Waiting

by Ha Jin

  The trailer was fully loaded. Ren and his sons couldn’t stay for tea because they would have to return the tractor to the commune Veterinary Station before five o’clock. After saying good-bye to Lin and Hua, they all jumped onto the vehicle, which rolled away with earsplitting toots.

  As the tractor was put-putting down the road, Bensheng came in. His face fell at the sight of the yard, which was almost stripped empty. He asked his niece, “Hua, did you save the wheelbarrow for me?”

  “I think it’s still in the shed.” She went there to see, but returned a minute later, saying, “Damn, they took everything, even the rakes and shovels.”

  Bensheng went up to Lin. “Elder brother, I thought you’d at least give me the sow.”

  “I’m leaving you our family plot.”

  “Forget it! The village is going to take it back.”

  “I—I told Ren to come with a horse cart so we could leave a lot of stuff for you, but he came with a tractor. We have some clothing for Hua’s aunt in the house. Also, don’t you want these?” He pointed to the stacks of brushwood and bean stalks, and a pile of manure.

  “Damn you, such an ungrateful worm!” Bensheng stamped his feet, storming away. His left leg seemed shorter than his right; this caused him to wobble a little.

  Lin and Hua decided to eat at their own home in the evening, not wanting to confront Bensheng. Lin took out some cookies and opened two cans, one of peaches and the other of fried minnow. Together father and daughter sat down to dinner, each drinking a cup of hot water.

  As they were eating, Lin asked Hua whether he should give Bensheng some extra money, say, a hundred yuan, to make up with him. Hua thought for a moment, then said, “Don’t do that. You should save the money for my mother. One hundred yuan is nothing for Uncle Bensheng. Sometimes he can make more than that in a week.”

  “All right, I won’t give him any.” Lin took a bite of a walnut cookie. “If he’s so rich, I don’t understand why he’s so angry at me.”

  “Greedy. He has nothing but money on his mind. He even adds water to soy sauce and vinegar in his store.”

  “Really? Does your aunt know that?”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  They smiled at each other. Lin was pleased with Hua’s smile, which showed she had become his ally. He realized that since he had come home, he had been in good spirits and never felt lonely, perhaps because his daughter had grown close to him again. But she would soon belong to another man. If only he could have kept her around forever, or if only she were ten years younger. No, he said to himself, you’ve been alone all your life and will remain a loner. Don’t be so mushy.

  The house was quiet, as all the animals were gone. Most of the flies had disappeared as well. Somewhere in the village a horse was neighing.

  Dusk was descending after father and daughter had cleared the table and washed the dishes. They had to go to bed early so that they could rise before daybreak to catch the bus. There would be a long, exhausting day tomorrow, since they were to carry three large suitcases containing winter clothes and quilts. After bathing his feet, Lin lit two incense coils to repel mosquitoes, one for his room and the other for Hua’s.

  Having said good night to his daughter, he returned to his room. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t fall asleep. The reed mat under his back was cool, but too hard to be comfortable. Besides, it was only eight o’clock, and the twilight outside wasn’t dim yet. Someone was playing a fiddle in the village, the broken music quite jarring. Lin kept his eyes shut and tried not to think of anything. Gradually he grew a little drowsy.

  A knock on the door woke him and he turned his head. Hua stepped in with a white toweling coverlet over her shoulders. “Dad, can I sleep in your room? I’m scared. That room is too quiet. With so many things gone, it feels spooky in there.”

  He remembered she had slept in her aunt’s room since Shuyu left. “All right, you use the other end of the bed. Did you put out the incense?”

  “Yes.” She climbed onto the brick bed, whose breadth was the same as that of the room, and lay down on the other end. Without a word she closed her eyes.

  Lin looked at her face carefully. Her nose was straight like his, but thinner; her forehead was full and her skin dark but healthy. When she was exhaling, her lips vibrated a little. He was amazed by her pretty looks, which she probably was unaware of. He was certain she would soon become an attractive young woman in the match plant. Why wouldn’t she forget that boy in the navy? She could easily find a man who’d love her more and take better care of her.

  As he was thinking, Hua opened her eyes. “Dad, what’s Muji like?”

  “It’s a big city, with two parks, three large department stores, and six or seven movie theaters.”

  “My friends told me that there were lots of moons in Muji at night. That isn’t true, is it?”

  “Of course not. They must have meant neon lights.”

  “What are neon lights? They look like the moon?”

  “Not exactly. They’re colorful, blinking all the time.”

  “That must be scary. Is my mother afraid of walking alone in the city?”

  “I don’t think so.” He regretted having answered in an uncertain tone, but on the other hand, he had never known how Shuyu felt when she was walking alone. “Hua, will you keep your mother company when she goes shopping in the city?”

  “I will,” she replied with her eyes shut. After a brief lull she said, “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “Were you scared when you left home alone? You were just a teenager then.”

  “Not really.”

  “Didn’t you miss your friends in Wujia after you left?”

  “I had few friends.”

  “Ah, I have so many here.” Her voice turned pensive.

  While father and daughter were conversing with their eyes closed, the night thickened. The table and chests in the room became obscure. Suddenly somebody yelled from the yard, “Come out, you pale-faced wolf!” It was Bensheng’s hoarse voice.

  Lin climbed out of bed, put on his pants, and went out. As he opened the door, sour, alcoholic fumes assailed his nose. Bensheng, in large white shorts and stripped to the waist, pointed at Lin’s face and said, “Elder bro-brother, I want to settle accounts wi-with you tonight.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “I want you to come h-home with me.”

  “All right.”

  Hua came out too, in a pair of pink pajamas. Her uncle waved his hand and croaked, “You’re all su-such heartless beasts, so-so ungrateful.”

  “You’ve drunk too much, Bensheng,” Lin said. “Let me take you—”

  “No, my head isn’t muddled. Everything is cl-clear in here.” He pointed his thumb at his temple, but his legs buckled, shaking.

  “Uncle, please go home.”

  “You’re ungrateful too. You don’t e-even want to eat m-my food. Your aunt made lamb dumplings for you, b-but you wouldn’t show your face.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that!” Hua wailed.

  “Tell me, how come Handong doesn’t de-deserve you? Where can you find a better lad, a real scholar?”

  “I’ve told you I don’t want to think about him, Uncle.”

  “He loves you.”

  “I told you I don’t want a bookworm.”

  Lin felt bad for Bensheng. “My brother,” he said, “we were wrong, all right? Please—”

  “Don’t brother me! You snatched away my sister. Now you’re taking Hua away from me. You bully me be-because I don’t have a child. You, you’re my born enemy. I want to get even with you.” He collapsed to the ground, sobbing like a little boy.

  “Uncle, don’t be so upset. You can visit us and I’ll come back to see you and Aunt. I promise.”

  “Don’t sweet-talk me. I know you think I’m dirty and greedy, but my heart is pure, like gold.” He thumped his chest with his fist.

  As Lin bent down to help him up, Bensheng’s stout wife appeared from the darkness, wea
ring a white T-shirt and mauve slacks. “My old devil,” she cried at her husband, “you come home with me.”

  “Leave me alone,” he grunted.

  “Get up right now!”

  “Okay, my little granny.” He tried to climb to his feet, but his legs were rubbery, unable to support him.

  His wife turned to Lin and said, “I told him not to make any trouble here and let you and Hua leave in peace, but he sneaked out after a pot of horse pee.”

  “He can’t walk anymore. Let me carry him back.” Lin squatted down; Hua and her aunt lifted Bensheng by the arms and put him on Lin’s back.

  Lin carried him piggyback toward Bensheng’s house, which was three hundred yards away, while Hua and her aunt followed, casting their long shadows ahead. As Lin plodded along in the damp moonlight, Bensheng breathed out hot air on the nape of his neck, making his skin tingle. Whenever Bensheng let out a feeble moan or a broken curse, Lin was afraid he would open his mouth to bite him. Hua was saying something to her aunt, her voice hardly audible.

  Soon Lin began panting as the load on his back grew heavier and heavier.

  4

  Hua was hired by the Splendor Match Plant a week after her arrival at Muji. For the time being she stayed with her mother in the hospital at night. She liked her new job, which was lighter than any work in the village—just gluing a slip of paper on the top of each matchbox and wrapping every ten boxes into a packet. Besides, she made more money now—twenty-eight yuan a month. In her heart she was grateful to her father, but she never said a word about it.

  A month later the plant assigned her a room in one of its dormitory houses; so one Sunday morning her mother moved out of the hospital to live with her in town. Lin bought bowls, pots, and some pieces of furniture for them, and he made sure they had enough coal and firewood. From now on, mother and daughter would be on their own. But their life was not worse than other workers’; Hua’s earnings and the alimony Shuyu received could help them make ends meet each month.

  After Shuyu and Hua had settled down, Lin began to attend to his own affairs. One day in October, he and Manna went to the Marriage Registration Office downtown. They gave each of the two women clerks a small bag of Mouse toffees. Without delay the older woman, who looked wizened and limped slightly, filled out a certificate for them. It was a piece of scarlet paper, folded and embossed with the golden words: Marriage License.

  Then the preparations for the wedding began. They were allocated a one-bedroom apartment, which needed a lot of cleaning. For a week, in the evenings they brushed the cobwebs off the ceilings, scrubbed the floors and doors, painted the rusty bed that Lin had borrowed from the Section of General Affairs, and scoured the cooking range. They cleaned the windowpanes, which were speckled with fly droppings, and sealed the cracks around the window with flour-paste and strips of newspaper. The northern wall of the bedroom had some crevices; when it was windy outside, cold air would surge in, making the wallpaper vibrate with eerie noises. Two masons were sent over by the Logistics Department; they filled the crevices with mortar and then whitewashed all the walls.

  In addition to the cleaning and repairing, Lin had to buy a large amount of candies, branded cigarettes, fruit, and wine. At the time these fancy things were in short supply, and he could get them only through the back door. Also, he was trying to buy a black-and-white TV set, which required a coupon he didn’t have. So in the evening he bicycled about the city visiting people who might be able to help him, and he often returned late at night. Meanwhile Manna had a cold; she was coughing a lot.

  The wedding took place in the conference room on the first Sunday of November. More than half of the hospital’s staff and their families gathered there that evening. Most of the leaders and their wives attended the wedding, but Mrs. Su would not come because she abhorred the very idea of divorce. Somehow she couldn’t stop calling Manna “Doctor Kong’s concubine” whenever the couple came to mind.

  Sodas, bottles of wine, platters of apples and frozen pears, and plates of roasted hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, cigarettes, and candies were laid out on twenty-four tables, which had been arranged into six rows. Children turned noisy at the sight of so many goodies; most of them were Young Pioneers, wearing around their necks a triangular scarf that represented a corner of a red flag. Some boys were running about and shouting at their pals while spitting out shells of sunflower seeds or cracking roasted pine nuts with their molars. A few little girls were warming their hands on the radiators below the double-glazed windows, which were partly packed with sawdust in between. The panes were covered with frost, shimmering in the fluorescent lights; on them one could see the patterns of clamshells, seaweed, reefs, waves, capes, islands. It had snowed heavily that morning, and the whirring of the north wind could be heard through the windows.

  On the front wall were posted two large words written in black ink on red paper: “Happy Marriage!” Six strings of colorful bunting intersected one another in the air. There were also two lines of balloons wavering almost imperceptibly; one of them was popped, hanging up there like a blue baby sock.

  When the room was nearly full, Director Ming Chen went to the front and clapped his hands. “May I have your attention please,” he called. People quieted down.

  “Comrades and friends,” he announced in a booming voice, “today we’ve gathered here to celebrate the happy union of Comrade Lin Kong and Comrade Manna Wu. I’m very honored to officiate at this wedding. You all know who they are, as you see them every day. So let us make the ceremony simple and short. First, let us meet the bride and the groom.”

  To loud applause Lin and Manna got up and turned around to face the people. Bareheaded, they both had on brand-new uniforms, with a red paper flower on their chests. Manna wore shiny patent-leather shoes while Lin was in big-toed boots, the standard army issue made of suede and canvas. She seemed nervous, not knowing where to put her hands, and kept smiling to a few nurses from her ward. Then at the request of Ming Chen, together the couple bowed to the audience, some of whom stood up and whooped while others applauded. More people were coming in from the doors at the back. A few women whispered about the bride’s complexion, which had turned rather sallow the last few weeks. Someone said, “Look at Doctor Kong’s face. He’s such a gloomy man that you never see him in high spirits.”

  Director Chen announced again, “Now, the bride and the groom pay tribute to the Party and Chairman Mao.”

  The couple turned to face the side wall, on which hung a portrait of the late Chairman and a pair of large banners carrying the emblem of a crossed sickle and hammer.

  Ming Chen began chanting: “The first bow . . .”

  The couple bowed to the banners and the portrait, keeping the tips of their middle fingers on the seams of their trousers.

  “The second bow . . .”

  They bowed again, lower than the previous time, almost eighty degrees.

  “The third bow . . .”

  Done with the homage, the couple turned to face the audience again. For a few seconds the echoes of the director’s chanting kept ringing in the room and the corridor. People remained quiet and seemed muted by the sheer volume of Ming Chen’s voice. Then the director announced, “Now I declare Lin Kong and Manna Wu are man and wife. Let us congratulate them.”

  People applauded again; some boys whistled.

  When the audience quieted down, the couple were asked to sing a song. Manna was good at singing, but Lin knew few songs, so they sang “Our Troops March Toward the Sun,” which was so outdated that some of the young officers had never heard it. Their singing was unpleasant to the ear. The bridegroom’s voice was too low and soft, while the bride’s was rasping thanks to the cold she had. A few nurses couldn’t help smirking; one said, “This gives me a toothache.”

  The moment they finished singing, a young officer raised his fist, shouting, “Eat a bobbing apple!”

  “Yes, let them eat a bobbing apple together,” several voices cried out. What they deman
ded was an apple strung by a thread in the air, so that the couple couldn’t avoid kissing each other while eating it.

  Director Chen held up his hands and calmed them down. He said, “We’re revolutionary officers and soldiers, and the army isn’t your home village, so the bobbing-apple stuff is not appropriate here. Now, enjoy yourselves.”

  As people were standing up and moving around, Ming Chen clapped his hands for the attention of the children. He cried, “Small friends—boys and girls—you can eat as many goodies as you want, but don’t take any home. Understood?”

  “Yes sir,” a little girl shouted back.

  Laughter followed. At once the room was filled with noise again. A baby burst out crying in a back corner. A young officer set off a firecracker; the explosion made a few girls scream; immediately he was prohibited from doing that again. The two doors at the back were opened to let out the smell of gunpowder.

  One by one the leaders walked up to the bride and groom to clink glasses and give their congratulations. When Commissar Ran Su approached them, he seemed very moved. Unlike others, he didn’t hold a glass of wine. He looked like an old man now—though he was merely fifty-one—with sparse hair and a gray mustache. Furrows spread on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes, whose lower lids hung down a little. He grasped Lin’s and Manna’s arms and drew them aside, saying in a somber voice, “You two must cherish this opportunity in your lives. Love and take care of each other. Don’t forget that yours is a bitter love.” He paused and said “bitter love” again, as though to himself.

  His words touched the bride. After Ran Su left, she was unable to restrain herself anymore and broke out sobbing. Lin took her glass away. With his arm around her waist he steered her to a corner and tried to calm her down, but she was inconsolable, her mouth trembling and her face bathed in tears. She bit her lip, sniffling, her eyes shining at the happy crowd moving about under a 300-watt bulb.