Little Aunt Crane

by Geling Yan

  ‘And what have you done, you little shit?’

  ‘At least I’ve never lost face for our family by getting expelled from school! When my mum was cleaning toilets wearing a white armband, where was she?’

  ‘You wanted to lose face but you couldn’t. Back then, if you’d really been able to lose that Japanese face of yours, you certainly would have. You couldn’t. And that’s why you took a razor to those two Japanese eyebrows of yours, and your Japanese temples and Japanese chest hair – you shaved them off, into the toilet and down the drain! Every day when you stood in front of the mirror, all you could think of was how you could get rid of the face your own mother gave you.’ There was a jeering smile on Xiaohuan’s face as she laid bare his most secret sore point, and suddenly it occurred to her that recently the little mirror had been hanging from the water pipe in the toilet once more. Gazing at his thick, dark hair, thick, dark eyebrows and fair skin, the boy had started to love himself. The more he looked the more he loved himself, the more he looked the stronger his blood connection with Duohe. Or was he still looking into the mirror, grinding his teeth, hating himself for a Japanese who didn’t have a full beard or complete eyebrows, hating his father’s expression that would suddenly appear in his own gestures, that kindly, tender-hearted look to the eyes? Or did he hate even more the words bottled up in his stomach, of which the vast majority were the language of his Chinese mother Xiaohuan? If he could still lay violent hands on himself, would he slash open his stomach to let all those decidedly unrefined Chinese peasant words come tumbling out?

  ‘Now you acknowledge your mother?’ Xiaohuan said. ‘So where were you earlier? The only thing you didn’t do was join in shouting Down with the Japanese spy! You little toad! I was the one who delivered you when you were born, on that very mountain out there – why didn’t I throttle you back then when I had the chance?’

  Girlie came up to pacify Xiaohuan, saying that she did not see eye to eye with her brother, but there was no point in arguing with him, and telling her mother not to lose her temper.

  ‘Who are you to argue with anyone?’ Dahai switched opponents, aiming his spearhead at his sister. ‘You married out of the family, you shouldn’t be counted as a member of the Zhang family at all! And you’re the one who’s going to Japan – what’ve you ever done to deserve it?’

  ‘It was your father’s wish,’ Xiaohuan said.

  ‘I don’t believe that for a moment.’

  ‘If you don’t believe it you can piss off and die, then once you’re dead you can ask your dad.’

  ‘Oh, so she’s not living a happy life! So I am? Working eight hours a day in the factory in the dark, never seeing the light of day! What’s she ever done to deserve special treatment?!’

  Xiaohuan started to snigger.

  Dahai stopped shouting, to see what she was laughing at.

  ‘I’ll tell you what? That you’ve rotted away your guts with regrets. Once you’d finished breaking your auntie’s heart, did you think she wouldn’t remember?’

  ‘Any real mother would forget!’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Xiaohuan asked. She was starting to become afraid, nervous of this question.

  ‘Only someone who isn’t my real mother would remember a grudge.’

  Xiaohuan thought she had brought this answer on herself. She should have stopped when she got close to that question, or avoided it. Now it was too late, she had taken her own heart and driven it onto the point of a knife.

  Girlie kept on with her words of comfort: Dahai didn’t really think in that way; once the words had been forced out there was no reining them back in. Once he had said all he had to, and got it out of his system, he would regret it deep down for sure. Xiaohuan just smiled weakly.

  Dahai wrote a letter to Duohe, and read it out loud to Girlie and Xiaohuan. In the letter he spoke of how as a boy he had been cursed so many times as a Jap brat, of how many times he had wept under his quilt, unable to bear the humiliation. How many times he had hit out in defence of his mother’s dignity, and his own, and how many times he had been injured as a result. However, all these grievances that he had suffered had not won him the slightest reward! His sister had suffered no such deep spiritual injuries, still less her family, and yet they were the ones that got the reward! He was the most unhappy member of the Zhang family …

  When Xiaohuan had heard Dahai read his letter to the end, she said in a level voice: ‘You go and find out how much it’ll cost to get you to Japan. Your mother in Japan can’t raise all that money, so I will. I’ll make sure you go even if I have to sell every pot in the kitchen for scrap.’

  Xiaohuan’s feet worked day and night, and after a year she had earned around three hundred yuan. When Erhai came back on his promotion to platoon leader, he broke his silence as soon as he saw Xiaohuan. ‘Ma, how come your face is so sallow? And thin! Your eyes are all red! What’s the matter?’

  Xiaohuan told him about how Dahai was to go to Japan. Erhai did not speak.

  ‘Erhai, do you want to go too, is that it? I’ve heard that they don’t let you go abroad if you’re in the army, you’ll have to lose that uniform before you can go,’ Xiaohuan said.

  ‘I’m not going,’ he said.

  ‘The neighbours are all half dead with envy. When your big sister went, it was like they were seeing her off to school all over again.’

  Still he did not speak.

  ‘The Gang of Four fell ages ago, and it’s not just peasants, workers and soldiers who can do well for themselves, I’ve heard about a student in this city who’s gone off to study abroad in Britain. Everyone in the city knows about it.’

  Still Erhai said nothing. Before he went back to his unit, he told his mother that he would earn the money for the plane ticket to Japan, so there was no need for her to slave away all night. The brothers barely saw each other, because Dahai was taking intensive language classes at night school, and when not at school he would lurk on the mountain memorising vocabulary. He said that the neighbours were just so ill-bred, the entire building was as noisy as a poultry farm. His companions were different from before, they were all genteel, scholarly classmates from the night school. Sometimes they would pass in a gaggle at the bottom of the building, every one of them like a Japanese with a ghastly speech impediment.

  One day, four young people knocked on the door of the Zhang household, two of them girls. On seeing Xiaohuan, they apologised, saying they had come to the wrong door. Xiaohuan said they were not wrong, she had seen Dahai going up the mountain with them from the balcony.

  ‘Come and wait inside, he’ll be off work in a while,’ Xiaohuan said.

  ‘Oh no, we’ll just wait downstairs,’ said one of the girls.

  The door shut, and Xiaohuan heard one of the boys ask: ‘Who was that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the girl said.

  ‘Dahai’s family’s maid, perhaps?’ said the other boy.

  Erhai came out of the big room. When Xiaohuan saw his looming stance, she moved smartly to restrain him. Erhai said loudly towards the door: ‘Dahai is a bastard, is he fit to hire a maid?’

  Everything went quiet outside.

  The day before Erhai was due to return to his unit after his month of family leave, he called his brother over to the big room. Xiaohuan heard the bolt shoot home with a rush. Then came a low-voiced argument that she could not hear, try as she might. It seemed that Dahai was explaining himself, and Erhai was hurling accusations at him without pause.

  Xiaohuan tapped on the door. They both ignored her. She circled round to the window, and opened it. The door that led to the balcony from the big room had not been closed, and Xiaohuan could hear the brothers’ quarrel from beside the open window in the other room. Dahai was saying that if the neighbours had made up stories, what could he do about it? Erhai made no attempt to reason with him, all his replies were: Brother, you’re talking bollocks, you’re talking bollocks, you’re talking such a load of old bollocks. Erhai had already made enquiries
among the neighbours, who all said that Dahai had told them that his father had worked as a hired hand for a Japanese family, and seduced the daughter of his Japanese employer …

  ‘That is such a load of old bollocks! And you have the nerve to deny it …’ he said.

  After that Xiaohuan heard muffled groans from Dahai. At first she worried that Erhai might be too heavy-handed and actually cripple him, but she also thought, let him hit him a bit first, then we’ll see. About five minutes passed, and only then did she shout through the window: ‘Erhai! How can a member of the People’s Liberation Army beat people!’

  Dahai opened the door and rushed out, straight into the toilet. Xiaohuan saw on the cement floor, which had been polished until it shone blue, a trail of blood.

  ‘How could you hit him in the face?’ Xiaohuan asked Erhai. ‘How’s he supposed to go to Japan if you spoil his face?’

  Mother and son exchanged a look. In the toilet, water was rushing through the pipes.

  Epilogue

  Duohe often wrote to Xiaohuan. She always talked about her dreams. She dreamed about herself in this family. She dreamed of that road at the foot of the building, that big slope. She said that she often went to Chinatown in Tokyo to buy vegetables; the food was cheaper there, and the people took her for a Chinese. She said that when Dahai came to Japan she would give up her own little room for him to live in, and she would squeeze in with Girlie’s family. Once she had saved up enough money they would work something out. She said that when she came back to Japan it was already too late for her, there was no place for her there. She only wished that the children would learn Japanese, and find their place. Duohe’s letters were full of ‘wishes’. A considerable number of orphans and women left behind after the war had petitioned the government to demand equal rights with Japanese citizens to employment and welfare. They also called on the government not to be prejudiced against the orphans and left-behind women who had been abandoned in a foreign land, nor to treat them as incapable, because their slow understanding had been created by the war. Duohe wished these petitions would succeed, so Girlie and her husband could find decent jobs. Duohe said she herself would just make do earning a cleaner’s salary, but she wished she could save up a bit of money.

  Reading Duohe’s letters was hard work, but it gradually became an important part of Xiaohuan’s life, especially after Dahai left for Japan. Girlie seldom wrote, and Dahai not even once, so Xiaohuan’s only way to read about their lives was from Duohe’s letters.

  Duohe’s letters grew longer and longer. For the most part she talked of how she had been reunited with so-and-so who was originally from Shironami village, or of how the petition was progressing. There was no progress. So the people who had returned from China became the poorest people, and those most subject to prejudice. She spoke of a fellow villager from Shironami who had come back from China: his children were beaten up at school every day, and their classmates called them Chinks. Just as he had been called a Jap devil by his Chinese classmates in his youth. Xiaohuan realised that Duohe was starting to get on in years, and often forgot things that she had already written. Duohe wanted Xiaohuan to make notes of her daily life, and tell her all about it, including how she quarrelled with people. She said that you could probably walk from one end of Japan to the other without finding anyone who could quarrel the way Xiaohuan did, or who had such a talent for quarrelling. She thought that Japanese people had rage and anxiety, yet they did not let them out properly, so they were not happy. Someone like Xiaohuan, who could quarrel until her opponent burst out laughing, would certainly not be wanting to kill other people all the time, or to kill herself.

  Although Duohe took forever to get to the point, Xiaohuan chuckled: Duohe seemed to understand her very well.

  Actually she did not quarrel that much now. She had come to realise that most of her arguments and fuss throughout her life had been on behalf of her family, and now she was the only one left, she could not find anything worth arguing about. She even spoke more easily now, though Blackie would always listen incomparably seriously, the same as always, gazing at her with eyes that were now clouded by cataracts. The three children were all doing very well; at least their prospects were better than those of the children of the other inhabitants of the building. This was one of the main reasons why Xiaohuan no longer quarrelled with people: what would I quarrel about with you? Do you have three children as good as mine? People who are satisfied with what they have do not quarrel.

  Three years after Zhang Jian’s death, Xiaohuan finally brought herself to tear open the envelope that held his last letter. It had been placed in a big parchment envelope, and sent back together with his old Shanghai brand watch, a little silver lock and a house key. The little silver lock was a relic from his babyhood, and he had always kept it tied to his keys. The key he had forgotten to give to Xiaohuan before going to Japan, and he had taken it away hidden in his pocket. The old watch was very accurate, it had stopped at exactly the moment when Zhang Jian’s heart had stopped beating. Duohe had told Xiaohuan this specially in a letter.

  Zhang Jian never finished his letter. He said that just recently his stomach had improved a little, and Duohe always made him noodles, cats’ ears and other wheat dishes just like Xiaohuan used to make. He said that once he had recovered his health, he would go and find work that did not require him to speak Japanese, like the job Girlie’s husband had, polishing the glass in a department store. Once he had earned some money he would bring Xiaohuan over to Japan, he had already discussed it with Duohe. The three of them could not do without each other, they had fought and quarrelled for a lifetime, but they had all fought themselves into a single lump of flesh and bone. He was staying in hospital now, and once he had had his operation tomorrow he could leave.

  It was only then that Xiaohuan realised that he had been completely unaware that his life was drawing to a close. It would appear that Duohe and the children had kept him in the dark all along, right up until he was wheeled to the operating table.

  This letter of Zhang Jian’s had been left unfinished. He wrote propped up on a pile of pillows, and went to sleep thinking of the way Xiaohuan had looked when she married him, that was how Xiaohuan imagined it. He had not even had the physical or mental energy to write a complete letter. He must have slipped it underneath his quilt, for fear that Duohe would see. He still had to continue with his cautious games between the two women, just like many years earlier. The children and Duohe had pulled the wool over his eyes very successfully, and he had believed them: that he still had plenty of time left, and there would still be no shortage of troubles to deal with, such as his two women, and the need to be cautious with them both. He must certainly have believed that once he had gone under the surgeon’s knife he would be the old, strong, vital Zhang Jian once more. Otherwise he would not have set out such a long and far-off future for Xiaohuan. His apologies to Xiaohuan could be seen at a glance.

  She said to Blackie with a smile: ‘Well, we appreciate the thought, eh?’

  Every day the neighbours would still see Zhu Xiaohuan walk from the bottom of the buqqilding down the big slope to the Neighbourhood Committee, carrying the chest that held her sewing machine. She had rented a triangular room under the stairs, where she kept the frame. But she was afraid the sewing machine itself would be stolen, and every day carried it stubbornly there and back. Blackie was old and blind, but he followed her, swaying his rump.

  Blackie would often hurtle down the big slope, he had no need for eyesight to turn the right corners in his headlong dash. Xiaohuan knew that meant the postman had come. If there was a letter from Erhai, the postman would let Blackie run up the hill holding it in his mouth to present it to Xiaohuan. He never lost heart, he would always throw himself ebulliently down the slope, staring at the postman with his grey-white, sightless eyes, mouth split open from ear to ear in his beaming doggy grin.

  Erhai had been transferred to the South-west, where he had married and had a child. He wrote t
o his mother Xiaohuan whenever he had time, but there was no letter from him today. Yet Blackie’s smiling face never turned away from the postman, he would remain standing in the same spot, wagging his tail, right up until the postman got on his bike and rode up the slope.

  All Xiaohuan could do was console him: ‘Blackie, there’ll be a letter tomorrow, hey?’

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  Harvill Secker, an imprint of Vintage Publishing,

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  This publication is supported by China Book International

  Copyright © Geling Yan 2008

  English translation copyright © Esther Tyldesley 2015

  Geling Yan has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Harvill Secker in 2015

  First published with the title Xiaoyi Duohe () in China by Writers Publishing House in 2008

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library