Authors: Yan Lianke
With this, she spun around and, leaning on her crutch, hobbled out into the middle of the street. Her footsteps were slightly louder than they had been when she left home, and her limp was significantly more pronounced. Her crutch resonated each time it struck the ground, and it almost seemed as though she were faking her limp in order to attract attention—using her limp and her crutch to demonstrate to the villagers the urgency of the situation. She was determined to halt the villagers’ attempts to leave the village, and began at Deafman Ma’s house in the center. Deafman Ma’s Firecracker-on-the-Ear routine was one of the troupe’s prize attractions, so if he didn’t go, the troupe would lose one of its key assets. Deafman Ma was in the process of stuffing his shoes, socks, pants, and shirts into a bag. His firecracker board was about as large as a shovel blade, and was leaning against a table leg. Grandma Mao Zhi walked into his house, stood behind him, then cleared her throat and called out, “Deafman Ma!”
He immediately stopped what he was doing.
Grandma Mao Zhi shouted, “Turn around.”
Deafman Man turned so that his left ear, which could hear a little, was facing her.
Grandma Mao Zhi demanded, “So, you too are going to join the performance troupe?”
He seemed afraid that Grandma Mao Zhi wouldn’t be able to hear him, so he cleared his throat and shouted, “For several thousand yuan a month, how could I not join?”
Grandma Mao Zhi said, “You’ll regret this.”
“I won’t regret it. This will be better than farming heavenly fields or living overturned days. I’ll never regret it.”
“Listen to me. You must not go.”
Deafman Ma shouted back, “My entire life, I’ve listened to you, and have never had an opportunity to enjoy myself. This time, I’ll leave the village even if it kills me.”
Grandma Mao Zhi went to One-Eye’s house. One-Eye’s bags were already packed, and he was sitting in his room changing into the shoes his mother had made him. Grandma Mao Zhi said, “It is a profound humiliation for both you and your eye to thread needles for an audience. It is a loss of face, and basically reduces you to the status of a performing monkey.”
One-Eye said, “Being in Liven is not a humiliation, but what
is
humiliating is the fact that I am now twenty-nine years old and still haven’t managed to find a wife. How could I not go?”
Grandma Mao Zhi then went to Paraplegic Woman’s house, and said, “So, you also feel that you have no choice but to go?”
Paraplegic Woman said, “If I were to stay here in Liven, I would die of poverty.”
Grandma Mao Zhi said, “Don’t forget how you came to be paralyzed. Don’t forget how you came to Liven.”
“I do remember. And precisely because I remember, I therefore have no choice but to leave with everyone else.”
Grandma Mao Zhi then went to see the thirteen-year-old Polio Boy. She said to his parents, “This child is only thirteen years old.”
His parents replied, “In a few years his foot will no longer fit in the bottle. He is not too young, so we should give him the opportunity to leave home.”
“You can’t put your son’s disability on display for others to see.”
“If we don’t let them see this, what will they see?”
Grandma Mao Zhi left Polio Boy’s house. The village was increasingly tranquil. The afternoon sun was shining down on the summer leaves throughout the village, making them look as though they were shining. The temple guest house was sitting empty, like a silent old man who, as time passes, no longer feels the need to say anything. The old cypress cast its shade over the village street, leaving it in semidarkness. Grandma Mao Zhi was not walking as quickly as before, and her limp became increasingly pronounced. The hard, yellow sheen that had congealed on her face disappeared, and was replaced by a gray pallor. She slowly hobbled forward, several strands of gray hair falling onto her forehead. When she arrived at the guest house door, she paused and peered inside, then entered.
Chief Liu was drinking his tea, and Secretary Shi was folding and packing the underwear and undershirt he had just washed. Chief Liu said, “Let me put my own underclothes away.” Secretary Shi replied, “There’s no need. They aren’t dirty. Even if they had been used to cover a steamerful of buns they wouldn’t be dirty.” So, Chief Liu let him pack the underwear—watching with a look of delight and pleasure, as though he were a father watching a son who had grown up and was able to help him do things, thereby permitting him to leisurely sit back. As Chief Liu sipped his tea, he suddenly remembered something. He turned and gazed at the portrait of himself hanging on the wall, then said to Secretary Shi,
“Take that down; it’s not appropriate.”
Secretary Shi replied, “Let’s keep it up. There’s nothing inappropriate about it.”
“If we are going to keep it up, we should at least move it down a little. How can I be on the same level as the others?”
Secretary Shi therefore climbed onto a table and shifted Chief Liu’s portrait down two chopstick lengths, so that his head was now level with Chairman Mao’s shoulder. Secretary Shi asked, “Is this okay?” Chief Liu considered, then said, “You could move it up a little.” Secretary Shi moved the portrait back up a little, such that it was now only half a head below that of Chairman Mao, and then refastened the corners of the portrait to the wall. At that point, Grandma Mao Zhi walked through the doorway and stood there without speaking, gazing at Chief Liu. She no longer had that look of disdain with which she’d regarded him ten days earlier when she saw him on the snow-covered mountain ridge, and no longer had that majestic look of a mother standing in front of a child. Instead, now she looked as though she had something to ask of the child, and furthermore was afraid the child would not heed a pitiful old woman, and might even strike her. She looked timid and weak, as though she would have toppled over if she hadn’t been grasping her crutch. Chief Liu regarded her the same way she had regarded him ten days earlier, with a look of impatience and disdain. He continued sitting at the table holding his teacup, without speaking or moving. He continued looking straight ahead, as though he hadn’t seen her.
“Are you really going to establish that disabled performance troupe?”
“It’s a special-skills troupe. We are leaving tomorrow. First we will go perform in the county seat, and we have already sent people to put up posters.”
“You will destroy Liven.”
Chief Liu laughed. “What is there to destroy? I’ll make it possible for every family in Liven to have a white-tiled house, and will give every disabled villager more money than they can possibly spend. They will all enjoy heavenly days.”
Grandma Mao Zhi said, “If you agree not to lead them away, I will kowtow to you in gratitude.”
Chief Liu smiled, “I don’t need your kowtows. After I bring back Lenin’s remains,
everyone
will kowtow to me.”
Grandma Mao Zhi said, “If you let the residents of Liven stay in the village, I’ll hang your portrait in the main hall of my home. I won’t hang anyone else’s portrait there, just yours, and will burn incense in front of it all day long.”
Chief Liu smiled again, and said softly, “I know that from the moment you let the residents of Liven enter society,
1
you always hoped that they would burn incense for you every day. But you have let Liven down, and haven’t let them enjoy a good life. Unlike you, I am not trying to get them to burn incense for me. I am not seeking fame; I just hope that they will think fondly of me. I know that, with your crippled leg, you are able to predict the weather. Actually, you could also join the performance troupe and perform a weather-forecasting act. If you come with us, I’ll pay you a salary that will be at least fifty percent—and perhaps even a hundred percent—higher than that of anyone else in the troupe.”
Upon saying this, Chief Liu gazed at Grandma Mao Zhi as though she were a girl he was exhorting, as if he imagined that what he had said had entered her heart and was able to transport her across a river. A look of immense happiness appeared on his face. Grandma Mao Zhi, however, glared at Chief Liu without saying a word. She looked as though he had just slapped her, and all of a sudden her face turned purple, as though she wanted to brandish her crutch at him, the way she had done ten days earlier. But as she was on the verge of doing so, she discovered that her body was no longer steady, and even before she lifted her crutch she suddenly tumbled over like a bundle of straw. As she was falling, her face twitched and she started foaming at the mouth. She cried out to the sky in words that only she—or someone else from Liven—could truly understand: “I have let Liven down. I helped Liven enter society, and in the process have let down the village and its people. . . .” It seemed as though she was having an epileptic attack. When Mothlet, who was standing in the entrance to the temple guest house, saw Grandma Mao Zhi collapse, she rushed inside, but at the same moment she immediately withdrew. She ran home, shouting, “Ma! Ma! Come quick. Grandma is not well.
“Quick, quick! Grandma is not well.”
The villagers immediately rushed to the guest house. Jumei and her daughters all rushed to the guest house. The entire village was a cacophony of running feet.
C
HAPTER 5:
F
URTHER
R
EADING—
E
NTERING SOCIETY
1)
Enter society.
This is a historical term that only the people of Liven would recognize, as it relates to a story that pertains only to Liven. Several decades ago, in the
jichou
Year of the Ox, 1949, there was a monumental occurrence. At that point Grandma Mao Zhi was only twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. Even so, she had been the wife of the stonemason for several years. But she had not yet had children. Her leg was somewhat lame, but not excessively so, and if she walked slowly no one could tell she was disabled. The stonemason had picked her up when he came to the Balou mountains to work as a stone polisher. No one knew where she had come from, or where she was going. She was rail-thin from hunger, more dead that alive. The stonemason had carried her more than twenty
li,
from deep in the mountains back to the village, where he fed her water and soup. After a few years, she became his wife.
At the time, it was quite common for people from Balou to bring back a woman when they returned from a trip, and therefore there was nothing remarkable about this. The extraordinary thing about Mao Zhi, however, is that even though she was an outsider, she wore the traditional clothing of the village. Despite already being seventeen, she still couldn’t farm or sew, though she could recognize quite a few Chinese characters. She had been rescued by the stonemason, who at the time was a thirty-one-year-old bachelor—almost fifteen years older than she—and therefore was anxious to get married as soon as possible. Because she was young and he was comparatively old, they didn’t marry immediately, and instead she stayed in his house, though they slept apart. Even after they settled down, they were attracted by the possibility of leaving Liven and the heart of Balou. While Mao Zhi was physically living in Liven, her heart was floating in the world beyond the Balou region. She never did make up her mind to leave Liven, and everyone assumed this was because the stonemason was so good to her.
In reality, this was not entirely the case. When Mao Zhi was little, she had marched tens of thousands of
li
with her mother and the Red Army, and one night during the Battle of the Fifth Encirclement Campaign, when she and her mother were sleeping in a cave, her mother was seized by a group of male Red Army soldiers. When the sun rose the next morning, her mother was executed along with another two Red Army soldiers, and her corpse was left on the riverbank.
It wasn’t until three days later that Mao Zhi learned her mother had been executed by a colonel whom Mao Zhi had called “Uncle,” and that her mother and those other two soldiers—whom Mao Zhi had also known as uncles—had been labeled traitors. For several months the regiment had been unable to shake the enemy’s pursuit, and it was said that it was all due to the fact that Mao Zhi’s mother and the other two soldiers were secretly revealing the regiment’s position to the enemy. Because Mao Zhi was now the daughter of a traitor, none of the other soldiers dared bring her any food, and consequently she spent three days alone in the cave without eating.
Finally, on the fourth day, a battalion commander went into the cave and carried her out. He gave her a bowl of soup and three hard-boiled eggs, and told her that it wasn’t her mother who was the traitor, but rather several other soldiers who had already been executed. Their army contingent could now safely eliminate its enemies and realign itself with the main army. The soldier told Mao Zhi that her mother had been officially recognized as a revolutionary martyr, thereby making Mao Zhi the descendant of a martyr, and of the Revolution. In this way, Mao Zhi became the youngest female soldier in the Red Army.
Mao Zhi had followed the army contingent from Sichuan back to the Northwest. One year followed another, and she gradually grew up and learned to fight and carry a gun. When the army contingent finally reached the Northwest, they were scattered by a surprise attack, and all of Mao Zhi’s sister soldiers fled to other areas. During her time with the army contingent, Mao Zhi had grown up in fear, with gunshots of the enemy and of her mother’s execution reverberating through her dreams. Under this unimaginable terror, she said that she wanted to leave, but in the end she stayed in Liven.