Read Online The Real Story of Ah-Q by Lu Xun - Free Book Online

midnight-blue sky. All – except the creatures of the night – slept. Hua Shuan * suddenly sat up in bed. Striking a match, he lit the oil lamp, its body slick with grease; a greenish-white light flickered through the two rooms of the teahouse.
    ‘Are you off, then?’ an old woman’s voice asked. A coughing fit erupted inside the small back room.
    ‘Mmm,’ Shuan mumbled as he dressed, distracted by the noise next door. ‘Pass it over,’ he reached out.
    After an extended search beneath her pillow, Hua Dama handed a packet of silver dollars to the old man, who tucked it, with trembling hands, into his jacket pocket. Giving the bulge a couple of pats, he lit a paper lantern, blew out the lamp and went into the other room. A faint rustling sound was followed by another succession of coughs. ‘Don’t get up, son,’ Shuan whispered, when it subsided. ‘Your mother will see to the shop.’
    Guessing from his son’s silence that he had fallen back into a deep sleep, Shuan opened the door. Outside, the street was sunk in a heavy darkness that obscured everything except the ashen road before him. The lantern cast its light over his feet, illuminating their progress – one step after another. The occasional dog silently crossed his path. The air was much colder outside, but Shuan found the change in temperature refreshing: he felt like a young man again, striding further and faster, as if invigorated by a new life-force. The outlines of the road grew clearer as he walked, the sky brighter.
    Thus absorbed, he was startled by the sudden, clear sighting of a T-junction in the distance up ahead. He slunk back under the eaves of a shop, leaning against its bolted door. After a while, the cold crept up on him.
    ‘Look at that old man.’
    ‘What’s he so happy about…’
    Another shock: Shuan now noticed passers-by – one of them turning to glance back at him. Though the lines of the man’s face remained hazy in the fading darkness, Shuan caught a predatory, famished gleam in his eyes. Shuan glanced at the lantern; it had gone out. He patted his pocket again, to check for the robust presence of the silver. Looking back up, he now found himself among a great ghostly throng, wandering aimlessly about in twos and threes. But when he looked again, their shadowy strangeness seemed to fall away.
    Shortly after, he saw a few soldiers march towards and then past him, the large white circle on their chests and backs clearly visible even from a distance. As they passed him, he noted the dark red border on their uniforms. Then a rush of footsteps: the crowd surged forward, its units of twos and threes suddenly coalescing into a tremendous mass that pulled up and fanned out into a semicircle just before the junction.
    Shuan watched them, the view beyond blocked by the ranks of backs and extended necks – as if they were so many ducks, their heads stretched upwards by an invisible puppeteer. A moment’s silence, a slight noise, then they regained the power of motion. With a roar of movement, the mass of them pushed back towards Shuan, almost sweeping him over in the crush.
    ‘You there! Give me the money and you’ll get the goods!’ A man dressed in black stood before Shuan, who shrank back from his cutting glare. One enormous hand was thrust out, opened, before him; the other held, between finger and thumb, a crimson steamed bun, dripping red.
    After groping for the silver, Shuan held it tremblingly out at him, recoiling from the object offered in return. ‘What’re you afraid of? Just take it!’ the man shouted impatiently. As Shuan continued to hesitate, the man in black snatched the lantern from him, ripped off its paper cover, wrapped it around the bread, then thrust the whole thing back. Grabbing the money, he gave the packet a squeeze then strode off, muttering ‘Old fool…’ to himself.
    ‘Who’s that for – who’s ill?’ Shuan vaguely heard someone ask. Whoever it was, he ignored them. His mind was now focused