Authors: Yan Lianke
“I don’t want money.”
One of the men asked, “What do you want, then?”
She said, “I need some time to think.”
He said, “Then take some time. It will take us the better part of the night to relocate to Wenzhou. And furthermore, it is raining, so the roads will be slick.”
The group walked away and entered the theater. Meanwhile, Grandma Mao Zhi hobbled along the street outside the theater, not looking to either side, but occasionally glancing at the cars and at the streaming rain behind her. Because of the rain, all of the residents of the city were inside, leaving the street completely empty, like a cemetery without any visitors. The rainwater flowed into crevices in the ground, and along the side of the road there were many silvery puddles. The buildings in front of her resounded with the pouring rain, just as, in midsummer along the Balou mountain ridge, the poplar grove resounds with the wind. Farther away, the houses and buildings disappeared into the mist as though they were frozen in the rain. They looked gray and black, but there was a shimmering, watery vapor emanating from them and slowly wafting overhead.
Grandma Mao Zhi truly believed that there was an enormous expanse of water in front of her. She stood there examining it carefully, but realized that it was actually not water, but rather the asphalt road and the gray ground merging together in the rain. She noticed that not far off there was an intersection where two cars had collided. She couldn’t hear what the drivers were saying to each other, but after a while they got back into their respective cars and drove off into the rain. Grandma Mao Zhi started walking toward the intersection where the accident had taken place, and when she arrived she noticed that not only was the ground covered with shattered glass, but there was a half-grown mottled dog that had been struck by one of the cars and was lying motionless in the rain. The dog’s blood was mixed with the rainwater, becoming gradually more diluted as it went from dark crimson to bright red to light pink and finally dissolved altogether.
As the raindrops fell into the pool of blood, they emitted a sharp sound. Red bubbles emerged from the pool, like the red paper parasols that dot the streets of that city on sunny days. When the bubbles burst, it was as if the parasols were closed up, and even the sound was similar, though parasols make a longer popping sound than the bubbles did. When the bubbles popped, a faint odor would emanate from them, then quickly dissipate. Grandma Mao Zhi stood next to the shattered glass from the car accident, next to that cacophony of odors, and gazed silently at the wounded dog. The dog stared back at her, as though begging her to hold it in her arms.
She was reminded of the disabled dogs she had at home.
She squatted down and patted the wounded animal’s head, then stroked its blood-soaked hind legs. It occurred to her that if a ticket could really sell for seven hundred yuan, then ten tickets could sell for seven thousand, a hundred tickets could sell for seventy thousand, and a thousand tickets for seven hundred thousand. But during their performances over the preceding two months, the troupe had always sold at least thirteen hundred tickets per performance. Thirteen hundred tickets would be equivalent to nine hundred and ten thousand yuan, and even if you were to subtract the proceeds that the wholers had promised to give the performers, they would still be left with at least eight hundred and fifty thousand yuan, to be distributed among these eight county cadres, together with the troupe’s accountant, cashier, ticket seller, and guards. In all, in addition to the forty-five disabled performers, the troupe included about fifteen wholers, and for every performance these fifteen wholers could collectively earn eight hundred and fifty thousand yuan.
That is to say, each of the villagers could earn two seats for each day’s performance, while the wholers could earn, at the very least, an average of fifty thousand yuan a day.
That is to say, if Grandma Mao Zhi didn’t sign the form stating that the performances had been canceled on account of the rain, then each of the wholers would lose the opportunity to earn five hundred thousand yuan.
That is to say, everything hinged on her.
The rain was coming down harder and harder. Grandma Mao Zhi squatted there in the rain next to the injured dog and began to feel cold, as though she weren’t wearing any clothing at all. At the same time, however, she began to feel rather hot. She remembered that if she declined to add her fingerprint to the box on that form, the wholers would not receive a single cent in compensation. She felt a wave of warmth surging up from her lower regions, and when it reached her head it felt as if her entire body was warm. Her chill immediately disappeared without a trace.
Grandma Mao Zhi caressed the dog’s head again. She wiped the raindrops from the animal’s face as though wiping tears from a child’s eyes. Then, she gently moved the dog to a safe spot on the side of the road. She watched it for a while, then turned around and walked back. She looked as though she had just made a decision, and although certainly her leg was still crippled, her pace was brisker than before. She took a deep step followed by a shallow one, and each time her good right foot hit the ground she had to use more strength to move her crippled left leg, thereby making a much bigger splash. After only a few steps, her left pants leg was completely soaked.
There wasn’t anyone else in the street.
Grandma Mao Zhi trudged through the rain like an old peasant passing through the city. But she noticed a tiny sound behind her, as though a lost child were calling her mother.
When she looked over her shoulder, she saw that the dog was crawling after her, dragging its hind legs. When the dog saw her turn around, it started energetically crawling forward like a child discovering her mother, gazing at her with a baleful expression.
This was one of the city’s wild dogs. She hesitated a moment, then hobbled back a few steps and picked it up, hugging it tight to her chest. She held the dog as though it were a water-soaked sack of flour, and immediately felt it trembling, both from the cold and from gratitude. Then, as she was walking back to the theater with this dog that had had its legs broken by the car, she noticed that a group of three to five other dogs had appeared out of nowhere and were following her as well. Some were black and others were white, but each was old and ugly. The rain had plastered their fur to their bodies, revealing their bones, as if they were emaciated people during the Year of the Great Plunder.
Mao Zhi stood there without moving.
The dogs stared at her intently, like street beggars staring at a charitable-looking person with food.
She said, “I’m an old woman. You can’t follow me like this.”
The dogs didn’t make a sound, and instead continued staring at her.
She said, “I don’t know why you are following me, since I don’t have anything to give you.”
They stared at her still.
She walked away, and they followed her.
She stopped, and they also came to a halt behind her.
She gently kicked the dog in front, and it let out a yelp as the others retreated a few steps. But when she continued toward the theater, the dogs again followed her as though they were her tail.
She stopped worrying about whether or not they were following her, and instead focused on hobbling forward. When she brought that half-grown mottled dog to the front of the theater, she looked back and saw that the handful of dogs had now grown to a pack of more than a dozen. These old and filthy dogs were all animals abandoned by the residents of the city. Like the people of Liven, the dogs included animals that were blind in both eyes and whose eyes were full of mucus and oozing yellow pus. There were dogs who had broken one of their legs, and had to stand on three legs like a crippled person leaning on a crutch. There was also a dog that looked like it had roamed back and forth in front of the city’s various restaurants searching for something to eat, until someone from the restaurant threw a pot of boiling soup onto its back, and its body gave off a smell of putrid meat, as if it were an amusement park for flies and mosquitoes.
By this point the rain had started to taper off, and the sky was covered in a bright light.
Grandma Mao Zhi was engulfed by the dogs’ nauseating stench. She stood in front of the theater and was about to urge the dogs to leave when the dog at the front of the pack—an old, crippled animal that walked unsteadily—suddenly came forward and knelt down in front of her. Mao Zhi felt her own crippled leg begin to tremble, as though someone were pinching her nerves. She gazed intently at the crippled dog’s front leg, and noticed that when the animal knelt down it appeared to topple over as it splashed into water on the ground. In order to distinguish between the acts of kneeling and lying down, the dog kept its rear legs erect so that its body inclined upward from the front to the rear, tail and rear end sticking straight up in the air. At the same time, however, it kept its head erect as it watched Mao Zhi, thereby granting itself a very peculiar posture.
She asked, “What do you want?”
She looked down at the dog she was carrying in her arms. “Is this your pup? If so, I’ll return it to you.”
She then proceeded to put down the mottled dog. As she did, it immediately turned and looked the older dog in the eye, then turned again and dragged itself forward toward Mao Zhi.
She therefore picked it up again.
As she did, the older dog suddenly looked back, then barked several times, as though telling the other dogs something. Then, all the other dogs knelt down in front of Mao Zhi as well. They all began crawling toward her, gazing both at her and at the dog she was holding. They gazed at her with a pleading expression, and at the dog in her arms with a look of envy. They were all hoping she would hold them as well, hoping she would carry them somewhere. It was as though they all knew she wouldn’t abandon them, and instead would take them back to that village in the Balou mountains where almost all of the residents were disabled. It was as if they knew that in Liven, she already had more than a dozen disabled dogs living with her. It was as if they had finally found their master, their mother, and their wet nurse. And as they knelt down before her, their eyes were filled with tears.
The air was filled with the smell of tears.
The entire world was filled with the bitter smell of the dogs’ tears. They wept as they entreated her, their throats emitting a peculiar growl of pain. They were heartbroken, having reached the point where they had no choice but to beg someone for help. Grandma Mao Zhi heard their whimpering, which sounded like crying. She saw their whimpers floating around her like clouds. She smelled the salty odor of their tears, like the aroma of a salty soup. She knew what they were begging her to do. Her heart was as soggy as a clump of sand in a puddle of water, but eventually it began to settle in her chest, a mound of dry sand.
The dogs could not but accompany her back to Liven, Grandma Mao Zhi thought as she stared at that pack of old and disabled dogs.
The rain finally stopped, and the sky and earth were illuminated by a bright light. That pack of more than a dozen dogs kneeling down in the rainwater let out a pathetic, muddy bark. Mao Zhi wasn’t sure what to do, so she put down the dog she was holding. She thought that if she didn’t carry the dog back behind the theater to feed it and bandage its leg, then maybe this pack of dogs wouldn’t keep begging for her help. After she put the dog down, however, it crawled abjectly up to her feet while making whimpering sounds, as tears flowed from its red eyes and down its melon-shaped face into its mouth.
Grandma Mao Zhi was at a loss as to what to do.
It turned out that those able-bodied cadres affiliated with the performance troupe had not returned to the theater, but rather had been waiting for her at the theater entrance, or perhaps had left, changed—Grandma Mao Zhi noticed they were all wearing dry clothing—and then returned. As she was standing there not knowing what to do, one of the cadres walked over to her. He looked curiously at the enormous pack of dogs, then back at her.
He asked, “Have you decided? We have already told the stagehands to begin preparing for the move to the new site tonight.”
He said, “We have decided to pay each of the performers five seats for each performance, which is to say, three or four thousand yuan.”
He said, “If you agree to do one performance, however, we would pay you ten seats, which is to say roughly seven thousand yuan.” He added, “Of course, the most important thing is not the actual proceeds, but rather that we need to call up the county and report to the county chief that the residents of Liven want to withdraw from society and leave the jurisdiction of Shuanghuai. Once you return home, you can take that withdrawal certificate and never have to return to the jurisdiction of Shuanghuai and Boshuzi. Never again will anyone be able to tell you what to do, and should you ever choose to perform again, you will be able to keep a hundred percent of the proceeds.”
He said, “Tell us your decision, Grandma Mao Zhi. Whether or not Liven withdraws from society hinges on a single word from you.”
He said, “Tell us. One way or the other, you should say something.”
Grandma Mao Zhi looked at the wholers standing in front of her, these cadres who had come to lead the performance troupe. Eventually, she let her gaze come to rest on the cadre who had done most of the talking.
She said, “Go tell Chief Liu that in Liven there isn’t a single person who does not wish to withdraw from society.”