The Four Books (25 page)

Their urine rained down on my head. It poured along my neck and back, while in the front it flowed down my forehead, my eyes, either side of my nose, over my lips, and into my shirt. When they had finished, one of them announced loudly, as though reciting a line onstage, “I’m telling you, this is the People’s verdict, that you traitors must be eliminated.” After this, someone behind me—I’m not sure who—slapped my face with his penis and after spurting out the last few drops of urine asked me,

“Are you a criminal who got what he deserved?”

I opened my eyes, which had been tightly closed, and nodded.

“Say it!” He kicked me again.

I opened my mouth, which had also been tightly closed, and said, “I deserved this. I really deserved this!”

“You’ve finally shown that you are not so stupid after all.”

Everyone laughed at this assessment. After a pause, they each pulled up their pants and headed back to the furnaces. I sat up on the sandy ground and gazed into the darkness. Under the starlight, I saw the shadows of those four figures, and vaguely recognized the middle two as two men from the ninety-ninth, but I didn’t hold any hard feelings toward them. I merely began to suspect that perhaps the Theologian had had an ulterior motive when he came to watch the furnace for me and urged me to hurry away. After those four men had disappeared into the distance and the fire next to me had completely burned down, I picked up my wallet and examined it, and discovered that the money inside was still inside, untouched. I picked up the empty bag next to me and used it to wipe my face and scrub my neck, as the stench of urine again assaulted my nostrils. I threw the bag into the fire, and after watching it go up in flames, I finally stood up. I carefully tested my arms and legs, and was relieved to discover that, apart from a pain in my shin, their punches and kicks had not been as devastating as I had feared. But without the five stars for which I had exchanged my hundred and twenty-five blossoms, I had no choice but to return to Re-Ed. Pausing briefly under the vast night sky, I sighed. Then, in order to establish the truth of what the Theologian had said, I headed toward the tent area, following the same road to the outside world that I had initially took when I left. I saw up ahead the four men who had just beaten and urinated on me, coming from the other direction.

“Success!” they shouted, as they walked onto the road. “The Revolution has been victorious. . . .” When their voices died down, five or six people suddenly appeared at the same point in the road. Under the glare of three flashlights, they all threw to the ground the ropes and poles they were carrying, then gathered together and began talking and laughing. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it seemed as though they were praising someone to the stars. Then they went together back toward the tent area.

I no longer resented the Theologian. When I reached a salt flat, I sat and stared up at the sky. I listened as the footsteps receded into the distance and the urine was so cold it felt like it was freezing to my skin. The emptiness and loneliness in my heart was like that of a homeless dog that has been beaten and tossed aside. As I feebly lay down in the sand of the salt flat, it occurred to me that I should go to the furnace and dry off my urine-soaked clothing before returning to my tent. It also occurred to me that I should cry helplessly. I suspected that I must have even shed a tear, but when I wiped my eyes I discovered that they were actually as dry as a bone. It seemed remarkable that even after having my five stars burned up, having been savagely beaten, having four men piss on my head, and one of them repeatedly slap my face with his penis until the final drops of urine ran down my cheek, I still didn’t feel at all resentful. Instead, I found myself so at ease that I didn’t have anything left to say.

I marveled at this feeling of lightness and comfort.

C
HAPTER
12

Planting Crops

1.
Old Course
, pp. 381–86

In the spring, the residents of the ninety-ninth returned from the riverbank because they needed to spread fertilizer and hoe their wheat fields. The Child had once again gone to attend a meeting where the higher-ups demanded that the district make good on the per-
mu
amounts they had promised during the previous year’s harvest season, and when he returned to the ninety-ninth, he took out his gun, oiled it, and left it to dry in the sun. Then he put a bullet in the chamber, and placed the gun on a cloth-covered tray. With the Theologian following behind him carrying the tray and the gun, the Child walked past each building, and whenever he saw someone, he would ask,

“Are you confident we’ll produce ten thousand
jin
of grain per
mu
?”

The person would look surprised.

“If you are not confident that you can meet the quota, then just take this gun and shoot me right here and now. I just ask that you shoot me from the front, so that I’ll fall forward when I die.”

The person would look first at the Child, then at the pistol on the tray the Theologian was carrying. Then he would nod to the Child and say, “As long as the others are confident, I am definitely confident as well.” The Child would smile with satisfaction, and from under the cloth covering the tray would remove a fist-sized pentagonal star cut out of slick paper, and hand it to the person. The Child wasn’t distributing blossoms anymore, and instead had begun handing out pentagonal stars. Whoever acquired five stars was still permitted to return home. People were no longer as obsessed with earning red blossoms and red stars as they had been when they were smelting steel. But there also wasn’t anyone who said they didn’t want a large star, or who would accept one only to rip it up or throw it away. They would accept the stars in a very restrained manner, pretending they didn’t care about them at all, while in reality they would carefully place them in one of the books they were permitted to read. I knew that many people, such as the Scholar, the Physician, and the criminals who had mastered the black sand steel-smelting technique, would act very dismissive when publicly accepting one of these stars, and would toss it onto a table or their bed. As soon as they found themselves alone, however, they would carefully hide it where no one would easily find it.

As the Child was awarding each pentagonal star, he would ask,

“Do you think we can produce ten thousand
jin
of grain per
mu
in our experimental field? If we can’t, you should shoot me. I just ask that you shoot me in the chest, so that I’ll fall forward when I die.”

Everyone responded that it could be done, and that they would work with the Child to make it happen. They even said that not only would it be possible to produce ten thousand
jin
; even fifteen thousand
jin
should be within reach. As a result, everyone received a large red star and proceeded to go work in the fields, spreading fertilizer and irrigating the crops. I hadn’t promised the Child that the ninety-ninth would definitely be able to produce ten thousand
jin
of grain per
mu
, and consequently I wasn’t awarded one of those fist-sized stars—of which, at any rate, I had already received five.

The Child and the Theologian took the tray with the gun to one tent after another, but when they arrived at our tent I hid from them. That night I emerged alone. By that point it was the third lunar month, and it was still chilly out in the wasteland along the old course of the Yellow River. The winter breeze nevertheless brought the faint scent of plants returning to life, like the smell of soda in a hospital. With a newly awakened nose and heart, I wandered far and wide. I knew perfectly well that there were no trees around, and yet several catkin blossoms wafted over from somewhere. Everyone was asleep, and in those several rows of tents, apart from the Scholar—who had his light on and was writing something with iodine—all of the other lights were off. Beyond the courtyard, there was the rustling sound of plants breeding and the faint sound of night insects flying around. Following that sound, I went to the district gate and saw the moonlight on the ground as calm as a pool of water. In the distant fields, the tiny wheat sprouts were awakening from their slumber under the silver moonlight.

I went to knock on the Child’s door. The Child was in his room reading his comics—comics describing the battles and stories of the revolutionary guerrillas. The gun that, during the day, had been placed in the middle of the tray was still there, on his table, as if neither the gun nor the tray had been touched since he returned to his tent. But the bullet had been removed from the gun’s chamber, and was now rolling around next to the gun like a silkworm pupa. The undistributed stars were also still sitting on the tray. Some of the stars were lying on top of the gun, while others were wedged beneath it, and the resulting scene reminded me of an oil painting an artist had laboriously painted and donated to the nation at the dawn of the People’s Republic. The room was still as it had been, with a bed, table, stools, and the washbasin that the Child had assembled himself. The door leading into an interior room was still shut, but there were several wooden nails in the door, on which the Child hung his clothing and his bags. It seemed as if the room was more crowded than before, but it was hard to determine what had been added. I stood hesitantly in the doorway, and the Child glanced at me and said, “What do you want? It’s already been two months since you last turned in an installment of the manuscript you’re supposed to be writing. The higher-ups at the headquarters are urging you to get on with it.” As he was speaking, the Child returned his gaze to his comics.

I laughed and said, “They don’t want me to write anymore. Instead, they call me a traitor. Every time I write a few pages, no matter where I put them, others always find them and either burn them or piss on them.”

The Child looked up again from his comic and gazed at me with a suspicious expression, and asked, “Really?” I replied, “I can produce a field of wheat with ears even larger than ears of corn. But you have to trust me, and let me go live somewhere far away, where I can farm, cook, and eat by myself. Otherwise, if I raise that kind of wheat, it will be pulled up and burned by jealous criminals.”

The Child’s eyes grew large. Under the light, his eyes appeared as lucid as water, like a pair of moons.

“Yesterday, when we went out to work in the fields, someone not only pissed all over my bed, they also shat on my pillow.” I told him, “Rest assured, if I were just permitted to get away from here, I could grow you thirty to fifty ears of wheat, each of which would be even bigger than an ear of corn. You could then take these ears of wheat to the capital and bestow them as a tribute—meaning that you could take the train, tour the capital, and stay at Zhongnanhai, and even have your photograph taken with the nation’s highest higher-ups. At any rate, given that you haven’t awarded me five large stars, even if I had ten legs I still wouldn’t be able to leave this Re-Ed district. Because even if I were to leave, without those five stars others would catch me and either return me here or send me to prison.”

I told the Child, “If, once the wheat has ripened, it turns out that I haven’t managed to produce several dozen ears of wheat as large as ears of corn, then you are free to make me wear a dunce cap and a wooden placard for three, six, or even nine days, as the Scholar did when he was smelting steel, and make me kneel somewhere so that everyone in the ninety-ninth can come and shit on my head and piss all over my face.”

The air in the room was somewhat thin from happiness, as the Child seemed to tremble from excitement. He threw the comic book he was reading onto the table and abruptly stood up. Staring at me with a delighted expression, he asked, “Can you really produce ears of wheat that are as large as ears of corn?” He added urgently, “In that case, I’ll allow you to leave this compound. You can go anywhere you want within a radius of twenty
li
. If you are able to produce ears of wheat as large as ears of corn, I’ll give you a sheet of slick paper and a pair of scissors, and let you cut out as many stars as you wish. With those stars, you’ll be able to go anywhere in the world. But if you are not able to do so”—the Child gazed down at the pistol on the tray in front of him, then looked at me coldly—“ then you must not only shoot me in the chest so that I’ll fall forward when I die, you must also bury me in some elevated location here in the ninety-ninth, such that I’m lying in my grave with my head facing east.” Upon saying this, the Child bit his lips and looked at me, waiting for my response and consent.

I considered for a while, then nodded solemnly and spit out a single word in response: “Okay!”

2.
Old Course
, pp. 386–411

I left the compound, leaving behind the others. I went to a sand dune to the northwest of the ninety-ninth and erected a shack. That sand dune was two stories high and covered an entire
mu
of land. Perhaps it was the tomb of an emperor from a dynasty long ago, because growing on the dune there had once been more than a dozen cypresses with trunks more than two feet in diameter. If it wasn’t an imperial tomb, why would there have been more than a dozen cypresses growing on top? During the recent steel-smelting campaign, however, these trees were all cut down and burned, leaving behind this barren dune.