by Yu Hua
CHAPTER NINE
Xu Yulan announced to Xu Sanguan that she was on her way to see He Xiaoyong.
Xu Sanguan was sitting inside, knotting some rags to make a mop. When he heard what Xu Yulan said, he stuck out his hand to rub his nose, wiped his mouth, and wordlessly continued to work on the mop.
Xu Yulan continued, “I’m going to see He Xiaoyong, but only because you asked me to. I swore long ago that I would never see him again.” She asked Xu Sanguan, “Should I dress up before I go over there, or is it better if I go as I am?”
Xu Sanguan thought to himself, She wants to dress up to see He Xiaoyong? Does that mean she’s going to comb her hair in the mirror, moisten it with hair oil, rub Snowflower cream on her face, put on her best sweater, pat the dust from her shoes, and wear that silk scarf around her neck? And then cheerfully saunter off to see the man who made me a cuckold these nine years? Xu Sanguan threw the mop to one side and bounded up from his seat.
“You still want He Xiaoyong to squeeze your fucking tits? You still want to have your fun with him? You want to look nice for him? You’re going just as you are. Better yet, rub your face with ashes from the stove.”
Xu Yulan said, “But if I go with stove ash on my face and my hair all a mess, don’t you think He Xiaoyong might say, ‘Hey everyone! Come look! This is what Xu Sanguan’s woman looks like! ’ ”
Xu Sanguan had to agree that she was right. He was not about to let that bastard He Xiaoyong have a good laugh at his expense. “Then you better dress up before you go.”
So Xu Yulan put on her finely woven sweater, over which she wore a dark blue khaki jacket with a turned-down collar. She adjusted the collar so as to show as much as possible of the sweater underneath, then went to get the silk scarf from her trunk. She tied and knotted it around her neck, but after a glance in the mirror revealed that it covered the sweater, she shifted the knot to the side and tucked it under her collar. After another glance in the mirror, she tugged the two ends of the knot out from underneath and let them rest atop her collar.
Xu Yulan walked over to He Xiaoyong’s house enveloped in a cloud of fragrance emitted by the Snowflower cream on her face. The ends of her scarf fluttered in the breeze like a pair of chicks flapping their wings. She passed two intersections, turned down a small lane, and came to He Xiaoyong’s door.
Xu Yulan saw a thirty-year-old woman sitting by his door scrubbing clothes on a washing board. This, she knew, was He Xiaoyong’s woman. He Xiaoyong’s woman was as skinny as a bamboo pole. She had been just as skinny ten years before, when she had walked through the streets with He Xiaoyong in tow, letting out a little snort of derision whenever they happened to run into Xu Yulan and bursting into giggles after they had passed her by. At the time Xu Yulan had thought to herself, He Xiaoyong’s gone and married a woman without any tits or ass. Now she saw that the woman still didn’t have any tits and that her ass was sitting squarely atop a stool.
Xu Yulan shouted into the open front door, “He Xiaoyong! He Xiaoyong!”
“Who is it?”
He Xiaoyong stuck his head from out of the second-floor window. But when he realized to his dismay that it was Xu Yulan standing outside, he immediately recoiled. After a moment his head reappeared, and his eyes looked down in her direction. He looked at this woman standing downstairs who was prettier than his own wife, this woman with whom he had made love; this woman who never talked to him anymore when they ran into each other in the street; this was the woman who was smiling in his direction. He spluttered, “What do you want?”
Xu Yulan said, “He Xiaoyong, I haven’t seen you for a long time. You’ve gained weight. You even have a double chin now.”
He Xiaoyong heard the sound of his wife spitting in disgust. “What do you want?”
Xu Yulan said, “Come down here. We can talk after you come downstairs.”
He Xiaoyong, eyes on his woman, said, “I’m not coming down. I’m just fine up here. Why should I come down?”
Xu Yulan said, “Come downstairs. It’ll be easier to talk if you’re down here.”
“I’m staying up here.”
Xu Yulan glanced at He Xiaoyong’s woman, then smiled up at He Xiaoyong. “He Xiaoyong, could it be that you’re actually afraid to come down and talk to me?”
He Xiaoyong looked over toward his wife, then said in a low, diffident voice, “I’m not afraid of anything.”
At this point his wife could no longer remain silent. She got to her feet, looked up at the window, and said, “He Xiaoyong, come down here. What can she do to you? She’s not going to eat you, for heaven’s sake.”
He Xiaoyong came down the stairs and walked over to where Xu Yulan was standing. “Say whatever it is you have to say, and make it quick. I don’t have time for this shit.”
Xu Yulan smiled nicely and said, “I came to tell you the good news. It’s Xu Sanguan. He says he’s not going to come and settle his debt with you, so you can put your mind at rest on that score. At first he was planning to chop you into pieces with a cleaver, because you knocked up his woman and forced him to take care of your own son for nine years. That’s why he was going to chop you to bits with a cleaver. And if he had, no one would have blamed him for it either. Xu Sanguan says he’s not going to ask you to pay back the money he’s spent on Yile. And he’s not going to send him back to live with you. He Xiaoyong, you’re getting off pretty easy, having someone else raise your son for you and never having to lift a finger to help. You get to be a dad for nothing. But Xu Sanguan has had himself a raw deal, from the very start. After Yile was born, he never got any sleep. He’d hold the baby and walk back and forth across the room all night so he wouldn’t cry. Xu Sanguan washed all of Yile’s diapers, and every year he made him a new set of clothes. Not to mention that he always provided him food to eat and water to drink, day in and day out. And Yile eats more than I do. He Xiaoyong, Xu Sanguan says he’s not going to settle his accounts with you. And he says all you have to do in return is give the money to Blacksmith Fang.”
He Xiaoyong said, “What does Blacksmith Fang’s son being in the hospital have to do with me?”
“Your son smashed his head in with a rock.”
“I don’t have a son,” He Xiaoyong said. “Since when do I have a son? All I have is two daughters. One’s called He Xiaoying and the other’s He Xiaohong.”
“You really have no conscience, do you?” Xu Yulan jabbed her finger toward him. “I suppose you’ve forgotten that summer when you took advantage of my dad’s going to the public toilet and pulled me onto the bed. You’re a heartless bastard. What did I do in my past life to deserve this? What did I do to deserve your bastard seed finding its way into my belly?”
He Xiaoyong brushed away her finger with his hand. “Do you think I would waste my precious seed on a bitch like you? That kid is Xu Sanguan’s bastard, and there’s two more where he came from.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Xu Yulan’s tears began to come. “Everyone who sees Yile says so. They all say he’s the spitting image of He Xiaoyong. Don’t think you can deny it. Even if your face was scarred by fire or scalded by coals, you wouldn’t be able to deny it. Because he looks more and more like you every day.”
When she saw that a group of spectators had begun to gather around and watch, He Xiaoyong’s woman chimed in, “Take a good look. She’s a shameless bitch, this one. Trying to steal my man in broad daylight.”
Xu Yulan swung around to look at her. “If I was going to steal anyone, it sure as hell wouldn’t be He Xiaoyong. He Xiaoyong! Back then I was as pretty as a flower. Everybody called me the Fried Dough Queen. He Xiaoyong was nothing to me. I threw He Xiaoyong out like a piece of trash, and you stooped down to collect him like he was some kind of treasure.”
He Xiaoyong’s woman straightened and slapped Xu Yulan across the face. Xu Yulan slapped her right back. In an instant their arms were flailing through the air, and each had grasped hold of the other’s hair and was tugging with all her might. As she pu
lled at Xu Yulan’s hair, He Xiaoyong’s woman called out to her husband, “He Xiaoyong! He Xiaoyong!”
He Xiaoyong stepped forward, grabbed hold of Xu Yulan’s arms, and squeezed them so hard that she was forced to let go of her opponent with an anguished “Aiya!” He let fly with a slap to her face that sent her tumbling to the ground.
Xu Yulan, rubbing her own face, burst into tears. “He Xiaoyong, you ought to be cut to pieces with a thousand knives! You’re a bastard, a son of a bitch, your conscience must have been eaten by a pack of dogs.” She stood up from the pavement and pointed an accusing finger at him. “Just you wait, He Xiaoyong! You won’t live to see another day. I’ll send Xu Sanguan after you with a cleaver. He’ll chop you to pieces. You won’t live to see another day.”
But Xu Sanguan didn’t support the death sentence Xu Yulan had pronounced so summarily for He Xiaoyong. When Xu Yulan got home, Xu Sanguan was still working on his mop. Xu Yulan sat down exhaustedly across from him, her face streaked with tears, and gazed in his direction. After a while her tears began to fall again.
When Xu Sanguan saw that she was crying, he knew she hadn’t succeeded in getting any money from He Xiaoyong. “I knew you’d come back empty-handed.”
Xu Yulan said, “Xu Sanguan, go chop him to pieces.”
Xu Sanguan said, “You fell to fucking pieces as soon as you saw him, didn’t you? You went soft, right? Couldn’t bear to ask for the money after all?”
Xu Yulan said, “Xu Sanguan, go chop him to pieces.”
Xu Sanguan said, “I’m telling you, if you don’t get the money today, Blacksmith Fang is going to come tomorrow and confiscate all our things. He’s going to take your bed, your table, your clothes, your Snowflower cream, your silk scarf. He’s gonna fucking take it all away.”
Xu Yulan began to weep. “I asked them for the money. They wouldn’t give it to me. And they pulled my hair, and he slapped me right across my face. Xu Sanguan, are you actually going to let someone get away with treating your woman that way? Xu Sanguan, I’m begging you to go chop him to pieces. There’s a cleaver in the kitchen. I sharpened it just yesterday. Go cut him to pieces.”
Xu Sanguan said, “What do you think would happen to me if I chopped him to pieces? If I went over there with a cleaver, I’d end up in jail, that’s what. I’d be executed, and you’d be a fucking widow, that’s what would happen.”
When Xu Yulan had heard him out, she stood, walked out of the room, and took a seat on the doorstep. When Xu Sanguan saw her sit down on the doorstep, he knew what was coming. Xu Yulan, flicking the handkerchief she had just been using to wipe her tears back and forth through the air, began her tearful litany.
“What did I do in my past life to deserve this? He Xiaoyong took advantage of me. And if that wasn’t enough, he got me pregnant. Not only did he knock me up, but I even gave birth to Yile. If giving birth to Yile wasn’t enough, he had to go and get himself into trouble.”
Xu Sanguan growled at her, “Goddamnit, get back in here! Do you have to let everyone on the fucking street know that I’m a cuckold?”
Xu Yulan sobbed, “And if Yile getting into trouble wasn’t bad enough, Xu Sanguan said he couldn’t help him out of it. Xu Sanguan won’t do anything, and neither will He Xiaoyong. He Xiaoyong not only refused to pay up but even pulled my hair and slapped my face. He Xiaoyong’s a crime against nature. He Xiaoyong will not die a happy death. But what am I supposed to do when Blacksmith Fang comes for the money tomorrow? What am I supposed to do? What am I going to do?”
Yile, Erle, and Sanle heard their mother’s sobs and ran to her side.
Yile said, “Mom, don’t cry, go inside.”
Erle said, “Mom, don’t cry. Why are you crying?”
Sanle said, “Mom, don’t cry. Who’s He Xiaoyong?”
The neighbors came to her as well. The neighbors said, “Xu Yulan, don’t cry, you’ll strain yourself.” “Xu Yulan, why are you crying?” “What are you crying for?”
Erle said to the neighbors, “It’s like this. My mom is crying because Yile—”
Yile cut in, “Erle, do me a favor and shut up.”
Erle said, “I will not shut up. It’s like this: Yile isn’t my dad’s kid.”
Yile said, “Erle, if you don’t shut up, I’ll kill you.”
Erle continued, “Yile is He Xiaoyong and my mom’s kid—”
Yile slapped Erle on the face, and Erle broke into loud sobs as well.
Xu Sanguan heard what was happening from inside the room and thought to himself, So that little bastard Yile thinks he can get away with hitting one of my sons? He catapulted out the door and slapped Yile’s face. Then he pinned him against the wall and shouted, “Little bastard! Just because your dad messes with me, you think you can bully my son too?”
Yile, dazed by Xu Sanguan’s sudden attack, stood in silence, rubbing his hand against the wall.
Xu Yulan pointed in their direction and once again sobbed, “My fate is bitter. But that child’s fate is even worse. Xu Sanguan doesn’t want him. He Xiaoyong doesn’t want him either. The child has no father, no one to call his own.”
One of the neighbors said, “Xu Yulan, why don’t you have Yile go over to He Xiaoyong’s place? Who wouldn’t be moved by seeing their own flesh and blood? He Xiaoyong doesn’t have a son yet, just two daughters. Who knows? Maybe he’ll even start to cry when he finally sees his own son.”
Xu Yulan immediately stopped crying and turned toward Yile, who was still standing against the wall, biting his lip. “Yile, didn’t you hear what the man said? Go on. Go find He Xiaoyong. Go over there and call him your dad.”
Yile backed himself against the wall and shook his head. “I’m not going.”
Xu Yulan said, “Yile, listen to what your mother’s telling you. Go on. Quick. Go call He Xiaoyong your dad. If he doesn’t listen to you, just try again.”
Yile shook his head. “I’m not going over there.”
Xu Sanguan pointed at him. “You’re not going, huh? If you don’t go over there right now, I’ll beat the shit out of you.”
As he spoke, Xu Sanguan approached Yile, grabbed him with one hand, pulled him away from the wall, and then pushed him a few steps forward. But as soon as Xu Sanguan had released him, Yile backed himself once more against the wall.
When Xu Sanguan turned and saw Yile pressed flat to the wall, he lifted his hand menacingly in the air. But just as he was about to slap him, he thought better of it. Damn. Yile isn’t even my own son. I have no right to hit someone else’s child.
As Xu Sanguan began to walk away, Yile’s voice rang out, “I’m not going. He Xiaoyong’s not my dad. My dad is Xu Sanguan.”
“Bullshit,” Xu Sanguan commented to the neighbors. “Look at this little bastard. He thinks he can implicate me, but I had nothing to do with him.”
At this point Xu Yulan once again burst into sobs. “What did I do in my past life to deserve this?”
By now Xu Yulan’s litany had lost much of its interest for the spectators. She went through the changes several more times, but her voice had begun to weaken with fatigue and, lacking its original bite and elasticity, became dry and gravelly. She waved her handkerchief back and forth with less and less force, and the gasps she took for air between sentences became lower, heavier, and slower. Her neighbors picked up and left, like theater patrons after a show. Even her husband left. Xu Sanguan had long ago become accustomed to her litanies on the doorstep. She might as well be sitting there knitting a sweater, for all he cared.
Only Yile was left standing there, glued against the wall, with hands behind his back scraping up against the whitewash. When everyone else had left, Yile approached his mother.
Xu Yulan’s body was propped against the door frame. She was no longer waving the handkerchief in the air. Her chin was cupped in her palm. When she saw Yile approach, the tears that had already ebbed once again began to flow.
Yile said to her, “Mom, don’t cry anymore. I’ll go over and call He Xiaoyong my
dad.”
When Yile arrived at He Xiaoyong’s door, he saw two girls a little younger than himself playing with rubber bands. As they stretched out their hands and hopped back and forth, their braids bobbed back and forth behind them. “You’re He Xiaoyong’s daughters, right?” he asked. “That means you’re my little sisters.”
The two girls stopped jumping up and down. One of them sat on the doorstep, and the other sat down next to her sister, and together they stared in Yile’s direction.
When Yile saw He Xiaoyong and his skinny wife emerge from inside, he called to him, “Dad.”
He Xiaoyong’s woman said to He Xiaoyong, “Your wild oat is here. What are you going to do about him?”
Yile called out again, “Dad.”
He Xiaoyong said, “I’m not your dad. Why don’t you go home now? And don’t come around here again.”
