Authors: Yan Lianke
Tonghua, needless to say, was one of the troupe’s star performers. When Huaihua heard that the village was going to establish a special-skills troupe to perform throughout the land, she immediately went to look for Secretary Shi. Secretary Shi asked her what kind of special skills she could perform, and she replied that she didn’t have any, but she could comb hair and therefore could make sure that the performers were all impeccably groomed. Secretary Shi wrote her name in his notebook as well, and smiled as he caressed her face, treating her as tenderly as he might his own child.
After this smile and caress, Huaihua couldn’t sleep at all that night after returning home, and the following morning she had a huge smile on her face. She was beautifully pink, like a butterfly, and spent the entire day sauntering through the streets of the village, telling everyone she met that she was the troupe’s hairdresser. She hadn’t slept at all the previous night, either, being a knot of nervous energy, and when the sun came up the morning after her meeting with Secretary Shi, she finally drifted to sleep, and dreamed she was leaping off a cliff.
She asked, “Uncle, do you think I’ve grown taller?”
She explained, “I’ve heard that if you dream of leaping off a cliff, that means you are growing taller. Auntie, do you think perhaps I’m a little taller?”
Her uncles and aunties did indeed feel that she had grown a little taller, and was prettier than Tonghua, Yuhua, and Mothlet. Huaihua’s three sisters were like three early spring flowers on a pockmarked field that had not yet bloomed, while Huaihua herself was a fully bloomed peony blossom, a beautiful red rose. She felt she was no longer a nin, but rather a petite wholer, an attractive little hummingbird. When Huaihua returned home and compared her height with that of Tonghua and Yuhua, she confirmed that she was in fact a bit taller than they. They felt that her growth spurt was a direct result of Secretary Shi’s caress, so she hoped that he would caress her again, maybe kiss her, thereby helping her grow from a petite nin into a wholer. She felt she was not only the troupe’s hairdresser, but also suited to be the troupe’s announcer.
Needless to say, the person playing the role of the announcer needed to be a pretty wholer.
Yuhua, meanwhile, was not quite as tall of Huaihua, but was nevertheless determined to become the troupe’s ticket seller. Only Mothlet obeyed her mother and grandmother, saying that she had no intention of leaving with the troupe and instead would remain in Liven. About half of the village’s nearly two hundred residents left with the troupe, and those who stayed behind were only children and the elderly, together with the mentally disabled, who’d never developed a special skill and consequently had no choice but to stay behind and farm the land.
On that day, the village was in a complete tumult, as though someone had raided the granary. Everyone was in the streets borrowing things. One-Eye, who was preparing to perform his needle-threading act, collected several sets of unused needles and went from house to house to exchange them for used ones, both large and small; because those needles were dull from having been used to sew clothing and repair shoes, their openings were very slick and therefore easier to thread. Polio Boy’s mother sat in the doorway of their house making her son a shoe for his left foot, since from that point on he would always wear a bottle on his right foot, and therefore the sole of his left shoe had to be particularly firm. There were also many people who, as they prepared to leave, suddenly discovered that several generations of their family had never really left home, apart from traveling into town to go to the market, and that consequently they didn’t own a handbag or knapsack, or even a pocket in which to stuff their clothing and other things. As a result, they all needed to borrow a bag of some sort from one of the other families.
The village seamstress once again became busy, sewing clothing for one person after another.
The carpenters also became busy making crutches and canes for the seventeen cripples and the three people with broken legs, together with the eleven blind men—all together, thirty-one people who needed crutches and canes, of whom there were eighteen who couldn’t do without their crutches, including thirteen who wanted to exchange theirs for new ones. As a result, the sound of the carpenters’ pounding echoed nonstop throughout the village. The sound of people trying to collect or borrow things for the trip was like an incessant river. One family had a half-blind son who, because he didn’t have any special skills, was removed by Chief Liu and his secretary from the performance troupe. The child therefore sat sobbing in the middle of the road, adding to the tumult, and as he cried he stomped with both feet, kicking up a cloud of dust.
This, then, was the state in which the village found itself.
The next morning, these sixty-seven residents of Liven, all of whom had been given special stage names, were getting ready to depart. Jumei had not left the house for ten days—not since Chief Liu and Secretary Shi moved into the village temple.
But now, her daughters Tonghua, Huaihua, and Yuhua were all running through the house, preparing their clothing and luggage in order to follow the performance troupe out of the village.
Jumei sat on a stone in the middle of her courtyard as the noon sun transformed it into a steam bath. There was no breeze, and sweat dripped from her face. The shade from the trees had shifted away from the spot where she was sitting, leaving her under the searingly hot sun, feeling like a handful of greens tossed into a hot wok. The courtyard consisted of two halls with four rooms each, between which there was a two-room main quarters. Jumei and Tonghua slept in the main quarters, while Huaihua and Yuhua lived together in the halls on either side. Everyone kept her clothes at the head of her bed. There was no chest of drawers, because there wouldn’t have been enough room to even turn around. They had lived in that small room for more than ten years, like birds in a crowded nest, and now they were finally ready to leave. One of the girls asked their mother, “Where did my pink shirt go? I distinctly remember that yesterday it was folded at the head of the bed, so how could it have suddenly disappeared?” Her sister asked, “Where did my velveteen shoes go? A couple of days ago I took them off and put them under my bed.”
Without saying a word, Jumei sat there watching her daughters come and go. Her thoughts were in turmoil; she felt like an immense field that had been cultivated—planted in the spring and harvested in the autumn—but was now on the brink of abandonment by those responsible for working it. The field would be left barren, just like her heart. She knew that in the past few days enormous changes had come over the village. She knew that the performance troupe would change the village’s destiny, just as her own destiny had been changed by the same person. But this time the entire village was at stake. It was like a sudden rain in the middle of a drought, and if it were to become a flood no one would be able to prevent the villagers from surging out. It seemed to Jumei that if her daughters wanted to leave, they would, just as water will always find a way to flow downhill, just as even a crow must eventually leave the nest. As they prepared to depart, however, Jumei sighed desolately, and finally stood up from the stone where she was sitting.
She walked out the door.
She felt she had no choice but to go see that man.
So, she went to the temple guest house.
This happened to be naptime, though that particular afternoon people were rushing around as though they were preparing for a major performance. It was as if they were all going to become somebody else, and live someone else’s life. The residents of Liven, regardless of whether they were blind, crippled, or able-bodied, were blushing with excitement.
Jumei ran into someone, who said, “Jumei, how are you doing? Three of your four daughters have joined the performance troupe.”
She smiled weakly, but didn’t respond.
The person said, “Jumei, soon your family will have more money than they will be able to spend. When I come to borrow some, I hope you’ll be forthcoming!”
She smiled weakly, but didn’t respond.
Then she proceeded to the temple guest house, where a couple were kneeling on the ground—a wholer and his wife were appealing to Chief Liu on behalf of their son. Chief Liu was sitting in a chair in the center of the room. It was the middle of the day, and he was feeling somewhat drowsy, as a tide of laziness flowed over his face and body like yellow mud. Secretary Shi had gone somewhere, leaving Chief Liu alone with the visitors. Because he was feeling drowsy, he seemed to glare angrily at the couple in front of him, and said, “If you have something to say, go ahead and say it.”
The kneeling couple knelt more resolutely, and said,
“County Chief, if you don’t agree to our request, we will kneel here until we die.”
He said more patiently, “So, what can your son do?”
“Although our son is rather ugly, he can smell the scent of wheat from miles away.”
Chief Liu replied, “Even I can smell the scent of wheat from several miles away.”
The couple said anxiously, “He can tell which family in the village is steaming buns, and can even tell whether the buns are stuffed with sesame or with scallion and chives.”
Chief Liu pondered for a moment, then asked, “Really?”
The kneeling couple said, “We’ll bring him over, and you can see for yourself; he can tell where in this room it is damp, where there is coal smoke, and where there are old rat droppings.”
But even though they’d described their son very accurately, Chief Liu waved them away, saying, “Please leave and let me rest; bring the child over later, and then we’ll see.” The couple once again kowtowed to him, then got up and left. The old cypresses in the temple courtyard covered it in shade, but even standing in the shade of the trees, Jumei immediately became bathed in sweat. She watched the couple leave, and saw that it was the village’s bricklayer and his wife. The couple looked at each other, and seemed as though they wanted to say something, but in the end they didn’t. Jumei saw that the couple looked unhappy, and realized that it was because three of her own daughters had managed to join the performance troupe while their child had not. They therefore felt resentful toward her, and stared at her coldly. Their footsteps echoed brightly on the brick floor of the courtyard, like the soft wood of a tung-oil
tree striking a stone slab.
Jumei paused at the door of the temple as she peered inside. Chief Liu had already closed his eyes and begun to nap. He was leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped together behind his head. He gently rocked the chair, but his body and soul were both in the process of falling into a deep slumber. Having established the performance troupe, he felt as though he had stepped outside and stumbled onto a money tree, from which the funds he needed to purchase Lenin’s remains had suddenly dropped to the ground. He hadn’t even needed to exert any significant effort to obtain it. How could this not make him feel relaxed and enlivened?
The room in the temple remained as it had been before, and the three rooms were separated by two partition walls. Along the beams at the top of the partition walls were drawings of dragons, phoenixes, and spirits, while the walls themselves were covered with old newspapers. There were four portraits hanging on the center wall, and the first three featured Marx, Lenin, and Chairman Mao. The ones with beards had dust on their beards, while the clean-shaven one had dust on his lips and nose. The paper had already turned yellow with age, and looked as though it would rip at the lightest touch. The last portrait, however, was brand-new. It depicted a middle-aged man with straight hair and a bright smile.
As Jumei stood in the doorway staring at this row of portraits, she felt shocked. It occurred to her that before leaving home she should have remembered to comb her hair and put on some new clothes. She regretted not having changed before coming, and now that she was really there and gazing at those four portraits, a knot of anxiety started pressing against the side of her heart, then suddenly became a ball of terror. The fourth image was a formal portrait of Chief Liu himself, and Jumei was startled to see it positioned alongside the first three. She stared in astonishment, as the knot of anxiety in her heart solidified. Still standing motionless in front of Chief Liu, just outside his front door, she looked as though she had just run into an old acquaintance. She finally began to understand why that knot of anxiety had become wedged in her heart. First, it was because Chief Liu had put on weight; his face looked fat, and his former slenderness was nowhere to be found. Second, it was because he had hung his own portrait on the wall beside those other three; this immediately made her feel that there was a vast gulf between him and her.
As she stood at the door, she found that her feet were frozen in place, unable to propel her over the threshold. She looked at Chief Liu, then around at the walls of the center room. After what seemed like an eternity, she softly cleared her throat.
It turned out he was already awake. He heard her cough, but because he was trying to sleep he didn’t open his eyes. Instead, he impatiently shifted in his chair and asked, “Whatever you want, can’t you wait until I’ve finished my nap?”
She replied, “I am Jumei.”
He immediately brought the four legs of the chair to rest on the floor, opened his eyes, and looked around the room. He stared at her for a while, then gazed coldly at the gate to the temple guest house.
He said, “Given that I didn’t ask you to come, what are you doing here?”