Cries in the Drizzle (25 page)

The table-leg episode did not mark the end of hostilities between Sun Youyuan and Sun Kwangtsai, for my father was a tenacious adversary and would not allow Sun Youyuan to rest easy for long. Soon he forbade my grandfather to sit at the table at mealtimes, insisting that he sit in the corner with a small bowl. My grandfather had to learn to put up with hunger. Although an old man, he had the appetite of a young newlywed, but now he was allowed only this one small bowl. Sun Kwangtsai's put-upon expression made it very difficult for him to request a second helping, and he could only watch with rumbling stomach as my parents and brothers dug into their meal with gusto. The only way of alleviating his hunger was to lick all the plates before they were washed, and now, through our back window, the villagers would often see
Sun Youyuan assiduously scouring the dirty dishes with his tongue.

My grandfather did not easily resign himself to suffering such humiliation, and given that he was no coward he had no choice but to go head to head with Sun Kwangtsai since it was impossible to outflank him. After a month or so, when my mother passed Granddad his little bowl, he deliberately failed to take a firm hold and instead let it drop and shatter on the floor. I can imagine how this would have infuriated my father, and sure enough he leapt up from his stool, and pointing a finger at Sun Youyuan cursed him loudly. “You old wastrel, you can't even hold a fucking bowl properly! How do you think you're going to eat now?”

By then my grandfather was already down on his knees, gathering up the bits of food off the floor. He put on an expression that seemed to acknowledge he had committed a terrible crime, and he said to my father, “Oh no, I shouldn't have smashed that bowl! Oh no, that family heirloom—it was supposed to be passed on to the next generation!”

This last sentence left my father nonplussed, and it was a moment before its implications sank in. Then he said to my mother, “You keep telling me the old man is so pitiful, but don't you see how devious he is?”

My grandfather did not look at Sun Kwangtsai. His eyes filled with tears while he kept crying stubbornly, “Oh no, that bowl was to go to my son!”

Sun Kwangtsai was now at the end of his tether, and he roared at Granddad, “Stop that fucking playacting!”

Sun Youyuan started to bawl, crying in an anguished voice, “Now that the bowl is broken, how's my son going to eat?”

At that point my little brother began to cackle. In his eyes Granddad looked so ridiculous that he burst out laughing, despite the inappropriateness of the occasion. My big brother Sun Guang-ping knew that this was not the time for levity but Sun Guang-ming's mirth so infected him that he could not stop himself from joining in. My father now found himself under fire from all quarters: on the one side, Sun Youyuan with his ominous prediction of hardship late in life; on the other, his progeny seemingly savoring with their laughter the prospect of his future sufferings. Sun Kwangtsai glanced suspiciously at his darling sons and thought to himself: its true I can't really count on these two guys.

My brothers’ laughter served to buttress my grandfather's position, although that was not what they intended. My father, normally brimming with self-confidence, found himself at sea. Bereft of the rage he needed to deal with the still-wailing Sun Youyuan, he retreated feebly toward the door, at the same time waving his hand and saying, “Okay, I give in. Just stop all that wailing, will you? You win, all right? I'm no match for you, I admit. Just stop that damn wailing!”

But once he was outside the house Sun Kwangtsai flared up once again. Pointing at his family inside, he swore, “You're such sons of bitches, the whole lot of you!”

Chapter 4
THREATS

There was one lunchtime when I—an adult now—found my attention drawn to a charming performance by a brightly dressed little boy. He stood on the sidewalk in the full sunshine, stuck out a pudgy arm, and very intently executed a whole series of gestures that suggested a rich imagination, simple though they were. In the middle of this routine he suddenly stuck his hand into the crotch of his pants and scratched an itch, although his face continued to maintain a blissful smile. Undistracted by the din of the city streets, his mind still reveled in a fantasy world.

Later, when a troop of primary school pupils passed by, he discovered that he wasn't as happy as he thought. He watched agog as these older children walked off into the distance. Even without seeing the look in his eye I could feel his despondency at that moment. Satchels, slung casually over their owners’ shoulders, swayed in a gentle motion as the class moved off, surely a dispiriting sight to a boy who had not yet reached school age, and the fact that the children were walking in pairs can only have sharpened his feelings of envy, leaving him vexed and dissatisfied with life. He turned and stomped off down an alleyway, wearing a long face.

Twenty or so years ago, when my big brother strutted off with his satchel and my father issued his parting injunction, I realized for the first time how unfortunate I was. A year later, when I went off to school with a satchel on my back myself, I was no longer in a position to listen to any advice that Sun Kwangtsai might have had for me, and received another kind of counsel altogether.

By that time it was six months since I had left Southgate. The burly man who escorted me away from Southgate had become my father, while my mother, a petite woman with a blue-checked headscarf who used to walk briskly across the fields, had been replaced by the pale and listless Li Xiuying. One morning my new father gripped the handles of a heavy wooden trunk, effortlessly shifted it to one side, and from the trunk underneath brought out a brand-new green military satchel, which he said was mine from now on.

Wang Liqiang's perception of country boys would have been amusing were it not so annoying. Perhaps because he was himself a peasant's son, he never altered his conviction that village children, like dogs, were liable to answer the call of nature wherever they felt like it. During his first full day of parenting he underscored repeatedly the importance of the chamber pot. His concern about my excretory functions remained uppermost in his thoughts even as I was putting the satchel on my back, a moment that to me was sacred. He told me that once I was at school I could not just go to the toilet whenever I felt like it; first I needed to raise my hand and secure the teacher's permission.

I felt proud to be so neatly dressed, green satchel dangling from my shoulder, escorted by Wang Liqiang in his army uniform. That was how I arrived at school on my first day. A man who was
busy knitting a sweater chatted quietly with Wang Liqiang, but I dared not laugh at his incongruous hobby because this man was to be my teacher. Then a boy my age ran toward us waving his satchel. He and I exchanged glances, and a cluster of children nearby took a good look at me. “Why don't you go and join them?” Wang Liqiang suggested.

I walked toward those unfamiliar faces. They eyed me inquisitively and I studied them with equal curiosity. I soon found that I had a significant advantage over the other children, for my satchel was bigger than any of theirs. But just when I was feeling rather pleased with my superior status, Wang Liqiang came across on his way out and delivered a loud reminder, “If you need to pee or drop your load, don't forget to raise your hand.”

My nascent self-esteem instantly bit the dust.

My five years of town life were spent in the company of an ill-matched couple, one all muscle, the other frailty personified. I had not been selected by the town because I was so adorable, nor was I, for that matter, so enthralled by the town; the crux of the matter was that Wang Liqiang and his wife needed me. They were childless, the reason being, according to Li Xiuying, that she was not strong enough to breastfeed. Wang Liqiang put it differently, telling me categorically that if Li Xiuying, with all her ailments, were to give birth, this would kill her right away—a remark that seemed quite shocking to me at the time. Neither of them liked babies, and they opted for a six-year-old like me because I could do some work around the house. To be fair, they were expecting to be parents to me their whole lives through, for otherwise they could perfectly well have adopted a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy whose performance of chores would have been more satisfactory. The problem was that a fourteen-year-old would already
have well-formed habits that might give them a lot of trouble. Having chosen me, they fed and clothed me, saw me off to school, scolded and beat me, just like other parents would. And so I, the product of another marriage, became their son.

During the whole five years I lived with them Li Xiuying went out of the house only once, and after that unprecedented excursion I never saw her again. It was always a mystery to me exactly what was wrong with Li Xiuying, but I was left in no doubt about her devotion to sunlight. It was as though, without exposure to sunshine, this second mother of mine was shrouded in a perpetual drizzle.

The first time Wang Liqiang conducted me into her room, I was astonished to see the floor dotted with little stools, on which were draped an immense number of undershirts and underpants, illuminated by the sunshine that came in through the window. She seemed completely unaware of our entrance. Her outstretched arm was groping for the sunlight, as though tugging on a slender cord. As the sun's rays shifted their position, she would move the stools so that her motley collection of underwear would always be bathed in sunshine. So absorbed was she in this monotonous and barren activity that I must have stood there for quite some time. When she turned around, I saw a large pair of eyes so hollow that I draw a blank when I try to picture their expression. Then I heard a sound so thin it was as though a thread was passing through my ear, the way it might pass through the eye of a needle. She was telling me what would happen if she wore damp underwear: “I'd be dead in a second.”

I was startled to find this languid woman speaking about death with such finality. I had left the familiar and intimate surroundings of Southgate and parted from my parents and brothers
who were all so full of life, and now, no sooner did I get here than the first thing this unnerving woman said to me was that she could die at any moment.

Later I came to feel that Li Xiuyings remark was not so exaggerated. During those periods when it rained day after day, she would run a fever and lie in bed mumbling. She looked so desperately ill at such moments that I often felt she was about to vindicate her own prognosis. But when sunlight shone through the window and illuminated her rows of stools, she accepted her survival with equanimity. She had an uncanny sensitivity to moisture and could even gauge the humidity in the air with her hand. Every morning when I pushed open her door and went to clean her window, she would extend a hand from her blue floral mosquito net and pat the air, just as if she was stroking something solid, in this way testing the dampness of the day that was just beginning. At first this scared me out of my wits, for her body was entirely obscured behind the mosquito net and all that could be seen was a white hand, its five splayed fingers in sluggish motion, like a severed limb floating in the air.

Sickly as she was, Li Xiuying naturally placed a high priority on hygiene. Her world was already narrow and confining, and if it was in a mess as well she would be hard put to sustain her fragile life. I was responsible for almost the entire job of keeping her room tidy. Window cleaning was the most important chore, to be performed twice a day so as to ensure that sunlight could reach her underwear unsullied by any impurities. The biggest challenge came when I opened the window, for I was expected to do a quick and thorough job of cleaning the outside of the pane, and it was a tall order for a child my age to perform this task with the requisite dispatch. Li Xiuying was truly too weak to withstand a gust of
wind. She told me that wind was the worst thing in the world, for it blew dust, germs, and bad smells all over the place, making people sick, making people die. She made wind sound so dreadful that in my young imagination it almost took on the features of a green-faced, long-toothed monster, fastening itself to my window at night and rubbing the pane till it shook.

After concluding her vilification of the wind, Li Xiuying asked me in a conspiratorial hush, “Do you know where dampness comes from?”

Then she answered her own question. “It's blown here by the wind!” she exclaimed. The sudden fury with which she said this gave me such a fright that my heart started pounding.

Glass played a vital role in Li Xiuying's life, interposing itself in transparent form between her and the outside world, protecting her from the intrusion of wind and dust and at the same time safeguarding her special relationship with sunshine.

Even now I remember that in the afternoon, when the sunlight was blocked by the slope of the mountain opposite, Li Xiuying would stand in front of the window, gazing disconsolately at the red tint in the sky behind the mountain, as though she had been deserted and yet at the same time was unwilling to accept her abandonment. She told me softly, “The sun wanted to shine in my room, but on its way here the mountain abducted it.”

Her voice traverses time and carries to my ears today, as though to remind me how long she and the sunlight had enjoyed cordial relations. The mountain, by contrast, was a despot that had forcibly appropriated her sunshine.

Wang Liqiang was a busy man, away at work the whole day, and he did not count on me simply to pull my weight doing chores: what he seemed to be hoping was that the noise I made around
the house would alleviate the melancholy to which Li Xiuying was prone. In fact, however, Li Xiuying did not set much store by my presence, for she preferred to spend her time bemoaning her fate and seldom concerned herself with me. She would harp on about how this was sore or that was giving her trouble, but when I nervously appeared in front of her, looking forward to doing some little job that would make her life easier, she would act as though I wasn't there. Sometimes my astonishment at her health problems would simply have the odd effect of making her feel proud of them.