Madwoman On the Bridge and Other Stories (8 page)

I was just in time to see the blacksmith maim his
own son by pressing Tan Feng’s left hand onto a red-hot
soldering iron. I recall that at that same moment, Tan
Feng shot me a glance so full of shock and despair that
it was like a red-hot iron itself, so searing that my whole
body seemed to steam with shame.

I am not exaggerating when I say that a hole was burnt
into my heart at that moment. I didn’t hear Tan Feng’s
scream, which resounded high above the town, I just
turned around and fled, as if afraid that Tan Feng, who
was in the process of losing the fingers of his left hand,
might yet chase after me. With dread and guilt in my
heart, I ran away, and before I knew it I was at Mr Zhang’s
pigsty. Despite all that had happened I still hadn’t
forgotten the little red train, even in this dark hour. I sat
for a moment on the stack of firewood and made up my
mind to excavate Tan Feng’s treasure, taking advantage of
the last rays of the setting sun to make my careful search.
I was surprised to find, however, that the little red train
wasn’t there. I took the stack of firewood apart, and still
I didn’t find it.

So Tan Feng was not as foolish as I had thought; he had
moved the train. I reasoned that he had done so after the
theft had been exposed. Perhaps while his family had
been calling for him he had moved it to an even more
secret location. I stood in Mr Zhang’s pigsty and realized
with a jolt that Tan Feng had taken that precaution against
me. Perhaps he had suspected me long ago, thinking that
I would tattle one day; perhaps he had another secret
hoard. I pondered this and a nameless sense of loss and
sorrow welled up in me.

You can imagine the chaos in the Tan household once
the deed was done. Tan Feng fainted and the blacksmith
wept, hugging his son to him and wandering through the
town to find a tractor driver. Then he and his wife got
on the tractor and took Tan Feng to the district hospital
fifteen kilometres away.

I knew that Tan Feng would spend the next few days
in extreme pain, and that time was very hard for me to
endure too. There was also the punishment my mother
inflicted on me. In her eyes I bore half the guilt for the
whole affair, so I was confined to the house. Beside this
she required me, like one of her students, to write a
piece of self-criticism. Remember that I was only eight
or nine at the time. As if I was going to be able to write
a substantial piece of self-criticism! I wrote and doodled
in an exercise book, and without realizing what I was
doing I drew several little trains on the paper; so I threw
it out. But afterwards I was still thinking about that little
red train. There was nothing I could do – no way I could
resist the spell that train had cast over me. I leaned over
the desk, and heard in my ears a dim, metallic sound: the
sound of the train’s wheels rolling over the ground. The
four cars, the sixteen wheels, were constantly appearing
in my mind’s eye; not to mention the stovepipe on top,
and the conductor with the neckerchief tied around his
miniature neck.

What made me disobey my mother’s orders was
burning desire: I urgently needed to find that missing
train. My mother had locked the door from the outside,
but I jumped out through the window and walked
down the streets of town positively thirsting for it. I
had no destination in mind and just blindly looked for
somewhere to go. It was a sweltering day in August, and
the town’s children were gathered by the riverside, either
splashing around in the water or playing stupid cops-and-robbers
games on the bank. I didn’t want to splash
around, and I didn’t want to play cops and robbers, all
I could think about was that little red train. I walked
until the only surfaced road in the town ended and I
saw the abandoned brick kiln in the cornfields beyond.
This must be what people mean when they talk about a
moment of inspiration. I’d suddenly remembered that
Tan Feng had once hidden several of old Mr Ye’s chicks
in that kiln. Could it be his second hiding place for the
treasure? The thought made me jittery with nerves. I
moved aside the stone blocking the kiln’s door and
ducked in. There! I saw the freshly piled cornstalks and
kicked them apart. Have you guessed? You have. It was
that simple. Don’t people often say ‘Heaven helps those
who help themselves’? I heard a clear, melodious ring,
and my heart nearly stopped beating. Heaven helps those
who help themselves – it’s as simple as that. I’d found the
Chengdu girl’s little red train in the brick kiln.

Did you think I was going to take the toy truck back
to the commune clinic and ask for Dr He? No. But if I
had, then the rest of this story would probably never
have happened. To be frank, it didn’t even cross my mind
to return the train to its original owner. Instead, I was
more concerned with the question of how to take it home
without it being discovered by anyone. I finally thought
up a plan and removed my T-shirt, broke off some heads
of corn, and wrapped both train and corn in my T-shirt
to make a bundle. Nervously, I set off for home. Usually
I never went shirtless like the other boys in town, mainly
because my mother didn’t allow it, so as I walked down
the narrow street, it felt as if people were looking at me. I
was very anxious to begin with, and then someone took
note of my unusual appearance. I heard one woman say
to another, ‘What a blistering day – even Mrs Yu’s kid’s
taken his shirt off!’ But what the other woman noticed
was my bundle, and she said, ‘What’s he carrying? Do
you think he’s stolen something?’ This scared me, but
fortunately my mother enjoyed a spotless reputation in
the town and the gossiping woman was brusquely cut off
by her partner who said, ‘Hold your silly tongue. As if
Mrs Yu’s son would steal anything!’

My luck held; my mother wasn’t around so I was able
to find a hiding place for the train. Besides the box under
my bed where I stored things there were two other places
for emergencies or temporary deployment: one of them
was the padded overcoat my father had left at home, and
the other was the pressure cooker in the kitchen, which
we weren’t using. I hid the toy train there, and from
that moment on I couldn’t rest. I realized I still had a
problem: the key to wind up the spring. No doubt Tan
Feng had it hidden about his body, and if I couldn’t get
the key, I couldn’t make the train run. And for me, a train
that didn’t run had lost the greater part of its value.

The trouble that came later was all because of that key.
I hadn’t even thought about how to deal with Tan Feng
once he got home. Every day I tried to make a key myself,
and one day I was at home alone, grinding a padlock key
on the whetstone, when the door was kicked open and
who but Tan Feng should come in. He walked up to me
and glared at me threateningly, then he said, ‘You’re a
traitor, a foreign agent, a spy, a counter-revolutionary and
a class enemy!’

His tirade caught me off-balance. I held the padlock
key tightly in my fist, and listened to Tan Feng abuse me
with all the coarse language he knew. I looked at that left
hand of his, wrapped tightly in white cloth, and my guilt
submerged any impulse I might have had to retaliate. I
remained silent, reflecting that Tan Feng might not yet
know that I had been to the kiln. I wondered whether he
would be able to guess that it was I who had taken the
train.

Tan Feng didn’t touch me – perhaps he knew that with
only one hand he would come off worse – instead he
just swore. But after swearing for a while he grew tired
and asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ Still I said nothing,
and he must have thought he had gone too far. He put
out his left hand for me to see. ‘You have no idea how
much gauze they used to wrap it up – a whole roll!’ I said
nothing, so Tan Feng examined the gauze on his hand
and, after looking at it for a while, suddenly he laughed
proudly and said, ‘I fooled the old man. As if I would use
my left hand! It was the right hand, of course.’ Then he
asked me a question, ‘Do you think it pays to have your
left hand burnt or your right?’

This time I replied, ‘It doesn’t pay either way. Far better
to have neither burnt.’

He looked stunned for a moment, then waved at me
contemptuously. ‘Stupid. What do you know? The right
hand’s way more important than the left. You need
your right hand to eat and work and everything, don’t
you?’

After Tan Feng came home, we didn’t play together any
more. My mother forbade it, and the blacksmith and his
wife wouldn’t allow me to play with him, either – they
were now both of the opinion that I was the devious
kind. I didn’t care what they thought of me, but I did
listen carefully to the goings-on in their house, since I
was anxious to know whether Tan Feng had been to the
kiln yet, and whether he suspected me of taking the little
red train.

That day finally came. We had already gone back to
school when Tan Feng blocked my way in front of the
gates. He looked distracted, and the expression in his
eyes as he studied me was almost pleading. ‘Did you take
it or not?’

I had prepared myself mentally for such a challenge;
you wouldn’t believe how calm and streetwise I sounded.
‘Take what?’

Tan Feng answered quietly, ‘The train.’

I said, ‘What train? The train you stole?’

And Tan Feng replied, ‘I can’t find it. But I hid it so
well, why can’t I find it?’

I urged myself to stay calm and not to mention the
word kiln. ‘Didn’t you hide it in Mr Zhang’s pigsty?’ Tan
Fang rolled his eyes at me, and after that he didn’t ask me
any more questions. He took a few steps back, towards
the sports grounds, his eyes fixed on me in confusion.
I looked steadily back into his eyes and started walking
in the same direction. You would never believe the way I
acted that day, that an eight-year-old child could put on
such a mature and composed manner. It wasn’t in my
nature; it was all because of the little red train.

From then on Tan Feng and I went our separate ways.
We were neighbours, but after that whenever we ran into
each other, we would turn the other way. On my part,
it was because of my guilty secret; on his the result of a
deep wound. Because I believe Tan Feng’s heart was hurt
as badly as his hand, and I have to take responsibility for
both. I remember very clearly how, a few months later, he
was brushing his teeth outside his home. I heard him call
out my name and I ran out. Though he was still calling to
me, he didn’t even glance my way. Instead he seemed to
be talking to himself, saying, ‘Yu Yong, Yu Yong, I know
what you are.’ I turned a deep red. He had obviously
fathomed my secret. What puzzled me about it though
was that ever since Tan Feng had returned from hospital,
I had kept the toy train hidden away in the pressure
cooker. Even my mother had failed to discover it, so how
could Tan Feng know? Had he perhaps also relied on
inspiration to guide him?

It sounds ridiculous, but after I got my hands on
that train I rarely had a chance to play with it, let alone
experience the joy of making it go. Only occasionally,
when I was sure it was completely safe, did I take the
lid off the pressure cooker and sneak a little look at it
– only a look. What are you laughing at? At a thief ‘s guilty
conscience? I did have a guilty conscience – actually it
was more painful and complicated than that – I even saw
the train a few times in my dreams, and in the dream
it was always blowing its steam whistle. Then Tan Feng
and the kids from town would come running to hear it
and I would wake up quickly from fright. I knew that
the steam whistle in my dream actually came from the
Baocheng railway two kilometres away, but still I woke up
in a cold sweat. You ask why I didn’t give the train back
to Tan Feng, but that would have made no sense. Reason
dictated I should give it back to the Chengdu girl, the real
owner. The idea had occurred to me, and one day I even
went up to the commune clinic’s door. I saw the girl in the
courtyard playing Chinese skipping, happy as anything.
She had forgotten all about the train a long time ago.
Well, I thought, if she’s forgotten about it, what’s the
point of doing a good deed and giving it back to her? And
in an epithet I had learnt from Tan Feng, I swore at her,
‘Porkhead.’

Was I very bad? Yes, when I was a child, I was pretty
bad: I went so far as to misappropriate stolen goods.
But, in fact, that’s not the right question to ask. The real
question is, with a secret like that – put yourself in my
shoes – how could I surrender the train? And then, very
soon, it was the winter holidays, and in the winter of that
year my father was released from military service and we
moved to Wuhan – our whole family moving here from
our little town in Sichuan. This news made me extremely
excited, not only because Wuhan is a big city but because
it gave me the opportunity to put all the trouble with the
train behind me. I looked forward more each day to our
move; I looked forward to leaving Tan Feng and the town
behind.

On the day we left, cold, heavy rain was falling. I was
waiting with my family at the long-distance bus station
when I saw somebody’s head appear and disappear outside
the waiting-room window, then, after a moment, it
appeared again. It was Tan Feng. I recognized him but
decided to ignore him. It was my mother who had to tell
me to go and say goodbye. ‘Tan Feng wants to say goodbye
to you. You used to be good friends, how can you
ignore him?’ And so I had to walk outside and go over to
him. His clothes were soaked from the rain and he used
his maimed hand to wipe away the water dripping from
his hair; his eyes too were wet. He seemed to want to say
something, but he didn’t open his mouth to speak. I grew
impatient and turned away. He gripped one of my hands
and I felt him slip something into it. Then he ran off, so
fast he was almost flying.