Free To Live by Yu Hua Page B

when a bomb exploded nearby, jolting him awake. After jumping out of his makeshift bed, he went outside and stood on top of our tunnel, yelling angrily in the direction of the explosions, “Quiet the fuck down! You’re so noisy I can’t get any sleep!”
    As I rushed to pull him back in, bullets were already flying back and forth above our tunnel.
    The Nationalist front was getting smaller by the day. Unless we were starving, in which case we would sneak out to look for something to eat, we didn’t dare climb out of our cave. Every day thousands of wounded were carried away. Our unit was stationed in the lower area of the front, so it became a haven for the wounded. During those days we spent holed up in our tunnel, Old Quan, Chunsheng and I would stick our heads out to watch the wounded soldiers being carried over on stretchers, their arms missing and legs broken. Before too much time could pass, another long string of stretchers would come by. The guys carrying the stretchers would arch their backs and, running over to an empty space on the ground near us, yell, “One, two, three.” When they got to three they’d turn the stretchers over as if they were dumping out garbage, then throw the wounded on the ground and leave them. The wounded were in so much pain they screamed out in agony—string after string of their screams and cries reached us. Old Quan eyed those men carrying the stretchers, and as they walked away he cursed them. “Animals!”
    There were more and more wounded soldiers. As long as there were explosions on the front, there were more stretchers headed our way. Yelling, “One, two, three,” they’d drop the wounded on the ground. At first the injured lay in different piles, but before long the piles all ran together. They continued screaming out in agony. As long as I live I’ll never forget the sound of those tortured screams. As Chunsheng and I watched we felt wave after wave of bitter cold drive into our hearts—even Old Quan
knit his brow in anger. I wondered how we were supposed to fight this battle.
    As soon as night fell it began to snow. For a long time there were no more gunshots. We only heard the cries of the thousands of wounded men left for dead outside the cave. Their screams seemed like a combination of crying and laughter. That sound of unbearable pain—I never again in my life heard such a terrifying sound. The snow was like a floodwater rushing down over us, one large flake after another. In the darkness we couldn’t even make out the falling snowflakes—there was only the feeling of our bodies becoming damp and cold. The soft snowflakes would melt slowly in our hands, but before long another thick layer would accumulate.
    Hungry and cold, the three of us huddled up together to sleep. By then the planes rarely came, so it was very difficult to find things to eat. Any hope of the Generalissimo coming to save us was dead; from that point on no one
knew if we would survive. Chunsheng pushed me and asked, “Fugui, are you asleep?”
    “No,” I whispered.
    He then nudged Old Quan, who didn’t respond. Sniveling, Chunsheng said to me, “This time we’re not going to make it.”
    As I heard this I could feel my tears welling up inside. It was only then that Old Quan opened his mouth. Stretching his arms he said, “Don’t talk about this depressing stuff.”
    He sat up and said, “I’ve been in dozens of battles since I was a
kid, and each time I say to myself: I’ve got to live. Bullets have brushed by every part of my body, but they’ve never hurt me. Chunsheng, as long as you believe you won’t die, you’ll make it.”
    After that no one said a word, but we were each lost in our own thoughts. All I thought about was my family. I imagined Fengxia sitting by the door holding Youqing, and I pictured my mom and Jiazhen. I thought and thought about them until I was all blocked up inside and couldn’t breathe. It felt as if someone were holding my nose and covering my