The Past and the Punishments

by Yu Hua

  He heard a solid thump, but when he looked down, the prone figure below him seemed unhurt, and his foot was still linked to his own. He closed his eyes and began to sprint angrily forward, stomping as hard as he possibly could on the ground. After a moment, he opened his eyes and looked down. The man was still lying on the ground in front of him. He began to feel dejected, to gaze helplessly around. The sun shone on his back, and the coarse burlap bag draped over his shoulders shimmered in the sunlight.

  He saw a blob of something deep and green somewhere ahead and to the right. A thoughtful smile played sluggishly across his face. He began to creep toward the deep green blob, discovering at the same time that his opponent had shifted into a crouch underfoot. He would have to move even more carefully now. Instead of fleeing, the man was sliding his body along the ground, sliding toward a little pond. And by the time he himself had reached the pond’s edge, the man’s head slid into the water, followed by his arms, his legs, and finally his whole body. He stood at the edge of the pool watching him float on the surface of the water. He bent to pick up some rocks and began to pelt him, turning away in satisfaction only after the man had shattered into what seemed like a thousand different pieces.

  Suddenly, he felt a burst of hot sunlight pierce his eyes. His head began to spin. But rather than close his eyes, he looked 144 yu hua

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  up through the hot glare and saw a head, streaming with blood, suspended somewhere in the distance above him.

  Head held aloft, he began to chase it, but it hid behind a cloud. The cloud began to shimmer like a smoldering cotton ball.

  When he looked down, something huge stood in the way of his field of vision. He couldn’t see across the fields. He had come to a town.

  The thing that had so suddenly blocked his way was like a tomb. He seemed to see drops of sunlight cascade through the air and splatter across its surface. But after a moment, he discovered that the thing in his way wasn’t just one thing but a cluster of things divided by countless cracks and saw-tooth fissures. The sunlight drifted down between the fissures as silently as dust.

  He lost interest in the chase and began to walk down a road enveloped in pallid shadow by the wutong trees lining its flanks, whose densely interlocking branches blocked the intense sunlight overhead. He walked suddenly out of the bright daylight and into what seemed like a dark, gloomy cavern. The road unfolded ahead of him like a carpet of whitened bones. Every few paces, human heads hung suspended from poles on either side of the road. Drained of blood, they too had grown pallid and white. When he began to examine them closely, though, he found that they also looked something like street lamps. He sensed that these heads would begin to churn with gleaming blood at night-fall.

  Pedestrians, each as drained and pallid as the heads on the poles, walked by. They all walked in the same monoto-nous way. He heard a strange noise. Two people approached each other and came to a halt just in front of him. He stopped too. The sound seemed to surround him. But a man with only one leg was limping down the road ahead of him.

  Compared with the other passersby, there was something terribly interesting, something very vivid, about the way 1986 145

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  this crippled man moved. He decided to abandon the two people he had seen a moment before and follow the cripple.

  Soon, his surroundings grew perceptibly warmer. He was engulfed in a curtain of gold, and the dark gray figures he had seen pass by him on the road just moments before began to gleam. Insensibly, he glanced up once more at the dazzling head. Now he realized that the things in his way were in fact buildings. He recognized them because they were covered with open doors and windows. People filed in and out of the doors. Some of them receded, and some of them approached. He smelled something warm floating from the open window of a butcher’s shop. He walked through the warmth, sucking at the air.

  He walked to the river. The water was green and yellow in the sun. He saw a thick band of liquid ooze by. Boats bobbed on its surface like corpses. He noticed the willow trees on the banks of the river. Clumps of hair dangled over the water. The hair must have been smothered with fertil-izer so that it could grow so unnaturally long and thick. He moved over toward it and held a strand next to a lock of his own hair. Dissatisfied with this initial examination, he tore off a strand from the tree and laid it out on the bank. Then he plucked a strand of his own hair, pulled it straight, and laid it parallel to the willow branch. Once again, he carefully compared the two. What he saw made him feel terribly dejected. He left the willows and walked toward the avenue.

  He saw braids swinging in the distance. He saw two red butterflies towing the braids through the air. His chest felt tight and strange, and he moved insensibly toward them.

  The fabric shop was thronged with people. Spring had awakened their thirst for color. Chatter, as bright and varied as the bolts of silk on the shelves, echoed across the shop floor. Most of the customers were young women, women whose thirst for color was also a thirst for love. Their 146 yu hua

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  mothers surged into the store along with them, seeing in the colorful fabrics the youth of their daughters and memories of their own. Here, mothers and daughters could enjoy themselves on an equal footing.

  With a friend at her left side, she walked happily out of the store. Her braids swayed as she walked. She usually didn’t wear her hair in braids. She usually let it flow loosely down her back. But the night before, she had stumbled on a beautiful old photograph of her mother. Her mother had looked particularly pretty in braids, and she had decided to try them out on herself. At her first glance in the mirror, she was surprised by just how much the braids had changed her.

  And when she fastened two red butterfly bows onto her new braids, she was nearly overwhelmed by the transformation.

  Now, as she delightedly walked out of the store, half of her joy came from the colorful bolts of fabric and the rest from the sheer pleasure of the braids dangling behind her. She pictured to herself the way the red bows would swing back and forth like real butterflies fluttering through the air.

  But a madman came walking toward her. She was star-

  tled and frightened. And when she saw that he was leering at her, that strings of saliva were dangling from his lips, she gasped and began to run. Her friend shouted and ran after her. They ran for a long time and didn’t stop until they had turned the corner onto another street. Finally, they stopped, looked at one another, and burst into laughter. They laughed so hard and so long that they began to rock back and forth with merriment.

  Her friend giggled, “I guess even the crazies come out when it gets warm.”

  She nodded. They clasped hands, said good-bye, and

  went their separate ways home.

  Her street was just ahead, across twenty paces of pavement awash in sunlight and noise. There was a dilapidated clock shop at the corner. The clocks inside the window glittered. An old bespectacled man had sat in the shop for as 1986 147

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  long as she could remember. She glanced at him as she turned down the sunny little lane toward her house. After another twenty paces, she could see the glass panes of her building sparkling in the sun. The closer she got to her front door, the heavier her steps became.

  Her mother, face drained of color, was sitting inside on a chair. She had been that way for three days now, scared of her own shadow, cowering just inside the door. She hadn’t gone to work since it had started.

  She asked her mother, “Did you hear the footsteps again last night?”

  Her mother ignored her. When she finally looked up, her eyes were full of terror.

  “No. I hear them right now,” she said.

  She stood behind her mother for a moment, confused and annoyed, and then walked over to the window. From the window, she could look out on the avenue and
see the happiness she’d left behind just a moment before. But all she saw was the back of a man with hair down to his waist and a piece of burlap slung over his shoulders slowly limping down the avenue. She shivered insensibly, felt a wave of nausea, and turned back to face the room. Footsteps began to sound out in the stairwell, footsteps that resounded with all the familiarity of more than ten years of routine inti-macy. Her father was back from work. She ran excitedly to open the door for him. The sound became steadily more distinct as she watched the top of her father’s gray head move up the stairwell. She greeted him with a happy cry. Her father smiled and lightly patted her head with his fingers.

  They walked into the house together.

  She felt how gently his fingers touched her hair and thought to herself that this was the only father she had. She remembered when she was seven a strange man had come to the house and given her a rubber ball. Her mother had said,

  “This is your father.” He had lived with them from that time on. He was always gentle, always nice, always made 148 yu hua

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  her feel good. But, a few days before, her mother had told her, “I hear the sound of your father’s footsteps walking toward the house after dark.” She was confused, and when her mother explained that she was talking about some other father, she felt frightened. This other father was a stranger.

  She hated him. She wouldn’t let him into her heart because she knew he would take away the only father she had ever had.

  She heard her father’s footsteps grow heavier as he walked through the door into the house. Her mother looked up at him with frightened eyes. She discovered that her mother’s face had grown even paler than before.

  2

  Dusk was falling, and the sky was dim. A sanitation worker wearing a surgical mask was sweeping a pile of gar-bage by the sidewalk. The broom hissed over the concrete, stirring up heavy plumes of dust from the pavement to drift in the dim light. There were only a few pedestrians on the street, but cooking steam and the distant sound of chatter had begun to pour from the lit windows of the residential buildings. Watery light streamed from the shop windows onto the street, and the languid shadows of listless shop clerks threw themselves onto the sidewalks. The sanitation worker took a book of matches from his pocket and ignited the trash pile.

  He saw a pile of blood begin to burn, illuminating the darkness that surrounded it. He moved toward the burning blood, watching as the crackling mass sent little sprays of blood flying at his face. The drops of blood stung his face like sparks. He realized that he was clasping an iron rod in his hand, so he stuck it into the pile and just as quickly pulled it back. It had taken just a second for the rod to begin to glow red with the heat, so hot that even his hand 1986 149

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  felt singed. And now those people were stealing toward him, so he began to twirl the rod, to trace glowing red arcs through the air. They continued to advance. They did not run away. They were too scared to run away. He stopped twirling and began to jab at them with the rod. He heard a long and boundless sizzle and saw tendrils of white smoke curl up into the air. He sank the rod into the dark ink, lifted it, and smeared the ink over the wounds he had just inflicted. Seared red welts turned a lush black. They warily stole past him. Elated, the madman bellowed, “

  !”

  They had seen the madman as they walked by. They had seen the madman stick his hand into the flames and then rapidly draw it back out because of the heat. They had seen how the madman twirled his arm through the air, how he had pointed and gestured at them. And they had seen him bend down and bury his fingers in a puddle on the sidewalk before drawing it back out of the water and pointing again.

  Finally, they had heard his incomprehensible shout.

  They saw everything. They heard it all. But they were too busy to pay the madman much attention as they walked past.

  It often happens that, once everything quiets down after dusk, the movie theater is the first place to begin to liven up after dinner. The little square in front of the movie theater had already been divided up by countless feet into countless little squares, and even more feet were cutting across the pavement as they made their way toward the theater. The show had yet to begin, and those with tickets in their pockets stood smoking cigarettes and chatting with those that didn’t. Those that didn’t have tickets had banknotes in their hands, which they waved at the people who had just arrived in front of the theater. A sign reading “sold out” hung from the closed ticket window, but even so, a mob had gathered in front of the window just in case it were to open suddenly and a few leftover tickets appear. Shirt buttons, popped from their mooring by the crush, fell to the ground under 150 yu hua

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  their feet as they squeezed toward the window. A few people took tickets from their pockets and began to stream into the theater, taking care to say hello to those without tickets as they went by. Fissures began to appear in the crowd. The fissures grew until the only people left were people waving banknotes in their hands and stubbornly refusing to leave despite the fact that the movie had already begun.

  He felt the knife twirling in his hands, severing the air around him into fragments. After a spell of twirling, he directed the blade toward their noses. He saw each nose fly up from the knife blade and hover in space. Spurts of blood spouted from the holes where the nostrils had been; flurries of severed noses danced through the air before falling one after another to the ground. Soon, the street was engulfed by the noisy clamor of noses leaping and rolling across the pavement. “

  !” he cried forcefully, limping away.

  Just at that moment, someone with a handful of tickets was discovered by the crowd. They swarmed into a circle around him. The sound of the besieged man’s shouts retreated farther and farther behind the madman.

  Pop music pounded through the café and flowed out

  through the open door into the street. A few young men followed the song out the door, humming through the Marlboros dangling from their lips. They came to the café every day to drink a cup of Nescafe before strolling through town until well past midnight, talking loudly among themselves, and, every so often, breaking into raucous song. They hoped that everyone on the street would notice them.

  Just as they walked out of the café, they caught sight of the madman, who was waving his hands through the air and screaming, “

  !” as he advanced toward them. They

  burst into laughter, fell in behind the madman, and began to follow him. They pretended to limp like the madman, twirled their hands through the air like him, screamed like him. Whenever a few passersby slowed to look at the spec-1986 151

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  tacle, they screamed even louder. But, after a while, exhausted by their pursuit of the madman, they stopped screaming, lit a fresh round of cigarettes, and let him continue on his way.

  The chopping knife sliced toward their legs snapping them off below the knees like cucumbers. Everyone on the street seemed suddenly to have shrunk by at least a foot.

  Their knees slammed down on the sidewalk with heavy, rhythmic thuds. He saw their knees trample over the severed feet that lay strewn across the ground, pounding them into pieces.

  The streets became lush with light. Moonlight splattered across the ground, merging with the lamplight streaming out of the shop windows. Dense patterns of light and shadow blanketed the pavement, like the underside of a leafy wutong tree at noon. Countless feet moved across the shadowy filigree, breaking the patterns of light into fragments that came together again only after they had passed. The moist evening breeze carried a cacophony of voices through the air.

  The windows of the residential buildings were still lit, but now they appeared cold and empty. Only a few people lingered inside, sitting quietly alone or together in pairs. It seemed that the whole town was strolling through t
he streets, streaming in and out of shops, ambling down the sidewalks.

  He realized that everyone around him was naked. The chopping knife flashed toward the lower bodies of each of the men who walked past. All of them had a little tail growing in front. The chopping knife slashed at their tails. Their tails fell to the ground with a ponderous thump, like sand-bags. Funny little balls rolled out of the bags after they broke on the pavement. In just a moment’s time, they covered the street, careening across the pavement like Ping-Pong balls.

  When she walked out of the store, the street made her think of two rivers moving in opposite directions. The few people who swerved into the stores looked like drops of 152 yu hua

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  water thrown off to the side by the river’s current. In between the streams, she saw the madman. He was limping down the street, twirling his arms, repeatedly bellowing a single word: “ !” But the people moving to either side of him seemed not to have noticed, caught up as they were in the enchantment of the evening. His hoarse screams were buried amid the general clamor of voices as he walked past.

  She started to walk slowly home. She walked as slowly as she could. For the past few days, she had taken to going out alone and strolling through the streets. She couldn’t bear the silence that had enveloped her home. At home, the sound of a pin hitting the floor was enough to startle.

  She reached her front door faster than she would have liked. She stood in front, looking up at the stars. The stars suffused the night sky with glowing light. She looked up at the brightly illuminated windows of the other apartments, heard the soft sound of conversation floating through the night air. She stood for a long time before she began to make her slow and hesitant way up the steps to her own house.

  Just as she had pushed open the door, her mother cried out, “Close the door!” Frightened, she quickly shut the door behind her. Her mother, hair in disarray, was sitting by the door.