Rickshaw Boy: A Novel (25 page)

She had decided to hedge her bets after talking about buying two rickshaws, one for him to pull and one to rent out. Now her plan was to buy one for him to pull but hold on to the rest of the money, for that was the source of her power. What if she gave it all to him and he had a change of heart? No, she had to take precautions. The departure of Old Man Liu had taught her a lesson: she could rely on no one but herself. Who knew what tomorrow would bring? She wanted to enjoy life, and money was the key. Having gotten used to snacking on little treats, she’d keep doing that as long as she could. They could get by on Xiangzi’s earnings—he was, after all, a first-class rickshaw man—and spend her money as she liked. She would live for the moment. One day the money would run out, but no one lives forever. Marrying a rickshaw man—she’d had no choice—had been bad enough, and the thought of being forced to go to him with her hand out was too humiliating for words. Her mood brightened a bit. Facing a bleak future was no reason to hang her head now. It was like looking into a sunset—though darkness has settled in the distance, it is still light enough close by to walk a few more steps.

Xiangzi saw no need to argue with her, since she’d given her approval to buy a rickshaw. He could surely earn sixty or seventy cents a day pulling his own rickshaw, enough for them to get by. Suddenly he felt pretty good about things. He had suffered in pursuit of buying a rickshaw, and now that he’d achieved that, what more was there to say? To be sure, two people living off the earnings of one rickshaw would be tight, and the danger existed that they would not be able to save up enough to buy a new rickshaw when this one wore out, but given the difficulties involved, buying just the one was good enough for now. Better not to think too far ahead.

As luck would have it, one of the compound residents, Er Qiangzi, had a rickshaw for sale. The year before he’d sold his nineteen-year-old daughter Fuzi to an army officer for two hundred yuan. For a while he’d spent lavishly, redeeming everything he’d pawned and buying new clothes for his family. His wife was the shortest, ugliest woman in the compound: protruding forehead, high cheekbones, hardly any hair, buckteeth, and a face full of freckles—a truly disgusting sight. She had cried over the loss of her daughter till her eyes were red, but that did not keep her from wearing her new blue dress. After selling his daughter, Er Qiangzi, a violent man, took to drinking, and later, once he was drunk, with tears in his eyes, he began looking for trouble. For his wife, a new dress and good food to eat hardly made up for enduring twice as many beatings as before. Er Qiangzi, who, at the age of forty, vowed never to pull a rickshaw again, bought a pair of baskets and a carrying pole with which to peddle an assortment of goods—melons, fruit, peanuts, and cigarettes. After two months, he made a rough calculation and saw that he’d not just lost money, he’d lost a great deal of it. Pulling a rickshaw was what he was good at; he had no head for business. Pulling a rickshaw was all about getting fares, whereas there were tricks to peddling that he could not master. Men who pulled rickshaws knew that their lives revolved around credit, and he could not find it in him to say no when his friends wanted to buy now, pay later. But getting them to settle up was harder than he’d thought. As a result, good customers were few and far between, and good friends could not pay off their debts. How could he not lose money? And the more he lost, the more heavily he drank, leading to confrontations with the police and ugly scenes at home with his wife and children. All because of alcohol. Regret and wrenching sadness set in when he sobered up, realizing that he was squandering money he’d gotten by selling his own daughter, and that he had turned into a drunk and a bully. What kind of man was that? At such times, he’d spend all day in bed, trying to dream away his sorrows.

He decided to give up peddling and go back to pulling a rickshaw. No sense throwing away what money he had left. So he went out and bought a rickshaw. Altogether unreasonable when drunk, when sober he was all about keeping up appearances, so he put on stylish airs. With a new rickshaw and natty clothes, he considered himself to be an elite rickshaw man, one who drank the best tea and pulled only high-class passengers. He would take a spot at one of the stands, showing off his new rickshaw and clean, white pants and jacket, and chat with the other men, seemingly too good to vie for fares. One minute he’d dust off his rickshaw with a new blue whisk, the next he’d stomp his white-soled shoes on the ground or stare at the tip of his nose and stand there with a smile, waiting for someone to come up and admire his rickshaw. An endless conversation would begin immediately. This could go on for days. When he did get a good fare, his legs were incapable of matching his rickshaw or attire. He could barely run, which upset him so much he’d start thinking about his daughter again and would have to drink to forget. And so it went, until all he had left was a rickshaw.

Around the time of the winter solstice he got drunk once again. The minute he walked in the door at home, his sons—one thirteen, the other eleven—ran off to hide from him, but not before he angrily gave them each a kick. When his wife complained, he kicked her in the belly. She fell to the floor and lay there without making a sound for a long moment, throwing their sons into a panic. One picked up a coal spade, the other a rolling pin, and they fought off their father. In the scuffle they stepped on their mother. Neighbors, hearing the commotion, rushed over and pinned Er Qiangzi to the brick bed, while the boys went crying to their mother. Er Qiangzi’s wife regained consciousness but was unable to walk again. Then, on the third day of the twelfth lunar month, she breathed her last, still wearing the blue dress bought from the sale of her daughter. Her distraught parents insisted on taking their son-in-law to court, relenting only after friends intervened and Er Qiangzi agreed to arrange a decent burial. After giving the family fifteen yuan, he pawned his rickshaw for sixty. New Year’s came and went, and Er Qiangzi had hopes of ridding himself of the rickshaw, though he was too strapped to redeem it. So he went out and got drunk and hatched a plan to sell one of his sons. There were no takers. Next, he went to see Fuzi’s husband, who refused to recognize this so-called father-in-law. And that put an end to his plans.

Knowing the rickshaw’s history, Xiangzi had no interest in buying it; there were plenty of rickshaws for sale, so why buy a jinxed rickshaw acquired through the sale of a daughter and sold because of a wife’s murder? Huniu saw it differently: she figured they could buy this nearly new rickshaw for a little more than eighty yuan, a bargain considering that it came from the renowned Decheng Factory and had only been in use for six months or so—its tires looked brand-new. Rickshaws that were only two-thirds new went for fifty or sixty! This was too good a bargain to pass up, especially since she knew that money was short after the New Year’s holiday, and he would not try to raise the price. He needed the money. So she went to look the rickshaw over and bargain with Er Qiangzi. The deal was struck while Xiangzi stayed home, and there was nothing he could say, since it wasn’t his money. He could only wait to take the rickshaw out on the street. When Huniu brought it back, he inspected it carefully. It was a good, strong rickshaw in fine shape. And yet, it made him uncomfortable. What disturbed him most were the colors—pitch-black, with nickel alloy fittings. Er Qiangzi had thought that the contrast—black and white—gave it a classy look. But it reminded Xiangzi of mourning garb in a funeral procession, and he would have preferred new fittings in bronze or soft yellow, to give it a livelier appearance. But he said nothing to Huniu, knowing the sort of reaction he’d get.

The rickshaw attracted a great deal of attention when Xiangzi took it out. He hated it when people called it “the little widow,” although he tried to put that out of his mind. But the rickshaw followed him around all day, keeping him on edge, as if at any moment something bad might happen. When thoughts of Er Qiangzi and his sad fate popped into Xiangzi’s mind, he felt as if he were pulling a coffin behind him, not a rickshaw, and he often saw ghostly shadows on the rickshaw, or so it seemed.

But nothing happened, despite his constant worries. As the weather warmed up, he changed his padded clothes for an unlined shirt and trousers; Beiping springs are notoriously short, and the days became irritatingly long and wearying. He would go out early in the morning, and by four or five o’clock in the afternoon he was finished for the day, though the sun was still high in the sky. He’d pulled enough fares, yet was not ready to go home, so he dithered, feeling unsettled, one long, lazy yawn after another.

However weary and bored Xiangzi was during those long days, it was worse for Huniu, who was maddeningly lonesome at home. She could warm herself by the stove in the winter and listen to the wind whistling outside, dejected to be sure but comforted by the thought that it was better than going outside. But now that the stove had been moved under the eaves, she had too much time on her hands. The filthy, treeless yard was submerged in a pall of rank odors, but if she went out for a stroll, she would not be able to keep an eye on her neighbors. Even shopping trips had to be kept as short as possible. She felt like a bee trapped in a sealed room, able to see sunlight through the window but unable to fly out. She had nothing in common with the women in the compound, who talked only of family affairs, while she was an unrefined woman who had no interest in such things. Their grumblings stemmed from the bitter lives they lived, and it took little to bring tears to their eyes. Her complaints, on the other hand, were a product of the dissatisfaction with what life had dealt her; she had no tears to shed, venting her frustration instead in cursing and quarreling. There was no basis of understanding between her and them, so best to mind her own business and not even talk to them.

Then, in the middle of the fourth month, she found a friend. Er Qiangzi’s daughter, Fuzi, came home. The man in her life was an army officer who set up a simple home wherever he was sent and spent a hundred or two to buy a large plank bed, a couple of chairs, and a young girl, all he needed to live enjoyably for a while. Then, when his unit was transferred, he picked up and moved on, leaving everything, the girl included, behind. Spending a hundred or two for the better part of the year was worth it, since hiring a domestic to wash and mend his clothes, cook his meals, and perform a myriad of little chores would easily cost ten yuan a month, food included. But marrying a girl brought him a servant
and
someone to share his bed, a girl guaranteed not to pass on a venereal disease. If she pleased him, he could buy her a nice dress at a cost of one yuan or less. If not, he’d leave her at home stark naked, and there was not a thing she could do about it. Then, when it was time to leave, he unemotionally abandoned the bed and chairs, leaving her to find a way to come up with the rent for the last two months, most likely more than she could get by selling the bed and chairs.

After disposing of the furniture and paying the outstanding rent, Fuzi returned home with nothing but a cotton dress and a pair of silver earrings.

As for her father, upon selling his rickshaw, Er Qiangzi paid off the pawnshop, with interest, and wound up with slightly more than twenty yuan. At times he bemoaned his fate of losing a wife at middle age, but gained no sympathy from anyone. That drove him to drink, and the more he drank, the greater his self-pity. He began to treat money with hostility, spending it with wild abandon. But there were other times when he told himself he ought to go back to pulling a rickshaw and bring his sons up properly, so they might have a future. With the two boys on his mind, he would rush out and madly buy all sorts of food for them, and then watch them wolf it down with tears in his eyes. “Poor motherless children,” he’d mutter, “ill-fated sons. Your father works like a slave for you. It means nothing to me if I go hungry, so long as you have food to eat. Eat up. And don’t forget your old papa when you grow up!” Slowly but surely, the twenty yuan ran out.

Broke again, drink was his only refuge, and that led to fits of temper, times when he could go a day or two without a single thought for his sons. Left to their own devices, the boys had to find a way to earn enough to buy food. So they began running errands at weddings and funerals and digging in garbage carts for scrap iron and paper they could sell for a few flatbreads or some sweet potatoes, which they’d gobble down, skins, roots, and all. If all they managed to earn was a small coin, they’d spend it on peanuts or broad beans, not enough to stave off hunger but something to chew on at least.

When Fuzi returned, they wrapped their arms around her legs and wordlessly smiled up at her with tears in their eyes. With their mother gone, she would have to take her place.

Er Qiangzi showed no emotion over his daughter’s return; all she meant to him was another mouth to feed. But the happiness in his sons’ eyes made it clear how important it was to have a woman in the house—to cook and do the laundry. So he said nothing, content to let things take their course.

Fuzi was not bad-looking. She’d left home a small, thin girl but, after living with the army officer, had put on weight and grown taller. There was nothing special about her, but she was attractive, with a round face and long neat eyebrows, and was seemingly in robust good health. She had a short upper lip that rose up when she pouted or smiled to reveal a row of even white teeth. Those teeth had been the officer’s favorite feature. With a silly, slightly vacant look, her open mouth proclaimed her lovely innocence, and this expression endowed her with the look of a flower, so common in attractive girls born to poverty: once they have a bit of fragrance or color, they are taken to be sold at the market.

Huniu, who generally ignored her neighbors, found a friend in Fuzi. To begin with, she was a pretty girl in a flowery dress. Then, too, since she had been married to an army officer, she’d seen a bit of the world. That was enough for her. Women do not make friends easily, but when they choose to, it happens quickly. Huniu and Fuzi were fast friends within days. Any time Huniu, who was an inveterate snacker, had some melon seeds or the like, she would call Fuzi over to share them. And as they laughed and chatted, Fuzi would smile her foolish little smile and talk to Huniu of things the other woman had never heard before. Living with the officer had not been easy or pleasant, but when he was in a good mood, he’d taken her to a restaurant or to a show, which provided her with many tales that piqued Huniu’s interest and aroused her envy. There were things Fuzi would rather not have talked about, degrading things, but for Huniu they were a joy to hear. When she begged her to go on, Fuzi found it hard to refuse, no matter how embarrassed she might be. She’d seen pornographic pictures; Huniu hadn’t, and she begged her to talk about them over and over. Huniu did not just admire and envy Fuzi. She was jealous of her. After hearing such stories, she would think about herself—her appearance, her age, her husband—and feel that life had passed her by. Having already been denied her youth, she could entertain no hopes for the future. As for the present, she had only heartless Xiangzi, and the greater her disappointment in him, the keener her admiration for Fuzi. Admittedly, the girl was pitifully poor, but the joys of life had not completely escaped her in her estimable travels, and she could die on the spot with no regrets. In Huniu’s view, Fuzi represented the life women deserved to enjoy.