The Day the Sun Died

by Yan Lianke

  my father in the chest and stomach. My father sat on the ground like a sack of sugar, and as the man hit and kicked him, my father’s butt slowly slid across the floor. The paper wreaths that covered the floor were pushed backward by my father’s body until they formed a pile against the wall. Once my father was pressed against the wall, the man began to hit and kick him even more viciously, but my father sat there like a pile of clothing or a sack of sugar.

  “Fuck your grandmother! After my father was buried three years ago, you must have been the one who informed on him. Do you admit it?”

  Several punches rained down on Father’s face like tiles being smashed on the ground.

  “Fuck your grandmother! Three years ago, when you informed your brother-in-law, that bastard sent someone to our home in the mountains and dug up the corpse, saying that the Reform and Opening Up Campaign had reached our remote village, and that we needed to change our customs. Then he ignited my father’s corpse and cremated his body in the open, you know?”

  He repeatedly stomped on my father’s head and chest, making him gasp for breath as his face came to resemble one of the white flowers with red petals that were lying on the ground.

  “Your brother-in-law cremated my father in the open, and in the process made me a model antireformist. In the village, I was put on display and made to parade around. They even wrote me up in the county paper. Did you see the report?

  “If you saw it, then how did your conscience permit you to live with this? Are you even human?

  “After my wife read the article and heard the broadcast, she left me. Your Li and Shao families have been profiting off other people’s deaths, and have condemned others to a lifetime of misfortune. How can you live with yourselves?

  “Shortly after my father was cremated, my mother died of anger, and it was three months after her death that my wife left me. Half a year later, my sister developed a mental illness as a result of our parents’ deaths, and leaped to her death from a cliff. In this way, what had been a stable family was torn apart and destroyed, even as your Li and Shao families didn’t know anything about it. As I have gotten older, I’ve become increasingly dissolute, and if I wasn’t drinking, I’d be gambling or stealing. It is all your fault that I became bad. When I was released from prison six months ago, I vowed to become good, but tonight while I was sleeping, God came to me in a dream and said, ‘Ma Guazi, your time has come. You should gather some friends and go into town and steal some things.’ After I woke up, I insisted that I didn’t want to rob or steal, and instead I wanted to be good. But God was still in my heart, saying, ‘You should go, you should go! Quick, get out of bed and go!’ If God demands that I do something, I have no choice but to do it. So I brought the others to town, and to your shop. I originally assumed that entering your funerary shop had been a very unlucky thing, but I never expected that this was actually God’s way of letting me get retribution for what your Li and Shao families have done to mine. God wants you, Li Tianbao, to repay me in full, and he wants your crippled wife to repay me on behalf of her brother. I have already come to terms with the collapse of my family and the deaths of my relatives. Other than in my dreams, I never imagined I would find you, and make you pay. But this night of the somnambulism has allowed me to think of all of this, and to encounter all of this.”

  He once again slapped my mother and kicked my father in the face and chest. He then stomped on my father’s legs and feet and ankles. He stomped on him for a while, said a few things, then slapped him several times. He beat him, said something, then stomped on him some more. He grabbed one of the room’s bamboo stalks and struck my parents over the head. After he grew tired from beating them—and after he had run out of curses and left the store a mess with paper blossoms, shreds of paper, sticks, and bamboo stalks all over the floor—he noticed that, throughout his beating and cursing, my parents hadn’t moved a muscle or uttered a word, and only raised a hand to protect themselves when he brought his foot or the bamboo stalk down on their faces. After a while, my father stopped doing even that, and simply sat there and allowed himself to be beaten. It was as if the person being beaten was not him, and as if the punches and kicks that were raining down on his head and face did not hurt him in the least.

  Blood poured out of his head.

  Blood poured out of his nose and mouth.

  The blood flowed onto his body, his shirt, and splattered all over his thighs. Everyone was astonished by my parents’ lack of response. I knelt down and—assuming that my father must have died—I stared in shock and called out to him, and also called out to my mother. I could see that they were both looking at me, as though they were trying to use their eyes to communicate. I knelt there without moving or saying another word. The room was very hot, and Ma Guazi’s clothes were soaked in sweat. The room was very cold, and everyone’s face was covered in frost.

  “Damn it!” Ma Guazi once again stomped on my father’s legs. I saw my father’s legs tense up, as though he were going into convulsions. Then he extended his legs and waited for them to be stomped on again. Sure enough, he was stomped on again, and his legs tensed up again. Then he extended his legs once again, and waited.

  “You sure can take a beating. If you just beg me once, I’ll stop.

  “All you need to do is beg me, and everything that happened tonight will be forgotten.”

  Ma Guazi continued stomping and speaking, speaking and stomping. “Could it be that you really weren’t the person who informed on me, which is why you refuse to speak or struggle? Damn it, if you don’t struggle, then it must be your own fault. If you don’t struggle, that means it must have been you who informed on me.” He slapped and kicked, kicked and slapped. Ma Guazi hoped that my father would either beg him to stop or else would try to defend himself, but instead it appeared as though he were the one who was begging my father. At this point, Mother crawled from Father’s side and begged Ma Guazi while hugging his leg. But as she was looking up to plead with him, Father reached over and pulled her back.

  My father spoke.

  My father finally spoke.

  “Thank you for coming to beat me. Actually, your father’s cremation was not a result of my having informed on him. However, for more than ten years I did do that sort of thing to others. So, in coming to beat me tonight, you are letting us repay those debts. This way, we will no longer owe anyone anything.”

  My father had a smile on his face as he said this—a miserable smile. As he grinned, his voice resembled a fly buzzing around. As he was speaking, he looked at Ma Guazi, and the smile on the corners of his lips spread to the rest of his face, as though his face were covered in white blossoms and red leaves. But as Father was expressing his gratitude, Ma Guazi slapped him. “Does that feel good? Then I’ll let you feel even better.” He knocked Father’s smile from his face, leaving it red with blood. He turned and glared at his companions, who were standing there staring. “Why aren’t you beating them? Could it be that these past several years, no one ever informed on you when your elders or relatives were buried?” Then, after using all his strength to kick my father and mother one final time, he announced that he was done.

  This was truly the end.

  As Ma Guazi was leading his companions away, he picked up a large, white paper blossom from the ground and placed it on Mother’s head. Then he picked up half a wreath and hung it around Father’s neck. Then he left. He did, in fact, leave. In the room, there were only my parents, myself, and a mess of wreaths and flowers. We looked at one another. The lamplight and the dusk were the same color as the paper and blossoms that littered the floor. Mother sighed, removed the white blossom from her head, and placed it on the ground; then she wiped her face. From somewhere she had managed to find a rag-like piece of cloth and handed it to Father. By this point, Father’s shirt was completely unbuttoned, and both his shirt and his chest were dark with blood. He carefully turned to accept the rag, as though afraid his neck might be broken. Upon discovering that he could still turn
his neck and move his body, Father wiped his face. It was as if he were checking to see whether or not his face was still there. Fortunately, it was. The left side of his face was as swollen as a freshly steamed bun. Then, as though he were afraid that the flesh on his face might suddenly fall off, Father slowly raised his hand to his left cheek. He ripped a strip from the rag Mother had handed him, and stuffed it into his bleeding nostril. The result was rather farcical. “Now our Li family doesn’t owe anyone anything. I am grateful to Ma Guazi, because it was he who permitted our family to repay our debt.” Father said this softly to himself. After removing the dead man’s wreath from his neck, he attempted to stand up. His joints creaked loudly, as though his bones had been displaced and were now returning to their correct positions.

  It turned out that Father was OK.

  I had assumed that Father’s bones would surely be shattered, but it turned out that he was OK. I had never thought that Father, as small as he was, would be so resilient. I went to help Mother, but saw that as soon as she stood up, she almost fell down again. She nevertheless made an effort and managed to stay upright. Seeing this, Father was relieved. He kicked the blossoms and paper ornaments lying on the ground, together with the spirit money and the paper ingots. And then, leaning against a chair and the wall, he headed toward the entranceway. “The sun is about to come up. As soon as it does, everything should be OK.” His mumbling became a sigh. “Be sure to straighten up the room. God, if they are willing to rob a funerary shop, there’s no telling how they must have left other people’s houses.”

  As he said this, he made his way out of the store, as though wanting to check on the condition of the other houses that had been robbed.

  Father stood outside the store and gazed at the street. The predawn coolness rose up from the street, as though water were flowing into the room. Mother didn’t clean up the mess, and instead hobbled into the kitchen to wash her face—to wash the blood off her face, and to wash the bloody wounds on her arms. “Your uncle’s family is going to come to a bad end. Tonight, your uncle’s family is going to come to a bad end.” She muttered this to herself as she walked, but before she passed the stairs and went into the kitchen, Father returned. He was walking much faster than when he left, and while it looked as if he still needed to lean against the doorframes and the walls for support, he was nevertheless moving at a fast clip. I knew he had seen that the outsiders were taking advantage of the somnambulism to arrive in cars with their shovels, hoes, and weapons. He had turned pale—as pale as white funeral paper. Sweat was flowing down his face as though he had been drenched in a downpour of bloody rain.

  “The town will experience a crisis.

  “The town will experience a major crisis.

  “This town will really find itself unable to escape its doom.”

  Father spoke so quickly, it was hard to believe he had just been beaten. In a single step, he leaped across the room and strode past the stairs to Mother’s side. “Go quickly, and leave this town! Don’t lock up the store on your way out, because the messier you can leave everything, the better. Niannian, you should scatter those shredded wreaths in the entranceway, and leave the front door wide open. Make it appear as though others have already robbed this store countless times.”

  2. (5:31–5:50)

  I went to do as Father instructed.

  I took the shredded wreaths that were scattered around the shop, and placed them in the entranceway. I took the ornamental boys and girls that had gotten stepped on, and placed them on either side of the door. I also took the funeral ornaments that were covered in my parents’ blood, and placed them in a visible location. I left the door to the store wide open, then fled with my parents. I don’t know where Father had managed to find a motorized three-wheeled cart, which could either be pedaled or could run on a motor. “Here . . . here.” Father was calling out from the darkness, and I ran over to him. I hopped onto the motorized cart, and Father headed toward a street in town.

  Behind me, there was a loud and chaotic sound of footsteps, and there was also the loud and chaotic sound of voices. The voices were like floodwaters rushing toward the town. The town was smothered by the sound of the voices, and was lifted up by this tide of sound. My family rode that three-wheeled cart from East Street toward West Street, and from the town entrance to the center of town. The cart sounded as though it were about to fall apart, and as though the chain were about to snap at any moment. In the cart’s tin trunk, there were sacks, hoes, and also a heavy-duty battery-powered radio. Around here, whenever middle-aged or old people ride a motorized cart, they like to carry a radio with them. The radio would play as it was being knocked around, but whenever you wanted to listen to it, it would go silent. I wasn’t sure which family had driven this cart and abandoned it while they went to steal things, but now the cart was carrying my family.

  The door to the farm tools store was closed.

  The door to the nearby grain and oil store was also closed.

  The door to the hair salon that was kitty-corner across the street, however, was open.

  The door to the store selling glass for windows and doors was half-open.

  The entire town was still half-asleep. Some people had woken up from their dreamwalking, and then fallen asleep again. Others had been sleeping soundly all night, and not only had they not dreamwalked, they hadn’t even gotten up to use the bathroom. But now, there were some people—I couldn’t tell whether they were awake or dreamwalking—who staggered along the street and had no idea what had happened or what was happening on this night in this town, in this world.

  “People from other villages have come into town to rob and steal!

  “People from other villages have come into town to rob and steal!”

  As several shouts came from the intersection, Father turned the cart around, and proceeded north. He began screaming at the top of his lungs, and told Mother and me to do the same. So, we all stood in the cart, cupped our hands around our mouths, and shouted.

  “Everyone, get up! Outsiders with hoes and shovels have come to steal and loot.

  “Everyone, quickly get up! Outsiders who have come to rob us have already reached the entrance to town.”

  Father’s shouts were as rough and urgent as shattered stone and cracked bamboo, while Mother’s were as thin and delicate as a ripped silk sheet fluttering in the wind. My shouts, meanwhile, resembled a partially grown branch swaying back and forth—and although they were short, they nevertheless flew the farthest. Some people emerged from their houses and stood on the side of the street, and after watching for a while, they went back inside and shut their doors, and we could hear them using wooden bars to barricade them. Father once again drove his cart forward, and our family’s shouts once again sounded out, one after the other. It was as if on this night, the town hadn’t succeeded in silencing my parents, and it was as if they had lived their entire lives so that tonight they would be able to travel the town’s streets shouting and hollering. In this way, the town’s streets and alleys were all woken up again, only to die down again.

  The square. The town’s northern entrance. South Street and West Street. All of the town’s streets and alleys were filled with the sound of our calls and shouts. Wherever we ran, the sound of our shouts would pour out like the wind. When we reached the entrance to the village chief’s house, Father had wanted to shout as we knocked on the door, but in the end he didn’t have a chance, and our family had no choice but to run away. The entrance to the village chief’s alley was suddenly filled with lights and the sound of footsteps. In the dark night, we couldn’t hear anyone talking or shouting, and all we could see was that light flickering. The sound of footsteps surged toward us like an earthquake, or like a flood that had inundated the houses and inundated the entire world.

  The outsiders gathered around so that, when the time came, they would be ready to surge into town.

  It was like water accumulating in a reservoir until it is ready to overflow the embankment.<
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  Or like troops gathering until they are ready to go to war.

  I stared in the direction of those lights and sounds. Mother looked at those lights and screamed, “They’ve arrived! Quick, run away! . . . Quick, run away!” Father’s foot, which was about to kick the door to the village chief’s house, froze in midair. By this point, the street was already full of the sound of people running, and it seemed as if everywhere we looked there were people fleeing town with their bundles of possessions. They were carrying lanterns and flashlights, even though the road leading out of town was well lit. The main road was as brightly illuminated as it had been before dusk, and everything could be seen perfectly clearly. When my father ran forward, he could see, in the lamplight, a key hanging from the handle of another cart, and tied to the key there was a dirty embroidered monkey. Father, without appearing to give the matter much thought, grabbed the key and turned it, starting the motor. This is what happened. Everything happened in this way. After hopping onto the cart, my father proceeded just like one of those villagers who drive three-wheeled carts, and with his hand on the throttle, the cart began to move with a warm and quick puttering sound. “Damn it, damn it!” It was unclear whether the voice was excited, upset, or angry. Father cursed repeatedly, and the cart handle shook a few times, and the trunk shook a few times as well. The motorized cart moved down the street—much faster than someone could run, and also faster than a cart drawn by a horse or donkey. There was a chaotic stampede in the streets. The village elders said that it had also been like this when the Japanese troops arrived, and as the townspeople fled and hid from the Japanese, they had similarly been shouting as they carried their things and fled in all directions. On this particular night, this is how things were just as the sun was about to come up—everyone was shouting as people ran in all directions. Some were carrying their sleeping children, while others were carrying their elderly parents. Some were able to keep up easily, and even pulled a handcart loaded with clothes, food, kindling, and rice, as well as young children and elderly relatives. The refugee pulling the handcart had his eyes only half-open, and it was unclear whether he was awake or asleep. The bodies of the sleeping elders and children riding in the cart rocked back and forth, as they kept mumbling to themselves.