by Ha Jin
Guhan, wearing only his underwear, remained motionless, as in a trance; his upper body was so thin that all his ribs were visible. He tried to shout, but no sound came out of his mouth. The aftershocks shook the ground continually, so he dared not let go of the tree.
Soon he collapsed, feeling as though he were engulfed by darkness, sinking deep into the sea.
Toward midafternoon some soldiers arrived. They wrapped Guhan in a blanket and dragged him away. After a medic bandaged up his wrist and let him drink some water from a canteen, a young officer asked Guhan, “Can you help us distribute canned food?”
“Oh, help!” he screamed.
“Can you join us in the rescue?”
“Help! Save me!”
“He’s out of his mind. Take him away,” the officer said.
A soldier led Guhan to a crowd of children and lightly injured adults. Twenty minutes later they were put into three Nanjing trucks, which were going to a suburban area where help was available. On the way, all the adults were speechless, though time and again someone broke into sobs. A few children kept crying for their parents who had disappeared.
The sight of the destruction overwhelmed everyone. All the houses and buildings in view had collapsed; there was only a concrete smokestack standing upright like a gigantic gun pointing to the sky. An apartment building had fallen and rolled all the way down a slope and broken to pieces at the bank of a brook. Another building was cut in half, in one of its rooms a white sheet and a line of colorful washing still flapping lazily. Here and there were cracks on the ground, some of which were too broad for the trucks to cross, so the soldiers filled them up with rocks and wooden poles. Now and then they came on a flooded crater caused by a caved-in mine tunnel. At the roadside near a cemetery, a tractor, together with its trailer, was almost buried by earth and pebbles, as though a mouth had opened from underneath to eat it but was unable to swallow the whole thing. Beyond the tractor, more than half of the gravestones had toppled over in the graveyard.
When the trucks passed a column of green ambulances that were heading for the city and were loaded with soldiers gripping shovels, picks, and broad banners, two helicopters emerged in the sky. One of them went on announcing, “All citizens must abide by the law and help one another. Any looter caught will be executed on the spot.” Beyond the helicopters a plane was banking away and dropping boxes of food and bundles of blankets to the citizens, who were working in groups to rescue the survivors trapped in the ruins.
“What’s your name?” an army doctor asked Guhan two days later in a field hospital.
“Apple,” he answered.
“Where are you from?”
“Apple.”
“Where is your work unit?”
“Orchard.”
“What orchard?”
“Apple.”
“How old are you?”
“Apple.”
The doctor sighed, shaking his head, and said to a nurse, “Amnesia. Let’s hope he’ll get his memory back soon.”
A brief checkup showed that except for a broken wrist Guhan was physically well, though he had lost his mind, unable to remember anything before the earthquake. Because he had nothing but some cash and national food coupons on him—in his underwear—it was impossible to ascertain who he was. Among the refugees there was a small group of unidentifiables. One man remembered his name as Wenyao but couldn’t recall his surname or where he came from; several children had lost their parents and couldn’t tell where their homes had been.
Guhan was given a name, Sweet Apple, and was assigned to collect trash at the field hospital. Every morning he held a short shovel or a wicker basket and walked about the camp with Wenyao. Together they picked up scraps of paper, rags, broken bowls and bottles, animal and human feces. They then burned the garbage in a pit. Guhan didn’t enjoy the job, but he had no idea what else he could do. Everybody was too busy and too tense to complain. The medical staff worked around the clock, and the kitchen served free meals day and night. Group after group of injured people came and then left. Those who hadn’t been identified stayed, doing chores to earn their meals at the hospital, which remained the same—two dozen tents encircled by a barbed-wire fence.
Because of his carefree state and unlimited access to food, Guhan gained weight rapidly. A month later, when trees began shedding leaves and the millet fields nearby turned yellow waiting to be gathered in, he was no longer a skeletal man. Now he looked healthy and a little robust, his ribs covered with a thick layer of fat, and he wore the large-sized uniform. His wrist had healed. Still, he looked like a half-wit and would smile at every woman he met.
The hospital was ordered to return to Yingkou City before winter came. Guhan heard that bulldozers had finished dig-ging collective graves and burying corpses in Taifu, and that airplanes had sprayed enough insecticide over the city to wipe out the swarming flies and mosquitoes. Now construction workers moved in to replace the soldiers. Before the hospital withdrew, Guhan, along with the other unidentifiable ones, was handed over to the Administration of Taifu City.
There were too many homeless people for the city to take care of, especially the elderly and the orphans. As winter was coming, it became difficult for the citizens to continue to share tents and shacks. Most of them had been living in small groups, each of which consisted of several broken families. By October, many people had left Taifu to stay with relatives in other provinces; yet the quarter-million people who remained had to be accommodated properly. At the moment, most of the construction teams were busy building huts for schools, so that children would have temporary classrooms to study in during the winter. After that, more huts had to be set up for stores, restaurants, banks, inns, bathhouses, police stations. And although the residential housing did not take priority, it was crucial for the city’s stability. Therefore the newly formed City Administration encouraged people to work in teams to construct shacks for themselves for the winter, using the bricks, rocks, and wood left in the ruins, in addition to the building materials donated by other provinces. The Construction Bureau provided a few shacks as models, which were low-pitched and cozy inside and had roofs made of straw, reed mats, and tar paper. In mid-October forty thousand soldiers were sent in to help the civilians build residential shacks.
Meanwhile, another movement was also under way, which was called Form New Families. The authorities urged the thirty thousand people who had lost their spouses in the earthquake to marry again, as a way to promote social order and provide havens for homeless children and old people. The temporary orphanages and old-folks homes simply couldn’t take in so many of them. Soon a slogan began circulating among the survivors: “We must live on!” It not only silenced the voices against the family-forming movement but also helped bring around some of those who had made up their minds not to remarry. As soon as the residential shacks were built, branches of the Party, the Youth League, and the Union all set about matchmaking for the people who had lost their spouses. This undertaking proceeded nicely. Every weekend some group weddings would take place, at each of which more than a dozen new families were established—candies, dried dates and persimmons, roasted peanuts and sunflower seeds, and fresh fruits were supplied in washbasins. Every one of these families comprised at least three members, usually from three homes.
Since this was an emergency measure, love wasn’t always taken into account; so long as a couple didn’t dislike each other, a marriage certificate would be issued to them. People ought to help one another in such a situation. Also, these were men and women who were accustomed to family life and needed it badly; in their hearts there was the natural longing for such a union. We all know how miserable loneliness can be. Besides, there were two great incentives to an immediate marriage: the city promised to grant the newlyweds priority for housing when the apartment buildings were completed the next summer, and they would have an advantage over others for job assignments as well. Therefore thousands of people signed up for the family-forming movement. As l
ong as you were healthy and normal, you were entitled to a spouse and a child or two, sometimes even to an old mother or father.
Already over fifty, Guhan no longer had strong sexual desires, but he was persuaded to help others and entered his name for a family. He looked like a normal man now, working as a clerk in the city’s waterworks, because his handwriting looked handsome and he could do sums. But it wasn’t a permanent job. Nobody knew who he was, and the authorities wouldn’t run the risk of employing a man with an unclear background. So he was on piecework, copying bills and numbers.
His bride-to-be, Liu Shan, was a small woman in her late thirties who had lost her husband and two daughters. When they met in an office in the Civil Bureau’s cottage, she didn’t ask Guhan any questions but just gave him a look. Her oval face was soft and smooth; her slight figure reminded him of a bullet, probably because she had sloping shoulders and wore quilted trousers.
“Do you agree to marry him?” an old woman cadre asked Liu Shan the next afternoon when the couple met in the office again. The bride-to-be nodded without a word.
Turning to Guhan, the official asked, “How about you?”
He gave her a big smile. She said, “You think you’re lucky, huh? Look how young and how pretty she is.”
He smiled again, and that settled it. With a flurry of writing she filled in a red glossy certificate for them. “Love and respect each other,” she said solemnly, revealing two broken teeth. “Com-rade Sweet Apple and Comrade Liu Shan, may you remain a devoted couple to the end of your lives.”
Compared with other men, Guhan wasn’t a bad choice; he looked gentle, strong, and well educated. To him, Shan was a fine woman. She worked as an accountant in a department store, so she must know how to manage money in a household; her voice was so quiet that she must have an even temper; her hands, small and slim, looked dexterous; her earlobes were thick, which was a sign of wealth. In a word, she seemed full of the makings of a good wife. The couple were assigned a new shack and a four-year-old boy named Mo, who would bring them an additional twenty-four yuan a month.
The wedding took place the next Saturday inside a large tent across the street from the Civil Bureau. Twenty-one couples, most of whom were middle-aged, became husbands and wives officially that evening. At the mouth of the tent two strings of firecrackers exploded; then the names of the brides and grooms were announced inside the tent. After a round of drums, pipes, gongs, and horns, together the couples sang “Even My Parents Are Not as Dear as the Party and Chairman Mao” and “Our Gratitude to the People’s Army.” Then a vice mayor, a spare man in steel-rimmed glasses, spoke briefly and gave them the city’s congratulations. After the speech, he presented to each couple the gift of a rice pot and a kettle.
However, the wedding wasn’t jolly and noisy, as weddings should be. Most of the brides looked rather somber; a few grooms stood motionless, their arms crossed before their chests, as though they were spectators. Some of them didn’t even touch the Great Gate cigarettes passed to them on plates. The air was hazy, humming a little; a dozen balloons were wavering languidly. Only a few children seemed in high spirits, seeing so many goodies on the folding tables.
“Happy marriage!” the mayor said loudly to Shan.
Shan’s hand trembled and she spilled her apple brandy. The wine stained the cuff of the mayor’s trouser leg and the head of his leather boot.
Guhan stepped forward and grasped her arm, saying with a smile, “Excuse us, Comrade Mayor. She has drunk too much.”
“I understand,” the leader replied unemotionally.
Hurriedly Guhan pulled his bride away. Among all the grooms he seemed the happiest. Some people shot sidelong glances at him.
Within just one hour, more than half of the couples had left. The band was packing up. An old man at the tea stand mumbled, “This is shorter than a breakfast. My seat isn’t warm yet.”
When Guhan and Shan returned to their shack, Mo had fallen asleep in Guhan’s arms. They took off the boy’s khaki jacket and pants and put him into the brick bed, which had been heated by an old woman from the Street Committee of the neighborhood.
Guhan sat down on their only chair and looked at Shan, who was washing her face over a yellow basin in a corner. Steam issued from her head, and her chest bulged a little in a red woolen sweater. Quietly he got up and went over. His palm touched the small of her back, caressing her while his stomach tightened.
She knocked off his hand with the wet towel and turned around, her eyes dim and a few tears on her cheeks. “Don’t touch me!” she cried.
“What happened?” he asked in surprise.
“I can’t do it tonight.”
“Do what?”
“You know.”
“Why?”
“I can’t.”
“Come on, I’ve been waiting for such a long time.” He grinned suggestively.
“I can’t do it.”
He kicked away the brand-new enamel chamber pot, which was a present from the Street Committee, and added, “Then why did you agree to get married?”
She turned to look at the sleeping boy, who didn’t stir. Lowering her head, she burst out sobbing. That frightened Guhan. He embraced her shoulders with one arm and asked rather gently, “What’s wrong, Shan? If you don’t want to, I can wait. Don’t be scared. I’m not a cruel man.” He kissed her cheek and noticed she had long eyelashes, which cast frail shadows on her lower lids.
“I’m not scared,” she moaned with her eyes shut. “I feel so sad, can’t shut my family out of my mind. I see him on your face. Even your voice reminds me of his. Oh, how I miss them! I don’t even have a photo of them.”
Guhan felt bad, but said, “There, now, don’t cry so hard. I’ll help you get over it.”
But her sobbing became unstoppable. She lay down on her stomach beside the boy and buried her face in a pillow. He wanted to console her some, but didn’t know what to say. Having sat in silence for a few minutes, he took off his clothes, climbed into his camp bed, and covered himself with a quilt.
She wept into the small hours.
Before the wedding, Shan had asked Guhan several questions, none of which he could answer. He couldn’t even tell her his exact age, just saying, “I’m around fifty,” or describe what his former family was like. “Probably he goes by an alias,” suggested Aunt Tian, who lived next door. Never had he shown any trace of grief over the loss of his family, whose other members, according to his words, had all vanished in the earthquake. More unusual, he always slept soundly, unlike other newlyweds who would weep or wail for hours during the first few nights. Maybe he hadn’t lost anything or anybody and was actually a gainer.
From the first day, Mo regarded Guhan as his uncle, but he called Shan mother. At night, he’d sleep with her, with his only toy, a MIG-15 jet fighter, placed beside his pillow. He had dark skin, his fat cheeks chapped. His hands and toes and heels were swollen with chilblains. Every night, Shan would wash and rub his hands and feet in warm chili water. The boy would whine with pain, but he allowed her to work on them. Soon scabs formed over Mo’s sores, and Shan kept telling him not to pick them so that they could heal quickly. By the official record, Mo’s father had been a truck driver and his mother a spinner; both had worked in a textile mill.
At a good meal, the boy could eat almost as much as Guhan could. Naturally their grain rations were not enough, and they had to buy some corn flour, rice, and sorghum at tripled prices on the open market. Yet Shan always let Mo eat as much as he wanted. She was a good cook and could make four dishes with half a pound of pork; she was also skillful with needles, her hands often busy knitting something—a sock or a hat or a glove. As Guhan had expected, she turned out to be a dutiful wife and never complained about housework. He felt lucky to have married her, though he was unsure whether he loved her; sometimes he preferred to stay a little longer at the waterworks at the end of the day. Unlike other couples, who would quarrel and fight during their adapting period, Shan and Guhan were very com
patible and had none of those problems that many of the newlyweds accused their spouses of having, such as shrieking and kicking in their dreams, abusing children or parents, grinding their teeth at night, sleepwalking, having a bloody nose, or a gluttonous appetite, or bad breath, or underarm odor. Guhan smoked and liked to drink a mug of wine or beer at dinner, but that was normal, as other men did the same.
As it got colder, the three of them would crowd into the brick bed, which they didn’t have enough coal to heat. Every night they’d shiver together for an hour or two before falling asleep. Their only hot-water bottle was tucked under Mo’s feet.
Guhan liked the boy a lot, but he soon thought of having his own baby. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: every new couple were allowed to have one child of their own. Evidently there would be a baby boom in the city the next summer, since so many women were already pregnant. To Guhan’s dismay, Shan refused to go to the hospital and have the contraceptive ring taken out of her womb. She had just begun to feel comfortable in lovemaking, but she insisted she wasn’t ready for a baby yet. “Be patient, sweetheart,” she said to him one evening. “I’m still very weak. Next year we’ll try.”
“Next year I’ll be an octogenarian,” he replied peevishly.
“Come on, Apple, I still can’t stop thinking of my kids.” Her eyes turned red.
“All right, all right, don’t think of them anymore. We have this baby with us, don’t we?” He grabbed Mo and set him on his lap. The boy seemed to understand what they were talking about; he embraced Guhan’s neck tightly. Outside, an icicle fell to the ground, and the wind was screaming.
Though Guhan didn’t know his age exactly, he felt old, eager to prove he was still fertile. After a few fruitless attempts to persuade Shan to have the ring removed, he gave up, only hoping the policy on new babies wouldn’t change soon. This frustration made him treat Mo more like a son. He would buy him spiced beans, hawthorn flakes, baked sweet potatoes, ice cream bricks, and walnuts. The boy enjoyed riding on his neck to stores and open-air theaters; at dinner the two often shared a mug of wine. At long last, in mid-December, when Guhan bought Mo a wind-up torpedo boat, the boy began to call him dad. Guhan was so happy that he promised to buy Mo a pile of firecrackers at the Spring Festival.
