To Live (2 page)

I’m the prodigal son of the Xu family—or, as my dad would say, I’m a bastard. I studied for a few years at an old-style private school. When the schoolteacher, wearing the traditional long gown, called on me to read a paragraph aloud, it was my happiest moment. I stood up, holding my string-bound edition of “The Thousand Word Essay,” and announced to my teacher, “Listen good now! Daddy’s going to read to you!”

The next time he saw my father, my teacher, who was really getting on in years, told him, “I guarantee you that when that son of yours grows up, he’ll be nothing but trouble.”

Ever since I was little I’ve been hopeless, as my father would say. My teacher used to say I was a rotten piece of wood that could not be carved. Now that I think about it, they were both right. But at the time that’s not how I saw things. I thought, I’ve got money, I’m the only flame the Xu family still has burning. If I’m extinguished, the Xu family will be finished.

When I was in private school I never walked anywhere—our family had a hired worker who would carry me on his back. When school got out he would already be waiting there, respectfully bent over. After I climbed on, I’d hit him on the head and say, “Changgen, let’s go!”

Our worker Changgen would start to run. I’d be on top, bobbing about like a sparrow on the branches of a tree. Then I’d say, “Fly!”

Changgen would take longer strides and jump as if he could fly.

When I got older I started to build up a taste for going into town. Sometimes I wouldn’t come home for ten or fifteen days. I wore a white silk shirt, and my hair was smooth and shiny. Standing in front of the mirror and seeing my head of black, flowing hair, I
knew that I looked like a rich man.

I loved to go up to the whorehouse to listen to those loose women moaning and groaning all night long. Listening to those sounds was just like scratching a good itch. Once the day comes that a man starts to go whoring, gambling can’t be too far behind. Whoring and gambling are just like a pair of arms or legs: inseparable. Later I began to like gambling even more—whoring was just to loosen up a bit. Whoring is like drinking a lot of water and needing to relieve oneself, or, said bluntly, it’s like taking a piss. But gambling is completely different. Gambling made me both happy and tense. And it was especially that sense of tension that brought me an almost indescribable feeling of comfort. I was like a monk caught up in his daily routine of ringing the bell, completely listless. Every morning I’d wake up with my only worry being how I should spend the day. My father would sigh in despair, reprimanding me for failing to bring honor to our ancestors. I would think that bringing honor to our ancestors wasn’t my job alone. I would say to myself, why should I give up my days of fun to worry about boring stuff like honoring the ancestors? Moreover, when my dad was young he’d been just like me. Our family used to have over two hundred
mu
of land, but once my father got his hands on it he managed to lose over half. I said to my father, “Don’t worry, my son will honor the ancestors.”

We should leave something good for the next generation anyway. My mom laughed when she heard this, and later she secretly told me that Dad had once said the same thing to my grandfather. I thought, you see, he forces what he doesn’t want to do onto me. Why should I listen to him? At the time, my daughter, Fengxia, was just four years old, and Jiazhen was pregnant with our son, Youqing. Because she was six months pregnant, Jiazhen was naturally no treat for the eyes. When she walked it looked like she had a pair of steamed buns stuffed down her pants. Her legs didn’t go forward when she walked, but side to side. I remember being so annoyed by her appearance that I even said to her, “Look at you. As soon as the wind blows your stomach doubles in size.”

Jiazhen would never contradict me. But after hearing me insult her, she couldn’t have been very happy and quietly retorted, “The wind didn’t blow
that
hard.”

Actually, after I started gambling I really did want to honor my ancestors. I wanted to win back that one hundred mu of land my dad lost. When my dad asked me what I was doing playing around in the city, I said to him, “I don’t play around anymore. I’m doing business.”

He asked, “What kind of business?”

As soon as he heard he lost his temper. When he was young he had said the same thing to my grandfather. When he found out I was gambling he took off his cloth shoes to hit me. I dodged to the left and ducked to the right. I thought after he hit me a few times it would be over. I was surprised to find that my father, normally only active when coughing, became increasingly violent as he flailed me. I wasn’t a fly that was going to remain still while he tried to swat me. I restrained his hand and shouted, “Dad, what the fuck is wrong with you? If it weren’t for the fact that you’re the one who brought me into this world, I’d beat the hell out of you! Fucking relax!”

I held back his right hand, but Dad used his left hand to take off his right shoe. He was still bent on hitting me. I held on to his left hand so he couldn’t get close enough to strike. He was so angry that he trembled for a long while before crying out, “Bastard!”

“Go to hell!” I told him.

I pushed him with both hands, and he fell down into the corner against the wall.

When I was young, I ate, drank, whored and gambled—I took part in every disreputable thing there was. The House of Qing was the whorehouse I used to go to. There was a fat prostitute there who really won my affection. When she walked, her fat butt was just like the two lanterns that hung outside, shaking from side to side. When she lay in bed she would wobble around. When I was pressed on top of her it felt like being asleep on a boat, rocking back and forth as I floated down a river. I would often have her carry me piggyback to go shopping—riding on her back was just like riding on the back of a horse.

Mr. Chen, my father-in-law, who was the owner of the rice store, always stood behind the counter wearing a black silk shirt. Whenever we were passing by his shop, I would pull that prostitute’s hair to tell her to stop. Then I would take off my hat and pay my respects to my father-in-law. “How have you been feeling lately?”

As I asked, my father-in-law’s face would look like a preserved egg. Me, I’d just giggle and continue on my way. Later my dad told me that on a few occasions my father-in-law was so angry with me it made him physically sick.

“Give me a break,” I told my dad. “You’re my father, and my behavior’s never even made you sick. Just because he’s got health problems, what right does he have to blame me?”

Mr. Chen was afraid of me, and I knew it. When I passed his shop riding on that whore’s back, my father-in-law would be startled into retreat—like a rat scurrying back into his little hole. He didn’t want to see me, but as a son-in-law passing a father-inlaw’s store, you should always have some manners. So I would call out, wishing my father-in-law well as he scurried away.

The wildest time was just after the Japanese surrender, when the Nationalist troops entered the city to recover their lost territory. That was truly an exciting day—both sides of the city streets were flooded with people holding small colored flags. Nationalist flags of a white sun against a blue sky jutted out at a slant from all the shops. My father-in-law even had a portrait of Chiang Kai-shek as large as two doors hanging before his store; the three hired hands at the rice shop stood under Chiang’s right-hand pocket.

I spent that whole night gambling at the House of Qing. I felt muddleheaded, as if a heavy bag of rice had been placed on my shoulders. It had been over half a month since I’d been home, and my clothes reeked of a sour stench. I dragged that fat prostitute out of bed and had her carry me home. I also hired a rickshaw coolie to follow us so he could take the prostitute back to the House of Qing once I got home.

As the prostitute carried me toward the city gate she wouldn’t stop yapping, blabbering on about how not even the god of thunder strikes people while they are asleep, and yet just as she had gotten to sleep I had the nerve to wake her up. She
kept complaining about how coldhearted I was. I slipped a silver coin down her shirt and that shut her up. As we got close to the city gate I saw crowds on either side of the road, and my spirit suddenly soared.

My father-in-law was the head of the city’s chamber of commerce. From far away I saw him standing in the center of the street, yelling, “Everybody get ready. Stand up straight, and as soon as the Nationalist army arrives everybody must clap and cheer.”

Someone noticed me and jokingly yelled, “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

My father-in-law thought the army had arrived and scuttled off to one side. My legs were wrapped around that whore as if I were riding a horse. I said to her, “Run! Run!”

With crowds bawling with laughter on both sides of the street, the prostitute, huffing and puffing, went into a light jog.

“At night you screw me and during the day you ride me!” She cursed me as we went. “You coldhearted bastard! You’re going to be the death of me!”

Over and over, I grinned and nodded in respect to the swarms of people roaring with laughter. When we came before my father-in-law I pulled the prostitute’s hair. “Stop! Stop!”

“Ow!” the prostitute yelped as she came to a halt.

In a blaring voice I said to my father-in-law, “My esteemed father-in-law, your son-in-law wishes you a good morning.”

That time I really did a good job of making my father-in-law lose face. At the time he just stood there stupefied, his lips trembling. After what seemed like an eternity he finally said in a hoarse voice, “My dear ancestors! Get out of here.”

The voice that emerged from his lips didn’t seem like it belonged to him.

My wife, Jiazhen, of course knew about my “colorful” romps in the city. Jiazhen was a good woman. For me to have had the good fortune to marry such a virtuous person in this life must have been repayment for having been a barking dog in the last. Jiazhen was always submissive toward me. While I was out screwing around she’d be at home worrying about me. But she would never say anything, just like my mother.

My escapades in the city were actually a bit too much. Jiazhen, of course, was a wreck. She was so disturbed that she had trouble
keeping herself together. One day I came home from town and, just as I sat down at the dinner table, I noticed a strange smile on her face as she brought out four different dishes. She poured me a glass of wine and sat down next to me while I ate and drank. Her beaming expression seemed a bit strange. I couldn’t imagine what good fortune had befallen her. I thought as hard as I could, but couldn’t figure out what the special occasion was. I asked her, but she wouldn’t say. She just gazed at me with a strange, elated smile on her face.

Those four dishes were all vegetable dishes. Jiazhen had prepared each one differently, but as I got to the bottom, I started to find pieces of pork hidden in each dish. At first I didn’t really pay attention to this, but as I ate the last dish, I discovered that there was again a piece of meat on the bottom. At first I was stumped but then I began to laugh out loud. I understood what Jiazhen was up to. She was trying to teach me that although women all look different on the outside, when you get down to it they are all the same.

“I understand this little principle,” I told Jiazhen.

But even though I knew what she meant, that didn’t change the fact that when I saw a woman who looked a little different on the outside, I couldn’t help thinking that she really was different. It was actually a hopeless situation.

Jiazhen would never let me know when she was upset with me—that was just the
kind of person she was. But in her roundabout way she still would try to get me in the end. I, on the other hand, wouldn’t put up with either soft or hard tactics; neither my father’s cloth shoes nor Jiazhen’s cooking could stop me. I still loved going into town, and I still loved visiting the whorehouse. It was really my mom who understood a bit of what makes men tick. She said to Jiazhen, “Men are nothing but a bunch of gluttonous cats.”

When Mom said this she not only exonerated me, but also exposed some inside information about my dad. Dad was sitting nearby, and as soon as he heard this his eyes squinted like two little peepholes and he began to giggle. When Dad was younger he couldn’t contain himself when it came to the ladies. It wasn’t until he was too old to screw around that he began to behave himself.

The House of Qing was also where I usually gambled. I’d often play mah-jongg, nine card and dice. Every time I gambled I lost, and the more I lost, the more I wanted to win back that hundred
mu
of land my father lost when he was young. In the beginning I would pay up right there, and if I didn’t have money I’d just steal jewelry from Jiazhen and my mom. I even stole my daughter Fengxia’s gold necklace. Afterward I just set up an account on credit. The creditors all
knew about my family’s wealth, so they let my debts ride. Once I started playing on credit I stopped
keeping track of how much I lost, and the creditors didn’t remind me. But every day they were secretly scheming away my family’s one hundred
mu.

It wasn’t until after Liberation that I finally found out the winning party had everything set up. No wonder I always lost and never won—they had been secretly digging a hole for me. At the time there was a Mr. Shen at the House of Qing. He was about sixty years old, and his eyes were as cunning and bright as a cat’s. He wore a long blue gown and would usually sit in the corner with his back straight. His eyes would be closed as if he were dozing off. Only after the action at the gambling table started to get exciting would Mr. Shen begin to cough and casually walk over, selecting a good spot from which to watch. He would never have to stand for long before someone would get up and offer him his place. “Mr. Shen, have a seat.”

Mr. Shen would lift his long gown as he sat down and address the other three gamblers: “Please proceed.”