One Man's Bible Read Online Free PDF Page A

birthday. A troupe of monks struck clappers and gongs as they chanted sutras. He lifted the coffin curtains, ran in and out of them, and had a good time. His mother got him to put on hemp shoes and he did, under duress, but adamantly refused to tie white cloth around his forehead, because it looked ugly. It was probably his grandmother’s idea. However, his father had to tie white cloth around his head even though he was dressed in a white linen Western suit. The men who came to mourn were also mostly in suits and ties, and the women were all wearing qipao and high-heeled shoes. Among the guests was a woman who played the piano; she was a coloratura soprano and the tremble in her singing made it sound like the bleating of a lamb—of course this wasn’t in the mourning hall but at the wake at home. It was the first time he’d heard singing like this and he couldn’t stop laughing. His mother quietly scolded him right in his ear, but he couldn’t help laughing out loud.
    In his memory, the time of his grandfather’s death was like a special festival, and there was an absence of grief. He thought the old man should have died much earlier. He had been paralyzed for a long time, and during the day was always reclining in the rocking chair; that he should return to heaven, sooner or later, was quite natural. Death in his grandfather’s case was not frightening, but his mother’s death terrified him. She had drowned in a river on a farm. Her bloated corpse was found floating in the water by peasants when they took the ducks down to the river in the morning. His mother had responded to the call of the Party to go to the farms to be reeducated. She died in the prime of life, at the age of thirty-eight, so her image in his heart was always beautiful.
    A present he got as a child was a gold Parker fountain pen, given to him by Uncle Fang, one of his father’s colleagues at the bank. He was playing with Uncle Fang’s pen at the time and wouldn’t put it down. The grown-ups all thought it was a good sign, and said the child was sure to become a writer. Uncle Fang was very generous and gave him the pen, it was not on that birthday but when he was younger, because he had written a piece about it in his diary when he was almost eight. He should have been going to school but, because he was frail and sick all the time, it was his mother who taught him to read and also to write with a brush, a stroke at a time, over the red character prototypes printed in the squares of the exercise books. He did not find it hard, and at times filled a book in a day, so his mother said it was enough of that, and got him to write a diary with a brush to save paper. Some composition booklets with small squares were bought for him and even if it took him half a day to fill a page, it counted as his assignment. His first diary piece read roughly: “Snow falling on the ground turns it pure white, people treading on it leave dirty footprints.” His mother talked about it, and everyone in the family, as well as family acquaintances, knew about it. From that time he could not stop himself writing about his dreams and self-love, sowing the seeds of future disaster.
    His father disapproved of his staying indoors all day reading and writing. A boy should be fun-loving, explore the world, know lots of people, distinguish himself; he did not think much of his son being a writer. His father thought of himself as a good drinker. Actually, he liked to show off more than he liked drinking. At the time, a game known as Charging Through the Pass involved downing a cup of liquor with each person at a banquet, and anyone who could make a round of three or five tables was a hero. Once his father was carried home unconscious and left downstairs in what used to be Grandfather’s chair. None of the men were at home, and his grandmother, mother, and the maid couldn’t get his father upstairs to bed. He recalled that a rope was lowered from the window upstairs and somehow