Waiting

by Ha Jin

  Putting down the pen, he yawned, interlaced his fingers, and stretched his arms above his head until two of his knuckles cracked. He enjoyed the peaceful night and felt his mind was more alert when he was alone. A rustle of tree leaves attracted his attention to the window, whose panes were blurred with dewdrops at their corners. Outside a few maple leaves were falling. He stood up, wiped his face with a wet towel, then went to bed.

  Some officers asked Lin when they could eat his wedding candies; he said it would be in a few months. Manna and he agreed that they should wait a while so as to prevent others from talking about their building a happy nest on the ex-wife’s miseries.

  Within two weeks Shuyu’s residential status was changed, and all the procedures for Hua’s employment were carried through. But Lin hadn’t heard from his daughter yet and was worried.

  Then, as he feared, her letter came, saying she was not interested in living in “an overpopulated city.” She claimed that because the working class consisted of both peasants and workers, she decided to stay in the country as “a socialist peasant of the new type.” Lin could tell that was a phrase she had picked up from a newspaper, and he was angry, but he didn’t know what to do. Not having heard a word from Bensheng, he suspected that his brother-in-law must have played a negative role in this matter—trying to hold Hua back and keep her working for him. Even Shuyu couldn’t help calling their daughter “a stupid egg.”

  When Lin talked with Manna about this impasse, she suggested he go and fetch his daughter personally. It seemed to be a good idea, because he also needed to sell the country property to get the cash for the wedding. So in the early fall he took annual leave and went back to Goose Village.

  3

  A dozen people were gathered in his yard when Lin arrived home. The afternoon heat had subsided, but flies were still droning madly. On the ground, near the wattle gate of the vegetable garden, was spread a bloody donkey’s hide. It was almost covered up by dead greenheads. Judging by the sweetish odor still emanating from the skin, a lot of dichlorvos had been sprayed on it to prevent maggots. The air also smelled meaty and spicy, with a touch of cumin, prickly ash, and magnolia-vine. Hua, a violet towel covering her hair, was stirring something in a cauldron set on a makeshift fireplace built of rocks. Against a blue wheelbarrow leaned a signboard that carried these words in black ink: “The Best Delicacy—Donkey Meat on Earth like Dragon Meat in Heaven! Two-Fifty a Pound!”

  At the sight of her father, Hua put down the shovel and went up to him. With a grin she said, “I’m so glad you’re back, Dad.” She took the duffel bag from his hand.

  “What are you doing? Why are so many people here?”

  “Uncle Bensheng’s donkey died. I’m cooking five-flavored donkey meat for him. They’re waiting to buy some.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in our house talking with somebody. Let’s go in now.” She turned and put the wooden lid on the cauldron, but left a crack between the lid and the rim.

  Lin wasn’t happy about the scene, wondering why Bensheng had not used his own yard as a meat shop. What a greedy devil, he thought. He always tries to profit at others’ expense. If I had come back a few days later, he’d have turned this home into his own.

  Bensheng’s only donkey had died two days ago. It had run out of its shed after midnight, gotten into a meadow, and then broken into a vegetable garden, where it ate a lot of alfalfa and beans without drinking any water. As a result it became too bloated to stay on its feet. A boy saw it lying behind the village’s millhouse the next morning, and he ran to inform its owner. When Bensheng arrived to help the animal, it was breathing its last, its stomach burst. Bensheng was very upset, because he had depended on the donkey to transport groceries from Six Stars. All he could do now was sell its meat to get some money back. Though a few villagers wanted to buy raw donkey meat, he would only sell it cooked, figuring that in this way he could make more money. He told them, “I don’t deal in raw material, only the finished product.”

  As Lin entered the house, he heard Bensheng speaking to someone in the main room. “I’ll give you the donkey’s hide, okay?”

  Lin and Hua stopped to listen. Another voice countered loudly, “No, that won’t do. Your beast destroyed my garden. I don’t want its skin. What can I do with it? I can’t even sell it at the salvage station.”

  “You can make a mattress out of it, can’t you?”

  “No. Who wants to sleep on a stinking ass? If it were a roe deer, I would take it.”

  “Some people don’t even deserve the company of a dead donkey.”

  “I just don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  Lin stepped into the room, but the men didn’t notice him. He recognized the other man as a neighbor, Uncle Sun. Bensheng said to the old man, “How about eight pounds of donkey meat, braised?”

  “No, ten pounds.”

  “Nine.”

  “Damn it, I say ten!”

  “Nine and a half.”

  “Ten!”

  “All right, I’ll let you have that much, Uncle Sun, only because I respect your old face.”

  Hua interrupted them by saying, “Uncle, my dad is home.”

  Both men turned to Lin. The old man looked a little embarrassed, flashing a toothless smile, and then said to Bensheng, “I must be going. I’ll send my grandson over for the meat.” He clasped his hands behind him and strode out with measured steps. A tuft of white hair peeked through a hole at the top of his felt skullcap.

  Bensheng himself looked like an old man now. His forehead was seamed with wrinkles, and his thin eyes were dimmer than the previous year and slightly sunken, as though he hadn’t slept for days. He seemed disturbed by Lin’s sudden appearance, but quickly regained his composure. “Is Shuyu back too?” he asked Lin.

  “No, I came alone to fetch Hua.” He glanced at his daughter, whose face showed little response to his words.

  Bensheng frowned, then said plaintively, “I received your letter, elder brother. I understand you got what you wanted. But we’re still one family.”

  “I feel the same way,” Lin managed to say, somewhat softened by his pity for him.

  “My sis isn’t here, so you come eat with us, all right?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Please Dad,” Hua broke in. “I’ve been staying at Uncle’s these days. We’re one family.”

  “All right, I will.”

  Bensheng was apparently pleased with Lin’s agreement. After telling Hua to get some water in a washbasin for her father, he went out to sell the five-flavored donkey meat.

  Lin was also glad that he had accepted Bensheng’s offer, because he wasn’t sure how to put the property up for sale and might need Bensheng’s advice and help. He wanted to sell it within a few days and return to Muji as soon as possible. In addition, he was unsure whether his daughter would be willing to leave with him. A good relationship with Bensheng would at least facilitate his job of persuading her. It seemed that Hua was quite attached to her uncle and aunt, who were childless and treated her like their own daughter. In his heart Lin resented the way Hua smiled at her uncle, as though there was something intimate between them, something to which he was denied access.

  Another idea lurking at the back of his mind had come to the fore: he wondered if Hua had a boyfriend. The girl was becoming a handsome young woman and must have attracted some pursuers. If she already had a lover, his task of persuading her to go to Muji might get complicated. Perhaps she wouldn’t give up her boyfriend for a job in the city. The more he thought about this, the more anxious he grew. He ought to find an opportunity to ask her so that he could know what difficulty he was facing.

  At dinner that evening, Bensheng said that Second Donkey was thinking of buying Lin’s house for his eldest son, Handong, together with the furniture. The young man planned to marry the next year, although he had no fiancée yet. These days matchmakers had been frequenting Second Donkey’s home, because Handong, who worked full-ti
me in Wujia Town, had finally agreed with his parents to look for a wife in the countryside. Lin was delighted that there was a buyer interested in the house, but his face darkened when Bensheng told him that Second Donkey had inspected the property and would pay no more than three thousand yuan. To Lin, the house and the furniture were worth at least four thousand.

  “No, I won’t sell it at that price,” Lin said to Bensheng after dinner.

  “Fine. Tomorrow when Second Donkey comes to my store, I’ll tell him that. By the way, how much would you ask?”

  “Four thousand.”

  “Keep in mind he can pay cash. He made a killing on cabbages last fall and on potato noodles this spring. His fish pond is a money cow. Few men in our village can come up with three thousand yuan at the moment.”

  “That’s too low,” Lin said firmly.

  Though Lin turned Second Donkey down, he couldn’t feel at ease because he might not have enough time to wait for a reasonable offer.

  The next afternoon he talked with his daughter and found out that she did have a boyfriend. He was unhappy about it, believing she was too young to understand love, but he didn’t blame her. While she was helping him pack up Shuyu’s clothes, he continued to ask her about the young man. “Does Fengjin live in a nearby village?” he said.

  “No, he’s in the navy now, in Jiangsu Province.”

  “How did you get to know him?”

  “We used to be classmates.” She blushed almost to the ears, kept her eyes low, and went on folding a pair of her mother’s pants.

  “How serious is it between you and him? I mean, do you know him well enough to love him?”

  “Yes,” she replied confidently.

  He was amazed by her answer, wondering how an eighteen-year-old could truly understand her feelings. Could love be so simple and so easy? Didn’t it take time to achieve mutual understanding and trust? Maybe she just had a crush. She couldn’t really love him, could she?

  “Does he know you’re going to have a new job?” he asked her.

  “Yes, I wrote to him. He wants me to go to the city with you too.”

  “So that he can join you in Muji someday?”

  “I think so.” She nodded.

  “Does Uncle Bensheng know you have a boyfriend?”

  “Yes, but he’s not happy about it.”

  “Why?”

  “He said I should find a college graduate instead, because soldiers are not fashionable anymore.”

  Lin smiled. Then mixed feelings rose in his mind about her boyfriend. On one hand, he was pleased that Fengjin encouraged Hua to seize the opportunity to go to the city; on the other, the young man was undoubtedly a practical fellow, who knew how to use her to improve his future—because if Hua stayed in the village, he might have to come back to the countryside when he left the army. Lin was afraid her boyfriend might just be using her, but he didn’t say a word about his suspicion. For the time being he would be satisfied if he could take her away without a hitch.

  Outside the window a goose honked, which reminded him that he should get rid of all the poultry, the goat, and the sow within two or three days.

  “Dad, do you think my mother can wear this? It’s the only silk thing she has.” Hua displayed a red tunic against her chest.

  “No, it’s too large for her. Have you ever seen her wear it?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  He remembered that a relative of his had sent the tunic to Shuyu as a wedding present two decades before, but it had never fit her. Neither had she ever tried to alter it, always saying, “This is too fancy for me.” That was why the tunic still looked new. Before he set out for the country, Shuyu had told him to give anything she couldn’t wear to her brother’s wife. He said to Hua, “Pack it in.”

  Bensheng came home with good news for Lin that evening. Second Donkey accepted the price, though he would pay only two thousand in cash initially and he would hand over the other half by the end of next year, after his son’s wedding. Lin was suspicious of this way of being paid, knowing well that once the house was occupied, the new owner could delay giving him the rest of the payment forever, and that he might never receive the other two thousand yuan at all. Furthermore, Bensheng was Second Donkey’s friend and might eventually get hold of the money without passing it on to him. That would be a good way to avenge his sister. Perhaps the two men had purposely worked out such an arrangement to take advantage of him. No, this wouldn’t do. He had to forestall the trouble.

  Without further consideration, Lin made up his mind to collect all the cash he could, and not to leave any balance behind.

  That night he and Bensheng went to Second Donkey’s home and clinched a deal. After a brief haggle, the buyer agreed to pay 3,200 yuan in cash on the spot. Lin hadn’t seen Second Donkey for seven or eight years and was surprised that he had not aged much and that only his large eyes were no longer as bright as before. His long teeth were still strong, tea-stained along the gums; his donkeylike face remained smooth and even less swarthy, with just a few wrinkles. How he can take care of himself, Lin thought.

  Second Donkey, his feet tucked up underneath him, went on saying, “We’re all neighbors. I don’t mind spending a bit more.” He was drinking beer from a glass, which was so greasy that the liquid resembled peanut oil. Lin wouldn’t touch the beer poured for him.

  Second Donkey called in his son Handong to help draw up a contract. To Lin’s amazement, the slender lad, who had an effeminate face and sensitive eyes, placed on the dining table a sheet of letter paper and a lumpy inkstone, which contained freshly ground ink. He climbed on the brick bed, sat cross-legged, and began to write with a small brush made of weasel’s hair, which few people could use nowadays. From time to time he turned smiling eyes toward Lin. His posture, manners, and handwriting all appeared to be scholarly. In every way he didn’t look like a son that the thickset, illiterate Second Donkey could father. Later, Lin heard from Bensheng, who thought a great deal of Handong, that the lad was a college graduate and a teacher in Wujia Middle School. Actually his father had given dinners and gifts to the commune leaders, who then had him elected for college as a worker-peasant-soldier student.

  Besides the house and the furniture, the contract also included the shack in the backyard, the pigsty, the grinding stone, the vegetable garden, the eleven elm and jujube trees, the water well, the cauldron, and the latrine. Having read it through, Lin pressed his personal seal on the paper, beneath his name. Second Donkey did the same. Next, the buyer went into the inner room, in which his wife was shelling chestnuts, and came back with three bundles of cash, each consisting of a hundred ten-yuan bills. Then from a small envelope lying on a red chest, he pulled out forty brand-new fivers and put them together with the three thousand yuan on the dining table.

  “Count this, please,” he said to Lin, who was impressed, never having met a wealthier man.

  Lin started counting the money, now and then pulling out a bill with a missing corner. Meanwhile Second Donkey poured another glass of beer for Bensheng, who frowned at Lin’s white fingers.

  All together Lin found seven damaged ten-yuan bills. “No store will accept these,” he said to the buyer.

  Second Donkey chuckled and said, “Smart man.” He went into the inner room again and returned with seven intact tenners.

  The transaction was completed, and Lin left Second Donkey a key to the house. Then he and Bensheng put on their caps, said good-bye to the father and son, and went out into the starless night.

  On their way home, Lin gave the seven ten-yuan bills to Bensheng, who took the money but didn’t look happy. A rooster crowed in the south. “Crazy. It’s not midnight yet,” Bensheng said. “They should kill or geld that damn cock who just confuses people, only makes noise and never lays an egg.”

  The next day Lin went to the village office and called his brother, telling him to come with a horse cart tomorrow afternoon to fetch things for his family. He had decided to give all the animals to Ren Kong. He tol
d Hua of his decision, and she promised not to reveal a word to Uncle Bensheng, knowing her father had already given him seventy yuan and meant to leave him all their farm tools and the family plot.

  Exhausted from sweeping and earthing up his parents’ graves, Lin slept nine hours and got up late the next morning. His shoulders and elbows were still painful. After breakfast, he poured two bottles of sweet-potato liquor into the feed Hua had prepared—chopped radish greens and crumbs of soaked soybean cake. With a pair of chopsticks he mixed the alcohol and the feed, then fed it to the sow and the seven piglets, the poultry, and the goat. All the animals ate hungrily. He planned to leave for Muji the next day and was pleased that so far things had run smoothly according to his plan.

  Ren and his two older sons arrived with a tractor in the early afternoon. Without delay they began to work. They put all the chickens, geese, and ducks into a large string bag, tied together the feet of the pigs and the goat with hempen ropes, then threw them into the spacious trailer. The creatures were all sound asleep and made no noise except to grunt vaguely once in a while. The boys were actually young men now, tall like their father with thick muscular arms. Lin was glad to see them, although he had never known them well. Ren had brought along a pair of brown leather sandals for Hua, the most fashionable and expensive kind in the county. The present delighted her so much that she immediately went about helping her cousins load into the trailer jars, vats, the meal bin, a pair of straw rain capes, pots, pans, two boxes of books, and a stack of unused notebooks for her youngest cousin who was still going to middle school.

  “Hua, can you boil some water for tea?” her father asked.

  “Sure.” She went into the house to start the stove.

  Meanwhile Lin and Ren sat under a jujube tree, chatting and smoking. Ren was puffing on his pipe, with an Amber cigarette tucked behind his ear, which Lin had given him and which he was saving for his eldest son. Again Lin expressed his admiration for his husky nephews. The eldest one was being trained to be a truck driver. Obviously Ren wouldn’t lack wine and meat in the future, since the boy would have a lucrative job.