The Seventh Day (2 page)

With a gloved finger he pointed at the plastic chairs to indicate that was where I should wait. Noticing that my eyes were drawn to the armchairs, he explained that they belonged to the VIP zone, and my status qualified me only for a place in the basic seating. As I made my way, ticket in hand, over to the plastic chairs, I heard him muttering to himself, “Another poor guy who’s come here without a face-lift.”

I sat down on a plastic chair. The usher paced back and forth in the pathway that separated the two waiting areas, seemingly lost in thought, his shoes tapping on the floor with the same steady rhythm as that of someone knocking on a door. Late arrivals kept showing up, and he would greet them and hand them a reservation ticket and point a finger in the direction of the plastic chairs. One of the late arrivals was an elite guest, and the usher walked him over to the armchair zone.

The crematees on the plastic chairs talked in low voices among themselves, while the six in the VIP area also chatted, but loudly, like singers projecting lyrics onstage. Our conversations were more like an accompaniment from the orchestra pit.

Funerary clothes and cinerary urns were the central topics of discussion among the VIPs. They were wearing exquisite handmade silk cerements with bright hand-embroidered designs, and they were discussing casually the price of these garments—all of which cost over twenty thousand yuan. The costumes looked splendid to me, like outfits worn in an imperial palace. Then the VIPs switched their attention to their respective cinerary urns, which were made of large-leaf red sandalwood engraved with exquisite designs and priced in the sixty-thousand-yuan range. The urns’ names were equally splendid and imposing: Sandalwood Precincts, Immortal Crane Manor, Dragon Palace, Phoenix Castle, Unicorn Palace, and Sandalwood Mansion.

We commoners were discussing the same topics. In our case the funerary garments were of synthetic silk with cotton trim, and they cost about a thousand yuan. The cinerary urns were either cypress or wood composite, undecorated, the most expensive costing eight hundred yuan, the cheapest two hundred. The names for these urns took simpler forms, such as Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots, or Fragrance Lingering for Time Everlasting.

Whereas the VIP section was focused on the relative expense of the crematees’ garments and urns, among the plastic chairs the focus was more on who got the best value for the money. Two crematees sitting in front of me found that they had bought identical sets of burial clothes at the same shop, but one had paid fifty yuan less than the other. The one who’d been charged more heaved a sigh. “My wife is hopeless at bargaining,” he muttered to himself.

I noticed that the other crematees in the plastic seats were all wearing funeral garments, either traditional cerements in Ming-Qing style or contemporary designs in Mao-jacket idiom or Western fashion. I was the only one dressed in a pair of Chinese clasp-fastened pajamas, but I was glad that I had at least jettisoned the baggy cotton overcoat—a
lthough my white pajamas were shabby, they could scrape by here among the plastic seats.

But I had no urn, not even a cheap one like Falling Leaves or Fragrance Lingering. This issue began to vex me—just where would my ashes end up? Should they be scattered in the boundless ocean, perhaps? But that was out of the question. That’s the resting place for the ashes of the great, with an airplane to carry them and a navy warship to guard the route, the ashes consigned to the sea amid the tears and sobs of relatives and underlings. My ashes would be tipped out of the oven and greeted with a broom and dustpan, then dumped in a garbage can.

An elderly gentleman on one of the adjacent chairs turned his head and looked at me in surprise. “You haven’t washed or reshaped?”

“I washed,” I said. “I did it myself.”

“But what about your face?” he said. “The left eye has come out and your nose has got out of position and your chin is so long.”

I realized now, to my chagrin, that I had forgotten about my face when washing. “I didn’t reshape,” I said.

“Your family really has been remiss,” the old man said. “They neglected both the wash and the reshape.”

In fact, of course, I was all alone. My adoptive father, Yang Jinbiao, who had raised me from infancy, had left me more than a year earlier when he realized he was terminally ill, and my birth parents were far away in a northern city, not realizing that at this moment I was already in another world.

A woman on the other side, who had been following our conversation all this time, now studied my outfit. “How come your cerements look like pajamas?” she asked.

“What I’m wearing is funerary garments,” I explained.

“Funerary garments?” She didn’t seem to understand.

“Funerary garments are the same things as cerements,” the gentleman said. “ ‘Cerement’ sounds better.”

I noticed that their faces were heavily made up, as though they were about to perform onstage, rather than be cremated.

Someone else in the plastic seats began to complain to the usher. “I’ve been waiting for ages now, but I’ve yet to hear my number called.”

“They’re just in the middle of the farewell ceremony for the mayor,” the usher replied. “They stopped after the first three crematees this morning and we need to wait for the mayor to enter the oven. It won’t be your turn until he comes out.”

“Why do you have to wait for him to be cremated before you do us?” the man continued to wrangle.

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“How many ovens have you got?” another person waiting asked.

“Two—one import and one domestic-brand. The import is reserved for VIPs—you’ll be using the domestic make.”

“Is the mayor a VIP?”

“Yes.”

“Does he need both ovens?”

“He’ll be using the imported one.”

“Well, why are you holding back on the domestic one, then?”

“I’m not clear about that—all I know is that both ovens are currently out of service.”

A VIP in the armchair zone waved a hand to beckon the usher, who walked briskly over to attend to his inquiry.

“How long is it till the farewell to the mayor?” the VIP asked.

“I’m not quite sure.” The usher paused. “It’ll be a little while yet, I imagine. Please just wait patiently.”

A crematee who had just arrived provided an update as he made his way to his seat. “If you add up all the city officials, big and small, as well as those from adjacent districts and counties, that must amount to over a thousand people, and every one of them needs to say goodbye to him, and they can’t walk fast—they need to walk past slowly, and some will want to weep as well.”

“What’s so special about a mayor?” the VIP grumbled.

The new arrival had not finished. “Starting this morning, all the main roads in the city were sealed off and the vehicle carrying the mayor’s remains moved along at walking pace, with several hundred cars following to escort it. What should have taken just thirty minutes required a good hour and a half. The main roads are still sealed off and regular traffic won’t resume until after the mayor’s ashes have been returned home.”

If the main roads are sealed off, the other streets are bound to be crammed with traffic. I remembered the sound of collisions when I was walking in the fog that morning and the scene of havoc that I saw later. Then I was reminded of the news of the mayor’s sudden death that had circulated in all the newspapers and on television channels a couple of weeks earlier. The official explanation was that the mayor had suffered a heart attack as a result of overwork; the popular version making the rounds on the Internet was that the mayor had suffered a heart attack in the executive suite of a five-star hotel just as he reached orgasm with a young model. The model was so shocked that she ran into the corridor screaming and sobbing, forgetting she was naked below the waist.

Then both sets of conversations turned to the topic of burial plots. Those in the plastic seats had plots measuring one square yard, whereas the burial grounds for the VIPs were all at least six acres. Perhaps because the VIPs had heard what the plastic-seaters were saying, one of them asked loudly, “How can one possibly make do with one square yard?”

A hush fell over the plastic seats as people began to listen to the luxurious appointments of those in the armchairs. Five out of the six burial plots were established on mountain peaks, facing the sea, encircled by clouds, the most uplifting and awe-inspiring ocean-view grave sites imaginable. The sixth was in a dale where trees grew thickly, streams gurgled, and birds sang, and where a natural rock that had been rooted there for hundreds of thousands of years served as headstone. These days everyone wants to eat organic foodstuffs, the owner said, but his was an organic headstone. Of the other five burial plots, two had monuments that were miniature versions of real buildings—one a Chinese-style courtyard dwelling, the other a Western-style villa—while two others boasted formal grave steles: they didn’t go in for all that showy stuff, their owners said. The last one took everybody by surprise, for the stele was a full-scale replica of the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square, the only difference being that the inscription in Mao Zedong’s calligraphy on the monument, “In eternal tribute to the people’s heroes,” had been changed to “In eternal tribute to Comrade Li Feng”—also in Mao’s calligraphy, since the owner’s family had hunted down the characters for “Comrade Li Feng” in Mao’s manuscripts, enlarged them, and inscribed them on the stele.

“Comrade Li Feng—that’s me,” the owner added.

“It all sounds a bit risky,” another VIP said. “One of these days the government might insist on demolishing a memorial like that.”

“I’ve already paid my hush money,” he responded confidently. “I can’t afford to let the story get out, so my family has already deployed a dozen people to keep reporters from covering it. Twelve is exactly the strength of an army squad, and with a team of guards protecting me I can rest without any worries.”

At this point the two rows of ceiling lights in the waiting room came on, and the twilight hour suddenly was transformed into noonday. The usher quickly marched toward the front door.

The mayor entered, dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie. He walked in soberly, sporting heavy makeup on his face, a pair of bushy black eyebrows, and bright lipstick on his lips. The usher greeted him, leading him in solicitously. “Mayor, please make yourself comfortable in the VIP luxury suite.”

The mayor, nodding, followed him in. Two huge doors in the waiting room slowly swung open, only to close again slowly once he had entered.

The VIPs in the armchairs had all gone quiet. The VIP luxury suite had reduced the armchair zone to silence; wealth conceded its inferiority to power.

Among the plastic chairs, conversation continued to rise and fall, with burial remaining the topic of interest. Everyone bemoaned the fact that graves were now even more expensive than houses. In graveyards that were terribly crowded, despite their remote location, a square-yard plot still cost you thirty thousand yuan—and with a guaranteed tenure of only twenty-five years. Although houses were expensive, at least you could be sure of keeping them for seventy years. Some crematees were highly indignant, while others were racked with anxiety. “What will happen after twenty-five years?” they worried. By that time the price of a grave plot would most likely have reached astronomical levels, and if their family couldn’t afford to pay out for a renewal of the lease, their ashes would simply end up as fertilizer.

“Dying is such an expensive business these days!” one of the crematees in the front row grumbled.

“Best not to think about the future,” the old gentleman next to me calmly advised.

The old man told me that seven years earlier he had purchased a square-yard plot for three thousand yuan, and now it was worth thirty thousand. He rejoiced in his foresight at the time—if he wanted to buy it now, he would never be able to afford it.

“In seven years the price has risen tenfold,” he sighed.

Reservation numbers began to be called. The mayor had now been cremated, and his urn, over which the Communist Party flag had been laid, was deposited on a black hearse, which then slowly moved away, followed by several hundred sedans. Funereal music began to sound from the sealed-off roads. I realized now that whereas ordinary reservation numbers began with an A, VIP reservation numbers began with a V. I wasn’t sure what letter reservation numbers of luxury VIPs like the mayor started with—perhaps they didn’t require any number whatsoever.

The six VIPs with the V numbers went in. Many A numbers were called, but just as the usher in blue had said, there were a lot of no-shows—occa
sionally there would be ten or more no-shows one after another. I noticed now that the usher was standing in the passageway next to me, and when I raised my head to look at him, his weary voice again sounded. “The no-shows don’t have graves.”