The Explosion Chronicles (17 page)

Zhu Ying didn’t say anything. She shifted her gaze from Cheng Qing’s face back to the flowers. She noticed that there were some black chrysanthemum leaves supporting the large peony blossoms. Several of the peony blossoms had pink petals, but the petals in the center of the flower were delicate pink and white, like a young girl’s innermost kernel. Zhu Ying looked at that cross between a chrysanthemum and a peony, and noticed that in another pot next to it a large garlic plant had sprouted little red fruits like wolfberries. There was a small cherry tree in a pot beneath the window, together with a pepper plant covered in red thorns. Then Zhu Ying stared at Cheng Qing, who had been sitting there without moving, and noticed that she had a satisfied smile, making her appear like one of those flowers.

“If he wants you, he can simply move in with you.”

“There’s no need.”

Zhu Ying looked away and said, “Over at Otherworldly Delights, everything is like this. The oddest thing is that the dogtail growing on the wall around my courtyard is blooming with chrysanthemum blossoms, and even the wormwood is as fragrant as osmanthus blossoms. If you have time, you’re welcome to come over to take a look.”

“Really?”

“Do you want to come right now? I’ll go with you.”

“I’m afraid the mayor might arrive at any moment. He likes to drop by periodically.”

And so it concluded. As Zhu Ying walked out of Peach Blossom Spring and passed through a courtyard full of cars, tractors, and bicycles bringing customers to the brothel, she felt that the sunlight appeared black, and the buildings and walls looked as though they were floating on water. The sound of pedestrians and street hawkers
was like an uprooted tree hurtling toward her. She felt faint, as her brain finally began to process what Cheng Qing had just told her.

III.

Kong Mingliang felt that the best things in the world were power, women, beds, and pillows. When Zhu Ying returned exhausted from seeing Cheng Qing, she immediately fell asleep, wanting to bury her head in the pillow and call for her father. The night enveloped Mingliang like a pool of water, and in this autumn evening, which was neither warm nor cold, he felt as though he had returned to an enormous womb, as his exhaustion slowly melted away. His typical day involved attending meetings and ribbon-cutting ceremonies, eating and reading documents, and going down to the site where the new town hall was being built. If he didn’t go down to the construction site one day, the construction workers and foremen would steal all of the cement and rebar beams. The truck drivers would even haul away an entire truckload of bricks and sell them. The amount of nails that drivers delivered to the construction site paled in comparison with the amount that they stashed under their beds. Mingliang took the town police down to the house of Second Dog—who was working as a guard at the construction site warehouse—and they discovered that his house was like a warehouse in its own right, with ropes, sacks, lumber, and steel pipes, together with piles of hammers and nails. Kong Mingliang summoned Second Dog and slapped his face.

Second Dog held his cheek and cried abjectly, “But Mingliang, I’m your brother!”

Kong Mingliang slapped him again.

Second Dog cried, “Even though you are now the mayor, I’m still your brother! Don’t forget that I was the first one to spit at Zhu Qingfang, on your behalf.”

Kong Mingliang launched a kick at him, until finally Second Dog stopped insisting on that brotherly form of address and instead just stared at him fearfully. Second Dog clearly saw that the person standing in front of him was Kong Mingliang, whom he had originally helped elect as village chief, but now this person’s bearing and disposition were different. Second Dog wasn’t sure what had changed, but somehow the person in front of him was no longer Kong Mingliang. It was not until Mingliang signaled with his eyes to the two policemen accompanying him—who in turn put a pair of jangling handcuffs on Second Dog’s wrists—that Second Dog finally realized that Kong Mingliang was no longer village chief but rather town mayor.

Second Dog abruptly knelt down and began kowtowing to Kong Mingliang, saying, “Mayor Kong, please let me go. I promise I’ll never steal again!

“… Mayor Kong, please let me go. I promise I’ll never steal again!”

Kong Mingliang then gave another signal, and the police released him.

In the course of a single day, Kong Mingliang visited several households in Explosion, ranging from that of the chief of the construction team to those of the construction team workers charged with tasks such as moving bricks. All of the workers were from Explosion, and each of them had stolen tiles, cement, rebars, and lumber from the construction site. When Mingliang entered these houses, the owners would immediately greet him as Mayor Kong and wouldn’t even bother to hide the goods they had stolen. Mingliang would then slap them, and that would be the end of that. Kong Mingliang asked one of them, “Will you steal again?” The man replied, “No, I won’t.” He then asked, “Why not?” The man replied, “We have already grown wealthy, and now we must follow the rules so that we don’t damage the reputation of Explosion and of the mayor.” It turned out
that this thief was wise. Kong Mingliang walked out, satisfied, and proceeded to another house. There, he encountered someone who was not as wise. This other man addressed him not as mayor but rather as Brother and Nephew. Kong Mingliang felt his heart lurch, but he didn’t say a word and instead merely stared intently. The police proceeded to put the thief in handcuffs, then kicked him until he was kneeling on the floor. The thief was at his wit’s end and begged the mayor, saying, “Mingliang … we’re both from Explosion. Don’t forget that you should address me as Uncle!” The policemen’s fists rained down on the man like thunder, and as they was beating the thief they asked, “Are you still going to steal? The mayor is frank and forthright, but what he hates most are thieves. Do you know that?” Finally, the man came to his senses and stopped addressing Kong Mingliang as either Mingliang or Nephew, and instead addressed him as Mayor Kong. He promised he would never steal again and would never again disgrace the town.

There was another man who didn’t understand what was going on, and as he was being slapped he merely stared in astonishment and asked,

“How dare you hit me? I’m the mayor’s uncle.”

They slapped him again.

He said, “Mingliang, how can you stand there and watch them hit me? Don’t forget that my entire family voted for you when you were elected village chief.”

The mayor didn’t respond and instead merely looked at the courtyard, which was full of items that the man’s family had stolen from the town. The mayor had a pale, disdainful expression, and as the police who had accompanied him understood its meaning, they turned to the man’s family and asked, “Did you participate in the thefts? All of you, kneel down… . Damn it, if you don’t kneel down now, you’ll have to spend the next six to twelve months in jail.” The entire family
hurriedly went out to the courtyard and knelt down. They stopped addressing the mayor by name and stopped calling themselves his uncle or aunt. They stopped discussing how they had voted for him when he was elected village chief. Instead, they simply said, “Mayor, mayor, you are very magnanimous. We’ll stop stealing and will never again bring dishonor to you and Explosion.” Eventually, the mayor gave a signal and the police let the family go, and soon a series of cars and trucks arrived to haul away the goods the family had stolen.

The mayor gave so many signals with his eyes that day that his eyelids developed a callus, and he became so exhausted that he almost fell asleep before dinner. He began feeling drowsy even as he was walking down the street, to the point that he almost walked right into an electrical pole along the side of the road. In this manner, however, the wealth gradually accumulated, and the pile of confiscated goods became as big as a mountain. Outside the town, in a field next to the river, they built an enormous warehouse, and what didn’t fit in the warehouse they left on the roadside. It was in this way that a modern town was constructed. Where one day there had been just a messy array of scaffolding, now there was a tall building. Workers were cleaning up trash from in front of the building. Where in the morning they had been breaking earth to build a road, by evening they were pouring asphalt, and by the next day there were cars driving up and down the new oil-scented road.

In this halting fashion, the town was erected. Using as models the town’s five-hundred-
mu
committee building and the two streets leading out of the town, Explosion’s economy, development, and modernity all expanded like a balloon ascending into the sky. The mayor was exhausted and wanted to get a good night’s sleep. It had been a month or so since he had slept in his own bed, and once he had a chance to go home he proceeded to sleep for three days straight—a full seventy-two hours. Apart from waking up twice for
a sip of water, or three other times to go to the bathroom, he slept soundly for more than seventy hours. When he did finally wake up, it was past midnight and the milky-white moonlight was shining in through the window, while a cool feeling of autumn circulated through the room. The red
double happiness
characters on the bed from the wedding had already faded, and there was a cobweb in the corner above, on which the tiny spiders were crawling around. He heard the soft footsteps of the spiders walking along the web, then turned over, rubbed his eyes, and saw that his wife, Zhu Ying, was sitting on the bed, staring at him as though she didn’t recognize him. She had a strange glint in her eyes.

He asked, “You haven’t gone to sleep yet?”

She replied, “You’ve already woken up?”

He asked, “How long have you been there watching me? From the look in your eyes, it seems like you want to kill me.”

She replied, “There is no woman in the entire world who loves you as much as I do.”

“I’ve reclaimed all of the things the people of Explosion stole,” he told her with a smile. “Now, everyone addresses me as Mayor Kong, and no one dares address me as Uncle, Nephew, or simply neighbor.”

Smiling back at him, Zhu Ying poured him a glass of water. She told him that while he was sleeping, he kept talking, saying that he wanted to become county or even city mayor. Upon hearing this, he stared in surprise, then laughed. He looked at the clock hanging on the wall, then out the window at the moonlight, and finally he took off his clothes and crawled under the covers. As Zhu Ying was waiting for him to finish drinking his water, she took off her clothes and curled up beside him. Finally, when their hands and lips were exhausted and he could no longer shout how much he loved her body, she turned on the light and sat up and asked solemnly,

“Don’t you like me anymore?”

“I’m tired.”

“If you don’t like me, you can go find someone else, such as Cheng Qing and her Peach Blossom Spring. It must be exhausting being mayor.”

He stared at her in shock.

“You should sample other people,” she told him with a smile. “You can’t just be town mayor. You should speak as though your voice were the law. You should be like the emperor, and have six courtyards full of wives and concubines, together with thousands of palace maids. You can’t only be town mayor.” She asked, “Who ever heard of an emperor who didn’t have six courtyards full of wives and concubines, thousands of palace maids, and the ability to send people to their death at will?”

Kong Mingliang stared at her intently as though he were reading a book.

“The town should have more brothels and entertainment districts. It’s not enough for it to have only two successful brothels like Peach Blossom Spring. Instead, it should have six, seven, or eight—to the point that the entire town becomes a red-light district. We should have all the girls in the world come to Explosion. Once they come, rich businessmen will follow, and in the process they will invest in Explosion. And then there are foreigners—foreigners are particularly fond of visiting Chinese red-light districts, and once they come they will build factories and set up companies. Once the streets are lined with cafés, dance halls, and bars, and are full of foreigners and rich people walking around with their girls—at that point Explosion will be recognized as one of China’s famous towns and cities. As the town and future city mayor, you will be recognized as the emperor of the entire Balou mountain range.”

Zhu Ying described her plans for her husband as though she were sketching an image with the tip of her tongue. As she was
speaking, she brushed aside her hair, revealing that her face was flushed like a spring day full of pink blossoms. Furthermore, as she was speaking, her body kept writhing back and forth on the bed, her breasts moving through the air like a pair of wild rabbits hopping through a field. Kong Mingliang stared at those wild rabbits with a gleam in his eye, but this gleam vanished as he knelt down naked before her and said,

“You’re still willing to help me, even though I’ve let you down?”

“You’re my husband. If I don’t help you, who am I going to help?”

After she said this, they both started to laugh. Naked, they hugged each other, laughing and crying, as their tears poured onto each other’s shoulders, completely soaking each other’s bodies as well as the bedsheets and the bed itself. Everything became as wet as though it had just been pulled out of a well.

1. SPARROWS

I.

Kong Mingguang decided he wanted to divorce his wife, and the reason involved none other than the new maid Zhu Ying hired for his family. Her name was Little Cui, and she was in her twenties. She was as delicate as water and her breath was so sweet it smelled as though it had been dipped in honey. She was one of the girls Zhu Ying had brought back from the city to work in Otherworldly Delights. However, no one realized that she worked there, and when people asked where her family lived she replied simply that they were in the mountains. When people asked her how old she was, she told them to guess. When people asked if her parents were still in good health, she burst into tears and said that her parents had already passed away. When she said that she had to work as a maid because her parents were dead, people
took pity on her and she would smile like an orphan who is being treated with kindness.

She always had a smile on her face, like a colorful cloud. She had a sweet voice and spoke in a whisper. She talked and worked very quietly, and it was almost as if she wasn’t even there. The moment you said you were thirsty, she would immediately bring you a glass of water, and the moment you began to feel sweaty, she would immediately bring you a change of clothes.

She was like a celestial being.

Zhu Ying had assigned Little Cui to work at the Kong household only a few days after Kong Mingliang was promoted to town mayor and the middle-aged maid left. Previously, no one in the family had noticed the middle-aged maid with Kong Dongde, and consequently no one suspected her of having any unseemly relations with him. The maid remained in the Kong household for half a year, washing clothes, cooking, and serving tea. She would bring tea when they wanted tea and would bring wine when they wanted wine. When they needed her to retire to her room, she would discreetly do so. Only a few days after she left, Zhu Ying noticed that at mealtimes her father-in-law would push his bowl aside and complain that his wife had put too much salt in the food and that his daughter-in-law Qinfang had not washed his clothes well. When he went to bed, he would complain of a toothache or say that he was running a fever. He would call a doctor and buy medicine, but he wasn’t really doing this to treat the illness; rather, he was simply acting out.

One day, when Zhu Ying was home alone with her father-in-law, he had beseeched her,

“Please, arrange for the maid to return.”

Zhu Ying knew that the time was ripe for her to proceed with her plan. She therefore brought Little Cui from Otherworldly Delights and told her to wear the sort of homespun clothes usually worn by
people from the mountains. Little Cui scrubbed her face so there wasn’t a trace of makeup left. She stood in front of the Kong home and greeted the family elders, then rolled up her sleeves and began sweeping the floor and scrubbing the tables, from time to time kneeling on the ground to look for things Kong Dongde had dropped. In general, she acted as though she had just returned to her own home and behaved as though she were waiting on her own parents, without any sense of restraint or separation. Kong Dongde wanted Zhu Ying to bring back the middle-aged maid she had originally hired for him, but Zhu Ying declined. She said the other maid had already gone home and wouldn’t return for any price, and therefore Zhu Ying had no alternative but to bring in a younger one. She said that perhaps Little Cui didn’t cook as well as the other maid, and perhaps she didn’t wash clothes as quickly, but she was nevertheless diligent and respectful.

So, Little Cui stayed on in the Kong household.

Three months later, Kong Mingguang decided to divorce his wife and marry Little Cui. He made this announcement one afternoon after lunch, as the sluggish sun’s rays flowed muddily through the Kong family courtyard and the sparrows in the trees sang like pigeons. The steps of people walking by outside were as soft as leaves fluttering down. Following Explosion’s explosive expansion, there were people in the village who built houses facing the road along the river. After they finished these new houses, they used them for business or rented them as street-front stores. As soon as new buildings and tile-roofed houses appeared on the hillside, everyone immediately moved away and everything suddenly grew quiet, and even the sound of footsteps faded away. Mingliang was often busy working in the town government complex and didn’t have time to return home. He ate and slept in his office—and it
almost seemed as though he were prepared to die there. Minghui, who hadn’t passed his university entrance exams, had gotten a job in town, and specifically was in charge of overseeing the town’s birthrate and its new households. He said that signing the daily reports on Explosion’s population growth was so exhausting that his wrist was constantly in pain. Therefore, he would return home only for meals and would leave as soon as he was finished. The eldest brother, Mingguang, meanwhile, was often at home, claiming that classes at his school had been canceled owing to some emergency or that the entire school had closed for several days. As a result, on this muddy-sunlit day Kong Dongde was sitting in his chair and, as Little Cui was idly giving him a shoulder massage, Mingguang happened to walk out of his room. He had a book in his hand and a box of chalk in the crook of his arm. He was headed back to school to teach a class, but he first went to the courtyard to look around. Little Cui said, “Teacher Kong, are you going to class?” He nodded first to her and then to his father, and then proceeded to leave as usual. After he left, the sparrows flew away as they usually did, and the magpies perched on the roof of the house and sang as they usually did. Everything was as usual, and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. But only a few minutes later, Mingguang returned. His face was pale with fury, and he slammed the outer gate shut, stood in the middle of the courtyard, his back as straight as a board, and stared at his father and Little Cui, whose alarmed faces were turning red and white.

“Father … there is something I want to tell you,” he blurted out.

Kong Dongde stared back at his son.

“I want to get divorced,” he announced to his father, “and then I want to marry Little Cui. I can’t wait to marry her!”

Kong Dongde turned pale. He sat up in his chair and turned to look at Little Cui, who had stopped her massage and was standing there with her hands suspended in midair. Her face was like a cloud that had suddenly been struck by a gust of cold air. Her mouth was half open and her eyes were wide, as though she had no knowledge of what was happening and had no idea what to do. At this point, Kong Dongde heard the sparrows in the courtyard start cooing like doves, and heard the magpies in the trees and on the roof start squawking like crows. He didn’t know what kind of relationship his eldest son had with Little Cui, nor did he know why his son’s wife, who had gone to visit her parents for a few days, still had not returned after more than two weeks. He asked Mingguang,

“When will Qinfang return from her mother’s house?”

Mingguang replied, “If she returns, I’ll kill her!”

Kong Dongde’s pale face was covered in sweat. He looked at his son’s contorted expression and, in a trembling voice, said, “You’re committing a sin, do you know that?”

“I’ll kill whoever tries to interfere with my marriage to Little Cui!” Mingguang shouted, as though he really was capable of killing someone at the drop of a hat. With bloodshot eyes, he glared at his father, then added, “After Little Cui and I get married, we’ll move out of this house. We’ll live alone. Even if you don’t give me a cent when we leave the household, I still want to live alone with Little Cui. I want to spend the rest of my life with her!”

Then he left.

His footsteps echoed loudly as he stormed out and slammed the gate behind him. The sparrows on the wall and the magpies in the trees also flew away, as the sparrows cooed like doves and the magpies squawked like crows. After watching Mingguang leave, Kong Dongde spun around and grabbed Little Cui’s arm and asked,

“Is this true? Is this true? Is this really true?”

II.

A few days later, Mingguang’s wife, Qinfang, came back from her mother’s house.

After she returned, she and Mingguang locked themselves in their room and began arguing, and there was a thunderous sound of things being smashed. The sky was overcast, and that morning it was full of dark storm clouds that galloped across it like horses. Mingguang’s wife hurled the washbasin into the courtyard, threw their water bottle to the ground, then struck her husband’s face until it bled. She used his chalk to draw countless turtles and tortoises on the walls, to symbolize adultery, then used kindling to burn all of her husband’s textbooks and his students’ assignments. In the light of the fire, she glared at her husband and asked,

“Are you an adulterous turtle?”

“Let’s be civilized about this.”

“Are you a cheating tortoise?”

“Be civilized!”

His wife grabbed an electric water kettle and threw it at her husband’s head, and Kong Mingguang ran out into the yard. At this point, he noticed his father was standing in the middle of the courtyard facing their house. He peered into his father’s eyes, then spat at his feet and said, “I know it was you who summoned Qinfang from her mother’s house… . You should be careful!” With this, he ran outside, closing the double gates behind him—wedging them closed so that his wife wouldn’t be able to follow him. His wife, hair disheveled, still ran out to the entranceway, where she furiously shook the gates. Then, like a madwoman, she rushed back into the courtyard and stared at her father-in-law, who was still standing there. She cursed, “Your son is a pig, a dog, a tortoise!”

Her father-in-law said, “You must not divorce him!”

She cursed, “He is even lower than a pig, a dog, or a tortoise.”

Her father-in-law said, “You must hold on to him and not divorce him. If you need anything at all, I can provide it.”

Like Mingguang, Qinfang spat on the ground in front of her father-in-law, then went inside to get her clothes, in order to return again to her mother’s house. She planned to leave the Kong household forever. The floor of her room was covered with things, and she kicked them all out of the way. She even leaned down to pick up a teacup and hurled it against the wall. Then she proceeded into the inner room, took a travel bag out of the cabinet, and began packing her clothes. When she was only half finished, someone’s shadow passed in front of the house, and she turned to see her father-in-law enter the room. He stood in front of her, with a beseeching look on his face.

“If you leave, you’ll just be following your beastly desires.”

She listened.

“You shouldn’t leave. You shouldn’t divorce him.”

She listened.

“Do you know that sooner or later Explosion will become a county seat, and even a major metropolis? Do you know that your brother Mingliang sooner or later will become county mayor, and even city mayor? If you remain in the Kong household, you will become the county’s or the city’s first lady. But once you get divorced and return to your mother’s house, you will no longer be a resident of Explosion. After that, you will no longer be regarded as an urban resident, and instead you will remain a peasant and a mountain resident for the rest of your life.”

Her hands, with which she was packing her bags, slowed down. The bed in front of her was as messy as an overturned flowerpot. It remained overcast outside, and the air was full of a mugginess that precedes a rainfall. Under the light of the lamp, the air resembled a piece of illuminated silk. She stood in front of the bed for a while, then looked at her father-in-law’s pale, yet still somewhat rosy face.
She looked at his hair, which was graying but still thick. She looked at his hands with their dark liver spots and throbbing veins, and bit her tongue as she waited for her father-in-law to finish.

He said, “If you don’t leave the Kong household, I’ll make sure you’re treated very well.”

He said, “If you treat Mingguang well and give the Kong household a son, he will surely have a change of heart, and you’ll have an exalted position within the Kong family.”

He said, “After you become the county’s or city’s first lady, you will be treated like an emperor’s wife. I can’t even imagine what kind of life you will be able to lead then.”

Kong Dongde’s wife walked in. She had been waiting right outside ever since her son and daughter-in-law started fighting. She had been standing anxiously in the entranceway, like an invalid unable to walk, but now she quietly came in and, without saying a word, she began picking up everything that was scattered on the ground. She used a dustpan to sweep up the broken glass and porcelain, and dumped it all at the base of the courtyard wall. Then she returned and, as she was cleaning the debris, her daughter-in-law Qinfang walked over from beside the bed, brushed past Kong Dongde, and said, “I’ll do as you say.” She then proceeded to help her mother-in-law tidy the room.

III.

After borrowing a house outside the village from Second Dog, Mingguang and Little Cui moved out of the Kong household and proceeded to lead a peaceful domestic life. Kong Dongde went to look for Kong Mingliang, and asked why he was focusing only on his responsibilities as town mayor and ignoring the needs of his own family, while his cuckolding brother had his head buried in his pants. So Mingliang went to see his elder brother Mingguang and found him in the street in front of the middle school—by this point Mingguang
had already been reassigned from primary school to middle school. The two brothers engaged in some idle small talk, then each went to attend to his business.

Mingguang’s school was located on a flat area on the mountainside. Mingliang slowly walked over, seeing several rows of new buildings and a surrounding wall, together with scaffolding for some new construction. There were also a lot of lively students, who ran to wherever they needed to go. That was Explosion’s middle school. The two brothers stood at a corner of the wall surrounding the grounds. The sun shone down on them, casting a mottled patchwork of dark yellow and light black shadows on their faces and bodies.