Little Aunt Crane

by Geling Yan

  But Xiao Peng never uttered a word of greeting to Zhang Jian. One time Zhang Jian saw a bicycle key under one of the lockers in the bathhouse, knotted with a length of grubby red plastic. He recognised it at a glance. He took the key to Xiao Peng’s dormitory, and gave it to his room-mate. Zhang Jian asked him to pass on a message to Xiao Peng, inviting him to come over to his house for a drink. Xiao Peng did not take up the invitation.

  He invited him once a month, month after month, but Xiao Peng did not even send him a tactfully worded refusal. There seemed to be no romantic rumours about him either. Xiao Peng, who had become a bachelor for Duohe’s sake, now did not want to see Duohe at all.

  One day a meeting was held for the whole factory, where the Party secretary made a report. Halfway through somebody sitting in the front row slipped out, back bent, and walked towards an emergency exit at the side of the hall, only straightening up once he was behind the cloth curtain. From his seat in the eighteenth row, Zhang Jian could see that it was Xiao Peng. Xiao Peng too was fed up with this secretary and his interminable fine words. Zhang Jian thought, Xiao Peng was an ally, both in public and in secret, so why had he broken off the friendship so completely, just like that, never setting foot over the Zhang family’s threshold?

  10

  LIKE FLOODWATER IN the mountains, a crowd of bicycles came pouring along the road every evening at five o’clock. On the east side of the railway, the workers from the steel-smelting plant and the workers from the rolled-steel plant came together, then went on to converge with the workers from the steel-plate factory, pouring along the sun-softened asphalt road, which seemed to buckle beneath them. The reed-filled ditch on both sides of the railway had dried out in the drought, and button-sized crabs climbed up onto the road, as if at the start of a great migration, only to be ground beneath the wheels of the advancing ranks of bicycles, exploding with a popping sound. Before too long, the flood of traffic had washed past, and all was peaceful again on the road, studded with drought-struck crabs that looked like designs heat-pasted onto pottery: shells covered with a delicate network of cracks, pairs of nippers that had never had the chance to be used in attack, pairs of eyes still staring up into the blue sky.

  Duohe walked past, treading on these newly formed crab fossils. She had almost reached the dependants’ area, where the big road split into criss-crossing smaller roads. The red bricks of the buildings were red no more, and the white-painted balconies were grimy and dull. These buildings, more than a hundred in all, identical when new, had mutated into all different kinds and varieties now they were old. Every family had added another balcony to the home by means of a big wooden plank, on which they placed bowls of onions or garlic, or flowers and shrubs, or bird or rabbit cages, or broken and decayed furniture. In some families the children collected waste paper, and piled it up in bundles on the balcony, covered with tattered fertiliser sacks, and this place made a good storehouse too. Duohe had put up an awning on their balcony’s balcony, on which she stored a row of glass bottles containing pickled meat and vegetables. The Zhang family’s balcony was so neat and tidy it dazzled the eyes, even from far away.

  Duohe was carrying a canvas work bag on her shoulder, packed with more than ten steel stamps. Because wages were paid by the piece, she would take stamps home on Saturday to carve. She had withdrawn the head of the sewing machine, and squeezed on a table vice, which enabled her to work. She had been walking for twenty minutes, and her shoulders were becoming quite sore, and just as she had shifted her bag from one shoulder to the other, a bicycle passed her, sandwiched between several other bikes.

  Zhang Jian was listening to some workmates discussing something. He rode on up the hill.

  Duohe thought, she had been a very obvious sight as he rode by. Could he not have seen her? Or had he not wanted to see her? He was unwilling to acknowledge her in front of his workmates. When they were joking or quarrelling in the workshop, she became an invisible woman.

  Duohe entered their home, and slowly took off her old cloth shoes, crusted with silvery steel dust. As she undid the toggles of the second shoe, her hands shook, and her actions lost all precision. It took her forever to get it undone. It was like this hand had crippled itself grasping the small steel file she used to make her serial numbers; every evening when she came home from work she had to rest for a while before the ability to fully extend and clench her hand returned to her.

  She stripped off her bulky overalls, sickened at the smell that rose from the short-sleeved shirt inside, which had been soaked with sweat and warmed dry again. She went into the toilet, removed her clothes and hosed herself down with a rubber pipe attached to the tap. She could not bring herself to use the two bathhouse tickets issued every week by the workshop – that way Dahai and Erhai could have a proper bath with hot water once a week. Once she had had a wash, she went into the big room, and saw Xiaohuan and Zhang Jian on the balcony, talking. The two of them were lounging on the balcony railings, turned away from the room, and Xiaohuan was laughing as she spoke, Zhang Jian was listening and laughing along with her. If Duohe did not concentrate on what she heard, their words became a buzzing fog of sound. And their intimacy was another thing she could not work her way into, or join in. How could she not be distressed at their joy at this moment? There would never be any place for her in this happiness. They were talking and laughing, and from time to time they would call down to an acquaintance below: ‘Come up and sit for a while!’

  As far as a lot of people were concerned, there was no such person as Duohe in this world. It was necessary for Duohe to disappear in order to exist.

  She tipped those steel stamps out of her work bag. The cement floor, polished excessively smooth, endured those rectangular lumps of steel with clunks and clatters that were painful to hear.

  The two people on the balcony had not heard. They stood shoulder to shoulder, cracking jokes with acquaintances on the ground, chattering and laughing.

  Duohe could not understand any of it. That laughter was also very hard to interpret, a quacking and cooing, everything a dense fog of speech and sound, from the sky to the ground. She thought, this is such a noisy race! She had lived among these people for so many years, how come this was the first time she had noticed that they were so noisy? How much time did they spend making this racket? If they weren’t making all this noise perhaps the floor could be a bit cleaner, the furniture could be a bit tidier, the clothes could be a bit smoother. If they spent a bit less time making a noise, they would have no need to ‘make do, eat’, ‘make do, wear’, ‘make do, live’.

  She pulled out the sewing machine. In this household, every item had to fit neatly into its own space between other objects, which meant that you had to use precise movements when moving things around. If you were not precise, you would bring the sky tumbling down on your head all at once, like soldiers in a rout, or a landslide. The sewing machine’s wheel twisted for a moment out of its customary invisible track, causing it to bash into the long wooden plank where shoes were kept, and the plank collapsed. One end bumped into one of the poles holding up the mosquito net over the bed, which promptly collapsed, enveloping Duohe. She wrestled her way out of the mosquito netting, but when she had finally got her head out, her foot in its wooden slipper kicked into the plank with the shoes, scattering them, and the wooden shoe on her foot along with them.

  The two of them came running over. They did not understand the way she was behaving. They’d spent so many years living in the same dog kennel, if they were not willing to understand, they never would understand anything. Her intimacy with Zhang Jian was a hidden thing that never saw the light of day, that would only happen once in several years, while his and Xiaohuan’s closeness was there every day, in front of an entire building full of people.

  Duohe shouted some words. The other two struggled through a mass of ‘don’t understands’ before they finally knew what she meant: Zhang Jian had seen her carrying a very heavy bag and had pretended not to see her.


  Zhang Jian muttered a few words. Xiaohuan was afraid Duohe would not understand, so she started explaining before the sound of his voice had died away. What he meant was that his colleagues had been talking about how the bonuses were unfair, and they were going to speak to the leaders, and he could not jump off his bike at such a critical juncture. Besides, he’d had no idea that her bag was so heavy.

  Duohe shouted another sentence, and this time Zhang Jian was struck speechless. Xiaohuan said to her: ‘You say that again!’

  She had quarrelled openly with Xiaohuan many times, and given her the silent treatment times beyond number, but she had never seen Xiaohuan look like this before: eyes narrowed to slits, one shoulder thrust out, lower teeth biting on the upper lip.

  Zhang Jian was standing behind Xiaohuan. Xiaohuan gave him a push, looking at Duohe as she said to Zhang Jian: ‘She says Chinese people are all born liars.’

  Duohe said loudly, too right, and she understood just fine, there was no need for Xiaohuan to interpret. She had used this phrase to curse Dahai and Erhai, albeit in a jokey way.

  ‘Who says Chinese people are all born liars?’ Zhang Jian asked.

  That was what they said in Duohe’s village. They said it of their Chinese hired hands. Her mother had talked about Fudan in that way.

  ‘Then your mother was a swine,’ Zhang Jian said.

  Duohe looked at his face. His eyes were still half closed, aloof from the rest of the world, nothing could faze him, no matter how strange, and the words came out from deep in his throat, and not from his lips. She struggled with what it was that he had just said.

  ‘Don’t understand?’ Xiaohuan’s shoulder thrust forward a little more, almost as far as her chin. ‘What he means is: your mother says Chinese people tell lies, and that means that your mother was a swine!’ Her slightly swollen eyelids, her cheeks, deep dimples and glittering tooth all came to her aid as she explained Zhang Jian’s words.

  Duohe swayed for a moment. From the dripping wet hair on her head to the centre of her body that had been sluiced in cold water, she felt the wild fires in her heart ignite with a roar.

  She bawled out a volley of words.

  Xiaohuan seized hold of her freshly washed hair, but could not get a good grip on it, so she made a grab for her clothes. The shirt had been worn ragged, and its collar had been cut off; this too was hard to catch hold of. Duohe backhanded her, and grabbed Xiaohuan’s hair in turn. It was very easy to get a good hold on Xiaohuan’s permed hair, and having done that she could drag Xiaohuan along. Zhang Jian came up and forced his hands between them, his arm trapping Duohe’s neck from behind. Duohe’s hands went limp, and she let go of Xiaohuan.

  Duohe was panting so heavily that her chest was like a pair of bellows. She spoke in a loud voice, sentence after sentence. It didn’t matter – if they did not understand she still had to say it. To them she was just a womb, a pair of breasts, and now both womb and breasts were useless, so come on then, throw them away, throw them down from the fourth floor!

  Her jabbering away in Japanese brought the other two to their senses. In this building, if you farted on one side of the wall, it could be heard on the other side. Her Japanese speech was far more audible than any fart. Were they scared? Duohe was not. Her heart and body were full of flames of black fire. Since the bandits had come charging towards the girls on their horses, she no longer had anything to be frightened of.

  She was a daughter of Shironami village, she should not have been a womb and a pair of breasts for people such as this. She threw herself towards the balcony. Two hands dragged her back from behind.

  She kept jabbering away in her own tongue. The door to the balcony clanged in the neighbouring flat. She was calmer now. That pair behind her dragged themselves through their days, dragging up the children, and dragging her along with them too. Xiaohuan’s ‘make do’ was a fearful thing. This big family had been thoughtlessly created by making do: if there was no wheat flour then make do with bran, if no red-cooked pork then make do with red-cooked aubergine, if there was no shampoo powder then make do with caustic soda. She, a Japanese, had somehow been making do along with them without ever quite knowing why, making do and making do again, and then sometimes it all hit her with a shock: from all these things beyond her control she could still gain a bit of satisfaction, and even steal a morsel of amusement.

  After that evening, Duohe put down a straw mat in the corridor, and spread a cotton quilt over it. Although she was making do, she was also making a statement that she was not prepared to sleep in the same room as either one of that pair. The summer ended, the first rains fell, and the pines on the mountain slopes shed many cones. The autumn was getting chilly.

  ‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ Xiaohuan said to Duohe. ‘Move back in.’

  Her expression was bland, as if all this was just the way it should be.

  ‘Or else you sleep in the big room with the boys, and I’ll come out and put a pallet on the floor?’ Zhang Jian said. That smile of his could wear you out just looking at it, with masses of wrinkles on his brow, and two creases at the corners of his mouth that could have been cut with a knife.

  Duohe bit her lip, and her heart softened somewhat, but she wanted to wait a bit longer, for him to drag Xiaohuan in, and to negotiate a proper, serious reconciliation.

  ‘I’ll give you stubborn! You’ll catch your death of stubbornness on that cement floor!’ Xiaohuan said, as she whisked her own quilt from the bed, and carried it to the corridor. Xiaohuan was so accustomed to quarrelling with people that she could not keep track of all her grudges. She was always sweetest towards the people she had just come to blows with. ‘You’re really this stubborn? I’ll freeze you to death!’ She laid out the quilt on the mat nicely for Duohe, patting it down here and there with her hands.

  Duohe did not utter a sound, or move. Once Xiaohuan had gone, she knelt on the floor, rolled up the quilt which had just been laid out flat and tidy on the floor, and carried it back to Xiaohuan’s bed. She was not about to muddle her way into a reconciliation.

  ‘Look at her! A female mule, wouldn’t you say?’ Xiaohuan whispered in Zhang Jian’s ear.

  Duohe knew what they were whispering together.

  Winter came, and Duohe moved herself into the big room, and laid out her quilt between Dahai and Erhai. The two boys, who were entering puberty, said in their hoarse, buzzing voices: ‘Now Auntie’s come, Dad’s going to have to go, otherwise how are we all supposed to fit in?’

  She immediately became accustomed to sleeping in the same room as the children. She often found herself with a boy’s face tucked into each armpit, as they spoke among themselves the language that only they could understand. They had seldom spoken this language since they started at primary school, but it was their milk tongue, and it would come back to them after a few sentences. They had plenty of words, Chinese, Japanese and the speech of babies and young children, but now their vocabulary had increased, and they added new words into the mix. This was a secret language, one that excluded the other grown-ups in the family. They talked about all sorts of things: Dahai spoke of his dreams of being a centre forward in basketball, and Erhai talked about his Blackie. Sometimes the two of them chatted about some fine fellows called the Red Guards, who had turned everything upside down in the government. Here in the city and at the provincial capital, they had tied up the head of the provincial government and the mayor, and paraded them through the streets.

  The three of them slept in one big bed: Duohe in the middle; Dahai, the larger of the two boys, slept on the outside; Erhai’s place was next to the window; and Blackie had his den on the balcony outside the window. Sometimes after the two children were fast asleep Duohe could hear murmurings from next door. Xiaohuan would chuckle in her smoky voice, and Zhang Jian would add a few words from time to time. Let them laugh, let them talk, it no longer grieved her.

  A couple of times she woke up to find that Dahai had wormed his way into her quilt, and was sleeping in her arms. S
he put him back, half pushing, half lifting. Dahai’s body was a fine sight, he was already putting on flesh, and Duohe could not imagine how such a big boy had come out of her own body.

  One day, the schools closed. Dahai and Erhai came back at noon, saying that they were going to go out and ‘link up’ with other like-minded revolutionary youths. Link what? It’s the Great Revolutionary Link-Up, don’t you even understand this? It doesn’t sound like good news to me, you’re not going. Mum’s so backward! Oh, you’ve only just noticed? I’ve been backward for decades!

  The Zhang family were the same as all the other families in the building. They all grounded, beat and cursed their children, whose hearts and feet were itching to go out and ‘link up’, even though they had not reached the required age. There had never been such a wave of the younger generation attacking their elders. Walk past the door of any household, and you would hear the mother roaring: ‘You dare! I’ll rip you to shreds, you little rat, just see if I don’t … Kneel! Who said you could get back up? If you go off “linking up” again I’ll make you carry two baskets of coal on your head as a punishment.’ But the children left anyway. They stole money for tickets and slipped away, mixed in with the older students.

  Dahai and Erhai ran away together. But they lost each other in the crush on a crowded train, where they couldn’t eat, drink or use a toilet for three nights, and one of them ended up going to Guangzhou, the other to Beijing. Erhai went to Guangzhou, and came back a month later with five Mao badges pinned to his clothes, bringing a few pineapples with him. He started speaking again to Xiaohuan after years of silence, as if he had never stopped speaking at all. As soon as he came in the door, he said with a cheerful expression: ‘Ma, I’m back!’

  Dahai, however, was still in Beijing. From there he sent a volume of the Quotations of Chairman Mao with a letter inside, as posting a copy of this book carried no charge. The letter informed them that he had had two audiences with Chairman Mao himself, and had gone on to the great North-west to have an audience with someone else, and to sow the fiery seeds of the revolution there.