The Explosion Chronicles (43 page)

“Can we first build a runway? I am Mayor Kong, and I’ve brought the documents relating to the airport’s construction and its funding.”

He pleaded, “Let there be a runway. I am Mayor Kong, and I really don’t want to beg Kong Mingyao for assistance.”

He closed his eyes, waited, and listened to the wind blowing the pile of documents he was holding in his hand. But apart from this soft sound, he was surrounded by silence. Everything was as still as a grave. When he finally opened his eyes again, he saw the field, stones, and the mountain ridge stretching out into the distance. He felt so helpless he wanted to weep, and felt unbearably depressed. Deeply chagrined, he returned the documents to his leather briefcase, but as he was turning to walk away, he saw Cheng Qing, who was standing behind him and appeared to have seen and heard everything. A dark flame rose up, and he felt his failure had been due to the fact that she had been standing there, but just as he was about to erupt in anger, Cheng Qing brushed the hair from her eyes, and softly said,

“You haven’t seen me in three months.

“… Not having seen me, you owe me.

“… You owe me for my body, so you should give me something else in return.

“… I don’t have anyone else I can ask. After Explosion becomes a provincial-level metropolis, you should appoint me deputy city mayor, or at the very least should transfer me to an outer province and appoint me deputy provincial mayor.”

When they returned to the SUV, they once again sat with one in front and the other in back. Like a married couple in the middle of a fight, neither of them said a word to the other. Mingliang had the car proceed directly toward the mountains to the west, as though they were about to drive into the setting sun. As the forests and fields, the villages and towns—together with the businesses and industrial parks that, for reasons known only to Mingliang, had been built deep in the mountains—receded into the distance, all that was left in front of the car was a vast desolate landscape. By this point they were about a hundred kilometers from Explosion, and the trees on either side of the road left it covered in shade. The road was like an endless ribbon
circling around the wooded mountain. The warm fifth-month sun was replaced by a bright chill. Cheng Qing rolled down the window, looked outside, and asked, “Where are we?” Mingliang instructed the driver, “Continue following this road, over that mountain up ahead.” Then a sense of surprise and mystery grew inside the car, becoming so heavy that as the SUV attempted to climb up the mountain, it had to proceed as slowly as an old man panting as he tries to walk down the street. Eventually, however, it managed to reach the top of the mountain. The SUV managed to free itself from the forest and parked in a grass lot at the top of the mountain.

A different world appeared.

It turned out that at the base of the mountain, and in the middle of the mountain range, there was an enormous field. The setting sun bathed everything in a bluish green and dark red glow, and Mingyao’s navy was in the process of conducting naval exercises on that sea-like field. Mingyao stood on the mountain peak gazing down at the sea-like field below, where several fleets of ships were clustered together in the field, attacking each other and defending themselves. There was the sound of cannons and clouds of smoke, and the field resembled a scene from a painting. Because the ships were so far away, it was like seeing a school of fish swimming along the surface of the ocean. The sound of the soldiers shouting swept toward Mingliang like a wave. There were tens of thousand of men from two or three divisions, all wearing naval uniforms with white ribbons fluttering behind their flat-topped caps, like white birds soaring above the grassy sea.

Cheng Qing got out of the car and stared in amazement.

“Mingyao is going to do something great,” Mingliang murmured to himself without removing his eyes from the seascape in front of him, though at the same time appearing to respond to the question Cheng Qing had asked him in the car. He stood on the mountainside
in the light of the setting sun, staring down at the grassy sea at the base of the mountain. His face was pale with surprise, but there was also a hint of an excited smile. Leaving the driver next to the car, he accompanied Cheng Qing down the mountain, where they found both sides of the street lined with troops welcoming them. One or two battalions were lined up along the side of the road, and all of the soldiers were wearing crisp new naval uniforms, and in the sunlight they were shimmering like the ocean. At first, the drumming sound was rather erratic, but it gradually cohered into a steady beat, until eventually it became as precise as though it had been cut by a knife. Mingliang walked in front and Cheng Qing followed behind. There was a large sign waving back and forth, which read,
WE WARMLY WELCOME THE MAYOR TO INSPECT OUR TROOPS
! When Mingliang saw the message on the sign, a naval officer in his fifties—who happened to be Mingliang’s former commanding officer back when Mingliang was in the military—rushed out from under it with his clenched fists held up to his chest. He suddenly stopped when he was a few meters away from Mingliang, and proceeded to salute and announce in a shrill voice,

“Reporting to Mayor Kong, sir! Explosion’s entire naval base is performing a large-scale sea-crossing and shore-landing military exercise. Participating in the exercise are two naval divisions and one sea missile regiment. Division Commander Gao Qiyi from the second naval division reporting, sir!”

Mingliang stared in surprise. After listening carefully to Commander Gao’s report, he initially wanted to return the salute and say something in a similarly measured cadence, but in the end he merely lifted his hand to his waist and said feebly,

“Take me to see Mingyao.”

The division commander responded in a forceful voice,

“The commanding officer is waiting aboard the ship.”

Upon hearing the words
commanding officer
, Mingliang felt a pang in his chest. He again looked down at the seascape at the base of the mountain, and the seemingly endless array of ships and troops. Then, without a word, he followed the division commander toward the rows of welcoming naval troops. When he arrived in front of them, a chant of “Senior Officer, Senior Officer” could be heard amid the applause. By this point, the sun was already approaching the western horizon, and a red glow filled the sky. The warmth in the air was like mountain camellias blooming in the winter. Mingliang knew that when he heard the troops chanting, “Senior Officer!” he should respond by shouting, “Comrades, you are working hard!” At this point, the welcoming troops would shout in unison, “Serve the People! The Senior Officer is working hard!” In this formulaic exchange, the greeting ritual would reach its climax. But when Mingliang heard Mingyao addressed as “commanding officer,” he found himself unable to utter the requisite response “Comrades, you are working hard!” Instead of that enthusiastic response, he merely took Cheng Qing to look around and nod, then quickly withdrew from the welcoming procession.

Upon leaving the procession, Mingliang turned back and saw Cheng Qing behind him. Her excited face was covered in a sheen of sweat, and was so red it appeared as though the excess color might peel off. The division commander, however, was standing right next to her. He gestured at the troops and ships and spat out a string of commands, from which Mingliang could make out phrases like
United States, Great Britain, President Obama,
and
Japanese Prime Minister.
But in front of him, along a dirt road leading down the mountain, he could see the silhouettes of one truck after another hauling goods. He stood on the side of the road and could see that, at the border of the sea of grass, an enormous naval vessel had appeared. Mingyao and his staff officers were on the ship’s deck and were gathered around
a sand table examining something. Mingyao kept looking up and gesturing at the assorted vessels and the thousands of troops in the sea of grass before him, together with a fleet of ships in the distance that were arranged in the shape of the character for “person”: 人. On this hillside on the edge of the grassy sea, the sun in the western sky shone across to the east. When the wind blew, an endless series of waves moved across the surface of the grass. There was a conifer with leaves similar to both a poplar and a willow, which could be found only on the mountains behind Explosion. In the wind, the leaves kept turning upside down, and their white underside looked just like ocean spume.

Mingliang was astonished by this sight of a navy on a frothing sea, and anticipated that Mingyao was doing something momentous on behalf of Explosion. His sense of unease grew, and a look of confusion passed over his face like a layer of fog. Standing at a turn in the road, he saw the row of sentries. He waited for Cheng Qing and the division commander to catch up to him, then told the commander that he had previously visited this outer county for inspections but had never heard of there being this sort of field in the middle of the mountains. The commander smiled and replied that three years earlier he had discovered that there was this one-hundred-kilometer plain right here in the middle of the mountains. So he planted some additional grass and converted the field into a vast grassy ocean, so that every year the navy could conduct exercises here.

“Does this work?” Mingliang asked.

“We are confident that we could defeat the Japanese fleet in open ocean.” The division commander shook his fist and added, “Our objective is to defeat the US aircraft carrier fleet, so that we can land on the US west coast whenever we wish.” Then, he pointed to the most distant row of several dozen ships and said, “Mayor Kong, look off into the distance. That farthest ship, which resembles an enormous
club floating on the water’s surface or a bowling ball floating in the water—that is a newly developed nuclear-powered submarine, which can remain submerged for up to eight months at a time. If it strikes a US aircraft carrier, the carrier would be completely destroyed.” While he was saying this, he proceeded forward, and the sentries along the side of the road kept saluting the mayor, the division commander, and Cheng Qing. When the sentries saluted, Mingliang would merely nod to them, while the division commander would stop in front of each sentry and return the salute. In this way, they headed down the mountain, approaching the ocean, until eventually they were assailed by thick steam arising from the fields and a sweet smell of fresh grass warmed under the hot sun.

“Do you smell the ocean?” the division commander asked Cheng Qing with a smile.

Cheng Qing nodded and asked coldly,

“Are there no female soldiers?”

The division commander smiled back and said, “We’ve already made plans to recruit some.”

When they reached the shore at the base of the mountain, they saw that the vast field was budding with green growth and was full of red, white, and yellow blossoms. Amid the military exercises there were also some homeless birds such as petrels flying through the sky. The steel body of the ship Mingyao was using as a headquarters was completely covered in sea paint and was anchored in the grass-sea about three thousand meters from the base of the mountain. No one could walk across these three thousand meters of grassland, because anyone who tried would fall into the water and drown. When they reached the shore, Mingliang used a walkie-talkie to call Mingyao, who was up on the control vessel. Then, after a while, a motorcycle left the ship as though it were a speedboat, and took them to the ship.

It was only as Mingliang was crossing the gangway onto the main deck of that five-story-high ship that he realized just how enormous the ship actually was. He fell into a stupor, as he saw that on the ship’s two decks, each as large as a basketball court, a white tarp was covering a shaded area as large as ten rooms. Beneath the tarp, there was an enormous sand table containing models of both the Eastern and the Western Hemispheres, on which there were an array of two-inch red and white flags, together with numerous pictures of the sea covered in red and white arrows and ship icons. When Mingliang and Cheng Qing arrived, the middle-aged and young naval officers stationed next to the sand table all saluted the mayor in unison. Then they looked over at their commander Kong Mingyao, who was standing between the sand tables, and after Mingyao nodded to them they all took their compasses and their binoculars, and retreated to the command deck.

Aboard the ship, there was just Mingliang, Mingyao, and Cheng Qing. It was only then that Mingyao removed his snow-white naval jacket and tossed it onto the US coast on the sand table. He then poured his brother and Cheng Qing a glass of water, which he placed on a white plastic table next to the sand table. Then he pulled over three white chairs and placed them around the table and told his brother apologetically,

“If you had come this morning, you would have been able to see us defeat the Japanese fleet and force it to surrender.”

He announced solemnly to Cheng Qing, “The day after tomorrow a fleet of submarines will surround the US mother ship, and it is there that our fate will be decided.” Then, turning toward the large ship and small warships under the setting sun, Mingyao looked anxious, because the fate of any future battles remained uncertain. Owing particularly to the light of the setting sun, his anxious expression appeared to carry a trace of sickness or even death—as though someone, following a
major illness, had left the sickbed before fully recovering. It appeared as though his resolution and his confidence had completely disappeared, and instead now he simply looked exhausted.

“You’ve lost weight,” Cheng Qing said, looking him over.

“The final battle is upon us, and I can never sleep.” Mingyao smiled, then handed the two glasses of water to Cheng Qing and Mingliang. “I hear that Explosion’s designation as a provincial-level metropolis will soon be approved?”

Mingliang nodded.

“After it is approved, you will become a ministry-level cadre,” Mingyao said. “This will place you higher than provincial governors and party committee secretaries.”

An expression of delight flashed over Mingliang’s face as he looked at his brother, then gazed silently out at the sea and the naval fleet. In the distance they could hear the sound of fighting and explosions. Several dozen kilometers away, on the far side of an island, fire and smoke were visible.