Brothers (27 page)

Baldy Li nodded his head. He was trembling so hard he couldn't say a word. When Sun Wei's mother saw the blood on Baldy Li's face, she gasped and asked, "Did you get into a fight?"

Baldy Li swiped his hand across his face. When he saw the blood on his hand, he realized that it was Sun Wei's. Shaking and sobbing, he said, "Sun Wei is dead."

Baldy Li saw the horror creep over Sun Wei's mother's face as she stared at him. He repeated himself and, feeling that she was not registering what he was saying, he added, "On the main street."

Sun Wei's mother stumbled out of her house and to the end of the alley until she reached the main street. Baldy Li followed behind her, stammeringly describing how her son had died and how her husband had battled the red-armbanders. Sun Wei's mother quickened her pace until she was no longer reeling with shock; speed gave her balance, and when she reached the main street, she broke into a run. Baldy Li ran behind for a few steps but then paused as she ran to where her son was lying. Baldy Li saw her fall to the ground, then heard a shattering series of wails, each sob wrenched from her chest as if with a dagger.

From that point on, Sun Wei's mother never stopped weeping. Even after her eyes became red and as puffy as two lightbulbs, her weeping continued unabated. In the days that followed, each morning she would support herself against the walls of the alley and walk to the end, then support herself along the walls of the main street and walk to the spot where her son had died. She would stand there, gazing down at the traces of his blood, and weep unceasingly. Only after the sun had set would she support herself against the walls and stumble home. The next day she would be there once again, sobbing. When acquaintances went over to comfort her, she would turn away, bowing her head deeply.

Her gaze grew unfocused, her clothes shabby, and her hair and face increasingly filthy. Her gait became odder and odder: As she stepped out with her right foot she would swing her right arm forward, and as she stepped out with her left foot she would swing her left arm forward. As they say in Liu Town, she was walking lopsided. She would walk to the spot where her son had died and sit there, her entire body slack as if she was barely conscious, her weeping sounding like the buzz of mosquitoes. Most people thought that she had lost her mind, but when she would accidentally catch someone's eye, she would turn away and stealthily wipe away her tears. Eventually, in order not to let others see her cry, she started sitting with her face against a wutong tree and her back to the street.

There was much talk among the people of Liu. Some concluded that
she had gone mad; others noted that she was still capable of feeling shame, so obviously she hadn't gone completely insane. However, even they admitted that, judging by her odd behavior, she at the very least had fallen into a deep depression. One day her shoe fell off, and from that point on she never again wore shoes. Various pieces of clothing also fell by the wayside, and she never replaced them, until finally one day she sat there stark naked. By that time, the traces of her sons blood had been completely washed away by the rain, yet she still stared at the ground, weeping inconsolably When she noticed someone looking at her, she would turn away and lean into the tree trunk, stealthily wiping her tears. Now the people of Liu Town were all in agreement that she had, indeed, gone completely mad.

This pitiful woman no longer knew where home was. At nightfall she stood up and wandered the streets and alleys of Liu Town, looking for her home. Like a ghost she silently paced the streets, often giving the towns residents a good scare. Later she even forgot where her son had died. All day she rushed about frantically like someone trying to catch a train, running from one end of the street to the other calling out her sons name, as if she were calling him home for dinner: "Sun Wei! Sun Wei!"

Then one day she vanished from Liu Town altogether. She was gone for almost half a month before people realized they hadn't seen her for a long time. They asked one another, "How did Sun Wei's mother suddenly disappear?" Sun Wei's former buddies, Victory Zhao and Success Liu, however, knew where she had gone. They stood amid the crowds and pointed north, explaining, "She's gone. She's long gone."

"Gone?" the crowds asked. "Where did she go?"

"She's gone to the countryside."

Victory Zhao and Success Liu were perhaps the last people to see her leave. That afternoon they were pissing on the wooden bridge outside the southern gate when they caught sight of Sun Wei's mother. She had once again been clothed, Mama Su having quietly dressed her in a shirt and slacks one night, but as she walked out the gate she had lost her pants again and was menstruating. The sight of blood trickling down her legs as she walked over the wooden bridge had shocked Victory Zhao and Success Liu into silence.

On the day that his son died, Sun Wei's father was locked into the warehouse that was really a prison cell. He once had guarded Song
Fanping here, but now it was his turn; it was said that he slept on what was once Song Fanping's bed. His sons ghastly death had made him temporarily lose his mind and caused him to beat up some armband-wearing rebels. From the first night the red-armbanders locked him inside the warehouse, they started to torture him. They bound his arms and legs and then placed a feral cat down his pants. The pants were fastened tight on either end, so that the cat tried to scratch and bite its way out, causing him to cry out all night in unbearable pain. Everyone else locked in the warehouse shuddered at the sound, and a few of the more cowardly ones even wet their pants.

The next day these red-armbanders switched to a new form of punishment: They had him lie facedown on the ground while they rubbed the soles of his feet with a metal brush. Pained and tickled, he started to thrash his arms and legs as if he were swimming. The red-armbanders watching him broke out into guffaws, asking, "Do you know what this is called?"

Though his entire body was in spasms, Sun Wei's father still had to answer. Through his tears he stammered, "I-I-I don't know…"

A red-armbander smiled. "You know how to swim, don't you?"

Sun Wei's father was now completely out of breath, but still he had to answer. "I do, I do…"

"This is called ‘a duck paddling in water.'" The red-armbanders were laughing so hard they bent over. "Now you're a duck paddling in water."

The third day the red-armbanders had more in store for Sun Wei's father. They lit a cigarette, inserted it upright in the dirt, and commanded him to take his pants off. Even the act of removing his pants made Sun Wei's father grimace in pain, and his teeth knocked together as loudly as Blacksmith Tongs hammer and anvil. The feral cat had shredded the skin on both his legs, and the pants legs had stuck to the bloody wounds. When he took off his pants, he felt as though he were skinning himself as pus and blood trickled down his legs. The red-armbanders then ordered him to sit down on the cigarette, and he tearfully complied. One of them crouched down on the ground to have a closer look; he directed the father's butt this way and that until the lit end of the cigarette was aimed straight at his asshole. Then the man commanded, "Sit down!"

Sun Wei's father sat down on the lit end of the cigarette. He could feel it burning his anus, and he heard a crackling sound. By this point
he no longer felt any pain. He only smelled the odor of burning flesh. That red-armbander still commanded, "Sit down! Sit down!"

His bottom reached the ground, and the cigarette was crushed inside his anus. He lay on the ground as if dead while the red-armbanders guffawed, asking him, "Do you know what this is called?"

Completely spent, he shook his head. "I don't know."

"This is called ‘smoking through your asshole.'" The red-armbander threw him a kick for emphasis. "Will you remember that?"

His head lowered, he responded, "I will remember ‘smoking through your asshole.'"

Sun Wei's father was tortured continuously. His legs became swollen, continued to ooze pus, and began to smell increasingly foul. Every time he defecated he was in unbearable agony. He didn't dare wipe himself, since each wipe brought on searing pain. As his feces stuck to his burnt flesh, his anus started to rot. The man was rotting all over, and he was in pain when he stood, when he sat, when he lay down, when he moved, even when he remained motionless.

He was in a state worse than death, and each day brought new tortures. Only deep in the night did he have a moment of peace. As he lay in bed, racked with pain, the only part of him that didn't hurt was his thoughts. He thought over and over again of his son and wife and kept wondering where his son had been buried. He imagined over and over a beautiful landscape of green hills and lakes, and he imagined his son buried somewhere amid this landscape. At times he felt that this beautiful place seemed very familiar; at other times he didn't recognize it at all. Then he would dwell obsessively on how his wife was doing. He imagined her heartbreak at losing their son, thinking of how she would have lost a lot of weight and would be staying at home all day, waiting for his return.

Every day he thought of suicide, and only by thinking constantly of his son and his helpless wife did he manage to survive each new day's torture. He imagined his wife walking to the front gate of the warehouse every day, hoping to see him; so whenever he heard the warehouse gate open, he would anxiously glance outside. Finally he couldn't bear it any longer and knelt down, kowtowing and begging a red-armbander to let his wife see him if she came by. That was when he learned that his wife had gone mad and had been wandering the streets without a stitch of clothing.

The red-armbander cackled and called over a few others. They told
him that his wife had long since lost her mind. They stood in front of him, taunting him with a description of his wife's body, saying that she had huge tits but too bad they were droopy, and that she had a thick bush but too bad it was so filthy, with pieces of hay sticking to it…

Sun Wei's father fell to the ground motionless, so heartbroken that he could no longer cry. When night fell and he lay on his bed, racked with pain, he realized that now it even hurt to think. It was as if there were a meat grinder inside his head, grinding his brain into bits. Around two o'clock that morning he had a moment of clarity. This is when he made up his mind to take his life, and the decision instantly cleared the pain in his head, making him completely lucid. He recalled that there was a long iron nail under the bed. About a month earlier he had his first thought of suicide when he discovered this nail, and now his final thought of suicide returned to it. Getting out of bed, he knelt on the ground and searched for a long time until he found it again. Using his shoulders to lift the bed frame, he pulled out one of the bricks propping up the bed and then sat down by the wall. At this moment he no longer felt any of his pains and bruises, as if he had already left them behind. Breathing in deeply twice, he held the nail with his left hand and pointed it down on his skull. With his right hand he raised the brick and thought of his dead son. Smiling, he said softly, "I'm coming."

As his right hand smashed the brick down on the nail, it seemed as if the nail drilled into his skull, but he could still think clearly. He raised his right hand to smash it down a second time. He thought of his wife, who had gone mad, and the thought of how she was now going to be all alone made him weep. Softly he said, "I'm sorry."

The second time he smashed down, the nail drilled farther and seemed to reach his brain. His mind was still active, and his last thought was of the vicious armband-wearing bullies. Suddenly he was filled with hatred and anger, and his eyes bulged as he conjured up those red-armbanders in the dark of the night. Crazily he bellowed, "I'm going to kill you all!"

With all the life that was left in him, he smashed the big metal nail straight into his brain. This time it went in completely, and the brick smashed into smithereens.

Sun Wei's father's final angry roar frightened everyone in the warehouse out of their sleep. Even the red-armbanders were terrified. When they turned on the light, they saw Sun Wei's father slumped
against the wall, his eyes staring straight and motionless, and the ground covered with broken shards of brick. At first no one realized that he had killed himself. They didn't know why he was sitting there, and a red-armbander even began to scold him, "Fuck! Get up! Fuck— look how he's staring."

When the red-armbander walked over to kick him, Sun Wei's father's body slid down the wall. Startled, the red-armbander jumped back a few steps and told two other prisoners to go take a look. The two men walked over and squatted near the body. They looked him over and saw all his bruises and wounds but couldn't figure out how he had died. The two men then righted him, and when they lifted him up, they saw that the top of his head was covered in fresh blood. They examined it more closely, feeling around until they finally figured it out: "There's an iron nail here. He drove a nail into his skull."

The unimaginable manner in which Sun Wei's father killed himself rapidly spread throughout Liu Town. When the news reached Li Lan, she was at home—she heard the neighbors talking about it, standing outside her window. Everyone expressed amazement and incredulity: How was it possible to smash a two-inch-long nail into your own skull? They talked about how the nail had been thoroughly embedded in his skull, as if he were making a cabinet, to the point that you couldn't even feel the end of the nail on his scalp. They asked with shuddering voices, "How could he do it? It would be nearly impossible to smash such a nail into someone else's skull, let alone your own." Li Lan listened at the window, and after they walked off, she turned back into the room and smiled sadly to herself. "If a person is determined to die, he'll find a way."

CHAPTER 23

T
HE STREETS
of Liu Town descended into chaos. Almost every day there were beatings among the revolutionary masses. Baldy Li didn't understand why these men, who all wore the same red armbands and waved the same red flags, were beating one another up with fists, flagpoles, and wooden bats, tearing at one another like wild beasts. One time Baldy Li saw them wielding kitchen cleavers and axes, until the electrical poles, the wutong trees, the walls, and the streets were all splattered with their blood.