The Past and the Punishments

by Yu Hua

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  “Nothing,” she said, her eyes searching the street for the bicyclist.

  “You look pale.”

  “I do?” She looked at her friend.

  “Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t seem very happy.”

  “I’m fine.” She braced herself, forced a smile. “What are you doing today?”

  “The commodity fair. Today’s the first day.” Her friend took hold of her arm. “Let’s go.”

  Her friend’s footsteps rang out excitedly beside her. She thought to herself, “Forget about all of that.”

  The spring commodity fair was on another street. The fair made people forget about everything else, let them live in the excitement of the moment. Winter was over. Spring had already arrived. They needed to change their lifestyle.

  They crowded together to browse, crowded together to explore. As they strolled between the makeshift stands that had been erected on either side of the street, they picked out new clothes, chose which household items to purchase, selected the kind of life that was to come. A megaphone hung from the roof of each of the concession stands, and each megaphone was blaring music and pitching products at ear-splitting volume. They were buffeted by a chaos of sound at every step. Despite the deafening noise, the dizziness, and the fatigue, they squeezed and pushed their way through the fair, shouting excitedly to each other as they went along. What with having to shout to be heard, the crowd itself was even noisier and more chaotic than the megaphones. Suddenly, one of the megaphones began to blare out a solemn piece of funerary music, thereby winning the battle for their attention. The crowd, laughing and elated, began to stream toward the stand, for rather than 1986 163

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  taking the music as an ugly prank, they found it amusing.

  And together they surged into the humor of the moment.

  They had already given up trying to control where they went. There were so many people pushing behind them that the only option left was to keep moving forward. There was no retreat. She clasped her friend’s shopping bags in her arms. Her friend bought enough for both of them to carry, but her eyes continued to shuttle hungrily between the various concession stands. She herself hadn’t bought a thing.

  She had merely squeezed through the crowds, gazing all the while at the products on display. That was enough. Buried in the happiness of the crowds and the noise, she could forget all the things she had decided to forget. It was as if she were experiencing once again the way her family used to be. Hadn’t her family been something like the fair?

  They were driven forward until they were pushed beyond the perimeter of the crowd. The force at their backs suddenly disappeared. She stood there like a boat washed ashore by strong waves. The waves quickly receded, leaving her stranded. She gazed blankly back at the crowds, feeling hollow.

  She heard her friend say, “I loved that skirt. Too bad it’s too crowded to get back to it.”

  She too had seen the skirt, but she hadn’t liked it as much as her friend had. She hadn’t really liked any of the clothes on display. She very much wanted to squeeze back into the crowds, but not for the skirt.

  “Let’s try to squeeze back through,” she said.

  Instead of replying, her companion nudged her with her hand. She looked over to where her companion had pointed to see the madman.

  He was standing a few feet away, spattered with dry blood, his hands twirling through the air. He was screaming something at the top of his lungs. He seemed just as happy and excited as everyone else who had come to the fair.

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  The boundless crowds of people swarmed toward him,

  and with a flash of his knife, their heads flew into the sky.

  Thousands of skulls collided in the air with an incomparably thunderous crash. The crash began to crack into smaller shards of sound until the shards came together once again in a bone-crunching sonic wave. The shattered skulls swirled through the air like broken tiles and began to fall.

  Blood rained down like sunlight. And at that very moment, a shining hacksaw materialized in his hands. It was soaring through their waists. Headless torsos stumbled across the ground, rolling fat brush strokes of blood across the pavement. The disembodied legs began to walk like automatons along the twisting and intersecting paths they made on the pavement. Every so often, two pairs of legs would collide and tumble helplessly to the ground. A steaming cauldron of hot oil appeared. Those bodies that were still untouched rained into the cauldron. The oil began to sizzle. One after another, bodies popped out of the liquid like flying fish and fell to the side. The sky now emptied of heads, which fell to the ground, carpeting the pavement and burying severed torsos and legs beneath them. And bodies continued to fry and pop from the cauldron. He reached toward the people who continued to walk toward him and started to peel off their skin. It was like peeling posters off a wall, producing a marvelous tearing sound, as if he were shearing through bolts of silk. After they had been peeled, the subcutaneous fat began to bulge and dribble away from the muscle below. He stuck his hand through the muscle and began to pluck out the ribs. Their bodies slumped. Then he pulled at the chest muscles until he could see the lungs still heaving for air. He carefully tore open the left lung to watch as the heart continued to ex-pand and contract with each beat. Two braids swung somewhere in the distance. Two lovely red butterflies towed the braids through the air.

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  She saw the madman staring at her once more, saliva dripping unceasingly from the corner of his mouth. She heard her friend cry out in surprise. She felt her friend grab hold of her wrist, and her legs began to pump up and down.

  She knew her friend was running beside her, pulling her away.

  5

  The spring snow had long since been forgotten.

  Peach flowers were slowly beginning to bloom. The willows by the river and the wutong trees on the sidewalk were a deep green. And the sun, of course, was sparkling even more brightly than before. Although spring had yet to run its course, they had begun to carry out all the familiar rituals with which they welcomed the arrival of summer. The girls embroidered their dreams with skirts from the fair, imagined the way the silky fabric would flutter around their legs as they walked the summer streets. The boys fumbled through their closets looking for swimsuits and, having found them beneath piles of summer clothes, imagined the way the water would sparkle in the summer sun. They kept the swimsuits on their dressers for a few days. Finally, they tossed them back into the closet. Summer, after all, was still a long way off.

  The madman was sitting cross-legged on the street. The sun was splattering across the pavement, and a breeze blew overhead. Dust rose through the air and drifted away like a fine mist. The asphalt was sticky with sunlight. People streamed down the sidewalk, dragging their slanted shadows behind them. Their shadows, in turn, glided happily over the pavement, oblivious to the heat. A few of the shadows slipped under the madman’s buttocks. He was single-mindedly assessing the blade of a kitchen cleaver.

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  The cleaver had been picked out of a trash heap, and its blade was rusty and pitted with holes.

  He turned the knife over and over in his hands until a sluggish grin of contentment lit his face and saliva dribbled down his chin. The wound on his face had begun to ooze, his face was swollen, and his nose was hugely distended. Pus dribbled down with his saliva. An extraordinarily strange odor streamed from his body, relentlessly filling the air around him. Pedestrians, smelling this strange stench, felt as though they were moving through a dark place as they navigated past the madman, a place from which they escaped as soon as they moved past him and into the dista
nce.

  He set the cleaver on the ground and carefully examined it. He flipped the cleaver over and methodically appraised the other side before flipping it back to its original position.

  He stretched out his legs in front of him and gnawed at his lips, his face contorting into a series of grimaces. After a few moments had gone by, he extended his long fingernails toward the sun, as if he were trying to disinfect them. He reached down and began – extremely carefully, extremely methodically – to peel off the dried blood that coated his legs like a thin layer of cellophane. He pulled the week-old film away from his skin, bit by bit. As soon as he had peeled one piece, he placed it carefully to his side and patiently set to work on the next patch. When he had finished, he once again began to inspect his legs. Having determined that the blood had all been removed, he raised a handful of the dark red film to eye level. He looked through it at the sun. He saw a dark red square of blood. After he gazed at the reddish square for a moment, he moved the little pile to one side.

  Then he began to pick up the pieces one by one and gaze excitedly through them at the sun. Another few moments of rapturous examination passed before he collected all the pieces together into another pile and sat on it.

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  He picked up the cleaver and lifted it to eye level. He saw a black rectangle surrounded by light. He held the cleaver over his lap, testing the blade with his fingers. He brandished the cleaver in the air above his thigh and screamed,

  “

  !” The cleaver pierced his thigh, and he cried out in pain. He looked down to watch the blood begin to seep from the wound. He inserted his fingernail into the wound and, discovering that it was shallow, discontentedly lifted the knife to the sun to examine the blade. After having run his finger along the edge, he smeared it with some of the blood that was dribbling from his thigh. Finally, he began to furiously grind the blade against the pavement. The friction produced a sharp squealing sound. His body rocked until sparks began to fly from the asphalt. The blade, hot with friction, fell from his hands. He bent to examine his handiwork, tested the blade with his finger. Dissatisfied, he set to his task with almost maniacal energy, grinding until beads of sweat began to roll down his torso. A moment later, he dropped the cleaver and teetered forward, panting and exhausted. Having caught his breath, he lifted the cleaver, inspected the blade, running his finger slowly along the edge. This time, he was satisfied.

  He brandished the cleaver high above his head, shouted, and brought the knife down onto his other thigh. This movement was immediately followed by a single sharp moan. A second later, he broke into wails as his body began to flutter like a leaf in the wind. His hands fell limp to his sides, shuddering uncontrollably. The cleaver, still embedded in his leg, trembled with the motion of his leg. He trembled until the cleaver jumped from the wound and hit the ground with a dull chime. The blood welled from the wound and dripped to the ground like rainwater falling from the eaves of a house. After a long time, he groped for the cleaver by his side. The knife began to tremble. He hesitated, steadied the handle with both hands, and reinserted it into the wound. Wailing, he slowly cut a piece of flesh 168 yu hua

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  from his leg. His body shook violently, and the wails grew louder. These were no longer short and sharp exclamations but protracted, almost bestial howls.

  The pedestrians were terrified by the sound of his howls.

  The street was empty, but the sidewalks were packed with onlookers. They listened to his grisly howls through a haze of fear. A few brave souls walked toward the madman to get a closer look, only to return to the sidewalk white with fear.

  A few people tried to move back from the edge of the sidewalk, and those who had just arrived kept well away from the middle of the street.

  The sound of his howls began to grow softer, but, for some reason, this was all the more frightening. They drifted to their ears from afar like ghostly wails, piercing and dark.

  They stood packed together, but each of the spectators felt themselves alone, hurrying through the dark of night, pursued by the sound of howls implacably ringing out somewhere behind them. They felt as if an enormously heavy weight was bearing down on their hearts. They felt their breath come in slow, grudging heaves.

  “Someone should get a rope. Someone has to tie him up.”

  A muffled voice broke out from the crowd. It was only then that the spectators began to talk, but the sound of their voices failed to rise above a suffocated whisper. Everyone agreed. A few young men moved quickly away, returning a moment later with a length of rope in hand. But no one would move any closer, and the man who had made the suggestion was gone. The wails were even softer now, mere gasps whistling weakly across the pavement. They could bear it no longer, but they did not leave. They sensed that if the madman wasn’t captured now, his howls would keep ringing in their ears, no matter how hard they tried to escape. They suggested that the traffic policeman take care of the problem. It was his job, after all. But he refused to do it by himself. After several minutes of whispered negotiations, four young men offered to accompany him. They 1986 169

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  armed themselves with sticks to fend off the madman’s cleaver and began to advance.

  He had stopped wailing. He was no longer in pain. His body was burning, parched. White foam bubbled from his lips as he continued to hack desultorily at his leg. Although he seemed to be gasping for his life, he approached the task with as much earnestness and care as before. But, within moments, his hands fell limp to his sides. The cleaver clattered to the pavement. He sat dead still for a long time, sighed, and fumbled for the cleaver.

  Five men approached, rope in hand. One of them slapped the knife out of his hand with a wooden baton. The others immediately set to winding the rope around his limbs. He didn’t struggle. He simply gazed laboriously up at them.

  He saw five executioners approach, somehow managing to walk across the heaps of severed heads, scraps of flesh, scattered bones, and blood underfoot as if they were on level ground. Behind them, he saw a blood-soaked mob. They had hacked off chunks of their own flesh until their bones lay exposed to the open air. They surged forward, following the lead of the executioners. Each of the five executioners was leading a horse-drawn cart with a rope. The horses’

  hooves rose and fell without a sound. The wheels of the horse carts rolled noiselessly over the heaps of flesh and bone. As they drew closer and closer, he realized why it was that they had come. He didn’t try to escape. He merely gazed quietly in their direction. They were standing just in front of him. The mob of bloody skeletons at their back formed a large circle around him. One of the executioners clasped his neck, while each of the remaining four took hold of one of his limbs. His body rose from the ground, hung suspended in the air. He looked up at the blood-red sky.

  Pieces of dried blood drifted in front of the sun. He felt a length of coarse rope being fastened around his neck. More rope was wound around his arms and legs. The five carts 170 yu hua

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  were arrayed around him, pointing in five different directions. Each of the five executioners climbed atop their carts.

  His body dangled from the ropes between the carts. He saw each of the five executioners raise their black leather whips above their heads. The whips danced, snake-like, through the air, suspending themselves for a moment in mid-flight before cracking down onto the horses’ flanks. Five horse-drawn carts galloped in five different directions. He saw his head, his arms, and his legs separate from his torso. His torso fell with a thud into the heaps already littering the road. His head and limbs hovered behind the carts until the executioners reined in their horses and they fell to the ground. The five executioners, followed by the mob of bloody skeletons, led their horses into the distance. Soon they were all gone. He began to look
for his head, for his limbs, for his torso. But he couldn’t find them. They were lost among the severed heads, limbs, and torsos that covered the ground.

  As twilight deepened, pedestrians were as few and far between as falling leaves. Most of the town was gathered around dinner tables laden with steaming dishes of food.

  Light streamed out of the apartment windows, brushing past the incandescent rays of the street lamps before merging with the moonlight. The entire town was dappled with slanting skeins of light.

  They gathered joyfully around the table to see off the day.

  There was no reason to hurry, no feeling of being pressed for time. The approach of dusk was delightful. The day was fading behind them, but this was the most marvelous part of the day because it heralded the liberty and leisure of the night to come.

  They cheerfully ate and talked. The dinner conversation was relaxed and happy. Everything made them laugh. After a while they started to talk about the crazy things they had seen, the crazy rumors they had heard going around town.

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  Some of them had seen the madman. Some of them had only heard about him.

  They said they couldn’t believe he had cut apart his own body with a cleaver. They registered their surprise. Finally, they burst into laughter. They talked about the madman, the one who had sawed through his own nose and sliced his own legs a few days back. They gasped and swore and, having run out of exclamations, were reduced to sighs. Their sighs had more to do with sheer amazement than pity. As they talked, the terror began to fade. It was something unusual. They always discussed anything unusual that had happened around town. And when the first topic got stale, they would always move on to something else. That was what they did at the dinner table. That was how they passed the time until they were done.

  They walked over to the window, stepped out on the balcony. They looked at the moon, felt the evening breeze blowing warm and sweet on their faces. They said to one another, “Let’s go out for a walk,” and strolled out of the house and into the streets. They knew that a walk after dinner was good for your health. The older people didn’t feel like taking a walk. They sat by the television and began to watch other people lead different lives that somehow reminded them of their own, while their children had already begun to roam the streets outside.