Cries in the Drizzle (2 page)

This coincidence made my father look at me and Granddad
with intense suspicion in the days that followed, for all the world as if we were the ones who had started the blaze. If I happened to stand next to Granddad, he would erupt into howls of frenzied protest, as though he expected our newly erected cottage to burst into flames any second.

Granddad died the year after my return to Southgate. His departure from the scene allowed my father's paranoia about us to dissipate, but this did nothing to alleviate my plight. My big brother took his cue from my father and made no secret of his disapproval of me. Any time I made the mistake of appearing by his side, he would tell me to get lost. So I grew steadily more distant from my siblings, and as the village boys were always doing things with my big brother I became ever more remote from them too.

To compensate, I would immerse myself in nostalgia for my life in Wang Liqiang's home and for my childhood companions in Littlemarsh, recalling countless happy moments, yet assailed at the same time by sadder memories. As I sat alone by the pond, engrossed in reliving the past, my solitary smiles and copious tears left the villagers bemused. In their eyes I was fast becoming a freak. That's why later, when people got into rows with my father, I became a weapon in their arsenal, and they'd say that only defective genes could spawn a son like me.

In all the time I spent in Southgate, there was just one occasion when my big brother turned to me as a suppliant—the time he cut my head open with a sickle, leaving my face dripping with blood.

This was in our sheep pen. When his stinging blow struck my head, I wasn't at all clear what had happened, and what first caught my attention was the abrupt change in my brother's attitude. Only after that did I feel the blood coursing down my face.

He stood aghast in the doorway and begged me to wash the blood off. I shoved him aside and headed out of the village, toward the fields where Father was working.

The villagers were fertilizing the vegetables, and a faint odor of feces wafted on the breeze toward me. As I approached the vegetable plot, I heard several women give cries of alarm and dimly perceived my mother running toward me. When she arrived at my side she asked me a question, but I made no reply, carrying on doggedly toward my father.

In his hand he was holding a long ladle, which he had just lifted out of the honey bucket. He held it stationary in the air as he watched me walking toward him. I heard myself say, “It was big brother who did it.”

He hurled the ladle to the ground, leapt onto the path, and set off for home at a rapid pace.

What I didn't know was that after I left, my big brother had cut my little brothers face with the sickle. Just as my little brother was about to open his mouth and bawl, my big brother explained why he'd done what he did and begged his forgiveness. In my case his entreaties had fallen on deaf ears, but my little brother was more receptive.

And so, when I returned home I was greeted not by the sight of my older brother taking his punishment, but by that of my father waiting for me under the elm tree, rope in hand.

Owing to my little brother's false testimony, the facts of the case had now taken on a completely new cast: it was only because
I
had cut
him
with the sickle that my big brother had bathed my face in blood.

Father tied me to the tree and gave me a thrashing that I will never forget. During the beating the village children stood around
in a circle and watched with rapt attention while my brothers complacently maintained order.

After this episode I made two marks, one large, one small, on the last page of my composition book. I kept a record of every beating I suffered at the hands of my father and my big brother.

Now, so many years later, I still have that composition book, but its mildewy odor makes it impossible to reexperience the urge for revenge that animated me then. It evokes instead a vague sense of wonder, which in turn brings to mind the willow trees of Southgate. I remember that one morning in early spring I noticed with surprise that their withered branches were dotted with tender green buds. This lovely image, when it now reappears in my consciousness so many years later, turns out to be intimately linked with the composition book that is the symbol of my childhood humiliations. Perhaps that is how memory works, outlasting loves and hates to make its entrance unaccompanied and unencumbered.

Just as my family situation was going from bad to worse, something else happened that created an unbridgeable gap between me and the other members of my household and also destroyed my reputation in the village at large.

Adjacent to our private plot was a tract tended by the Wang family, which included among its members a pair of brothers, the strongest men in the whole village. The elder of the two was married, his older son the same age as my little brother. Arguments over private plots were commonplace in Southgate and I can no longer recall exactly what triggered this particular dispute. All I remember is that it was late in the afternoon and I was sitting by the pond watching my parents and brothers as they engaged in an unending altercation with the six members of the Wang family.
Our side appeared to be in the weaker position, or at least it was making less noise. This was particularly true of my little brother, who was still unable to enunciate swearwords as clearly as his opposite number in the Wang household. Practically everyone in the village was standing around watching, and a few came over in an effort to pacify the antagonists, only to be sent packing. Some time later I saw my father hurling himself at his adversaries, his fists flying. The younger of the two Wang brothers, Wang Yuejin, seized his wrist and with one blow sent him hurtling into the rice paddy. My father unleashed a string of curses and just as he tried to climb soggily to his feet, Wang Yuejin kicked him back into the field. Mother screamed and threw herself at Wang Yuejin, but he dodged to one side and gave her a shove that sent her headlong into the paddy as well. My parents floundered about clumsily, like chickens tossed into a lake. I bowed my head in distress at the sight of them thrashing around.

Later my big brother charged over brandishing the kitchen cleaver, my little brother hot on his heels grasping a sickle. My big brother aimed a blow at Wang Yuejin's buttocks.

A dramatic reversal of fortune ensued. Under the onslaught of my brother's cleaver, the Wang brothers, who had seemed so invincible just moments earlier, retreated to their house in alarm. My brother chased them right to their door, where the Wang brothers grabbed fish spears in an effort to fend him off. But when he recklessly threw himself at them, cleaver flailing, they dropped the fish spears and ran for their lives.

Inspired by his big brother's example, my little brother raised his sickle high in the air and gave a battle whoop, quite the intrepid warrior. But he had trouble keeping his balance as he ran and tripped over himself several times.

Throughout the whole confrontation I remained rooted to my spot next to the pond, and it was because of my detached role as spectator that the villagers—no matter whether they were my father's supporters or his detractors (the Wangs included)—came to the conclusion that in all the world there could not be another person as degenerate as me, and it is not hard to imagine what kind of reception I got from my own family. My big brother, on the other hand, was proclaimed the hero of the hour.

There was a period when I would make a point of quietly observing the Su family as I sat by the pond or cut grass for the sheep. The two town boys did not emerge from their house all that often, and the farthest they ever went was to the cesspit at the edge of the village, where they immediately turned back. One morning I saw them come out of the house and stand between the two trees in the front yard, pointing at something as they talked. Then they walked over to one of the trees, and the older of the two squatted down on his haunches while the younger climbed onto his back. The one carried the other over to the second tree, where they exchanged positions and the younger boy carried his older brother back to the original spot. They repeated this routine over and over again, and each time one threw his weight on the other's back I could hear their infectious laughter. The two brothers’ laughs sounded very much alike.

Later on three bricklayers came from town, bringing two loads of red bricks. A wall was erected around the Sus’ house, enclosing the two trees, and I never again saw the Su brothers playing the game that so captivated me. But I often heard laughter from the other side of the wall, so I knew they still played it.

Their father, a doctor, worked at the hospital in town. Often I saw him strolling along the road late in the afternoon, a man with
clear skin and a gentle voice. Once, however, he didn't come home on foot as usual, but sped past me, perched on the saddle of one of the hospitals bicycles. I was heading home with a basketful of grass and was startled by the sound of a bicycle bell behind me. He was calling his sons as he rode past.

The two boys went into ecstasies as soon as they came out the door and raced joyfully to meet the bicycle, while their mother stood by the side of the lane, greeting with a smile the returning man of the house. The doctor loaded his two sons onto the bicycle and rode off along a path between the fields. They shrieked with excitement, and the younger boy, who sat in front, rang the bell incessantly. This spectacle made the village children green with envy.

When I was sixteen, in my first year of high school, I tried for the first time to come to terms with the word
family.
I hesitated for a long time, faced with the choice between my home in South-gate and Wang Liqiang's home in Littlemarsh, and the understanding I finally reached was inspired by the memory of that particular scene.

My first contact with the doctor occurred some time before the argument over the private plots. I had been back at Southgate only a few months then, and Granddad was still alive. After staying with us for a month, he had gone off to my uncle's house. Meanwhile I had come down with a fever that left my mouth parched dry. I lay in bed for two days, all in a daze. Our ewe was just about to lamb and the rest of the family was out in the pen, so I was alone in the house, listening groggily to the noises outside. My brothers’ shrill voices were particularly audible.

Later my mother appeared by my bedside and said some-thing
or other, then went out. Next time she appeared Dr. Su was by her side. He placed the palm of his hand on my forehead, and I heard him say, “Must be a hundred and two.”

After they left, the noise in the sheep pen went up a notch. Though the doctor had just laid his hand lightly on my forehead, it felt to me like a tender caress. Before long I heard the voices of the Su brothers outside; only later did I realize that they were delivering medicine.

Once I was on the mend, feelings of dependency began to stir. I had been close to my parents until I was six, when I left the village, and later, during my five years in Littlemarsh, Wang Liqiang and Li Xiuying had provided their care and support, but since my return to Southgate I had found myself suddenly abandoned and unprotected.

So around this time I would often stand by the roadside and wait for the doctor to pass on his way home from work. I watched as he approached, imagining the heartwarming things he might say to me, anticipating how his broad hand would pat me on the forehead.

But the doctor never paid me the slightest attention, and I realize now that there was no reason he should have given any thought to who I was or why I was standing there. He would brush past me, and if on occasion he threw me a glance it was only as one stranger looks at another.

Su Yu and Su Hang, the doctors two sons, soon afterward were inducted into the ranks of the village children. My brothers were trimming grass from the bank of earth between the fields, and I watched as the Su brothers walked hesitantly toward them, debating some point as they went. My older brother, who in those
days tended to think he could take charge of anything, waved his sickle at them and said, “Hey, do you want to cut some grass?”

In the short time Su Yu spent in Southgate, he came over to talk to me only once. I still remember his shy expression, the unmistakable timidity in his smile as he asked, “You're Sun Guangping's younger brother, right?”

The Sus lived in Southgate for only two years. The sky was overcast on the afternoon they moved out. The very last cart of furniture was hauled away by the doctor himself, with the two boys pushing, one on either side, and their mother brought up the rear, clutching two baskets full of odds and ends.

Su Yu died of a brain hemorrhage when he was nineteen. I didn't hear the news until the day after it happened. On the way home from school I passed the house where the Sus had lived and sorrow surged through my heart, bathing my face in tears.

When my big brother went to high school his behavior changed quite markedly. (I find I now recall rather fondly my brother at the age of fourteen. Though he was a real dictator, there was something unforgettable about his arrogance. Sitting on the bank, directing the Su brothers’ grass-trimming activities—for a long time this was the image of him that was foremost in my mind.) Once he began to mix with the children from town, he became increasingly standoffish toward the village boys. As his town classmates became more regular visitors to our house, my parents felt that this reflected very well on them, and there were even some senior residents of the village who predicted that my brother would have the brightest future of any of the village children.

During this period two teenagers from town often came running out to the village early in the morning, shouting at the top of their lungs just for the heck of it. They yelled so much that they
became hoarse, and their screeches made our hair stand on end. The villagers thought at first theywere hearing ghosts.

This made a deep impression on my brother, and I once heard him say darkly, “Here we are, wishing we could be townsfolk, but its entertainers that the townsfolk want to be.”