Three Brothers, page 21
My fifty-eight-year-old retired fourth uncle was like a river that suddenly becomes obstructed and doubles back upon itself. I didn’t dare believe that he, who had previously worked at the factory, often doing overtime, was now almost sixty. I couldn’t believe that he, who once had jet-black hair, had now gone completely gray. I couldn’t believe that he, who once had a clear voice and a ruddy complexion, was now pale and asthmatic. This made me realize that those of us from my generation would always need our parents’ love, from our youth to middle age. As long as our parents remained healthy, we would forever treat them as though they were still in their thirties or forties, and we would forever view ourselves as immature children in need of our parents’ love—even if by that point we were already adults, and the members of our parents’ generation were already entering old age. Because this sort of tender love resembled a river constantly flowing out from its source, we assumed that it was inexhaustible. In fact, we would often view that love as a burden and would want to discard our elders’ love the same way that someone might lance a boil on their back. Eventually the day would arrive when the older generation would grow old and fall ill, and only then would we understand how our parents and their generation had exhausted themselves for the sake of their children and for the sake of daily life and daily trifles. As for us, by that point we would no longer be children, youths, or young adults.
At the time, we neglected our parents and their generation the same way that we ravenously sucked their lifeblood as though it were water. Now, however, we remember that we are the children of our parents and the descendants of that older generation. Up to now, our parents and their generation have done everything humanly possible on our behalf. Now they are elderly and can no longer work the fields or go to work in the factories, and the only thing to keep them company is futility and aging. Now that the only thing they have to look forward to is disease and death, we should understand that our role is not just to be parents to our children or spouses to our partners. We should struggle not only on behalf of our careers and aspirations, but rather we should also apply a portion of our efforts to help our parents. We should take one of the twenty-eight bones in our fingers and let our parents use and caress it. We should let them appreciate the fact that, in this life, they did indeed give birth to and raise some children.
We should endeavor to let them enjoy the process of living as though it were life itself, and let them enjoy life as though it were completely different from living.
I recall how, when I got married, Fourth Uncle repeatedly reminded me that I should enjoy life. I recall Fourth Uncle’s life, and how he vacillated between living and life, and even the embarrassment and exhaustion of his struggle. I recall how, when he finally retired, he was able to let out his breath—like a boat, continually buffeted back and forth on a river, that can find shelter by the shore, permitting the passengers to disembark and have a smoke or enjoy a leisurely drink.
Fourth Uncle liked to drink. His two sons were honest, upright, and extremely filial, and his grandchildren crowded around him every day in an adoring fashion. Every month he received a pension, because he had spent half his life as a bowed-head, living away from Fourth Aunt. After he retired, he and Fourth Aunt were able to live and enjoy their old age together, and Fourth Aunt treated Fourth Uncle very considerately. I assumed that Fourth Uncle would be able to enjoy a peaceful and happy life. When I returned I sat with him in front of our house for more than two hours, chatting about all sorts of matters, but when he finally shifted to the topic of his life, he stared blankly, then smiled wanly, and said a soft voice, “After having worked outside the village for half my life, now that I’ve returned home I find that I can’t adjust.”
He was silent for a while and then added softly, “The main thing is that I feel that I don’t fit in with anyone.”
At first, I didn’t know how to respond, nor did I understand the significance of his remark. Instead, it was only after he left that I gradually realized that Fourth Uncle had spent his entire life as a wanderer. He resided in the gap between the city and the countryside. If the city, in the eyes of those from the countryside, was a lofty heaven, while the countryside was a form of hell on earth, his life for more than forty years had been suspended in midair. This state of being unable to reach heaven while also being unable to return to earth had become a familiar and unalterable reality for him. He was like a bird that has spent half its life in a bird cage hanging from a tree branch—if you release it, it won’t be able to adjust either to flying through the sky or to walking on the ground and instead will be comfortable only suspended in between, sitting in a tree that sways in the breeze. Fourth Uncle was the same way. He belonged neither to the city nor to the countryside, and in the end he possessed a life that belonged only to him and others with his circumstances. Bowed-heads like him had their own friends and social circles, their own concerns and topics of conversation. They had their own experiences of and solutions to serious issues like life, fate, the country, and the nation, and they also had their own understandings of and replies to common matters of oil, salt, vinegar, soy sauce, and their children’s romantic entanglements. They were a group of people who had left their land and, in order to seek riches in the city, had resigned themselves to a life of material hardship, spiritual turmoil, and endless deprivation. They were homesick on account of having left the countryside to go to the city, like so many generations before them, but they were also sojourners who, because of their homesickness, were unable to fully integrate into city life. Among the Chinese people, those who do not suffer from homesickness can be counted as fortunate. Those who do may find it of value for writing, but it is a burden for life. If you suffer from homesickness but do not write, it is like having a chunk of unrefined gold but not one beautifully crafted piece of jewelry.
Of course, among these homesick city dwellers, the happiest are those who have succeeded in their struggle to become officials and businesspeople. Because they were originally born in the countryside, however, their hometown becomes an endless source of bittersweet memories. If a rural resident manages to leave the countryside and achieve success, such that he acquires a retinue following his golden sedan, then when he returns to his hometown to visit his family and friends, this will almost inevitably constitute a moment of redemption.
However, Fourth Uncle was different. He led a simple life and was constantly short of money. After he worked outside for forty years, his only major achievements were raising his children and building them tile-roofed houses that quickly went out of fashion—as happened to many families who stayed behind to work the land. The only difference was that when this mode of living in the gaps between buildings became an essential part of Fourth Uncle’s being, this entire way of life was suddenly cut short. As a result, there were so many things that would appear to have no direct connection to Fourth Uncle’s life, but when he reached the point that he could reminisce about them, he finally understood that he did have an intricate relationship with them, and that they were part of his life, his fate, and his blood. Everything from housing, hygiene, health care, street life, transportation, shopping, his practice of getting together with other workers to chat after work, or to drink tea or wine, and even the places that seemed close but which he would never visit—the shopping malls, skyscrapers, movie theaters, white-collar businesses—to the city youths who would hurry past him and the city children constantly being shuttled to and from school by their parents. These all formed part of his spirit.
This was particularly true of the sort of soul and spirit that Fourth Uncle’s lifestyle helped cultivate. This type of environment had already become something Fourth Uncle could no longer fully comprehend—he was like monks or nuns who spend their entire life in a monastery, tolling the morning and evening bells. While the monastery is still around they don’t consider it their spirit or soul, and instead they feel that it is simply their home. However, if one day it suddenly collapses, disappears, or is moved—or if it remains intact but they themselves are driven away—then at that point they finally understand that the monastery, with the monotonous tolling of its bells, was not merely their home and life but also their soul and spirit.
In this case, what has moved or changed was not merely the monastery and its environment but also the person’s belief and interior world.
We can’t really explain how, exactly, an external “object” or “other” like the monastery can become the monk’s or nun’s soul and spirit, and it is quite possible that the monk or nun can’t explain it either. In Buddhism it is always claimed that “Buddhism resides in the heart” and not in an “object” or “other.” Without this sort of “object” or “other,” however, a monk or nun cannot have a soul or spirit.
Fourth Uncle was like that monk or nun. Although no one had demolished his monastery or driven him out of the tile-roofed building where he had spent half a lifetime tolling the morning and evening bells, fate nevertheless required that he leave the city and return to that seemingly familiar hometown that had been a source of anxiety for him his entire life. Of course, only after he returned to his hometown, where he knew virtually everyone, did he finally realize that while the city did not belong to him, neither did the countryside, and even those people he thought he knew well were virtual strangers.
Fourth Uncle experienced profound solitude and loneliness.
Day after day, he experienced a sense of spiritual weakness and loss.
Today, we understand that behind the bustling life in the countryside, there is in fact a deep stillness. Peasants no longer work the land and have to travel long distances to find employment. Every family’s fields lie fallow, and even during the busy agricultural season there is only a handful of children and old people out working. In daily life, the young people who don’t go looking for employment in the cities stay in the village to work in chicken farms and pig farms, where they also live. And so the village comes to resemble a battleground after an army has passed through, and even the brand-new houses and bridal chambers cannot conceal the village’s decline and its resulting stillness.
When a village loses its liveliness, it also loses its soul.
After a village loses its soul, it will never again regain its former liveliness.
After Fourth Uncle retired and returned home, he kept watch over the houses, streets, villages, and over the stillness itself, like an old man guarding a cemetery in the wilderness. Those children and elders who remained behind in the village “never had anything to say” to him, the same way that he didn’t share any interests with them. The villagers didn’t know what Fourth Uncle really cared about, and although Fourth Uncle did know what they cared about, he didn’t share those concerns. His daughter inherited his position in the Xinxiang cement factory, while his second son and daughter-in-law also went to work in the factory, just as I had done. Fourth Uncle’s eldest son and his family remained behind in the village, but every day they, like everyone else, had to keep busy raising pigs and pursuing various small ventures just in order to survive. Regardless of how filial they might be, they would never be able to counteract Fourth Uncle’s sense of loss and loneliness, and even less would they be able to change Fourth Uncle’s spirit, that of a monk who has lost his monastery. In order to alleviate Fourth Uncle’s sense of loss, his eldest son, Changke, not only made a point of speaking to him regularly but also encouraged him to enjoy himself by playing mahjong.
Changke always hoped that his father would be able to return from the city and reintegrate with his original rural life, even if others might find that life boring.
Changke did everything he could to fulfill his duties as a filial son.
Several times, I told him, “Fourth Uncle likes to drink. So if he wants, you should let him drink some every day. Just make sure he doesn’t drink too much.”
Changke replied, “I let him drink some every day. I know that drinking helps relieve some of his boredom.”
I added, “If he wants to play mahjong, then let him play with some of the other villagers. Just make sure that he doesn’t play for money.”
Changke said, “I’m afraid he’ll develop a habit.”
In this way, after Fourth Uncle retired, he entered a state of boredom and would spend the entire day standing around and looking at nothing. The village streets were empty, and often he’d be the only person there, standing in the village entrance like a useless tree. Over time, he interacted more and more with his wine cups and bottles, sharing with them all of his life experiences and fated arrangements. Later, when he didn’t have anything else to do, he’d seat himself at the village mahjong table. Because he received a pension, idlers were eager to play with him, and sometimes several of them would join together and invite him to play as soon as he received his monthly stipend, encouraging him to gamble it all away. In this way, they used mahjong to transfer his pension into their own pockets.
9. RETURN
In his old age, Fourth Uncle would frequently be kept company by his wine cup or mahjong table. At first, each time I returned, I would always bring him a bottle or two, but later Mother told me to stop. She explained that when Fourth Uncle drank, he would lose his senses. He would go looking for people to play mahjong with, but his gambling partners would often cheat him, and although this was obvious to everyone, Fourth Uncle himself remained oblivious.
When I mentioned to Changke that Fourth Uncle seemed to have developed a gambling problem and a drinking problem, his eyes became bloodshot, and he replied that he didn’t know why his father had turned out this way. Changke said that if they didn’t let his father drink and gamble, he found life very boring, but if they let him enjoy himself, he would ignore even his own family.
Changke said regretfully, “If we had realized this sooner, we would never have helped him find mahjong partners.” However, I could tell that Changke understood the source of his father’s feelings of loss and loneliness. The other people who had gone back to the village after having worked in the city ended up returning to the city upon realizing that they couldn’t reacclimate to life in the countryside. Because of this, the village is no longer what it once was. Those who come back from the city might appear to be the same people they were when they left the countryside, but in reality they aren’t. They are like a pair of shattered mirrors. Even if after several decades you finally succeed in piecing the fragments back together, the mirrors will never again be truly complete. Because of differences in collection and preservation, the color and brightness of the various fragments will have corroded to differing degrees. However, Fourth Uncle didn’t have the option of returning to the city—both because Fourth Aunt wasn’t willing and also because his pension from the cement factory was not very large, and it couldn’t begin to approach his previous monthly salary. My cousins Suping and Jianke led a very difficult life and frequently had to work overtime in the cement factory. Compared to them, Changke, who was living at home, was comparatively well-off, thanks to his diligence and industriousness.
Therefore, Fourth Uncle had no choice but to remain in his family home.
It seemed that Fourth Uncle had no choice but to use alcohol and gambling to compensate for his sense of loss and loneliness. Finally, in 2007, on National Day—which is to say, on the twenty-first day of the eighth month on the lunar calendar—my mother suddenly called me up long-distance and told me to come home as soon as possible, because Fourth Uncle had just passed away. She said that he had been gambling and drinking again and, after getting drunk, had fallen into a gully and badly injured himself. Although he was taken to the hospital, he still departed this world two days later. Next, my elder brother phoned me and urged me to hurry home, after which my eldest sister did the same. I quickly packed my bags and bought a train ticket, but I couldn’t make it home until the next day. Once there, just as I had done two years earlier, following First Uncle’s death, I proceeded to keep vigil by Fourth Uncle’s spirit tent, staying beside his coffin and his corpse, which would never again take a breath in this mortal world. I kept vigil until we sent Fourth Uncle to his grave plot, where he could lie with his two elder brothers, my father and first uncle. Before I returned again to Beijing, I went to see my cousin Changke, whose eyes were bloodshot and whose knees were bloody from kowtowing. When Changke and his wife saw me, they were silent for a long time, until finally Changke broke the silence and said, “If only my father could have remained in the city after he retired, rather than going home to the countryside.” Changke observed that his father’s relocation to the countryside from the city precipitated a change not only in his father’s process of daily living but also in his life and his fate.
As Changke was saying this, his tear-filled eyes dried up. He appeared calm and thoughtful, as though he had already fully experienced the city and the countryside, life and fate, marriage and love, life and daily life—these sorts of matters that peasants often do not actively consider, despite the fact that they are often immersed within them. It is as though they have already made preparation for the future and for life’s magical transformation.
10. INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE WALL
By this point, all three brothers from Father’s generation have left us. They’ve all left this life’s disorder and confusion and have bid farewell to this world’s happiness and misery. In my family, there was a saying: “If members of the elder generation were any older, they’d be a tree shielding us from the wind.” What this meant was that regardless of how old or sick the elders might be, as long as they are still alive, you will feel that you yourself are young. As long as nothing unexpected happens and death arrives when expected, the elderly resemble a tree planted in front of a forest, blocking the specter of death from entering the forest and preventing it from interacting with others. Similarly, the elderly use their old age and their feeble bodies to keep death outside, where they can then engage it in a discussion, a debate, or a struggle. If they can force death to admit defeat, then death will end up passing by our family, our front door, and our forest. Otherwise, if death is able to outtalk the elderly, they will have no choice but to depart together with death, in order to prevent it from bothering those of us in the next generation. Alternatively, if death starts heading toward one’s family and one’s plot of forest like a whirlwind, the elders will resist and struggle. Finally, when they are completely exhausted, they will use their final ounce of strength to lead death away from the family’s doorstep and the edge of its forest, and then they will depart together with death.
