The Past and the Punishments

by Yu Hua

  The woman shook herself. “It’s a red sun.”

  A Japanese plane. Just as the landlord swore to himself, he saw two gray bombs fall from the airplane toward the ground. The landlord slid backward and fell inside the vat.

  The resounding splash of runny night soil and the detonation were simultaneous. The explosive cries of a multitude of bees buzzed inside the landlord’s ears, and wave after wave of dust stirred by the detonation settled slowly over his head. The landlord’s eyes were shut tight, and his head steadily buzzed. Even so, he could feel the night soil rippling around him. Feeling an itching sensation crawl across his face, he opened his eyes, lifted his right arm out of the night soil, and saw a few white maggots clinging to his hand. He disposed of them with a flick of his wrist and then began to attend to the maggots on his face, which seemed to melt underneath his fingertips as soon as he touched them.

  The odor inside the vat was quite strong, so the landlord opened his mouth wide in an effort not to breathe through his nose. This was an improvement, and he might have felt relatively comfortable had it not been for the buzzing in his ears. There seemed to be a lot of yelling and screaming coming from somewhere very far away, like a multitude of torches glittering through the darkness. The landlord raised his head to see the last patches of light before dusk fell. The sky was a deep, deep blue.

  The landlord stayed inside the vat until the sky grew black. The buzzing in his ears gradually receded. He heard the sound of approaching footsteps and knew that his son had arrived. No one else’s footsteps could possibly sound so The Death of a Landlord 203

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  listless. The young master walked to the side of the vat, gazed around in every direction, and finally caught sight of his father sitting inside it. He tilted his head toward him, saying, “Dad. We’re all waiting for you to start dinner.”

  The landlord looked up at the sky and asked, “Are the Japanese gone?”

  “They left a long time ago. Get out of there.”

  The young master turned on his heel, muttering to himself:

  “It’s not a bathtub, after all.”

  The landlord stretched his right hand toward his son.

  “Give me a hand.”

  The young master hesitated as he looked at his father’s hand, for even through the gloom, he could see countless white maggots crawling on his skin. The young master knelt, picked a few pumpkin leaves, and gave them to his father: “Wipe your hand first.”

  The landlord took the fresh leaves. They were covered with fine hairs that stung his hand, like wiping his skin with coarse wool. The scent of the green juice that dribbled out from the broken leaves lingered in his nostrils. When he was done, he once more stretched his hand out to his son.

  His son looked, bent down to pick a few more leaves, and finally wrapped them around his own hand before he grasped hold of his father’s hand and helped him out of the vat.

  The landlord, dripping with night soil, shook himself as he gazed at his son walking back to the house in the new moonlight:

  “The little bastard.”

  2

  Wang Xianghuo, the scion of the wealthy landlord

  Wang Ziqing (of Anchang Gate just outside town), was sitting in the Kaishun Tavern. The tavern was empty save for 204 yu hua

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  an old man huddled drowsily in the corner, clasping an erhu1 to his chest. Three small dishes, a pot of wine, and a wine warmer sat on the table in front of him. His hands were clasped together inside the sleeves of his embroidered robe, and he wore a melon-shaped skullcap on his head. He seemed to be dozing, but his narrowed eyes were actually fixed on the tavern window.

  The scene outside was gray and gloomy. Rain caromed across the sodden road like boiling water, and the big, round drops falling from the eaves of the houses on both sides shimmered through the air. The window faced the town’s West Gate, and in the portal set into the city wall stood four rifle-bearing Japanese soldiers, who searched each person leaving town. A mother and her daughter emerged from within the gate, carrying an oilcloth umbrella that looked as bright as a plot of shiny yellow rape blossoms through the curtain of rain. The woman’s hand was clasped around her daughter’s shoulder. The yellow blossoms suddenly collapsed. The pair walked through the gate and presented themselves before the soldiers. One of the Japanese soldiers playfully mussed the little girl’s hair while the other rubbed and pinched at her mother’s body. From the tavern, he looked as if he were plucking feathers from a boiled chicken.

  The rain slanted and swirled in the air so that he was unable to see the woman’s discomfort as she bore the insult of the soldier’s roaming hands.

  Wang Xianghuo lifted his eyes toward a view he had

  looked on many times before. Beyond the city wall, he could see a seemingly endless stretch of water. The rain seemed to have abated somewhat – there were gaps in the curtain of rain, and like a window in the process of being washed, the scene outside gradually cleared. He could even see the tops of bamboo enclosures – placed there in order to trap fish –

  protruding from the water. A little boat propelled itself over 1A two-stringed Chinese violin.

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  one of these barriers and floated across the steaming surface of the lake like a fallen leaf. There were three tiny figures on the deck. The one standing at the prow seemed to be probing the river bottom with a bamboo pole. Then he watched as one of them dove into the cold, wintry water, looking for a catch, and resurfaced a moment later. First, his arms made a kind of violent throwing movement toward the cabin, and then he suddenly appeared standing up on the deck. Because of the distance, the figure’s movement from the water onto the deck looked to Wang Xianghuo like a kind of som-ersault, as if the diver had tumbled back onto the boat by the sheer force of the choppy surface of the lake.

  A commotion of voices came through the window from

  within the city walls, sounding as if someone’s house had caught fire. Two Japanese soldiers, holding a man who looked like a merchant, advanced to the center of the road and then came to a halt. The man was standing directly across from the window, arms held firmly to his sides by the soldiers. A third soldier leveled his bayonet at the man’s back and began to scream a string of unintelligible phrases.

  There was no expression on the man’s face – perhaps he did not realize that the screams signified his death. Wang Xianghuo watched his body flutter twice, as if he had been shoved forward, and then the tip of the bayonet protruded from his chest. The man’s eyes opened so wide it looked as if they might fly from their sockets. The soldier lifted a leg and let fly with a vicious kick, taking advantage of the forward momentum of the man’s tumble toward the ground to extract the bayonet from his torso. Blood sprayed from the wound, soiling the soldier’s face. His two companions erupted into another string of shouts and laughter. The bloodied Japanese soldier appeared unconcerned, though, simply raising an arm in salute, shouting something, and marching elatedly back through the city gate.

  The sound of thick cotton soles advanced up the tavern stairs. This was the proprietor’s fifty-year-old wife, clad in a 206 yu hua

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  coarse cotton robe and absently rubbing a bit of stove ash across her face as if it were rouge. As he watched her ponderous approach, Wang Xianghuo thought to himself, “At least the Japanese might spare someone like her.”

  The woman said, “Young Master Wang, you’d better

  hurry on home.”

  She slumped down opposite him, pulled a pink handkerchief from her sleeve, and began to sob. “That scared me to death.”

  Wang Xianghuo noticed that it was only after she had wiped her eyes that a few teardrops began to spill from her eyes. Her distress was brilliantly performed, betrayed only by the excessive delicacy wit
h which she wielded the handkerchief.

  The dozing old man in the corner began to cough, rose to his feet, and peered toward the two figures by the window.

  He appeared to be on the verge of speech, but, noticing that his movements hadn’t been noticed, his mouth simply folded into a yawn.

  Wang Xianghuo said, “The rain’s stopped.”

  The woman stopped sobbing, carefully wiped her eyes, and replaced the handkerchief in her sleeve. Gazing at the Japanese soldiers below, she said:

  “They’ve ruined a perfectly good business, that’s for sure.”

  Wang Xianghuo left the Kaishun Tavern and began to

  walk slowly along the sodden road. The dead man’s body lay on the pavement, separated from his hat by several feet. The hat had begun to fill up with rainwater. Wang Xianghuo could not see any blood – perhaps it had been washed clean by the rain. His back was a dark red mess. Bits of cotton padding had leaked out from his jacket, only to be flattened by the rain. Wang Xianghuo walked around the corpse and moved toward the city gate.

  Now there were only two soldiers standing in the portal observing his approach. Wang Xianghuo halted in front of The Death of a Landlord 207

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  them, removed his skullcap, held it to his chest, and made a low bow toward each of the soldiers. He watched as their faces broke into happy smiles and one of them waved him past through the gate with his index finger. He walked between them and out of town, without even having been subjected to a search.

  The road was almost unbearably slippery, muddy, and pitted, having soaked in rainwater for several days running.

  Wang Xianghuo had to walk down the strip of weeds that ran along the side of the road so that his feet wouldn’t sink into the mud. The weeds, battered flat and pliant by the rain, stretched before him in a tangled mat. Black clouds rolled in the sky overhead. Walking with hands in his sleeves and his head tucked in against the chill of the early winter breeze, Wang Xianghuo looked very much like the barren black elms that stood silhouetted against the gloom in the fields around him.

  A troop of Japanese soldiers had gathered in front of a Daoist nunnery that lay just ahead. They had detained a dozen or so passersby and made them stand, single file, in a drainage ditch by the side of the road. The cold water came up above their knees, and it was already impossible to tell whether they trembled for fear or simply because of the chill. Nor had the nuns been able to escape a similar fate.

  They knelt in a row in front of the nunnery as two elated soldiers desecrated them with mud. As the soldiers plastered their bald pates with the mire, it slid over their faces, rolled down their necks, and slipped inside their robes. The other Japanese soldiers hovered behind them, howling and rocking, seemingly drunk with laughter. As Wang Xianghuo approached, one of the soldiers was trying to sculpt a fringe for one of the nuns, but the mud, refusing to stay put, repeatedly slipped off her forehead and onto her face.

  Finally, one of the soldiers plucked a weed from the ground and, with a bit of mud as adhesive, pasted it to her forehead.

  The brigade was on its way to Songhuang. When they

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  had finished with the prank, a Japanese who looked like the commanding officer and a Chinese who seemed to be his translator moved toward the detainees in the irrigation ditch, inspected them one by one, and exchanged a few phrases. Soon, it became clear that they were looking to recruit a guide to lead them to Songhuang. When Wang Xianghuo walked forward and presented himself, it appeared to him that the pallor of the sky had swallowed their laughter whole. Their empty, gaping mouths reminded him of the big porcelain jars piled up in the family courtyard.

  He took off his hat and bowed deeply to the Japanese soldier. He watched as the commanding officer smilingly strode forward and tapped him several times on the shoulder with his baton, before turning to his translator and spewing out something that sounded like a duck quacking, an impression that was only heightened by the flapping of the officer’s thick lips.

  The translator took a step toward him:

  “You. Take us to Songhuang.”

  3

  Winter had come early that year. It was only

  November when the landlord’s family had begun to use the charcoal brazier to heat the house. Wang Ziqing sat snugly in a great, fleece-upholstered armchair, hands extended over the brazier, staring vacantly into space. The patter of rain and the popping of dry kindling within the brazier merged together, and tiny bright sparks flew periodically from the vent into the darkened room.

  The sound of his hired hand Sun Xi chopping wood carried into the room from outdoors. The cold snap had come far too suddenly – even the coal briquettes had yet to be prepared. His only option had been to have Sun Xi prepare some makeshift coals in the stove.

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  The three women of the landlord’s family – his wife, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter – were also clustered around the brazier, bundled up in thick cotton padded robes, their feet resting on bronze foot warmers full of stove embers, which sent up currents of warm air through little vents on the covers. Even so, their bodies were huddled against the cold, as if they were sitting in the teeth of a chill, whistling wind.

  The landlord’s granddaughter was distracted from the cold by a drum-shaped rattle. No matter how she twirled it in her hands, she still could not induce the little beads at the end of the tassels to strike the head of the drum. When she tried to twirl a bit harder, the rattle slipped from her hands and fell to the ground. Still sitting, she stuck her head out over the edge of her chair and gazed longingly down at the rattle, her legs kicking back and forth in front of her. Realizing that she was simply too far above the floor to collect it, she reached out a hand and began to slap at her mother as if she were trying to kill a mosquito.

  A basin of water cascaded down on the embers inside the stove with a gurgling hiss, rousing Wang Ziqing’s spirits.

  He shifted his buttocks in the chair, and a sense of ease spread through his limbs.

  Sun Xi appeared, bearing a dustpan full of steaming coals. His cotton padded jacket was open in front, revealing the sturdy flesh within. Sweating profusely, he threaded through the family, their clothes bundled thick as armor, and placed the pan in a convenient spot from which Wang Ziqing would be able to pick up the coals with a pair of pincers and feed them to the brazier.

  Wang Ziqing said, “Take a quick break, Sun Xi.”

  Sun Xi wiped the sweat from his brow, straightened, and replied, “Yes, master.”

  The landlord’s wife, fingering a Buddhist rosary, lifting her left leg, and pushing her foot warmer forward with her right, addressed Sun Xi:

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  “It’s not as hot as it was before. Put in some more coals for me.”

  Sun Xi immediately bent and raised the foot warmer to his chest, saying:

  “Yes, mistress.”

  The landlord’s daughter-in-law also wanted new coals.

  She too shifted her legs, but without uttering a word, because she knew that to have her coals changed at the same time as those of her mother-in-law would be vaguely inap-propriate.

  Having sat for quite some time, Wang Ziqing’s joints began to ache. He stood and slowly made his way to the window, feeling slightly oppressed by the constant, heavy patter of the rain on the roof. The trees outside were barren, and streams of water coiled down their trunks. Wang Ziqing’s eyes followed the streaming water down to the clumped weeds underneath, all of which had been battered flat by the rain. The earth next to the weeds was swollen with moisture. Wang Ziqing heard a drum sound, followed by his granddaughter’s giggles. She had finally hit the mark. Her crisp laughter brought a faint smile to Wang Ziqing’s face.

  The news tha
t the Japanese had occupied the town had reached them the day before. Wang Ziqing thought to himself, “That little bastard should have been back by now.”

  4

  “The commandant says,” the translator told Wang

  Xianghuo, “that you’ll get a big reward if you take us to Songhuang.”

  The translator turned toward the officer, and they

  exchanged another string of gibberish. Wang Xianghuo shifted his head to one side and saw the Japanese soldiers sticking little white wildflowers into the barrels of their The Death of a Landlord 211

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  rifles. One machine gun had a circlet of the flowers wrapped around the barrel. The flowers fluttered slightly under the dense smoke-dark clouds overhead, and the prospect of the broad, barren fields stretching into the distance before him made Wang Xianghuo quietly expel a long breath.

  The translator’s white-gloved hands pulled Wang Xianghuo’s face back toward him. “The commandant’s asking you whether you can guarantee that you’ll get us to Songhuang.”

  The translator’s accent was northern, and his mouth tended to twist to the right when he spoke. His nose was very large but very flat, and it looked to Wang Xianghuo like a big head of garlic.

  “What are you, a motherfucking mute?”

  Wang Xianghuo’s mouth was slammed by a hand, and

  his head lolled back and forth. Then he spoke:

  “I can speak.”

  “Motherfucker.”

  The translator gave Wang Xianghuo another hard slap, turned, and angrily let out a stream of quacking sounds toward the officer. Wang Xianghuo replaced his skullcap, put his hands in his sleeves, and stood watching them. The officer took a step forward, screamed for a while in Japanese, stepped back, and finally waved for a couple of soldiers. The translator barked:

  “Take your fucking hands out of your sleeves.”

  Wang Xianghuo ignored him, turning instead to observe the approach of the two soldiers and wondering just what it was they were going to do. One of the soldiers pointed a rifle barrel in his direction. The flower in the barrel trembled and looked as if it might fall. Suddenly, Wang Xianghuo’s left side received a tremendous jolt, his legs went limp underneath him, and he fell to his knees. So did the flower, whose petals were still white against the mud. But the blossom was soon obscured under the other soldier’s boot.