Authors: Yan Lianke
There was not a single event in the entire performance that people could believe.
The more unbelievable the performances seemed, the more audiences flocked to see them, to the point that every home, factory, and office closed its doors and its inhabitants or workers went to watch. The price of an admission ticket rose from three hundred to five hundred yuan, and if the troupe hadn’t raised the ticket prices the scalpers working out front would have ended up making a fortune. Local newspapers, radio, and television stations suddenly had lots of new material. It reached the point that even after holding twenty-nine performances in a certain city the troupe still wasn’t able to pack up and move on to its next destination.
Eventually, however, the end of the year arrived and the troupes, in accordance with their agreement with Shuanghuai county, needed to conclude their tour. Liven had almost reached the date when it would withdraw from society.
On one particular day it started to rain, and the entire city was engulfed in water. Cars and trucks all came to a halt, and even motorcycles found themselves unable to move. It became difficult for people to get around, and the members of the troupe looked up at the sky and sighed. When they arrived at a new location, they would invariably sleep in the auditorium behind the stage, this being a common practice among northern theatrical troupes. After laying out their bedrolls, the men would sleep on one side of the room and the women on the other. The young people would then play cards, and the paralyzed women would fold everyone’s performance costumes, while five of the nine little nins sat in a corner washing their costumes. The older performers, meanwhile, would retreat to quiet areas and count the money they had earned over the preceding five months. Grandma Mao Zhi had gone to considerable effort to revise the terms of the county contract so that the villagers would no longer simply be guaranteed a minimum of three thousand yuan a month in salary; instead the contract now clearly stated that each time one of the villagers performed, he or she would earn a “seat.” In theatrical lingo, a “seat” refers to the price of an admission ticket. If tickets were selling for three hundred yuan apiece, each villager would therefore receive three hundred yuan for each performance. If ticket prices rose to five hundred yuan, each villager would receive five hundred yuan for each performance.
Calculated in this way, from Henan and Anhui provinces to Shandong’s Heze and Yantan cities, on to Jiangsu’s Nanjing, Suzhou, and Yangzhou, together with the northern Jiangsu star city, ticket prices for each performance averaged around three hundred yuan, and since the villagers would give at least thirty-five performances a month, each villager was able to earn thirty-five seats a month, or ten thousand and five hundred yuan. From this the villagers would have to discount the cost of food and overhead—though, to tell the truth, there was no real overhead, since each performer was given one seat a month to buy food, and consequently they all had more fish, meat, rice, and noodles than they could possibly eat. Speaking of overhead, the men went out to buy several packs of cigarettes, while the women and girls would buy lipstick and foreign soap for washing clothes and washing their faces, but when everything was added together each person spent less than a hundred yuan a month. For them to be able to earn more than ten thousand yuan a month was so astounding that it was enough to make their ancestors turn over in their graves.
What can you do with ten thousand yuan? If you are building a dwelling, ten thousand yuan is more or less enough to build a three-room house. If you are getting married, it is more or less enough to pay the fiancée’s family her bride’s price, in return for permission to marry her. If you spend ten thousand yuan on someone’s funeral, this would be enough to transform an ordinary earthen grave into an imperial tomb.
The first month the villagers received their salaries, they were all so excited their hands trembled. They stuffed the money into their underwear, and then wouldn’t take off their clothes even to go to bed. Some of them sewed an extra pocket onto their inner clothing, and then stuffed the money into it, and when they went out to perform the money would pound against their bodies like a brick. Although it wasn’t very convenient for them to perform with all that cash, they would nevertheless do so even more enthusiastically because the money was there. When performing Firecracker-on-the-Ear, the deaf man would use two hundred firecrackers rather than one hundred; and when performing the Acute-Listening act, the blind man, in order to prove that he was really completely blind, would let someone shine a hundred-watt spotlight directly in his face, followed by a five-hundred-watt or even a thousand-watt light.
By the following month, everyone was being given more than ten thousand yuan in salary. They found that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of on stage. When the little Polio Boy inserted his foot into the bottle and did a somersault, he wasn’t trying to break the bottle but rather waited until the end so that the bottle could shatter under his feet. He would then stand on the glass shards while taking his bow, and the audience could clearly see the blood flowing out from under his foot.
The audience would break into loud applause.
The Polio Boy became even less concerned with the pain in his foot.
He subsequently began to earn more and more money each month.
By the end of the year, after five months of performances, everyone had earned several tens of thousands of yuan, and households with two or three performers could earn more than a hundred thousand yuan. Because almost all of Liven was out performing, the village itself became a virtual ghost town, and when the performers wanted to wire money home, they found that there was no one reliable in town to receive it. Consequently, they sewed thick wads of cash into every pillow and comforter, and also stuffed them into the chests that each performer had to keep. In this way, the money piled up like autumn leaves, to the point that the villagers didn’t even dare go outside except to perform. Even when it was time to eat, they would take turns so that there was always someone backstage keeping guard. When it rained, all of the villagers crowded together on their bedrolls, and some of them would hide in a corner, claiming that their comforter was ripped and needed to be mended, whereupon they would rip the comforter open at the seams and stuff it full with their recent earnings.
They would claim that their performance chest was broken and needed to be nailed back together, whereupon they would add several more layers of cash to the chest, reinforcing it with several more nails and a larger lock.
They would complain that their pillows were no longer comfortable, and needed to be fluffed up, whereupon they would dump out the wheat and bran from inside the pillow, and then fill it with their carefully folded clothes, now stuffed with wad upon wad of brand-new hundred-yuan bills. As a result, the pillow would be as hard as a board or a brick from all that cash.
When it rained, they all looked after their money, and once they had put it all away they called out, “Hey, have you finished sewing your comforter?”
“Almost.”
“Do you want to play cards when you’re done?”
“Sure. Why don’t you come over here to play.”
“Why don’t you come over here instead. You can bring your comforter.”
So, they nodded and, watching each other, broke into broad smiles.
It was pouring rain outside, while inside the theater a thick layer of fog hovered over the ground. The theater seats were all covered in droplets, and even the curtain on stage looked as though it had just been washed and hung out to dry. The wholers from Shuanghuai county who had come to organize the two special-skills troupes took advantage of the rain to go shopping in the city, and only the disabled performers were left behind in the theater, which was called the Emperor and Concubine.
It was at this point that Grandma Mao Zhi shared with everyone an unforgettable memory that was weighing on her. It was as if this matter had taken root in her heart, and over the preceding five months and three days—a total of one hundred and fifty-three days since the troupe’s debut performance in Jiudu—this matter in her heart had grown a thick trunk, started to sprout leaves, and recently begun to bloom. No one ever expected, however, that long after the villagers had forgotten about this matter, they would suddenly remember it with surprise. It was as if they had been hurtling forward from one day to the next and then saw the opening of a deep well, and just as they were about to fall in they came to their senses.
Each family had dug its own hole.
Each family had fallen into its own trap.
Each family had put poison into its own rice bowls.
Grandma Mao Zhi asked, “Hey, does everyone remember what day today is?”
The villagers all stared at her.
Grandma Mao Zhi said, “Today is the winter solstice, and in another nine days, on the thirteenth day of the lunar month, it will be the last day of the year in the Western calendar.”
The villagers continued staring at her, not knowing what was significant about its being the last day of the year.
Grandma Mao Zhi explained with a bright smile, “On that day, our contract with Shuanghuai county will expire, and Liven will formally withdraw from society. Shuanghuai county and Boshuzi township will no longer have any jurisdiction over us.”
At this point, everyone suddenly remembered the performance contracts that had been signed five months earlier when the troupes were established, and realized there were only nine days left until those contracts expired. The expiration had been anticipated, but as the villagers performed day after day, earning piles and piles of money, they completely forgot that the last day of the performances was approaching. As the rain fell, the fog was so thick that you couldn’t even move your hand through it. There was a bright spotlight shining down on the stage, as bright as if it were the sun itself hanging from the ceiling. Grandma Mao Zhi sat next to her comforter mending several performance costumes. At that point, the villagers focused their gaze on her, as though there were a dark cloud enveloping her face.
“The time has come? So the troupes will have to disband?”
“The time has come, and we’ll have to return to Liven.”
The person asking the question was the little Polio Boy. He was playing cards, and abruptly lifted up the card he was holding, as though he had suddenly thought of something of monumental importance. Staring intently at Grandma Mao Zhi, he asked carefully,
“What happens after we withdraw from society?”
“After we withdraw from society, no one will have any more authority over us.”
“And what will happen once they have no authority over us?”
“Once they have no authority over us, you will be as free and enlivened as a wild hare.”
“If no one has authority over us, will we still be able to perform our special skills?”
“This is not a question of our special skills, but rather of our exploited dignity.”
The boy threw the card he was holding onto the table.
“I am willing to have my dignity exploited,” he announced. “If withdrawal from society means that the performance troupes have to disband, then my family will fight the withdrawal tooth and nail.”
Grandma Mao Zhi was startled by this outburst, and looked as though someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on her head. She looked closely at the little Polio Boy for a moment, then shifted her gaze to the crippled woman who embroidered leaves. She gazed at the deaf man who exploded firecrackers next to his ears, and the blind man with acute hearing. She gazed at the six-fingered man and the other cripples and mutes, together with the two wholers responsible for carrying the troupe’s suitcases and bags. She asked for those who weren’t willing to withdraw from society to raise their hands—and suggested that if it turned out everyone wanted to withdraw, then the Polio Boy could stand alone outside performing his Foot-in-the-Bottle routine day after day. After saying this, she looked over at the mothlike little nins, then let her gaze come to rest on a group of villagers in the back of the theater, thinking that everything had been resolved and that the Polio Boy’s comments had been addressed.
What she hadn’t expected, however, was that at that moment the forty-odd members of the troupe would all look at one another as though trying to discover something in their neighbors’ faces. They continued staring at one another for the longest time, then eventually looked to the two wholers.
Without glancing at Grandma Mao Zhi and staring instead at the red curtain, one of the wholers said, “If we withdraw from society and Shuanghuai ceases to have any jurisdiction over us, then we will not be able to perform and earn money. But if we can’t continue earning money, then what would be the point of withdrawing from society?” As he was saying this, he tentatively raised his hand.
Seeing the first wholer raise his hand, a second wholer also raised his, saying, “Everyone knows that Shuanghuai county will soon bring Lenin’s corpse back from Russia and install it on Spirit Mountain, and that afterward everyone in the county will become incredibly anxious about not even being able to spend all of the money they earn. They say there are already many people from neighboring counties who are secretly shifting their residency permits to Shuanghuai. Wouldn’t it be the ultimate in stupidity if we were to withdraw from society now?”
It was as if he were asking the other villagers. He cast his gaze over their faces, silently urging each of them to quickly raise a hand.