Authors: Yan Lianke
Chief Liu walked all alone from the old city to the new one. Whenever he encountered someone, he would stop and wait for them to recognize him. If they did, he was prepared to promote them to the position of bureau chief or something. In the end, not a single person recognized him. Unlike the past, not one person, when they saw him, rushed over to stand by the side of the road, wearing a broad smile, nodding or bowing to him, and intoning softly, “County Chief Liu.” By this point the sky was already dark, and he had moved from the city streets to a series of rural alleys. Not until he reached his family’s courtyard did the street lamps behind him finally come on.
Chief Liu had never before been so anxious to have someone recognize him and call out to him by name. He had originally decided to return to the city under the cover of darkness because he had been afraid of running into anyone, but when no one ran into him—or if people saw him, they didn’t recognize him—his heart felt as empty as a warehouse that had been robbed clean, to the point that only the empty building remained. At the very least, he told himself, the doorkeeper of his family’s courtyard would recognize him and would hurry out to greet him, but when he arrived at the entrance, the gatekeeper didn’t come out to meet him as he normally did. From a distance, Chief Liu had seen a light on inside the house, but when he arrived the entranceway was as quiet as a tomb.
He had no idea where the old gatekeeper had gone. The gate was open, but no one was there.
After dusting his feet in the entranceway, Chief Liu walked into the courtyard.
He had to return home.
He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he was last there. It seemed like a long, long time ago. His wife had told him that, if he could, he should stay away for three months, and he had replied, “Just watch me! I’ll stay away for half a year.”
It seemed that he had in fact been away from home for half a year. It was early spring when he left, and now it was the dead of winter.
Between visiting the countryside, attending meetings, and staying at the construction site of the Lenin Memorial Hall, it seemed that it had already been more than half a year. In fact, it was almost as if he had been away for several years. Sometimes he would be in the county seat, but he would prefer even to stay in his office rather than return home. And now, as he walked into his family’s courtyard, he suddenly felt he couldn’t remember what exactly his wife looked like. He couldn’t remember whether she was thin or fat, light- or dark-skinned, or even what kind of clothes she liked to wear.
By this point the sky was already dark but the moon and stars were not visible, as clouds covered the sky like black fog. As Chief Liu stood in the dark entranceway, he concentrated for a while until he finally remembered that his wife was in her mid-thirties, was short, and had a white face with jet black hair that she would often wear down to her shoulders. He remembered that she had a mole on her face, or what people called a beauty mark, and that it was black and brown, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall whether it was on the left or right side of her face.
The first thing he wanted to do as soon as he walked in was to check and see which side of her face the mole was on. He glanced up at his house, where he saw his wife’s sparrowlike shadow flit past the kitchen window. It passed in an instant, and his heart felt as if it had been gently stroked by something. He immediately strode forward.
He wanted to return home.
After walking only a few steps, he turned left, thinking that he should stop first at his Hall of Devotion to pay his respects. It had been half a year, or perhaps even several years, since he was last home, and who knew what condition the hall was in.
He therefore went first to his Hall of Devotion. He opened the door, closed it behind him, then turned on the lights. When the lights came on, he gazed at the portraits on the wall, but no longer felt the sense of livening that he used to feel when he looked at them. The portraits of Marx, Engels, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Hoxha, Tito, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, and Carlos Mariátegui were still hanging on the wall, just as before, and those of China’s ten great military leaders were still hanging below them. The only difference was that Chief Liu’s portrait was no longer on the second row where Lin Biao’s had been, but rather was now on the first row behind those of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.
Chief Liu stood in the center of the Hall of Devotion for what seemed like an eternity, letting the time in the room slowly flow past. In the end, he removed his portrait from its position behind Mao’s, and instead placed it in front of Marx’s, hanging it at the very front of the first row. Then, he filled in all of the empty rows on the sheet below his portrait, underlining them in red, and in the final space he wrote two rows of characters:
The greatest peasant leader in the world
And the most prominent proletarian revolutionary in the third world.
He drew nine red lines beneath each of those two rows of text. Those nine lines were like the thick red dragon he had described, dazzling and eye-catching. He stared at those two rows of text and the red dragon for a while, then knelt down and kowtowed to them, and to his own portrait. Next, he turned around and gazed at the portrait of his adoptive father, and lit him three sticks of incense. Finally he left the Hall of Devotion.
In the quiet night outside, he could hear the sound of a car in the distance. That low rumble sounded somewhat familiar, almost like the sound of his own car. Maybe Secretary Shi had received the news that he had returned and was coming to see him. Needless to say, at least his secretary, when he saw him, would address him as “County Chief Liu.”
Chief Liu emerged from his Hall of Devotion and turned off the light. His black sedan was in fact parked in front of his house, and it was in fact Secretary Shi who had come to see him. From the time he was appointed as county chief and had designated Secretary Shi to be his secretary, the secretary had always addressed him as “County Chief Liu,” and surely he would again now.
And, in fact, Secretary Shi had not stopped calling him “County Chief.”
Further Reading:
1)
Pace by pace.
DIAL. This refers to the act of stretching time out, and means to calculate everything to the fullest; it has nothing to do with taking actual steps.
3)
Utterly wronged.
DIAL. This refers to the act of completely missing out on an opportunity, and thus feeling wronged.
C
HAPTER 3:
C
HIEF
L
IU,
C
HIEF
L
IU, MAY
I
BOW TO YOU?
“I’m sorry, Chief Liu. I’ve wronged you, Chief Liu.”
“Fuck your grandmother! I’ll cut off your head! I’ll shoot you! But even beheading or shooting you wouldn’t be enough to relieve my fury.”
“Chief Liu, Chief Liu, I’ve really wronged you, Chief Liu.”
“Bow down, everyone bow down to me!”
“Don’t blame him, don’t blame Secretary Shi. Blame me for everything!”
“Get out! You lewd woman, you sow, you bitch, you weasel!”
“Chief Liu, don’t beat her. Beat me instead. Look, her face is covered in blood. If you keep beating her, you’ll kill her. Everything is my fault, it’s all Secretary Shi’s fault.”
“Are you telling me not to beat her, and to beat you instead? Did you really think I was going to let you go?”
“Ah, ah, ahya.
. . .
”
“I’ve already fired you. After you’ve done your time in prison, I’ll arrange for you to return home to work the fields.”
“Beat me, Chief Liu! You are welcome to kick me to death, stomp me flat, or tread me to a pulp.”
“I’ll fuck eight generations of your ancestors, that’s what I’ll do. But for now I’ll have the Public Security Bureau send you to prison. With one word, I can exterminate your entire family. I can drag your name through the mud, reducing you to the status of a rat in the street. I can make it difficult for you to even walk in Shuanghuai. I can make it such that there won’t even be anywhere in Shuanghuai where you can go beg for food.”
“I’m begging you, please don’t beat him. Look, he’s already lost consciousness. Old Liu, Chief Liu, I’m begging you to beat me instead.”
“Fuck your grandmother. Tell me the truth: When you leave the house, everyone recognizes you as the county chief’s wife, and addresses you as the first lady. Do you know that?”
“I know that. But I don’t want to be a first lady. I just want to be someone’s ordinary wife. When I get off work, I want to cook dinner and mop the floors, and while my husband sits on the couch reading the paper, I want to be working in the kitchen. When I bring the food to the table, he’ll put down his paper and we will eat together. After we have eaten, I’ll sit on the couch reading the paper while he goes to the kitchen to wash the dishes. After he has finished, the two of us will sit on the couch watching TV and chatting, and eventually we will go to bed together.”
“Chief Liu, you must complete us. If you don’t forgive us, we’ll keep kneeling here before you all night long.”
“Water? Water? Fuck your mother! Doesn’t this house even have a drop of water?”
“We don’t have any drinking water ready.
. . .
I’ll go boil you some now.”
“Fuck your grandmother! I never expected, when I appointed you to be my secretary, that you would turn around and stab me in the heart. Even my failure to purchase Lenin’s corpse did not hurt me as much as you have.”
“I’ve wronged you, Chief Liu. I’ve really wronged you.”
“Okay, okay. Even if you kowtow to me until your forehead bleeds, I still won’t forgive you.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive me. One should pay for one’s crimes.”
“Please have some water.
. . .
It’s still hot, though, so let it cool off first.”
“Do we have any tea?”
“Do you want green tea or red tea?”
“I don’t fucking care.”
“Okay, I’ll fix you some green tea. I have some right here.”
“Stand up. Tell me what you’re going to do about this.”
“Chief Liu, if you don’t offer your forgiveness, then I won’t stand up even if my life depends on it.”
“Then just kneel there, and tell me what you are going to do.”
“I beg Chief Liu to complete us.
. . .
”
“Complete us, because if you don’t we’ll die right here kneeling in front of you.”
“Tell me how you want me to complete you.”
“Let us get married. I’ve caused you to lose face in Shuanghuai, so afterward you are welcome to have us transferred somewhere else.”
“Chief Liu, we won’t forget your benevolence and generosity. I’ve been your secretary for many years, so no one knows better than I what you want. If you complete us, I’ll have everyone in the entire county bow down to you. I know that you weren’t successful in purchasing Lenin’s corpse. Even so, I’ll have the entire county bow down to you. I’ll have everyone in the entire county bow down to you whenever they see you. If you don’t believe me, give it a try. Starting tomorrow, I’ll have everyone on the street bow down to you whenever they see you. I’ll have everyone in the new and old city hang your portrait in the main hall of their house. Is that okay?”
“Huh?
. . .
Do you think that you are a celestial being? I’m telling you, even God himself doesn’t have the ability to do that.”
“Chief Liu, I can do what I propose.”
“Get out! Both of you, get out! Get out of my sight!”
……
“You didn’t return for half a year, so I thought
. . .
that I would stay overnight to speak with you.”
“Needless to say, you can have whatever you want in this house.”
“I don’t want anything. The only thing I’ll take is my father’s portrait.”
“You can take it. You can take anything you want.”
“Okay, then. We’ll be leaving now.”
“Go. Hurry up and leave. I don’t want to see either of you again.”
“Thank you, Chief Liu.
. . .
I know that benevolence must be requited. I’ll remember your generosity and benevolence. Tomorrow, I’ll have all of the people of the county kowtow to you and treat you like a deity.”
C
HAPTER 5:
T
HE ENTIRE WORLD BOWS DOWN
Chief Liu’s tears of livening finally fell to the ground.
To his surprise, when he came out of the house the next day, everyone was in fact bowing down to him.
When he woke up, the sun had already passed the highest point in the sky and it was almost time for lunch. What Chief Liu never expected was that after the earth-shattering events of the preceding few days, he would be able to sleep soundly that night. Even Secretary Niu’s telephone calls couldn’t wake him.