by Yu Hua
“Take it off! Don’t just stand there! Take off your clothes!”
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The man stood gazing about him in shock and bewilderment, his arms wrapped tightly around his torso. The person next to him took forcible hold of his arms, unclasped them, and stripped off his robe. Finally, the man stood motionless on the swaying deck as he meekly allowed the others to rub his naked body with grain spirits.
Sun Xi found all of this tremendously interesting. He watched intently as they continued to hack apart the bridge as if it were so much firewood. Two boats had almost reached the opposite side of the lake, where they continued to work. The men on the side closer to Sun Xi’s began to holler for them to get back to safety as fast as they could.
But the men at work by the shore of Orphan Hill simply gestured for the others to join them, yelling:
“Come on over!”
Sun Xi heard one of the boatmen standing on a boat by the shore say:
“If the Japanese got hold of one of those boats, we’d be off to see our ancestors in no time flat.”
Someone began to scream, his voice shrill and piercing like a woman’s:
“The Japs are coming!”
The crew of the two boats closest to Orphan Hill fell into a panic, their craft colliding with one another as they franti-cally tried to turn their prows back toward the other side of the lake. Once disentangled, the two craft rowed madly for the opposite shore, rolling dramatically on the waves as if they might capsize at any moment. When they had reached the others, though, they were greeted with a burst of hyster-ical laughter. It was only when they gazed back toward Orphan Hill that they realized that they had fallen victim to a ruse:
“Motherfuckers! Where do you get off?”
Sun Xi laughed and called out:
“Hey! Is the young master over there?”
No one seemed to notice him. The bridge was already 242 yu hua
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wrecked. Stray beams drifted across the lake like flood flot-sam. Sun Xi called out once more, and this time someone shouted back:
“Who are you asking?”
“You’re as good as any. Is the young master over there?
Did he cross over to the island?”
“Which young master do you mean?”
“The one from the Wang family outside of Anchang
Gate.”
“Oh.” He waved his hands toward the island. “He crossed over.”
Realizing that his mission was accomplished and he
could now return home to report, Sun Xi wheeled around and walked toward the road that led to the right. The boat-man shouted toward his retreating figure:
“Hey you! Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going home,” Sun Xi returned. “First to Hong
Family Bridge, then Bamboo Grove.”
“It’s gone,” the man burst into laughter. “We tore that bridge down.”
“Tore it down?”
“Wasn’t it your young master who said we should tear them all down?”
Sun Xi flushed:
“But what the fuck am I supposed to do now?”
Another man on the deck laughed:
“How should we know? Go ask your young master.”
The first man continued:
“Try going to Baiyuan. If you’re lucky, they won’t have torn that one down yet.”
Sun Xi turned left and began to sprint down the road to Baiyuan.
When he arrived later that afternoon, they had just finished dismantling the bridge. A few boats were paddling swiftly away toward the west.
Sun Xi began to scream at the top of his lungs:
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“Wait! How am I supposed to get across?”
The boats were already too far away to have heard his plea, so he began to give chase, sprinting along the bank.
But the boats were coasting quickly on the current, and Sun Xi broke into a string of curses:
“Wait up, turtle’s eggs! Wait up, sons of bitches! Slow down, I can’t keep up!”
When Sun Xi finally managed to catch up, he pleaded between gasps for breath:
“Brother, do me a favor. Brother, can’t you give me a ride across?”
A man on the deck asked:
“Where you headed?”
“Home, Anchang Gate.”
“You’re on the wrong track. You should be trying to cross at Hong Family Bridge.”
Sun Xi painstakingly spit out a mouthful of foamy saliva:
“That bridge’s already gone. Come on, brother, do me a favor?”
The man on the deck told him:
“Then the best thing for you to do is keep on running.
There’s another bridge just up ahead. We’re on our way to tear it down.”
Sun Xi once again threw himself into a sprint, thinking as he ran: Got to get there before these goddamn turtle’s eggs. Moments later, he caught sight of a bridge. He glanced toward the boats, made certain that they were well behind him, and only then slowed to a walk.
When he had made his way to the middle of the bridge, he stopped to watch as the boats rowed closer and closer.
Then he slowly and deliberately made his way across the bridge and to the other side. Now completely assured of safe passage, he sat on the grassy bank for a rest.
The boats maneuvered under the bridge, and a few men stood and began to hack at the beams. One of the oarsmen glanced over at Sun Xi and called out:
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“What’re you doing hanging around here?”
Sun Xi thought: I can do whatever I damn well please.
He was about to say something to that effect when the oarsman continued:
“You’d better run for it. They’re gonna tear down the bridge from here to Songhuang any minute now. And then the bridge from Songhuang to Bamboo Grove too. You still wanna hang around?”
More bridges?
Sun Xi leaped to his feet in fright and sprinted into the distance like a mad dog.
13
Sensing that it was about time that Sun Xi returned, the landlord stood on the front steps fingering a string of cash.
Dusk was approaching, and the sky lit up incandescently red to the horizon, suffusing the winter evening with a sort of warmth. Wang Ziqing’s eyes peered above the courtyard wall and followed the twists of the dirt path toward the horizon, where a tiny figure was outlined against hovering pink clouds. The landlord was pleased by the way Sun Xi sprinted down the path toward home.
He knew the two women were looking mournfully at
him from inside the door. They had been waiting intently for Sun Xi’s arrival, waiting for word as to whether the little bastard was dead or alive. They had finally come to an understanding of just how exhausting it can be to cry. Their tears had been for the landlord’s benefit anyway. Now they no longer had the heart to cry the whole day through, and the landlord was grateful for the quiet that their new knowledge had afforded him.
Sun Xi, drenched with sweat, ran forward to meet him.
He had originally planned to run directly to the water The Death of a Landlord 245
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crock, but when he saw the landlord waiting, he hesitated, stopped, and prepared to give his report.
But before he could even open his mouth, the landlord waved him away:
“Go get a drink first.”
Sun Xi hurried over to the water crock and sucked down two ladlefuls of water. Then he wiped his mouth and turned toward the landlord:
“Master, all the bridges are down. The young master took them to Orphan Hill, and then they tore down all the bridges. Even the bridges out of Bamboo Grove are gone.”
“I almost didn’t make it back.”
The landlord looked up and gazed expressionlessly down the path. The women burst into screaming sobs, their voices splashing like countless basins of water onto the steps.
Sun Xi stood awkwardly at the foot of the steps, eyes fixed on the string of cash clasped between the landlord’s fingers as he wondered why he still had not been tossed his reward.
In order to prod the landlord, he continued his report:
“Master, I’ll go take another look.”
The landlord shook his head:
“It’s no use.”
As he spoke, the landlord put the money back into his pocket and said to his disappointed laborer:
“You ought to be on your way home, Sun Xi. Take a sack of rice with you.”
Sun Xi immediately strode past the landlord and into the house. At the same time, the two women emerged:
“Make Sun Xi go back and have another look.”
The landlord waved his hand dismissively, stating:
“There’s no need.”
Sun Xi came out with a sack of rice, attached it to one end of a carrying pole, and halfheartedly attempted to lift the pole over his shoulder before setting it back down. He said:
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“Master, one end of the pole’s too heavy.”
The landlord smiled faintly:
“Go get another sack then.”
Sun Xi bowed:
“Thank you master.”
14
“You can’t get to Songhuang.” Wang Xianghuo, who
had been watching as the boats disappeared in the distance, finally turned and addressed the translator. “This is an island. Orphan Hill. They tore down all the bridges. Not one of you will be able to get away.”
The translator flew into a panic and began to scream, waving his fist at Wang Xianghuo, before turning anxiously toward the Japanese officer and babbling a report.
A sort of astonishment washed over the faces of the young Japanese soldiers as they turned to gaze uncomprehendingly at the broad waters that surrounded them. After a moment, one soldier, perhaps having finally digested the gravity of their predicament, suddenly began to scream as he ran toward Wang Xianghuo with his bayonet leveled. His
shouts ignited the anger of the rest of the troops, and within seconds what seemed like the entire brigade had besieged him with their bayonets. When the commanding officer bellowed something, the soldiers quickly pulled back their weapons and stood at attention. The officer moved toward Wang Xianghuo, brandishing his fist and squealing something in Japanese. Wang Xianghuo watched the officer’s fist hover in front of him for what seemed like several moments before it finally slammed against his face. Wang Xianghuo collapsed on the ground beneath the officer’s boots, and the translator landed a few hard kicks on his torso:
“Get up. Take us to Songhuang.”
Wang Xianghuo pushed himself to his knees with his
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forearms and then slowly stood to his full height. The translator continued:
“The commandant says that if you want to live you have to take us to Songhuang.”
Wang Xianghuo shook his head and said:
“You can’t get to Songhuang now. All the bridges are gone.”
The translator slapped Wang Xianghuo across the face.
Wang Xianghuo’s head lolled back and forth as the translator said:
“Do you fucking want to die?”
Wang Xianghuo looked down and mumbled:
“You’re all going to die too.”
The translator’s face went ash gray, and he seemed to be stuttering as he relayed this last conversation to the officer.
The officer, too, seemed not to have come to a thorough understanding of his plight, for he told the translator to tell Wang Xianghuo to lead them away from the island. Wang Xianghuo said to the translator:
“You should kill me.”
Wang Xianghuo gazed over at the rippling surface of the lake and said to the translator:
“Even if you knew how to swim, there’d be no way to come out alive. You’d freeze to death by the time you got to the middle. You should kill me.”
The translator said something to the officer. The Japanese soldiers grew increasingly restive as they stared imploringly at their commanding officer, entrusting their fates to someone just as helpless as themselves.
Wang Xianghuo, standing to one side, told the translator:
“You tell them that even if they could get to the other side alive, they’d find that every bridge throughout the region has been torn down.”
Then he smiled and somewhat sheepishly added:
“I was the one who told them to tear down the bridges.”
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The young soldiers began to shriek. One by one, they pointed their bayonets at him. The sight of their mud-spattered uniforms suddenly filled him with a kind of sorrow, for they reminded him less of soldiers than little boys. The officer waved a command, and two of the Japanese soldiers dragged Wang Xianghuo to an old withered tree, slamming him against its trunk with blows to his shoulders from the butts of their rifles. Wang Xianghuo bit his lips to stave off the intense pain. With his head lolling to one side, Wang Xianghuo watched the two Japanese soldiers discuss something. The other soldiers milled around in the distance, faces etched with anxiety, seeming hardly to notice what was about to happen. He saw the two Japanese soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder and advance toward him with their bayonets held at the ready. Suddenly, the sun emerged from behind the clouds and with it a wave of dizzying light that transformed everything before his eyes into a glittering, brilliant screen. One of the Japanese soldiers knelt down, rifle in hand, and took off his overcoat. Then he folded it over his knees and bowed his head toward the ground. Another soldier walked up to him and began to stroke his narrow, bony shoulder. The first soldier remained motionless, and the second stood by his side.
The two soldiers with bayonets retreated five or six meters and then stopped. One of them turned to glance at the commanding officer. The officer turned away from a conversation with the translator and barked a couple of clipped phrases toward the soldiers. Wang Xianghuo
watched a few of the soldiers take off their caps and rub the grime from their faces. Fragments of the shattered bridge flashed in the sunlight.
The two soldiers came shrieking toward him. A few of the others turned to watch. The two shining bayonet blades looked as if they were sticking out of the soldier’s chins as they hurtled toward him. The blades pierced his chest and The Death of a Landlord 249
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his stomach. He felt them churn inside him, and he felt them being pulled from his body. It seemed that he had been disemboweled. Wang Xianghuo screamed:
“Pa, it hurts!”
His body slid down the tree trunk to the ground and lay lifelessly twisted in a pool of gore.
The officer barked out an order, and the Japanese soldiers immediately gathered into two neat columns. The officer waved his arm, and, boots thudding rhythmically against the dirt, the brigade began to march away. One of the soldiers took up the same tune on his whistle, and the rest of the brigade joined in low song. In the hours before their death, through the approaching dusk, the brigade sang a song of their native land as they marched across foreign soil.
15
After Sun Xi left, two sacks of rice squeaking on the carrying pole, Wang Ziqing slowly walked out of the courtyard, hands clasped behind his back, and moved through the gleaming light of the setting sun toward the night soil vat by the village gate.
The silver-whiskered landlord walked desolately across the barren fields. The withered trees, motionless even in
the breeze, reminded him of corpses. A peasant approached and bowed respectfully:
“Master.”
“Uhh.”
He grunted and continued to walk until he reached the edge of the vat. He lifted up the edge of his robe, let his pants fall to his ankles, and squatted over the vat. He gazed at the path that extended into the distance, but it was empty of anything save gradually approaching darkness.
Not far away, an old peasant was tilling the land, repeatedly slapping his hoe weakly into the mud. He felt his trembling 250 yu hua
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legs begin to shake violently, tried in vain to steady himself by crouching down on the edge of the vat. He looked up at the mottled sunset sky, but the speckles of light only made him dizzy. He closed his eyes. With this tiny movement, he tumbled down beside the vat.
He watched the peasant walk up to him and inquire:
“Master, are you all right?”
He lay propped against the side of the vat, but when he tried to move, his body went limp, as if it were just a hollow shell. It was only with great effort that he lifted a couple of crooked fingers toward the peasant. The peasant immediately knelt next to him:
“Master, what can I do for you?”
He softly asked the peasant:
“Have you ever seen me fall before?”
The peasant shook his head:
“No, master.”
He lifted up one finger:
“The first time?”
“Yes, master. The first time.”
The landlord laughed quietly and waved the peasant
away. The old peasant returned to his work. The landlord lay limply against the vat as the night spread around him like black smoke. The path in the distance was still pale with light.
He heard the sound of a woman calling for someone float toward him from out of the distance, and he trembled. It was the sound of his young wife’s voice. She was calling for his reluctant little son to stop playing and come on inside.
He closed his eyes and watched the endless waters of the lake swell across his chest. The pink clouds were much too low. They coiled across the surface of the water like wind.
He saw his son move distractedly toward him, and he cursed under his breath: The little bastard.