《来雨》（Rainmaker）

赵命可著 胡宗锋 罗宾 译

The situation was becoming worse and worse. The downpour seemed about to drown the entire town. The primary school, located on a flat portion of terrain, had been transformed into a miniature ocean. The schoolmaster Rainmaker Wang squatted atop a desk and shouted without pause for thought: “It’s all over. My allotment is flooded.” His wife, a teacher of fine arts, and his daughter Little Moon were busy trying to empty the rainwater out from the room using a washing basin. They remained ever  cheerful, not even showing a hint of despondency despite the fact that every object around them was floating on the surface of the deluge. By contrast, Rainmaker Wang, who wore the trousers in the family, found it impossible to muster any glee whatsoever.Rainmaker Wang was napping when the cloudburst broke. Hao Mei, his wife, was the first to be awoken by the clap of thunder. A series of bolts caused even the windowpanes to rattle. Hao jumped down off the bed without having dressed herself properly. Their daughter, Little Moon, who feared the thunder the most of any of them, was sleeping in the adjacent room. As Hao entered, she was perched on the bed clutching a pillow tightly. “Don’t be scared, Little Moon,” she reassured. “Your ma is here. It’s just a crack of thunder. The heavens aren’t going to fall down.” The moment Hao and her daughter came out of the room, the heavy rain beat down. All of a sudden it became dark and the raindrops spattered upon the asbestos tiles of the kitchen. Soon the visibility diminished and the kitchen vanished.

Rainmaker Wang was still sleeping when Hao Mei and Little Moon came in. “How can you slumber on when the rain is about to drench your backside?” his wife asked. Wang turned his body over and said: “Is this anything to do with me? It’s not me who made the clouds empty. I can’t manage a decent bit of shuteye at the weekend.” Just as he was speaking these words, the rainwater gushed into the room. Everything - footwear, basins, sticks of chalk, Wang’s underwear that he could not find a few day previously and the bra which Hao feared had been stolen - were all swept along on the tide.

Rainmaker Wang could not sleep any longer even if he wanted to. The rainwater reached the bed and he leapt onto the table, anxious to find his shoes but without success. “Where are my shoes?” he yelled. “Who’s seen my shoes? ” Little Moon picked them out from the basin and said “So soaked through, they’d squelch if you wore them. Wait for a while. We’ll find you a clean pair after we we’ve got the room drained out.” Wang stood on the table, wishing to gauge how heavy the rain was. However, was unable to see a thing and could only hear the heavy pattering. The darkness outside obscures the sight of the downpour. Looking at how it has engulfed the room he realises that his allotment must have been lost. That palm-sized field had been planted with chives, garlic shoots, cucumbers, tomatoes and aubergines. Every day he would set aside some time and busy himself in the field. He tended to it in much the same way as he did his wife and his daughter. He only cooked what he harvested there when it was rainy or blowing a gale, or else when they both had classes in the morning. Usually they bought vegetables in the town market. But for the time being, the inundation had curtailed his dreams.

Looking at Rainmaker Wang squatting on the table with head drooping down, Hao stretched her aching waist and exclaimed: “You are only thinking about that sodden field. It’s drowned, so let it lie. It’s not as if we had to depend on it for vegetables. Just lend us a hand in tipping this rainwater. These room have been drenched, so why mope on about the allotment?”

“Yes, the living quarters are flooded, but they belong to the school and are not actually our home,” Wang flashed in a fury. “That field was our property, so how can my heart not ache about it?”

Hao smiles and told her daughter: “See, that’s your pa’s quality. How he is suited to being a schoolmaster!”

“Then why do you marry him?” Little Moon asked. “If you had been married a city official or a rich guy, I might have shared some of that glamour.”

Hao patted Little Moon and explained: “If I had married that way, how could you be here? My silly kid, take a rest. This rain might not stop for a while. Our house is on the flat, so it’s easy to flood. Let’s wait until the rain has stopped and then try to bail it out.”

Having been busy for half a day, she was exhausted, so also sat on the table and declared: “My pa is right. This house doesn’t belong to us and we cannot take it away with us either. What’s more, it’s built of bricks and so unless it collapses the rainwater can’t harm it.”

The whole family simply sat on the table, waiting for the rain to abate and the day to become clear. The rain seemed reluctant to stop, and everything they had retrieved so far began to float on the surface again. They gazed at the objects whirling on the wave and had no mind to be bothered with them any more.

The heavy rain did not stop until dusk fell. The dark clouds scattered and the setting sun shone brilliantly and colourfully. After the storm, the town seemed to bear one thousand boils and a hundred holes. Trees had been felled by the wind and the floods had left deposits everywhere. Only now the air was extremely fresh. Residents all ventured out from their houses and strolled about, peering here and there. The storm had altered completely the face of the town. However they were confident that within a few days, everything would be restored to its former state. A simple spell of rain could not change anything.

Rainmaker Wang and his family followed the town folk to the riverside. Each time heavy rains struck, they would gather together spontaneously at the riverbanks. They judged the magnitude of the fall according to the torrent of the river. Incidentally, those items floating on the current gave them a clear indication of the damage caused.  

The water had almost reached the banks. What had previously been an arid channel now echoed with an earsplitting boom and the gushing waterway would soon merge with River Wei downstream. Usually, the greedy would seize this as an opportunity and fish wood and other debris out upstream. This time nobody dare try for the torrent was truly too violent. They could only stare at the lumber being swept along with their eyes wide open. All of this would be deposited into the River Wei and surge on towards Xianyang. They could do nothing more than appear downcast as the load skirted by across their line of vision.

The crops growing on the banks of the river had been buried in mire before they had the chance to be harvested. Their owners were now haunting the bank. Maybe the town folk would glean not an cob of corn this year. They had also seen corn floating past from upstream, so it seemed that the corn and fields of those who lived further along the channel had been spirited away by the river, while their corn had been interred in mud and the land itself was intact underneath. As long as they had their fields, their vitality would be conserved and they had nothing to fear. They stood on the bank until darkness came. The river was now a jet black abyss, and the people could not tell where the crops ended and where the people waiting to consume them began. Since nothing could be seen and everywhere was pitch dark, they all headed home for there was nothing worth observing.  

 作者简介

Zhao Mingke, a native of Baoji, Shaanxi province. He works in Xi’an as a column editor-in-chief of Culture and Art Weekly. He graduated from Chinese Department at Northwest University and started to have his fictions published in 1991. To date, he has published more than a million words on literary periodicals like People’s Literature, Shanghai Literature and Tianjing Literature.

译者简介

Hu Zongfeng: Professor Hu Zongfeng was born in Fengxiang County, Baoji, Shaanxi Province in 1962. He serves as President of the Shaanxi Translators Association and Director of the Edgar and Helen Snow Studies Center. From 2016-22 he was Dean of the School of Foreign Languages at Northwest University, Xi'an, where he has taught for more than thirty years. His acclaimed English to Chinese translations include China at Last by Burton Watson, The Eagle and the Dragon by Russell Duncan, and Disappearance by David Dabydeen ( longlisted for the Lu Xun Prize). He is the most prolific translator of the literature of his home province, having published English renderings of Jia Pingwa, Chen Zhongshi, Yang Zhengguang, Hong Ke, Ye Guangqin, Wu Kejing, Mu Tao, and many more authors besides. His bilingual version of Chen Yan's modern opera trilogy was released by Shaanxi Normal University Press in 2021. His English translation of The Backstage Clan was released by ACA Publishing Ltd. in 2023.

Robin Gilbank is originally from the North Yorkshire coast. He obtained his BA and PhD degrees from Aberystwyth University and his MA from the University of York. Since 2008 he has taught at Northwest University, currently acting as associate professor in British Literature and assistant dean in the School of Foreign Languages. Together with Hu Zongfeng, he launched the “Shaanxi Stories” series (Valley Press, UK) to promote the work of local authors in English translation. His other publications include An Englishman in the Land of Qin (2018) and Exploring China (2018), both translated into Chinese by Hu Zongfeng, with the latter being longlisted for the Lu Xun Prize. His essays on China have received the Feng Zikai Prize and the Wang Zengqi Prize.

原文来源：《山西文学》2021年第9期

译文来源：Journal of Translation Practice and Research 2024年第1期

Journal of Translation Practice and Research 是陕西省翻译协会主办的季刊，是“文学陕军”作品英译本的首发平台，是助推中国文学“走出去”的主要阵地之一。该刊刊登文学作品英译及相关学术论文。2024年第1期已经于2024年3月由美国经典出版社出版，第2期正在征稿，投稿邮箱为yiyuanguojiban@126.com, 欢迎来稿。

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