Qimin did not come in with Wu Quan’s wife—he came into her house along with her swollen belly.
Now Wu Quan’s wife was sitting up, her eyes as bright as water in the dark room.
Where the Grand Canal entered Hangzhou, fields stretched in all directions. Boys with sickles in their hands and baskets of grass on their backs—four of them, there should be—walked toward him, and the notes of the flute pulsed on the water.
Wu Quan’s wife went on sitting there, while the rain beat down in a neat, precise tempo. As time passed, human clamor subsided and the rain was imbued with stillness, so that it seemed as stationary as the concrete utility poles outside. Rain had poured down the whole day in an unchanging rhythm and by its very monotony had become a form of quiet.
Wu Quan’s wife stood up, her body sluggish as she turned. Was she planning to go upstairs? There would be a bed up there too. But instead she entered a small room—the kitchen, it had to be.
“Ah!”
A woman’s screech, like that of a bird swooping down from a cliff.
“A snake!”
The scream hung in the air for a long time before it was carried off by the wind.
“A snake! There’s a snake!” The cries became staccato.
There was the sound of someone dashing out of a shelter in panic and splashing frantically through the rain.
“There’s a snake inside the shelter.”
Nobody paid any attention.
“There’s a snake.”
Her voice became weak, and now she was talking to herself. Then she remembered to cry.
Why would nobody listen to her?
Her sobs circled around their heads, but her sobs were feeble and insubstantial, unable to knock a hole in the rain’s stillness.
Zhong Qimin heard the clatter of a wok; she had probably started cooking. She needed to cook for two, although she was the only one to eat. The child inside her would soon come into the world, grow up rapidly, and then enter quietly and sit at his feet, listening to his flute.
As soon as the music sounded, it eclipsed her weeping.
When it’s raining, flute music always has a link to sunshine. The sky should be blue; in the northlands, the earth and the sunshine are much the same color. He had once hiked there for a day, the notes of his flute resounding on the sunbaked earth. A boy appeared between some leafless trees, his skin at one moment as yellow as the earth and the next moment as yellow as the sunlight, or perhaps it was both at the same time. The boy began to tag along behind, his eyes as black as the ocean’s deepest depths.
Wu Quan’s wife was sitting on the bed once more and looking at him. Her eyes gleamed with a glance that looked almost like Xingxing’s, but it wasn’t her glance so much as the glance of the child-to-be. The still-unborn child had heard his flute and was looking at him with his mother’s eyes.
Something fell down with a huge crash and there was the sound of someone struggling, his cries muffled.
It was Lin Gang’s voice that finally emerged. “Wang Hongsheng, my shelter has collapsed!” He sounded rattled. “I thought it was an earthquake.”
He cried again, “Wang Hongsheng, give me a hand, will you?”
No response.
“Wang Hongsheng!”
Wang Hongsheng’s weary voice emerged from his shelter. “How about you come in here?”
Lin Gang stood in the rain. “I can’t do that. How can three people fit in such a tight space?”
Wang Hongsheng said nothing.
“I’ll do it myself.” As Lin Gang yanked on the tarp, water cascaded down. Nobody went to help him.
Wu Quan’s wife now stood up and went back into the kitchen; soon he heard the sound of a wok being lifted off the burner.
I ought to get back, he said to himself.
2
She felt beads of sweat crawling on her skin, glistening beads. What is it those broad-leaved trees are called? On bright mornings the leaves are covered in glistening drops of dew. Rays of the rising sun shine into the drops, creating rifts in them. The beads of sweat on her body had a similar sparkle, but no such rifts.
The pitter-patter repeated itself endlessly, but the moans had ceased a long time ago—was her husband never coming back? Later, it was that boy Bai Shu who arrived, and two people were sitting on the bed once more. This boy was always showing up—as soon as she thought of him he would appear. He would sit there quietly, with no moaning and no tearing of shirts, but there would still be two people sitting on the bed.
The rain on the old wall spattered everywhere as before. But now a gust of wind came and the leaves that hung over the earthquake shelters made a swaying sound that began to disrupt the uniform pitter-patter of raindrops. Inside the shelter the breeze brought a whiff of crisp, early morning coolness.
“Now we’ll read the lesson,” the Chinese teacher said. “Chen Ling, read the fourth paragraph.”
She stood up. “The wind died, the rain stopped….”
The old wall where the rain spattered was obscured by a body. It moved inside—it was her husband. Her husband’s body pressed down on the bed. Bai Shu would be here very soon, but there were already two people on the bed. She felt he
r husband’s eyes gleaming. One hand reached inside her clothes and made a beeline for her breasts; the other hand rested on her spine.
A boy very much like Bai Shu was sitting next to her desk.
“The wind died, the rain stopped….”
Her husband’s fingers were laden with familiar language, a language constantly repeated these past few years, calling her skin again and again.
Perhaps there had been such an afternoon when a youth came walking out of the sunshine, his dark hair waving in the breeze. Yes, he surely must have come out of the sunshine—that would be why she felt so warm.
The body next to hers stood up, and her own found itself controlled by a pair of hands. The hands helped her to her feet and led her toward the old wall where the rain danced. She felt rain on her face, along with a cooling breeze. Morning opened the window and she saw how the grass was dancing in the wind.
That pair of hands continued to guide her, a familiar voice was guiding her as her body and another’s moved through the rain.
The rain had suddenly stopped, but the wind seemed all the fiercer. They were in a corridor, it appeared, with classrooms on right and left. Now they began to go upstairs, the other body leading her.
The folder holding her lecture notes fell onto the stairs and a heap of music scores scattered everywhere like snowflakes.
“Good students will pick them up for me.”
Students were drifting like snowflakes, not far away.
Now they had reached the top of the stairs. Her body and the other one came into a room. There would be an organ next to the blackboard, and sunshine would slip through the cracks between the tree leaves and flow across the keys. Without her fingers the organ could not sing.
There seemed to be a clatter of desks being shifted, shrill like the shouts of the children on the playing field. The students on cleaning duty began to sweep the floor, their brooms knocking against one another, the dust flying like snowflakes, like song scores.