The Four Books (3 page)

When the person saw the Child, he turned pale.

“Were you relieving yourself?” the Child asked.

The person didn’t respond.

The Child asked again, “Were you shitting or pissing?”

The person still didn’t respond.

The Child pushed aside the cornstalks, and saw that someone had created a small hollow with a light. The light was coming from inside a tree, and hanging from the tree was a painting of Mary, Mother of God. The Child didn’t recognize Mary, but saw that she was very beautiful. The painting was old and dirty, but the image itself was still quite beautiful. The Child gazed at it and smiled, then stuck a cornstalk into his mouth. His smile quickly disappeared, and he grew serious.

“Say three times in a row, ‘I am a pervert!’”

The person didn’t reply.

“If you don’t say it, then what were you doing in there, with this foreign woman?”

The person didn’t reply.

“If you say it twice, that would be fine,” the Child said, offering a compromise.

The person didn’t say anything.

The people working the land turned and looked in their direction, but didn’t know what was happening. They just turned and watched for the longest time. The Child became somewhat impatient. He stepped forward and asked, “Are you really not going to say it? If you don’t, I’m going to tear that painting down, and hang it from a wall in the district, saying that you slept with this woman here in these cornstalks.”

The person didn’t say anything.

The Child was left with no alternative. He kicked apart the pile of stalks, knocking down the opening to the hollow. Then he turned away from the crowd, so that he was now facing the painting. He untied his pants, as if he were going to pee on it. At that moment, the person panicked. He knelt down before the Child, saying, “I beg you, please don’t do this.”

“Say, ‘I am a pervert.’ Once is enough.”

The person didn’t say anything.

The Child turned again toward the painting, as though he were about to pee on it.

The person turned pale and his lips started to tremble. He then said repeatedly, “I am a pervert, I am a pervert. . . .”

Even as he said this, there were tears in his eyes.

“That’s better,” the Child replied. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” He seemed to have no intention of further punishing the person. The man fell to the ground, his face as white as a cloud in a clear sky, and the Child stormed away. The Child watched the workers from the four brigades, the people plowing the fields in the distance. There he saw a woman, who was young, quiet, and had a dignified beauty, and who looked just like the woman in the painting hanging from the tree branch. He wanted to call her
Sister
. He moved closer, but discovered that she didn’t resemble the image at all. When he looked again, however, he decided that in fact she did. Confused, he approached her. She was turning the soil, repeatedly bending over and straightening up again, and gradually moving away from him. When he approached, he realized that she had only recently been sent to the ninety-ninth. She was a new teacher from the provincial seat—a pianist who taught music. Blood and pus were oozing from a blister on her hand. He took out a handkerchief and handed it to her to wipe the blood. The handkerchief was made from coarse white cloth. It had frayed edges, but otherwise appeared clean.

She gazed at him with a look of gratitude.

3.
Heaven’s Child
, pp. 39–43

They plowed and sowed the fields, and every district prepared to report its production targets.

The Child’s demands were not very steep. Other districts had to donate five, six, or even seven hundred
jin
of grain per
mu
of land. And there were even several districts that had to donate eight hundred
jin
. All the Child asked was that the ninety-ninth divide into brigades, and that each brigade donate five hundred
jin
. That is to say, each
mu
of land had to produce an average of five hundred
jin
of grain.

After dawn, the ninety-ninth was so quiet that you could even hear the sun’s rays striking the ground. Representatives from each brigade were summoned into a room for a meeting. They silently sat down, and the Child asked each brigade to report on its production targets. The representatives remained deathly silent.

“I know,” said the Child, “that you think the most you can get from a single
mu
of land is two hundred
jin
of grain, but that is actually not true. To increase production to five hundred
jin
, all you need to do is open your mouths and report that sum, then return to the fields and produce it.”

The meeting was held in the Child’s house, which was next to the main entrance to the district. The house had three rooms, with the sitting room in the center and the living area and his bedroom on either side. The visitors were seated in the center room, where there were several long benches, and everyone was sitting across from each other, their heads bowed. There was the Author and the Scholar, together with the man from the cornfield, who was a professor of religion, as well as the music teacher from the provincial seat, who was a pianist. Each had been designated as the representative of his respective brigade. The meeting opened in silence.

“If you don’t report your production targets,” the Child said softly, “I won’t allow you to go back and wash up.

“If you don’t report your production targets,” the Child said loudly, “I won’t allow you . . . to go back and eat.

“If you don’t report your production targets, I will strip you of your responsibilities. I guarantee you won’t return home for at least five years, and neither will your relatives be permitted to visit.” The Child roared this final threat.

The four representatives proceeded to play the game, and each reported high production targets.

So it came to pass.

They each reported an average of six hundred
jin
of grain
per
mu
. The Child was kindhearted, and didn’t curse or strike them. Instead, he just kicked the bench with his foot, and the production targets magically increased. The Scholar, the Theologian, and the Musician would all return in time to eat.

They would wash their faces and eat their food. This is how things came to pass.

The Child didn’t permit the Author to leave. The Child said, “Of the four, you reported the lowest production target. So, you must stay behind. I want to speak to you.” With a terrified expression, the Author stayed behind and watched as the Theologian, the Scholar, and the Musician left. The Author turned green with envy, like freshly turned soil. After waiting for them to leave, the Child closed the door. In the darkened room, he took out the picture of Mary and placed it on the table. He asked, “Who is this?” The Theologian had secretly hung the portrait at the edge of the field—from the tree surrounded by cornstalks.

The Child took out a book consisting of seven volumes bound together with rough thread. He asked, “What is this? After I assigned the Musician as the representative of the fourth brigade, she gave me this—her composition.”

The Child then took out that certificate with the image of the bullet. In the empty space below the bullet, there were two lines of verse: “Even if there is a thousand-year-old iron gate, in the end there will still be a need for an earthen mound.” This poem was written in bright red. The Child pointed to it and said, “This is something the Scholar had under his pillow. What does it mean?”

The Child took out many more things and handed them to the Author, asking him to inspect each of them carefully. For instance, there was a picture of a half-naked woman, a densely written diary, the kind of ballpoint pen used by foreigners, together with a cigarette lighter of a sort that not even the Author had ever seen before. The lighter reeked of kerosene, as though a car had just driven by. Both of them inspected each item one after another, commenting extensively on each. Finally, the Child brought out a bottle of blue ink, a fountain pen, and some paper, then handed them to the Author, saying, “If you write a book, your dreams will come true. The higher-ups have agreed that you should write a book about the district.” The Child said, “You can write a really extraordinary book. The higher-ups have proposed a title, which is
Criminal Records
. They say that each chapter should be fifty pages long, and ask that whenever you finish fifty pages you turn them in and they will give you another fifty blank sheets of paper. They say that as long as you finish this book, not only will they allow you to return to the provincial seat to be reunited with your family, but they will have the book printed and distributed throughout the country. They will reassign you to the capital, to be the leader of the country’s writers.”

The Child said, “Now you can go. Of all the people in the ninety-ninth, you are the one in whom the higher-ups have the most confidence.”

As the Author was about to leave, he turned and said, “The production targets we originally reported were too low. I now wish to report that we will produce eight hundred
jin
!”

The Child smiled at him. The sun was golden. Dense fog was swirling across the land. The courtyard reverberated with a sharp, piercing sound of a whistle summoning people to work the fields.

4.
Heaven’s Child
, pp. 43–48

The whistle blew, and the sound pierced the sky. Most people, however, dawdled in their houses. They didn’t carry their tools out to the field. Each brigade had two seed drills, but they remained stored under the eaves of the buildings. The rope used for pulling the drills was lying on the ground. The wheat seed distributed by the higher-ups was still sitting in bags in the doorway of each brigade.

The people washing clothes continued washing their clothes.

The people writing letters continued writing their letters.

Those with nothing to do just squatted there in the sun.

They all went to look for the Child, saying that no one was going to the fields, and asking who had the ability to produce six hundred
jin
of grain from a single
mu
of land?

The Child looked at the Theologian, the Scholar, and the Musician—they had just come out of their rooms, and then had gone back inside—and he softly uttered three simple words:

“Call a meeting.”

So they called a meeting.

Everyone crowded in front of the Child, sitting with their respective brigades. The Child silently took out a document, then asked one of the young people from Re-Ed to read it. The Child said, “Whoever reads this document will be exempt from work tomorrow, and instead will go to town to mail this letter and bring back whatever packages and other mail are waiting there.” As a result, two young people began jockeying to read the letter, and the Child picked one of them. There was not much in the document—it merely announced which books were permitted in Re-Ed. After the document was read, the Child was silent for a moment, then asked loudly, “Did you all hear? These are the books you may read. If a book wasn’t mentioned, then reading it will be considered a crime.”

“Now, I know what books you are reading, and where you are hiding them,” the Child said as he paced back and forth. “There are some people who read reactionary books while in the bathroom, and others who wake up in the middle of the night to read them, sobbing.” The Child suddenly stopped pacing and pointed to the two youngsters who both had wanted to read the document. “Not only will you have the day off tomorrow to go into town to deliver and pick up the mail; next year each of you will have three days to go visit your families.” The Child added, “But you must do as I say. Go to the second brigade, where the Scholar has hidden a reactionary book under his pillow.”

So they went to look, and found a reactionary book titled
The Seven Sages of Wei and Jin
.

The Child said, “Go look at the comforter belonging to the Theologian from the third brigade. The comforter cover has a zipper. Unzip it and see what’s inside.”

So they went to look, and at the head of the Theologian’s bed they found his neatly folded comforter. Inside, there was a copy of the Old Testament. The book had a black cover, and every page had been read over and over again, and had marks from fingers moistened with saliva.

The Child said, “Go check under the bed of the Author in the fourth brigade, where he has hidden three wooden boxes. The boxes are all full of books.”

So they went to look, and found the three wooden boxes. They pulled out the boxes, threw the clothes to the ground, then dumped the books. There were copies of
Wild Grass
and
Laws of the Tang and Song
, as well as foreign works such as
Le Père Goriot
,
Don Quixote
, Mallarmé’s collected poetry, Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
, Dickens’s
David Copperfield
, and so forth, together with Goethe’s
The Sorrows of Young Werther
. The books were old and tattered, and were written in traditional Chinese characters. The curious thing is that while the Author’s own novels were all about China, the books he secretly read turned out to be from abroad.