Alive by Ha Jin

Author:Ha Jin [Jin, Ha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-101-91036-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

A week before the Spring Festival, the city was decorated with colorful lanterns, scrolls, bunting, and red flags, though a lot of rubble remained uncleared. These days, train after train of relief goods poured into Taifu; as a result, the citizens were allocated more meat, fish, fruit, eggs, and branded cigarettes for the festival than in other years. There were even some fresh vegetables on the market, like cabbages, turnips, spinach, bamboo shoots, cucumbers, garlic stems. Every family was given a coupon for one bottle of wheat liquor, but there was no limit on draft beer and wine. The supply of hard candies and pastry was abundant, too.

On his way home one evening, Guhan caught a whiff of fragrance in the air—something very familiar, like that of leek dumplings. It was an unusual smell for late winter, when leeks were hard to come by. As the aroma entered his lungs, a domestic scene suddenly opened in his mind. He saw a cheerful family making dumplings at a table—a slender girl in a pink apron was grinding a chunk of dough with a rolling pin, a young man was kneading together the edges of a wrapper with his fingertips, and a middle-aged woman stirred the stuffing in a porcelain bowl with a pair of chopsticks. A dizzy feeling surged in him, and he got off his bicycle and squatted down on the snow-covered sidewalk. As he sniffed the fragrant air some more, the domestic picture grew clearer. He lit a cigarette and focused his mind on the scene. Gradually their talk became audible. A male voice, somewhat like his own, said, “It’s time to heat water to boil the dumplings.”

That voice shocked him, though he couldn’t see himself in the scene. “No rush, Dad,” the girl said, clapping her floury hands.

Again he was surprised. Did she talk to me? he asked himself. Yes, it seemed so. Why did she call me dad? Was I her father? Who were they? Why did the young man look like me? Who was the middle-aged woman? Were they my family? Did I really have a family? Where did this gathering take place? And how long ago?

By instinct he followed the leek scent, which came from a hut about a hundred yards to the east. As he was walking, a sign emerged above the door of the restaurant: TASTY DUMPLINGS. He hastened his steps toward the hut while his mind’s eye still observed the family scene. “Dad, you should put these in neat rows,” the young man said, lining up the dumplings. Those words shook Guhan and made him realize that the girl and the young man must have been his children. He froze, then turned a little, gripping the handlebars of his bicycle with both hands while his left shoulder leaned against the bole of a dried mulberry tree killed by the earthquake. A gust of cold wind passed by and made him sneeze and cough. As though the coughing had been meant to precipitate

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