The Four Books (32 page)

The weather was extraordinarily cold, and even inside it felt like a wasteland. The wind would cut straight to people’s bones, and into their hearts. Cold and hungry, some people came out to see the dark sky. The sky was full of clouds, making it bitterly cold, and everyone put on all of their clothes. Some people even draped a sheet over their shoulders and wore it wherever they went. It was so cold, some people didn’t even expect to survive to the next day. One person figured that if he was going to die tomorrow, he wasn’t willing to endure such extreme hunger and cold today—and therefore took his cup of sweet potato flour to an area that was sheltered from the wind and cooked it all at once. He cooked it into a paste and ate it, scraping the bowl with his fingers and licking it clean. Afterward, he felt warmer, but when everyone else was cooking their food the next day, he could only watch. In tears, he pleaded, “Professor, can you give me a bite?” The professor looked at him, then turned away without saying anything, as though he hadn’t heard him, and he continued wolfing down his own food, seemingly afraid that the man would try to grab his bowl from him.

One day passed.

Another day passed.

By the third or fourth day, someone became so hungry that he came out of his room with something in his hands, then headed to the district entrance, where he knocked on the Child’s door. Inside, the Child had a fire burning in his room, and there was the fragrant smell of flour paste. The visitor immediately kneeled down and began kowtowing to the Child, saying “If I give you a book, could you exchange it for a
liang
of black flour?” He brought out the book from where he was carrying it in his coat. It had a thread-sewn binding, and the pages were yellow and brittle. “This is a volume of great
Yongle Encyclopedia
, and it has been in my family for five hundred and fifty years. I take it with me wherever I go.”

As he was saying this, he handed over the book. The volume consisted entirely of small black characters written with a fine brush. The paper was soft and light. The Child didn’t know what the
Yongle Encyclopedia
was, but he recognized that this was something very valuable. He accepted the volume, and gave the book’s owner half a cup—which is to say about three
liang
—of sweet potato flour. The visitor was about sixty years old, and originally worked at the national history research institute. He was a historian, and accepted the flour as though he were accepting history itself. He cradled it carefully, kowtowed to the Child in gratitude, then closed his coat and left.

That evening several other visitors arrived. The moon shone coldly in the sky, and a dry wind was blowing. The Child used kindling to start a fire. Five or six people were kneeling in his room, and they saw him tear something in half and throw it in the fire. It was a copy of the Book of Psalms, and he tossed the remainder of the page on the table. They had brought the book to him, confessing that they had not handed it over earlier because this book was actually not counterrevolutionary, though it was included in the higher-ups’ list of blacklisted titles. One volume on that list was a copy of Aristotle’s
Physics
that foreigners had brought to China fifty years earlier, and another was a copy of Aristotle’s
On the Heavens
, which had been brought from Britain even earlier. There were also other books that belonged to our ancestors, including several thread-bound copies of
Records of the Historian
and
Three Kingdoms
. The people had brought the Child all of these books and said that these volumes were out-of-print editions, and that these were among the final copies in the entire country. The Child didn’t know how valuable those volumes actually were. He simply accepted them, and gave each person one or two
liang
of sweet potato flour.

Many more people approached the Child to hand over their books. Initially he would give each of them a
liang
or two of flour in return, but by the end he gave them only a handful of flour, or even half a handful. After a couple of weeks, people stopped coming to hand over their books. This was because no one had any books left—except, of course, the Child, who now had many, all of which he stored inside the room where no one had previously been allowed to enter. One day the Theologian walked in just as the Child was lighting a book on fire. The Theologian had come out when everyone else was huddled in their blankets in their rooms. He didn’t bring anything with him, and neither did he kneel down when he entered. Instead he stood in the middle of the Child’s room, which was full of a red light. The Child was reading a comic book while holding a black pancake. The pancake was as thin and brittle as a sheet of paper, and it crackled as he ate it. Even though it was made from black flour, the scent of wheat nevertheless filled the room.

Staring at that black pancake, the Theologian swallowed hard. It was snowing outside, and was dark and gray. The Child put down the comic book he was reading and placed a piece of pancake on one of the ripped out pages. He looked at the Theologian’s face, which was lit up like a pool of water. The Theologian lifted his pants to show the Child, who saw that his ankle was as thick and bright as a column of water.

The Child exclaimed, “My God!”

“I’m on the verge of starving to death,” the Theologian explained. “For four days I haven’t consumed anything other than water, and I had to lean against the walls simply to get here.”

“I’ll give you a
liang
of flour,” the Child said. “But you mustn’t tell anyone that I gave you flour for no reason.” The Child went into his room and wrapped the flour in a page from one of his books. The Theologian immediately opened the makeshift packet and swallowed some of the raw flour right then and there. As he started to choke, the Child handed him a glass of water. After eating the flour, the Theologian had a bit more strength, and therefore proceeded to wrap up the remainder of the flour and placed it on the corner of the table, then licked his lips. He stretched out his neck and said, “It’s not the case that I’m getting something for nothing.” He took a portrait of Mother Mary from his pocket, like the one he had handed over before, and laid it out on the ground, stomping on the figure’s head. He deliberately ground his foot on the portrait’s eye, leaving it a black hole. He knelt down and kowtowed to the Child, then took the packet of flour on the table and, still leaning against walls, left the room.

It was at this point that the Child finally realized what had just happened. He looked down at the black eye of the portrait of Mary that the Theologian had trampled and left lying on the ground and, startled, turned to the Theologian. The Theologian stepped out of the Child’s room. It was snowing lightly outside, and as the Theologian was about to close the door, he noticed the Author kneeling in the doorway. The Author saw that the Theologian was carrying a paper packet, and his eyes began to gleam. But just as he was getting up to go into the Child’s room, he almost lost consciousness and squatted down again. He half crawled into the Child’s room, then looked up and said in a soft voice,

“If you let me live, I’ll write that
Criminal Records
for you. This winter I’ll record what everyone says and does, and next spring I’ll go back to that sand dune and grow wheat with ears that are even larger than ears of corn. I confirmed that beneath that sand dune there is in fact an ancient imperial tomb. I planted the wheat on top of the emperor’s body, and irrigated it with blood from my own veins. I guarantee that the ears of wheat will be bigger than ears of corn, and the grains will be larger than peanuts. You’ll be able to take the wheat into the capital and stay in Zhongnanhai. I don’t want those five stars. Instead I’ll stay here with you for the rest of my life, doing whatever you want. But you must help me survive this winter.”

The Child was very moved, and gave the Author one of the black pancakes on the table. As the Author was eating it, the Child went back into the room to fetch a cup of flour. The Author offered a shallow smile, his future now bright. “The further things proceed,” the Child said, “the more the higher-ups insist that we must know what everyone is thinking, saying, and doing. I won’t let you starve, but you must keep a record of everything everyone says and does, and next year you definitely must grow me an ear of wheat that is even larger than an ear of corn.”

The Author nodded, and that same day began working again on his
Criminal Records
.

C
HAPTER
14

The Great Famine (II)

1.
Old Course
, pp. 425–31

The billowing snow stopped, and both banks of the Yellow River were an endless expanse of white. When it snowed the previous winter, everyone continued smelting steel in the snow, working so hard they each wished they had four legs and eight arms. During this year’s winter snow, everyone in the ninety-ninth stayed buried under their covers, neither moving nor talking—afraid of using up valuable energy and exacerbating their hunger. The one person who remained active was the Scholar, who continued going back and forth between one room and another, while supporting himself by leaning against the walls. He approached one bed, pulled back the covers, and asked, “Are you still alive?” Upon seeing the person move or simply stare straight ahead, he would add, “You must live. The higher-ups can’t let us starve to death. If all of the country’s scholars were to starve, the country itself would starve.” Not caring whether or not the person in the bed was listening to him, or was even interested in listening to him, the Scholar moved on to the next bed, pulled back the dirty sheets, and saw that the person had his eyes closed. The Scholar placed his fingers under the person’s nose to see whether he was still breathing, then pushed his shoulders and said, “Wake up, wake up! Are you still alive? You definitely need to wake up.”

Then he went to yet another bed, asking, “Are you still alive? . . . You definitely need to live, so that the higher-ups can see the result of sending us here for Re-Ed.”

As if he were one of the higher-ups of the ninety-ninth, the Scholar called upon his comrades to persevere. He was neither the most educated person there nor the one with the highest position, and he was certainly not the oldest. No one had appointed him to perform this task of serving as a higher-up like the Child, but he nevertheless proceeded on his own accord from one bed to another, and from one room to another. Everyone knew that the Scholar had once helped the nation’s highest higher-ups prepare philosophy lectures, create translations, and revise critically important volumes, and therefore they listened to him just as they did the Child.

They gazed up at him and asked skeptically,

“Will the higher-ups forget about us?”

He shook his head, “They definitely won’t. Within half a month they’ll definitely send someone to come check on us.”

He then went to one of the women’s rooms and asked, “Are you still alive?” When he saw the woman turn over in bed to look at him, he pulled a packet out of his pocket and said, “Here are some grass seeds, which you can mix with flour and boil.” He gave each woman a packet of grass seed, and when he got to the Musician he placed the packet on her pillow. He then caressed her face and squeezed her hand, and whispered into her ear, “Get up and go eat. I’ve brought you some flour and grass seeds.” Then he turned, leaning against the wall, and announced loudly, “Everyone must live. . . . The higher-ups will not forget us. As soon as the snow melts and the roads open, the higher-ups will send someone to bring us grain. . . . Because, at the end of the day, the country still needs scholars!”

Everyone believed him, and each day they would mix into their black flour some wild grass, tree leaves, and even mud from the salt flats, and they would bake it all into a mud pancake. When they were hungry they would eat a bite, washing it down with water. After eating too many of these mud pancakes, everyone became very constipated. The Scholar then organized them into pairs and had them take turns using chopsticks to help each other defecate. It was very cold outside, and the Scholar was afraid that people would die of exposure and hunger if they tried to go to the courtyard to use the outhouse, so he instructed everyone to relieve themselves in their rooms. He told them they could urinate in their doorway, or if they had extra bowls or bottles, they could simply urinate into them and dump the waste outside. Everyone did as the Scholar recommended, and consequently everyone’s room started to smell like an outhouse.

They continued in this way for another ten days, whereupon the snow finally began to melt and the roads began to dry up. At this point some higher-ups did in fact arrive. Everyone was standing in their doorways, warming themselves in the sunlight and searching their bodies for lice. Some women were mending their men’s clothes. By noontime, the sun was so warm that everyone could take off their jackets without feeling cold. Some people pointed to the empty road and exclaimed, “Quick, come look!” Everyone looked, and saw a jeep driving through the empty wasteland, like a small boat cutting through the surf. When the jeep arrived at the ninety-ninth, several people got out. The first person was wearing a gray uniform and had gray hair that was parted on the side. He was tall and thin, with a chiseled face and white but slightly protruding teeth. He walked ahead of the others to the Child’s door and went inside.