Authors: Yan Lianke
“You stole my money.
. . .
You stole my money.
. . .
”
The person who had taken her money leaned into the hall and said with a laugh, “If we had wanted to steal your money, why on earth would we have waited here for three days and three nights to do so?”
Her scream faded into silence, as she quickly backed away from the door, grasping the pocket sewn into her shirt. From a distance, One-Legged Monkey saw the old man with the crutch instinctively glance over at that area beneath the crystal coffin. He saw that all of the people in the hall had been left speechless, and were watching Grandma Mao Zhi.
The entire time this was going on, Grandma Mao Zhi simply stood in the middle of the hall next to a column. Huaihua, however, had already retreated to one side, holding in one hand half a bun and in the other half a bowl of water, which she was enjoying happily but silently. No one knew when she had gotten the money to buy them, but now, as she hid in a corner eating, she repeatedly looked back, with large, vivid eyes, at her grandmother, her blind older sister, and her other nin sisters. The sun was shining in through the window as brightly as before, and depite the earlier stench, the air now also had the fragrance of buns and of moisture. Huaihua was standing there chewing her bun and drinking her water, but now she was quieter than before, as though afraid someone might hear her, as though a swarm of rats or sparrows were about to steal from her.
The villagers who hadn’t managed to buy water or a bun miserably watched Grandma Mao Zhi, as though simply by watching her they could get something to eat and drink. They all had expressions of bitter regret, that they had missed an opportunity to survive and were about to die of hunger and thirst. All of them were lying limply at the base of the wall, gazing at Grandma Mao Zhi and at the wholers in the window, and then bowing their heads.
At that point, the situation quickly changed, as the wholers started smiling deviously. The sunlight behind them was blindingly bright as it shone in the villagers’ eyes. The sun was hovering above the wholers’ heads, and their faces were bathed in sweat. They had all taken off their shirts and gowns, and their shoulders were as red as if they were covered in black and red oil. The driver was still standing on a ladder, telling the people inside loudly but deliberately,
“I know that many of you have a lot of money hidden away on your persons. For each performance, each of you received one or two seats, so who knows how much you’ve earned over the course of the past six months. The others only stole about one- or two-thirds of what you must have had. I am now telling you the truth when I say that if you give me eighty or a hundred thousand yuan, I won’t ask you for anything else, I’ll simply sit here selling buns and water. The price of water just went up again, to three hundred yuan a bowl. The price of buns has increased as well, to a thousand yuan a bun. If you want, I also have packets of pickled vegetables. These are comparatively cheap, and you can buy some for only two hundred yuan each.”
He added,
“Do you want them or not? If you do, this is the price. If you don’t, then you are welcome to wait until tomorrow, but the price may well go up again.”
He looked at Grandma Mao Zhi, and said, “I am the leader of the wholers outside, and you are the leader of the disabled people inside. I know you’ve endured a lot, and that the bridges you’ve crossed are far longer than the roads I myself have traveled. But you mustn’t get confused and do things you will regret, like not passing me the money.”
Staring intently at Grandma Mao Zhi’s face, he said,
“This is the price. Do you want water and buns?”
He continued looking at her. “Do you want any or not? I’m sorry, Grandma Mao Zhi, if you don’t want this bun, the price will rise again. A steamed bun will soon cost twelve hundred yuan. The price of water will also increase, to five hundred yuan a bowl. A packet of pickled vegetables will cost three hundred yuan. That is the going price, and if you want to starve to death, you are welcome to not buy anything. Think about it. I’m going to step down for a rest period.
3
After you have decided, give me a shout.”
After the driver finished his explanation about the price increases, he smiled again at the villagers from the window, then told all of his people to come down from the window, saying, “Hey, Grandma Mao Zhi, you should urge the other villagers to hurry up and purchase what they want, because if they don’t, I might get angry and raise the prices again.”
Then, he disappeared from the window.
The hall returned to its earlier silence. Those who hadn’t yet finished their water and buns quickly stuffed them into their mouths and placed the empty bowls at their feet. Others who hadn’t finished their steamed or baked buns either quickly ate them or hid them somewhere. In any case, the villagers all quieted down again, and the window also reverted to its former state.
The hall became as silent as a grave. One after another, the villagers retreated from the main hall to the side rooms where they slept. There, they sat or lay down, as if waiting either to die or for the wholers outside to open the door and permit them to walk out with their money.
One-Legged Monkey, however, did not return to the side room. He noticed that before the old man with the crutch left the crystal coffin, he had leaned over and felt around beneath the coffin—but it was unclear whether he was looking for something or placing something there. One-Legged Monkey therefore decided that he, too, would go feel around beneath the coffin. First, he went to the latrine and stood there for a while, as though taking a piss. By the time he emerged, the main hall was empty, as everyone had retired to the side rooms. Even Grandma Mao Zhi, grasping Tonghua with one hand and Mothlet with the other, sat with her daughters on her bedroll, their eyes closed and their heads leaning against the wall.
Everything was quiet. Deathly quiet. So quiet that it was possible to hear the sound of dust flying around the room.
At this point, One-Legged Monkey emerged from the latrine and discreetly went over to feel around underneath the crystal coffin. The coffin was positioned on a marble table, and was supported by two stone bars. Apart from a layer of dust, there was nothing beneath the coffin. Needless to say, though, the old man with crutches had previously kept his money here but must have just removed it, leaving behind only a layer of dust. One-Legged Monkey was somewhat disappointed, and hated himself for having watched for so long that the old man with crutches had noticed him.
One-Legged Monkey pulled his hand out from beneath the coffin and wiped off the dust. He was petrified with fear, but refused to give up. He glanced over at the side room doors, then proceeded to lie down and peer under the coffin. He saw not only three marks in the dust next to the support rods, where Cripple had kept his money, but also a black hole half as big as a book in the center of the table. It was as if when the workers were building the table, they had forgotten to add a slab of marble.
One-Legged Monkey reached into that dark hole. He accidentally pressed something, and suddenly the two slabs of marble on which he was standing began to sink into the ground. Before he knew what was happening, they had sunk down several inches and receded to the side.
A deep, black pit appeared beneath his feet.
He was so startled that he sat down on the floor.
He peered into this two-foot-long and one-foot-wide pit in front of the coffin, suddenly realizing that when he had reached into the hole beneath the coffin, he must have accidentally tripped a mechanism of some sort. By this point, the main hall was completely empty, and there was no one in the doorways of any of the side rooms, either. The windows to the main hall were also empty. One-Legged Monkey’s palms were sweaty and his face was pale. Using the light from the crystal coffin, he peered into the pit that had opened beneath his feet, and noticed with surprise that beneath the coffin there was another pit. It was somewhat smaller than the marble table, and was about five feet wide, eight or nine feet long, and three feet deep. The sides of the pit were also lined with milky white marble slabs, as though lined with a sheet of white silk. Inside this milky white pit, there was another crystal coffin that was identical to Lenin’s coffin above it. Perhaps this second coffin was slightly smaller than the first, but otherwise the two were virtually identical.
One-Legged Monkey was so startled by the sight of this second coffin that he broke into a cold sweat. His legs, which were dangling into the pit, began to tremble. He wanted to pull his feet out, but something seemed to be holding them there, making it a struggle just to move them. He peered into the pit, whereupon he heard the sound of the sunlight shining in through the memorial hall window onto Lenin’s crystal coffin, turning the coffin red, as though it were made of pink agate. That gentle light also shone down onto the second crystal coffin inside the pit, which turned the color of black jade. The second coffin began to glimmer, but its glimmer was deep and murky, like a piece of black jade immersed in water.
At this moment, One-Legged Monkey saw clearly that there was a row of Chinese characters on the lid of the second crystal coffin. The characters were bright yellow, and while they didn’t shine they nevertheless were very bright. Every character was as big as a bowl, and they began from the head of the coffin, with a space as wide as several fingers between characters. These characters were written in an ancient chancery
script, and were each as thick as a piece of tree bark.
The characters were inscribed directly on the lid of the coffin, and there were nine of them in all. One-Legged Monkey read them carefully from beginning to end:
May Comrade Liu Yingque Be Eternally Remembered by Posterity
One-Legged Monkey felt somewhat at a loss. He immediately realized that Chief Liu had prepared this second crystal coffin for himself, but what he couldn’t understand was why Chief Liu would want to prepare his own coffin while he was still alive, why it had to be a crystal coffin, or why it had to be positioned in Lenin’s Memorial Hall, next to Lenin’s coffin. One-Legged Monkey stared into the pit at those nine characters inscribed on the lid of the coffin, but waited until later to ponder their significance. The golden color of those nine embossed
li
script characters attracted him. They didn’t produce light in themelves, but rather emitted a yellow glow into this underground pit—like a row of nine suns hidden behind the clouds. He stared intently at the nine characters, focusing in particular on their color and wondering what they were made of. Of course, if the characters had been made of brass, they would have oxidized quickly in the humid pit. Instead, however, they remained bright yellow. What, then, could they possibly be made of?
One-Legged Monkey thought of gold.
When it occurred to him that the characters might be made of gold, the chill in his legs immediately disappeared, and he felt instead a surge of warm blood rush from his feet up to his head. Without wasting a second, he slid monkeylike into the pit, leaned over, and stroked the characters. Then, as if crazed, he grabbed at the characters on the lid of the coffin. But it appeared as though every single stroke was firmly nailed down; and this, combined with the fact that his hands were sweaty, meant that he wasn’t able to pry off a single one.
The sounds in the main hall resonated loudly down inside the pit, as though there were an underground river close by. One-Legged Monkey stood up, bumping his head against the bottom of Lenin’s crystal coffin. There was a thud, which startled him so much he became covered in sweat. He had a sudden urge to pee, just like six months earlier when he’d first performed on the Shuanghuai stage.
He managed to control himself, however, and didn’t permit the urine to leave his body. Instead, he began tugging at the gold characters, eventually managing to break off a single stroke from one of them. This piece was the size of a fingernail and the shape of the tip of his index finger, and was as thick as a piece of tree bark. He held this tiny piece in his hand, and tried to estimate how much it weighed. It felt as though this little piece pressing down on the palm of his hand was as heavy as an iron hammer.
It turned out that those characters were indeed made of gold.
The nine gold characters on the lid of Chief Liu’s crystal coffin read:
May Comrade Liu Yingque Be Eternally Remembered by Posterity
Upon realizing that the embossed characters were made of actual gold, One-Legged Monkey sat there stupefied, then tried to pry off another piece. After he failed to loosen even half a stroke, he could no longer think about anything other than urinating and proceeded to climb out of the pit. He immediately went over to the two marble slabs and began pressing down on the opening between them. He didn’t know what button he pressed, but it pricked his hand like the end of a tree branch. He pressed against this branchlike stub, moving it back and forth until eventually the open pit was covered up again.
At that point, One-Legged Monkey realized he really had peed in his pants, and the damp area was rubbing against his thighs like a clump of wet sand.
Seeing the deathly quiet memorial hall, he quickly hobbled over to the bathroom, but succeeded in secreting only a few more drops.
Given that over the previous three days he had drunk only half a bowl of water, he’d had the urge to urinate without actually having had anything in his bladder. Moreover, he had already pissed out all of the excess liquid inside him when he’d wet his pants down in the pit.