Authors: Carlos Rojas
“Can you really eat that?” The Theologian, the Musician, and the Physician came up behind him.
“Yes,” the Scholar answered. “Sparrows survive the winter by eating grass seeds, which are not dirty.”
They went up to the Child’s building. First they crawled to his window to listen, but didn’t hear any movement, so they knocked on his door. They heard a faint sound from inside, and the Scholar pushed the door open. Upon entering, the Scholar, the Theologian, and the Musician all stared in shock, just as they had when they opened the door of the two researchers who hanged themselves. This time they were not staring at a cold, dead corpse, but rather at a scene of fiery heat. Unlike everyone else, the Child was not frail with hunger, his eyes bulging, but rather his face was radiant with light. The entire room was full of light. The last rays of the setting sun shone into his room, and everyone saw that he was lying on his bed. His bed and the adjacent walls were all covered with the certificates and blossoms that the higher-ups had issued him to replace the ones that had been burned. Row upon row of certificates were posted on the wall above his bed, while those large and small blossoms—including silk ones, paper ones, crimson ones, and pink ones—were hanging from a thread. The thread was strung from the window to the bedside, and the red blossoms completely covered the head, side, and foot of the bed. In fact, the Child’s entire bed was covered with these bright red blossoms, and combined with his red sheets and red comforter, the Child was enveloped in redness, as though everything were on fire.
The Child resembled an infant being reborn from the flames. He lay in that fiery red light, with a sheet draped over his body. There was a chair next to the head of his bed, on which there was half a bowl of fried soybeans and half a bowl of boiled water. The scent of the fried soybeans—which seemed especially strong, since everyone was already famished—swirled around the room. The Child was half lying and half sitting in his bed reading a children’s book, and he would periodically reach out for some soybeans from the bowl, and then would take a sip of water. The Scholar, the Theologian, and the others came just as the Child was reading his book, eating his soybeans, and drinking his water. They first stared at the bright red room, then shifted their gaze to that bowl of fried beans.
“Two more people starved to death,” the Scholar said. “They were so hungry they resorted to cannibalism before they died.”
After putting his children’s book down, the Child sat up and said, “I went to see the higher-up yesterday, and he said that our ninety-ninth had the lowest number of deaths from starvation of any district in the region, and therefore proposed to award us several
jin
of fried soybeans. . . . You are welcome to have some as well.” As he said this, he shifted his gaze to that half bowl of fried beans.
“There has been a case of secret cannibalism,” the Scholar continued.
“The higher-up said”—the Child gazed at the Theologian’s face—“that the most important thing is that we mustn’t let people run away.”
“If they don’t distribute more grain, everyone is going to starve to death.”
“I know . . . if people are hungry enough they’ll try to run away. But where would they go? The higher-up says that there is famine throughout the land, and this is one of the few places that is sparsely populated, so we should figure out a way to make it through the winter.”
The Scholar stared at the Child and said, “But at the very least we can’t permit people to eat each other, right?”
The Child opened the picture book he was holding to a page near the end, and said, “Early on, there was a devastating famine, and people died throughout the land. There was also an enormous flood in which nearly everyone drowned, and only Noah’s family survived.”
The Scholar wanted to say something else, but in the end he just stood there, then woodenly walked out. As he was leaving, he glanced back, signaling for the Theologian, the Musician, and myself to follow him.
So, we all left together.
But, as we were filing through the doorway, the Theologian pushed the Musician ahead and he turned back. He closed the door and stood next to the stool in front of the Child’s bed, peering at the half bowl of fried soybeans. He took a deep whiff, then looked down at the children’s book the Child was holding. He saw that the Child was still reading that illustrated
Collection of Bible Stories
. He laughed drily, then reached into his breast pocket and felt around, eventually pulling out a thick envelope. From the envelope he took out a sheet of colored paper that had been folded into a square. When he unfolded it, a portrait of Mother Mary illuminated the redness of the Child’s room. “This is my last copy.” The Theologian laughed again. “It really is my last copy. If you give me a handful of beans, not only will I stomp on this portrait of Mother Mary, but I’ll also dig out her eyes and tear out her mouth and nose, and eat them. In this way, I’ll have Mary turn into shit in my belly. In addition, I’ll even do as you originally ordered, and piss on her face.” As he said this, the Theologian gazed at the Child’s face, and with his right hand he gouged out one of Mary’s eyes and threw the scrap of paper to the ground, leaving in its place a gaping hole. But as the Theologian was about to tear out Mary’s other eye, the Child’s red face suddenly turned black. He grabbed a fistful of beans from the bowl and hurled them at the Theologian. Before the Theologian had a chance to gouge out Mary’s other eye, the beans struck him and fell to the floor.
The Child didn’t say anything else, and instead stared intently at the Theologian’s hands.
The Theologian reacted in shock, and immediately stopped what he was doing. He looked again at the Child’s face, and after a brief hesitation he knelt down and began collecting the beans from the floor, stuffing them into his mouth as quickly as he could. The sound of him chewing was like a hammer pounding the floor.
3.
Old Course
, pp. 439–57
By the time the eighth resident of the ninety-ninth starved to death, all of the wild roots, grass seeds, and tree bark in a three- to five-
li
radius of the compound had been devoured. If people wanted to collect more roots or more seeds, they would need to go even farther away. They would head out at dawn, each carrying a porcelain cooking pot, a porcelain bowl, and flint for a fire, and return to the compound by sunset. No one told anyone else where they were going, and instead they would simply get out of bed and leave. They would wander into the wasteland, and when they found some couch grass they would dig it up and eat it. When they found some dogtails they would pick off the seeds and roll them in a sheet of paper, and once they had accumulated a handful or so, they would get a bowl of water and pound the flint on a stone, using the sparks to ignite a cotton wick. They would then blow on the wick until it caught on fire, and use the fire to cook a wild seed soup. In order to mask the soup’s strong taste of weeds and soil, some people would break off several pieces of salt from the salt mounds on the ground and add them in, blunting the taste to the point that the soup became palatable. But if people drank too much, they would come down with such a bad case of diarrhea that they wouldn’t even be able to walk, and as a result would starve to death in the middle of winter. In order to avoid the runs, they would add more salt, but if they ate too much their stomach would feel like it was on fire, to the point that they wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. The next day someone became wobbly on his feet and collapsed on his way to forage for wild roots.
The others found a ditch in which to bury him and placed a stick on his grave, carving into the wood that so-and-so died and was buried here, to make it easier if they later wanted to send his body to his family. But the following day, the stick they left at the head of his grave was gone, and everyone forgot where they had buried him.
By the middle of the twelfth month, eighteen residents of the ninety-ninth had starved to death. One day, they were all standing around the compound, discussing how much salt they should put in the root and seed soup, whereupon I noticed that the Musician had a different complexion from everyone else. Their skin appeared sallow or else had the greenish tint of someone about to die, but the Musician’s face somehow still retained a ruddy glow. Death came and went like the wind, and everyone had long since given up washing their clothes, combing their hair, and brushing their teeth, but the Musician’s hair remained neatly combed and pulled back into a single braid, which was tied with a hairband in the shape of a flower, and her light red uniform shirt was always clean and neatly pressed.
I began to develop suspicions about the Musician. She stood apart from the crowd, and I stood directly across from her. After carefully watching for a while, observing her through the emaciated bodies of the people in the crowd, I eventually began making my way toward her. As I approached, I noticed that she had a faint yet distinct smell of cold cream. I stood behind her, feeling startled and joyful. Since the beginning of the famine, the Child would give me a fistful of grain for every page I recorded describing everyone’s conversations and behavior. Later, after the grain ran out and they stopped distributing rations, the Child would still give me a handful of grain for every five pages I submitted. Later, after even he ran out of grain, the Child would instead give me half a handful of fried soybeans each time I went to hand in my new submission. By this point everyone in the ninety-ninth was bloated and listless, and periodically someone would die, but I never found myself completely without food.
I was hungry, like everyone else, but I wouldn’t starve to death—not as long as I could secretly record everyone’s conversations and actions. But given that during this period everyone would leave to go foraging for roots and seeds, it had become increasingly difficult for me to observe all of them. It had already been five days since I last gave the Child an installment of my
Criminal Records
, and consequently I had not received any of his fried soybeans. I therefore decided to follow the Musician around and record everything she did, so that I might figure out what she was eating in order to keep her face so ruddy. That way I, too, would get something to eat, and hopefully I could similarly end up with a face resembling that of a living person. By this point eighteen people from the ninety-ninth had already died, but the Musician was still wearing clean and neatly pressed clothes, and had a faint smell of perfume. After debating how much salt one should add to a bowl of root and seed soup, everyone headed out of the compound, as they had been doing—some walking with the aid of crutches, while others leaned against walls for support. They all left the compound like sheep leaving their pen after a shepherd has left the gate open, all heading in different directions. Some of them headed east, and others went west. Some traveled in groups of two or three, while others headed out alone.
The sun was already almost directly overhead. The wasteland, which was gradually turning white, was enveloped by a layer of yellow light. The shadows of the departing figures shrank as they receded, eventually becoming small dots that disappeared into the horizon. I waited outside the gate of the compound for the Musician to emerge. Sure enough, she came out of her room, and then left with the Physician. At the gate, they said a few words to each other that I couldn’t make out, whereupon the Physician went east while the Musician headed southeast. The Musician proceeded at a measured pace, as though she were going somewhere to retrieve something. I followed several dozen meters behind her, carrying a bag for collecting roots and grass. If she noticed me, I would pretend I was simply out foraging for food. As I followed her, my shadow stretched long to my left like an old tree trunk. After a short while, hunger made me pant as though I had just sprinted several dozen meters. On the path ahead of me, however, she continued rushing ahead. When we reached the next intersection, she suddenly turned, and seeing that there was no one around, she permitted herself to slow down. She then took a path heading south, toward the ninety-eighth.
As she proceeded down the dirt path, I followed her through the wasteland. Upon reaching a building in the ninety-eighth about seven or eight
li
away, she stopped, picked up a stick as tall as a person from the side of the road, and stuck it in the ground. Then she headed toward a row of steel-smelting furnaces located about one
li
to the west of the district.
It turned out that everything had been prearranged, and shortly after she stuck that stick in the ground on the side of the road leading into the ninety-eighth, a middle-aged man approached. He was wearing an old, faded military uniform, and he came over and pulled up the stick and placed it back at the front of the field, then he, too, headed in the direction of that row of steel-smelting furnaces. Soon the Musician emerged from the furnace and looked around, then smiled at the man and asked, “Did you bring it?” The man took a fist-sized bag from his waist and lifted it, and then they both disappeared into the empty furnace.
I crawled into a nearby ravine and hid amid some weeds. I could only vaguely make out what was going on, but some things were quite clear. By this time the sun was already high in the sky and was warming the breeze blowing over from the old course of the Yellow River.
By midday the winter chill began to dissipate, as a layer of warmth hung above the wasteland. The furnace was one that had been left by the criminals of the ninety-ninth when they were smelting steel the previous winter, and now it had been appropriated by the Musician and the man in the military uniform for their rendezvous. I don’t know how many iron dregs were smelted in that row of furnaces at the time, but a year later, after the dust on the outer walls had been blown away, all that was left was a layer of reddish brown coke. The furnaces stood there like a row of rusting battlements, and the two of them snuck into the second one.