Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather

THE ACCIDENT

It happened like this…

A gust of wind swept up a pile of dirt from the roadwork outside Xinhua Bookshop on the other side of the road, swirled it up in an arc, then dumped it everywhere. The dust has just settled. It is five o'clock in the afternoon, right after the fourth beep has sounded on the radio in the radio repair shop in Desheng Avenue. It isn't the dust storm season and the weather is only starting to turn warm. Some cyclists are still wearing short gray cotton coats, although on the pavements there are already young women in pale blue spring clothes. There are endless streams of cyclists and pedestrians, but it isn't at a time when everyone is finishing work and traffic congestion is at its worst. However, inevitably there are people who are finishing work early, as inevitably there are people on work leave, so there are busy and idle people coming and going on the street. At this time of day it's always like this. The buses aren't too crowded even if all the seats have been taken and some people are standing, holding on to the handrail as they look out of the windows.

A bicycle fitted with an extra wheel for a baby-buggy with a red-and-blue checkered cloth shade is crossing diag onally from the other side of the road, and a man is riding it. Coming from the opposite direction is a two-carriage electric trolley bus that is going quite fast, but not too fast. It is clearly going more slowly than the small pale green sedan car about to overtake the bicycle, but neither is necessarily exceeding the city speed limit. The man on the bicycle arches his back, pedaling hard, and the little green car overtakes him on the other side. On this side, the trolley bus is heading toward him. The man hesitates but doesn't brake, and the bicycle with the buggy unhurriedly continues to cross diagonally. The trolley bus sounds the horn but doesn't reduce its speed. As the man crosses the white line in the middle of the road, the dust from the gust of wind has already settled, so his vision isn't obscured. Unblinkingly, he looks up; about forty, he is not a young man, and his hat, tilted slightly to the back of his head, shows that he is balding. He must be able to see the trolley bus coming toward him, and hear the horn. He hesitates again, seems to brake, although not hard, and the bicycle with the buggy clumsily continues crossing the road diagonally. The trolley bus is now close and the horn is sounding nonstop. However, the bicycle keeps going, as before. Sitting in the buggy under the shade is a child with rosy cheeks, barely three or four years old. Suddenly there is the screech of brakes and the horn sounds louder and louder as the trolley bus fast approaches. The bicycle's front wheel continues heading diagonally toward the bus, slowly, as the horn grows louder and the screeching of the brakes turns shrill. The bus has reduced its speed, but the front of the bus keeps moving ominously forward, closing in like a wall. The bus and the bicycle are about to collide and a woman on the pavement on this side of the road starts screaming. Pedestrians and cyclists alike all look on, but no one seems capable of moving. As the front wheel of the bicycle passes the front of the bus, the man starts pedaling hard, maybe he will just make it, but he reaches forward to touch the red-and-blue checkered shade, as if he is trying to push it down. As his hand touches the shade, the buggy flies off, bouncing on the single wheel. The man's legs are caught as he throws up his arms and falls backward off the bicycle. In the clamor of the horn and brakes and women screaming, before onlookers have time to gasp, the man is instantly crushed under the wheels. The bicycle he was riding, completely twisted, is thrown ten or so feet along the road.

The pedestrians on both sides of the road are aghast and cyclists get off their bicycles. It is quiet all around, and only the gentle singing from the radio repair shop can be heard:

It is probably a record of some post-Deng Lijun singer from Hong Kong. Front wheels in a pool of blood, the bus comes to a halt. Blood on the front of the bus is dripping back down onto the body. The first to approach the body is the bus driver, who has opened the door and jumped down. Next, people from both sides of the road also come running, while others surround the overturned buggy, which has rolled into the gutter. A middle-aged woman takes the child from the buggy, shakes it, and examines it all over.

"Is it dead?"

"It's dead!"

"Is it dead?"

Talk in low voices all around. The child, drained of color, has its eyes shut tight, and blue veins can be seen through the child's soft skin. But there is no sign of external injury.

"Don't let him get away!"

"Hurry, call the police!"

"Don't move anything! Don't go over there. Leave everything as it is!"

A crowd several layers deep has surrounded the front of the bus. Only one person is curious enough to lift the twisted wreck of the bicycle. The bell rings as he puts it back down.

"I clearly sounded the horn and braked! Everyone saw it; he was intent on getting himself killed by charging into the bus – how can you blame me?" It is the strained voice of the driver trying to explain, but no one takes any notice.

"You can all be witnesses, all of you saw it!"

"Move aside! Move aside – move aside, all of you!" A policeman with a big hat emerges from the crowd.

"We've got to hurry to save the child's life! Quick, stop a car and get the child to a hospital!" It is a man's voice.

A young man in a coffee-colored leather jacket runs to the line in the middle of the road, waving an arm. A small Toyota sedan sounds its horn nonstop to make its way through the pedestrians who have spilled onto the roadway. Next, one of those 130 light trucks comes along, and it stops. Inside the windows of the bus involved in the accident, passengers are bickering with the conductress. Another trolley bus pulls up behind. The doors of the one in front open and the passengers surge out, blocking the trolley bus that has just arrived. There is a loud clamor of voices.

The singing on the stereo is drowned out.

Blood is still dripping, and there is a stench of blood in the air.

" Waaa.. ." The child's repressed wailing finally breaks out.

"It's a good sign!"

"It's still alive!"

There are sighs of happy relief. As the wailing grows louder, people also come back to life: it is as if they have been liberated. They then all rush to join the crowd surrounding the body.

Screaming sirens. A police car with flashing blue lights on the roof has arrived, and the crowd parts as four policemen quickly get out. Two of them are wielding batons, and people stand back immediately.

Traffic has come to a standstill and long queues of vehicles are waiting at both ends of the street. Honking horns have replaced the din of voices. One of the policemen goes to the middle of the road and waves his white-gloved hands to direct the traffic.

The police summon the conductress from the second trolley bus. She tries at first to make excuses, then reluctantly takes the child from the middle-aged woman and gets into the 130 light truck. A white glove signals. The truck drives off, taking with it the child's shrill screams and wailing.

As the police wielding batons shout at them, the onlookers move back to form a rectangle that includes the twisted wreck of the bicycle.

What is happening to the driver can now be seen from this side of the road. He is wiping off the sweat with his cotton cap. A policeman is questioning him. He takes out his driver's license in its red plastic folder, and the policeman confiscates it. He immediately protests.

"Why are you making excuses? If you've run over the man, then you've run over him!" A youth pushing a bicycle yells out.

The conductress wearing sleeve-protectors comes out of the bus and rebukes the youth. "He was trying to get himself killed. The horn was sounding and the bus had braked, yet the man wouldn't give way. He just went under the bus."

"The man was in the middle of the road and had a child with him. It was broad daylight, so he must have seen him!" someone in the crowd says angrily.

"What does it matter to drivers like him if they run over someone? He won't have to pay for it with his life." This is said with derision.

"What a tragedy. If he didn't have the child with him, he would have got across long ago!"

"Is there any hope for the man?"

"His brain came out?"

"I just heard this plop – "

"You heard it?"

"Yes, it went plop – "

"Stop all this talk!"

"Ai, life's like that, a person can die just like that…"

"He's crying."

"Who?"

"The driver."

The driver, sitting on his haunches with his head down, has covered his eyes with his cap.

"He didn't do it deliberately…"

"If this had happened to anyone, they would…"

"The man had a child with him? What happened to the child? What happened to the child?" someone who has just arrived asks.

"The child wasn't hurt, it was very lucky."

"Luckily the child was saved."

"The man was killed!"

"Were they father and child?"

"Why did he have to hook a buggy to his bicycle? It's hard enough not to have an accident even with just one person on a bicycle."

"And he'd just picked up the child from kindergarten to take home."

"Kindergartens are hopeless, they won't let you leave children for a whole day!"

"You're lucky if you can get into one."

"What's there to look at! From now on, if you run without looking across the road – " A big hand drags away a child who is trying to squeeze between people in the crowd.

The Hong Kong star has stopped singing. People are crowded on the steps of the radio repair shop.

Red lights flashing, the ambulance has arrived. As medical personnel in white carry the body to the ambulance, the people in doorways of all the shops stand on their toes. The fat cook wearing an apron from a small eatery nearby has also come out to watch.

"What happened? Was there an accident? Was someone killed?"

"It was father and son, one of them is dead."

"Which of them died?"

"The old man!"

"What about the son?"

"Unhurt."

"That's shocking! Why didn't he pull his father out of the way?"

"It was the father who had pushed his son out of the way!"

"Each generation is getting worse, the man was wasting his time bringing up the son!"

"If you don't know what happened, then don't crap on."

"Who's crapping on?"

"I wasn't trying to start an argument with you."

"The child was carried away."

"Was there a small child as well?"

Others have just arrived.

"Do you mind not shoving?"

"Did I shove you?"

"What's there to look at? Move on! Everyone move on!"

On the outer fringes of the crowd people are being arrested. Traffic security personnel with red armbands have arrived and they are more savage than the police.

The driver, who is pushed into the police car, turns and tries to struggle, but the door shuts. People start to walk away and others get on their bicycles and leave. The onlookers thin out, but people keep arriving, stopping their bicycles or coming down off the pavement. The second trolley bus leads a long line of sedans, vans, jeeps, and big limousines slowly past the buggy with the torn red-and-blue checkered shade in the gutter on this side of the road. Most of the people standing on shop steps have either gone inside or left, and the long stream of cars has passed. At the center of what has become a small crowd in the middle of the road, two policemen are taking measurements with a tape measure, while another makes notes in a little notebook. The blood under the wheels of the bus has begun to congeal and is turning black. In the trolley bus with its doors open, the conductress sits by a window staring blankly across to this side of the street. On the other side of the street, the faces in the windows of an approaching trolley bus look out and some people even poke their heads out. People have finished work: it is peak traffic time, and there are even more pedestrians and people riding bicycles. However, shouts from the police and traffic security personnel stop people from going to the middle of the road.

"Was there an accident?"

"Was someone killed?"

"Must have been, look at all that blood."

"The day before, there was an accident on Jiankang Road. A sixteen-year-old was taken to the hospital, but they couldn't save him – they said he was an only son."

"Nowadays, whose family doesn't have only one son?"

"Ai, how will the parents survive?"

"If traffic management isn't improved, there'll be more accidents!"

"Well, there won't be any fewer."

"Every day after school, I worry until my Jiming gets home…"

"It's easier for you with your son – daughters are more worry to parents."

"Look, look, they're taking photographs."

"So what if they are, it's not going to help."

"Did he deliberately run over the man?"

"Who knows?"

"It couldn't have been attached, otherwise it would have been hit for sure."

"I was just passing by."

"Some drivers drive like maniacs, and aggressively. If you don't get out of the way, they certainly won't make way for you!"

"There are people who work off their frustrations by killing people, so anyone could be a victim."

"It's hard to guard against such occurrences, it's all decided by fate. In my old village there was a carpenter. He was good at his trade but he liked to drink. Once he was building someone a house and, on his way home at night, rotten drunk, he tripped and cracked his head open on a sharp rock…"

"For some reason, the past couple of days my eyelid has been twitching."

"Which one?"

"When you're walking you shouldn't be so engrossed in thought all the time. Quite a few times I've seen you…"

"Nothing's ever happened."

"If something had, it'd be too late and I wouldn't be able to bear it."

"Stop it! People are looking at us…"

The lovers look at one another and, holding each other's hands even more tightly, walk off.

They finish taking photographs of the scene of the accident, and the policeman with the tape measure takes a shovelful of dirt and spreads it over the blood. The wind has died down completely and it is getting dark. The conductress sitting by the window of the trolley bus has put on the lights and is counting the takings from the tickets. A policeman carries the wreckage of the bicycle on his shoulder to the car. Two men with red armbands get the buggy from the gutter, put it into the car, and leave with the policemen.

It is time for dinner. The conductress is left standing at the door of the trolley bus and looks around impatiently while waiting for the depot to send a driver. Passersby only occasionally glance at the empty bus stopped for some reason in the middle of the road. It is dark and no one notices the blood covered with dirt in front of the bus that can no longer be seen.

Afterward, the streetlights come on and at some time the empty bus has driven off. Cars speed endlessly on the road again and it is as if nothing has happened. By around midnight hardly anyone is about. A street -washing truck slowly approaches from the intersection some way off where traffic lights flash from time to time next to an iron railing with a blue poster. There is a row of words in white: for your own safety and that of others, please observe traffic rules. At the spot where the accident had occurred, the truck slows down and, turning on its high-speed sprinkler jets, flushes clean any remaining traces of blood.

The road cleaners don't necessarily know that a few hours ago an accident had occurred and that the unfortunate victim had died right here. But who is the deceased? In this city of several million, only the man's family and some close friends would know him. And if the dead man wasn't carrying identification papers, right now they might not even know about the accident. The man probably was the child's father, and when the child calms down, it will probably be able to say the father's name. In that case, the man must have a wife. He was doing what the child's mother should have been doing, so he was a good father and a good husband. As he loved his child, presumably he also loved his wife, but did his wife love him? If she loved him, why wasn't she able to carry out her duties as his wife? Maybe he had a miserable life, otherwise why was he so distracted? Could it have been a personal failing and he was always indecisive? Maybe something was troubling him, something he couldn't resolve, and he was destined not to escape this even greater misfortune. However, he wouldn't have encountered this disaster if he had set out a little later or a little earlier. Or, if after picking up the child he had pedaled faster or slower, or if the woman at the kindergarten had spoken longer to him about his child, or if on the way a friend had stopped him to talk. It was unavoidable. He didn't have some terminal illness but was just waiting to die. Death is inescapable for everyone, but premature death can be avoided. So if he hadn't died in the accident, how would he have died? Traffic accidents in this city are inevitable, there are no cities free of traffic accidents. In every city there is inevitably this probability, even if the daily average is one in a million; and in a big city of this size there will always be someone encountering this sort of misfortune. He was one such unfortunate person. Didn't he have a premonition before it happened? When he finally encountered this misfortune what did he think? Probably he didn't have time to think, didn't have time to comprehend the great misfortune that was about to befall him. For him, there could be no greater misfortune than this. Even if he was that one in a million, like a grain of sand, before dying he had clearly thought of the child. Supposing it was his child, wasn't it noble of him to sacrifice himself? Maybe it was not purely noble but to a certain extent instinctual, the instinct of being a father. People only talk about a mother's instinct, but there are some mothers who abandon their babies. To have sacrificed himself for the child was indeed noble, but this sacrifice was entirely avoidable: if he had set out a little later or earlier, if at the time he had not been preoccupied, and if he were more resolute by nature, or even if he were more agile in his movements. The sum total of all these factors had hastened his death, so this misfortune was inevitable. I have been discussing philosophy again, but life is not philosophy, even if philosophy can derive from knowledge of life. And there is no need to turn life's traffic accidents into statistics, because that's a job for the traffic department or the public security department. Of course a traffic accident can serve as an item for a newspaper. And it can serve as the raw material for literature when it is supplemented by the imagination and written up as a moving narrative: this would then be creation. However, what is related here is simply the process of this traffic accident itself, a traffic accident that occurred at five o'clock, in the central section of Desheng Avenue in front of the radio repair shop.