Little Aunt Crane

by Geling Yan

  A woman entered in a waft of perfume. Her teeth were so white. Did Duohe’s used to be this white? Let them not be false – the person, or the teeth. An overseas visitor. A Japanese woman. Zhang Jian thought that his face must look exceedingly peculiar, caught between all kinds of different expressions, like his feelings. Ranging across happiness, anger, grief and amusement, all his flesh was stuck in an in-between state, neither stretching forward nor shrinking back.

  Duohe could not disguise her shock. Was this thin, sun-blackened old man the person she had single-mindedly remembered every night at nine o’clock (ten o’clock in Japan), the man she had believed she could see by thinking about him?

  Xiaohuan told Duohe to sit down, don’t just stand there! Sit down and change your shoes! She added that Dahai would be back soon, he had asked for leave today, he had not gone to work in the factory.

  Zhang Jian thought that he must say a few words to Duohe, pleasantries about the hard journey she’d had, something of that kind. She bowed so very deeply. This bow alone had already made a stranger of her. She must have enquired about his health and the state of his illness, because he heard Xiaohuan reply that they had checked everything that should be checked, and the tests had found nothing, it was just that he couldn’t get his food down, see how thin he was!

  Duohe suddenly stretched out her hand to grasp Zhang Jian’s, which seemed unnaturally large because he was so thin. She rested her face against that hand, and with a wail burst into tears. Zhang Jian had thought that he would need another thirty years and more to lose this strangeness, but now he found that the layer of strangeness that separated him from her had already become familiar and intimate.

  Xiaohuan had gone out into the kitchen, and she returned, carrying a teacup in each hand. She saw them, and tears flowed from her eyes. After a while, the lids of the two teacups began to clatter against the cups with her trembling. She retreated from the room, carrying the rattling, shivering teacups, hooked her foot round the door and closed it on them.

  When Dahai came back, the family had washed away their tears and started to look over the gifts that Duohe was setting out. Duohe had changed into a short kimono, and the slippers on her feet had come from Japan. Everyone had a share in the gifts she had brought for all aspects of daily life, including Girlie, far off in the North-east, and Girlie’s husband and children. The thing that caused the greatest sensation was a transistor television, even smaller than a magazine.

  She also produced a tape recorder, saying that Erhai enjoyed playing the erhu, and he could listen to tunes of the erhu on this tape recorder. It was only then that everyone told Duohe that after two years spent hanging around at home, it suddenly occurred to Erhai to write to the wife of that army commander who had been in charge of the military occupation of the city – who had once promised to help him. She had not forgotten him, and sure enough, she had arranged for Erhai to enlist in the army, and got him into the song-and-dance troupe at the headquarters as an erhu player.

  Duohe looked at the photograph of Erhai in military uniform, and said that of all the three children, Erhai was the one who looked the most like her, especially when he laughed loudly. It was a pity that Erhai laughed too seldom.

  And so the clothes Duohe had bought for Erhai became the property of Dahai, and Dahai had two identical sets of clothes for spring, summer, autumn and winter. Duohe had remembered their measurements in her heart, and they were not out by an inch. Dahai tried on each item in turn, and kept walking in front of Duohe for her to give a tweak here, a tug there.

  Xiaohuan suddenly let out a snort of laughter. They did not know what she was laughing at, and raised their heads together to look at her.

  ‘You little sod! What happened to not wanting anything a Japanese has touched?’

  Dahai promptly gave a shameless laugh. Right now the whole thing was just a joke. Between family members, fighting was just one step on the path to agreement, beating was tenderness, cursing was love, once the thing was past everything became a joke, and making up saved so much effort. Were not those children who had stuck up posters everywhere exposing their fathers for hiding gold bricks in the home or concealing transmitters, all their fathers’ sons again now? That half of Duohe’s blood flowing in Dahai’s body had determined that he would make up with Duohe one way or another.

  At suppertime Duohe spoke of Kumi’s goodness. She depended on Kumi for everything. On her return to Japan, Duohe had suffered from crippling culture shock, and could not understand the Japanese the city people spoke. There were many things she did not understand: machines for washing clothes into which you put coins, machines for cleaning and sweeping the floor, machines selling train tickets, machines selling food and soft drinks … Kumi had to teach her about them one at a time, sometimes she had to instruct her many times over. Often she would teach her to use them in one place, then she would go somewhere else where the machines were different, and all she had learned was useless. Without Kumi she would have gone nowhere, not even daring to enter the shops. And there was another reason for not entering shops, which was that there was nothing she needed to buy: her clothes, shoes and everything she used were hand-me-downs from Kumi. Picking up clothes for free was just lovely. Luckily Kumi was only half a head taller than her, and she could make do and wear all her clothes – if she had been a full head taller, how much trouble would it have been to cut the clothes down to size? Even more fortunately, Kumi’s feet were two sizes bigger than hers, so if she stuffed cotton wool in the toes of her shoes she could wear them and make do very well. If Kumi’s feet had been smaller than hers, she would have been properly in for it.

  Everyone noticed that Duohe’s mouth was full of Xiaohuan’s language, a ‘make do’ here, a ‘just lovely’ and a ‘properly in for it’ there.

  Duohe still scrubbed pots and washed dishes, just as she had in the past. While she was scrubbing she said to Xiaohuan that the concrete sink was not very hygienic; once the dirt had become ingrained it was easy to make it look clean without being really clean at all, and she should cover it in white tiles, that was the thing. And since they were putting up tiles they might as well do the whole kitchen. Chinese people used too much oil when they fried food, and when porcelain tiles got oil on them they were easy to wipe. Once she had cleaned up every corner and crack of the kitchen, she returned to the big room and looked it up and down. Throughout all this, Xiaohuan felt guilty and ill at ease: an inspector had come from a Japanese ‘Patriotic Hygiene Committee’, what comments would she come out with next? But Duohe did not say anything, just wrinkled her forehead and gave up. Duohe took out a roll of ten-yuan notes from her leather handbag and handed it to Xiaohuan, telling her to go tomorrow and buy tiles to cover the sink.

  Xiaohuan dodged out of the way, saying: ‘Ai, how can I take your money?’

  At this Duohe pressed the money on Dahai, and told him to go and buy them.

  ‘You dare take your auntie’s money!’ Xiaohuan turned on him fiercely. She thought about how Duohe was wearing shoes with big wads of cotton wool stuffed in the toes, it must be unbearable on her feet. Xiaohuan could make do in all things but not in this one. Nothing made a mark on its home more than a person’s feet, and once they had lain for a while in a pair of shoes, the shoes became their nests, shaping themselves to them, with all their bumps and hollows, highs and lows, duck feet or pigeon toes, like sand poured into a mould. If another pair of feet came in, well, sorry, the shape of that original pair of feet might be ugly or beautiful, but it made no difference, they would bulge up against you and rub everywhere, they had to break your feet into them. Part of Duohe’s money had come from savings made by inflicting suffering on her own feet. Xiaohuan was just not prepared to put her feet through that in order to make the walls of the kitchen feel good.

  Dahai smiled shamelessly again, and took the money from Duohe’s hands. In order to save face, Xiaohuan left it at that.

  Zhang Jian was lying on the bed, weak and feeble, yet he felt tha
t in spite of everything there was a strangeness there, which could inflate, increasing the tension in this thirty-odd-square-metre flat. The tension would grow until he wanted to duck out the way, but there was no place to hide.

  Duohe was not wrong in anything, she contributed the money and strength for everything she did, and they were all constructive things, but the household still became ever more tense. Even Duohe herself realised it, and she kept explaining that she was not rejecting them, she only wanted to bring in a few small improvements, so that they could live a little bit more comfortably and hygienically.

  Xiaohuan and Duohe accompanied Zhang Jian for a thorough physical examination: all the major and minor organs were essentially healthy. At this point Duohe spoke up, saying that before she came back, she had made plans to take Zhang Jian to Japan for testing and treatment. Now she had seen how he was, she believed that this plan was the only way forward. How could he possibly not have anything major the matter? Weak and feeble as he was, and skinny as a bag of bones: could he be healthy?

  How many people went to Japan for treatment? He was very lucky to be able to go! If he was cured, he could make up in latter years for the time that had been wrongfully lost. Otherwise he’d be wronging her, not to mention wronging himself. This was how Xiaohuan persuaded Zhang Jian.

  They had to get going straight away if they wanted to get everything done. Zhang Jian and Duohe needed to get married, and they had to apply to both countries at the same time: to leave the one country, and to enter the other.

  Dahai took time off work, and carried his father on the back of his bicycle, with Duohe walking by their side. As soon as they left the gate of one government office they turned straight into the door of another one.

  The neighbours had seen Dahai coming and going in a great hurry in his new clothes, and they all admired his Japanese jacket, asking him to lend it to them so they could have a copy made to the same pattern.

  ‘Did your auntie bring it back for you?’ A neighbour tweaked the fabric. ‘It’s different, right enough!’

  ‘It was brought back by my mother.’

  ‘Ooh, you’re not calling her “auntie” now?’ The neighbour smiled knowingly.

  Dahai, however, was completely in earnest. ‘She was my mama in the first place!’

  The neighbours heard him dragging out the space between the two characters of ma … ma in a minor key, like an actor in a play.

  ‘Then will you be going back to Japan with your ma … ma?’

  ‘I most certainly will!’

  ‘When you come back in the future, you’ll be a Japanese!’

  ‘I was Japanese in the first place.’ Dahai walked off. He was desperately busy, and these neighbours had no tact at all, asking questions whenever they saw him.

  By the time Zhang Jian and Duohe had dealt with all the formalities, and were on the point of leaving, Dahai’s Japanese life story had already circulated widely among his contemporaries. The story went like this: when his father was in the North-east, he had worked as a hired hand for a very wealthy Japanese family, and in that family there was a beautiful little Japanese princess called Zhunei Duohe. His father had secretly loved this young Japanese girl, watching her grow up day by day, and finally become promised to the son of a Japanese high official. His father had been so hurt by this that he had come close to taking his own life. He resigned his job, returned home, and married a peasant’s daughter called Zhu Xiaohuan. One day when he went to market, he bumped into the Japanese girl, who was now fifteen years old. She asked his father heartbrokenly why he had quit his job and left her family, giving her no choice but to consent to the marriage agreement with the high official’s family. Only then did his father discover that Zhunei Duohe had loved this Chinese hired hand from a very young age. After that the two of them began a passionate affair. That was when his elder sister Zhang Chunmei was conceived.

  And then?

  And then Dahai’s father never stopped his assignations with Zhunei Duohe.

  And after that?

  After that the Great War came to an end. The Japanese were defeated. That Japanese family were killed in revenge by Chinese, and all the people of their village fled. Zhunei Duohe came with her daughter Chunmei to the Zhang family, and they took her in. Because Zhu Xiaohuan, the official wife, could not have children, everyone in the Zhang family knew that Zhunei Duohe was the true wife of the Zhang family.

  Dahai’s love story with its hundred holes moved the young people until they could not stop themselves from sighing. If now had not been a great age of revolution, they believed that Dahai could have written this story down, and become famous overnight.

  When the day finally came, Zhang Jian slowly came down the stairs and into their hired car, leaning on Duohe’s arm, and the neighbours all congratulated them, gazing on these ‘lovers who became family at last’. ‘What’s Zhu Xiaohuan playing at? She’s actually going with them as far as the station?’ ‘Can’t she even let them be together as a family?’ ‘All the same, it’s been really hard for Zhu Xiaohuan!’

  As they said this, the people started to feel sorry for Xiaohuan. There they were, flying off wingtip to wingtip over the seas to Japan; what must she be thinking?

  But Xiaohuan was just the same as ever. Dahai became the only target for her laughter, curses and nagging. Every day when he went to work, she would pursue him onto the walkway: ‘Don’t spill the sauce from your lunch box, it’s all oily! Don’t try to barge ahead when you’re crossing the railway line! If there’s a train coming just wait a bit if you have to …’ Sometimes she chased after him so hastily that she had one foot in a cloth shoe, while the other was wearing a wooden slipper.

  One day, a month and more after Zhang Jian and Duohe had left, people saw that Xiaohuan’s eyes were heavily swollen. Without a doubt, she must have cried long and hard last night. People wanted to ask her what had happened, but they were also embarrassed to do so. There had been disagreements between them and her family, and even now Xiaohuan had not forgiven them. With great difficulty they caught hold of the listless Dahai.

  ‘What’s up with your ma?’

  ‘What’s up with who?’

  ‘Have you had a fight with her?’

  ‘Oh, you mean that mother? Nothing’s the matter with her, she’s just had a good long cry.’

  Dahai considered that he had already given a reply to the riddle that was keeping them in suspense, and that it was unreasonable of them to keep on staring at him. So he scrunched up his eyebrows and walked away.

  A few days later Erhai returned, wearing an army uniform. If they’d called him back too, something bad must have happened in the Zhang family.

  After all these years, they had figured out the trick of talking to Erhai, for all that he was like a teapot with no spout, keeping everything inside.

  An old lady said: ‘Oho, have you come back to visit your sick mother?’

  ‘My mum’s not ill.’

  ‘Then it must be because you’ve found yourself a nice girl!’

  ‘My dad was sick.’

  ‘Did they find out what it was in Japan? Nothing too serious, I hope?’

  ‘Myeloma.’

  When Erhai had nothing else to do he would sit on the balcony and play his erhu, and from his playing the neighbours understood something. They asked Erhai again: ‘You’re going to Japan to see your dad?’

  ‘Too late for that.’

  16

  BEFORE GIRLIE LEFT for Japan, she went to visit Xiaohuan. She already had the look of a middle-aged woman. Her family was going to emigrate to Japan. Girlie, who had felt ashamed to go home, now felt that she had recovered at least some of her dignity. Before he passed away, Zhang Jian had told Duohe that Girlie and her family should be the first of them to be brought over, as she was the one with the most unsatisfactory life in their home town. Duohe worked as a cleaner in an office block, and had no money to act as guarantor for all of Girlie’s family, but Kumi had helped out.

 
Girlie did not bring her husband and two children with her to see Xiaohuan. Xiaohuan understood that she was not willing to spend money on travel expenses for three more people, and perhaps the money was just not there to spend. Girlie was as painstaking and sensible as ever, and she never opened her mouth without a smile. As she went past neighbours’ doors arm in arm with Xiaohuan, they all said they were like a real mother and daughter. It was only Dahai’s temper that worsened when Girlie came back. If a child was crying in someone’s home when he passed by the door he would say, ‘Having these people for neighbours is enough bad luck for eight generations.’ Blackie would come down the stairs to meet him, only to be kicked until he whimpered.

  No one knew that since Girlie had come back there were quarrels in the Zhang family every day. In fact it was mainly Dahai doing the quarrelling, but sometimes Xiaohuan heard more than she could take and joined in, and they hurled abuse at each other.

  ‘What’s she ever done for them to send her a form to go to Japan? What’s she ever done for my mum? What’s she done for our family? All she’s done is lose face –’ Dahai said.