Cries in the Drizzle

by Yu Hua

  I don't know how Sun Youyuan managed to get through that terrible afternoon. By making his getaway as he did, my greatgrandfather came across too much like a petty thief. Sun Youyuan had to bear a double shame: while just as disconsolate as the apprentices, he also suffered the ignominy of being my greatgrandfather's son. It was a complete disaster—just as bad, my grandfather told us, as if a house had collapsed on top of their heads. He was in all the worse a situation because he happened to be one of the eight porters. He gripped the balustrade but found himself unable to take a single step forward, as drained of strength as though someone had squeezed him in the crotch.

  It was after dark when my great-grandfather returned. Although he had been too mortified to face the local spectators earlier in the day, he still managed to project a superior air in front of his son and the apprentices. The old man, masking his inner turmoil, lectured his dispirited audience in a rasping voice. “Don't pull such long faces. I'm not dead yet. A new start can be made. I remember how things were when I started out…”

  In expansive, inspiring tones he reviewed his stirring past and painted for his disciples an even more splendid future. Then all of a sudden he announced, “We're disbanding.”

  He turned on his heel and strode away as the apprentices stared and gaped in shock. But when he reached the entrance to the construction shed, my great-grandfather, who was so fond of taking people by surprise, spun around and issued a piece of confident advice. “Remember your master's words: so long as you've got money in your pocket, you won't have to sleep in an empty bed.”

  In that bygone era, the old man found it very easy to impress himself. When he decided to leave that very night for the county seat so that he could present his apology to the local administrator, he felt that he was displaying an integrity worthy of legendary heroes, and when he told my grandfather that a man has to take responsibility for his actions the tremor in his voice came entirely from his own sense of exaltation. Seeing his father transported by the ambition to convert failure into glory, Sun Youyuan himself felt a foolish surge of pride.

  But my great-grandfathers morale slumped after he had taken only a few steps, for he made the mistake of looking back at the stone bridge. He could not help himself, because the upturned dragon-gate stone glinted in the moonlight, like a wild dog baring its fangs in a bad dream. As my granddad watched, the old man's silhouette seemed to tremble and totter. Under a chilly moon my great-grandfather began his wearisome trek down that little country road, assailed by a persistent sense of failure. Far from marching gallantly into the county jail, as Sun Youyuan claimed was the case when he related this episode to us later, he looked even more feeble than a sick man trundled into the hospital at death's door.

  For a long time Sun Youyuan was inspired by his father's heroic spirit, despite its fraudulence. He did not change his profession as his father had urged, and after a number of apprentices had packed up their belongings and left for home, he and the seven other bearers of the dragon-gate stone stayed on. Sun Youyuan vowed to salvage the stone bridge, and after his father's departure he applied his own acumen to telling effect. First he led the seven apprentices out and directed them to dig sixteen holes underneath the arch, and then he had them cut sixteen wooden stakes. After inserting the stakes into the shafts, the eight young men swung sixteen hammers and struck the stakes in a ferocious frenzy. Bystanders may well have thought they were lunatics, for they banged away there for a full four hours. In deference to their puny but strenuous efforts, the huge bridge ever so slightly rose, and eventually my grandfather heard an encouraging scrape, followed by a thunderous boom, and he had achieved his goal. The dragon-gate stone now snugly and securely filled the breach.

  My grandfather was so elated that he bounded down the road, tears streaming down his face, calling my great-grandfather at the top of his lungs. He ran a full fifteen miles in one go, all the way to the county town. When my great-grandfather emerged befuddled from jail, he saw his son soaked from head to toe as if he had spent the whole night in the rain, though there was a baking sun in a clear blue sky. My grandfather had expended practically all his bodily fluids in making his dash, and he was able just to call “Dad …” before he collapsed to the ground with a thump.

  My great-grandfather bore the imprint of his era's frailty, and even though he could draw comfort from his son's redemption of the Northmarsh Bridge debacle he found it impossible thereafter to recover his former vigor. With the ponderous steps of an old peasant, my demoralized great-grandfather plodded toward my great-grandmother, who when young had been quite a beauty. In their twilight years these two old folks began, for the first time in their lives, to spend day after day in each other's company.

  Meanwhile my grandfather, the proud and self-assured Sun Youyuan, led a team of masons just like his father before him, and carried on the business established by his forebears. But his glory days were fleeting; as the last generation of traditional stonemasons, they encountered only indifference from the age in which they lived. Besides, many stone arched bridges already spanned the rivers in the surrounding area, and given their predecessors’ skilled craftsmanship it was too much to expect that all these structures would simply give way overnight. Sun Youyuan's hungry crew traversed the waterlands of Jiangnan, clinging to their naive hopes. The only opportunity that came their way allowed them to construct a small stone-paved bridge—a crooked bridge, at that. But it gave Sun Youyuan the chance to observe his future father-in-law's scholarly bearing.

  A group of peasants had pooled together funds to engage their services, and my grandfather by now was too hard up to be picky. At one time the Suns had specialized in arched bridges of impressive scale, but things had now reached such a parlous state that Sun Youyuan readily accepted the commission to build a little slab bridge. They selected a place where two highways intersected as the best site to build the foundation, but a large camphor tree on the other bank hampered construction at one end. My grandfather waved his arm and told them to cut the tree down, not knowing that its owner was the father of his wife-to-be.

  Liu Xinzhi was known near and far as a man of property; he was to go through his whole life not knowing that his ultimate son-in-law was a pauper. A licentiate under the imperial examination system, he was much given to pontificating about the scholar's obligation to be first to worry about the world's problems and last to enjoy the world's pleasures. But when he heard that there was a plan afoot to fell his family's camphor tree, he was just as incensed as if they were proposing to dig up the ancestral tombs. Oblivious of his reputation for profound learning, he unleashed a string of barnyard curses at the people who had come to consult him.

  Sun Youyuan, his hands tied, had no choice but to build the foundation at a slight angle to the line of the bridge, and after three months the crooked bridge was completed. Now that the job was finished, the sponsors invited Liu Xinzhi, Old Master Liu, to bestow a name upon it.

  That was the morning that my grandfather saw his father-inlaw . He watched with awe as Liu Xinzhi emerged, dressed in silk, and walked at a snail's pace toward him. Somehow this pretentious licentiate appeared even more imposing to Sun Youyuan's eyes than an official in the Republican administration. Years later, as my grandmother's bed partner, he looked back on the scene that day, recalling how the decadent Liu Xinzhi still managed to impress him in his robust youth.

  My grandmother's father maintained a scholarly posture all the way to the bridge, but once he got there he promptly announced that it was beneath his notice, saying sharply, as though he had been insulted, “Such a lousy crooked bridge, and you ask me to think of a name for it!” And he went off in a huff.

  My grandfather carried on crisscrossing the country north and south. He and his team trudged long distances amid the gunfire of Nationalists and Communists, through scenes of famine; in such times as these, who would think of raising money to have them demonstrate their skills? Like a band of beggars, they tried to drum up business everywhere they w
ent. My grandfather was stirred by an ambition to build bridges, but he lived at the wrong time, in an era infatuated with destruction. In the end his motley crew had little choice but to compromise their initial innocence and take on any work available, even cleaning corpses and digging graves, for only by such means could they ensure that they themselves did not die by the roadside. In that dire hour, Sun Youyuan somehow managed to induce them to follow him on his aimless and futile travels; I have no idea what kind of blandishments he used to persuade them. Finally one night, mistaken for Communist guerrillas, they were fired upon by Nationalist troops, and these stonemasons, so steeped in out-of-date ideals, were forced to go their separate ways, alive or dead.

  At that time my grandfather and his band of paupers were sleeping on a riverbank. After the first wave of shots rang out, Sun Youyuan was unscathed, and he propped himself up and yelled, “What do you think you are doing, letting off firecrackers?” Then he saw that the face of an apprentice next to him had been shot to pieces, reduced in the moonlight to a gruesome mess, like an egg that has been smashed on the ground. My bleary-eyed grandfather took to his heels and ran, yelling and screaming as he tore along the bank. But he soon hushed when a bullet whistled through the crotch of his pants. “Damn it,” he thought, “my balls have been blown away!” He continued to run for his life all the same. When he had run a good ten miles, he felt that his crotch was completely soaked through. It didn't occur to him that it could be drenched with sweat and he felt sure that he was losing all his blood, so he came to a stop and reached in a hand to press down on the wound. In so doing, he brushed against his testicles. At first he was startled, thinking, “What the hell is this?” But more careful examination confirmed that the family jewels were intact and unharmed. Later he sat down under a tree, toying with his sweaty testicles for a good long time and chuckling away. Only when he was absolutely sure of his own safety did he give any thought to the band of apprentices on the riverbank. The memory of the youngster s shattered face reduced him to tears and wails.

  For Sun Youyuan to try to keep the family business afloat was clearly no longer an option. At the age of twenty-five, he felt the same bleak hopelessness that had beset his father on his retirement. As Spring Festival approached, wearing the careworn expression of an old man, my young grandfather stepped onto a dust-blown highway and set off for home.

  My great-grandfather had fallen seriously ill after he returned home the previous year, and though my great-grandmother spent all their savings she was unable to return him to his former vigor and had to pawn everything of value in the house. Eventually she found herself bedridden too. On the last day of the year, when my grandfather returned home ragged and penniless, his father had already breathed his last, and his mother lay sprawled next to his lifeless body, on the verge of death. Racked by illness as she was, she could greet her son's return only with a rasping, hurried breath. My grandfather had brought poverty back to a poverty-stricken home.

  This was the darkest hour in my grandfather's early years. By now there was nothing left in the house worth pawning and during the holiday season no way to sell his labor to earn rice and firewood. At his wits’ end, braving a piercing wind, he ran toward town on the morning of the Chinese New Year, his father's body over his shoulder. He had come up with the idea of leaving his dead parent at the pawnshop, and as he ran he constantly apologized to the corpse on his shoulders, at the same time racking his brains to think of an excuse that would make him feel better. My great-grandfather's body had lain frozen for two days and two nights in the drafty thatched cottage, and was then carried by my grandfather for ten miles through the howling north wind. When he set it down on the counter of the pawnshop in town, it was as stiff as a board.

  Tears welling up in his eyes, my grandfather threw himself on the mercy of the pawnshop proprietor, explaining that it wasn't that he was an unfilial son, but there was simply no other recourse open to him. He told the pawnbroker, “My dad is dead, and I have no money for his burial; my mom is alive, but ill in bed at home with no money for treatment. Do a good deed, will you? I'll redeem my dad in a few days’ time.”

  The pawnbroker was an old man in his sixties; he had never in his life heard of using a corpse as collateral. Covering his nose with his hand, he waved him away. “No, that won't do, I'm afraid. We don't accept gold bodhisattvas here.” On the first day of the New Year he wished to strike a propitious note, and so he elevated Great-grandfather to the rank of a priceless treasure.

  But my grandfather, refusing to take no for an answer, persisted with his entreaties, and so three clerks came forward and shoved my great-grandfather down off the counter. He fell as rigid as a flagstone, hitting the ground with a resounding thud. Sun Youyuan hastened to pick his father up and inspected him fearfully to see if any damage had been done. A spray of cold water then descended on his head, for without waiting for him to leave the shop the clerks had begun to clean the counter soiled by the unwanted pledge. This incensed Sun Youyuan, who swung a heavy fist in the face of one, knocking him to the ground with the force of a pellet hurled from a slingshot. My grandfather used his enormous strength to overturn the counter, but when several more clerks descended on him, cudgels flying, the only thing he could think of was to raise his father's corpse aloft, to ward off their blows and take the battle to them. In that chilly morning he brandished the rock-hard carcass and turned the pawnshop upside down. Brave Sun Youyuan gained strong support from his father's cadaver, beating the clerks till they did not know what to do. None of them dared to touch the corpse for fear of incurring a whole year's worth of bad luck, and the superstitions of the day, combined with Sun Youyuan's audacity, ensured that he encountered practically no resistance. But when my grandfather swung his father around and lashed out at the ashen-faced proprietor, it was Sun Youyuan's turn to be horrified, for in so doing he knocked his father s head against a chair. An awful noise awoke him to the realization that he had committed a monstrous sin, using his father's remains as a combat weapon. His father's head had been knocked askew, and after a moment of shock my grandfather hoisted him onto his shoulder, dashed outside, and set off at a run through the icy wind. In the end he did, like a proper son, weep bitter tears— he was sitting under a winter elm then, cradling my damaged ancestor. It took a great deal of effort to twist his father's head back into its original position.

  Sun Youyuan buried his father, but he had not buried poverty, and in the days that followed he could only dig up some herbs and boil them in a broth for his mother to drink. These were little pink and green plants that grew at the foot of the wall— motherwort, though Sun Youyuan did not know that. He was overjoyed to find that his ailing mother, after drinking the broth, was able to get out of bed and walk around. My slapdash grandfather found this a revelation, thinking naively that he now understood the true state of affairs, that those miracle-working physicians actually had no special skill at all, that there was nothing more to it than harvesting a pile of herbs and medicating a patient the same way you would feed a sheep. So he abandoned the idea of going to town to work as a laborer, and after being a mason all his life he decided he would now devote himself to health care.

  Sun Youyuan was excited about the prospect. He knew that when starting out one needed to make house calls and interview patients; once his reputation was established he could sit at home and have the afflicted come to him for treatment. He threw a basket of herbs on his back and began an itinerant life, going from door to door, yelling like a rubbish collector in that ringing voice of his, “I'll swap my cures for your diseases.”

  His innovative sales pitch attracted much interest, but his ragtag appearance left people unsure how seriously to take him. In the end a family engaged his services; the first (and last) patient of my grandfather's career was a boy with acute diarrhea. Sun Youyuan took a casual look at the ailing child, and without bothering to take his pulse or ascertain his symptoms he reached into his basket for a handful of herbs, which he handed to th
e boy's father with instructions to cook them into a soup. While the family eyed the herbs doubtfully, Sun Youyuan made a quick exit, picking up his refrain, “I'll swap my cures for your diseases.”

  When the boy's father followed him out of the house, quizzing him in earnest perplexity, it astonishes me that Sun Youyuan still managed to tell him with supreme self-confidence, “That's right: he takes my medicine and I take his illness away.”

  No sooner had the poor boy drunk the herb soup than he vomited and excreted copious amounts of green fluid, and within two days he had breathed his last. The result was that one afternoon my great-grandmother was treated to the alarming sight of a dozen men rushing furiously toward her house.

  My grandfather maintained his composure. He told his frightened mother to go back into her room and closed the door behind her, and then he went out to meet the visitors with a welcoming smile on his face. The father and other relatives of the deceased child had come to make Sun Youyuan pay with his life. Though confronted by their livid and intransigent faces, Sun Youyuan still tried to disarm them with specious platitudes. They were in no mood to listen to his rambling and ridiculous speech and closed ranks tightly around him, with several shiny hoes aimed at his shiny shaved head. Having survived a hail of Nationalist bullets, Sun Youyuan was unperturbed, and he informed them complacently that he didn't care if there were a dozen of them—even if there were twice that number, he would still beat them till they were covered all over with bruises. For Sun Youyuan to make such exaggerated claims when he was staring death in the face left them quite dazed. My grandfather untied the buttons of his jacket and said, “Let me just take this off, and then we can get on with it.”

  So saying, Sun Youyuan thrust a hoe aside, walked back up to the house, pushed the door open, and coolly kicked it shut. After that, no further sound was heard from him; the avengers outside were rolling up their sleeves, unaware that my grandfather had already jumped out the back window and fled, and they continued to stand there, gearing up to do battle with their terrible foe. Only after waiting a while longer with no sign of Sun Youyuan did they sense that something had gone awry, and kicking the door open they found the house completely deserted. Then they saw my grandfather, with his mother on his back, fleeing down the road and already well off in the distance. My grandfather was no country bumpkin, after all; his improvised escape shows that he was more than just dauntless, he could be wily too.