BOY IN THE TWILIGHT

By: Yu Hua
Translated from English: Kadia Dedja

It was the middle of an autumn day. Sun Fu sat by a fruit stall, his eyes squinting in the bright sun. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, and his gray hair looked gray in the sunlight, gray like the road before him, a wide road that stretched into the distance and then extended in the other direction. He had occupied this spot for three years now, selling fruit near where the long-distance buses stopped. When a car passed by, it covered him with the dust stirred up by its passage, brushing it into the darkness, and it was a moment before he and his fruit reappeared, as if discovered by a new dawn.

After the cloud of dust had passed, he saw a scraggly man in dirty clothes standing in front of the stall, looking at him with black, shining eyes. As he watched, the boy placed one hand on the fruit, a hand with long black nails. When he saw the nails touching the bright red apple, Sun Fu raised his hand to signal him to go away, as if to scare away a fly. “Get out,” he said.

The boy pulled back his dirty hand and swayed slightly as he walked, his arms hanging limply at his sides. His head seemed larger on such a thin body.

Other people were already approaching the table, and Sun Fu turned to look. They stopped on the other side of the stall and glanced at him. “How much are apples?” they asked. “How much is a kilo of bananas?”

Sun Fu stood up, weighed the apples and bananas on his scale, and took the money. Then he sat down and put his hands on his knees. The boy had returned. This time he was not standing directly in front of him, but to one side, his sparkling eyes fixed on the apples and bananas, while Sun Fu watched him with equal attention. After contemplating the fruit for a moment, the boy looked up at Sun Fu. “I’m hungry,” he said.

Sun Fu was silent. "I'm hungry," the boy repeated, a note of urgency lingering in his voice.

Sun Fu scowled. "Take it off".

The boy's body seemed to shudder. "Get out," Sun Fu said again, in a louder voice.

The boy froze. His body swayed in doubt before his legs began to move. Sun Fu looked away from the boy and turned his attention to the highway. A long-distance bus had stopped on the other side of the road, and the people inside stood up. Through the bus windows, he could see a line of shoulders crowding toward the doors; a moment later, passengers were pouring out from both ends of the bus. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Sun Fu saw the boy running away as fast as his legs could carry him. He wondered why, and then he saw the boy’s hand fumbling: he was clutching something, something round. Now he knew what it was. He sprang to his feet and started after him. “Stop the thief,” he shouted. “Stop that thief over there…”

It was already afternoon. As the boy fled along the highway, dust rose. He heard screams behind him and looked around to see Sun Fu chasing him. He was struggling desperately, panting, and when his legs began to give out, he realized that his strength had left him. When he looked back a second time, he saw Sun Fu still chasing him, screaming and waving his arms wildly. Completely hopeless, the boy stopped and turned around, breathing heavily. He watched until Sun Fu was close to him and then he brought the apple to his mouth and took a big bite.

Sun Fu swung his arm and shot the boy, knocking the apple out of his hand and hitting his chin so hard that he fell to the ground. He was protecting his head with his hands, chewing hard the whole time. Sun Fu, furious, grabbed the boy by the collar and pulled him to his feet. The boy's throat was so tight from the tight collar that he could not chew; his eyes began to bulge and his cheeks to swell, a little apple still in his mouth. As he grabbed the boy's collar with one hand, Sun Fu squeezed the boy's neck with the other. "Spit! Spit!" he cried.

A crowd of people was gathering. “He is still trying to eat it!” Sun Fu told them. “He stole my apple and bit it, and now he is trying to swallow it!”

Sun Fu slapped him hard in the face. "Give it up, spit it out!"

But the boy just clenched his jaw even tighter. Sun Fu put one hand on his throat and started to choke him once more. "Spit it out!" he shouted.

As the boy's mouth opened, Sun Fu could see chewed pieces of apple inside. He tightened the grip like a vice on the boy's throat until his eyes began to bulge. "Sun Fu," someone said, "look, his eyeballs are almost popping out. You're going to choke him."

"It's good for him," said Sun Fu. "It's good for him if he drowns."

Finally, he let go. “If there’s one thing I hate,” he said, pointing to the sky, “it’s a thief. Spit!”

The boy began to spit out the apple piece by piece. The way he spat the pieces onto the front of his shirt was a bit like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. After he closed his mouth, he forced it open again and leaned in to look inside. “You didn’t spit it all out,” he said. “There’s still some left.”

The boy spat again - almost all of it this time, but with a few bits of apple here and there. The boy spat and spat, until finally there was only a dry gurgle, no more spit. "Enough," said Sun Fu.

He saw many familiar faces among the people who had gathered to watch. “We never locked our doors, did we?” he said. “There wasn’t a family in the whole town that locked their doors, was there?”

He saw the people shaking their heads. "Now, after you've locked the door once, you have to use a second latch," he continued. "Why? Because of thieves like that. If there's one thing I hate, it's a thief."

Sun Fu saw the black-faced boy, who looked at him fascinated, as if amazed by what he was saying. The boy's appearance aroused an impatience in him. "If we follow the old practices," he said, "we must break one of his hands, break the hand that stole..."

Sun Fu looked down at the boy. "What hand was that?" he shouted.

The boy shuddered and hurriedly put his right hand behind his back. Sun Fu grabbed his hand and showed it to everyone. “It was this hand. Otherwise, why would he try to hide it so quickly?”

"It wasn't that hand!" the boy shouted.

“Then it was this hand.” Sun Fu grabbed the boy's left hand.

"No, it wasn't."

As he said this, the boy tried to pull his hand away. Sun Fu slapped him across the face, causing him to flinch. After a second slap, the boy stood still. Sun Fu grabbed him by the hair, lifting his head up. “What hand was that?” he cried, staring into his face.

The boy's eyes widened as he looked at Sun Fu, and a moment later he extended his right hand. Sun Fu grabbed his wrist and with his other hand grabbed the boy's middle finger. "If we follow the old practices," he told the contemplatives, "we must break this hand. We can't do that anymore. We are now teaching. How to teach?"

Sun Fu looked at the boy. "This is how we educate."

He swung hard with both hands. There was a sudden snap as he broke the boy's middle finger. The boy screamed with a sharp, knife-like scream. He looked down, saw the broken finger sticking out of the back of his hand, and collapsed to the ground in shock.

"This is how you should deal with thieves," said Sun Fu. "If you don't break one of their arms, at least break a finger."

Saying this, Sun Fu bent down and lifted the boy to his feet. He noticed that his eyes were tightly closed in pain. “Open your eyes!” he cried. “Give it, open it!”

The boy opened his eyes, but he was still in agony and his mouth was twisted into a strange shape.

Sun Fu kicked him in the leg. "Move!"

Sun Fu grabbed him by the collar and pushed him in front of the fruit stand. He rummaged around in a carton for a rope and tied him to the stall. “Scream,” he said to the boy when he saw the people watching. “Scream: ‘I’m a thief!’”

The boy looked at Sun Fu. When he did not obey, Sun Fu grabbed his left hand and squeezed his left middle finger. “I am a thief!” the boy shouted.

"It's not loud enough," said Sun Fu. "Raise your voice!"

The boy looked at Sun Fu, then thrust his head forward and shouted with all his might: "I am a thief!"

Sun Fu saw how the blood vessels in the boy's neck stood out. He nodded. "Excellent," he said. "That's how you should shout."

All afternoon the autumn sun bathed the boy in light. His two hands were tied behind his back and the rope was wrapped around his neck, making it impossible for him to lower his head. He had no choice but to stand there frozen, his eyes fixed on the highway. Next to him lay the fruit he had coveted, but with his neck fixed in place he could not even glance at it. Whenever someone passed by - a passerby, probably - at Sun Fu's insistence he would shout: "I am a thief!"

Sun Fu sat down behind the fruit table on his stool, watching the boy with pleasure. He was no longer so indignant at the loss of an apple and was beginning to feel satisfied with a job well done, because he had caught and punished the apple thief, and the punishment was not yet over. He made sure the boy shouted at the top of his voice whenever anyone passed by. He had noticed that the boy's screams attracted a steady stream of people to his fruit table.

Many people watched the boy who was screaming with curiosity. It seemed strange to them that a bound slave would shout so loudly: “I am a thief.” Sun Fu explained the whole story to them, explaining tirelessly how the boy had stolen an apple, how he had been caught, and how he had been punished. “It is for his own good,” Sun Fu would add.

And he would make it clear what he meant by that. "I want him to understand that he should never steal again."

Then Sun Fu would turn to the boy. "Are you going to steal again?" he would ask.

The boy was shaking his head vigorously. Because his neck was so tight, he was only shaking his head a little, but very quickly.

"Did you see him?" Sun Fu said triumphantly.

All afternoon, the boy screamed and cried. His lips dried and cracked in the sun, and his voice became hoarse. By evening, the boy was unable to utter a full cry and could only make a scratching noise, but he still continued to scream: “I am a thief.”

The passengers could no longer understand what he was shouting about. “He is shouting: 'I am a thief.'” - said Sun Fu.

After that, Sun Fu untied the rope. It was almost dark now. Sun Fu transferred the fruits to his flat cart and when everything was in order, he untied his slave. Just as Sun Fu was placing the coiled rope on the cart, he heard a muffled noise behind him, and he looked around to see that the boy had collapsed to the ground. “After this,” he said, “I bet you won’t dare steal again.”

As he spoke, Sun Fu mounted his bicycle on the front of the cart and set off down the wide highway, leaving the boy sprawled on the ground as wide as he could. Faint from hunger and thirst, he had collapsed as soon as he was untied. He now simply lay there, his eyes slightly open, as if he saw the road or as if he saw nothing. He stood motionless for a few minutes and then slowly rose to his feet and leaned against a tree. Finally, he began to crawl down the road, heading west.

The boy headed west, his small body swaying slightly in the twilight as he walked out of the city at a half-step. Some watched him go and knew that he was the thief Sun Fu had caught that afternoon, but they did not know his name or where he had come from, and they certainly had no idea where he was going. They saw his middle finger hanging from the back of his right hand and watched him walk into the distant twilight and disappear.

That evening, as usual, Sun Fu went to the small shop next door to buy a half liter of rice wine, then prepared some simple snacks and sat down at the square dining table. At this time of day, the setting sun shone through the window and seemed to warm the room. Sun Fu sat there in the twilight, sipping his wine.

Many years ago, he had shared a room with a beautiful woman and a five-year-old boy. In those days the room was constantly buzzing with noise and activity, and they never ran out of things to talk about. Sometimes he would just sit inside and watch his wife build a fire outside in the coal stove. Their son would cling to her like mastic from behind, tugging at her jacket and asking or saying something in his small, hoarse voice.

Later, one summer afternoon, some boys came running in, calling out Sun Fu's name. They said that his son had fallen into a pond not far away. He ran like a madman, his wife chasing after him with piercing cries. It wasn't long before it became clear that they had lost their son forever. That night they sat together, weeping and wailing in the darkness and the gloom.

Later still, they began to regain their composure, continuing their lives as before, and so several years passed quickly. Then, one winter, a traveling barber stopped outside their house. Sun Fu's wife went outside, sat down in the chair the barber gave her, closed her eyes in the bright sunlight, and let the barber wash and cut her hair, clean her ears, and massage her arms and shoulders. Never in her life had she felt so relaxed as that day: her whole body seemed to melt. Then she put her clothes in a bag and waited until the sky darkened, then set off along the path the barber had taken.

Sun Fu was alone now, his past captured in a faded black and white photo hanging on the wall. It was a family portrait: he, his wife, and their son. The son was in the middle, wearing a cotton hat several sizes too big. On the left, with braids, his wife smiled joyfully. Sun Fu was on the right, with his youthful face almost alive. /ExLibris Newspaper/