To Live (17 page)

The guy doing the blood work said, “You always get dizzy when you donate blood.”

Youqing had already given more than his body could take, but out came another doctor saying there still wasn’t enough blood. The fucking asshole doing the blood work extracted almost every drop of blood from my son’s body. Youqing’s lips turned blue, but the guy still didn’t stop. Only after Youqing’s head slumped and fell to one side did he finally begin to panic. He called a doctor over, who squatted down and listened with a stethoscope.

“I can’t get a heartbeat,” muttered the doctor.

The doctor didn’t seem to think it was a big deal. He just scolded the blood technician. “You’re really an idiot.”

He then went back into the delivery room to save the magistrate’s wife.

That evening as dusk fell, when I was just getting ready to pack it in for the day, a
kid from one of the neighboring villages, a classmate of Youqing’s, came running over. He rushed right over to me and shouted at the top of his voice, “Is Xu Youqing’s father here?”

My heart jumped. It was getting late, and I had just begun to worry that something might have happened to Youqing. Before I had a chance to respond, the
kid yelled again, “How about his mother?”

I quickly answered, “I’m Youqing’s father.”

Wiping his nose, the kid looked at me and said, “I was right, it’s you. You’re the one who came to our classroom.”

My heart felt as if it was going to jump out of my chest, and then he finally said, “Xu Youqing’s almost dead. He’s in the hospital.”

My vision instantly went blurry. I asked the kid, “What did you say?”

“Hurry up and get to the hospital,” he repeated. “Youqing’s dying.”

With my thoughts in disarray, I threw down my hoe and ran toward town. It just didn’t make sense. Youqing had been fine that morning when he went to school, and now they were saying he was almost dead. My head buzzed wildly as I ran to the town hospital. As soon as I saw a doctor I stopped him and asked, “My son?”

The doctor looked at me and laughed, “How would I know your son?”

As soon as I heard this I was stunned. I thought, perhaps they made a mistake—how wonderful it would be if it was all just a mistake.

“They said my son was dying and that I should go to the hospital,” I said.

Just as he was getting ready to walk away, that doctor suddenly stopped and looked at me.

“What’s your son’s name?” he asked.

“Youqing,” I replied.

He extended his arm and pointed toward the room at the end of the hall. “Go ask over there.”

I ran down to the room he had pointed toward and saw a doctor sitting there, in the middle of writing something. My heart was pounding as I walked over to ask, “Doctor, is my son still alive?”

The doctor raised his head and looked at me for a long time before asking, “Do you mean Xu Youqing?”

I quickly nodded my head.

“How many sons do you have?” the doctor asked.

Immediately my legs went soft. Standing there trembling, I said, “I only have one son. I beg you, please, save my son.”

The doctor nodded his head to let me know that he understood, but then he asked, “How come you only had one son?”

How was I supposed to answer this? I got anxious and asked him, “Is my son still alive?”

He shook his head and said, “He’s dead.”

Suddenly I could no longer see the doctor—my mind went blank and my head began to spin. All I felt were the tears pouring down my face. Only after what seemed like an eternity did I ask the doctor, “Where’s my son?”

Youqing was lying alone in a small room on a bed made of bricks. When I went in, night had not yet fallen, and I could see Youqing’s small, frail body lying there. He was wearing the new outfit Jiazhen had made for him. My son’s eyes were tightly closed, as was his mouth. “Youqing! Youqing!” I
kept calling to him. Only after he didn’t move did I know that he was really dead. I went to hug my son, but Youqing’s body was stiff and cold. That morning when he had gone to school he was alive and well; by evening he had become stiff and cold. I couldn’t understand it—the body before me seemed like a different person from the one I’d seen that morning. I looked at Youqing and caressed his skinny shoulders—it was really my son. I cried and cried, not even noticing the arrival of Youqing’s gym teacher. When he saw Youqing, he cried too, as he
kept repeating to me, “How could it be? I can’t imagine . . .”

The gym teacher sat down next to me, and we cried together. I caressed Youqing’s face; so did he. After a while I suddenly realized that I still didn’t even
know how my boy had died. I asked the gym teacher, and only then did I learn that he had died from having too much of his blood extracted. At the time I wanted to
kill somebody. I put my son down and rushed out. Charging into the patient ward, I grabbed hold of the first doctor I saw—I didn’t care who he was—and hit him in the face. That doctor fell to the floor and started screaming for help.

“You killed my son!” I barked at him.

I lifted my leg to kick him, but someone grabbed me from behind. Turning around, I saw Youqing’s gym teacher.

“Let me go!” I demanded.

The gym teacher said, “Don’t do anything crazy.”

“I’m going to kill him,” I said.

With the gym teacher restraining me, I couldn’t get loose from his grip. Crying, I begged him, “I
know you’ve always been good to Youqing. Please let me go.”

But no matter what, the gym teacher wouldn’t let go. All I could do was elbow him, but he still wouldn’t loosen his grip. He gave the doctor time to get up and run away, and by then a whole crowd had surrounded us. I saw that there were two more doctors in the crowd and said to the gym teacher, “I beg you, please let me go.”

The gym teacher was really strong—with him holding me I couldn’t move a muscle. I
kept trying to elbow him, but he didn’t seem at all afraid of getting hurt. He just
kept saying, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

It was then that a man wearing a Sun Yat-sen–style tunic suit walked over and told the gym teacher to let me go. He asked me, “Are you Xu Youqing’s father?”

I ignored him, and as soon as the gym teacher let me go I rushed over to pounce on one of the doctors. The doctor immediately turned and ran. I heard someone address the guy wearing the tunic suit as the county magistrate and I thought, oh, so he’s the county magistrate—it was his wife who took my son away. I raised my leg and kicked the magistrate in the stomach. He let out a groan as he fell to the ground. Youqing’s gym teacher grabbed hold of me again and yelled, “That’s Magistrate Liu!”

“The magistrate’s just the person I want to kill!” I said.

I raised my leg to kick him again when the magistrate suddenly asked me, “Aren’t you Fugui?”

“I’m going to kill you!” I screamed.

The magistrate got to his feet and said, “Fugui, it’s me, Chunsheng.”

As soon as he said that I went numb. I gazed at him for a while, and the longer I looked at him the more he resembled the Chunsheng I once
knew. I said, “Chunsheng, is it really you?”

Chunsheng took a step closer and looked me over.

“Fugui, it’s you,” he said.

Seeing Chunsheng seemed to quell my anger. Through my tears, I told him, “Chunsheng, you’ve gotten tall and gained weight.”

Chunsheng’s eyes also turned red.

“Fugui, I thought you were dead,” he said.

I shook my head. “I survived.”

“And all this time, I thought you’d died the same way as Old Quan,” Chunsheng added.

As soon as he mentioned Old Quan the two of us began to cry like children. After crying for a while I asked Chunsheng, “Did you ever get your hands on that flatbread?”

Wiping away his tears, Chunsheng said, “No, you still remember that? Just as I went out to look for some I was taken prisoner.”

“Did you get to eat steamed buns?” I asked him.

“I sure did,” he smiled.

“I did, too,” I said.

Saying that, we both laughed. We laughed and laughed until I remembered my dead son. I wiped my eyes and began to cry again. Chunsheng put his hand on my shoulder.

“Chunsheng,” I said, “my only son is dead.”

Chunsheng heaved a deep sigh, saying, “How could it have been your son?”

I thought of my son lying all alone in that little room—the pain was unbearable. I said to Chunsheng, “I want to see my son.”

No longer did I want to kill anyone. Who could have guessed that Chunsheng would suddenly appear? I took a few steps and turned around to say to him, “Chunsheng, you owe me a life. You’ll have to repay me in your next lifetime.”

That night I carried Youqing home. I kept stopping from time to time on the way. When my arms got tired from carrying him, I’d put him on my back for a while. But each time I placed him on my back I’d instantly start to panic, so I’d hold him again in front of me. I couldn’t help but look at my son. When I saw I was approaching the village, it got more and more difficult to go on— what was I supposed to say to Jiazhen? Jiazhen was already so sick. I
knew that once she found out Youqing had died she wouldn’t be able to go on much longer. I sat down on the ridge just outside the village with Youqing resting on my leg. As soon as I looked down at him I couldn’t hold back the tears. After crying for a while, I started to think about how to break the news to Jiazhen. After going through everything in my head, I decided I should
keep Youqing’s death a secret from her for the time being. I put Youqing down on the ridge and snuck home to get my hoe. I then picked Youqing back up, headed over to my parents’ gravesite, and started digging a hole.

I had to bury him, but at the same time I couldn’t bear to part with him. I sat down before my parents’ graves and embraced Youqing, not letting go. I let his face rest up against my neck. Youqing’s face felt like it was frozen stiff—it felt like ice pressing on my neck. The night wind whisked against the leaves above our heads, and Youqing’s body was dampened by the dew. The image of him going to school that morning wouldn’t leave me. I remembered his backpack bouncing up and down as he ran off to school. When I realized that Youqing would never again utter a single word or go off running barefoot, I felt wave after wave of pain—it hurt so much that I couldn’t even cry. I
kept sitting there until I saw the sky beginning to turn light. I had to bury him. I took off my clothes and, ripping off my sleeves, used them to cover Youqing’s eyes. I used the rest of my clothes to wrap his body. I placed his body down in the pit I had dug and told my parents, who were buried beside him, “Youqing’s coming. You’ll have to take care of him. When he was alive I was never good to him. You’ll have to love him for me.”

The longer I looked at Youqing lying in that hole, the smaller he looked. He didn’t look like someone who had lived thirteen years; he looked more like he must’ve looked as a newborn, just after Jiazhen had given birth to him. I pushed the dirt into his grave with my hands. I made sure I picked out all the little pebbles and rocks, afraid that the coarse pebbles would press against him and make him uncomfortable. As daylight broke, I finished burying Youqing. I slowly made my way home, but after taking a few steps I turned around to take one last look. As I got to the door of our hut, I realized that I would never see my son again. I couldn’t help crying a few more tears, but fearing Jiazhen would hear, I covered my mouth and squatted down. After squatting down for a long time I began to hear the sound of people heading out to the fields to work—only then did I get back up and go inside. Fengxia was standing next to the door, staring at me with her wide-open eyes. She still didn’t
know that her little brother was dead. When the little kid from the other village had come to give me the news, Fengxia had been right there with me, but she couldn’t hear. From her bed, Jiazhen called me. I walked over and told her, “Youqing’s had an accident. He’s in the hospital.”

It looked like Jiazhen believed me.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I can’t say for sure,” I said. “During class Youqing suddenly fainted and was sent to the hospital. The doctor said that this type of illness might need some time to cure.”

A sad expression began to appear on Jiazhen’s face, and tears began to trickle from the corners of her eyes.

“It’s exhaustion,” she said. “He’s been working too hard ever since I got sick. It’s all my fault.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “Even if he’s tired, exhaustion doesn’t cause someone to get sick like that.”

Jiazhen looked me over.

“Your eyes are all swollen,” she said.

I nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t sleep all night.”

I cut our conversation short and hastily made my way outside. Youqing was dead—I had only just put his body into the cold earth—and there was no way I’d have been able to control my emotions if I’d
kept on with Jiazhen like that.

For the next few days I would work the field during the day, and then when night fell I would tell Jiazhen that I was going into town to see if Youqing was doing any better. I would slowly walk toward town, and as it got darker I would turn back around. When I got to the western side of the village, I would sit down in front of Youqing’s grave. The night sky was a dense black, and the wind would waft against my face as I spoke to my dead son. My words were carried away by the wind; they didn’t even seem to belong to me. I would sit there until the middle of the night before finally going home. The first couple of days Jiazhen would be waiting up for me, and as soon as I stepped through the door she would ask if Youqing was any better. I would be forced to make up some stories to
keep the truth from her. But after a few days Jiazhen would already be asleep by the time I came home, lying there with her eyes closed. I
knew that going on lying to her wasn’t going to solve anything, but that was all I could do—take one day at a time. As long as Jiazhen believed that Youqing was okay, that was all that mattered.

One night, after arriving home from Youqing’s grave, I climbed into bed next to Jiazhen. I thought she was asleep, but she suddenly said, “Fugui, I don’t have much time left.”