Free Cries in the Drizzle by Yu Hua, Allan H. Barr

uneasily, at the same time scanning Sun Kwangtsai's face with suspicion. “Sun Guangping is so damn lucky!” my father went on.
    No sooner did he say that than the girl's brother careened down the stairs and with one enormous blow knocked Sun Kwangtsai to the ground, along with the chair he was sitting on.
    That afternoon Sun Kwangtsai returned to the village with his face all black and blue, and the first thing he said to Sun Guangping was, “I canceled that match for you.” My father was outraged. “Those people are so unreasonable!” he cried. “I was just trying to look out for my son and make sure the girl was in good health. Can you believe how bad they beat me up?”
    The reports that came from the neighboring village offered a different interpretation of the incident, according to which my father's first gift to his future daughter-in-law had been a breast massage.
    My mother spent the whole day after the visit sitting by the kitchen stove, wiping away tears with the hem of her apron. Sun Guangping did not, as the locals were expecting, come to blows with Sun Kwangtsai, and his reaction was simply not to speak to anybody in the village for several days in a row.
    In the two years that followed, my brother was never again to see the matchmaker approach him, her face wreathed in smiles. During that period he would think of his father only in bed at night, gnashing his teeth. Sometimes, as dawn approached, his thoughts would turn to his brother, far away in Beijing. I would often receive letters from him in those days, but they said nothing of substance and their vacuous contents made me realize how empty he felt.
    When he turned twenty-four Sun Guangping married a Southgate girl. Yinghuas only family was her father, confined to bed after a stroke. The pond played a role in their union. Late one damp afternoon Sun Guangping looked out through the rear window and saw Yinghua washing clothes there. She was crouched down in her patched clothes, so overwhelmed by the hardships of life that she had constantly to wipe her tears away. The sight of hershivering in the chilly winter breeze triggered the same kind of heartache that his own plight inspired in him. The couple reached an understanding without the help of the matchmaker, who made a point of ignoring them.
    Sun Guangping's marriage took place a year or so after he glimpsed Yinghua at the pond. The wedding arrangements were so skimpy that the older villagers were reminded of how a landlord s hired hands used to get married in the old days. Though meager, the wedding was not without its comic aspects, since the bride waddled about with a big belly. Before sunup the next morning Sun Guangping borrowed a flatbed cart and took Yinghua to the obstetric ward in the town hospital. For newlyweds, morning in the bridal chamber is normally a time of blissful cuddles, but Sun Guangping and Yinghua had to brave the piercing cold and rush into town to tap on the doors and windows of the hospital, still locked tight at that hour of the day. Two o'clock that afternoon, protesting furiously, a boy later to be named Sun Xiaoming came into the world.
    Sun Guangping had entangled himself in a web of his own design. After his marriage he was duty bound to provide for his bedridden father-in-law. At this point in time, Sun Kwangtsai had not yet completed his career as a deliveryman, but to his family's relief he had restrained some of his impulses and was no longer in the habit of ostentatiously transferring property from our house to the widow's home. He did, however, reveal a new talent, an aptitude for pilfering things on the sly. Sun Guangping's financial and domestic difficulties continued for some years before his father-in-law—embarrassed, perhaps, at being such a burden—closed his eyes one night and never opened them again. For Sun Guangping, the greatest challenge was not his father-in-law's infirmity orhis father's thievery but the period following Xiaoming's birth.