Cries in the Drizzle (19 page)

But this was not the most stirring moment. That came later, well into the autumn of that year, when the day finally came to close the gap in the middle of the bridge. Decorated archways were set up at the two ends, their colored bunting flapping in the wind like tree leaves; there were deafening peals of music and clouds of incense; a noisy hubbub rose from the ranks of country folk who had flocked to the scene from many miles around. Not a single sparrow was to be seen, the frightening din having driven them all to seek anxious refuge on trees far away. It has always surprised me that Sun Youyuan, having witnessed this splendid scene, could in his final years be so awed by my grandmother's wedding. Compared with this, her wedding was a nonevent.

It would never have occurred to my great-grandfather that his career would take a nosedive at this particular juncture. He had always been able to depend on his wits and his skills as he made his way in the world, but here in Northmarsh Bridge he came upon a cropper. He had in fact noticed that the soil was porous and that the bridge was subsiding. But he was a bit too confident, a bit too fixed in his judgment, thinking on the basis of past experience that some settling was inevitable. However, as the completion date grew closer, the rate of subsidence increased. By
overlooking that point, my great-grandfather condemned himself to a miserable old age.

Although it was to end a fiasco, the sight of the eight apprentices carrying the dragon-gate stone onto the bridge was inspiring at the time. They marched proudly up to the apex and their work song died away. As they carefully lowered the dragon-gate stone toward the breach, the music hushed and the spectators went completely quiet. That was when my great-grandfather heard a grating scrape rather than the resounding clunk that he had anticipated, and knew, sooner than anybody else present, that disaster had struck. He had been watching from the decorated arch, and the unanticipated crisis left a smile frozen on his face. When that awful jarring noise reached his ears, he sprang to his feet, like a fish about to go bottom up—as my grandfather was later to tell us—with the whites of the eyes exposed. But he was after all a veteran of many adventures, and before the crowd had cottoned on to just what was amiss he had already come down from the decorated arch and walked away with his pipe pressed against his back, as though he was heading off to a tavern. He made straight for the hills, leaving his son and the team of apprentices to shoulder the disgrace.

The dragon-gate stone was tightly wedged inside the breach, and though the eight burly youths turned red in the face in their efforts to raise it out of its awkward position, it remained lodged there, immobile. As a wave of hisses swept over them, their eight faces shone like pig livers in the scorching sun. The dragon-gate stone lay tilted like a seesaw, unadjustable, unremovable.

I don't know how Sun Youyuan managed to get through that terrible afternoon. By making his getaway as he did, my greatgrandfather came across too much like a petty thief. Sun Youyuan
had to bear a double shame: while just as disconsolate as the apprentices, he also suffered the ignominy of being my greatgrandfather's son. It was a complete disaster—just as bad, my grandfather told us, as if a house had collapsed on top of their heads. He was in all the worse a situation because he happened to be one of the eight porters. He gripped the balustrade but found himself unable to take a single step forward, as drained of strength as though someone had squeezed him in the crotch.

It was after dark when my great-grandfather returned. Although he had been too mortified to face the local spectators earlier in the day, he still managed to project a superior air in front of his son and the apprentices. The old man, masking his inner turmoil, lectured his dispirited audience in a rasping voice. “Don't pull such long faces. I'm not dead yet. A new start can be made. I remember how things were when I started out…”

In expansive, inspiring tones he reviewed his stirring past and painted for his disciples an even more splendid future. Then all of a sudden he announced, “We're disbanding.”

He turned on his heel and strode away as the apprentices stared and gaped in shock. But when he reached the entrance to the construction shed, my great-grandfather, who was so fond of taking people by surprise, spun around and issued a piece of confident advice. “Remember your master's words: so long as you've got money in your pocket, you won't have to sleep in an empty bed.”

In that bygone era, the old man found it very easy to impress himself. When he decided to leave that very night for the county seat so that he could present his apology to the local administrator, he felt that he was displaying an integrity worthy of legendary heroes, and when he told my grandfather that a man has to take responsibility for his actions the tremor in his voice came entirely
from his own sense of exaltation. Seeing his father transported by the ambition to convert failure into glory, Sun Youyuan himself felt a foolish surge of pride.

But my great-grandfathers morale slumped after he had taken only a few steps, for he made the mistake of looking back at the stone bridge. He could not help himself, because the upturned dragon-gate stone glinted in the moonlight, like a wild dog baring its fangs in a bad dream. As my granddad watched, the old man's silhouette seemed to tremble and totter. Under a chilly moon my great-grandfather began his wearisome trek down that little country road, assailed by a persistent sense of failure. Far from marching gallantly into the county jail, as Sun Youyuan claimed was the case when he related this episode to us later, he looked even more feeble than a sick man trundled into the hospital at death's door.

For a long time Sun Youyuan was inspired by his father's heroic spirit, despite its fraudulence. He did not change his profession as his father had urged, and after a number of apprentices had packed up their belongings and left for home, he and the seven other bearers of the dragon-gate stone stayed on. Sun Youyuan vowed to salvage the stone bridge, and after his father's departure he applied his own acumen to telling effect. First he led the seven apprentices out and directed them to dig sixteen holes underneath the arch, and then he had them cut sixteen wooden stakes. After inserting the stakes into the shafts, the eight young men swung sixteen hammers and struck the stakes in a ferocious frenzy. Bystanders may well have thought they were lunatics, for they banged away there for a full four hours. In deference to their puny but strenuous efforts, the huge bridge ever so slightly rose, and eventually my grandfather heard an encouraging scrape, followed
by a thunderous boom, and he had achieved his goal. The dragon-gate stone now snugly and securely filled the breach.

My grandfather was so elated that he bounded down the road, tears streaming down his face, calling my great-grandfather at the top of his lungs. He ran a full fifteen miles in one go, all the way to the county town. When my great-grandfather emerged befuddled from jail, he saw his son soaked from head to toe as if he had spent the whole night in the rain, though there was a baking sun in a clear blue sky. My grandfather had expended practically all his bodily fluids in making his dash, and he was able just to call “Dad …” before he collapsed to the ground with a thump.

My great-grandfather bore the imprint of his era's frailty, and even though he could draw comfort from his son's redemption of the Northmarsh Bridge debacle he found it impossible thereafter to recover his former vigor. With the ponderous steps of an old peasant, my demoralized great-grandfather plodded toward my great-grandmother, who when young had been quite a beauty. In their twilight years these two old folks began, for the first time in their lives, to spend day after day in each other's company.

Meanwhile my grandfather, the proud and self-assured Sun Youyuan, led a team of masons just like his father before him, and carried on the business established by his forebears. But his glory days were fleeting; as the last generation of traditional stonemasons, they encountered only indifference from the age in which they lived. Besides, many stone arched bridges already spanned the rivers in the surrounding area, and given their predecessors’ skilled craftsmanship it was too much to expect that all these structures would simply give way overnight. Sun Youyuan's hungry crew traversed the waterlands of Jiangnan, clinging to their naive
hopes. The only opportunity that came their way allowed them to construct a small stone-paved bridge—a crooked bridge, at that. But it gave Sun Youyuan the chance to observe his future father-in-law's scholarly bearing.

A group of peasants had pooled together funds to engage their services, and my grandfather by now was too hard up to be picky. At one time the Suns had specialized in arched bridges of impressive scale, but things had now reached such a parlous state that Sun Youyuan readily accepted the commission to build a little slab bridge. They selected a place where two highways intersected as the best site to build the foundation, but a large camphor tree on the other bank hampered construction at one end. My grandfather waved his arm and told them to cut the tree down, not knowing that its owner was the father of his wife-to-be.

Liu Xinzhi was known near and far as a man of property; he was to go through his whole life not knowing that his ultimate son-in-law was a pauper. A licentiate under the imperial examination system, he was much given to pontificating about the scholar's obligation to be first to worry about the world's problems and last to enjoy the world's pleasures. But when he heard that there was a plan afoot to fell his family's camphor tree, he was just as incensed as if they were proposing to dig up the ancestral tombs. Oblivious of his reputation for profound learning, he unleashed a string of barnyard curses at the people who had come to consult him.

Sun Youyuan, his hands tied, had no choice but to build the foundation at a slight angle to the line of the bridge, and after three months the crooked bridge was completed. Now that the job was finished, the sponsors invited Liu Xinzhi, Old Master Liu, to bestow a name upon it.

That was the morning that my grandfather saw his father-inlaw
. He watched with awe as Liu Xinzhi emerged, dressed in silk, and walked at a snail's pace toward him. Somehow this pretentious licentiate appeared even more imposing to Sun Youyuan's eyes than an official in the Republican administration. Years later, as my grandmother's bed partner, he looked back on the scene that day, recalling how the decadent Liu Xinzhi still managed to impress him in his robust youth.

My grandmother's father maintained a scholarly posture all the way to the bridge, but once he got there he promptly announced that it was beneath his notice, saying sharply, as though he had been insulted, “Such a lousy crooked bridge, and you ask me to think of a name for it!” And he went off in a huff.

My grandfather carried on crisscrossing the country north and south. He and his team trudged long distances amid the gunfire of Nationalists and Communists, through scenes of famine; in such times as these, who would think of raising money to have them demonstrate their skills? Like a band of beggars, they tried to drum up business everywhere they went. My grandfather was stirred by an ambition to build bridges, but he lived at the wrong time, in an era infatuated with destruction. In the end his motley crew had little choice but to compromise their initial innocence and take on any work available, even cleaning corpses and digging graves, for only by such means could they ensure that they themselves did not die by the roadside. In that dire hour, Sun Youyuan somehow managed to induce them to follow him on his aimless and futile travels; I have no idea what kind of blandishments he used to persuade them. Finally one night, mistaken for Communist guerrillas, they were fired upon by Nationalist troops, and these stonemasons, so steeped in out-of-date ideals, were forced to go their separate ways, alive or dead.

At that time my grandfather and his band of paupers were sleeping on a riverbank. After the first wave of shots rang out, Sun Youyuan was unscathed, and he propped himself up and yelled, “What do you think you are doing, letting off firecrackers?” Then he saw that the face of an apprentice next to him had been shot to pieces, reduced in the moonlight to a gruesome mess, like an egg that has been smashed on the ground. My bleary-eyed grandfather took to his heels and ran, yelling and screaming as he tore along the bank. But he soon hushed when a bullet whistled through the crotch of his pants. “Damn it,” he thought, “my balls have been blown away!” He continued to run for his life all the same. When he had run a good ten miles, he felt that his crotch was completely soaked through. It didn't occur to him that it could be drenched with sweat and he felt sure that he was losing all his blood, so he came to a stop and reached in a hand to press down on the wound. In so doing, he brushed against his testicles. At first he was startled, thinking, “What the hell is this?” But more careful examination confirmed that the family jewels were intact and unharmed. Later he sat down under a tree, toying with his sweaty testicles for a good long time and chuckling away. Only when he was absolutely sure of his own safety did he give any thought to the band of apprentices on the riverbank. The memory of the youngster s shattered face reduced him to tears and wails.

For Sun Youyuan to try to keep the family business afloat was clearly no longer an option. At the age of twenty-five, he felt the same bleak hopelessness that had beset his father on his retirement. As Spring Festival approached, wearing the careworn expression of an old man, my young grandfather stepped onto a dust-blown highway and set off for home.

My great-grandfather had fallen seriously ill after he
returned home the previous year, and though my great-grandmother spent all their savings she was unable to return him to his former vigor and had to pawn everything of value in the house. Eventually she found herself bedridden too. On the last day of the year, when my grandfather returned home ragged and penniless, his father had already breathed his last, and his mother lay sprawled next to his lifeless body, on the verge of death. Racked by illness as she was, she could greet her son's return only with a rasping, hurried breath. My grandfather had brought poverty back to a poverty-stricken home.