The Five Brothers' Dream

After the defeat of the Hami melon venture, Ma Yide seemed suddenly to have grown thinner by a full measure.
When he returned from the freight yard at Canton North Station, his body still carried the sour, rotten smell of spoiled melons. He bathed several times and changed clothes again and again, yet that odor seemed still to coil at the tip of his nose. At night, when he closed his eyes, he saw that sweltering railcar: yellow water covering the floor, bamboo baskets collapsed, melon skins like ruined faces, each one staring up at him.
The fifty thousand Hong Kong dollars were gone.
His third uncle Gaohui did not press him for repayment. He only called from Hong Kong, his voice still carrying a smile.
“Yide, a loss is a loss. Keep the accounts clear, but don’t let the person collapse. Losing once in business is not shameful. Refusing to acknowledge the debt after losing—that is shameful.”
Ma Yide held the receiver, his throat tight. “Third Uncle, I will definitely repay you.”
“I know you will.” Ma Gaohui paused. “But remember this: money can be repaid slowly. Do not burn away your spirit in a single night.”
But how could Ma Yide listen?
By day he continued running about looking for work. By night he faced his account book and calculated the debt over and over. Before long, there was news about a foreign trade clerk position at the Provincial Chemical Construction Import and Export Company. It was a proper work unit. Though he would not be able to start for more than a month, to Ma Yide, who had just suffered a terrible defeat, it seemed like a lamp finally lit in the darkness.
Outwardly, he appeared to recover his former energy. He handled procedures, completed documents, found people to stamp forms, and went to the unit to register. Yet the fire inside him still refused to settle.
He ate irregularly.
Sometimes he gnawed only two steamed buns in a whole day; at other times, late at night, he would wolf down a bowl of roast goose rice. He drank strong tea, learned to smoke, developed sores at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were red as though he had endured several sleepless nights. Zhao Youlan wrote from Qianzhou, reminding him to “think less, grow angry less, and eat on time.” He read the letter and stuffed it into a drawer. His mouth assented, but in his heart there was only one thought: start work quickly, earn money quickly, repay the debt quickly.
Before long, his body finally collapsed.
At first there was bitterness in his mouth, swelling pain beneath the ribs, and agitation at night that kept him from sleeping. Later, the whites of his eyes turned yellow, his whole body became weak, and whatever he ate seemed to churn in his stomach. One morning, as he rose in his rented room, his vision suddenly went black. He had to grip the table to keep from falling.
Only then did Ma Yide go to the Provincial People’s Hospital, the work unit to which his elder brother Ma Rende had been assigned after graduation.
The outpatient building was noisy and crowded. The smell of disinfectant mingled with sweat and medicine. Doctors and nurses in white coats hurried back and forth through the corridors. Ma Yide sat on a long bench, clutching his registration slip, and suddenly felt dazed. He had charged recklessly through Canton Station, freight yards, and wholesale markets, believing himself afraid of nothing beneath Heaven; yet now, a thin examination form made his heart feel empty and weak.
He had not wanted to trouble his elder brother.
But Rende found out after all.
That afternoon, Ma Rende came from the burn ward in his white coat. Years of medical school and hospital training had given him a steadier, clearer bearing. He walked up to his younger brother, looked at him only once, and immediately frowned.
“Your complexion is this bad. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
Ma Yide forced a casual tone. “It’s nothing. Canton is hot. Too much internal heat.”
Rende reached out to touch his forehead, then looked through the test results. His voice lowered. “Liver fire rising, damp heat lodged inside, and the transaminase levels do not look good. You brought this on by exhausting yourself. It was not caused by hot weather.”
Ma Yide lowered his head and said nothing.
Rende looked at him and sighed. “Yide, lost money can be earned again. If you lose your body, what will you use to repay anything?”
This sentence was more bitter than any medicine the doctor prescribed.
With Rende’s help, Ma Yide underwent a more detailed examination and was placed on a course of treatment and regulation. It was not a serious illness, but it required rest, a bland diet, and regular sleep. Rende did not trust him to muddle through alone in his rented room, so he simply had him move in temporarily.
Rende lived in an old staff apartment building near the hospital.
The apartment was not large, with one bedroom and one sitting room. Outside the window stood two tall kapok trees. In the evenings, hospital workers passed below after getting off work; bicycle bells, the calls of porridge vendors, and the braking sounds of buses in the distance wove together into the ordinary, steady smoke-and-fire life of the provincial city.
When Ma Yide first moved in, he was not used to it.
Rende left early and came back late every day. Work in the burn department was extremely busy, and he often returned carrying the smell of medicine and exhaustion. Yet no matter how late it was, he always first checked whether his younger brother had taken his medicine and eaten on time. On the table there was often plain congee, steamed fish, green vegetables, and aged tangerine peel water—nothing spicy or oily.
Ma Yide smiled bitterly. “Brother, you’re raising me like a patient.”
Rende pushed the tablets toward him. “You are a patient.”
“I only lost a business deal.”
“No.” Rende looked at him. “You turned a business loss into a judgment on your whole life.”
Ma Yide froze.
Rende sat down, his voice softening. “Yide, since childhood you have always wanted to win. You competed in school, in looking for work, in business. Competing is not a bad thing. But you cannot take every step as though you are fighting fate to the death. Have you ever thought about why Father was unwilling to let you gamble with the family’s savings? It was not because he did not understand business. It was because he understood that a family cannot be supported only by one person’s hot blood.”
Ma Yide lowered his head. After a long while, he said, “At the time, I thought all of you were too steady—so steady it was as if you were afraid of living.”
Rende did not grow angry. He only smiled faintly. “And now?”
Ma Yide looked out at the kapok tree beyond the window, his voice lowering. “Now I think I was too impatient. From twenty cents to two yuan (dollars), I only saw the one yuan and eighty cents in between. I did not see the flood on the road, the heat, the local thugs. I did not see Mother unable to sleep at night.”
The room was quiet for a moment.
Rende said softly, “If you can see it now, then the loss was not for nothing.”
During this period, Ma Yide often saw Guo Jiawen.
She was a reporter in the news department of the city television station, in her twenties, with short hair cut to her ears, bright eyes, and a way of walking as though she carried wind with her. She was not like traditional women, gentle and lowering her brows. Her speech was direct, sometimes even sharp. She often came to Rende’s place carrying fruit or newspapers; sometimes she had just finished an interview nearby, and sometimes she came specially to bring soup.
The first time they met, Guo Jiawen looked Ma Yide over and smiled.
“So you’re the younger brother Rende often mentions—the one whose courage is bigger than his wallet?”
Ma Yide was embarrassed. “He says that about me?”
Rende coughed beside them. “I did not say it like that.”
Guo Jiawen placed the oranges on the table. “The meaning was about the same. Your brother said you dared to haul melons from the ancient Western Regions to Canton all by yourself.”
Ma Yide smiled bitterly. “In the end, I hauled back a railcar of rotten water.”
Guo Jiawen did not laugh with him. She sat down, peeled an orange, and said slowly, “I run news at the television station. I have seen many people. Some people have done nothing, yet talk every day about how extraordinary they would be if they made a move. Some people really fall once, and afterward they stop talking. You belong to the second kind.”
Ma Yide lifted his head and looked at her.
Guo Jiawen handed him a segment of orange. “Failure is not news. What becomes interesting is when someone still takes responsibility after failing.”
Her words were not heavy, yet they were like a beam of light entering some damp, shadowed corner of Ma Yide’s heart.
Later, the three of them often talked in the small apartment.
Rende spoke of patients in the hospital. The burn department was full of bitter stories: factory accidents, kerosene fires, children overturning boiling water. Rende spoke calmly, yet often fell silent for a long while after a single sentence. Guo Jiawen talked of what she saw as a reporter: new development zones, private business owners, laid-off workers, Hong Kong investors, street scams, young entrepreneurs. Her world was lively, complicated, and sharp, like a camera that never stopped turning, illuminating all the brightness and darkness of the age.
Listening to them, Ma Yide gradually stopped treating his railcar of rotten melons as the greatest calamity under Heaven.
One night, the three sat by the window eating congee. Outside, rain was falling, striking the kapok leaves with a soft rustle.
Ma Yide suddenly said, “I owe Third Uncle fifty thousand. I recovered ten thousand from selling the melons. After all the miscellaneous deductions, I still need to repay the rest slowly. Once I start work at the Provincial Chemical Construction Import and Export Company, I will keep enough of my monthly salary for living expenses and use the rest to repay the debt.”
Rende nodded. “That sounds right.”
Guo Jiawen asked, “Do you still want to do business?”
Ma Yide was silent for a moment, then smiled. “Yes.”
Rende frowned.
Ma Yide hurriedly said, “But not the way I did before. I used to think courage was ability. Now I know courage is only the fire. Accounts, relationships, weather, transport, policy, risk—those are the pot. With only fire and no pot, what you cook is not rice. It is disaster.”
Hearing this, Guo Jiawen could not help laughing. “That sentence could go into a news script.”
Rende laughed too, though there was relief in his eyes.
Gradually, the illness improved.
Color returned to Ma Yide’s face, and he could sleep steadily at night. On the day the formal notice to start work came, he made a special trip back to Qianzhou. When Zhao Youlan saw how thin he had become, her heart ached so badly she shed tears. Yet she still personally cooked him a bowl of chrysanthemum and goji berry soup to clear the liver and brighten the eyes. Ma Cunhui did not say much. He only handed the old iron abacus back to him.
“Take it with you still.”
Ma Yide accepted it and said in a low voice, “Father, this time I know how to keep accounts.”
Ma Cunhui looked at him and slowly said, “There are two account books. One counts money. One counts the heart. If the money account is wrong, it can be corrected. If the heart account is wrong, a person will go crooked.”
Ma Yide nodded solemnly.