The Five Brothers' Dream

The ripening of Hami melons begins first in the wind.
During those days, the sun was fierce as a copper basin heated red in fire. It shone upon the melon fields until the leaves curled slightly against the earth, and in the air there floated a fragrance both sweet and clear. Ma Yide stood on the ridge and watched as the workers of the Construction Corps farm turned one melon after another from beneath the vines. They tapped each one lightly by hand, listening to judge its ripeness; then they used a small knife to lift the stem and sniff the faint fragrance beneath. Whether a melon was good or not, the old hands needed no scale and no measure. One look at the pattern, one breath of scent, and they knew how much sweetness it held.
Cadre Liu, wearing a straw hat, squatted and selected one melon, then handed it to Ma Yide.
“Try this.”
The knife fell. The melon skin split open, revealing pale yellow and white flesh, and a fresh sweetness rose at once into the face. Ma Yide took a bite. The juice reached the root of his tongue, and his whole body felt as if it had been drenched by a clear spring beneath the burning sun.
“This is the taste!” His eyes shone. “The people of Canton have never eaten melons like this.”
Ma Chengzhi laughed beside him. “Don’t just imagine the people of Canton drooling. First think about how to get these melons safely to Canton.”
Within ten days, with the help of his two cousins and friends from the Construction Corps, one railcar of sixty tons of fragrant melons was finally loaded.
Bamboo baskets, straw mats, hemp rope, wooden planks—everything was prepared one by one. On the day of loading, dozens of farm men stripped to the waist carried basket after basket of melons into the carriage. Inside the railcar, wheat straw was first spread across the floor, then wooden slats laid down. The melon baskets were stacked in layers, with space left between them for air to pass through. Ma Yide personally stood beside the carriage door, sweat running from his forehead to his chin, account book in hand, counting basket after basket.
Ma Chengye reminded him, “Don’t count only the quantity. Remember which batch ripened earlier, and which batch can withstand pressure. When you unload in Canton, the ripest melons must go first.”
Ma Yide nodded, his pen moving quickly.
“Upper layer on the east side, eighty percent ripe. Lower middle section, seventy-five percent. West side near the door, unload first.”
Ma Chengzhi patted the iron side of the carriage.
“Brother, this whole railcar is your entire fortune.”
Ma Yide looked at the full carriage of fragrant melons, and his chest burned. These were not melons. They were fifty thousand yuan in borrowed money, his father’s silent gaze, the herbal medicine his mother had tucked into his bag, his third uncle’s words over the telephone—“Win or lose, you must stand upright”—and the first destiny he had reached out to seize in this life.
When the train started moving, the sunset over Hami Station was as red as burning silk. Ma Yide stood on the platform and watched the carriage with its freight tag slowly pull away. The iron wheels pressed against the tracks with a heavy, rhythmic sound, like a string of abacus beads being flicked one by one toward the South.
According to the railway schedule, the melon carriage would arrive at Canton North Station in thirty to thirty-five days.
Ma Yide returned to Urumqi and stayed two more days. His eldest uncle, Ma Zhihui, invited him to a family meal. On the table were pilaf, mutton soup, and cucumbers tossed in dressing. Seeing the joy upon his face, the old man set down his chopsticks and said, “Yide, now that the goods are on the road, the heart must also go on the road. The hardest part of business is not making the move. It is waiting.”
Ma Yide smiled. “Eldest Uncle, don’t worry. I have arranged everything.”
Ma Zhihui looked at him, his gaze filled with meaning. “In this world, the most dangerous sentence is precisely: ‘I have arranged everything.’ Man makes his arrangements, and Heaven makes Heaven’s.”
At the time, Ma Yide did not truly understand.
Two days later, he flew back to Canton. The airplane crossed the Tianshan Mountains, the Yellow River, the Central Plains, and the Southern Ridges. When it landed and the damp, hot wind of Canton rushed into his face, he even felt something like triumph.
He began contacting wholesale markets, searching for warehouses, and negotiating for stalls. Each day he rode his bicycle between the Jiangnan fruit and vegetable wholesale points, the railway freight yard, and the farmers’ markets. When people heard that he had shipped an entire railcar of Hami melons from the ancient Western Regions, their eyes immediately lit up.
“When the goods arrive, let me see them first. The price can be discussed.”
Ma Yide’s heart became steadier.
For the first thirty days, everything seemed to be on track.
Each day he drew one red line across the calendar on the wall, as though counting wealth inch by inch as it drew nearer. He waited for the goods in Canton with his friends. His mother, Zhao Youlan, seemed to have sensed that something important would happen to her son. Against her husband’s objections, she specially put aside her work and came to Canton for two days. Seeing him so busy that his feet barely touched the ground, she washed his clothes for him and reminded him, “The money is not in your hands yet. Do not speak too fully.”
Ma Yide laughed. “Mother, just wait to eat Canton’s first batch of ancient Western Region melons.”
He estimated that the goods would not arrive so quickly, and so he sent his mother back home.
At home, his father Ma Cunhui said very little. Each evening he still tended orchids and listened to Yue opera in the courtyard, only the sound of the radio was lower than before. Now and then, seeing his son tapping away at a calculator, he would say softly, “Yide, no matter how well the accounts are calculated, leave three parts for impermanence.”
At that time, telephone communication was still far from convenient. On the thirty-first day, Ma Yide went to the telephone office for the first time to inquire about the shipment.
The people at the railway freight office searched through documents for a long while, then said only, “Still on the road. Normal.”
On the thirty-second day, he went again.
“Where is it now?”
“Northwest direction. Specific station has not yet reported back.”
On the thirty-third day, he called the ancient Western Regions. Ma Chengzhi said from the other end, “Don’t rush. It is normal for freight trains to be slow. This is not a passenger train. Along the way, it has to be remarshaled, give way to other trains, and wait for scheduling.”
On the thirty-fifth day, the melon carriage had not arrived. He had originally reserved one of the first local batches of melons, but by this time, they could already see Hami melons beginning to appear one after another in the Canton market.
Ma Yide began to feel that something was wrong. Several wholesalers in Canton who had already spoken with him urged him every day.
“Boss Ma, where are the melons? If they don’t arrive soon, the market will be filled with other people’s goods.”
Outwardly, he remained calm. “Soon, soon. In the next two days.”
But when he returned home, he could no longer eat.
On the thirty-seventh day, the news suddenly broke off.
The freight office could only find that the car had passed a certain section in the northwest; after that, no timely report had come back. Ma Yide stood in the telephone booth, palms full of sweat, feeding coin after coin into the machine. He called Urumqi, Hami, Lanzhou, and every contact his cousins could think of. Ma Chengye asked police academy colleagues to inquire through the railway system. Ma Chengzhi asked Armed Police comrades to help ask along the route.
At dusk, Ma Chengzhi finally called back, his voice terribly heavy.
“Yide, steady yourself first. Something happened around Jiuquan city in the desert.”
It had happened on the seventh day after the train left: trouble in the Yellow River West Corridor.
“What happened?”
“Rainstorm. Flooding. I heard the railway was washed out, and some freight cars derailed.”
Ma Yide felt a buzzing in his ears, as though someone had turned the whole world upside down inside an iron barrel.
“What about my car?” he almost roared. “What happened to my melon car?”
There was silence on the other end.
“We haven’t found out yet.”
That night, no one in the Ma family slept.
Zhao Youlan sat in the main room, turning her prayer beads again and again, murmuring, “Namo Guanshiyin Bodhisattva.” Ma Cunhui sat beneath the osmanthus tree, the ancestral abacus placed before him, yet he did not move even one bead. Ma Yide paced back and forth in the room like a young beast trapped in a cage. Fifty thousand yuan, sixty tons of melons, his third uncle’s loan, the wholesalers’ promises—all his dreams of making a fortune seemed to have been soaked in darkness by a distant rain.
The next day, news came piece by piece.
The Jiuquan area had suffered a rare torrential rain. Mountain floods surged down. River water, carrying yellow mud, stones, and dead branches, rushed toward the railway. In the night, wind and rain poured without cease; between Heaven and Earth there was only chaos. When track patrol workers discovered the danger, a section of the roadbed ahead had already been hollowed out. Several rails hung suspended above muddy water like two helpless black snakes. When the freight train entered the section, the driver braked urgently. But on a rainy night, the rails were slippery, and the body of the train was heavy. Several rear carriages were still forced forward by their own momentum.
A great crash tore through the rain curtain.
Several carriages derailed one after another, like iron boxes overturned by a giant hand, tilted among mudwater and broken stones. Some carriages fell on their sides, their goods spilling out. Some hung half-suspended beside the collapsed roadbed, wheels turning uselessly in the air. Rainwater poured through the broken places; sleepers were scattered by the flood. In the darkness, railway workers, villagers from nearby settlements, and soldiers arrived with flashlights and lanterns. Raincoats snapped in the wind. Some shouted commands, some moved stones, some carried sandbags, and some braved the rain to inspect each carriage. Mud reached their ankles. The floodwater was cold and foul, striking hard enough that people could barely stand steady.