Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today (34 page)

The burning of Mr. Wu You's books shook the people's confidence in his healing arts. But he had committed an astonishing quantity of the incinerated books to memory; it was an extraordinary gift that not only saved the clinic but simultaneously invested him with mystical airs. By then, Mr. Wu You and Apricot had become nearly inseparable, a development that sparked mixed reactions in the villagers. To some, the relationship seemed shady at best, since she hardly ever left the boxy ancestral hall until late at night, in the company of Mr. Wu You. Over time, they wore a path through the woods between his home and hers, luminous and white. Gradually, the villagers warmed to Apricot. For by then, they nearly worshiped Mr. Wu You, and rather than concern themselves with the rectitude of the relationship, they convinced themselves that an atmosphere of harmony and sanctity prevailed. Naturally, the village headman was never far from their thoughts, since he had secured his position as headman not by grasping the essentials of forest-fire prevention or by practicing the art of divination but by virtue of a robust, muscular body and a broad, menacing forehead. He was a mighty lion, or so the village women said. Later, after the headman had been carried off by dysentery, a village old-timer told me, "The women were moved to tears even when they knew the headman was feeding them a line."

One day, an outsider came to the village. He swept a spot of ground clean of snow and set up a performing-monkey show. Mr. Wu You and Apricot, who were in the audience that day, looked over at the smirking headman, who said deliberately and in full voice, "I'm going to kill you two." People close by were laughing so hard at the performer's antics they didn't hear the headman. But my brother Old K heard him, and he streaked home as fast as his legs would carry him. Long after the incident, he told me he ran like the wind that day, flung open the door, and fell flat on his face. Yet even before he could clamber to his feet, he was shouting, "The headman's going to kill Apricot and Mr. Wu You…"

Like so many village women, Mother was off in some lovely dreamland as she stitched soles for cloth shoes, so she may not have heard what Old K was saying. Which is probably why she merely grunted in response.

Many days passed. Green buds popped from willow branches growing wild above crumbling walls at the village entrance; if you looked past the reeds on the riverbank, way off into the distance, you could see new grass in the mountain hollows. Suddenly, the village buzzed with talk that Mr. Wu You had killed Apricot. No one doubted the truth of the story, since he had confessed to the crime A couple of forensic interns were invited to the village for what would be their first autopsy. They began by laying Apricot's body out on a three-legged Ping-Pong table, then stood on either side of her, butcher knives at the ready. She looked just as she had when she was swimming in the river in midsummer, the way people had so often seen her: ruddy faced and full of life. Not knowing exactly what to do, the two interns commenced cutting and kept at it all day, until it was impossible to tell what was what. Winding up with seven separate pieces of unequal size, they concluded that Apricot had been strangled after being raped.

The three visiting police officers really knew their business: the skirt-clad young woman filled every page of her thirty-by-forty-centimeter notebook. One day, she and the others spoke to the person who actually shot Mr. Wu You, a lad named Kangkang. On the eve of the dragon-boat festival, after the magistrate informed him he would be Mr. Wu You's executioner, he decided to make some repairs on his double-barreled shotgun, a family heirloom that hung on the wall of his mother's room. A one-time paralytic whom Mr. Wu You had cured, she had just got out of bed when her son came in to take down the shotgun, which had gathered dust for thirty years or more. "Going after wild boar?" she asked. He walked out without a backward glance.

Kangkang painstakingly wiped down the shotgun three times before taking it to the blacksmith to straighten out the barrel, which was thirty degrees off center. Then he loaded it, went down to the river, took aim at a billy goat, and fired, creating a dark hole the size of a man's thigh in the animal's belly. He smiled contentedly.

The next morning after Old K and I sneaked out to watch Mr. Wu You's execution, we encountered a woman with bound feet, moving as fast as those tiny feet would allow, sort of like bouncing along on stilts. A month or so after Mr. Wu You's execution, we learned the facts of the murder from her lips: her husband had suffered a terrible headache that night, so she took some spirit money into the woods to burn at the family grave site. There she saw the headman force Apricot, who had been walking home alone, to the ground. She was no more than twenty paces from them at the time. The night was absolutely still, she said, and the subtle fragrance of reeds along the riverbank drifted over on gentle winds. It was an intoxicating setting, with a milky miasma that hung over the woods and a lovely halo girding the moon. She declared that the sight of the headman ripping off Apricot's clothes and white underpants had moved her to tears.

For more than a month following Apricot's death, she was in the grips of dementia, her eyes vacant and clouded, until she knew she must do something to keep from going stark raving mad. So on the morning the young wife ran shouting from one end of the village to the other, the bound-foot woman, knowing she could keep the truth bottled up inside her no longer, decided to reveal what had happened that night. She ran like a woman possessed to the execution ground.

The onlookers grew impatient as a light rain fell. Kangkang took aim at Mr. Wu You on a signal from the magistrate, who held a red three-cornered flag in his raised hand. He dropped his arm, and Kangkang pulled the trigger. Blam! The shotgun misfired, blackening the front of Kangkang's white shirt. He spat angrily and reloaded. There was fear in Mr. Wu You's eyes. He strained to open his mouth, but his tongue had been cut out a month earlier. He was gesturing frantically when Kangkang's double-barreled shotgun roared one last time.

By the time the woman with bound feet hobbled up to the execution ground, mud-spattered from head to toe, Mr. Wu You was already in the ground. A few bloodstains and some bristly hairs were all that remained. A fine rain was still falling as way off in the distance a wedding party of men decked out in reds and greens was on its way to fetch a bride, their horns blaring, their drums banging. They disappeared from view on the opposite bank of the river.

Translated By Howard Goldblatt

As you all know, I live in the Huangpu East district of Shanghai. There is nothing wrong with the place, except that it is a bit of a pain to get anywhere from here. A tunnel under the Huangpu River, completed some ten years ago, links the district to downtown. The air quality in the tunnel is awful. Often, hundreds of idling vehicles sit inside unable to move an inch, each emitting its own fumes. What always strike me are the walls, through which water oozes, leaving behind grimy rings. The light is very dim. Every time my bus crawls out of the tunnel, even if it is raining outside, I feel that I am back in the sunlight again. Because of all this, I tell people of only passing acquaintance not to come see me at my place. Whatever business they might have, they can just tell me over the phone. When they do come, I have to make apologies for the tunnel. Such apologies pile up. It's no fun.

For a while, I enjoyed passing through the tunnel at night. At night, it is better lit than the streets, making it easier to recall its virtues. Sometimes you might not encounter another oncoming vehicle for the whole two miles. Those water rings still hang on the walls, like paintings by gods or ghosts. Occasionally, you see a deep crack. The Huangpu River is right above you, and a thousand-ton liner might be passing overhead. The tunnel is a rectangle, yet it meanders along. There is no light at the end. The road appears to hang in front of you, so quiet that all you can hear is your own engine. Not another soul for the whole two miles. The single eyes of the cameras on the walls stare at you coldly, one after another, as in a relay. Once my bus stopped in the middle of the tunnel, and all was deadly silent. There I was, on a bus with eight men and three women, every one of them sitting quietly as though waiting for some sort of visitation.

From my window above, I can see the tunnel exit on this side. Often when I have nothing else to do, I look to see if there is a traffic jam in the tunnel, if there are a couple of hundred cars stuck on the street. Whatever the season, beneath my window there is always the noise of cars and, occasionally, of tractors.

I live on the sixth floor, the top floor.

On my floor, there are four apartments, two on either side of the stairway. Once inside the cast-iron gate, you pass number 602 to reach my apartment, 601. There is rarely anybody living in number 602. It is a rather large two-room apartment, furnished only with a bed, a table, a couple of chairs, and some cooking utensils. The owner, who also has a nice apartment in the Huangpu West district, often lends this one to people passing through Shanghai, such as honeymooners.

Owing to the might of the cast-iron gate, I hardly ever run into 603 or 604. What we see of one another is the laundry we hang out to dry.

I rarely go out. Except to get a newspaper or to take out the garbage, I don't even go downstairs much. I live alone, a very quiet life. Sometimes the doorbell rings, and the door opens to old friends. Then I am happy. Sometimes the telephone rings; I am also happy then.

I have two rooms. There are some books in the study, and a full-length mirror in the bedroom. I rarely stand in front of the mirror, except when I shave. Beyond the bedroom is the balcony. Late at night, there is always a strong wind that makes spooky noises.

That's why I keep a knife by my pillow. When I wake up in the middle of the night and see the knife, my heart calms down, and I can go back to sleep.

I moved here half a year ago.

The day before I moved, I met someone at a friend's home who claimed he could tell fortunes. As soon as he saw me, he congratulated me on my pending move. I smiled. It was no big secret. Then I asked casually if there was anything else to congratulate me tor. He held my hand for a careful examination and said he saw a peach blossom, which meant lucky in love. After that, he stared intently at my palm for a long while.

This romantic good fortune of yours is really peculiar. Look here, it lies hidden in the lines of your palm." He stroked my palm with his index finger. "Also, there is major yin influence."

"Any harm in that?" I asked.

"Can't tell."

This amateur fortune-teller was the first honest man I had met, someone who would actually admit that he couldn't tell. Which must have meant that he could tell about the other stuff.

The next day, I moved.

I should make it clear that even after finishing the move, I didn't have any luck that was even remotely peachy.

A chrysanthemum I had planted in a flowerpot was blooming-yellow petals, the kind the woman poet Li Qingzhao liked to write about. The mums made my empty balcony look like a small cemetery.

Now back to my move. The building was finished only a few years before, yet I was already the third owner of this apartment. The day I moved in was dark and cloudy. Our truck was stuck in the tunnel for a whole hour, until we were all seeing stars. By the time we emerged, a storm had come and gone. But the sky remained gloomy. On the porch in front of my building was a stain, a light-brown one. At first, I didn't take any notice of it-until I stepped on it and slipped. I was puzzling over it when my friends started to carry my stuff upstairs. So I pulled myself together and followed them up.

The move was completed, and not a single neighbor had come out to watch the show.

It was dark by the time I saw my friends off. Standing at the curb, I looked at the building. Only a few lights were on, including my own two. Weeds grew amid heaps of construction material abandoned at the curb. The streetlight was broken, and there was darkness all around.

It was a bit of an effort to walk all the way up to the sixth floor. I opened the cast-iron gate and realized that someone was standing in the corridor, leaning over the banister to look down.

I cleared my throat.

"Are you the new tenant?" It was a woman with a very soft voice. Her door was half-open, and the light from inside lit up the tip of her nose. Some music wafted out, the kind with poor sound quality.

"Are you the owner of six-oh-two?" I asked.

"Oh, no. I used to live here, in six-oh-one. Just here to take a peek. No, I'm not the owner."

I couldn't very well pursue the matter, so after exchanging some pleasantries, I went back to my own apartment.

Inside the new place, even the four walls felt cold. I didn't plan to stay here for long, so I decided not to paint the walls. The noise from the tunnel drifted up. I stood on the balcony and looked around for a while; then I moved the chrysanthemum to the win-dowsill. The blossoms were no longer fresh.

I started to gather together some odds and ends, tripping all over myself. Just to boost my spirits a bit, I turned on all the lights in the apartment. Still, it didn't feel bright. The walls were beige, painted by the previous owner. There were drawings by a childish hand, friendly like. And a faint footprint. A couple of mosquito corpses. At this point, the doorbell rang.

As I strolled over to the door, I tried to guess who it might be.

The door opened, and there was the neighbor I had met just a minute ago. I asked if anything was the matter.

She answered, beaming a bright smile, "If you have any questions, or if there's anything you don't know, just come and ask me."

"All right. I won't hold back."

Under the light, her face seemed pale, her lips painted a bright red. She had a pretty neck. Her hand rested casually against the doorframe, a young-looking hand. We were standing so close that I didn't look at her figure. She had a sort of baby face, but there were tiny wrinkles in the corners of her eyes.