The Younger Zhu, hearing the words, turned swiftly and glared at his elder brother, his flaming eyes riveted on the Elder Zhu. “No wonder I couldn’t find ’em to pay my tu’tion. You’d stolen ’em!”
With these angry words, the Younger Zhu turned his horse around and headed in the opposite direction. “Git a woman with the money. I’m goin’ home!”
The Elder Zhu turned his own horse to stand in his younger brother’s way and protested worriedly, the two horses taking the chance to nuzzle each other on the neck. “My dear brot’er, when I get a wife who can take care of the housework for us, you’ll go back to school then.”
“You bastard!” his younger brother replied with fury.
“I know.”
“Do you mean what you said?”
“Yes, sure!” the Elder Zhu confirmed earnestly.
The Younger Zhu turned his horse around again and walked along the limpid canal.
The snowcapped Mount Qilian grew higher, and the Elder Zhu had to raise his head to see his favorite milk-white snow on the top, from which his eyes glided to the purplish hillside and finally rested on the house.
The Elder Zhu brought the horse to a stop and said, “You’ll go t’ere and I’ll wait for you here!”
“See, the horse’s just fine, but you’re worn out,” the Younger Zhu jeered at his elder brother. “Ain’t you a good-for-nothin’ bum? You get discouraged on every important occasion!”
Not caring about his younger brother’s jeering, the Elder Zhu insisted. “You’ll go t’ere and I’ll wait for you here!”
“All right!” With a second thought, the Younger Zhu added, “Then wait for me there in the grassy ditch!”
“Good!” replied his elder brother.
3
The old man living in that house was Grandpa’s old friend; they used to visit him every now and then. The old man had eight daughters, seven of whom had got married. The youngest daughter was named Plum Maid. Three days before Grandpa died, he and his two grandsons had come to visit his old friend. The four men had sat at the table while Plum Maid served them dinner.
“Marry you’ daughter to my elder cub—whaddya say?” Grandpa asked his old friend. Hearing that, the Elder Zhu quickly dropped his head while Plum Maid flushed red and ran out.
The Younger Zhu waited for Plum Maid to serve more food, but the girl did not show up. Leaving the three men sitting wordlessly at the table, the Younger Zhu crept into the kitchen to serve himself. Squatting against the chopping board, he swallowed a huge bowl of rice, wondering why his elder brother wanted Plum Maid, who just couldn’t compare to the fair and pretty girls on Mars, with whom he himself was obsessed.
After a long, embarrassing silence, the old man eventually said, “I’ll marry her to a rich man.”
“How much do you want?” Grandpa asked.
“It’s not money. I want her to marry a man holding an office, with guaranteed salary.”
The Younger Zhu, who had fed himself more than full, now returned to the table and chimed in with a burp. “We’ve got a room half-filled with gold and half with silver. Whaddya say?”
The old man stuck out his three-foot-long tobacco pipe to hit the Younger Zhu. The boy dodged nimbly and rushed out of the room, dragging Grandpa out with him. Lifting Grandpa onto the horse, the Younger Zhu struck the horse hard. He raced after the galloping horse for several yards and sprang onto the horse’s back, seating himself behind Grandpa. He then turned and yelled at the old friend, who was standing in the doorway, waving his pipe with rage.
“Pooh-pooh!” the old man shouted. “A money-grubber you are, ain’t you?”
Later that day, the Elder Zhu, with the old man’s spit on his face, returned home to find his grandpa, who was still starving from the unfinished meal at his old friend’s house, lying on the mud-brick bed, breathing heavily with indignation. His younger brother, who was one size smaller than he, stood on the earthen floor cursing with resentment. “Damn it! I swear I’ll git the bitch for you!”
Now the Younger Zhu’s horse, following the limpid canal, ran lightly and rhythmically toward Mount Qilian. He could take on any challenge as long as he was on horseback.
The old man’s house came into sight, gray bricks all over with a tiled roof. In the backyard sat a row of kilns, two meters tall, from behind which the limpid canal flowed by.
Right there on top of a kiln was Plum Maid, squatting to add coal to the fire. The Younger Zhu, seeing her fat butt sticking out high as she bent down to do her job, couldn’t help sniggering. With a second gaze, he saw at the gateway the girl’s father, who was chopping firewood with a broad ax.
With a smile on his face, the Younger Zhu kicked his left foot off the stirrup and turned his body over lightly to hang himself behind the right side of the horse, his right foot holding the stirrup fast. The horse, keeping her normal pace, passed by the old man.
“Whoops, who’s lost a horse?” the old man murmured to himself. Hearing this, the Younger Zhu quietly let go one of his hands, with which he was gripping the horse’s mane, and covered his mouth so he wouldn’t laugh out loud. The horse walked unhurriedly to the kiln, facing the old man with her bare left side. The Younger Zhu was calculating: he was on horseback, and Plum Maid was squatting on the kiln that was two meters above the ground. A slight drag would get the girl onto his horse’s back. It would be a piece of cake to him, for he had snatched fat lambs from level ground on his galloping horse. Plum Maid was not as fat—and, more favorably, she was up on the top of the kiln.
Plum Maid was totally oblivious to the approaching horse. The moment the horse walked close to the kiln, the Younger Zhu popped up suddenly to grip the girl’s coat from behind. Screaming with fear, Plum Maid fell down right onto the horse, in front of the Younger Zhu. The boy quickly gave a heavy strike on the horse’s rump and they set off at a gallop, heading westward like the wind.
When the old man realized what had happened, he began to chase after the racing horse, waving his ax like a storming devil.
High above in the sky, the wheel-big sun was beginning to set, blood red.
Plum Maid had fainted. Leaving her hanging across the horse’s back like a bag of grain, the Younger Zhu ran his horse as fast as he could. After running a semicircle of about five miles, he rode near to the canal again.
With a groan, Plum Maid came to and began to struggle hard. The Younger Zhu raised his fist and struck a heavy blow on her butt.
“Better keep quiet!”
Very much frightened, Plum Maid stopped struggling and lay on her stomach on the horseback, weeping and peering at her kidnapper from the corner of her eye.
“Shoot! You know who I am, don’t you?” The Younger Zhu shouted threateningly, “I kill pigs, goats, cows, horses, jus’ anything!”
Plum Maid was frightened and moved her eyes away, still weeping.
The Younger Zhu then realized he needed to explain the whole thing to the girl. So he tried to speak to her with the refined vocabulary he had learnt at school.
“The reason why I took this action is to help my brother to get a wife.”
Stuffing Plum Maid’s feet into the stirrups, the Younger Zhu helped the girl up in the saddle where he was sitting. The Younger Zhu now found little room for himself in the saddle.
“See, you’ butt’s too fat, isn’t it?” he complained, moving backward onto the rear end of the horse. “If you agree to marry my elder brother, he promised to work for your father in your family kilns.”
“I’m scared!” Plum Maid replied.
“Why scared? I kill pigs, not you!”
“I’m scared. I’ve never ridden a horse.”
“Ha! A useless nut you are, just like my elder brother!” The Younger Zhu immediately regretted that dirty remark, for he realized that “nut” was for men only. He then softened his tone and comforted the girl. “Don’t worry, I’ll hold you.” The Younger Zhu held the girl’s waist from behind.
“Too tight!” said the girl
.
The Younger Zhu loosened his arms.
“Too loose!” said the girl.
“What a pain in the neck!” the Younger Zhu said impatiently. “I won’t hold you, then.”
The horse had walked close to the limpid water. The Elder Zhu was nowhere to be seen, nor was his horse.
The Younger Zhu sang cheerfully from his horse. “Elder Zhu, when you have big nuts in your pants, a good-for-nothing git you are! Elder Zhu, when you have small nuts in your pants, a chicken you are!”
Plum Maid wept louder. “I’m scared. I wanna go home!”
Ignoring Plum Maid, the Younger Zhu stopped his horse, searching around for his elder brother—who finally emerged from a grassy ditch not far away, trembling, followed by his horse.
“C’mon! Brot’er! Here’s whom you want!” the Younger Zhu yelled.
“You . . . you . . .!” Daring not to look at the girl, the Elder Zhu turned to gaze at his younger brother.
Holding Plum Maid’s hand, the Younger Zhu helped her dismount, and then he moved back into the saddle. He had to stay on horseback—otherwise he would achieve nothing.
The Younger Zhu walked his horse in a circle around his elder brother and the girl, instructing them from above.
“You”—he pointed to Plum Maid—“and you”—pointing to his elder brother—“enjoy you’ date here. I’ll be waitin’ for you back home!”
With these words, the Younger Zhu turned his horse about. The horse, following the limpid water, ran into the immense grassland, soon losing itself in the blood-red sunglow.
The jujube-red Shandan horse that the Younger Zhu was riding proved to be superb. She ran like wind, leaving the limpid water behind, leaving the blood-red sunset behind. She galloped on the moonlit grassland and reached the mud house at the foot of Mount Yanzhi, finally stopping in front of Grandpa’s tentlike tomb, where she usually slept the night. Her master, the Younger Zhu, had fallen asleep, his limbs dropping to the horse’s sides. The Younger Zhu had too much on his mind: the girls on Mars, going back to school, and getting a woman for his brother.
A puff of cool breeze flew down the gentle slope of Mount Yanzhi and set the Younger Zhu to consciousness. He heard the sound of hooves approaching. Against the indigo sky, he saw his elder brother riding on the horse alone.
“Where’s my sister-in-law?” the younger brother asked.
“Soon after you left, the old man stormed there, waving his ax in front of me. I hurried on my horse and followed you back.”
The Younger Zhu let out a sigh. All of a sudden he burst into loud laughter, which he could not explain himself. The two horses stood close to each other, head to tail, poking at one another’s ass and moving in a circle as they smelled each other.
“I thought of something Grandpa used to say,” the Younger Zhu said.
“What was that?”
“Born a bachelor with a cock . . .” the Younger Zhu began.
The Elder Zhu recognized what his younger brother was reciting and provided the next line: “You travel to the ends of the earth . . .”
“Catch sight of something and pick it up . . .”
“And raise it up to have a good look.”
The two brothers yelled in unison: “A carrot? Oh, no! A cock it was, too!”
Both roared in loud laughter. Astride their horses, they laughed till they felt sick.
Gasping for breath, they both fell down by the side of Grandpa’s tomb. They climbed on top of Grandpa’s tomb, still laughing.
Translated by Yang Jinmei
Li Chunguang
Li Chunguang, born in 1950, is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, director of Xi’an Writers Association, provisional chairman of Xianyang Writers Association, and honorary chairman of the Institute of Chinese Western Literary Reportage Studies.
His works include Black Forest, Red Forest, Agent of Love, Luck, Out of the Great Canyon, and Red Hot Love. In his years of writing, he has held up the ideal of equality and created numerous characters with high morals and a great sense of ethics. Though his language tends to be traditional, he is also exploring new avenues and developing new trends. Agent of Love won the Xianyang Award for Excellent Literature. I Hold You, Hong Kong won the award for Notable Contribution to Chinese Modern Literature.
19
LI CHUNGUANG
Stargazing
With its thousand-mile journey ahead, the majestic river roared past, undisturbed by the passions of the humans whose stories unfolded along its banks.
On the north bank, a winding road traced the river’s course up to a bridge.
As night fell, a man in his twenties walked along the road, approaching the bridge. He pushed a pram up the incline, but instead of crossing the bridge, the young man then turned, pointed the pram back downhill, and descended on the other side of the road, where he resumed his unhurried walk.
The man appeared lost in thought, oblivious to the changing scenery. His normally bright, youthful eyes now seemed dull and withdrawn. Occasionally, his eyes would light up as the piping voice of the child in the pram caught his attention, but as the child returned to playing, the man would instantly withdraw again into his inner thoughts.
His inner thoughts, if they could be recorded, would probably sound like this:
Hey, kiddo, can you imagine me performing the duty of a father—giving up everything, every normal enjoyment of a young man my age, just so you can grow up like a normal kid? Yes, that’s right. All this for you.
If maternal love is universally known to be the greatest love a person can feel for another human being, then what is paternal love in comparison? And what about a man’s love for a baby not even his own?
His heartbeat quickened like a willow leaf stirred by the breath of an evening breeze. Unbidden, the unforgettable scene came back to him: a baby crying its heart out in a basket fastened inside a tire’s inner tube, beside which lay the dead bodies of a young couple, stiff on the mudflat left by the flood.
Apparently, in their final moments, the baby’s parents had given their beloved son a chance at life.
His silent soliloquy resumed:
Kiddo, luckily you know nothing of hypocrisy. No matter what praises they heaped onto your head, the minute your back was turned you would hear a different tune . . .
On that day, he had taken one look at the crowd that had gathered—pointing, commenting, but no one moving—before he’d gone ahead and picked up the child. The next thing he knew he had the baby in his arms and was an acclaimed hero.
He’d not had the slightest idea of what it took to be a parent. It had all come too suddenly. The only thing that went through his mind was that the child needed care. He had brought the boy back to his bachelors’ dormitory, taking his roommates by surprise. Their wonder was soon followed by chants of “Hero!”—but that didn’t last. Before the night was over, without exception they’d all decided to move out. A baby screaming through the night was beyond all their knowledge and tolerance.
Hey, kiddo, I knew that a baby needed food and water to grow. But this stupid man was caught by surprise that a baby cries for food delivery! And yes, yes, now I know you also cry for the warm arms of a doting parent.
Despite the talk in the neighborhood, the man decided to keep the kid, feeding, bathing, and looking after him. The man changed the normal pattern of his life accordingly. Now his morning started with baby feeding, followed by arranging a diaper tower—several diapers placed one on top of the other—on which he would place the baby with a fluffy cotton towel for cover; all this on the advice of an experienced mother he knew. And then he would rush off to work. During the noon break, he would come back and change the nappies and then feed the baby before eating his own lunch. The nighttime routine began with the baby’s bath and change. Then the man would play with him before the baby dropped off to sleep. Only after that would the man have time to switch on his tape recorder and try to catch up on his missed lessons from his radio correspondence course
.
Baby, I have no regrets. Watching you grow each day and hearing you call me Daddy in that sweet, piping voice of yours—it fills my eyes with tears of joy. I’m a ha-a-appy man.
He did not know when or how the course of his life had changed—until one day he was looking in his closet and discovered a pair of training shoes covered in mildew and dust. That brought back the memory of his dorm mates coming running and shouting—and then leaving in disappointment. His determination had wavered at such times. All around him, there was little understanding of all the young bachelor’s new worries and troubles. As a last resort, he had picked up the baby and gone to the kindergarten, seeking sympathy from the head teacher.
Being a young man, he should have been living his own life, going on dates with girls. There was no lack of warmhearted would-be matchmakers. They all tried to set him up with lots of pretty girls. However, the kid inevitably put a damper on the women’s interest. The occasional girl who managed to get as far as a face-to-face meeting would pull away after less than an hour with the man and his kid, as reality dawned on her: “Wow, how can a little child be so much trouble?”
Kiddo, must I believe your prospective mother is this far away from us? As far as the stars from the earth? Maybe I’ll be still sitting here when my hair has turned gray.
In the meantime, he had become inseparable from the kid. If he heard the crying of any child, he’d immediately think it was Little Humble. When his work shift would end, no sooner would he manage to wash the engine oil off his hands and change out of his work clothes than he would hurry over to the kindergarten. When he saw Little Humble tottering and stumbling toward him, those chubby hands waving happily in greeting, the man’s steps would quicken. His hands would—as if of their own will—stretch out, ready to catch the child’s embrace. When he caught the boy in his grasp, he would plant a warm kiss on the boy’s plump cheeks and rub his stubbly beard against the boy’s velvet skin, making him giggle, while bringing the child’s hands to his own face and feeling their tickly touch. Then he would pick up the boy and stride off at a fast trot.
Old Land, New Tales: Twenty Short Stories by Writers of the Shaanxi Region in China Page 38
