Lenin's Kisses (17 page)

During the encore performance, it seemed as if the entire mountain was full of people, and their jostling and clapping sounded as though the entire world was filled with the sound of black rain. When Chief Liu awarded the performers their money, that sound of black rain suddenly stopped and the crowd went silent, becoming so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. After Chief Liu had awarded the money, however, the person accepting it would kowtow to him, and that intensely black sound of applause would once again ring out like black rain, enveloping the mountain range, the village, the trees, and the houses, as though mosquitoes had flown into the darkness.

This was the first time that blind Tonghua had clearly heard the village’s livening festival, including the villagers’ special-skills routines: the one-legged race, the deaf-person-lighting-fireworks, the one-eyed needle-threading, the paralyzed woman’s embroidery, the one-armed arm-wrestling. There was also the nephew of the village carpenter who lived in the back of the village. He was only about ten years old and small like a bug. He had contracted polio as an infant, and it had left one of his legs as thin as a twig and his foot as tiny as a bird’s head. He was, however, able to insert his tiny foot into a bottle and use it as a shoe to walk around.

Chief Liu’s eyes were opened by Liven’s special-skills performances, and blind Tonghua heard him clap so hard that his hands turned black-and-blue. She heard him distribute money, and speak and laugh until his voice became black-hoarse, such that his every word became as black and shiny as the black blade of the carpenter’s saw. In the end, as the sun was about to set and the temperature turned from hot to cool, many of the outsiders chatted and joked as they prepared to return together to their own villages. Chief Liu stood on the stage and shouted with his pitch-black words, “Who else has a special skill to perform? If you don’t speak now, you won’t get another opportunity. Tomorrow my secretary and I will leave, and afterward there won’t be anyone left to hand out awards!”

At this point, Tonghua climbed up onto the stage and used her date-wood cane to make her way to the center. When she reached the spot where only the special-skills performers were permitted to stand, she stopped, delighting her sisters, who all started shouting, “Tonghua! Tonghua!” as they rushed to the front of the stage. The sun by this point was black red and searingly hot, shining down from the western mountain ridge. Tonghua was wearing a pink shirt, blue pants, and square shoes, and stood there like a sapling, her shirt and pants rustling in the black-cool breeze that blew over from the back of the stage. Her pretty blind eyes were as bright and black as a pair of grapes covered in mist. Her figure was pristine and unblemished by dust, and while she was not as blindingly beautiful as her sister Huaihua, she was nevertheless blessed with a delicate figure. The raucous crowd abruptly grew still. Tonghua’s sisters also stopped shouting out to her. They were all waiting for Chief Liu to offer her something, and for her to offer something in return. It seemed as if the entire world had been plunged into silence. Chief Liu gazed at her as if the scorching sun had suddenly disappeared and been replaced by the moon.

Tonghua waited there in the darkness, and heard Chief Liu standing slightly to the south of the center of the stage—which is to say, to her left. She heard Secretary Shi standing behind him, and One-Legged Monkey standing to his right. When she heard their gazes she was somewhat surprised, feeling as though late autumn leaves were about to fall onto her body. She heard her sisters watching her, as their gazes flew up onto the stage like a breeze blowing on her face through a crack in a window.

Chief Liu asked, “What’s your name?”

She said, “I’m Tonghua.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ve seventeen.”

“Whose daughter are you?

“My mother’s name is Jumei, and my grandmother is Mao Zhi.”

Chief Liu turned pale, but quickly recovered his composure.

He asked her, “What is your special skill?”

She said, “I can’t see anything, yet I can hear everything.”

“What can you hear?”

“I can hear a leaf or feather fall to the ground.”

Chief Liu therefore asked someone to go fetch a gray sparrow feather with a white stem. He held the feather tightly and extended his fist toward her, waving it back and forth. He said, “I’m holding a feather from a Plymouth Rock rooster. What color is it?”

She said, “Black.”

Chief Liu then took a white fountain pen and waved it in front of her, asking, “What is this?”

“There’s nothing there.”

“This is a pen. What color is it?”

“Black.”

Chief Liu passed the feather from one hand to another, then held it behind his head. He said, “Listen to where this feather lands.” Tonghua opened her eyes wide, and the fog that had hung over her black eyes disappeared as they became so bright they looked fake—appearing unspeakably moving and enticing. The field became deathly silent, and the people who had been preparing to leave immediately returned to their places. The people sitting in chairs or on bricks all stood up to get a better view, and the children who had climbed down from their trees all climbed back up again to watch. The paralyzed, crippled, and blind spectators couldn’t see the performance, so they just sat there without moving, waiting for the people around them to tell them what had happened. The entire world became still, to the point that the sun could be heard setting on the other side of the mountains. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the feather Chief Liu was holding.

He released the feather and it slowly fluttered to the ground, flipping over a few times before landing next to Tonghua’s right foot.

Chief Liu asked, “Where did it land?”

Tonghua didn’t answer, and instead simply bent down with her head raised, and reached out to grab the feather.

Everyone on and below the stage was astounded. Yuhua blushed brightly, as did Mothlet. But Huaihua, looking surprised, was blushing with envy. Her blush was not merely red; it also had a tint of yellowish green. As for Chief Liu, he stared carefully into Tonghua’s eyes. He took the feather from her and once again waved it in front of her face, and saw that her black eyes were still beautifully vacant. So, he handed the feather to Secretary Shi and signaled for him to drop it.

Secretary Shi gently dropped the feather to the floor.

Chief Liu asked, “Where did it fall?”

Tonghua said, “It fell into an indentation in the ground in front of me.”

After having someone pick up the feather for him, Chief Liu held it in the air without dropping it, and asked her again, “Where did it fall this time?”

Tonghua pondered for a long time, then sadly shook her head, “This time I didn’t hear a thing.” Chief Liu walked over and stood in front of her for a long time, and then stuffed three hundred-yuan bills into her hand, saying, “You answered correctly three times, so I’m giving you three hundred yuan as a reward.” He watched Tonghua accept the money, and her face light up as she stroked these brand-new hundred-yuan bills. Chief Liu, looking intently at her face, asked, “Is there anything else you can hear?” Tonghua put the money in her pocket, and asked, “Will you offer another reward?”

He said, “If it is a performance that doesn’t involve listening, I’ll give you another reward.”

She laughed and said, “I can tap a tree with my cane and tell whether it is a willow, pagoda, elm, mahogany, or tung-oil
tree.” He therefore led her to an elm, a chinaberry, and two old pagoda trees on the edge of the field, and she indeed was able to identify each of them correctly, so he gave her another hundred-yuan bill. He told someone to bring over a stone and a brick, together with a piece of quartzite, and then asked her to tap them with her cane—and, sure enough, she was able to tell which was which. He gave her another hundred-yuan bill. By this point, everyone on and off stage was in a hubbub. Seeing Tonghua earn five hundred yuan in the blink of an eye, they all marveled and discussed it excitedly. Tonghua’s sister Huaihua was the first to climb onto the stage and grab her hands, saying, “Sister, Sister, tomorrow I’ll lead you down to the market, where I’ll buy you anything you want.”

The sun slipped behind the western mountains, bathing Liven in a red glow. Those people who still wanted to perform no longer could, as darkness had fallen. The visitors from other villages gradually recovered from their surprise and excitement, and returned home. The person who had cooked a big pot of food in the middle of the village for all of the residents of Liven called out for everyone to come over and eat some cabbage and boiled meat. At this point, Chief Liu’s initial feeling of confusion was suddenly lifted, replaced by an enormous tree of clarity.

He decided to establish a special-skills troupe in Liven and give performances throughout the country. The admission fees for their acts would provide him with just enough money to purchase Lenin’s corpse.

Book 5: Stem

C
HAPTER 1:
A
TUMULT BREAKS OUT, AS THOUGH SOMEONE HAS JUST WALKED OUT A DOOR
AND INTO A TREE

In the blink of an eye, Liven was thrown into a tumult, as though, in the middle of the night, instead of the moon, the sun were to suddenly rise—replacing the moonlight that had shone every night with the blindingly bright light of the sun. It was decided that Liven would establish a performance troupe, which would tour outside the Balou region. They would wear costumes and perform on stage in city theaters. Each of Liven’s special-skills performers was given a title by Chief Liu, as Secretary Shi wrote down their stage names and the names of their respective routines:

One-Legged Monkey: One-Legged Flying Leap

Deafman Ma: Firecracker-on-the-Ear

One-Eye: One-Eyed Needle-Threading

Paraplegic Woman: Leaf-Embroidery

Blind Tonghua: Acute-Listening

Little Polio Boy: Foot-in-a-Bottle

There was also the sixty-three-year-old Blind Fourth Grandpa, who lived in the front of the village, and because he was blind from birth, his eyes were merely a fallow field, and he was able to drip molten wax onto his eyeballs. Third Auntie, who also lived in the front of the village, had broken her hand at an early age, but was able to slice turnip and cabbage thinner and more evenly with one hand than most people could with two. In the back of the village there was Six Fingers, who had an extra digit on his left hand—a second thumb growing out of his first one. In Liven he almost couldn’t be counted as being disabled, since he was virtually a wholer. But ever since he was a little boy he had despised that extra thumb, and every day he would bite it until, gradually, it became reduced to merely a piece of flesh with a fingernail as hard as a chrysalis. He wasn’t afraid of biting it off, and would even have dared to barbecue it over a fire, as though it were a piece of old wood, or a hammer or something. Everyone in the village, both young and old, had a special skill
¹
on account of their disability, and they were all recorded in Secretary Shi’s notebook, and were told they would all go on to become actors in the special-skills performance troupe.

They would immediately stop farming and leave Liven, and instead would earn a salary every month. This salary would be astonishingly high. Chief Liu announced that he would give a hundred yuan per performance to anyone whose special-skills routine could be included in the show. Therefore, if they had a performance every day, in twenty-nine days they would have twenty-nine performances, and in thirty-one days they would have thirty-one performances. If they received a large payment for each performance, then each month they would receive a sizable pile of cash. If a family with two wholers stayed behind in Liven to farm the land, then even if they had perfect weather all year long and planted all of their land into heavenly fields,
³
enjoying overturned days,
⁵
they probably still wouldn’t be able to earn a comparable amount of money.

Who wouldn’t want to perform with that sort of special-skills troupe?

One-Legged Monkey had already asked the carpenter to make him one of those special crutches. Paraplegic Woman had already returned to her mother’s house to borrow some money in order to pay for some traveling clothes. Deafman Ma went to find some hard cedar in order to make a partition box for his firecrackers. The parents of the thirteen-year-old little Polio Boy had already prepared his travel bag.

The village’s special-skills performance troupe was established overnight, and would leave the village the following day. The troupe consisted of sixty-seven performers, including eleven blind people, three deaf people, seventeen cripples, three people with broken legs, and seven with deformed hands or arms. There was also one member with six fingers, three who had only one eye, and one with a burn scar on his face. The remainder were wholers and virtual wholers. Disabled people were the stars, and wholers played only a supporting role, such as moving boxes and setting up props. They could help the disabled wash their costumes and cook food. They could help them fix or replace their props when they broke, and after the disabled villagers finished performing in one location and were preparing to go to another, the wholers could help them with the strenuous task of moving everything.