The Real Story of Ah-Q (11 page)

The dark hours before an autumn dawn: the moon had sunk, but the sun had not yet risen, leaving an empty expanse of midnight-blue sky. All – except the creatures of the night – slept. Hua Shuan
^*
suddenly sat up in bed. Striking a match, he lit the oil lamp, its body slick with grease; a greenish-white light flickered through the two rooms of the teahouse.

‘Are you off, then?’ an old woman’s voice asked. A coughing fit erupted inside the small back room.

‘Mmm,’ Shuan mumbled as he dressed, distracted by the noise next door. ‘Pass it over,’ he reached out.

After an extended search beneath her pillow, Hua Dama handed a packet of silver dollars to the old man, who tucked it, with trembling hands, into his jacket pocket. Giving the bulge a couple of pats, he lit a paper lantern, blew out the lamp and went into the other room. A faint rustling sound was followed by another succession of coughs. ‘Don’t get up, son,’ Shuan whispered, when it subsided. ‘Your mother will see to the shop.’

Guessing from his son’s silence that he had fallen back into a deep sleep, Shuan opened the door. Outside, the street was sunk in a heavy darkness that obscured everything except the ashen road before him. The lantern cast its light over his feet, illuminating their progress – one step after another. The occasional dog silently crossed his path. The air was much colder outside, but Shuan found the change in temperature refreshing: he felt like a young man again, striding further and faster, as if invigorated by a new life-force. The outlines of the road grew clearer as he walked, the sky brighter.

Thus absorbed, he was startled by the sudden, clear sighting of a T-junction in the distance up ahead. He slunk back under the eaves of a shop, leaning against its bolted door. After a while, the cold crept up on him.

‘Look at that old man.’

‘What’s he so happy about…’

Another shock: Shuan now noticed passers-by – one of them turning to glance back at him. Though the lines of the man’s face remained hazy in the fading darkness, Shuan caught a predatory, famished gleam in his eyes. Shuan glanced at the lantern; it had gone out. He patted his pocket again, to check for the robust presence of the silver. Looking back up, he now found himself among a great ghostly throng, wandering aimlessly about in twos and threes. But when he looked again, their shadowy strangeness seemed to fall away.

Shortly after, he saw a few soldiers march towards and then past him, the large white circle on their chests and backs clearly visible even from a distance. As they passed him, he noted the dark red border on their uniforms. Then a rush of footsteps: the crowd surged forward, its units of twos and threes suddenly coalescing into a tremendous mass that pulled up and fanned out into a semicircle just before the junction.

Shuan watched them, the view beyond blocked by the ranks of backs and extended necks – as if they were so many ducks, their heads stretched upwards by an invisible puppeteer. A moment’s silence, a slight noise, then they regained the power of motion. With a roar of movement, the mass of them pushed back towards Shuan, almost sweeping him over in the crush.

‘You there! Give me the money and you’ll get the goods!’ A man dressed in black stood before Shuan, who shrank back from his cutting glare. One enormous hand was thrust out, opened, before him; the other held, between finger and thumb, a crimson steamed bun, dripping red.

After groping for the silver, Shuan held it tremblingly out at him, recoiling from the object offered in return. ‘What’re you afraid of? Just take it!’ the man shouted impatiently. As Shuan continued to hesitate, the man in black snatched the lantern from him, ripped off its paper cover, wrapped it around the bread, then thrust the whole thing back. Grabbing the money, he gave the packet a squeeze then strode off, muttering ‘Old fool…’ to himself.

‘Who’s that for – who’s ill?’ Shuan vaguely heard someone ask. Whoever it was, he ignored them. His mind was now focused on one object alone, as if he held in his hands the single heir to an ancient house; all else was shut out. His only thought was to place this elixir inside his son, and enjoy its blessings. The sun was now fully risen, painting in light the road home, and the faded gold characters of a battered old plaque at the junction behind: ‘Crossing of the Ancient — Pavilion’.

By the time Shuan returned home, the main room at the tea-house had been cleaned and tidied, its rows of tables polished to an almost slippery shine. No customers, only his son, sitting eating at one of the inner tables, fat beads of sweat rolling off his forehead, thick jacket stuck to his spine, the hunched ridges of his shoulder blades almost joined in an inverted V. A frown furrowed Shuan’s forehead. His wife rushed out from behind the cooking range, wide-eyed, a faint tremble to her lips.

‘Did you get it?’

‘Yes.’

The two of them returned to the stove and, after a brief discussion, Hua Dama left the room, returning shortly afterwards with an old lotus leaf, which she spread out on a table. Shuan opened out the lantern paper and rewrapped the crimson bun in the lotus leaf, by which point the younger Shuan had finished his breakfast.

‘Stay there,’ his mother called quickly out to him. ‘Don’t come over here.’

After firing up the stove, Shuan stuffed the jade green parcel and the torn red-and-white lantern paper inside. A reddish-black flame flared up, filling the room with a curious fragrance.

‘Smells good! What treats have you got in there?’ The hunch-back had arrived. All day, every day he spent in the teahouse, always the first to arrive and the last to leave. Today, he had chosen the corner table nearest the street. Everyone ignored him. ‘Crispy rice?’ Still no reply. Shuan hurried over to pour him some tea.

‘Come in here!’ Hua Dama called her son into the back room, where he sat down on the bench in the middle. His mother brought him a round, pitch-black object on a plate.

‘Eat up,’ she told him softly. ‘It’ll make you better.’

The boy picked it up and studied it. The strangest thing: as if it were his own life he were holding between finger and thumb. He broke it carefully open: a jet of white steam escaped from within the burnt crust, leaving behind two halves of a white steamed bun. Soon enough, the whole thing was swallowed down, its taste forgotten, leaving only an empty plate before him. His parents stood to either side, watching, an odd gleam to their eyes – as if they wanted to pour something into him, and take something out in return. His heart started to pound. He pressed his hands to his chest; another coughing fit began.

‘Go and have a nap – then you’ll feel better.’

Her son obediently coughed himself to sleep. Once his breathing had steadied, Hua Dama lightly covered him with a patched quilt.

The teahouse was now full. Dark circles under his eyes, Shuan moved busily between customers, filling their cups from his copper kettle.

‘Are you all right?’ a man with a grey beard asked. ‘Not ill, are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Really?’ his interlocutor murmured. ‘You look cheerful enough, I suppose.’

‘He’s just busy. If his son – ’

A man with a fleshy, overbearing face rushed in, interrupting the hunchback’s diagnosis. He wore a dark brown shirt, unbuttoned and bunched carelessly at the waist with a broad black belt.

‘Has he had it?’ he shouted at Shuan. ‘Is he better? You’re a lucky man, Shuan! Lucky I keep my ear to the ground…’

One hand on his kettle, the other clamped by his side, Shuan listened respectfully, his face split wide open into a smile. Everyone else followed his example. Smiling just as brightly, Shuan’s wife – her own eyes shadowed by exhaustion – bustled out with a bowl and tea leaves. Once she had added an olive, Shuan poured on the hot water.

‘He’ll be better before you know it! Guaranteed!’ the fleshy face blustered on. ‘A miracle cure! Right? Get it hot, eat it hot.’

‘Without your help, Mr Kang – ’ Hua Dama gratefully began.

‘Guaranteed! Eat it hot. That consumption of his won’t stand a chance, not against a bun dipped in human blood!’

Paling at the word ‘consumption’, Hua Dama smiled all the more valiantly, before walking off, mumbling some excuse, to conceal her discomfort. Oblivious, Mr Kang raised the volume of his voice a notch, squeezing a further coughing fit from the Shuan boy asleep in the back room.

‘What a stroke of luck. Soon he’ll be right as rain; no wonder old Shuan can’t keep the smile off his face,’ the grey-beard echoed, approaching Mr Kang. ‘I heard it was the Xia boy – is that right?’ he lowered his voice deferentially. ‘What happened?’

‘It was Mrs Xia’s son, all right! The rascal!’ A feeling of exceptional well-being rushed through Mr Kang as he observed his rapt audience, the folds of his flesh seeming to swell with delight. ‘He threw his life away, the idiot,’ he went on, even louder. ‘No doubt about it. Didn’t get anything out of it myself, of course – not like our friend Shuan here. Red-Eye the prison guard got his clothes, while the boy’s uncle cleaned up with a twenty-five-dollar reward. Straight into his pocket!’

The younger Shuan slowly made his way out of the back room, both hands pressed against his chest, unable to stop coughing. Walking over to the cooking range, he filled a bowl with cold rice, poured on hot water, then sat down and began to eat. ‘Feeling any better?’ his mother murmured, following behind. ‘Still as hungry as ever?’

‘Guaranteed!’ Mr Kang glanced at the boy, before turning back to his audience. ‘Sharp as a tack, that uncle of his. If he hadn’t informed when he did, the authorities would have gone for the whole family – root and branch. Instead of which, he’s made a mint! That boy – you wouldn’t believe it, he even tried to get his jailer to turn against the government.’

‘Unbelievable,’ spat a furious-looking young man, around twenty, in the back row.

‘When Red-Eye went to sound him out for bribes, he tried to talk him round. The empire, he said, it belongs to every one of us. Ever heard anything like it? Mad! Red-Eye couldn’t believe how poor he really was – even though he’d known all along there was only an old mother back home. He lost his rag completely when he found out there wasn’t a drop to be squeezed out of him. Gave him a couple of good slaps round the face – and quite right!’

‘That would’ve given him something to think about.’ The hunchback in the corner suddenly revived.

‘Ha! Not a bit of it. He just said he felt sorry for him.’

‘Sorry for hitting a fool like that?’ the man with the grey beard asked.

‘You weren’t listening,’ Mr Kang smirked contemptuously. ‘The
boy
felt sorry for Red-Eye!’

His listeners’ eyes suddenly went blank, their chatter fading away. His eating done, the sweat was steaming off the Shuan boy.

‘
He
felt sorry for Red-Eye – crazy! He must have gone crazy,’ the man with the grey beard illuminated.

‘Crazy – crazy,’ the man in his twenties echoed, identically inspired.

Life – and the power of speech – returned to the other customers. As the teahouse buzzed with noise once more, the Shuan boy began coughing desperately. Mr Kang strode over to thump him on the back.

‘Guaranteed!’ Mr Kang told him, thumping him on the back. ‘No need to cough like that, Shuan my boy. Guaranteed!’

‘Crazy,’ the hunchback nodded his head.

For as long as anyone could remember, the land beyond the western gate in the town wall had been common ground, bisected by a narrow, meandering path tramped out by the shoes of short-cutters. To the left of this natural boundary line were buried the bodies of the executed and those who had died in prison; to the right lay the mass graves into which the town’s poor were sunk. Both sides bulged with grave mounds, like the tiered crowns of steamed bread with which wealthy families celebrated their birthdays.

The weather that April – the month on which the Grave-Sweeping Festival fell – was unusually cold, with buds no more than half the size of rice grains daring to peep out on to the willow branches. Not long after daybreak, a weeping Hua Dama set four dishes of food and a bowl of rice in front of a new grave. After burning some funeral money, she squatted there blankly, as if waiting for something – what, she couldn’t say – to happen. A light breeze ruffled her short hair, noticeably greyer than it had been last year.

Another woman – her hair also grey, her clothes ragged, carrying an old, round basket lacquered in vermilion, from which a chain of paper money hung – approached slowly along the narrow track, pausing every few steps. Suddenly noticing Hua Dama’s gaze, she hesitated, a flush tingeing her pale face, then forced herself to walk on: to a grave to the left of the boundary, in front of which she set down her basket.

The grave was directly across from the Shuan boy’s, the two plots separated only by the narrow path. Hua Dama watched the woman lay out four dishes of food and a bowl of rice, weep a while, then burn her paper money. ‘Her son must be buried there, too,’ she thought to herself. After she had paced aimlessly back and forth, a tremble suddenly took hold of the second woman’s hands and feet. She took a few unsteady steps back, her glazed eyes staring ahead.

Fearing that the woman was almost maddened by grief, Hua Dama rose to her feet and crossed over. ‘Try not to upset yourself,’ she murmured. ‘Why don’t we take ourselves back?’