The Noodle Maker

by Ma Jian

  When the Campaign to Learn from Lei Feng was launched, a broadcasting cabin was built on the flyover next to the metal huts, and every citizen in town who couldn’t afford to buy a radio jumped with joy. People were able to stand in the streets and listen to the broadcasts for free. They could hear revolutionary songs, programmes from the Chinese Peoples’ Television Broadcasting Company and even international weather reports.

  During those months, the streets were filled with people making desperate attempts to emulate Lei Feng. They kept their eyes peeled at all times, searching for a chance to perform a good deed. You only had to trip over a kerb, or carry a heavy-looking bag, and someone would charge forward to offer to help. And there was no chance of you ever losing anything. One day, a pencil dropped from my pocket, and before I knew it, three children rushed over, picked it up and said, ‘Uncle, you’ve lost something,’ then smiled sweetly and gave a Young Pioneer salute. I took the pencil from them and said, just as the newspaper told us to: ‘Thank you, young comrades. You are real little Lei Fengs.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ they piped in unison. ‘We’re only doing our duty.’

  ‘Tell me, which school are you from? I would like to inform your headmaster of your exemplary behaviour.’

  ‘A person who performs good deeds should never leave their name,’ they chirped, then swung round and ran back to the end of the street to wait for their next prey, just like the Young Pioneers in the propaganda films.

  We can all put up with taking the wrong road, but no one can bear reaching a dead end. When the survivor was alive, I was confused about everything – including him. I had lost my way. But after he died, I found I had nowhere to go. There was no hope left for me, nothing to look forward to. He had destroyed everything I believed in.

  ‘Everything is decided for you by your superiors,’ the dog said one day, ‘what job you do, who you marry, how many children you have. You have no belief in your ability to control your destiny. Your lives are so dull and monotonous, if you weren’t subjected to various trials and tribulations, you would never be strong enough to look death in the face.’ The dog uttered these words on the roof terrace, his head framed by the azure sky. The fumes pouring from the chimney stacks behind him smelled like the sour steam that rises from fermenting tofu. Against the blue sky, the smoke was blindingly bright.

  ‘I seem to have caught a cold,’ the dog said. ‘The breeze up here is bad for my health.’ He had picked up that last phrase from me.

  I still don’t know how he died, though.

  Sometimes I think he must have jumped from the roof. I imagine him darting across the terrace, then retreating to the edge as the old carpenter and the other two from the dog extermination brigade approached, followed by a pack of Young Pioneers brandishing spears and spades. He was either lassoed with a rope and dragged downstairs or beaten to death on the spot. His sharp claws and teeth couldn’t protect him from them. Once they had decided he should die, there was nothing he could do.

  My three-legged dog never liked the Young Pioneers. He said that after years of being told to sacrifice their lives to the Revolution, they turn into little hooligans who lack any sense of morality or common decency.

  ‘They are children,’ I said. ‘We should forgive them. Childhood is sacred.’

  He curled his lips and, glancing at the street below, said, ‘See those children making fun of the blind man? Look at their ugly faces! If their teachers sent them out tomorrow to perform good deeds, they’d fight for the chance to grab the blind man’s hand and help him across the road.’

  Although their faces were a blur, I could see them racing across the blind man’s path, performing karate moves they had picked up from some martial arts film. Then the dog asked: ‘If you had to choose between me and a child, which one would you save?’

  I couldn’t answer. Even today I wouldn’t be able to give an answer to that question. Naturally, I should put a human life before a dog’s, but my feelings for the survivor far exceeded any I felt for those children in the street – they were even stronger than the feelings I had for my girlfriend. If those children were indeed responsible for the survivor’s death, I know he wouldn’t have put up a fight. He could have bitten off one of their legs had he wanted to, but he would have chosen to suffer in silence rather than cause them any harm.

  When I returned from the conference, I made a thorough inspection of his body to try and find out the cause of his death. He reeked of formaldehyde, but there were no wounds on his skin. I patted him on the back and said, ‘Look, they didn’t hurt you at all! Why have you been lying to me in my dreams?’

  A couple of weeks later, I returned to the workshop to speak to the carpenter. When I entered the room, he was nailing the skin of a Dongbei tiger onto a wooden frame. I asked him how the three-legged dog had died. He smiled amiably, and drawing the tiger’s pelt across the frame, he said: ‘A three-legged dog? I’ve seen a five-legged donkey and a five-legged bull. Ha ha! Those fifth legs were half the size of the others!’ He roared with laughter, and made a lewd gesture above his groin.

  I am convinced that Secretary Wang knows exactly how the dog died. I even suspect that he planned the murder himself He is the museum’s Party secretary, after all. Maybe he wanted to use this episode to test my loyalty to the Party. How could he not have known that I was keeping a dog on the terrace? Perhaps at first he decided to sit back and wait for me to confess my crime. But when he saw me commit mistake after mistake, he packed me off to a conference and got rid of the dog while I was away. When I returned from the trip, he convened an enlarged session of the Party cell, and encouraged the members to come forward and give their opinions on my relationship with the dog.

  ‘The higher organs are putting me to the test,’ I told the stuffed survivor the next time I visited him in the workshop. ‘In the meeting before my trip, they asked if any comrades had something they wanted to reveal. I should have owned up about you there and then. You had the cheek to criticise my girlfriend for committing suicide, and then you go and die yourself!’

  ‘Did you love her?’ the stuffed survivor asked me suddenly. ‘Don’t you feel responsible for her death? Why was she so willing to throw her life away? How could you have let her go through with it? What was she trying to tell you?’

  His questions left me speechless. I remembered the first time I met her, when I was chairman of the student union at school. If I hadn’t got involved with her, I would probably have entered the Party that year. After I graduated from university, I was assigned a room in a staff dormitory block, and our friendship deepened. She would visit me every day and stay until ten at night, slipping out just before the security guard locked the front gates. In my darkened room, I would rest my head on her stomach and listen to the growling of her intestines. She lay down on my bed and gave herself to me. But even today, I don’t know what I loved about her. She was a woman, my girlfriend, but had she been any other woman, would I have felt any different? How would I have reacted if my leaders hadn’t agreed to our relationship? (She was still at drama school at the time and her lifestyle wasn’t faultless.) Just before she died, her eyes were full of kindness and goodwill. I wondered whether she was hoping I would rush to her rescue.

  ‘Then why didn’t you try?’ the survivor asked.

  ‘I did jump to my feet at one point. But I had skived off a political meeting at work that day, and if news had got out that I wasn’t ill at all, but had come to watch the performance, I would have got into terrible trouble. She knew very well that the higher organs were in the process of considering my application to join the Party.’

  ‘You should be held responsible for her death.’

  ‘No, my only responsibility is towards the Party,’ I said, refusing to give in to him.

  But there is one matter that still puzzles me, and that I suspect might have contributed to the dog’s death. After I left for the conference, the dog somehow managed to climb to the top shelf and bring down those unh
ealthy books that only a select group of cadres are allowed to ‘Read and Criticise’. They contain the reactionary thoughts of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Freud, and the much-discredited Hegel. The poor dog was completely unprepared for these ideas – he had never attended any political meetings, and he even held the reactionary opinion that Marxist-Leninism was out of date! Those books corrupted the minds of many poets and university students (including my girlfriend), driving them to a life of decadence, causing them to lose their normal sense of judgement. The dog must have squatted in the corner and read through every wretched book. If this did indeed happen, then I would certainly hold myself responsible for his death.

  Now that he’s gone, I have no use for the leftover bones in the cafeteria. But at mealtimes I still glance under the table looking for them, and when no one is watching, I kick them towards me, then wrap them up in a newspaper and take them home with me. This isn’t a normal way to behave. Of course I know in my heart that the survivor is just a stuffed specimen now, but my feelings for him can’t change overnight. In the evening, I wait for darkness to fall, then I walk to the edge of the terrace and toss the bones onto the streets below.

  The terrace feels empty without him. His absence weighs heavily on my heart. My life has become disorderly, and my room is no longer as clean as it was when he was around. Mice scuttle across the metal joists on my ceiling now, and when they get tired they drop straight onto my bed. When the dog was alive, the mice only dared take their walks late at night when we were both asleep, and they never ventured far from the skirting board. Now large spiders climb between the rusty joists, sometimes winching themselves down to steal a piece of cake. The pollution outside seems to be getting worse by the day. A thick layer of dust hovers above the terrace, and the air smells of burnt plastic. At night, I close the door and stay inside. If I were to look through my telescope, I would be able to see all the stories taking place in the crowds below, but without the dog by my side, they would seem dull and meaningless. Besides, ever since the Campaign to Learn from Lei Feng was launched, the streets have become so well ordered, there’s nothing much left to see.

  Last week, I resolved to confess to my leaders all the unhealthy thoughts that have run through my mind over the past years, and promise that in the future I will align myself fully with the Party and the higher organs. In the enlarged session of the museum’s Party cell meeting, Secretary Wang asked me and the other three colleagues whose Party membership was also under consideration to present self-criticisms about our thinking this year, and admit the mistakes we have committed against the Party. The young graduate confessed that she had read the pornographic novel The Thoughts of a Young Girl, and begged the higher organs to take disciplinary action against her. The old carpenter admitted that he’d constructed the top drawer of his wooden chest from a piece of state-owned hardboard, and he asked the leaders to accept his sincere apologies. Song Juhua from the finance department was still apologising for conceiving a child out of wedlock three years ago. When my turn came, I confessed to every reactionary opinion that either I or the dog had uttered. My mind was extraordinarily clear. I told them about every mistake we had committed, without omitting a single detail. I felt an immense wave of relief. The leaders remained silent throughout my speech, and when it came to an end they just said they would have to go away and look into the matter.

  Since my confession, the sad look has vanished from the survivor’s glass eyes. Although he is dead, his coat lives on, and will live on for ever. Never again will he have to hide himself from public view. He is a survivor who has seen through the red dust of the world. When he took part in the Beijing exhibition, he brought glory to our town. Everyone here started talking about my three-legged dog. People travelling here on business would hear about him as soon as they stepped off their train. Tourists would make special trips to visit him in the museum. His photo appeared in many magazines. I cut each one out and stuck them on my wall. Now at last he is able to show his face to the world. The crowds he so despised when he was alive are now his greatest admirers. Secretary Wang was so impressed by the carpenter’s ability to create such a lifelike exhibit, he singled him out for praise on several occasions, and later awarded the survivor the title of ‘Grade One Stuffed Animal’.

  As dawn approaches, the writer’s thoughts come to a sudden halt, like a generator that has run out of fuel. All the images that have raced through his head disappear into a vague mist. He has experienced these moments of calm before, when his mind temporarily disconnects from reality. But the calm he feels now seems different somehow. When he closes his eyes, the characters who have lived inside him so long seem like a lump of dough being pulled by invisible hands into a thousand white threads. He sees the threads pulled tighter and tighter, until suddenly they break into a million pieces and scatter into the night sky.

  ‘I knew it would end like this,’ the writer mutters to himself. ‘Everything fades and dies. There’s nothing I can do about it …’

  The blood donor stares at the writer’s shadow slanting on the wall behind. Now that the lights in the buildings outside have gone out, the lamps in the room seem brighter. The blood donor walks to the cassette player and turns the volume down. The writer rises to his feet, and ambles towards the toilet like a sleepwalker. As he listens to his urine splash into the bowl, he catches the smell of fish-head soup again. This time, the smell isn’t wafting from his neighbour’s kitchen, it’s coming from inside his own body. Slowly he returns to his chair. Now that the alcohol has left their organs and evaporated through their orifices and pores, the two men look as dry as shrivelled oat flakes or lumps of burnt charcoal.

  ‘My greatest achievement has been my ability to produce unending streams of AB blood,’ the donor croaks, pulling his vest up and pointing to his heart. ‘My blood has changed the course of my life. It has given it meaning.’

  The writer’s voice is now as soft as the Requiem Mass playing on the cassette player. Through the floating melody of the aria, the blood donor hears his friend say, ‘Those people’s lives were doomed from the start. Whatever ending I choose to give their stories won’t change anything. I was just an onlooker, like that three-legged dog, hiding in the margins. You’re the only one who’ll ever hear these stories, but I’m the only one who can understand them. Only I know the pain that lies behind them.’

  ‘My spirit may be weak, but my flesh is strong. That’s why I fit into this town so well. But you will always be an outsider, lost in your illusions,’ the blood donor says, in a condescending tone he has rarely used these past seven years.

  ‘But those characters are real, they live in the same town as you and me. I may not know them very well, and they probably know even less about me. But I’m sure they exist. Or perhaps I’ve been dead for years, and those characters are just scraps of manuscript paper floating in some distant sewer.’ The writer prods his skull. Then his eyes light up for a moment and he adds, ‘I guarantee that my unwritten novel will have far more lasting value than any published book.’

  ‘I too have many stories to tell,’ the blood donor says. ‘They’re trapped inside me like water in a kettle. Maybe it’s time I tried pouring them out …’

  The writer stands up, rests his hands on his hips and says, ‘My blood is worth nothing compared to that novel of mine.’ Then he glances around the room and starts sniffmg the air again. ‘That fish-head soup must have been excellent,’ he mumbles. ‘I can smell it even now …’

  The blood donor’s cigarette is still alight. He now seems as deep in thought as a professional writer. He appears to be eager to set to work on some intellectual task. ‘When we’ve no energy left to fight against this brutal world, we turn inwards and start harming ourselves,’ he says, taking a last puff from his cigarette. He flings the stub to the ground, crushes it under the sole of his shoe, then walks next door to the writer’s study, sits down on the chair and stares at the blank page on the desk.

  In the last few minutes before dawn, t
he writer darts about his room like a maimed, wingless ladybird. Then, without saying a word, he opens his front door, shuts it quietly behind him, and disappears down the dark stairwell.

  International Praise for The Noodle Maker

  “The Noodle Maker is beautifully translated from the Chinese … . These are surrealistic and often bawdy, with a frankness that veers from clinical to crude.”

  — The Independent (U.K.)

  “Clever and humorous … Constructed with a good deal of artfulness … Fans of the absurdity and dark humor of Milan Kundera’s portraits of life behind the Iron Curtain will appreciate these same elements in Ma Jian’s work.”

  — The Baltimore Sun

  “Succinct and right on target … Blistering satire.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

  “In Red Dust, Ma Jian gave us a dazzling portrait of life for a dissident in China. The Noodle Maker is an even greater accomplishment. Playful and wonderfully dark, it confirms Jian as a Chinese Kundera or Mrozek or Gogol. The funniest book I’ve read in a long time.”

  — Philip Marsden, author of The Bronski House

  “A brilliant and disturbing novel, portraying cruel, heartless deeds and a frustrated and angry people stamped down by rigid state control. In lesser hands this would all be too much, but Jian is a born storyteller, spinning tales with an almost fablelike quality. It is a most compelling read—a book I shall not forget in a hurry.”