by Yu Hua
Again that familiar pair of hands was leading her, pressing her, until her feet left the floor. Her body lay down and the hands began to talk to her clothes. The other body mounted hers, and one body called to another in conventional speech.
A sparrow had once flown in through the window, into the organ music and song. The children’s glances followed the sparrow as it fluttered.
“Get it out of here.”
The students rushed up, but it didn’t look as though they meant to drive the bird away.
Something had entered her, she ought to be able to remember what. It was a sentence she’d often heard, a line one never got tired of using that had come in. Why was the body on top so agitated?
She understood now: the children were trying to capture the sparrow.
“Just leave it alone.”
Later the sparrow flew out of the classroom all by itself.
3
When Dawei returned from town that afternoon, Li Ying’s sobs, long suppressed, carried through the air once more.
Dawei had brought a child back with him. His shouts could be heard even as they were still in the alleyway. “Li Ying, Li Ying—I’ve found Xingxing!”
There was an outburst of weeping, and the sound of two pairs of feet tramping through water toward each other.
“Xingxing!” Li Ying wailed as she hugged the boy.
He struggled in her arms, his protests muffled.
“I found him next to the garbage dump.” Dawei’s voice was loud. “A typhoon is coming.” Again he spoke loudly.
In the wind and rain only their voices could be heard. Nobody came out of the shelters to encroach on their relief.
“A typhoon is coming.”
Why was Dawei so elated? Was it because of Xingxing’s return, or because a typhoon was on its way?
Xingxing was back.
Wu Quan’s wife sat on the bed looking at Zhong Qimin, who was raising his flute.
With his paper glasses Xingxing could see everything, and after his long outing he was back home again. Flute music filled the air.
Evening was approaching. The fields stretched as far as the eye could see and the rays of the setting sun could not have been warmer. The path stretched across the fields in the same winding manner as a fish’s passage through water, and somehow it had a way of returning to where it started: just so long as you kept walking straight, you would find yourself heading home.
Li Ying’s weeping trailed off. She was saying something to the boy, but the words were indistinct. Dawei shouted once more, “A typhoon is coming!”
Still they stood in the rain, but nobody came out to join them. They began to trudge toward the shelter.
Zhong Qimin waited until the splashing sounds had disappeared before raising his flute once more.
The image that came to mind was of a leaf that has just left the tree, its greenness unsullied by dust; as it neared the ground a gust of wind changed its fate. It landed on the stream, and water glinting with dappled sunlight clambered on top. It sank to the bottom, resting on earth, after all.
The sound of Dawei and the others was now replaced by wind and rain. Surely Xingxing would have heard his flute and would sneak out to linger by his feet. But the boy did not appear.
He began to recall where he was. Xingxing would not come here, for this window was not his. So he stood up and went outside, and through a sheet of rain he saw his own window in the distance. Xingxing was perhaps already sitting there. So that was where he went.
4
Much later, she became aware of how heavy her body felt as she returned to waking consciousness. Through the open window there came sounds of pelting rain. She turned and watched the trees trembling in the storm. Then she discovered that she was lying in the classroom, naked below the waist. Astonished, she rose hastily, dressed, and sat down in a chair.
When she tried to remember the scene prior to this, it seemed to have happened a long time ago. She could faintly hear the sound of a shirt being torn, and an image of her husband appeared jerkily in her mind and just as jerkily departed. Then it was Bai Shu who came into the picture, sitting quietly next to her.
Now she sat alone in the earthquake shelter. Whose body was it that was blocking her view of the old wall? It had stretched out a hand to her, and so she lay down.
She stood up and walked toward the door. When she reached the staircase, the body that had led her upstairs came to mind once more, but she could not think whose it was.
At the bottom of the stairs she saw the earthquake shelter straight ahead of her, her husband sitting inside. She walked toward him.
When she sat down by his side, again she could picture herself half naked in the classroom, and she felt frightened. She put out an arm and clasped her husband’s hand.
His head drooping, he showed no reaction whatsoever.
“Just now I—” Her voice sounded unfamiliar to her ears. “Please forgive me,” she murmured.
Her husband’s head was still bowed.
“Just now I—” she repeated. She thought a while, then shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Her husband tugged his hand away. “Too heavy,” he said. His voice was weary.
Her hand slipped down to the edge of the bed. She said nothing more and began to gaze at the old wall where the rain was still coursing.
After what seemed like a long time, she faintly heard the loudspeaker at the school gate announcing that the typhoon was about to arrive.
The typhoon is coming, she told herself.
Tiles fell from the roof and shattered and a tree fell to the ground, exposing its mud-caked roots.
Her husband stood up now. Dragging his feet, he exited the shelter and disappeared in the rain. After the typhoon the sun was bright. But the elm tree in front of the building had been blown over. She had asked her father, “Did the typhoon do that?”
Her father was about to go out.
She noticed that the grass next to the tree was completely untouched and swayed in the breeze, in the sunshine. “Why wasn’t the grass blown flat?”
5
Sayram Lake in spring is circled by snow-clad peaks, and a white bird darts over the water, its wings as dazzling as snow.
Zhong Qimin sat by his window, but Xingxing still did not appear. He finished playing the last tune that Xingxing had heard.
That boy is not Xingxing, he told himself. Then he stood up, went down the stairs, and came out into the rain. The raindrops were sparse now. He walked toward Wu Quan’s house.
Wu Quan’s wife was not sitting on the bed. As he stood by the door he saw that she had moved her possessions back into the shelter. The way she looked at him prompted him to join her, and he sat down next to her.
Just then the cries of an upset child emerged from Dawei’s shelter. “I want to go home!” the boy cried. “I want to go home!”
“That’s not Xingxing,” he said.
6
Now again there were two people sitting on the bed.
Bai Shu took the red fruit from his pocket and offered them to the physics teacher’s wife.
“What are they?”
Her voice had never sounded so close before, and it brought her scent to him. It was a damp, somewhat sour scent, but it was hers—and it came from the body under her clothes.
Her hand made contact with his, and she popped one of the wild fruit into her mouth. Her lips puckered, and a purple juice dripped quietly from the corner of her mouth. Then she looked at the other fruit nestled in his outstretched hand. She reached out and tipped them into her own palm.
He looked at her sideways. Her long neck, as pale as jade, bent forward slightly, beads of sweat on its surface. A little mole perched quietly on her neck—it had no reason not to be quiet.
A few strands of black hair drifted down over her white skin. Her neck suddenly gave a wonderful little swivel: that was her head turning toward him.
Now there were two people on the bed. It had been that way for ages, it seemed. Her husband had gone out long ago. Later a body blocked her view of the old wall, when Bai Shu came and sat next to her. She began to remember, remember the body that led her into the classroom. Could it have been Bai Shu?
Now the view of the old wall was obscured again, this time by two bodies, one behind the other. Someone asked, “Do you want a steamed bun?”
It was a man, she could see, with a woman behind him holding a basket.
“The buns are hot out of the steamer.”
Bai Shu recognized the speaker as Wang Liqiang; his mother was with him. When she saw him, she tugged Wang Liqiang’s arm and they hurried away.
The old wall in the pouring rain appeared once more. Many years ago, this same kind of rain had soaked the city where she used to live. Holding an umbrella over her head, she stood waiting for a trolleybus. Two youths huddled nearby, water dripping from their hair as though from the eaves of a house. Later one of them slipped in underneath her umbrella. “Is that all right?”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
The other youth, a very good-looking boy, went on standing in the rain, but threw her furtive glances.
“Is he your classmate?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Hey, come and join us,” she called to him. He turned and shook his head, blushing hotly.
“He’s embarrassed.”
The handsome youth went on standing in the rain.
There was another day in early summer, a day with radiant sunshine and no black clouds scudding across the sky, when he sat on a concrete block near the school gate, his legs dangling casually. Almost all the young teachers at the school were standing by the gate, a clear sign that the physics teacher’s city wife would arrive that afternoon. Reports of her beauty had been circulating for some time already among Gu Lin, Chen Gang, and Co. His legs waved ostentatiously as he watched the young teachers mopping sweat from their brows under the fierce sun. Next to him was a plane tree, and above his head its broad leaves were waving too.
Later the young teachers formed two lines at the entrance to the school, and he saw them break into applause, big grins on their faces, as the physics teacher and his wife approached. The physics teacher, though red with embarrassment, was brimming with pride; his wife kept her eyes lowered but chuckled gaily. She walked toward him in a black dress, a black dress that looked stunning in the bright sunshine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yu Hua is the author of five novels, six story collections, and four essay collections. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He has received many awards, including the James Joyce Award, France’s Prix Courrier International, and Italy’s Premio Grinzane Cavour. Yu Hua lives in Beijing.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Allan H. Barr is the translator of Yu Hua’s debut novel, Cries in the Drizzle; his essay collection China in Ten Words; his short story collection Boy in the Twilight; and his most recent novel, The Seventh Day. He teaches Chinese at Pomona College in California.
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