The Bridegroom

by Ha Jin

  The same men were in the office, though this time the scribe was sitting there empty-handed. At the sight of Mr. Chiu the chief said, “Ah, here you are. Please be seated.”

  After Mr. Chiu sat down, the chief waved a white silk fan and said to him, “You may have seen your lawyer. He’s a young man without manners, so our director had him taught a crash course in the backyard.”

  “It’s illegal to do that. Aren’t you afraid to appear in a newspaper?”

  “No, we are not, not even on TV. What else can you do? We are not afraid of any story you make up. We call it fiction. What we do care about is that you cooperate with us. That is to say, you must admit your crime.”

  “What if I refuse to cooperate?”

  “Then your lawyer will continue his education in the sunshine.”

  A swoon swayed Mr. Chiu, and he held the arms of the chair to steady himself. A numb pain stung him in the upper stomach and nauseated him, and his head was throbbing. He was sure that the hepatitis was finally attacking him. Anger was flaming up in his chest; his throat was tight and clogged.

  The chief resumed, “As a matter of fact, you don’t even have to write out your self-criticism. We have your crime described clearly here. All we need is your signature.”

  Holding back his rage, Mr. Chiu said, “Let me look at that.”

  With a smirk the donkey-faced man handed him a sheet, which carried these words:

  I hereby admit that on July 13 I disrupted public order at Muji Train Station, and that I refused to listen to reason when the railroad police issued their warning. Thus I myself am responsible for my arrest. After two days’ detention, I have realized the reactionary nature of my crime. From now on, I shall continue to educate myself with all my effort and shall never commit this kind of crime again.

  A voice started screaming in Mr. Chiu’s ears, “Lie, lie!” But he shook his head and forced the voice away. He asked the chief, “If I sign this, will you release both my lawyer and me?”

  “Of course, we’ll do that.” The chief was drumming his fingers on the blue folder—their file on him.

  Mr. Chiu signed his name and put his thumbprint under his signature.

  “Now you are free to go,” the chief said with a smile, and handed him a piece of paper to wipe his thumb with.

  Mr. Chiu was so sick that he couldn’t stand up from the chair at first try. Then he doubled his effort and rose to his feet. He staggered out of the building to meet his lawyer in the backyard, having forgotten to ask for his belt back. In his chest he felt as though there were a bomb. If he were able to, he would have razed the entire police station and eliminated all their families. Though he knew he could do nothing like that, he made up his mind to do something.

  “I’m sorry about this torture, Fenjin,” Mr. Chiu said when they met.

  “It doesn’t matter. They are savages.” The lawyer brushed a patch of dirt off his jacket with trembling fingers. Water was still dribbling from the bottoms of his trouser legs.

  “Let’s go now,” the teacher said.

  The moment they came out of the police station, Mr. Chiu caught sight of a tea stand. He grabbed Fenjin’s arm and walked over to the old woman at the table. “Two bowls of black tea,” he said and handed her a one-yuan note.

  After the first bowl, they each had another one. Then they set out for the train station. But before they walked fifty yards, Mr. Chiu insisted on eating a bowl of tree-ear soup at a food stand. Fenjin agreed. He told his teacher, “You mustn’t treat me like a guest.”

  “No, I want to eat something myself.”

  As if dying of hunger, Mr. Chiu dragged his lawyer from restaurant to restaurant near the police station, but at each place he ordered no more than two bowls of food. Fenjin wondered why his teacher wouldn’t stay at one place and eat his fill.

  Mr. Chiu bought noodles, wonton, eight-grain porridge, and chicken soup, respectively, at four restaurants. While eating, he kept saying through his teeth, “If only I could kill all the bastards!” At the last place he merely took a few sips of the soup without tasting the chicken cubes and mushrooms.

  Fenjin was baffled by his teacher, who looked ferocious and muttered to himself mysteriously, and whose jaundiced face was covered with dark puckers. For the first time Fenjin thought of Mr. Chiu as an ugly man.

  Within a month over eight hundred people contracted acute hepatitis in Muji. Six died of the disease, including two children. Nobody knew how the epidemic had started.

  Alive

  Liya’s letter threw her parents into a quandary. She informed them that she had been admitted by Sunrise Agricultural School in Antu County, to specialize in veterinary medicine. They didn’t mind her pursuing that profession. What worried them was that with a diploma from such a school she might remain in the countryside for good, as an educated peasant.

  For three days her father, Tong Guhan, didn’t know what to write back to her. He wished she could have returned to Muji City. If he could have found her a job here, he would tell her to forget about the agricultural school. On the other hand, the admission promised better employment and could take her away from the chicken farm where she had worked for three years. Should he tell her to go to the school? Or should he let her wait for an opportunity to come back home? He was torn by the dilemma.

  “Dad, why don’t you apply for a new apartment?” his son, Yaning, asked at lunch.

  “It’s not the right time yet,” said Guhan. “Don’t worry about that. If everything works out all right, we should have another apartment soon.”

  “I can wait, but I don’t know how long Meili can wait.” Yaning dropped his bowl on the table with a thump, his face twitching. He and Meili couldn’t marry because there was no housing available, though they had been engaged for four years.

  His mother, Jian, put in, “Yaning, be patient. Tell her to just wait a few months. When your father becomes the vice director, he’ll ask for a new apartment. They’ll give us one for sure.” She peeled a green leaf off a lettuce, dipped it into the fried soy paste, and put it into her broad mouth.

  “I don’t know.” Guhan sighed, twisting his mustache with his fingers, and his close-set eyes squinted at Yaning.

  He was sympathetic to his son, whose facial tic made it harder for him to keep a fiancée. If their one-room apartment were larger, he would have let the young couple marry and move in, but there was no extra space for them. An ideal solution would be for him to get another apartment, one of those built recently near East Cannery, where he led the Packing Section; then he could give this old apartment to Yaning, whose work unit, a bookstore, was too small to own any residential housing. What prevented Guhan from applying for an apartment now was that he might be promoted to vice director of the cannery, and any selfish act at this moment might cause animosity among the staff and workers and upset his promotion. His superiors had already assured him that he was the strongest candidate for the position because he had a college degree.

  Tong Guhan was a simple man, not very interested in power. But recently he realized that if he were the vice director, he could have moved into a new apartment long ago and said to his son, “Prepare for the wedding!” and he could also have written to his daughter, “Forget veterinary medicine and come back home. I’ll get you a residence card and find you a good job here.” Obviously the solutions to both problems depended on whether his promotion would materialize in time. These days he became anxious. Every morning, when watering the violets, cannas, roses, and cyclamen in his tiny backyard, he’d pray in silence that today he’d be officially notified of the promotion.

  It was a sunny day. Buildings, trees, electrical poles, and kiosks were still wet with rainwater; the night before, a thunder shower had poured on the city. The blue trolley-bus Guhan was taking to work was full of passengers, wobbling along River Boulevard like a boat sailing through a harbor. The sunlight slanted in through the trolley’s windows, shining on people’s faces and the backs of the imitation-leather seats. G
uhan let both arms, thin and swarthy, remain basking in the sun. He hoped the previous night’s lightning had not damaged the ice-cabinets in his workshop.

  On arrival at the cannery, he ran into Fei, a spindly young man who had recently joined the Party. “Good morning, Old Tong,” Fei greeted him pleasantly, his round head tilted to one side. “Did you have a good bus ride?”

  “It was all right,” Guhan replied lukewarmly.

  “Director Li wants to see you.”

  “About what?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Guhan disliked Fei, who seemed too clever and oily. It was rumored that Fei would lead the Packing Section if Guhan left for his new position. The warmth Fei exuded made Guhan feel that the young man couldn’t wait to take over.

  He went to Director Li’s office in the back of the factory building. At the sight of him, Li poured him a cup of green tea from a tall thermos bottle and said, “Old Tong, Secretary Liu and I want you to take a trip to Taifu City.”

  “What for?”

  “To get our money from the coal mine.” Li winked. His eyes were so big that some workers called him Director Ox-Eyes behind his back.

  Guhan had heard of the debt. Knowing he had no choice, he said, “Of course I’ll go.”

  “You’ll represent our factory as our vice director. I hope they’ll pay us this time, otherwise we won’t be able to operate next year. The apartment building has gobbled up most of our funds.”

  “I’ll try my best, Director Li.” Guhan’s face brightened at the mention of his new title.

  “I wish you luck, Old Tong. Be stubborn with them.” Li gave him a meaningful look and tapped his cigarette over the ashtray on the desk, revealing the stump of his third finger lost in the Korean War.

  Guhan realized the trip was meant to test his ability as a factory leader. Two years ago the coal mine had bought twenty-four tons of canned food from East Cannery, but to date, though dunned every month, the mine hadn’t paid a fen. Despite knowing it was a difficult mission, Guhan dared not show any reluctance in front of Li. He told himself, If they don’t pay the debt this time, I won’t come back. He believed the trip might either finalize or cancel his promotion.

  That evening, after dinner, his wife sewed into his underwear a secret pocket in which he could carry cash and national food coupons. Unlike other women in the neighborhood, Jian had always been a housewife ever since they married. Guhan had never cursed or beaten her; for that he was respected by their neighbors. Jian asked him repeatedly when he’d be back, saying she’d miss him, but he couldn’t give her a definite date. He said, “Don’t worry. I can take care of myself. I’ll come back soon.”

  One morning in late July, after an eleven-hour train ride, Guhan arrived at Taifu. That very afternoon he went to the coal mine, but found only a few clerks in the office building. An accident, a cave-in, had occurred in a tunnel, and all the leaders had gone to the scene.

  The next morning he again went to the office building, which was a two-story manor, constructed of black bricks and red tiles, its doors and windows painted sky blue. On both sides of the front entrance stood a few sunflowers, heavy-headed, soaked with dew, and facing southeast. Several bumblebees were humming among the yellow, toothed petals, darting about. Guhan nodded at the guard, who remembered him. He went up the iron stairs that led to the main office. Manager Ren, a stout man with a double chin, received him. He had heard of Guhan’s previous visit, and after an exchange of greetings, he said they’d wire the money to East Cannery soon.

  “How soon?” Guhan asked, taking a puff of a Winter Jasmine cigarette while his other hand fingered his lighter.

  “In a week or so.”

  “Manager Ren, could you give me a written statement confirming that? Otherwise I won’t be able to go back.”

  Ren shook his head and sighed. “We really don’t have a set date. Sorry, I cannot give you a written statement, Director Tong.”

  “You see, we’ll go bankrupt if you don’t pay us soon. We owe a construction company thirty thousand yuan, but our coffers are empty. They’re going to sue us if we don’t pay them within a month.”

  “Well, fact is I can’t decide this matter by myself. We’ll have a meeting to discuss it.”

  “All right, in that case I’ll wait here, at the inn. When will you let me know your decision?”

  “Why don’t you go back to Muji? We’ll send you an official letter in a couple of days.”

  “I was instructed not to return without the money.”

  Guhan was prepared for the difficulty, so he was not deterred by Ren’s equivocal responses. Before leaving, he told the manager that he would have to come back the next day. Ren grimaced, scratching the back of his ear.

  The following afternoon Guhan went to the mine’s office building again, but Manager Ren was out visiting the injured workers at the hospital. He left Ren a note, begging him to cherish the friendship between the mine and the cannery and clear up the debt without further delay.

  With heavy legs, he returned to Anti-Imperialism Inn. The inn was a pleasant place, compared with the drab surroundings—hillsides spotted with the dark mouths of tunnels, coal piles here and there accompanied by the skeletons of cranes and conveyers, and trains crawling about like giant caterpillars. It consisted of four brick houses that formed a large courtyard, in which there was a small well topped with a winch. A dozen apple trees stood on both sides of the path that divided the yard in half. A few small cages, made of cornstalks, containing grasshoppers and cicadas, hung under the eaves of the northern house. Two or three pieces of radish greens were stuck into each cage—food for the insects, which, when evening settled in, would start chirring. Their metallic chirrups would continue until midnight.

  Guhan caught Manager Ren the next day. This time Ren told him frankly that the mine didn’t have the cash to square the account, so they decided to pay the cannery with coal instead. “The best anthracite, at a twenty-percent discount,” Ren said, fanning his face with a large clipboard, as if both parties had already agreed to the settlement.

  This was absolutely unacceptable to Guhan. The cannery didn’t need so much anthracite. Besides, how could they transport the coal to Muji? Railroad wagons, rationed by the state, were unavailable. Even if they managed to ship the coal back, there would be no place in the cannery to store the six hundred tons. So, Guhan resolutely refused the offer. Frustrated, he threatened that his factory would sue the mine.

  Manager Ren replied helplessly, “What else can I say? Even if you beat me to death, I can’t come up with any cash. You can’t squeeze any fat out of a skeleton. We just had a terrible accident, you know that, and all our savings have gone to the medical bills.”

  Go bankrupt! Guhan said mentally.

  That night he wrote to his daughter, telling her to accept the admission to the agricultural school. By now he had become uncertain whether he’d be promoted to vice director, since it was unlikely he could fulfill his mission. He should at least let Liya get off the chicken farm; as for her return to the city, there might be some opportunity in the future.

  It was sultry that evening. A few drops of rain fell; stars were unusually bright, piercing the thin mist in the sky. Despite the heat, Guhan went to bed early, having drunk three cups of sweet-potato liquor at dinner. His two roommates were with other tenants in the courtyard, where they were watching the well, which had somehow begun spouting water. A narrow ditch had been dug to drain the yellowish stream out into the street. Before Guhan went to sleep, some startled horses broke into neighing outside the inn and galloped away toward the railroad in the south. Many tenants went out to have a look, but Guhan was too tired to get up. Soon he fell asleep.

  At about four o’clock the next morning, suddenly the room started trembling and jolting. A male voice yelled in the corridor, “Earthquake!” Guhan opened his eyes and saw the beds colliding—one of his roommates was flung up, crashed into the wall, and dropped on the cement floor. Instantly the man ceas
ed making noise. Guhan jumped up and rushed toward the window, but the floor was shifting back and forth like a sieve; his legs were twisting as though shocked by electricity, and he was thrown down. He managed to sit up, then the room began swaying like a boat caught in a storm. Things crashed against one another while the roof was crackling. The ceiling fan fell to the floor, and thermos bottles, lamps, coat trees, chairs, and tables were flying about. Unable to get up, he tried crawling to the window. A jolt from below shot him upward and tossed him out of the room. With a crash he landed in a puddle, covered with bits of glass. Meanwhile, a chimney tumbled down the roof and crashed to the ground; a large brick hit his left wrist and smashed his Seagull watch. “Ow!” he yelled, holding his broken wrist, and rolled toward one of the apple trees, which all seemed to be capering about, their branches sweeping the ground right and left like brooms. It was bright everywhere as if in daylight; colorful flashes streaked across the sky, which turned now red, now pink, now blue, now silver, now saffron, now green. A long orange ribbon blazed in the air as though a set of power lines had caught fire. Around him were dust, explosions, screams, the rumble of collapsing houses and buildings. A roar, like that made by a thousand old oxen together, was rising from underground.

  When he finally managed to get to his feet by holding the trunk of an apple tree with his right arm, all the houses around were leveled. Streets disappeared, covered by rubble. The landscape had widened in every direction, and here and there more trees emerged. From beneath the ruins came muffled groans and cries. Somewhere a man yelled, “Help! Ah, help me!”

  A little girl, who had also been thrown out of a house, shrieked, “Mom! Save my mom!” Her small hand was clawing toward the debris.

  Apples dropped about Guhan, whose arm was still around the trunk of the tree. In the east, jets of muddy water were shooting into the air, about twenty feet high, and fireballs broke out like bombs in places. A gust of wind tossed over an intense smell of methane, as though the air itself were burning and exploding.