Cries in the Drizzle by Yu Hua, Allan H. Barr Read Free Book Online Page A

by saying, “Go into town tomorrow and have the radio station broadcast the news.”
    Sun Guangming's burial took place the following day. He was buried between the two cypresses behind our house. During the funeral I kept my distance. Isolation and neglect had practically negated my existence as far as the village was concerned.Under the hot sun Mother's wailing cries pierced the air for the last time; the grief of my father and brother were not clearly visible to me from where I stood. Sun Guangming was carried out, wrapped in the straw mat, while the villagers stood in clusters along the road from the village to the burial ground. My father and my big brother laid Sun Guangming in his grave and covered him with earth. This was how my little brother officially terminated his stay in the world.
    That evening I sat by the pond behind the house, gazing at the hump of my brother's grave in the quiet moonlight. He lay a ways off but somehow I felt he was sitting right next to me. In the end both of us had put a distance between ourselves and our parents, our older brother, and the village folk. We had taken separate paths, but the outcome was much the same. The only difference was that my younger brother's departure seemed much more decisive and carefree.
    My alienation had kept me away from the scenes surrounding his death and burial, and I was anticipating that I would now be the object of even more forceful censure at home and in the village. But many days passed and nobody said or did anything different from before, which took me rather aback until I realized with relief that I had been utterly forgotten. I had been assigned to a position where I was recognized and at the same time repudiated by everyone in the village.
    On the third day after the funeral the radio station publicized the heroic exploits of Sun Guangming, a young boy who had sacrificed himself to save another. This was the proudest moment for my father. During the three days leading up to it, whenever there was a local news broadcast Sun Kwangtsai would grab a stool and sit down right next to the radio. Now that his long wait hadbeen rewarded, he was so exhilarated that he ambled about like a happy duck. That afternoon, when people were taking a break from work, homes throughout the village echoed with my father's resounding cry: “Did you hear?”
    My older brother stood under the elm tree by the front door watching my father, his eyes gleaming. Thus began their splendid but short-lived days of glory. They felt sure that the government would immediately send someone to call on them. This fantasy originated at the district level, but in its more elaborate forms went all the way to Beijing. Their most impressive moment would come on National Day, when as the hero's closest kin they would receive an invitation to join the dignitaries at Tiananmen. My brother proved more astute than my father, for although his mind was filled with equally vacuous illusions, a fairly realistic thought occurred to him as well. He alerted my father to the possibility that my little brother's death might well elevate them to some kind of official status in the county. Though he was still in school, there was nothing to stop him from being groomed for public office. My brother's comments brought some substance to my father's dizzying fantasies. Sun Kwangtsai rubbed his hands with glee, scarcely knowing how to contain his excitement.
    So elated were they that father and son shared their highly unreliable notions with the villagers on a variety of occasions. Thus it was that reports of the Sun family's imminent departure soon spread around the village, the most unnerving version of the story being that we might well be moving to Beijing. These speculations in turn were relayed back to my family, and one afternoon I heard my father gloating to my brother, “No smoke without fire! If this is what the villagers are saying, it must mean that the officials will soon be here.” My father