Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today (19 page)

The young dentist laid a hand heavily on Miss Dai Er's shoulder, as though to keep her from being carried away by the billowing smoke in her memory. That was the arm for which Miss Dai Er had long been yearning. She had been waiting for just such an arm to rescue her from her memories. For the first time in her life, she became a patient, giving herself up weakly to the arm that had rooted out so many decayed teeth. The arm itself was the warmest and safest bedside practitioner, the most accurate psychoanalyst.

One breezy, sunny morning a few months after I moved in with him, we cut through the busy district of town, then crossed a vacant lot and a yard piled high with rusty metal, rotting wood, and crumbling bricks. I had always felt a strange affection and melancholy toward all those relics; the desolation never failed to spark feelings of nostalgia: maybe that junkyard held my childhood and early youth. We stood silently for a while, then walked toward a small hut-for years, it had been regarded as the cradle of love as well as the source of the graveyard; people said it was a stage that accommodated both comedies and tragedies. I was incapable of naming this place, just as today I am incapable of naming my love of that time.

A warmhearted young man received us, one who habitually punctuated his speech with
fuck
(used in place of commas, this word evinced neither joy nor anger). From this small hut, we obtained a red certificate that read

Registration No. 13

Dai Er (Female), 23

Kong Sen (Male), 26

Wed of their own free will.

Investigation confirms that their marriage conforms to the marriage laws of the State.

We each kept a copy, knowing that the paper was thick as sheet metal and thin as a cicada's wing.

On an afternoon after her marriage, Miss Dai Er finally shows up again at dental chair 103 in Hospital 103. She looks especially beautiful, her face radiant with softness and charm. The panicky eyes exist no more; now her gaze has a dazzling fascination, like a shining constellation.

Sitting peacefully and confidently in the chair, she says to the young dentist beside her, like a mistress commanding her attendant: "Let's begin."

In his right hand, the young dentist holds a full syringe, the needle pointing straight up as if it were a loaded pistol ready to fire. He waves it in front of Miss Dai Er and asks, "Are you sure?"

Dai Er smiles. "I'm sure."

She opens her mouth wide, calmly accepting the highly symbolic hypodermic as it stabs her soft palate. Following a momentary sting, her mouth is suffused with a warm, sweet numbness. Sunshine enters her mouth, penetrates her jaw, permeates her tongue; it dances trippingly and sings gracefully in her mouth. A pink smile spills out over her lips.

The young Dr. Kong Sen bends over her, and even though the white gauze mask hides his lips, Dai Er can still feel the hot breath greeting her. The dentist holds forceps or scalpel in his right hand, and with his left arm he presses against her chest for support. This weight stirs her imagination wonderfully. The young dentist deftly extracts two impacted wisdom teeth from Miss Dai Er's mouth, one from each side. When they work together like that, Miss Dai Er feels no pain. She cooperates obediently and meekly. They seem to be hovering together, distantly light as a feather, the sky covered with their rainbow arcs. This intimate cooperation and harmony resurrects the memory of sharing her husband's bed on their wedding night.

When the young Dr. Kong Sen noisily drops the two bloody wisdom teeth onto the milky tray, the secret anguish deeply buried in Miss Dai Er's remote past is finally uprooted.

Translated By Shelley Wing Chan

This story was ignited by being cooked up over a fire. Perhaps you think this is an exaggeration bordering on sensationalism: after all, how can a fire cook up a story? Now if we were talking about cooking a bowl of soup noodles or something… But in our little village of thirty or forty households, where a story about somebody's chicken dying is front-page news, a fire is really a major event. So you can imagine the stir that was created by the unusual fire that hit the house of the pensioner Old Mr. Chen. The old-timers of the village, who say that everything in this world has a cause and an effect, concluded that the fire was a result of the ancestors' spirits having somehow been offended, maybe because the house wasn't situated just right or because of some evil deed carried out by an earlier generation or because of an act of defiance initiated by the younger generation. But the fact is that even if Mr. Chen, a childless old man, had committed any terrible offenses, he'd certainly have owned up to them by now, and he'd never provoked anyone. So how could a huge fire strike him? That's why we've all maintained there was something fishy in the way this incident occurred.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this interpretation. Our friend Xie doesn't. He insists he saw flames coming out of a crack in Old Chen's chimney a long time ago, and not just once, either. It was as if the lower part of the chimney had a piece of crimson cloth fastened to it that flapped in the wind. The team leader was a little miffed over this and asked him why he hadn't spoken up about it at the time, but Xie (whom we called the Crabman) countered, "How vvas I supposed to know it could burn through to the roof? If you look up at my chimney, you'll notice a few fingers of fire leaking from it, too."

The truth of the matter is if there were a blacklist of firetraps, there's little doubt that the house occupied by those young high school graduates from Shanghai would have been on it. If you don't believe me, you can go stand at the entrance to the village and look up at the roof of each household. There'll be no need to ask who's poor, who's well-off, and who's really able to manage his resources-your eyes won't deceive you. The roofs of the poor people are smoothed out and covered with rice straw and wheat stalks; those of the well-off families are covered with a reddish grass brought all the way from Dahong Mountain; and those who are even a little richer have smooth, gray tiles attached to the eaves. The rooftops of those who can really manage their resources are fashioned from wheat stalks and shiny green tiles. But regardless of whether the people are rich or poor, the straw for the eaves has been clipped off, all nice and tidy, and the top is as smooth as a mirror. Not only is it attractive, but the rainwater drains well and isn't always backing up. Now take another look at the house of the students from Shanghai -who knows how many dynasties it has endured? The wheat stalks have been washed white by the rains, the eaves are so soaked they've started to turn black, and the tip of the roof is so full of bumps and hollows it looks like a small pasture where sheep graze. The wind has blown some grass seed up to the rooftop, so a patch of new grass is growing there. Then there's that chimney, all crooked and slanting, as if it were about to topple to the ground; even if it doesn't fall, you never know when it might spray sparks onto the ground.

There's another factor that must be taken into account. It was a scorcher on the day of the fire, so hot that sweat gushed off the workers. Out in the countryside, there aren't any thermometers, so I can't tell you the exact temperature, but I heard someone say that if you stood facing the sun for half a second, you'd be gasping for air, and the sweat would wash out of your pores and evaporate in the air without leaving a speck of salt on your body. The physics textbook we used in middle school said there are two factors needed for combustion to occur: oxygen and high temperature. Since both these factors were at optimal conditions, a fire was inevitable What's odd is that our book mentioned nothing about cause and effect. But as we said before, this was a middle school textbook, something for kids to read; seldom do such books touch upon matters involving adults or elderly people.

Since it was so hot, they went to work extra late that afternoon. Some of the guys who lived under that grassy roof were just returning from dreamland. The one called Four Eyes by his friends was tossing about on his bed. He turned and faced south, trying to determine by the patch of sunlight on the door across from him what time it was. His friend, who was nicknamed the Professor, was holding a book to his heart, chanting poetry with his eyes closed. The Crabman was reading a letter. Abe Lincoln (so named because of his idealistic belief in truth and justice) had already got up. Of course at the time, none of them imagined there was a fire; all they were thinking about was how to get through the rest of the day. The team leader, who was in his own backyard and separated from these fellows by two mud walls, stretched and gave an earth-shattering yawn, signifying that he was ready to pick up his hoe and sling it over his shoulder. He stuck his whistle into his mouth, but instead of blowing it to send the men back to work, he savored that last remaining second of leisure.

When the sound of his whistle did finally pierce the silence, the Crabman and the Professor were both talking, but what they were saying didn't necessarily have any direct bearing on the fire. The Professor was reading a poem that went something like this:

What the Crabman was saying went something like this: "Nowadays what's really great is for a guy who's stuck here like us to have a girlfriend in Shanghai, whether she's got a job or not!"

Both Four Eyes and Abe Lincoln sneered contemptuously. All three of them responded to the Crabman's little speech by looking at one another in blank dismay, as if they couldn't make heads or tails of what he meant. When the team leader walked past the door carrying his hoe, the four of them reluctantly straggled out of the room. If there's any truth to what the old-time villagers say about how hot it was that day, the students should already have been able to taste the scorched, charred flavor of the sun's rays.

They started hoeing corn. When they'd finished about half of that field, the team leader ordered half of the men to hoe the sorghum up on the ridge. Four Eyes and the Crabman held on to their hoes and didn't budge, so the Professor and Abe Lincoln went. Actually, the two of them didn't have to go; Four Eyes and the Crabman certainly could have gone, but Fate stepped in at this point, dictating that those two go up the hill and the other two stay behind. And that is how the task of being the main character of our story fell to the Crabman. As Abe Lincoln and the Professor walked farther and farther away from the house that was destined to burn down (of course, they were oblivious of this), they discussed the Crabman's puzzling comment.

"What do you think the Crabman meant? I believe I've heard him say it before," said the Professor.

"I don't know," said Abe Lincoln, "but have you noticed that the Crabman only goes on like that after he's got a letter from Shanghai?"

If conditions had allowed them to continue probing into this matter, no doubt they'd have soon figured it out. After all, we know that once the waves settle, the truth surfaces. And had that been the case, our story would have ended here. The two of them were racking their brains when suddenly they heard shouts from below the ridge. As they looked toward the village, they could see a hazy, nearly transparent speck of red flickering intermittently atop Old Chen's house. At that second, those with the quickest reactions sped down the hill. Abe Lincoln and the Professor ran after them.

Anyone who had the good fortune to see the huge fire at the Cultural Square in Shanghai or the disastrous department store blaze in Beijing or the even more impressive fire in Changsha will doubtless be deeply disappointed by our story. Old Chen's single-room house was off in a corner by itself, in the western part of the village. Even had it been possible for the mud walls to catch fire, I rather doubt that the building could have gone up in a really big blaze. But of course, the small scale of the fire should not detract from the courage of those brave and daring villagers who quelled the flames, not in the least. Any fire is life threatening, whether it's a major conflagration or a lesser blaze.

So when the Crabman charged into Old Chen's house, he unquestionably put his life on the line for at least a few seconds. What happened then was stated accurately in the article that ran in the
Eastern Anhui News
:

It was a raging inferno, the thick, suffocating smoke from which threatened the life of Mr. Chen, a poor farmer. In this life-and-death crisis, the Crabman recalled the heroic efforts of Huang Jiguang and Qiu Shaoyun during the Korean War, and he remembered those modern revolutionary figures Ouyang Hai and Lei Feng, who sacrificed their lives for the good of the country. It was as if the flames directed him to act-he scrambled in front of his fellow villagers and, like a powerful, intrepid eagle, rushed toward the raging fire…

Here there's a slight problem: who actually was the first to jump in at the scene of the fire? By the time the Professor and Abe Lincoln raced over, that particular act of our little drama was already concluded. It's true that Four Eyes stood outside the house, immobilized, like a piece of wood nailed to the wall, but it's difficult to say why he did so. The villagers were divided over the issue of who entered the house first: some said it was the Crabman, some said it was the team leader. However, that's relatively unimportant.

In any case, it was the Crabman and the team leader who helped Old Chen out of the house, one on either side-that much was obvious to everyone.

After he helped Old Chen out, the Crabman charged back into the sea of flames and succeeded in rescuing an old quilt. At the same time, the villagers managed to take out of the house anything of the slightest value. (Frankly speaking, there was nothing of any real value. If there had been, how could Old Chen have qualified for a government pension for all these years?) According to the newspaper, as soon as the Crabman's foot was out the door, a burning beam crashed and knocked a millstone-sized hole in the floor. Of course, the hole was no larger than the size of a teacup, and the beam hadn't caught his leg, as the report implied. The rescue work was completed by the time the people on the ridge came racing down. They watched the fire burn for about six or seven minutes before they heard the crash of the burning beam as it fell to the floor. But no one questioned this point. After all, when writing a story, how can you keep from spicing things up a bit? Everyone understands that. Don't forget that even though most of the villagers aren't literate, they still possess a fair amount of common sense.