Cries in the Drizzle

CHAPTER 3. FAR AWAY

It's been said that my grandfather Sun Youyuan was a man in a rage, but you need to bear in mind that it was my father who said that. Sun Kwangtsai was a father skilled in evading responsibility and fond of imposing crude discipline, and when a patchwork of welts began to appear on my skin and he was panting from the effort of laying into me, he would invoke the memory of my grandfather, saying, “If it were my dad, he would have beaten the life out of you ages ago.”

My grandfather had passed away by then, and my father (like other people at the time) was in the habit of sticking tyrant or other such fearful epithets on the tombstones of the dead, while projecting himself as civilized and cultivated. My father's words must have had a certain effect, for when the pain wore off I could not help feeling some gratitude to him. What he said, after all, indicated that he did place some value on my life.

After I reached adulthood and began to create in my mind a more accurate image of my grandfather, I found it difficult to imagine him as a man in a rage. Perhaps my father was trying to console me by reminding me what hard lessons he had learned in his childhood, as though he were saying, “Compared with the beatings I used to receive when I was young, what you're getting doesn't count as much at all.” If I could have seen things in that light, then my self-esteem would have survived intact even if my body took a beating. But pain made me lose my wits, and apart from howling like a beast I could think of no other way to react.

In the old days it never ceased to surprise people that my grandfather showed such respect for the woman in his life, but this was his way of expressing — however unconsciously — his gratitude to destiny. My grandmother had been pampered and coddled as a child. At sixteen she was married off, riding a bridal sedan chair and wearing tiny embroidered shoes, but within two years she was forced to leave that grand mansion, slumped drowsily on the back of a pauper. My destitute grandfather led her to a Southgate overgrown with weeds. Her dazzling heritage so overshadowed Sun Youyuan as to make his own life seem dismal and gloomy by comparison.

My grandmother, who died when I was three, maintained habits that were quite out of keeping with my home environment at the time, as a way of demonstrating that the prosperous and respectable life that she had once enjoyed had not entirely disappeared. Despite our poverty we would light a charcoal fire in the cold of winter, and she would spend the whole day huddled beside it, her eyes almost shut, a blank expression on her face. Before she went to bed she would always bathe her feet in hot water, and after a soaking those misshapen little feet of hers would gradually take on a rosy hue, an image that has printed itself indelibly on my memory. Those feet had never stepped into a rice field, even though she had slept with a peasant for over thirty years. Her indolent, aristocratic air somehow succeeded in wafting unimpeded for decades through our tumbledown house. My grandfather, so prone to fly off the handle (according to my father), in my eyes stood humbly, his hands at his side, before Grandmother's foot basin.

On a winter morning when she should have risen from her bed my grandmother failed to wake. She died so unexpectedly, without the slightest warning, that my grandfather was immobilized with grief. If he ran into anybody in the village he would greet them with a timorous smile, as though some kind of family scandal had occurred, rather than his wife passing away.

In my memory the following scene takes shape. My grandfather Sun Youyuan is standing among billowing snowflakes, dressed in a black padded jacket that has no buttons; it is so filthy it has acquired a dull sheen. He is not wearing anything underneath, and has tied the jacket shut with a piece of string; the skin of his chest is exposed to the winter cold. Stooping, both hands in his sleeves, he lets the snow fall and melt on his chest. As he tries to smile, his eyes redden; tears tumble down his face — a vain attempt to communicate his grief to my insensible heart. I faintly recall him saying to me, “Your grandma was ripe for picking.”

My grandmother's father must have been the least distinguished rich man of his day. My grandfather, with a poor man's deference, never wavered in his esteem for this father-in-law, whom he had once had the privilege of meeting. In his twilight years, as his teeth dwindled in number, Sun Youyuan would often regale us with accounts of my grandmother's former high station, but it was the sighs of admiration — to us so meaningless — punctuating his reminiscences that made the biggest impression on us.

When I was little I could never understand why Granddad's father-in-law always had to have a ferule in his hand, rather than the string-bound book that I imagined he should have been holding. (Sun Kwangtsai, after all, could impose discipline too— though it was a broom that he clutched in his hand, he was simply using a different instrument for much the same purpose.) This ominous figure applied all the harshness of the old society, using his own pedestrian knowledge to educate his two equally mediocre sons and even, through a wild stretch of imagination, hoping that they would bring honor on their ancestors. Nor did he neglect the upbringing of his daughter, making a ritual out of practically every waking moment of her life. My poor grandmother did not view her submission to him as a surrender of the most basic freedoms, but in a spirit of blind happiness complied strictly with her father's rules on when to get out of bed, when to begin embroidering, what posture to adopt when walking, and so on. Later she inherited her fathers prestige during her marriage to my grandfather, and in Sun Youyuan's quaking presence my grandmother savored to the full her own superiority. My grandfather was enveloped all his life by her short-lived wealth and status. The only respect in which she carried herself with modesty was that she always made a point of sitting sideways opposite my grandfather. Her father's admonitions had been so forceful that she continued to be constrained by them long after she had in effect made her escape from his control.

He prided himself on his rigor, and when it came time to select a husband for his daughter his gimlet eyes immediately came to rest on a man much like himself. On the day that Grandma's first husband appeared stiffly before him, his daughter's fate had already been settled. This fellow, who had to think things over carefully before making the simplest remark, from my perspective today seems practically retarded, and compared to my destitute but vigorous grandfather he was a complete nonentity. But he pleased my grandma's father, and his satisfaction in turn directly influenced my grandma, for every time she mentioned him to my granddad a look of admiration would appear on her face. My granddad was a secondary victim, for the reverence with which he hung on her words made this fellow in a long gown become the yardstick by which he measured his own inferiority.

The feebleminded fiance, dressed in his silk finery, entered self-consciously through Grandmother's vermilion door, his waxed hair combed to perfection. He raised the hem of his gown with his right hand, crossed the courtyard, and walked into the reception room, skirting a large square table to appear in front of Grandma's father. And that was all it took for him to secure approval for the marriage. When Granddad told me all this, I had just turned six and was about to be placed in other people's care, and his account failed to stir very much interest on my part, just a faint degree of surprise. All you had to do was walk through an open door, make a turn, and a bride was yours for the taking. Well, I could do that too, I thought.

The extravagance of my grandmother's wedding was inflated in her imagination after thirty or more years of poverty, and then reported to me through the unreliable medium of my grandfather. So it was that my head resounded with the din of gongs and drums and a particularly loud horn, and in my mind's eye the entourage carrying the trousseau was so long it trailed completely out of view. My grandfather always stressed that the bride was conveyed in a large sedan carried by eight porters, but at six years of age I could hardly have taken in just how magnificent that was. Granddad's description was so vivid that it created a chaotic impression in my mind, and the worst thing was that the sound of the horn, which Granddad imitated most effectively, was as unnerving to me as the howl of a dog in the night.

My grandma was sixteen that year, and her face was like an apple about to fall from the tree, but she applied a thick coating of rouge to it all the same. As she was welcomed in from the sedan chair that afternoon, her face gleamed in the sunlight as brightly as an earthenware pot.

The dourness of the groom took my grandmother by surprise. Throughout the ceremony he wore what he considered to be a sedate smile, a smile so fixed and immobile that it could have been smeared on with paint. This fellow with his artificial grin did not maintain his gentlemanly profile in the latter part of the evenings activities. Once the candles had been lit in the nuptial chamber, the groom proved amazingly deft, and after a moment of shock my grandmother discovered that she was not wearing a stitch of clothing. He wasted no time with preliminaries, but did everything that could be expected of him without a word having passed his lips. When he woke the following morning he found that the bride had disappeared into thin air, and searched around frantically until he finally thought to have a look in the wardrobe. She was crouched there, stark naked, trembling from head to toe.

But he was a decent fellow. That, at least, was my grandma's final appraisal. I find it hard to imagine, but after traumatizing the bride on her wedding night he then delved deeper into his bag of tricks and provided the solace she needed. In the two years that followed, she greeted each night with equanimity and acquitted herself well. My grandfather Sun Youyuan claimed that her first husband was a man who knew how to treat a woman, but I suspect this is an image reconstructed by my grandmother over many years of remembrance. So continually did she harp on the past that no amount of meekness and humility on Sun Youyuan's part could gain much appreciation from her.

In the summer my grandma's mother-in-law sat in the reception room, wearing a black silk dress, fanned by a maid dressed in cotton. She maintained a grave demeanor as she discussed the illnesses that afflicted her. She could not tolerate the slightest moan in the house, not even her own, for she believed such sounds to be just as pernicious as the outbreak of unruly laughter. My grandmother found herself immersed for long stretches of time in her mother-in-law's accounts of her various pains and aches; you can imagine what a joyless atmosphere prevailed. But psychologically my grandmother was not so profoundly affected by the prevailing gloom, for her father had already administered an education that was not all that different in tone. The deadness of family life was relieved only in the evening, when her husband's brief fervor in bed invested the proceedings with a certain animation. But my grandmother felt perfectly at home and took it all in stride, and until she clambered onto my grandfather's back she could barely have imagined that a family might operate any differently. In the same way she had no clue that her face was really very pretty, and it took my grandfather's constant reassurance and earnest compliments to finally convince her of this point, something that her father, husband, and mother-in-law had always kept tightly under wraps.

I cannot shed much more light on my grandmother's life in that household, for their experiences, like they themselves, are long dead and gone. But in the first few years after my grandmother's death, loneliness and sorrow filled Granddad with enthusiasm for her past, and when a light shone in his gray eyes my grandmother came alive again in his retelling of her story.

The turning point in my grandmother's destiny came on a fine, clear morning. She was young and beautiful then, not the wizened old lady I saw later. Although she herself possessed a staidness compatible with the family into which she had married, she was only eighteen, and a young woman who spends her days in a dark mansion is easily drawn to the singing of birds outside. Dressed in a red tunic, with embroidered slippers on her feet, she stood on the stone steps. The early morning sun lit up her healthy complexion, and her delicate hands hung charmingly by her sides. A pair of perky sparrows chirped on a tree in the courtyard and unveiled a little repertoire of actions that she found captivating. In her ignorance, she did not realize that they were engaged in courtship, and was deeply touched by their intimacy and ardor. Her absorption in the wonderful mood of that morning rendered her completely unaware of her mother-in-law's ponderous steps approaching. As the sparrows continued to posture and preen, the unsmiling mother-in-law could not allow her impropriety to continue one minute longer, and frightening words suddenly resounded in my grandmother's ears. The old lady said to her coldly, “Time to go inside.”

My grandmother was never to forget the shock she experienced at that moment. When she turned around, it was not just the usual dourness that confronted her; she saw instead, in her mother-in-law's keen and complex gaze, her own uncertain future. She was smart enough to realize immediately that the splendid little show put on by the sparrows must actually be a very shady piece of business. She returned to her room with a premonition that she was now in deep trouble, and her heart thumped in her chest with the awareness that the very course of her life had been thrown into doubt. She listened as her mother-in-law shuffled into another room, and soon other, sprightly footsteps approached, those of a maid. The maid entered the study and summoned her sleepy husband.

A silence ensued, as though nothing whatsoever had happened, but my grandmother's unease expanded by degrees, and with time a certain element of anticipation combined with her misgivings. She suddenly looked forward to the punishment coming sooner rather than later, for suspense could only make her more nervous.

At dinner my grandmother sensed right away that misfortune was about to befall her, for her mother-in-law was unusually nice to her and on occasion became quite red around the eyes, while her husband seemed doleful. Her mother-in-law had her stay behind after the meal and launched into a lengthy disquisition, reviewing their impeccable family history, emphasizing that — whether in terms of scholarship or government service— theirs was a heritage of which their posterity would be proud. What is more, their ancestors had produced a paragon of female chastity, the recipient of an official honor from a Qing emperor who had a soft spot for women. Here she really hit her stride, and waxed so lyrical on this subject that she could hardly drop the topic. In the end, however, she got to the point and told my grandmother she should get her things together. She could hardly have made it more obvious: a bill of divorce was on its way.

For my grandmother it was an unforgettable night. Her remote husband for once expressed affection for her, not by saying anything to her, but (according to what she later told my grandfather) by showering her with caresses — Granddad did not mention tears. It was perhaps on account of this evening that she always remembered him, and so later, as described by my grand-father, this dissolute character took on the virtues of a man who knew how to look after a woman.

My grandmother's mother-in-law lived at the tail end of the old order, and was not as despotic as her progenitors, for she did not tell her son what to do but gave him a choice, even though she knew all along what his choice would be. The next morning my grandmother rose early; her mother-in-law, even earlier. When her husband arrived in the reception room, he resumed his customary aspect, and my grandmother was hard put to find in his expression any trace of the previous nights sorrow. They had breakfast together. What was going through her mind in those moments? Still so young, she felt completely lost. Disaster was about to overtake her, there was no question about that, but before its arrival my grandmother felt dizzy, and everything in front of her swayed in an inchoate blur.

Then all three of them left the house, and my grandmother's mother-in-law, in her black clothes, led them to the highway. She instructed my grandmother to go west, while she for her part headed east. At this time the din of the Japanese war machine was steadily growing closer, and scattered clumps of refugees could be seen moving along the road. The matriarch committed to upholding the family's honor headed off toward the sunrise, while my grandmother set out in the other direction and the sun's first rays illuminated her back. As he had his last glimpse of her receding figure, her husband was stricken with grief, but his decision to follow his mother east was unhesitating.

My grandmother carried a heavy bundle on her back; inside were her clothes and jewelry, as well as some silver dollars. Her face exhibited a ghastly pallor; in the thirty years that followed, it would never again be rosy pink. The morning breeze blew her hair into disarray, but she did not have time to notice this as she was sucked into the flow of refugees. Joining them was perhaps a comfort to her, because it obscured her status as a divorced woman, and the helpless misery on her face could be seen on other faces too. My grandmother was like a leaf swept along in the current; she lumped together her misfortune and the others’ exodus. It was unthinkable that she return to her father's home and throwing in her lot with the horde of evacuees took the edge off her agonized consideration of her future.

My grandmother, who had been raised in such a sheltered environment, now found herself on the road during a full-blown war, but the trauma she suffered was quite unrelated to the outbreak of hostilities. Her darkest moment came when she ran into a man identifiable now only as a butcher. My grandmother recognized him as such on the basis of the pork grease and raw stench that his body exuded. In the decades that followed, she would tremble and shake at the smell of uncooked pork. This brute ravished my grandmother as briskly as if he were chopping meat.

In the war-torn twilight my grandmother had unwisely parted from the throng of refugees and gone down to the river to wash her now weather-beaten face. The figures moving along the highway grew sparser, then faded from view altogether while she squatted by the riverside, lost in sentimental musings. She had to face the butcher alone. Beneath the darkening sky she kneeled at his feet, the sound of her entreaties quivering in the evening breeze like her body itself. She opened her bundle, offering its contents to him in exchange for her honor. The butcher gave precisely the kind of boisterous laugh that her mother-in-law abhorred. “Sure, I'll take these things off your hands,” he said to her, “but I'm going to fuck you too.”

The day my grandmother sat in her sedan chair, soon to become someone's wife, my grandfather, twenty-three-year-old Sun Youyuan, was on his way to a place called Northmarsh Bridge along with his father, the famous Stonemason Sun, and a team of apprentices. They were going to build a large stone bridge with thirty arches. It was a morning in early spring, and my greatgrandfather had rented a wooden boat to carry him and his assistants down the broad river. He sat at the stern, smoking a pipe and watching his son with a twinkle in his eye. Sun Youyuan stood at the prow, his jacket open, his chest flushed red in the cold breeze. The bow gently rose and fell, cleaving the river like a knife and propelling the water into rapid retreat.

That winter an official in the Republican government had announced his intention to return home and visit his family. Years ago, after setting fire to the house of some moneybags, he had swum across this wide river when fleeing the area, and had later gone on to make his fortune. Now, as he prepared to go home in a blaze of glory, the county administrator could not possibly expect him to swim across the river one more time. So some Republican silver dollars were transferred to the hands of my great-grandfather. He knew it was an important assignment and enjoined his subordinates: “This time it's a government bridge we're building, so I'm expecting your best effort.”

They arrived at their destination, which despite its name had no bridge at all. My great-grandfather was in his fifties then, a man with a lean build and a loud voice. He walked back and forth along the riverside, beginning the job in a seemingly offhand manner; close behind him walked my energetic grandfather. As he surveyed the local topography, my great-grandfather constantly looked back and — just as my great-grandmother might yell at chickens in her yard — barked out instructions to his apprentices. From time to time my grandfather would pick up a handful of soil and squeeze it between his fingers or test it with his tongue. After they had finished assessing the lay of the land on both banks and drawing up plans, Great-grandfather told the apprentices to put up a construction shed and start extracting stone, while he and my grandfather slung tools and provisions over their backs and headed into the hills.

Their mission was to extract the dragon-gate stone. These two ancestors of mine scurried across the slopes like feral cats, tapping away with their hammers and for three whole months giving the hills no rest. In those days, a stonemason's skill found its fullest expression in the dragon-gate stone, the keystone that at the culmination of the whole project was placed at the very center of a bridge, joining the two sides; it could not afford to be one inch too big or one inch too small.

My great-grandfather was the smartest pauper of his age; compared to my grandmother's father, he was dynamic and accomplished. He had spent his life roaming far and wide; he possessed both an artist's free spirit and a peasant's stolidity. My grandfather, whom he had sired and reared, was a remarkable man in his own way. The two of them extracted from the hills a square dragon-gate stone, and on its facade they carved a relief of twin dragons vying for a pearl; two stone dragons, their bodies writhing in the air, fought fiercely for the spherical stone pearl in the center. They were not the kind of masons content simply to lay a slab across a ditch; the bridge they were about to construct would be so exquisite that it would lord itself over their posterity.

After three months of work, having quarried all the stone required, the apprentices went into the hills to fetch my two ancestors. On a sweltering summer day my great-grandfather sat erect on the dragon-gate stone as the eight apprentices lugged it down from the hills on their shoulders. He was naked to the waist, puffing away at his pipe, contentment apparent in his squinting eyes, but he was not in the least triumphant, for this was all perfectly routine as far as he was concerned. My ruddy-faced grandfather Sun Youyuan marched steadily alongside, crying every few paces, “Here comes the dragon-gate stone!”

But this was not the most stirring moment. That came later, well into the autumn of that year, when the day finally came to close the gap in the middle of the bridge. Decorated archways were set up at the two ends, their colored bunting flapping in the wind like tree leaves; there were deafening peals of music and clouds of incense; a noisy hubbub rose from the ranks of country folk who had flocked to the scene from many miles around. Not a single sparrow was to be seen, the frightening din having driven them all to seek anxious refuge on trees far away. It has always surprised me that Sun Youyuan, having witnessed this splendid scene, could in his final years be so awed by my grandmother's wedding. Compared with this, her wedding was a nonevent.

It would never have occurred to my great-grandfather that his career would take a nosedive at this particular juncture. He had always been able to depend on his wits and his skills as he made his way in the world, but here in Northmarsh Bridge he came upon a cropper. He had in fact noticed that the soil was porous and that the bridge was subsiding. But he was a bit too confident, a bit too fixed in his judgment, thinking on the basis of past experience that some settling was inevitable. However, as the completion date grew closer, the rate of subsidence increased. By overlooking that point, my great-grandfather condemned himself to a miserable old age.

Although it was to end a fiasco, the sight of the eight apprentices carrying the dragon-gate stone onto the bridge was inspiring at the time. They marched proudly up to the apex and their work song died away. As they carefully lowered the dragon-gate stone toward the breach, the music hushed and the spectators went completely quiet. That was when my great-grandfather heard a grating scrape rather than the resounding clunk that he had anticipated, and knew, sooner than anybody else present, that disaster had struck. He had been watching from the decorated arch, and the unanticipated crisis left a smile frozen on his face. When that awful jarring noise reached his ears, he sprang to his feet, like a fish about to go bottom up — as my grandfather was later to tell us — with the whites of the eyes exposed. But he was after all a veteran of many adventures, and before the crowd had cottoned on to just what was amiss he had already come down from the decorated arch and walked away with his pipe pressed against his back, as though he was heading off to a tavern. He made straight for the hills, leaving his son and the team of apprentices to shoulder the disgrace.

The dragon-gate stone was tightly wedged inside the breach, and though the eight burly youths turned red in the face in their efforts to raise it out of its awkward position, it remained lodged there, immobile. As a wave of hisses swept over them, their eight faces shone like pig livers in the scorching sun. The dragon-gate stone lay tilted like a seesaw, unadjustable, unremovable.

I don't know how Sun Youyuan managed to get through that terrible afternoon. By making his getaway as he did, my greatgrandfather came across too much like a petty thief. Sun Youyuan had to bear a double shame: while just as disconsolate as the apprentices, he also suffered the ignominy of being my greatgrandfather's son. It was a complete disaster — just as bad, my grandfather told us, as if a house had collapsed on top of their heads. He was in all the worse a situation because he happened to be one of the eight porters. He gripped the balustrade but found himself unable to take a single step forward, as drained of strength as though someone had squeezed him in the crotch.

It was after dark when my great-grandfather returned. Although he had been too mortified to face the local spectators earlier in the day, he still managed to project a superior air in front of his son and the apprentices. The old man, masking his inner turmoil, lectured his dispirited audience in a rasping voice. “Don't pull such long faces. I'm not dead yet. A new start can be made. I remember how things were when I started out…”

In expansive, inspiring tones he reviewed his stirring past and painted for his disciples an even more splendid future. Then all of a sudden he announced, “We're disbanding.”

He turned on his heel and strode away as the apprentices stared and gaped in shock. But when he reached the entrance to the construction shed, my great-grandfather, who was so fond of taking people by surprise, spun around and issued a piece of confident advice. “Remember your master's words: so long as you've got money in your pocket, you won't have to sleep in an empty bed.”

In that bygone era, the old man found it very easy to impress himself. When he decided to leave that very night for the county seat so that he could present his apology to the local administrator, he felt that he was displaying an integrity worthy of legendary heroes, and when he told my grandfather that a man has to take responsibility for his actions the tremor in his voice came entirely from his own sense of exaltation. Seeing his father transported by the ambition to convert failure into glory, Sun Youyuan himself felt a foolish surge of pride.

But my great-grandfathers morale slumped after he had taken only a few steps, for he made the mistake of looking back at the stone bridge. He could not help himself, because the upturned dragon-gate stone glinted in the moonlight, like a wild dog baring its fangs in a bad dream. As my granddad watched, the old man's silhouette seemed to tremble and totter. Under a chilly moon my great-grandfather began his wearisome trek down that little country road, assailed by a persistent sense of failure. Far from marching gallantly into the county jail, as Sun Youyuan claimed was the case when he related this episode to us later, he looked even more feeble than a sick man trundled into the hospital at death's door.

For a long time Sun Youyuan was inspired by his father's heroic spirit, despite its fraudulence. He did not change his profession as his father had urged, and after a number of apprentices had packed up their belongings and left for home, he and the seven other bearers of the dragon-gate stone stayed on. Sun Youyuan vowed to salvage the stone bridge, and after his father's departure he applied his own acumen to telling effect. First he led the seven apprentices out and directed them to dig sixteen holes underneath the arch, and then he had them cut sixteen wooden stakes. After inserting the stakes into the shafts, the eight young men swung sixteen hammers and struck the stakes in a ferocious frenzy. Bystanders may well have thought they were lunatics, for they banged away there for a full four hours. In deference to their puny but strenuous efforts, the huge bridge ever so slightly rose, and eventually my grandfather heard an encouraging scrape, followed by a thunderous boom, and he had achieved his goal. The dragon-gate stone now snugly and securely filled the breach.

My grandfather was so elated that he bounded down the road, tears streaming down his face, calling my great-grandfather at the top of his lungs. He ran a full fifteen miles in one go, all the way to the county town. When my great-grandfather emerged befuddled from jail, he saw his son soaked from head to toe as if he had spent the whole night in the rain, though there was a baking sun in a clear blue sky. My grandfather had expended practically all his bodily fluids in making his dash, and he was able just to call “Dad …” before he collapsed to the ground with a thump.

My great-grandfather bore the imprint of his era's frailty, and even though he could draw comfort from his son's redemption of the Northmarsh Bridge debacle he found it impossible thereafter to recover his former vigor. With the ponderous steps of an old peasant, my demoralized great-grandfather plodded toward my great-grandmother, who when young had been quite a beauty. In their twilight years these two old folks began, for the first time in their lives, to spend day after day in each other's company.

Meanwhile my grandfather, the proud and self-assured Sun Youyuan, led a team of masons just like his father before him, and carried on the business established by his forebears. But his glory days were fleeting; as the last generation of traditional stonemasons, they encountered only indifference from the age in which they lived. Besides, many stone arched bridges already spanned the rivers in the surrounding area, and given their predecessors’ skilled craftsmanship it was too much to expect that all these structures would simply give way overnight. Sun Youyuan's hungry crew traversed the waterlands of Jiangnan, clinging to their naive hopes. The only opportunity that came their way allowed them to construct a small stone-paved bridge — a crooked bridge, at that. But it gave Sun Youyuan the chance to observe his future father-in-law's scholarly bearing.

A group of peasants had pooled together funds to engage their services, and my grandfather by now was too hard up to be picky. At one time the Suns had specialized in arched bridges of impressive scale, but things had now reached such a parlous state that Sun Youyuan readily accepted the commission to build a little slab bridge. They selected a place where two highways intersected as the best site to build the foundation, but a large camphor tree on the other bank hampered construction at one end. My grandfather waved his arm and told them to cut the tree down, not knowing that its owner was the father of his wife-to-be.

Liu Xinzhi was known near and far as a man of property; he was to go through his whole life not knowing that his ultimate son-in-law was a pauper. A licentiate under the imperial examination system, he was much given to pontificating about the scholar's obligation to be first to worry about the world's problems and last to enjoy the world's pleasures. But when he heard that there was a plan afoot to fell his family's camphor tree, he was just as incensed as if they were proposing to dig up the ancestral tombs. Oblivious of his reputation for profound learning, he unleashed a string of barnyard curses at the people who had come to consult him.

Sun Youyuan, his hands tied, had no choice but to build the foundation at a slight angle to the line of the bridge, and after three months the crooked bridge was completed. Now that the job was finished, the sponsors invited Liu Xinzhi, Old Master Liu, to bestow a name upon it.

That was the morning that my grandfather saw his father-inlaw. He watched with awe as Liu Xinzhi emerged, dressed in silk, and walked at a snail's pace toward him. Somehow this pretentious licentiate appeared even more imposing to Sun Youyuan's eyes than an official in the Republican administration. Years later, as my grandmother's bed partner, he looked back on the scene that day, recalling how the decadent Liu Xinzhi still managed to impress him in his robust youth.

My grandmother's father maintained a scholarly posture all the way to the bridge, but once he got there he promptly announced that it was beneath his notice, saying sharply, as though he had been insulted, “Such a lousy crooked bridge, and you ask me to think of a name for it!” And he went off in a huff.

My grandfather carried on crisscrossing the country north and south. He and his team trudged long distances amid the gunfire of Nationalists and Communists, through scenes of famine; in such times as these, who would think of raising money to have them demonstrate their skills? Like a band of beggars, they tried to drum up business everywhere they went. My grandfather was stirred by an ambition to build bridges, but he lived at the wrong time, in an era infatuated with destruction. In the end his motley crew had little choice but to compromise their initial innocence and take on any work available, even cleaning corpses and digging graves, for only by such means could they ensure that they themselves did not die by the roadside. In that dire hour, Sun Youyuan somehow managed to induce them to follow him on his aimless and futile travels; I have no idea what kind of blandishments he used to persuade them. Finally one night, mistaken for Communist guerrillas, they were fired upon by Nationalist troops, and these stonemasons, so steeped in out-of-date ideals, were forced to go their separate ways, alive or dead.

At that time my grandfather and his band of paupers were sleeping on a riverbank. After the first wave of shots rang out, Sun Youyuan was unscathed, and he propped himself up and yelled, “What do you think you are doing, letting off firecrackers?” Then he saw that the face of an apprentice next to him had been shot to pieces, reduced in the moonlight to a gruesome mess, like an egg that has been smashed on the ground. My bleary-eyed grandfather took to his heels and ran, yelling and screaming as he tore along the bank. But he soon hushed when a bullet whistled through the crotch of his pants. “Damn it,” he thought, “my balls have been blown away!” He continued to run for his life all the same. When he had run a good ten miles, he felt that his crotch was completely soaked through. It didn't occur to him that it could be drenched with sweat and he felt sure that he was losing all his blood, so he came to a stop and reached in a hand to press down on the wound. In so doing, he brushed against his testicles. At first he was startled, thinking, “What the hell is this?” But more careful examination confirmed that the family jewels were intact and unharmed. Later he sat down under a tree, toying with his sweaty testicles for a good long time and chuckling away. Only when he was absolutely sure of his own safety did he give any thought to the band of apprentices on the riverbank. The memory of the youngster s shattered face reduced him to tears and wails.

For Sun Youyuan to try to keep the family business afloat was clearly no longer an option. At the age of twenty-five, he felt the same bleak hopelessness that had beset his father on his retirement. As Spring Festival approached, wearing the careworn expression of an old man, my young grandfather stepped onto a dust-blown highway and set off for home.

My great-grandfather had fallen seriously ill after he returned home the previous year, and though my great-grandmother spent all their savings she was unable to return him to his former vigor and had to pawn everything of value in the house. Eventually she found herself bedridden too. On the last day of the year, when my grandfather returned home ragged and penniless, his father had already breathed his last, and his mother lay sprawled next to his lifeless body, on the verge of death. Racked by illness as she was, she could greet her son's return only with a rasping, hurried breath. My grandfather had brought poverty back to a poverty-stricken home.

This was the darkest hour in my grandfather's early years. By now there was nothing left in the house worth pawning and during the holiday season no way to sell his labor to earn rice and firewood. At his wits’ end, braving a piercing wind, he ran toward town on the morning of the Chinese New Year, his father's body over his shoulder. He had come up with the idea of leaving his dead parent at the pawnshop, and as he ran he constantly apologized to the corpse on his shoulders, at the same time racking his brains to think of an excuse that would make him feel better. My great-grandfather's body had lain frozen for two days and two nights in the drafty thatched cottage, and was then carried by my grandfather for ten miles through the howling north wind. When he set it down on the counter of the pawnshop in town, it was as stiff as a board.

Tears welling up in his eyes, my grandfather threw himself on the mercy of the pawnshop proprietor, explaining that it wasn't that he was an unfilial son, but there was simply no other recourse open to him. He told the pawnbroker, “My dad is dead, and I have no money for his burial; my mom is alive, but ill in bed at home with no money for treatment. Do a good deed, will you? I'll redeem my dad in a few days’ time.”

The pawnbroker was an old man in his sixties; he had never in his life heard of using a corpse as collateral. Covering his nose with his hand, he waved him away. “No, that won't do, I'm afraid. We don't accept gold bodhisattvas here.” On the first day of the New Year he wished to strike a propitious note, and so he elevated Great-grandfather to the rank of a priceless treasure.

But my grandfather, refusing to take no for an answer, persisted with his entreaties, and so three clerks came forward and shoved my great-grandfather down off the counter. He fell as rigid as a flagstone, hitting the ground with a resounding thud. Sun Youyuan hastened to pick his father up and inspected him fearfully to see if any damage had been done. A spray of cold water then descended on his head, for without waiting for him to leave the shop the clerks had begun to clean the counter soiled by the unwanted pledge. This incensed Sun Youyuan, who swung a heavy fist in the face of one, knocking him to the ground with the force of a pellet hurled from a slingshot. My grandfather used his enormous strength to overturn the counter, but when several more clerks descended on him, cudgels flying, the only thing he could think of was to raise his father's corpse aloft, to ward off their blows and take the battle to them. In that chilly morning he brandished the rock-hard carcass and turned the pawnshop upside down. Brave Sun Youyuan gained strong support from his father's cadaver, beating the clerks till they did not know what to do. None of them dared to touch the corpse for fear of incurring a whole year's worth of bad luck, and the superstitions of the day, combined with Sun Youyuan's audacity, ensured that he encountered practically no resistance. But when my grandfather swung his father around and lashed out at the ashen-faced proprietor, it was Sun Youyuan's turn to be horrified, for in so doing he knocked his father s head against a chair. An awful noise awoke him to the realization that he had committed a monstrous sin, using his father's remains as a combat weapon. His father's head had been knocked askew, and after a moment of shock my grandfather hoisted him onto his shoulder, dashed outside, and set off at a run through the icy wind. In the end he did, like a proper son, weep bitter tears— he was sitting under a winter elm then, cradling my damaged ancestor. It took a great deal of effort to twist his father's head back into its original position.

Sun Youyuan buried his father, but he had not buried poverty, and in the days that followed he could only dig up some herbs and boil them in a broth for his mother to drink. These were little pink and green plants that grew at the foot of the wall— motherwort, though Sun Youyuan did not know that. He was overjoyed to find that his ailing mother, after drinking the broth, was able to get out of bed and walk around. My slapdash grandfather found this a revelation, thinking naively that he now understood the true state of affairs, that those miracle-working physicians actually had no special skill at all, that there was nothing more to it than harvesting a pile of herbs and medicating a patient the same way you would feed a sheep. So he abandoned the idea of going to town to work as a laborer, and after being a mason all his life he decided he would now devote himself to health care.

Sun Youyuan was excited about the prospect. He knew that when starting out one needed to make house calls and interview patients; once his reputation was established he could sit at home and have the afflicted come to him for treatment. He threw a basket of herbs on his back and began an itinerant life, going from door to door, yelling like a rubbish collector in that ringing voice of his, “I'll swap my cures for your diseases.”

His innovative sales pitch attracted much interest, but his ragtag appearance left people unsure how seriously to take him. In the end a family engaged his services; the first (and last) patient of my grandfather's career was a boy with acute diarrhea. Sun Youyuan took a casual look at the ailing child, and without bothering to take his pulse or ascertain his symptoms he reached into his basket for a handful of herbs, which he handed to the boy's father with instructions to cook them into a soup. While the family eyed the herbs doubtfully, Sun Youyuan made a quick exit, picking up his refrain, “I'll swap my cures for your diseases.”

When the boy's father followed him out of the house, quizzing him in earnest perplexity, it astonishes me that Sun Youyuan still managed to tell him with supreme self-confidence, “That's right: he takes my medicine and I take his illness away.”

No sooner had the poor boy drunk the herb soup than he vomited and excreted copious amounts of green fluid, and within two days he had breathed his last. The result was that one afternoon my great-grandmother was treated to the alarming sight of a dozen men rushing furiously toward her house.

My grandfather maintained his composure. He told his frightened mother to go back into her room and closed the door behind her, and then he went out to meet the visitors with a welcoming smile on his face. The father and other relatives of the deceased child had come to make Sun Youyuan pay with his life. Though confronted by their livid and intransigent faces, Sun Youyuan still tried to disarm them with specious platitudes. They were in no mood to listen to his rambling and ridiculous speech and closed ranks tightly around him, with several shiny hoes aimed at his shiny shaved head. Having survived a hail of Nationalist bullets, Sun Youyuan was unperturbed, and he informed them complacently that he didn't care if there were a dozen of them — even if there were twice that number, he would still beat them till they were covered all over with bruises. For Sun Youyuan to make such exaggerated claims when he was staring death in the face left them quite dazed. My grandfather untied the buttons of his jacket and said, “Let me just take this off, and then we can get on with it.”

So saying, Sun Youyuan thrust a hoe aside, walked back up to the house, pushed the door open, and coolly kicked it shut. After that, no further sound was heard from him; the avengers outside were rolling up their sleeves, unaware that my grandfather had already jumped out the back window and fled, and they continued to stand there, gearing up to do battle with their terrible foe. Only after waiting a while longer with no sign of Sun Youyuan did they sense that something had gone awry, and kicking the door open they found the house completely deserted. Then they saw my grandfather, with his mother on his back, fleeing down the road and already well off in the distance. My grandfather was no country bumpkin, after all; his improvised escape shows that he was more than just dauntless, he could be wily too.

It was not so difficult for Sun Youyuan to sling my great-grandmother over his back and take to his heels, but now that he had started running, it was not so easy to stop. He mingled with the streams of refugees just as my grandmother had done, and on several occasions he clearly heard the sound of Japanese guns at his back. Being the devoted son that his era expected him to be, he could not bear to see my great-grandmother lurching down the road in her bound feet, so he carried her on his back the whole way, sweat pouring down his face, panting for breath, following the refugees as they fled helter-skelter along dust-swirled roads.His only respite came one evening when, reduced to a state of near-total exhaustion, he detached himself from the throng, set my great-grandmother down under a withered tree, and went off in search of water. Successive days of arduous travel had so worn out my feeble great-grandmother that she fell into a heavy sleep as soon as she lay down, and on that chilly moonlit night she was savaged by a wild dog. As a child, I found it hard to get my mind off this nightmarish scene: somebody falls asleep, and then — a bit here, a piece there — they are devoured by a wild dog; I could not imagine anything more gruesome than that. By the time my grandfather returned to the tree, my great-grandmother had been horribly mangled. The wild dog stuck out its long tongue and licked its nose, staring at my grandfather ferociously. His mother's shocking appearance made Sun Youyuan howl like a lunatic. He forgot for a moment that he was human, and he bared his teeth just like the wild dog and made a lunge toward it. It was my grandfather's roar that frightened the animal most, and it turned tail and fled. Sun Youyuan, in a towering rage, set off in pursuit, but the curses he rained down on the vile creature must have slowed his pace. Eventually, when the dog had completely disappeared from view, my grandfather returned to his mother's remains, rattled and tearful. He knelt at her side and punched himself viciously in the face, his piercing wails filling the night with gloom and dread.

After burying his mother, Sun Youyuan found his confidence at a historic low. Sick at heart, he randomly followed the swarms of refugees, though his mother's death had rendered his flight suddenly meaningless. That's why when my grandfather first saw my grandmother by a tumbledown wall a brook babbled in his heart. By this time all traces of my grandmother's lofty pedigree had been erased; she sat bedraggled on a bank of wild grass and saw my grandfather's haggard face with blurry eyes, through disheveled hair. Reduced by hunger to utter debility before long she slumped on my grandfather's back and fell asleep. Young Sun Youyuan thus acquired a wife and brought to an end his life as an aimless vagabond. So long a victim of poverty and undernourishment, Sun Youyuan now strode forward with my grandmother on his back, his face glowing with hope.

IN THE FLICKERING LIGHT

After Grandfather sprained his back, an uncle suddenly impinged on my consciousness. An utter stranger to me, he apparently lived in a small market town and did a job that involved people opening their mouths and his reaching in and pulling out their teeth. According to reports, he shared a street corner with a butcher and a cobbler. My uncle inherited the medical career that my grandfather had once pursued in such absurd fashion, but he was able to sustain it indefinitely, which shows that his medical technique differed from my grandfather's utter hogwash. By the side of a noisy street he opened his broad oilcloth umbrella and sat down underneath it, as though he were out fishing. As soon as he donned his white gown with its motley collection of dirty blotches, he could claim to be a medical specialist. The small table in front of him was piled with several pairs of rusty pliers and several dozen bloodstained teeth. These pulled teeth served effectively as a vehicle for self-promotion, advertising the high sophistication of his dental arts and drumming up business from customers with loose teeth.

When Granddad walked past us one morning without a word, a blue bundle over his back and a shabby umbrella in his hand, my big brother and I were taken aback. He said nothing to my parents as he left, and they gave no sign that there was anything unusual about his departure. My brother and I leaned up against the back windowsill, watching him shuffle off. It was Mother who told us, “He's gone to see your uncle.”

In his final years my grandfather's plight was like that of a rickety old chair that is abandoned and can only wait quietly for the advent of the fire that will consume it. On the day Granddad came to grief my brother Sun Guangping had been given a satchel, an accessory that, owing to the fact he was older than me, he received well before I did. That moment still glimmers in my childhood memory. Late one afternoon, on the eve of the start of the school year, my father Sun Kwangtsai sat on the doorsill, puffed up with unjustified pride, loudly instructing my older brother what to do if the kids in town got into an argument with him: “If there's just one of them, hit him; if there's two, scoot back home.”

Sun Guangping, then eight years old, gazed at Sun Kwangtsai with a look of mindless awe; it was during these years that he most idolized his father. His deferential expression inspired my father to patiently explain the reasoning behind this injunction, unconscious of what nonsense he was talking.

For a clodhopper, my father was very smart, and quick to pick up whatever fashion was in vogue. The first time my brother headed off for school with his satchel on his back, Sun Kwangtsai stood at the entrance to the village and issued a final reminder. It was comical to see a grown man like him imitate the tone of a bad guy in a movie. “Password?” he barked out.

My older brother had a natural gift for putting things in a nutshell. When he turned around to deliver his response, he did not repeat his fathers fussy and complicated instructions but called simply “Beat one, flee two.”

In the midst of that gleeful exchange my aging grandfather slipped past silently, holding a length of cord: he was going up the hill to collect firewood. Seen from behind, he looked so tall and strong. I was sitting on the ground, and his forceful steps sprinkled dust over my face, blurring the jealousy I felt toward my brother and the unthinking excitement of the moment.

My grandfather's misadventure was intertwined with my big brother's jubilation. At that stage, more than twenty years ago, my younger brother and I were still happy just to forage for snails at the edge of the pond. But Sun Guangping, on his first day back from school, was all set to show off what he had learned. I'll never forget how he swaggered home with his satchel over his shoulder, then swung the satchel around so that it hung over his chest and put his hands behind his back. The latter gesture clearly was designed as an imitation of his teacher. He sat down next to the pond and pulled his textbook out, first letting the sunlight catch it, then reading it with great concentration. My little brother and I watched dumbfounded, the way two hungry dogs, their stomachs rumbling, might watch a bone flying through the air.

It was at this precise moment that Sun Kwangtsai came lumbering up, with an ashen Sun Youyuan on his back. My father was fuming. He set Sun Youyuan down inside on his bed, and as soon as he came out of the house he started muttering, “It's just what I was afraid of, that somebody would get sick. Now we're really screwed! One more mouth to feed and one less pair of hands at work — that's twice we lose out.”

After taking that tumble on the hill my grandfather was laid up in bed for a whole month, and though later he was able to get up and walk about, his back was so stiff that full movement was beyond him. Having lost the capacity to engage in labor, he would greet the villagers with a smile even more timid than the one he wore when my grandmother died. I can still picture the tremulous look on his face as he told them, “I can't bend down.”

One could hear self-recrimination in his voice, as well as an eagerness to justify himself. His fate was forever altered by this sudden handicap, and he began a life of dependency. In the few months leading up to my departure from Southgate, the old man, once so hale and hearty, rapidly grew sallow and emaciated, as though a makeup department had been working on him. It was clear that he had become an encumbrance, and thus was inaugurated the arrangement whereby his sons took turns looking after him, and I finally learned that I had an uncle. After a full month at our house, Granddad would set off along the dirt track into town. He needed to take a boat from there, I believe, to reach the place where my uncle lived. A month later, right around dusk, his figure would shamble into sight again in the distance, on that same road.

At such moments, my big brother and I would race exuberantly toward him. Our little brother could only stand at the edge of the village and watch us as we ran, a smile of vicarious excitement on his face. Sun Youyuan's eyes would brim with tears, and his hands would tremble as he ruffled our hair. In reality, our mad dash was inspired by sibling rivalry, not by any great delight at Granddad's return. The umbrella in his hand and the bundle on his back were what triggered our enthusiasm: whoever was first to grab the umbrella was the undisputed champion. Once, I remember, my brother seized the bundle as well as the umbrella, and then marched along on Granddad's right, proud as a peacock. I, on the other hand, was heartbroken to be completely empty-handed. On the short walk home I kept complaining to Granddad about how unreasonable my brother was. “He's got the bundle too!” I sobbed, “He took the umbrella, and then he took the bundle!”

Granddad did not correct this injustice, as I had hoped. His misunderstanding of our motives brought tears to his eyes, and I can still remember how he wiped them away with the back of his hand. My little brother, then four, was always on the lookout for ways of turning things to his advantage, and seeing Granddad so tearful he ran home as fast as he could, shrilly announcing to our parents: “Granddad's crying.” Though he, like me, came back empty-handed, he had found something to make up for it.

Given my tender age before I left home, I could not possibly feel the extent of the humiliation Granddad suffered. But now that I think about it, my father was always in a foul mood during the month that Granddad was with us. In our cramped little house he would often howl as loud as a winter gale. If he pointed at Sun Youyuan and cursed him by name, then I would be in no doubt that Granddad was bearing the brunt of his rage, but at other times I would watch my father warily in case he was suddenly to aim a kick at me. When I was young my father was an unpredictable fellow.

During his time at our house my grandfather was so self-effacing that he practically disappeared. He would sit for a long time in an inconspicuous corner, silently idling away what little life he had left. But when meals were served he would appear on the scene as quick as lightning, often startling us three boys. My little brother then had an opportunity to show off, putting his hand to his chest and looking agitated, so as to underscore what a fright he'd been given.

Examples of Granddad's spinelessness remain etched on my mind. On one occasion when Sun Guangming went looking for him, my little brother — still unsteady on his feet — fell down and started wailing. Not only that — he started cursing too, as if he had somehow been tripped. Not yet able to enunciate very well, he did his best to swear with great conviction, though it all sounded like a puppy's yapping to me. Granddad, however, was so anxious that his face went pale, fearful that Sun Guangming would carry on crying right until my father came back from the fields at the end of the day, and knowing that Sun Kwangtsai would never pass up an opportunity to fly into a rage. One could see in Sun You-yuan's eyes a dread that disaster was about to strike.

After his accident Sun Youyuan seldom mentioned our grandmother, talk of whom made us uncomfortable. Instead he became accustomed to recalling for himself the days that he spent with her. He, after all, was the only member of the family who would have been able to savor the memories of their lives together.

When Sun Youyuan sat in a bamboo chair recalling his pretty young bride (once so well-to-do), his pallid face seemed all the more expressive, for its creases and furrows would start to undulate. I would often sneak a glance at the smiles that fluttered over his face like grasses in a breeze, smiles that strike me as poignant when I think about them now. But for me at the age I was then, I was simply astonished that someone could smile all by himself. When I shared this discovery with my big brother, who was down by the riverside catching shrimp, he ran home at a speed faster than I could manage, his excitement proving how right I was to be amazed. When we two grimy little boys arrived by Granddad's side, a smile was still playing delicately on his face. My brother acted with a boldness that was almost beyond my imagination, and his loud cries of protest jerked my grandfather out of his reveries. Granddad quivered from head to toe, as though struck by lightning; his mysterious smile vanished and his eyes filled with apprehension. My brother, still so immature, assumed a mantle of severity as he scolded Granddad: “How can you smile when you're on your own? Only loonies do that.” Then he waved his hand dis-missively: “In the future, you're not to smile by yourself, is that understood?”

Granddad, now clear on this point, gave a humble and deferential nod.

In his final years Sun Youyuan tried to get on the right side of everyone in the family, but given that he was our senior, his self-abasement could hardly win our respect. For a time I was pulled in two directions. On the one hand, I urged myself to follow Sun Guangping's example and throw my weight around with Granddad. For a child to issue orders to an adult, after all, is stirring stuff. But at the same time I was swayed by Granddad's kindly gaze, and when we exchanged glances, the warmth in his eyes made it impossible for me to flaunt some spurious authority. I could only leave the room in low spirits and go off in search of Sun Guangping, whose feistiness I admired.

After Granddad framed my little brother — and so coldbloodedly, too — I abandoned altogether any idea I might have had of bullying Granddad. From that time on my grandfather was for me a sinister, forbidding presence.

It all stemmed from a simple accident. As my grandfather rose from his corner one day, he happened to give the table a jolt and a bowl was knocked to the floor. I was close enough to see how Granddad froze in horror. He stood with his back to me, staring at the shards of china that now lay scattered at his feet. When I try now to recall the image of him standing there, I see only a hazy shadow. But I do remember that he came out with a long string of shocked whispers; never since have I heard anybody talk as rapidly as he did then.

Sun Youyuan did not clear away the broken pieces as I was expecting him to do. By now I was six, an age when I could dimly sense that something awful was going to happen, something involving my father, who was due to come home any minute. I had no idea how fearsome he would be when he lost his temper this time, but I knew that to a man as strong as him, shaking a fist was as easy and natural as it was for my mother to shake out her scarf. I stood there as Granddad sat down again in his corner, seemingly unperturbed, having made no effort to conceal the damage. His calm demeanor only intensified my unease. My young eyes veered uncertainly between the shattered bowl and my grandfather's face, and then I fled in alarm, as though I had stumbled on a snake.

As I had feared, Sun Kwangtsai was driven to new heights of manic anger by the loss of the bowl. Perhaps he was secretly hoping that Granddad was indeed the culprit, so as to justify the abuse he was always tempted to heap on him. His face flushed, Sun Kwangtsai shouted and screamed tirelessly like a child. His anger caught us three boys in its slipstream, reducing us to shivers as though we were being buffeted by a gale. When I glanced timidly at Sun Youyuan, he shocked me by standing up and meekly telling my father, “Sun Guangming broke it.”

My little brother, fidgeting at my side, did not take this in at all. There was alarm on his face, to be sure, but that came from Sun Kwangtsai's menacing expression. When my father, now boiling with rage, asked him, “Did you do it?” my little brother was scared speechless, and it was not until Sun Kwangtsai roared out this question a second time, pressing toward him threateningly, that I finally heard him speak up in his own defense: “It wasn't me.”

My little brother slurred his words. Right up until the day he died, he was prone to mumble. His response further inflamed my father, who was no doubt bent on making the most of this opportunity to blow off steam. He practically exploded, “If it wasn't you, how did the bowl get broken?”

My little brother looked utterly bewildered. Questioned thus, he could only shake his head in confusion. He was just too young; though able to issue a simple denial, he did not understand that testimony was needed to support his case. Worst of all, he was suddenly distracted by a bird outside and ran out the door to investigate. For my father, this was an intolerable provocation. Seething with fury, he yelled, “Come back here, you little son of a bitch!”

Although Sun Guangming knew enough to be frightened, he did not realize the gravity of the situation. No sooner was he back in the house than he pointed outside and gave what seemed to him a perfectly reasonable explanation for his exit. “There was a little bird!” he told Sun Kwangtsai, his eyes wide. “It was just there!”

My little brother's tender face took the full force of my father's flailing hand. He flew through the air and landed with a thump on the floor, where he lay in total silence for what seemed like forever. My mother, no less frightened than me by my father's rampages, cried out in alarm and ran to his aid. Then at last Sun Guangming started to bawl. Just as he did not knowwhy he had been slapped, he did not seem to know why he was crying either.

My fathers rage began to recede. He banged on the table and yelled, “What the hell are you crying about?”

Then he went outside. Inflamed by his own anger but softened by Sun Guangming's wails, he chose to give way. As he went out, he continued railing, “Wastrels! I have a house full of wastrels. The oldest one claims his back hurts just from walking and the youngest one is a full fucking four years old but still talks in a mumble like he's got a ball in his mouth. Each one is worse than the last. The way they're going, this house is heading for ruin.”

He capped this with a self-pitying coda: “Fate is so unkind to me!”

Events had unfolded so quickly: my father left before I had time to recover from the shock of what had happened. When I turned to glare at my grandfather, I found him still standing there, shaking like a leaf. Probably I had been too confused to immediately come to my little brother's defense: a six-year-old perhaps has slow reactions — or at least I did. But afterward this incident kept haunting me like a shadow in the moonlight. Although I wanted to expose Granddad, I could never bring myself to do so. Once, when nobody else was around, I did approach him. He was sitting in his sun-dappled corner, eyeing me in his usual benign way. But at that moment his affectionate gaze only made me shudder. With all the courage I could muster I said, “It was you who broke the bowl.”

Granddad calmly shook his head and at the same time smiled at me indulgently. His smile was like a mighty fist arcing toward me, and I had to force myself not to turn around and flee. In an effort to conceal my alarm I shouted, “It was you!”

My accusation, however just, failed to wrest a confession from Granddad, and he responded serenely, “It wasn't me.”

Granddad's tone of unshakable confidence made me begin to wonder if I was the one who had got things wrong. As I stood there uncertainly, he again gave me one of his terrifying smiles. My spirits crumbled and I hurriedly beat a retreat.

With the passage of days it was all the more difficult to blow the whistle on Granddad, and at the same time I realized that he stirred in me an indefinable phobia. If I ran home to pick something up and discovered that Granddad was watching me from his corner, I would tremble all over.

Through the depredations of my grandmother during the previous three decades, Sun Youyuan had lost his youthful energy, and now he had become a timid and servile old man. But as he deteriorated physically, his mental acuity sharpened. In the flickering light of old age Sun Youyuan recaptured the shrewdness and intelligence of his youth.

My father liked to scold Granddad over the dinner table, for it was at such moments that he was confronted with the most disagreeable evidence of the economic losses he was sustaining. Amid my father's bluster my grandfather would bow his head and assume an expression of anxiety. But this did not affect the pace of his eating, and the chopsticks in his hands conveyed food from plate to mouth with startling rapidity. He turned a deaf ear to Sun Kwangtsai's abuse, or seemed to treat it as a condiment that enhanced the pleasure of the meal. Only when the bowl and chopstickswere removed from his grip was he forced to stop. Sun Youyuan would then keep his head bowed and his eyes stubbornly glued to the dishes left on the table.

So it was that later on my father had Granddad sit on a low chair from which he could see the dishes on the table but not the food inside them. By then I had already left Southgate. My poor grandfather could only lay his chin on the table and stare as the others transferred food to their bowls. My little brother, being so short, suffered much the same inconvenience, but he could always count on my mother to help him. Sun Guangming liked to test the limits, and time and again he would stand up on his stool, rejecting his mother's help, and cater to his appetite through his own efforts. The silly boy would then incur a penalty quite out of proportion to the crime. In those days my father was not the least inclined to be lenient, and even for such a small thing he would subject my little brother to a pummeling, at the same time announcing, like a tyrant, “If anyone stands up again at the dinner table, I'll break their legs!”

Sun Kwangtsai's real goal in punishing my little brother so harshly was to cow his father into submission, as Granddad perfectly well knew. He sat meekly in his little chair, and for Sun Kwangtsai it was most gratifying to witness the old man's discomfort as he raised his chopsticks high in the air and struggled to pick up morsels from this awkward angle.

But my grandfather, like a rodent that digs a hole in a dike, found insidious ways of countering his son's malice. Having managed to shift the blame for the broken bowl onto my little brother, now he had his eye on him once more. Of course, it was only Sun Guangming who shared Granddad's discontent with the height of the table. But my little brother was conscious of this problem only during meals, for the rest of the time he was rushing madly all over the place like a wild rabbit. It was my grandfather, fixed for long periods in his corner, who had all the time in the world to figure out how to address the issue.

Over a period of several days, whenever my little brother came close to him, Sun Youyuan would mutter darkly, “The table's too high.”

These repeated murmurings inspired my brother, now nine years old, to stand between Granddad and the table and look back and forth between the two for some time. A light in his eyes told my grandfather that the little chap had ideas turning over in his mind.

Sun Youyuan, who understood my brothers psychology so well, coughed loudly — to cover up his own scheming, perhaps, for he was quite prepared to wait for Sun Guangming to come up with a plan.

Apart from his habit of slurring words, my little brother was strong in other areas. With his budding intelligence and the destructive urge typical of his age he immediately saw a way to address the table-height issue. He cried to Granddad triumphantly, “Saw it down!”

My grandfather assumed a look of astonishment, at the same time throwing my brother an admiring glance that surely encouraged him. Carried away by his own ingenuity, he said, “Saw a bit of the legs off.”

Sun Youyuan shook his head. “You wouldn't be able to handle the saw,” he said.

My little brother, in his innocence, was unaware that he was being led toward a trap. Provoked by Granddad's condescension, he cried out, “I'm strong!”

Sun Guangming felt that words alone were not enough, so he ducked underneath the table, lifted it up on his shoulders and shuffled a couple of steps forward, then slipped out again and declared, “I'm very strong!”

Sun Youyuan shook his head once more, as a way of letting Sun Guangming know that his hands were not as strong as the rest of him, that he still wouldn't be able to saw off the table legs.

When it first occurred to Sun Guangming that the legs could be sawn down, he was content simply to have identified this solution in the abstract. Sun Youyuans doubts about his strength were the impetus to put the idea into practice. That afternoon my little brother indignantly ran out of the house, heading for the home of a carpenter in the village in order to prove to Granddad that he could indeed put a saw to the table legs. He found the master of the house sitting on a stool, with a cup of tea in his hands. My little brother greeted him warmly. “How are things going?” Then he went on, “If you're not using your saw, you'll let me borrow it, won't you?”

The carpenter could not be bothered with him and waved him away. “Off you go, get out of here! Why the hell should I lend it to you?”

“I knew you wouldn't,” Sun Guangming said. “But my dad said you would. He said he helped you when you were building your house.”

Ensnared by Granddad, Sun Guangming had laid a snare for the carpenter. The carpenter asked him, “What does Sun Kwang-tsai want it for?”

My little brother shook his head. “I don't know.”

“All right, take it,” the carpenter relented.

With the saw over his shoulder my little brother went back home, where he knocked it loudly on the ground and asked Sun Youyuan in a piping voice, “Now do you admit I can do the sawing?”

Sun Youyuan shook his head, saying, “You can saw off one leg at most.”

That afternoon my little brother, so smart and so foolish, the sweat pouring down his face, sawed a length off all four table legs, turning round from time to time to ask Sun Youyuan, “Am I strong or not?”

My grandfather did not provide any direct encouragement, but he was careful to keep a look of amazement on his face the whole time. Just that was enough to motivate my little brother to finish sawing all four legs. Once he had completed the job, Sun Guangming did not have much chance to feel proud of himself, for my grandfather heartlessly revealed the awful fate that now awaited him, saying, “That's a terrible thing you've done! Sun Kwangtsai is going to kill you.”

My poor little brother was scared speechless, only now realizing what appalling repercussions were going to ensue. He looked at my grandfather with tears in his eyes, but Sun Youyuan simply rose to his feet and hobbled into his room. My little brother slipped out of the house and nothing more was seen of him until the following morning. Not daring to go home he spent the night in a rice field, fighting off the pangs of hunger. My father ran him to ground easily enough, standing on the raised path between the fields and spotting in the green expanse a patch where the rice had been flattened. Having howled with fury all night long, Sun Kwangtsai was still in a towering rage. He beat my little brother until his bottom was like an apple hanging from a tree, equal parts green and red, and it was a month before he was able to sit down on his stool again. Meanwhile, at mealtimes, my grandfather no longer needed to reach so high with his chopsticks. Only after this mutilated table was destroyed in the fire, on my return to Southgate when I was twelve, did the family no longer have to bend down low to eat their meals.

Once I rejoined the household, that old fear of Granddad— if it still lingered in my mind at all — soon mutated into self-pity, and as my own position at home grew more precarious, his presence turned out to be enormously comforting. I came to dread the prospect of some mishap affecting the family, knowing that I would be made a scapegoat whatever happened, and so with time I understood why, years earlier, Granddad had felt impelled to pin the blame on my younger brother. During this period my father would often bare his scraggly chest, exhibiting his protruding ribs to the villagers, and spell out plainly why there was so little meat on his bones, all because “I've got two worms eating away inside me.” Granddad and I were like two unwelcome guests steadily burrowing a hole in his grain ration.

After my little brother sawed the table legs, there was to be yet another trial of strength between my father and Granddad. Although my father maintained his bluster till the end, he had suffered a psychological defeat. So after I returned to Southgate I no longer saw my father openly cursing or scolding Granddad as he had been so wont to do earlier. His resentment of Granddad was now expressed only in the most ineffectual way. He would sit on the doorsill and ramble on like an old biddy, muttering to himself mournfully, “People are so much more trouble than sheep. Sheep's wool you can sell, the dung is good fertilizer, and the meat makes a fine dinner. With a relative to support, you're really up shit creek. He's got no wool, and eating him is too big a risk — who would bail me out if I ended up in the slammer?”

Sun Youyuan's composure in the face of such humiliations left an indelible impression on me. He always looked upon these assaults with a kindly eye, even a smile. After I grew up, on occasions when I thought of him, that touching smile of his was the first thing that came to mind. My father dreaded his smile and would quickly turn away, as though anxious to fend off an impending attack, and only after he had put some distance between them and he was all by himself would he start cursing. “He grins like a dead man, but he's perky enough as soon as he starts eating.”

Though now befuddled with age, Sun Youyuan gradually became aware of my tenuous position at home, and he made a point of keeping me at arm's length. That autumn, as he squatted at the foot of the wall sunning himself, I went up to him and quietly stood there for some time, hoping he might say something to me, but his aloof expression made it impossible for us to break the silence. Later, when he heard the faint sound of people knocking off work in the fields, Sun Youyuan stiffly got to his feet and shuffled back into the house. He was afraid that Sun Kwangtsai would see us two undesirables together.

The fact that Granddad and I came home just as the fire was in full swing made Sun Kwangtsai look at us with suspicion for a long time afterward, as though we had somehow brought the fire back with us. In the wake of the conflagration, if Granddad and I ever happened to be in the same place, to my alarm I would hear my father pounding his chest and stamping his foot, shouting hysterically, “My house, my poor house is heading for destruction again! If these two are together, fire can't be far away.”

When I was almost seven, as I was leaving Southgate with Wang Liqiang in his army uniform, I ran into my grandfather, just back after spending a month with my uncle. I didn't realize then that I had been given away and thought I was simply going off on an excursion. My big brother, knowing that I had now dropped out of the sprint competition, did not run to meet Granddad, but stood listlessly at the entrance to the village. His dispirited air made me all the more proud to be leaving in the company of a man in uniform. That's why when I saw Granddad I was so full of myself that I said, “I don't have time to talk to you now.”

As I slipped past my grandfather with my nose in the air, I made a point of kicking up some dust. Now I remember the expression on his face. When I looked back to catch a last glimpse of my big brother, Granddad's ponderous bulk blocked my view, and so it was he who commanded more of my attention. Granddad stood there, looking at me fretfully, as though with misgivings. Of what destiny had in store for me, he knew as little as I did, but on the basis of his own life experience he had reason to doubt that my buoyant mood was warranted.

Five years later, when I returned alone to Southgate, a fateful coincidence brought Granddad and me together at a moment when black clouds were encroaching on the red glow of sunset. By that time we no longer recognized each other. The five years preceding had given me a heavy burden of memories to carry, squeezing my recollections of the more distant past into an obscure corner. Although I could recall my family's faces, their features had grown indistinct, like trees at twilight. Just as my memories had been rapidly multiplying, Granddad was in the opposite situation: infirmity and old age had begun to cruelly ravage his past, and he lost his way on the most familiar road. When he ran into me, he was like a drowning man who sees a plank floating in the water; it was only by sticking close to me that he managed to make it back to Southgate. We and the fire appeared on the scene simultaneously.

The day after our return to Southgate, Granddad left for my uncle's home once again, and this time he stayed for two months. By the time he returned we had already put up the thatched cottage. I cannot imagine how the old man, with his memory deficit and his incoherent speech, managed to make it there and back. He died in the summer of the next year.

Despite having been reduced to servile self-abasement for so long, just before his death Sun Youyuan surprised everyone by recovering his youthful energy, and there was something splendid about the last chapter of his life. Just as the end grew nigh, he summoned his final flickering strength to vie with heaven itself.

That year, when the rice in the fields was almost ready to be harvested, day after day of steady rain caused consternation among the villagers. Standing water was clearly visible in the paddies, covering the earth like a sheet of plastic. The heavy ears of grain drooped lower and lower, gradually approaching the silently rising rainwater. I'll never forget the faces of the helpless farmers as disaster approached, for they looked as desolate as if they were in mourning. Old Luo, the storehouse caretaker, sat the whole day on the doorsill wiping his tears, and issued a pessimistic forecast to the villagers: “This year we're going to have to go begging.”

Old Luo had a phenomenal memory. He could navigate a smooth course through the torrent of history and was able to tell us that the waterlogged fields were a mirror image of those in 1938 and 1960, leading us to believe that we would indeed be beggars soon.

Sun Kwangtsai, who was usually busily engaged in one dubious activity or another, was now as quiet as a sick chicken. But sometimes he would come out with something even more shocking than Old Luo. He told us, “When things get bad, we'll just have to eat dead people.”

Some of the older residents surreptitiously brought out clay bodhisattvas, set them on their altar tables, kowtowed to them, and prayed to Buddha, imploring the bodhisattva to exercise his powers and save the rice crop. It was at this juncture that my grandfather came on the scene like a guardian angel. One afternoon, abandoning his customary position in the corner, he suddenly rose to his feet, picked up his ramshackle umbrella, and went out. I assumed he was planning to go early to my uncle's. He walked falteringly, but his face, pasty for so many years, now shone with a healthy glow. Raising his oilskin umbrella, tottering along through the wind and rain, he visited every house in the village, delivering in a drone the following message, “Throw your bodhisattvas outside and give them a good soaking. That'll put a stop to the rain in no time — you'll see.”

The households with Buddhist leanings were shocked by my grandfather's audacious proposal. My father was amused, at least at first. After days of being down in the dumps Sun Kwangtsai gave us a smile, and pointing at my grandfather as he staggered around in the rain he said to us, “The old man can still tough it out.”

Only when several old folks hurried over in alarm and begged Sun Kwangtsai to put a stop to Sun Youyuan's impious canvassing did he realize that it was all getting out of hand. I couldn't help but feel anxious for Granddad.

Sun Kwangtsai went up to his father and yelled at him savagely, “Get back home!”

To my astonishment Granddad showed no signs of his usual fear. His stiff figure swiveled ponderously in the rain, and he took a long hard look at Sun Kwangtsai. Then he raised his finger and pointed at him. “You go home,” he said.

My father was outraged at my grandfather's temerity. “You stupid old fart, you're tired of living, aren't you?” he cursed.

But Sun Youyuan repeated slowly, with emphasis on every word, “You go home.”

My father was flummoxed. Standing there in the rain, he glanced around helplessly, and there was a pause before he finally said, “Shit, he's not scared of me anymore.”

The village production team leader, as a member of the Communist Party, felt that worship of the bodhisattva had gone on quite long enough; he had a responsibility to curb this superstitious practice. With three militiamen in tow, loudly touting the principle of man's capacity to triumph over nature, he went from door to door in a hunt for effigies. He used his incontestable authority to intimidate the weak-kneed villagers, warning them that anybody who tried to harbor a bodhisattva would be punished as a counterrevolutionary.

So that morning there was an uncanny convergence between the Communist Party's methods of dispelling superstition and my grandfather's approach of seeking divine intervention by punishing the bodhisattva. I must have seen at least a dozen clay bodhisattvas tossed out into the rain. My grandfather reprised his role of the previous afternoon, clutching his shabby umbrella and stumbling around from door to door, circulating his latest bulletin. Now that his teeth had all fallen out, his words undulated incoherently in the rain, as with a reassuring smile he told people, “The bodhisattva can't take more than a day of soaking. When he's had enough, he'll ask the Dragon King to stop the rain. Tomorrow will be dry.”

My grandfather's confident forecast did not become a reality. The following morning Sun Youyuan stood underneath the eaves watching the billowing rain, his wrinkled face crumpled up with grief. I saw him stand there for a long time, and then, quivering, he turned his head upward, and for the first time I heard him bellow. It had never occurred to me that Granddad could express himself with such violent rage: Sun Kwangtsai's erstwhile tantrums were mere trifles compared to what Sun Youyuan came out with then. My grandfather turned to the sky and yelled, “God, you bastard! Why don't you get your cock out and fuck me, if that's what you want?”

But then all of a sudden my grandfather looked lost. His mouth seemed to be frozen open, as if he were dead. His whole body tightened and he stood rigidly for several moments. Then he went limp and burst out wailing.

What was curious was that at midday the rain stopped. The old folks were awestruck. As they watched chinks gradually appear in the clouds and the sun shine down at last, they could not help but recall the crazy behavior of Sun Youyuan earlier, which they had then regarded as sacrilege. These credulous villagers began to feel with wonder and trepidation that Sun Youyuan possessed the bearing of an immortal, and his ragged clothes made them think of the legendary mendicant priest Master Ji. In fact, of course, had the Communist Party member and team leader not commandeered the militiamen and conducted the search, the villagers would never have thrown their bodhisattvas out in the rain. But at the time nobody was in the mood to give the production team leader any credit, and the notion that Sun Youyuan might be an immortal spread like wildfire through the village for the next three days. Eventually even my mother wondered if there was some truth to it. But when she cautiously sounded my father out on this question, Sun Kwangtsai said, “What a load of crap.”

My father was a confirmed materialist. He said to my mother, “It's his sperm that made me. If he's an immortal, then I've got to be one too, no?”

FADING FROM VIEW

Just before he died Sun Youyuan wore an expression very much like that of a water buffalo as it waited to be slaughtered. Though such an imposing animal in my eyes, the buffalo lay on the ground with legs splayed, meekly allowing itself to be trussed. I was standing off to one side of the village drying ground and my brothers were standing right at the front. The commentary of my little brother, who pretended to understand more than he actually did, drifted like dust through the morning air, interspersed with Sun Guangping's scoffing, “You don't know shit!”

At first I was no smarter than my little brother, believing that the water buffalo didn't know what was going to happen to it. But then I saw its tears, the tears it shed after being trussed up; they sprayed the concrete floor like raindrops in a thunderstorm, for when facing extinction life reveals its infinite attachment to the past. It was not just grief that I saw in the buffalo's expression but also a kind of despair, and there is no more shocking sight than that. Later I heard my big brother tell other boys that the buffalo's eyes reddened as soon as it was tied up. In the years that followed I would recall with a shudder the scene just before the buffalo's death: the tattered images of its polite surrender and its unresisting submission reappeared before my eyes, leaving me troubled and uneasy.

For a long time Granddad's passing was an enigma to me, its raw reality imbued with a mysterious ambience that made it impossible for me to ascertain the true cause of his death. “Joy at its fullest gives way to sorrow,” they say, and no sooner had my grandfather delivered his fearless challenge to the heavens on that rain-swept morning than he was cast back into an abyss of misgivings, dumbstruck and lost. At the moment when he opened his mouth to yell, he felt to his astonishment that there was something inside him desperate to find an outlet, something that took wing with sublime, birdlike ease. He wheeled around in alarm, crying pitifully, “My soul! My soul has flown away.”

Like a little bird, his soul had flown out through his gaping mouth. To me at thirteen this was something startling and bizarre.

That afternoon I saw on Granddad's face the look that I had seen on the water buffalo. By then the sky had cleared and the senior population in the village was marveling that Sun Youyuan's prediction had been fulfilled. My grandfather was in no position to enjoy his hour of glory, so grief stricken was he at the loss of his soul. Sun Youyuan sat tearfully on the doorsill, the returning sunshine in his face, and mournful whimpers came from his gaping mouth. He started crying after my parents went off to the fields and his tears were still gushing when they returned. I have never seen anyone cry for so long.

When Sun Kwangtsai came back home at the end of the day and saw his father's tears, he preferred to think they were being shed out of concern for himself. “I'm not dead yet,” he muttered. “A bit early to mourn, isn't it?”

Later my grandfather rose from the doorsill and brushed past us, sobbing. He did not join us for dinner as usual but went into the cluttered storeroom and lay down in his bed. Soon afterward, however, in a voice of unusual force, Sun Youyuan called his son, “Sun Kwangtsai!”

My father ignored him, saying to my mother, “The old guy is giving himself airs. He wants me to bring him his dinner.”

Granddad gave another shout, “Sun Kwangtsai, my soul has left me! I'm dying!”

At this my father went over to the door and said to him, “How can you be dying when you can yell like that?”

My grandfather started crying, his sobs punctuated by indistinct words. “Son, your dad is dying. I don't know what it's like to die. I'm scared!”

Sun Kwangtsai had had enough of this. “I don't see there's anything the matter with you,” he pointed out.

Encouraged perhaps by his son's responsiveness, Sun Youyuan stirred himself to call, at even higher volume, “Son, I really have to die! You just get poorer with every day I live.”

The loudness of his delivery made my father uncomfortable, and he said with annoyance, “Keep it down, will you? If people hear that, they'll think I've been persecuting you.”

To my young mind, there was something unnerving about Sun Youyuan's premonition of death and his handling of this foreknowledge. It seems to me now that when Granddad sensed his soul leaving him, he must have genuinely felt that this was what had happened; surely he would not have concocted this story as some kind of subterfuge, when his own life and death were involved. But perhaps after he injured his back he had begun to plan for his own demise, and it may be that he magnified what was simply a normal physical reaction to his yelling at the sky, imagining it to mark the departure of his soul and a portent of his death. That afternoon when the sky cleared, as Sun Youyuan wept incessantly, he had already finalized his own sentence. For this old man in the twilight of life, there was no real choice to make when faced with the prospect of being reunited with his wife and departing forever from the world. For nine long years he had hesitated. Now, when he finally felt that death was inescapably approaching him, his tears demonstrated how tightly he still clung to this mortal life, despite all its hardships. His one request was that Sun Kwangtsai agree to make him a coffin and send him off with pipes and cymbals: “Make sure the pipes are blown good and loud, so the news carries to your ma.”

I was stunned by the idea that Granddad would just lie down and die. The image of him in my mind underwent a fundamental change. No longer did I think of him as someone who sat in the corner recalling his past, for now he was intimately connected to death itself. He became unutterably distant from me, fusing with the grandmother I barely remembered.

My little brother showed a compulsive interest in Granddads imminent passing. He stood by the door the whole afternoon, peeping at him through the crack and running outside from time to time to report to my big brother, “Not dead yet.”

He explained to Sun Guangping, “Granddad's belly is still moving.”

As far as my father was concerned, Sun Youyuan's resolve to die was just empty posturing. As he left the house with his hoe on his shoulder, he had the unpleasant feeling that Sun Youyuan had simply found a new way to give him a hard time. That evening, however, after we had eaten and Granddad had still not emerged from his room, my mother took a bowl of rice in to him and we heard him whine, “I'm dying. I'm not eating.”

Only then did my father take seriously Granddad's determination to die. With a look of surprise on his face he went into Granddad's room, and these two archenemies actually began talking to each other like devoted siblings. Sun Kwangtsai sat on Sun Youyuan's bed and talked to him in a good-natured tone that he had never used when speaking to him before. When he emerged, he was already convinced that his father would soon no longer be of this world. Beaming with joy, he made no effort to conceal his elation, indifferent to whether or not this would jeopardize his prospects of being seen as a proper son. He went out to spread the news that Sun Youyuan was about to die, and even from inside the house I could hear his ringing voice off in the distance. “How long can somebody live if they don't eat?”

Having lain in bed expectantly all night long, Sun Youyuan nimbly propped himself up the following morning when Sun Kwangtsai came in. “What about the coffin?” he asked.

It gave my father a shock to find that Sun Youyuan was not at his last gasp as he had been anticipating. He seemed a bit disappointed as he came out of the room, shaking his head and saying, “It looks like we're going to have to wait another couple of days. He still remembers about the coffin.”

My father was perhaps concerned that when the next mealtime came around Sun Youyuan would emerge all of a sudden and humbly take his seat among us. Sun Kwangtsai did not rule out this possibility at all, so he felt compelled to give proper attention to the coffin that so preoccupied Granddad. That morning he walked in with two blocks of wood in his hand and with an air of exaggerated mystery instructed my little brother to knock the bits of wood together. I was taken aback to see my father, usually so careless and blatant, suddenly so stealthy and furtive. Then he stood erect, shoved open Granddad's door, and said to him in the tone of a filial son, “Dad, I've got the carpenter here now.”

Through the half-open door I saw Granddad raise himself slightly and give a relieved smile. My little brother, who seldom performed any useful service, had now acquired a temporary occupation, and Sun Guangming brandished the two lengths of wood and knocked them together as though they were weapons in a lethal swordfight. But my little brother was a lover of freedom and could never accept space restrictions for very long. He soon became fully invested in these military operations and, like some general in ancient times, fought his way out of the house, perspiration pouring down his face. He had totally forgotten what his job was supposed to be, so carried away was he by the joy of fighting at close quarters. His wheezing war whoops gradually receded in the morning sunshine as he ran off who knows where, and he did not return until almost dinnertime, by which time his hands were empty. When my father asked him what he'd done with the pieces of wood, Sun Guangming looked baffled. He hemmed and hawed as though he had never seen them his entire life.

After my little brother disappeared, I heard a restive shout from my grandfather's gloomy room: “The coffin!”

With the silencing of the wood-tapping sounds that could appease his soul, a hungry rustle rasped in Sun Youyuan's flat and febrile voice. His last wish in life had been dashed by my little brother's insouciance.

Later it fell to me to carry on the construction of the bogus coffin. My older brother, fifteen by this time, saw this as quite beneath him. Sun Kwangtsai grabbed me by the shoulder, having realized all of a sudden that this morose son of his could occasionally do something worthwhile. As he passed me the blocks of wood his face was the very picture of disdain. “You can't just eat free meals all the time.”

For the next two days I gave grandfather the reassurance he sought by beating out a monotonous rhythm with the wooden blocks. But I found myself in a hopeless trough of despond. At thirteen I was sensitive enough to wonder whether I was hammering nails in my own coffin. Although Granddad had not offered me understanding or sympathy after my return to Southgate, because his status in the family was so like my own, when he gave an indication that he felt sorry for himself — as he was inclined to do — I considered, from my perspective, that his sentiments also contained an element of compassion for me. My disaffection with father and home was aggravated by the tapping sounds designed to hasten Granddad's death. Now, so many years later, I still feel that this was a cruel punishment for my father to impose on me, however unwittingly he may have done so. My sense at the time was that I was like a convict on death row who is forced to carry out the execution of another hapless inmate.

The news of Sun Youyuan's impending death brought surprise and excitement to our normally torpid village. The old folks, who had regained a childish innocence after all their long years in the world, expressed an awed respect for Granddad's decision to die. His stance toward the bodhisattva gave them grounds to believe that he was most likely set on going home. According to one intriguing but far-fetched theory, at the time of his birth my grandfather had descended, like rain, from heaven; his foreknowledge of his own death proved that his assigned term in the dusty world had expired, and now he was returning to heaven, back to his true abode.

People of the younger generation, steeped in the atheism promoted by the Communist Party, viewed these ideas with scorn. Just as Sun Youyuan had been castigated by Sun Kwangtsai, these endearing seniors were flatly told that age had done nothing for them, that they were just getting more stupid all the time.

There I sat, in the middle of the room, the front door ajar, tapping out a monotonous rhythm. In the eyes of sundry spectators I was engaged in a ridiculous exercise. How did I feel about it? My fragile ego was hard put to keep shame and distress at bay, particularly with the village children pointing at me and giggling all the time.

All the commotion outside the house distracted Sun Youyuan as he made ready to depart this life, and a scene from his youth reappeared before him, the time he fled from a hail of Nationalist bullets. Agitated, unsure what was happening outside, he called Sun Kwangtsai. As my father entered the room, Sun Youyuan summoned the energy to sit up in bed, and he asked Sun Kwangtsai if somebody's house had caught fire.

When Granddad lay down in bed he had intended to die right away, but three days had passed and it seemed the longer he lay the more lively he felt. Even though Sun Youyuan yelled every dinnertime that his eating days were over, my mother still would wordlessly carry a bowl of rice in to him. Torn between an ideal death and all-too-real starvation, my grandfather hesitated agonizingly, but yielded in the end to hunger's authority. My mother always returned with an empty bowl.

Patience had never been Sun Kwangtsai's strong suit, and seeing my grandfather had not arrived at death's door as soon as he had expected, he lost confidence that he would die at all. When my mother, bowl in hand, prepared to enter Granddad's room and my grandfather repeated his old trick of insisting that he was on a fast, Sun Kwangtsai shoved my mother aside and yelled at him, “If you're going to die, don't eat! If you're going to eat, don't die!”

My mother found this rather shocking, and she whispered to Sun Kwangtsai, “That's going too far. The Lord will make you pay for that.”

But my father couldn't care less. He stormed off and could be heard saying to people nearby, “Did you ever hear of a dead man eating dinner?”

In fact, Granddad was not behaving as willfully as my father imagined. Sun Youyuan had the genuine sensation that his soul had flown, and he was firmly convinced that he was about to die. On the mental level he had already died, and he was simply waiting for his physical being to reach that same point of no return. Just as my father was growing more and more exasperated, Sun Youyuan himself was vexed that he was taking so long to die.

At this final stage of his life Sun Youyuan employed his scattered wits to ponder the question of why he had not yet expired. As the rice swayed in the sunlight, soon to be harvested, an herbal aroma was carried in by the southeasterly breezes. I don't know if Granddad smelled it or not, but a peculiar notion persuaded him that death's delayed arrival was in some way linked to those heavy ears of grain.

That morning Sun Youyuan again called loudly for Sun Kwangtsai. After venting so much rage, my father was now a bit despondent, and he walked listlessly into Granddad's room. Sun Youyuan told him in a conspiratorial whisper that his soul had not flown far away: it was still lingering in the vicinity, and that was why he had not died. (He said this so warily it was as though he feared his soul might overhear him.) The reason the soul had not flown far was that it was attracted by the scent of the rice field, and now his soul was mixed up with a flock of sparrows, the sparrows that were circling above the paddy at that very moment. Sun Youyuan asked my father to assemble some scarecrows and set them out in a circle around the house to frighten his soul away; otherwise his soul might reinhabit his body at any time. My grandfather opened his toothless mouth and said to Sun Kwangtsai with a mumble, “Son, if my soul returns, you'll be in the poorhouse again.”

My father was beside himself. “Dad, forget about dying! Just get back to living, will you? First it's a coffin you want, and now it's scarecrows. Give me a break, for heaven's sake!”

When the old men of the village heard about this latest development from Sun Kwangtsai (now in high dudgeon), they did not share my father's view that Sun Youyuan was making a fuss for nothing. My grandfather's belief that his soul was hovering about nearby struck them as perfectly plausible. At midday — I had stopped my tapping then — I saw several old men walking over with two scarecrows in their hands, their pious expressions in the sunlight conveying a curious dignity. They propped one of the scarecrows against the wall next to our front door and set the other one down outside Sun Youyuan's window. As they explained to Sun Kwangtsai later, they did this to smooth my grandfather's ascent to heaven.

My grandfathers allotted span was truly drawing to a close, and in the three days following his condition rapidly deteriorated. Once, when my father went into his room, Sun Youyuan could talk to him only in a faint tone, like the hum of a mosquito. By now he was no longer at the mercy of his appetite, for he had lost even the most basic desire for food and at most ate two or three mouthfuls of the rice my mother brought him. This led my father to loiter outside the house for quite some time, eyeing the scarecrows suspiciously and muttering to himself, “Can it be these things really work?”

My grandfather lay unwashed in that summer room for many days, and he wet his bed in the final stages when he was scarcely breathing. The storeroom reeked.

Once Sun Youyuan truly looked as though he was close to death, Sun Kwangtsai began to calm down. On two successive mornings he went to Granddads room to check on his condition, and when he emerged he was knitting his brows. Given to exaggeration as he was, my father asserted that Sun Youyuan had soiled a good half of the bed. He did not go into Granddad's room the following morning because, he said, he couldn't bear the stench. He told my mother to go in and see how Granddad was doing while he sat by the table and offered instruction to my brothers: “Your granddad will be dead soon.” He elaborated. “People are like weasels: when you try to catch them they let loose a stinky fart to make you all groggy, so they can escape. Your granddad is about to make his getaway, so it's horribly smelly in his room.”

When my mother came out of Granddad's room she was white as a sheet and was kneading the hem of her apron with both hands. She said to Sun Kwangtsai, “Quick, go and have a look!”

My father seemed to be launched off his stool. He scurried into Granddad s room and after a few moments he came back out again, with a rapt expression on his face. Dancing with joy, he said, “He's dead, all right! No doubt about it.”

In fact, Sun Youyuan was not yet dead; he was simply going in and out of shock. But my father, never very punctilious about small details, went off in a great rush to seek the help of people in the village, for it only now occurred to him that a hole had still to be dug. With a hoe over his shoulder and a mournful expression on his face, he went around the village calling people out of their houses, and then together with several locals he began to dig a resting place for Sun Youyuan next to Grandmother's grave.

Sun Kwangtsai was not easily satisfied, and when the neighbors had finished digging the grave and were about ready to go home, my father kept grumbling away in the background, saying that if they were going to help they should go whole hog, otherwise they'd do better not to help at all. He asked them to carry my grandfather out, while he stood by the doorway, opting not to join them in the room. When Wang Yuejin (the one who was later to get into a fight with him) screwed up his face and complained about the awful smell, my father said unctuously, “Dead people are like that.”

My grandfather chose to open his eyes at the very moment that he was being lifted off the bed. He had no idea, of course, that they were just about to bury him, and he gave a little chuckle as he regained consciousness; the sudden appearance of a smile on his face gave them the fright of their lives. I heard a chaotic medley of shouts erupt inside the room, and the next thing I knew, every one of the neighbors bolted out in a panic. Wang Yuejin, the most strongly built of all, was white as a sheet, and he patted his chest and kept saying, “That scared the shit out of me!”

Then he started hurling curses at Sun Kwangtsai. “I screw your ancestors, all eighteen generations of them! You stupid bastard, what sort of joke is that to play on people?”

My father looked at them quizzically, not knowing what the problem was, until Wang Yuejin said, “Fuck it, the man's still alive!”

Hearing that, Sun Kwangtsai rushed into Sun Youyuan's room. On seeing him, my grandfather gave another titter, so infuriating my father that he started cursing even before he left the room. “All your talk about dying is just a load of shit! If you really want to die, then string yourself up or throw yourself in the river, don't just fucking lie in bed!”

Like a fine stream of water that just keeps on flowing, Sun Youyuan's life carried on unbroken, to the villagers’ amazement. Practically everyone was convinced that he was about to die, but he had succeeded in making his passing a very protracted affair. The biggest surprise came that summer evening. It was stiflingly hot inside the house, so we moved the table out and set it down underneath the elm tree. We were eating there when Granddad suddenly appeared.

Though bedridden for some three weeks now, he had managed to clamber to his feet, and putting a hand against the wall for support he tottered outside like a child just learning to walk. We watched him in speechless astonishment. By now he was gripped by a deep unease about his inability to die properly. With difficulty he positioned himself next to the threshold and then lowered himself unsteadily onto the sill. He seemed oblivious to our reaction and sat as motionless as though he were a sack of sweet potatoes. We heard a dejected mumble, “Still not dead! What a pain!”

It was the following morning that Sun Youyuan died. When my father went over to his bed, he opened his eyes wide and looked at him steadily. Granddad's look must have been chilling or my father would not have been so petrified. He told us later that Granddad's expression seemed to be saying that he wanted to take him along, so they could die together. But my father did not make a run for it, or rather he could not make a run for it as his hands were now held in his father's viselike grip. Two tiny tears fell from the corners of my grandfather's eyes, and then he closed his eyes forever. Sun Kwangtsai could feel his clamped hands gradually recover their freedom, and that's when he left the room all flustered and in a slurred voice told my mother to have a look. Compared with him, she was much more composed. She hesitated a little as she went in, but she came out with a steady step, telling my father, “He's gone cold.”

My father smiled with relief, and as he headed outside he cried, “Finally, damn it! Finally!”

He sat down on the doorstep, grinning at some hens that strutted about nearby. But before long his face grew dark with grief, his mouth went out of shape, and he started crying; soon he was blubbering. I heard him murmuring to himself, “Dad, I let you down. Dad, you had such a hard life. I'm a lousy bastard, I didn't treat you right! But I really had no choice, you know.”

When Granddad at last fulfilled his ambition and died, this failed to evoke the feeling that I had lost a real, living person. It left me in a strange state of mind, a combination of sorrow and disquiet. What was clear to me, however, was that one particular spectacle would fade from view and be lost forever. At twilight Sun Youyuan used to appear on the road into Southgate, shuffling along toward me and the pond. Even from a considerable distance I could always recognize the oilskin umbrella clutched to his chest and the blue bundle dangling over his shoulder. That tableau had so often brought me warmth and comfort, as reassuring as sunshine itself.

GRANDFATHER'S VICTORY

Sun Youyuan was no coward; at least inside he was not. If he was humble, this servility stemmed to a large extent from low self-esteem. In my fourth year away from Southgate, after my little brother had adjusted the table legs, Granddad's sorry predicament at home grew even more dire.

The table-leg episode did not mark the end of hostilities between Sun Youyuan and Sun Kwangtsai, for my father was a tenacious adversary and would not allow Sun Youyuan to rest easy for long. Soon he forbade my grandfather to sit at the table at mealtimes, insisting that he sit in the corner with a small bowl. My grandfather had to learn to put up with hunger. Although an old man, he had the appetite of a young newlywed, but now he was allowed only this one small bowl. Sun Kwangtsai's put-upon expression made it very difficult for him to request a second helping, and he could only watch with rumbling stomach as my parents and brothers dug into their meal with gusto. The only way of alleviating his hunger was to lick all the plates before they were washed, and now, through our back window, the villagers would often see Sun Youyuan assiduously scouring the dirty dishes with his tongue.

My grandfather did not easily resign himself to suffering such humiliation, and given that he was no coward he had no choice but to go head to head with Sun Kwangtsai since it was impossible to outflank him. After a month or so, when my mother passed Granddad his little bowl, he deliberately failed to take a firm hold and instead let it drop and shatter on the floor. I can imagine how this would have infuriated my father, and sure enough he leapt up from his stool, and pointing a finger at Sun Youyuan cursed him loudly. “You old wastrel, you can't even hold a fucking bowl properly! How do you think you're going to eat now?”

By then my grandfather was already down on his knees, gathering up the bits of food off the floor. He put on an expression that seemed to acknowledge he had committed a terrible crime, and he said to my father, “Oh no, I shouldn't have smashed that bowl! Oh no, that family heirloom — it was supposed to be passed on to the next generation!”

This last sentence left my father nonplussed, and it was a moment before its implications sank in. Then he said to my mother, “You keep telling me the old man is so pitiful, but don't you see how devious he is?”

My grandfather did not look at Sun Kwangtsai. His eyes filled with tears while he kept crying stubbornly, “Oh no, that bowl was to go to my son!”

Sun Kwangtsai was now at the end of his tether, and he roared at Granddad, “Stop that fucking playacting!”

Sun Youyuan started to bawl, crying in an anguished voice, “Now that the bowl is broken, how's my son going to eat?”

At that point my little brother began to cackle. In his eyes Granddad looked so ridiculous that he burst out laughing, despite the inappropriateness of the occasion. My big brother Sun Guang-ping knew that this was not the time for levity but Sun Guang-ming's mirth so infected him that he could not stop himself from joining in. My father now found himself under fire from all quarters: on the one side, Sun Youyuan with his ominous prediction of hardship late in life; on the other, his progeny seemingly savoring with their laughter the prospect of his future sufferings. Sun Kwangtsai glanced suspiciously at his darling sons and thought to himself: its true I can't really count on these two guys.

My brothers’ laughter served to buttress my grandfather's position, although that was not what they intended. My father, normally brimming with self-confidence, found himself at sea. Bereft of the rage he needed to deal with the still-wailing Sun Youyuan, he retreated feebly toward the door, at the same time waving his hand and saying, “Okay, I give in. Just stop all that wailing, will you? You win, all right? I'm no match for you, I admit. Just stop that damn wailing!”

But once he was outside the house Sun Kwangtsai flared up once again. Pointing at his family inside, he swore, “You're such sons of bitches, the whole lot of you!”