Authors: Yan Lianke
However, envy is merely envy, and gradually that feeling was transformed into a form of pain. She saw slogans painted on the town walls with white lime, all of which either praised the mutual aid teams and cooperative society or had been written many years earlier. She had seen these slogans when she was a teenager, and she herself had helped people write some about overthrowing landlords or local tyrants and dividing up the land. Those slogans were now old and faded, but they still sparkled in the sunlight. When Mao Zhi saw these big-character slogans, her heart started racing, like a dammed-up underground stream that had suddenly been opened. This stream had originally flowed as a small trickle, through gunfire and rain, from north to south, from snowy mountains to grassy plains, and was ultimately transported on shoulders and horseback.
Back then, because Mao Zhi was still young, she became exhausted easily and yearned to stop and rest, and as she made her way alone, village by village, from the yellow-earth hills of Shaanxi toward western Henan, whenever she encountered another regiment she would follow it, and if she encountered an appropriate family she was prepared to settle down with it. In this way she made her way from village to village, day after day, until she finally reached the Balou mountains, where she encountered the stonemason and the village of Liven. It was as if Liven had been waiting for her there for several centuries—or even millennia—and as soon as the village saw her it forced her to stay behind. As for Mao Zhi, it was as if she had been searching for Liven as she made her way from Shaanxi to western Henan, and it was precisely when she couldn’t take another step that she spotted the village.
After living in Liven for several years, Mao Zhi found that her wounds gradually healed, and even after the stonemason’s mother passed away and Mao Zhi wept and lay sobbing on her mother-in-law’s corpse, she made no mention of the wounds, which she had already started to forget. Other than herself, there wasn’t a soul in the world who had any knowledge of those events. No one knew that when she was part of the army, she had known a Red Army platoon leader from Hubei. After that secret order disbanded the army contingent, she and the wounded platoon leader left together. Later, when they ran into enemy troops, they hid in a tomb. It was raining heavily, and she started running a fever. She lost consciousness, and didn’t know how much time had passed before the rain stopped and the sun came out and she finally woke up.
However, the platoon leader, who had regarded her as his sister, was nowhere to be seen. More important, she discovered that her lower body was sticky and smelled of menstrual blood. It was only later that she realized he had taken advantage of her while she was unconscious. She had been deflowered by that platoon leader who had somewhat loved her. She squatted inside the tomb and wept inconsolably. The platoon leader never returned, and no one else passed by. After night fell, she finally dragged her body, defiled by the platoon leader, out of the tomb.
She staggered in the direction of her hometown.
It was then that she encountered her future husband, the stonemason. It was also then that she encountered the village of Liven, which had been waiting for her for centuries or even millennia, and decided to settle down there. Her tearless wounds gradually healed, her body matured, and she recovered her strength. The world had changed dramatically. She had to take care of things—take care of some things in Liven.
Of course, she couldn’t forget that she had been to Yan’an, or that she had contributed to the Revolution. Even though now, after so many years, she was the wife of a stonemason and a resident of Liven through and through, she was nevertheless still a Red Fourth
1
revolutionary. She still kept a folded Red Army uniform from the Red Fourth Regiment in a chest at home, and was still young and full of energy, so how could she not do something?
She thought, I want to help advance the Revolution. I want to lead the people of Liven into society.
C
HAPTER 7:
F
URTHER,
F
URTHER
R
EADING—
R
ED
F
OURTH
1)
Red Fourth.
As with “entering society,” the term “Red Fourth” derives from a period of Mao Zhi’s personal history. She was a famous female soldier in the Red Army’s Fourth Regiment when she was a teenager, but in autumn of the
bingzi
year, 1936, she was like a stone rolling down a hill, unable to return to the elevated position from which it began, and therefore with no choice but to quietly wait at the bottom of the hill. Over the following decade, Mao Zhi matured into a woman and became a member of this village of disabled people. Even though it had been many years since she was a female Red Army soldier, the Red Fourth was like a seed planted in her heart that was only now beginning to sprout.
She wanted a revolution. She wanted to lead the people of Liven into a mutual aid team and a cooperative society.
It was sixty-nine
li
from Liven to Boshuzi Street, meaning that a round-trip was one hundred and thirty-nine
li.
Traditionally, when the people of Liven needed to go to the market, they would leave home one day and return the next, and if they couldn’t find a place on the road to sleep overnight, they would at least stop somewhere to rest. But the one time Mao Zhi went to the market, she left and returned the same day. Her husband waited for her in the moonlight, and when he saw her bounding down the mountain path like a deer, he called out to her, Where did you go? I woke up early and didn’t see you. I spent all day looking everywhere for you, and have been waiting here all night! She gazed at that man fifteen years older than she, and said excitedly, Hey, Stonemason, did you know what all of the other villages and towns have become? Everyone has combined their land into five-household teams or eight-household groups. They even share their oxen and their plows. Each household has renounced every last sliver of private land that they once owned, and when the bell rings after each meal the entire village happily goes out to farm the land together. If the field is far away, someone returns to the village to fetch water for everyone. After drinking the water, some of the villagers sing Xiangfu tunes or clapper opera arias. Mao Zhi asked her husband whether he had seen or heard of any of this when he had been at the market.
She didn’t wait for his answer, and instead grabbed his hand and plopped down on a stone beside him. She exclaimed, I’m exhausted! I’ve walked more than a hundred
li
today, and my feet are covered in blisters. If you don’t carry me, there’s no way I’ll be able to make it home. It turned out that although the two of them had been living together, that night was the first time he had seen her express anger toward him. He sat on the stone next to her and tried to pull her up, but as soon as he grabbed her hands she immediately collapsed into his lap as though paralyzed. He then carried her home under the moonlight.
After they arrived, he gave her some warm water and washed her feet—massaging her toes and the soles of her feet, and popping her blisters. He asked, So, you went to the market just to observe people’s farming partnerships? She said, The world has changed. Do you know who is now in control of everything? He replied, I don’t know. She said, It’s the Communist Party. She then asked, Do you know what the farming partnerships are called? He said, No. She looked disappointed, but precisely because of her disappointment she appeared happy and excited, and said, It’s not just you who doesn’t know! I suspect that no one in Liven knows about this! She added, Now that we’ve been liberated, our leaders are the Communist Party and Chairman Mao, and each family and household must unite into mutual aid teams to work the land together. These mutual aid teams unite together into cooperative societies. Stonemason, I want to coordinate Liven’s entry into society, and organize each family and household into teams to farm together, harvest together, and distribute the grain together. She continued, There is a bell hanging from the tree at the front of the village, and when it tolls, everyone immediately drops their bowls and goes out to the fields. This afternoon, I’m going to go and tell all of the villagers to return home and eat. In the city they have running water, and with a flick of the wrist they can have water come pouring into their pots, buckets, and washing basins. We still have to haul water every day from the gorge back up to the village. People report that in Jiudu they even have electrical lights instead of gas lamps; and that behind their front door there is a cord, and when you pull it the entire house fills with light, as if it were full of sunlight.
She said, Stonemason, carry me to bed, and tonight you can do with me as you please. I am your woman, and you are my man. You can do with me as you please. She said, I want to lead the people of Liven into society, and allow them to enjoy a heavenly existence. I want to give you a son and daughter; I want to give you a whole passel of children and grandchildren. I want them to have more grain than they can eat, and more clothes than they can wear. I want them to enjoy a good life in which they have lights that don’t need oil, flour that doesn’t need to be ground, and when they go out they don’t need to ride in an ox-drawn carriage. The stonemason had never ejaculated the way he did that night while lying on top of her. Previously, she had not been well, and he didn’t dare touch her. But that night, he rubbed his body against hers as though he were polishing a stone, while she was like soft clay beneath him. By the time they finished and were panting, she asked, Did you enliven?
He replied, I did.
She said, After we enter society, I’ll enliven you every night.
He asked, When will we enter society?
She said, Tomorrow we will hold a meeting, so tomorrow we will enter society.
He said, But if you say that we have entered society, does that mean we necessarily will? Liven doesn’t have a town above us. If we did, we could have them send someone down to hold a meeting, and if they told us to enter society, the villagers would have no option but to do so. But we have no higher-ups, and there is no one to send down. Therefore, if you say we should enter society but there is someone in the village who pays you no heed, what will you do?
Mao Zhi didn’t say another word.
In the end, Liven was a village that had been forgotten by the world. Located in the Balou mountains at the junction of three separate counties, it was more than ten
li
from the nearest village. From its Ming dynasty origins, the entire village had been made up of blind people, deaf people, and cripples. Able-bodied men would marry out of the village once they grew up, as would able-bodied women. Disabled people from outside would come in, and the village’s wholers would leave. This is how things had stood for centuries. However, there was no canton or county that was willing to accept Liven as its own.
One year followed another, and the Kangxi reign was replaced by the Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns, right up to the reign of Empress Dowager Cixi, the Xinhai Revolution, and the Chinese Republic. For several centuries, Liven never paid grain taxes to any dynasty, province, canton, district, county, or township, and no one from the other districts, towns, or villages in the adjacent counties of Dayu, Gaoliu, or Shuanghuai ever came to Liven to collect grain taxes.
Liven was a village outside the world.
That night, Mao Zhi sat in bed, in a daze. Suddenly, she got up and threw on her clothes.
The stonemason asked, What are you doing?
She replied, I’m going to Gaoliu. Do you want to go with me?
What are you going to do there?
I’m going to see the higher-ups.
Her husband lit a fire, kneaded some dough, and then placed the griddle in the fire and baked her five oil buns. They left Liven before dawn, setting off for Gaoliu.
Gaoliu was three hundred and nine
li
from Liven, and they asked for directions as they proceeded. Each day, they would resume their journey at dawn, and stop to rest at dusk. They would eat when they were hungry, and drink when they were thirsty. Whenever they needed something, the stonemason would offer to polish people’s stones.
Twenty-five days later, they finally arrived in Gaoliu. The county seat had two streets, at the intersection of which was the government office. The building was a triple courtyard-style structure, with three separate entrances. In the late Qing, this courtyard had been used as the county yamen, and during the Republican period it was the county seat, but in the new era it was called the county government. The stonemason sat down in the garden in front of the government office and waited, while Mao Zhi entered the second courtyard of the county government building. The county chief was pushing a slightly used foreign cart,
1
and Mao Zhi ran into him as he was about to leave for the countryside. The county chief asked, What do you want from me? She said, I am from Liven, in the Balou mountains. I see that the entire land has been liberated, and there are cooperative societies everywhere, so how is it that in Liven we are all still operating as individual households? Why has no one been sent to organize us and help us enter society?