Authors: Yan Lianke
Everything
became silent.
Startled by this sudden quiet, the chickens that had been pecking around for food beneath everyone’s feet lifted their heads and stared blankly.
The dogs that had been hiding in the shade behind the wall were also startled, and they opened their eyes and looked at the villagers in the truck.
The children stopped crying, and their parents cut off their exhortations. The sound of the engine died down as the truck prepared to depart. The passengers in the truck were ready. Chief Liu was going to ride shotgun, and therefore Secretary Shi climbed into the tower first. Although Huaihua continued gazing at him, he didn’t turn around, but rather devoted all his attention to Chief Liu. After Secretary Shi climbed in, he extended his hand to Chief Liu, who accepted it, then grabbed the door handle and hopped in.
The door closed behind him.
The truck started moving.
The truck drove away.
After the truck had proceeded a way down the road, however,
it
happened. Almost as if it had been anticipated, as soon as the truck started moving,
it
happened. Beneath the gable of the blind man’s house,
it
happened. This
it
was that Grandma Mao Zhi rushed down to the truck like someone who had just returned from the dead. It was the middle of the summer, but she was wearing the nine-layer silk burial outfit that she had sewn for herself. The inner three layers consisted of what the deceased should be dressed in during hot weather; the middle three layers contained a jacket intended for spring and fall; and the outer three layers included a padded coat, padded pants, and a burial gown that the deceased would wear in winter. The burial gown was made from black silk with gold trim, and in the back there was a gold
homage
character as large as a washbasin. The black silk and yellow embroidery shimmered in the sunlight. Bathed in gold sunlight, Grandma Mao Zhi plunged down from beneath the gable like a comet, landing with a thud in the middle of the street.
She landed right in front of the truck.
The driver shouted, “Hey, woman!” and slammed on the brakes.
The entire village crowded around, shouting, “Mao Zhi, Mao Zhi,” “Granny Mao Zhi,” “Auntie Mao Zhi.”
Actually, Grandma Mao Zhi was quite calm, since the truck’s front wheel was still two feet from her. It was two feet away, but she rolled forward until she was directly under it, with the
homage
character on her back facing the sky and shimmering in the sunlight.
The entire village stared at her in astonishment. All of Liven stared at her, transfixed.
Initially, Chief Liu looked simply startled, but upon realizing it was Mao Zhi, he shifted from surprise to fury, which remained frozen on his face.
The driver shouted, “Ma, are you trying to kill yourself?”
Huaihua and Yuhua crowded to the front of the truck, crying, “Grandma, Grandma!” Blind Tonghua shouted with them, “Grandma, what’s wrong? . . . Huaihua, what’s wrong with our grandma?”
In the midst of these shouts, Secretary Shi opened the truck door and climbed down. At first he looked furious, and wanted to pull Grandma Mao Zhi out from under the tire, but when he realized that she was wearing her burial clothes and saw the
homage
character on her back shimmering in the sunlight, he just stood in front of the truck without moving. The look of fury on his face gradually changed to one of dejection.
“Grandma Mao Zhi,” Secretary Shi said, “please come and say what you have to say.”
Mao Zhi didn’t respond, and grasped the truck’s tire with both hands.
Secretary Shi said, “You’re our elder; you should be reasonable.”
Mao Zhi didn’t respond, and continued grasping the truck’s tire with both hands.
Secretary Shi said, “If you don’t come of your own accord, I’ll have to pull you out.”
Mao Zhi still didn’t respond, as she continued grasping the tire with all her might.
Secretary Shi said, “You’re breaking the law by obstructing Chief Liu’s truck. I really
will
pull you out!”
Mao Zhi finally spoke, screaming, “Just pull me, then!”
Secretary Shi glanced up at Chief Liu, and as he was leaning down and extending his hand, Mao Zhi brandished a pair of scissors from her burial gown. These were high-quality Wang Mazi–brand scissors, and Mao Zhi held the sharp point to her throat, shouting, “Just
try
to pull me! If anyone so much as touches me, I swear I’ll stab myself. I’m seventy-six years old, and have already lost my will to live. My coffin and burial clothes are already prepared.”
Secretary Shi stood up, and with a pleading expression looked again at Chief Liu and the truck driver. The driver shouted, “Let’s run over her and be done with it.” Chief Liu coughed, and the driver added more quietly, “Who would dare to really run over her? I was just trying to scare her.”
Chief Liu didn’t respond. After considering for a moment, he climbed down from the truck.
The villagers parted to give him room to approach.
Chief Liu walked through the path that had opened in the crowd.
The sun was in front of the truck, and Grandma Mao Zhi’s burial clothing sparkled in Chief Liu’s eyes. The entire land was quiet, to the point that you could hear the villagers holding their breath. The sun rays rained down like shards of glass falling from the sky. Chief Liu stood in front of the truck, his face as dark as tree bark in the springtime. He was biting his lower lip so hard it looked as though he was going to bite right through it. Holding his hands in front of his chest, he clenched his left hand into a fist and repeatedly cracked the knuckles of his right hand. Then he switched hands, and began cracking the knuckles of his left hand, unleashing another string of popping sounds. In the end, all ten of his knuckles had been cracked, and his teeth had left two rows of indentations in his lower lip, which immediately filled with blood.
He squatted in front of the tire.
“If you have something to say, you should go ahead and say it.”
“You must let the people of Liven stay in Liven.”
“I’m doing this for their own good.”
“Nothing good will come of their leaving Liven.”
“You must believe in me, and in the government.”
“You must let the people of Liven remain in Liven.”
“They are all there of their own free will. Your own three granddaughters are in the truck.”
“You must let the people of Liven remain in Liven.”
“Your own three granddaughters are in the truck; everyone is there of their own free will.”
“In any event, you should let them stay in Liven. Nothing good will come if the people of Liven leave the Balou region.”
“In consideration of the county’s eight hundred and ten thousand residents, and in consideration of our Lenin Fund, I have no choice but to create this performance troupe.”
“If you want to take them away, you are welcome to, but it will be over my dead body.”
“How about this—you let everyone leave, and just state your conditions.”
“Even if I gave my conditions, I’m sure you wouldn’t agree.”
Chief Liu laughed coldly. “Do you forget that I’m the county chief?”
Mao Zhi replied, “I know that you want to raise money in order to buy Lenin’s corpse. If you want the villagers to go earn money for you, that’s fine. But you must permit Liven to withdraw from society, so that from now on Liven will no longer fall under the jurisdiction of Shuanghuai county and Boshuzi township.”
“After so many decades, how can you still be thinking about this?”
“If Liven is allowed to withdraw from society, I won’t feel that I’ve wronged Liven in any way.”
Chief Liu pondered for a long time, and then finally stood up and said, “Do you think that Shuanghuai owes you this village? Do you think they owe you these several dozen square kilometers of hilly land? If you come out from under there, I’ll agree to this.”
Mao Zhi’s eyes lit up, becoming several times brighter than her burial garb. She said, “A true agreement can only come in the form of words on paper. If you write this out, I’ll let you go.”
Chief Liu fetched a notebook from his secretary’s bag. Then he lifted his pen and wrote several sentences that took up half the page:
I agree that, as of the beginning of next year, the village of Liven will no longer fall under the jurisdiction of Boshuzi township. Representatives of Boshuzi will no longer be permitted to come to Liven on any account. Also, as of the beginning of next year, Liven will no longer fall under the jurisdiction of Shuanghuai county either. Within a year, the county will print a new administrative map, which will no longer include Liven within its borders. At the same time, no one in Liven should use any means to prevent any other villager from voluntarily joining the Shuanghuai County Special-Skills Performance Troupe.
The final line contained Chief Liu’s signature.
After he finished writing, Chief Liu read it out loud to Mao Zhi, then tore out the page from the notebook and handed it to her. He said, “Several decades have passed, and you still think about this every day. To withdraw from society is a major undertaking, and therefore you should give me half a year to explain things to the higher-ups at the district level.” Grandma Mao Zhi listened to him and accepted the sheet of paper. She considered for a while, she looked at it for a while, and then suddenly tears began to well up in her eyes.
She held the document in her hand as though an immense burden had, in the blink of an eye, suddenly became as light as that sheet of paper. Though she didn’t dare believe it was real, her hand was trembling slightly, causing the paper to shake. She was wearing nine layers of burial garb, but even through those nine layers, you could see that the trembling of her hand was also causing her clothing to shake. Warm sweat had soaked the inner layers of her clothing, and though her face was still as aged as before, without a trace of perspiration, there was a blood red layer buried beneath her yellow pallor. She had already endured more trials and tribulations than there were grains of grass growing on the mountain slope, and therefore when she took the sheet of paper to look at it she uttered only a single sentence. She turned to Chief Liu and said,
“You should stamp this with your county committee and county government stamps.”
He replied, “Not only will I stamp it, I will also return to the county seat and issue an official notice notifying each township, each unit, and each board committee.”
She asked, “When will this notice be sent out?”
Chief Liu replied, “By the end of the month. In ten days, you can come to the county seat to receive a copy.”
She said, “How would I go about receiving this document?”
Chief Liu said, “You could just wear this burial garb and lie down in my house. You could wear this clothing while sleeping in my bed, and then slaughter several blood red roosters
3
and bury them in front of the county committee and county government building.”
Grandma Mao Zhi counted the days, and thirteen days before the end of the month she finally crawled out from beneath the truck’s tire.
On that day, the truck finally rumbled away, leaving Liven shrouded in solitude.
Further Reading:
1)
Truck’s tower.
A truck’s cabin.
3)
Blood red rooster.
In Balou and throughout the Shuanghuai and western Hunan region, people often use roosters as sacrificial offerings. Therefore, legend and popular belief hold that if you bury a dead blood red rooster in front of someone’s door, that family can expect a catastrophe, and if you bury a blood red chicken in front of a work unit building, the leader of the work unit will be fated to have an unfortunate career and destiny.
C
HAPTER 3:
L
ONG AFTER THE APPLAUSE HAS DIED DOWN, AND THE LIQUOR HAS BEEN DRUNK
The night was as dark as the bottom of a well, and the moon hung in the sky like a chunk of ice.
When the troupe gave its first informal performance in the county seat, its success vastly exceeded everyone’s expectations.
The date had been set for the beginning of the seventh lunar month. Because three, six, and nine are all auspicious numbers, Chief Liu therefore chose the ninth day of the seventh month, and ceremonially wrote the number nine twice in large Chinese characters.
That evening, on the ninth day of the month, was the beginning of the Liven performance troupe’s most unforgettable moment. Initially, the county’s auditorium was virtually silent, and there were just a handful of people sitting below the stage fanning themselves. It was very hot, and during the day the county’s asphalt road became baked into black oil, so that when people walked along the road the heels of their shoes would get stuck and the wheels of their cars would get caught. It was said that at midday people fainted from the heat and recovered only after being given an ice bath at the county hospital, but that some died from the abrupt change in temperature.