Rickshaw Boy: A Novel (26 page)
Huniu seemed not to notice Fuzi’s troubles. The girl had come home with nothing, yet she had to care for her two brothers—since her father had no interest in doing that himself—so where was she going to get the money to feed them?
It was left to Er Qiangzi to come up with an idea while he was drunk: there’s one way you can feed your brothers if you really care that much for them. Look at me, I work like a dog day in and day out, but I can only do that on a full stomach. If I don’t eat, I don’t work. You could laugh if I dropped dead out there, but what good would it do you? Instead of idling around, you’ve got something to sell, so what are you waiting for?
She looked at her drunken, irrational father, then at herself, and finally at her famished brothers. All she could do was cry. But her tears did not move her father and could not feed two boys who looked like starved rats. No, something more practical was required. In order to feed her brothers, she had to sell her own flesh. As she hugged the younger of the two, her tears fell on his hair. “I’m hungry, Sister,” he said. Sister! Sister was a piece of meat to feed her brothers.
Instead of commiserating with Fuzi, Huniu was willing to help by lending her money to make her presentable. She could pay it back out of her earnings. She was also happy to let the girl use one of her rooms, since her own place was so dirty. There was plenty of space in the two rooms, and they were in decent shape. Xiangzi was out during the day, and she was eager to help a friend. It would also give her a chance to see some things that were new to her, things she missed and could never do, even if she wanted to. Her only condition was that Fuzi give her twenty cents each time she used the room. Friends are friends, but business is business. She would have to keep the room neat and clean for Fuzi’s use, which would entail an expenditure of both effort and money. After all, brooms and dustpans aren’t free, are they? She was willing to charge so little only because Fuzi was a friend.
Fuzi’s teeth showed as she swallowed her tears.
The effect of this on Xiangzi, who was told nothing, was the loss of a lot of sleep, as Huniu attempted to recapture her youth on his body.
B
y June the compound was silent during the day. The children went out early with their splintered baskets to scavenge the area, returning with what they could find by nine o’clock, when the blistering sun had begun to crack the skin on their scrawny backs, and eat whatever their parents had for them. Then the older boys would buy—if they could scrape together even a bit of cash—or steal chunks of ice to resell. If no money was to be found, they’d go in groups down to the moat for a bath, stopping along the way to pilfer a few lumps of coal at the train station or catch dragonflies or cicadas to sell to the children of the rich. The younger children, who dared not wander far from home, would play with locust beetles near the compound gate or dig up larva. With the children and the men all away from the house, the women stayed indoors, naked to the waist, unwilling to go outside, not out of a sense of shame but because the sun-baked ground burned the soles of their feet.
The men and children trickled back shortly before sunset, when the walls cast their shadows and cool breezes rose up, while the stored-up heat turned the rooms into steamers. They sat outside waiting for the women to cook the evening meal. The yard would be as lively as a marketplace but with no wares to sell. A day’s heat and empty stomachs had pushed the men’s tempers to the boiling point. One careless word could easily lead to a beating—children or wives, it made little difference—or at the very least an angry outburst. This would last till dinner was over, when some of the children would fall asleep in the yard and others would run out to play in the street. When they had a meal under their belts, the men’s mood would improve enough for some of them to gather in threes and fours to complain about the day’s hardships. For those who had nothing to eat, it was too late to pawn or sell anything—if they had anything to pawn or sell in the first place—so they would throw themselves down on their beds, ignoring the heat, and lie there in morose silence or fill the air with their curses. Teary-eyed women would visit neighbors and, if they were lucky, return with crumpled twenty-cent notes. Clutching the treasured notes in their hands, they’d buy some cheap fixings for a pot of gruel to feed their families.
This was not the sort of life Huniu and Fuzi led. Huniu was pregnant—this time for real. Xiangzi went out early, leaving her to get out of bed by eight or nine o’clock, in accord with the mistaken belief that pregnant women should move around as little as possible. But that belief was only one reason for her indolence; pregnancy was also a status symbol. While the neighbor women had to be up working early, she could lie in bed doing nothing as long as she wanted. When night fell, she took a stool out onto the street to enjoy the evening breezes and not go back inside until almost everyone else was asleep in bed. It was beneath her to engage any of them in conversation.
Fuzi also spent her mornings in bed, but for a different reason: she was afraid of the looks the men in the compound gave her, so she did not leave the house till they had all gone to work. Then she either visited Huniu or went out for a walk alone, since she was her own best advertisement. At night, in order to escape notice by her neighbors, she roamed the streets, not stealing back home until they were all in bed.
Among the men, Xiangzi and Er Qiangzi were the exceptions. Xiangzi hated the idea of walking into the compound and shuddered at the thought of entering his own room. The unending talk in the compound always put him out of sorts, and he longed for a quiet place to be by himself. At home it seemed to him that Huniu was truly living up to her name. He nearly choked on the heat, the oppressive atmosphere, and the tigress who lived there the moment he walked inside. Before Huniu had someone to keep her company, he had been forced to come home early to avoid an argument. But now that she had loosened her grip on him, he could, and did, stay out late.
As for Er Qiangzi, who stayed away most of the time, his daughter’s trade shamed him too much to show his face in the compound. But since he was incapable of supporting his children, he could not stop her from doing what she did. Best for him to stay away. The phrase “out of sight, out of mind” said it best. Some of the time he deeply resented his daughter; if she had been a man, she would not have made such a spectacle of herself. Why, as a female, had she been born into this family? Other times he took pity on a daughter who was forced to sell her body in order to feed her brothers. But resentment or fondness, what difference did it make? When he was drunk and broke, he neither hated nor pitied her, but came to her for money. At such times he saw her as a wage earner, and as her father, he had the right to claim some of her earnings. He also had to keep up appearances, and since everyone else looked down on her, he must do the same. Cursing and verbally abusing her as he pressed her for money would show everyone that he—Er Qiangzi—knew how shameless his daughter was.
So he yelled at her, and she bore it. Huniu, on the other hand, sent him away with curses, but only after he’d gotten what he came for—more money to drink away. If he’d ever seen this with a clear head, he’d probably have drowned or hanged himself.
The sun scorched the earth on the fifteenth of June as soon as it rose in the morning. A suffocating gray vapor, neither cloud nor mist, hung low in the sky. Not a breath of wind anywhere. The sight of the reddish-gray sky convinced Xiangzi that he ought to take the night shift, going out to pull his rickshaw after four in the afternoon. If business was slow, he could stay out all night. Working at night was more bearable than suffering through the day.
But Huniu wanted him out early so he wouldn’t be around if Fuzi had a client. “You might think it’s better inside, but by noon the walls will be too hot to touch,” she said.
Without a word, he drank a ladleful of water and went out. Willow trees lining the street drooped as if sick, dusty leaves curling at the tips, branches hanging limp. The parched roadway gave off a white glare while dust swirled above the dirt paths and merged with the gray vapor to form a cruel veil of sand that seared people’s faces. No place escaped the dry, blistering heat or oppressive air that turned the ancient city into a blazing kiln. People could hardly breathe; dogs sprawled on the ground, pink tongues lolling from their mouths; mules and horses flared their nostrils; peddlers’ voices were stilled; road surfaces cracked. Even brass signs above shop doors seemed to be melting. Except for the unnerving clanging of a hammer in the blacksmith shop, the streets were deathly quiet. Even knowing they wouldn’t eat if they weren’t out running, men who pulled rickshaws could not muster the energy to take on fares. Some parked their rickshaws in the shade, raised the rain hoods, and dozed, while others escaped the heat in teahouses or came out without their rickshaws to see if there was any reason to work that day. Those who picked up passengers, including the best-looking and youngest among them, preferred walking to running hard, even if they lost a bit of face in the process. Every drinking well was a lifesaver; they never passed one by, even if they’d only run a few steps, and if they missed one, they drank greedily from troughs set out for mules and horses. Then there were those who walked along until heatstroke or a case of cholera sent them pitching to the ground, from which they never rose again.
Xiangzi, too, was intimidated by the heat, which seemed to wrap itself around him after he’d taken only a few steps with his empty rickshaw. Even the backs of his hands were sweating. But that did not stop him from responding to a potential fare—maybe running would stir up a slight breeze. But when he started off, he realized that no one should be out working in such crippling heat. The air was too hot to breathe and his lips burned as he ran. He wasn’t thirsty, but the sight of water made him want to drink. Yet as soon as he stopped, the searing heat blistered the skin on his hands and back. His clothes stuck to his body by the time he’d managed to get where he was going, so he tried fanning himself with a rush fan, but all that did was assault his face with hot wind. He’d drunk water every chance he had, and still he went to a teahouse, where he drank two cups of hot tea, which made him feel a little better. The tea went in, the sweat oozed out, as if his body were an empty chamber that could not retain a drop of water. He was afraid to even move.
After sitting there awhile, he grew restless. He didn’t dare go back outside, but he had nothing to do, and he felt as if the weather was spiting him. No, he thought, I won’t admit defeat. This was not his first day out, and certainly not his first summer day, and he refused to waste a whole working day. But his legs did not feel up to the task and he was listless, like one who is sweating after a hot bath that has failed to invigorate. So he sat a while longer, but since even that made him sweat, he might just as well go out and give it another try.
He realized his mistake the moment he stepped outside. The gray vapor had dissipated, lessening the oppressive feeling, but the sun was beating down so savagely that no one dared look up. The sky, the rooftops, the walls, even the ground, were dazzlingly white, tinged with red. Wherever you looked, up or down, the world was like a fiery mirror on which every ray of sunlight seemed focused, turning everything it touched into flame. In that engulfing whiteness, every color hurt the eye, every sound grated on the ear, and every smell carried with it a stench from the steamy ground. The streets, all but deserted, appeared wider than before, an expanse devoid of cool air, and so white it made him shudder in fear. Xiangzi didn’t know what to do as he plodded along in a daze, head down, pulling his rickshaw behind him, heading nowhere and reeking of sticky sweat that covered his body. Before long, his shoes and socks stuck to the soles of his feet, as if he’d stepped in mud; it felt terrible. When he spotted a well, he drank; though he wasn’t thirsty, he savored the refreshing coolness of the water as it slid down his throat into his stomach. His pores contracted and he shivered, an enormously pleasant feeling. He belched several times, nearly bringing the water back up.
After walking awhile, he sat to rest, too lazy to look for fares, all the way to noon. Not particularly hungry, he thought about getting something to eat anyway, except the sight of food sickened him. His water-filled stomach made an occasional gurgling sound, like the sloshing of water in a mule’s stomach.
Xiangzi, who had always feared winter more than summer, never imagined that summer could be so unbearable. This was not his first summer in the city, but it was easily the hottest in memory. But had the weather changed or had he? Suddenly, his mind cleared and his heart seemed to chill. His body, it was his body that had weakened. Fear gripped him, but there was nothing he could do. He could not drive Huniu away, and one day he would be just like Er Qiangzi or that tall fellow he’d met that day or Little Ma’s granddad. He was doomed.
He caught another fare at one o’clock that afternoon, the hottest time of the hottest day of the year, but he was determined to take the customer where he wanted to go, the searing sun be damned! If he managed to pull this off, he’d know he was still fit. But if he couldn’t, all he could say was he’d be better off crumpling to the burning ground and dying.
He’d taken only a few steps when he felt a bit of cool air, like the breeze that seeps in through the door of a hot, stuffy room. It must be an illusion, he thought. But then he saw the branches of roadside willows rustle as people swarmed into the street from the shops, covering their heads with rush fans and looking all around. “A breeze! A real breeze!” they shouted, jumping up and down. The willows had become angels bearing heavenly tidings. “The willows are swaying! Bring us more cool winds, old man in the sky!”
It was still miserably hot, but people were breathing more easily. The cool wind—what little there was of it—brought them hope. After the wind gusts, the sun beat down less fiercely than before. The sky, now bright, now a bit darker, looked as if a cloud of flying sand were floating by. Then the winds increased, bringing joyful news to the dormant willow branches, which waved in the air and seemed to grow longer. A strong draft darkened the sky and filled it with stirred-up dust. When that began to settle, dark clouds appeared in the northern sky. Xiangzi, who was no longer sweating, looked to the north and stopped the rickshaw to put up the rain hood. He knew that summer rains came quickly and waited for no one.