The Past and the Punishments

by Yu Hua

  “Silver dollars!” Sun Xi cried out. “Just one dollar’s enough to buy a woman for a lifetime.”

  The woman gestured toward the earthen wall:

  “You see that? Know what it is?”

  Sun Xi looked and said, “It’s a hole.”

  “It’s a bullet hole,” the woman excitedly raised her eyebrows. “I risk my life to please you, and all you can offer me is some lousy bronze coins?”

  “This is all I’ve got.”

  The woman spread her fingers in the air. “What you’ve got is just about half of what you’ll need.”

  “Listen, sister. It’s not like you have any other customers right now anyway. You might as well make a little money.”

  “Bullshit. I’d rather let it rot than sell myself short.”

  Sun Xi stomped his feet. “Fine. And I don’t want to cheat you. Just let me do it half price. Half the time, half the way there. Is that fair?”

  The woman thought for a moment, nodded, turned, and walked back into her room with Sun Xi in tow. She stripped off her pants and lay down on top of the bed. Then she splayed open her legs. Sun Xi stood motionless above her and stared. She yelled:

  “Hurry the fuck up, will you?”

  It was only then that Sun Xi, afraid that she would change her mind, hurriedly slipped off his pants and mounted her. Almost as soon as Sun Xi entered her, the woman slapped his shoulders and yelled, “Hey, hey! Didn’t you say you’d just go halfway?”

  Sun Xi chuckled:

  “Yeah. The second half.”

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  10

  With the advent of fair weather, Wang Ziqing had a

  good mind to go out for a stroll, for ever since his son had been carried off by the Japanese, the weeping of the two frightened women of the house had driven him to distrac-tion. The day before, as he had seen Old Master Ma off at the door, he had concluded:

  “How could I not be worried? But those two women just make it that much worse.”

  The landlord usually frequented the Xinglong Teahouse in town. The upstairs room of the Xinglong had elegant red-lacquered tables, each of which was screened off from the others by a painted silk screen. Through the spotless windows lay a panoramic view of the dark blue waters of the lake. This was a teahouse frequented by distinguished patrons, patrons with whom Wang Ziqing shared common interests. But, what with the Japanese occupation of the town, the landlord felt it would be wiser to meet at a different venue.

  Wang Ziqing walked through the warm winter sunlight wearing a woolen cap and a long silk robe. He held a walking stick in his hand, which tapped against the soft road with each step he took. The flattened weeds next to the road had recovered from the rain and now stood erect, plastered with dried mud. As the landlord walked through the barren, broad fields, breathing deeply of the cool winter air, his face gradually unfolded into a smile.

  The Japanese had occupied Anchang Gate a few days

  before but had lingered there only one day. There was a good teahouse there that possessed the additional virtue of being the closest to town.

  As soon as Wang Ziqing stepped through the door, he caught sight of the few old friends with whom he usually drank tea at the Xinglong gathered around a table. They were among the wealthiest men in town. Now they sat by The Death of a Landlord 233

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  the wall without so much as a wooden screen to seclude them from the rabble at the adjoining table. Even so, they looked quite cheerful despite the noise that filled the room.

  Old Master Ma was the first to catch sight of Wang

  Ziqing:

  “Everybody’s here. We’re together again.”

  Wang Ziqing bowed to each member of the party,

  repeating:

  “Together again, together again.”

  It seemed that the tea friends of Xinglong Teahouse had, unexpectedly and unbeknownst to one another, gathered here at Anchang Gate. Old Master Ma said:

  “I was going to send someone for you, but, what with the difficulty with your son, I thought it might be better not to disturb you.”

  Wang Ziqing thanked him profusely.

  One member of the company leaned over the table and asked: “How is the young master?”

  Wang Ziqing clasped his hands in thanks, replying:

  “Let’s not talk about it. That little bastard’s just reaping what he’s sown.”

  After Wang Ziqing had taken a seat, a waiter brought an earthenware wine pot and warmer in his left hand and a bronze kettle in his right. He set the pot down on the table and began to pour the boiling water from the kettle from somewhere well above Wang Ziqing’s head. Steam poured into the air as the waiter sent a stream of water cascading down into the pot. Finally, without spilling so much as a drop, he broke the stream in midair three separate times as a gesture of respect. Wang Ziqing, duly impressed, congratu-lated him:

  “Well done, well done.”

  Old Master Ma, helping himself to a cup of wine, added:

  “The decor may not be all that it could be, but the service is extraordinary.”

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  To Wang Ziqing’s right sat the principal of the town school. The principal, gold-rimmed spectacles flashing, said:

  “Remember Qi Laosan, the waiter over at the Xinglong with such fast, steady hands? I hear he got most of his head blown off by the Japanese.”

  Another guest corrected him. “No, it wasn’t his head.

  They shot him right through the heart.”

  “Amounts to the same thing,” Old Master Ma broke in.

  “If they get you anywhere else, you might have a chance, but if it’s the head or the heart, you won’t even have time to blink before you’re gone.”

  Wang Ziqing picked up his cup between two fingers and took a sip of wine. “A good way to go. The best way to go.”

  The principal nodded in agreement, wiped his lips, and said:

  “Mr. Zhang from just outside the south gate had both his legs broken.”

  Someone asked, “Which Mr. Zhang was that?”

  “The one who’s a fortune-teller. After they broke his legs, he knew he could never walk again, knew he was going to die. There was blood pouring down his legs, and it was just heartbreaking to hear the way he was crying. The worst thing is knowing that you’re going to die.”

  Old Master Ma chuckled:

  “That’s right. One of my workers went up to him and asked him how he knew he was going to die. And he wailed, I’m a fortune-teller, aren’t I?”

  Another guest nodded seriously:

  “He was a fortune-teller indeed. If he said he was going to die, then you’d better believe he was going to die.”

  The principal continued:

  “When he died, he was so scared that he was crying and shaking all over, shrunken up in a little ball, just staring wide-eyed at everyone around him. And he stunk. He shit in his pants.”

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  Wang Ziqing shook his head:

  “Awful. What an awful way to go.”

  An itinerant performer making the teahouse rounds approached their table, holding a little stack of red paper scrolls:

  “Gentleman Immortals. What I have in my hand are

  magic spells passed down through the generations. If you’d like to get rich, or to quit drinking, or whatever it is you’d like to do, you need only consult these secret spells. Two bronze coins for a spell. Just two bronze coins – a mere pittance for gentlemen such as yourselves. How about it? A magic spell for just two bronze coins?”

  Old Master Ma said, “What kind of spells do you have?”

  The itinerant flipped through the cards, saying:

  “You’re all affluent gentlemen, so I guess you won’t be interested in the �
��get rich’ spells. But there’s spells for laying off the bottle, too, and for curing impotence . . .”

  “Hold on there,” Old Master Ma cut in, dropping two coins in his hand. “I want to see the ‘get rich’ one anyway.”

  The itinerant handed over the spell. Old Master Ma

  unrolled the paper, smiled mysteriously, and slowly placed it in his pocket. The rest of the company could only gaze at one another in bemusement.

  The entertainer continued:

  “Flowers only bloom for a hundred days, and men can’t last longer than a hundred years. Suffering and heartbreak are unavoidable in this world, and suffering and heartbreak can really wear a man down. When things are rough, food doesn’t taste any good anymore. You can’t sleep well. You start to worry that your days are numbered. But don’t worry.

  I have here a spell expressly formulated to rid a man of suffering and heartbreak. Why doesn’t one of you gentlemen get yourself a copy?”

  Wang Ziqing put two coins down on the table:

  “I’ll take it.”

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  Wang Ziqing took the scroll in hand and unrolled it. The spell consisted of just two simple words:

  “Don’t think.”

  Wang Ziqing could not help but chuckle. But his smile was rapidly superseded by a sigh.

  Now, Old Master Ma took out the “get rich” spell to show the other guests. And once again, Wang Ziqing saw that there were just two words written on the scroll. “Work hard.”

  11

  The weeds crawled down into the water. They were

  tangled in dense clumps on the banks, but as soon as they entered the water, they began to unfurl, to sway in the currents of the cold azure lake. The lake water was brilliantly clear and as tranquil as sleep, for there were neither frogs nor tadpoles to disturb the peace, only the gentle roll of the water as the surface of the lake filled with ripples like row after row of fish scales glinting in the sun. Wang Xianghuo watched the brilliant light reflected off these scales swell and begin to roll across the surface of the lake in the form of a wave. It was as if the lake itself was breathing. He could not see a single boat. The lake was as clean and empty as an unclouded sky. The tops of the bamboo enclosures stuck lazily out from the water, as if they had merely lifted their necks to gaze out across the water.

  They had already crossed the last bridge. The wooden planks were nearly rotten with age, wind, and rain, and they had given off a muted crack like a popping bubble with each step across the bridge. This was the planks’ swan song

  – no longer would they sound out underfoot. Toss them in the water, let them sink to the bottom to share the fate of the pebbles on the lake floor. Even if they rose to the surface The Death of a Landlord 237

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  once more, it would be a mere curtain call, a final florescence before the very end.

  Wang Xianghuo looked suspiciously at the beams that supported the wooden planks. After years under water, how much longer could they possibly hold up? The long, long bridge extended out toward the opposite shore in a slow, egg-shaped arc, curving in order to fend off the tidal bore.

  The opposite shore lay unfurled in the distance, but because of the sunlight reflecting across the water, Wang Xianghuo’s view of the bank itself was obscured. He could see houses, but they seemed to float dim and lusterless on the water because of the intense gleaming light. It seemed that he could see a few figures in the distance as well, gathering by the shore like little ants.

  One by one, the Japanese troops stood up and slapped the dust off their uniforms. The officer barked out his orders, and the troops fell hurriedly into two columns, rifles in hand. The translator asked Wang Xianghuo:

  “How much farther is it to Songhuang?”

  You’ll never get to Songhuang, Wang Xianghuo thought to himself. He was finally standing on the muddy ground of Orphan Hill. The hill was actually an island, surrounded on all four sides by the lake. The hill was the beginning of the end, and now the long wooden bridge was the only thing that mattered. And very soon, that bridge would disappear.

  He said:

  “We’ll be there soon.”

  The translator babbled with the officer for a moment, then turned to Wang Xianghuo:

  “Very good. The commandant is quite pleased. He says you’ll be rewarded when we get there.”

  Wang Xianghuo lowered his head and took his place at the front of the two columns of troops. Their youthful and energetic faces were coated with dirt, but weeks of hard marching had failed to dent their spirits. There was an innocence to those faces that made a kind of pity well up in 238 yu hua

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  Wang Xianghuo’s chest. He began to guide them up a path that led away from the water.

  The road was very smooth, perhaps because it had never been particularly well traveled. There was none of the bumpiness one might expect of a track footprinted and pitted by travelers after a hard rain. He heard the soldier’s disciplined, obedient footsteps pounding behind him like a multitude of lobsters climbing up out of the water and onto the beach. A cloud of yellow dust rose above them and drifted to either side of the path in their wake. The barren winter trees stretched what looked like wounded branches toward the column of men, as if calling for help or perhaps casting blame.

  The curves in the road seemed to lack any sort of rhyme or reason. They encountered no real obstacles, but the road was several times forced to curve around dense clumps of trees in order to continue up the hill. Soon, the road was covered with knee-high weeds so tangled that they seemed to be part of the same yellowed and lifeless creature.

  Wang Xianghuo’s progress across the island had by this point become completely random. If anything resembling a road continued to unfold before him, he followed it. The hill was quiet. There was no sound save the orderly crunch of their boots and, from time to time, a few murmurs passing between the soldiers. He glanced up at the sky. It was already late in the afternoon. Clouds were spread sparsely across the sky, and the pale sunlight shone through a fea-tureless blue field in which Wang Xianghuo could not see even a single bird.

  After a while, they came to a halt. The road had ended abruptly in front of an old thatched cottage. The cottage looked as if it were crawling across the ground with its thatched roof streaming unkempt onto the muddy ground below. Two rifle-bearing Japanese soldiers advanced toward the cottage and kicked in the door. Wang Xianghuo caught sight of a second door inside the cottage. The soldiers pushed The Death of a Landlord 239

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  open this second door with their bare hands. The road they were following took up where it had left off just past the second door.

  The translator said: “Where the fuck are we?”

  Instead of replying, Wang Xianghuo walked through the cottage and continued down the road. Propelled by force of habit, the troops mechanically began to follow behind him, while the translator glanced suspiciously around and muttered, “This is looking worse and worse . . .”

  After a while, they seemed to have crossed the island and arrived once again at the shore of the lake. Wang Xianghuo hesitated for a moment before turning right so as to loop back around toward the wooden bridge. Wang Xianghuo saw the weeds crawling down into the water a second time.

  The surface of the lake was dark and shadowy now, but the waves rolling in the distance still glittered as before. A bank of clouds had blocked the sun. The clouds glowed like leaves shining under the sun.

  He heard a Japanese soldier blow a whistle somewhere behind him. The whistle was followed by the poignant sound of a chorus of voices breaking into song. The voices dispersed across the shadowy surface of the lake. Wang Xianghuo turned to gaze back at the soldiers. The dirt-caked face of the soldier leading the chorus with his whistle was rapt with concentration. This young Japanese s
oldier had absently begun to whistle as he gazed at the water. He hadn’t even realized that he was whistling the melody of a song from his native land. Gradually, the other soldiers had unthinkingly begun to hum along. Wang Xianghuo had

  marched along with these weary soldiers for days now, but this was the first time he had been able to move unaccompanied by the constant rhythmic thud of their boots. The deep, stirring hum of their voices raised together in song pushed him along the path like a hand at his back.

  Now, Wang Xianghuo could see the dismantled bridge

  lying in the distance. The bridge was wreathed in shadows, 240 yu hua

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  fractured into little islands in the lake, like stepping stones scattered across a stream. About a dozen boats glided on the surface of the lake. The faint sound of sculling oars floated into his ears like a thread through the eye of a needle. The Japanese troops behind him erupted into a clamor of babble and opened fire on the boats. The boats turned, scudding across the water toward the opposite side before climbing the lake shore like clumps of tangled weeds. The sound of oars hitting the water was drowned out by machine-gun fire. Gazing at the shattered bridge lying over the broad surface of the lake, Wang Xianghuo laughed desolately.

  12

  When Sun Xi arrived at the shore across from

  Orphan Hill, the sun had just been obscured by a bank of clouds, the bright surface of the lake went dim, and Orphan Hill looked like nothing so much as an upended basin floating on the water across the lake.

  The locals had begun to dismantle the bridge. A dozen small craft positioned themselves parallel to the wooden support beams as the men hacked at the piers and columns.

  The old wood gave way beneath the axes with a dull thudding sound. Sun Xi saw one man tumble from his boat when a weakened beam gave far more easily under his ax than he had expected. Spray cascaded in all directions, and when his head finally bobbed back to the surface, he hollered:

  “I’m freezing!”

  Another boat swayed over toward him, and he was pulled up onto the deck. His cotton robe clung to his skin, and he shivered so violently that he looked almost as if he were sobbing. A man on another boat shouted across the water: