Free The Seventh Day by Yu Hua

of the mess on my diapers, and then fold them up and place them in the other bag. After he got home at the end of the day, he would set me down on the bed and use soap and running water to wash the dirty diapers.
    Our home was a little cabin some twenty yards from the railroad tracks. Outside the door, diapers were hung out to dry at various heights, like leaves hanging from a tree.
    I grew up amid the sounds of trains rumbling by, in the shaking and trembling little house. When I was a bit bigger, the cotton sling on my father’s chest gave way to a cotton sling on his back, and that sling slowly got bigger too as I continued to grow.
    My father had quick hands, and he soon taught himself how to tailor clothes and knit sweaters. During work hours, his coworkers couldn’t help laughing when they saw him, because he would knit a little sweater for me as he walked along the tracks, with fingerwork so expert that he didn’t need to look at what he was doing.
    After I learned to walk, we would hold hands. On weekends my father would take me to the park to play. There, confident in the safety of our surroundings, he would let go of my hand and follow along behind as I ran around everywhere. We were very much attuned to each other’s needs, and if we were going down a little path I would sense at once, even without looking, when my father stretched out his arm, and would give him my little hand right away.
    After we returned to the house next to the tracks, my father would be vigilant in protecting me from dangers, and when he was cooking inside and I wanted to play outside, he would attach us with a cord, one end tied to his foot and one end tied to mine, so that I grew up within the safety zone that he had defined. I could roam around near our front door, but if I saw a train approaching and couldn’t resist going closer to the tracks, I would hear the warning shout of my father from within the room: “Yang Fei, come back!”

    The little house that I had been looking for appeared, just as the two rails were drifting off into the distance. A second earlier it had not been there, but the next second it was. I saw myself as a young child and my father as a young man, and also a young woman with her hair tied in a long braid. The three of us emerged from the house. My face looked vaguely familiar, my father’s face I remembered as though it were yesterday, but the girl’s face was indistinct.

    As a little boy I was happy as a lark, utterly unaware that I was ruining my father’s life. My railside birth had narrowed his path dramatically. He had no girlfriend, and marriage was now only the remotest possibility. His best friends, Hao Qiangsheng and Li Yuezhen, introduced him to several prospects, informing them ahead of time about my foundling origins, so as to make clear that my father was a kindhearted and reliable man. But when those young women met him for the first time, if he wasn’t changing my diapers he’d be knitting a sweater for me, and the sight of him in full domestic mode, although making them smile, would also make them turn around and leave.
    It was when I was four that I met the young woman with her hair in a braid. She was three years older than my father. She had missed the scenes of diaper changing and sweater knitting and saw simply a rather cute little boy. She reached out a hand to pet my hair and face, and after I addressed her as “Auntie,” she happily took me in her arms and dandled me on her knee. These friendly gestures settled my father’s nerves and gave him a glimpse of what happy married life could be.
    They began to date, in encounters not involving me, I being left on such occasions with Hao Qiangsheng and Li Yuezhen. The dates took the form of evening strolls along the railroad line. My father was a bashful, introspective man, and he would escort his partner back and forth without saying a word. Typically it would be she who broke the silence with a remark or two, and only then would