The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China

by Lu Xun

  There was a three-room apartment in the Shaoxing Hostel in Beijing. The story went that a woman had once hanged herself on the locust tree in the courtyard outside. Even though the tree later grew so tall no one could reach its branches, still the apartment remained unoccupied. For years, then, this was where I lodged, copying out ancient stone inscriptions. I suffered very few visitors, and applied myself to realizing my sole ambition: to permit my life to ebb quietly away, without undue stimulation – either technical or intellectual – from my inscriptions. On summer nights, when mosquitoes hung heavy in the air, I would sit beneath the locust tree, cooling myself with a cattail-leaf fan, glimpsing scraps of blue sky through cracks in the dense foliage overhead, as nocturnal caterpillars dropped icily on to my neck.

  An occasional visitor was an old friend by the name of Jin Xinyi.3 Setting his large leather briefcase on a battered old table, he would take off his gown and sit himself down opposite me, looking as if his heart was still pounding from fear of a dog he had encountered along the way.

  ‘What’s the use in this?’ he asked one evening, flicking through my book of inscriptions.

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Why are you doing it, then?’

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘I thought, maybe you could write something for…’

  I knew what he was driving at. Although he and a few associates were now working on a magazine of their own – New Youth4 – so far they had been rewarded only by indifference, by neither criticism nor support. Maybe, I thought, they were feeling lonely. This is what I replied:

  ‘Imagine an iron house: without windows or doors, utterly indestructible, and full of sound sleepers – all about to suffocate to death. Let them die in their sleep, and they will feel nothing. Is it right to cry out, to rouse the light sleepers among them, causing them inconsolable agony before they die?’

  ‘But even if we succeed in waking only the few, there is still hope – hope that the iron house may one day be destroyed.’

  He was right: however hard I tried, I couldn’t quite obliterate my own sense of hope. Because hope is a thing of the future: my denial of it failed to convince him. In the end I agreed to write something for him: my first short story, ‘Diary of a Madman’. And once I had started, I found it impossible to stop, rattling off poor imitations of fiction to keep my earnest friends quiet, until in time I found myself the author of some dozen pieces.

  I thought I had changed: that I was no longer the kind of person who felt the imperative to speak out. Yet neither could I forget the lonely sorrows of my youth. And so I found myself issuing a few battle-cries of my own, if only to offer comfort or sympathy to those still fighting through their loneliness, and to alleviate their fear of the struggles ahead. I have no interest in passing judgement on these things of mine: on whether they are brave, despondent, contemptible or ridiculous. But since they are battle-cries, I naturally had to follow my generals’ orders. So I often stooped to distortions and untruths: adding a fictitious wreath of flowers to Yu’er’s grave in ‘Medicine’; forbearing to write that Mrs Shan never dreams of her son in ‘Tomorrow’, because my generalissimos did not approve of pessimism. And I didn’t want to infect younger generations – dreaming the glorious dreams that I too had dreamed when I was young – with the loneliness that came to torment me.

  These attempts of mine are no works of art; that I understand perfectly well. And yet I now enjoy the great good fortune of seeing them collected together and passed off as a volume of fiction. Though I feel some unease at this undeserved stroke of luck, it also brings me some happiness – that they might, at least fleetingly, find a readership.

  And so I have dispatched my pieces to the printer and, for the reasons given above, named them Outcry.

  Lu Xun

  3 December 1922, Beijing

  DIARY OF A MADMAN

  At school I had been close friends with two brothers whose names I will omit to mention here. As the years went by after we graduated, however, we gradually lost touch. Not long ago, I happened to hear that one of them had been seriously ill and, while on a visit home, I broke my journey to call on them. I found only one of them at home, who told me it was his younger brother who had been afflicted. Thanking me for my concern, he informed me that his brother had long since made a full recovery and had left home to wait for an appropriate official post to fall vacant. Smiling broadly, he showed me two volumes of a diary his brother had written at the time, explaining that they would give me an idea of the sickness that had taken hold of him and that he saw no harm in showing them to an old friend. Reading them back home, I discovered his brother had suffered from what is known as a ‘persecution complex’. The text was fantastically confused, and entirely undated; it was only differences in ink and styles of handwriting that enabled me to surmise parts of the text were written at different times. Below, I have extracted occasional flashes of coherence, in the hope they may be of use to medical research. While I have not altered a single one of the author’s errors, I have changed all the local names used in the original, despite the personal obscurity of the individuals involved. Finally, I have made use of the title chosen by the invalid himself following his full recovery.

  2 April 1918

  I

  The moon is bright tonight.

  I had not seen it for thirty years; the sight of it today was extraordinarily refreshing. Tonight, I realized I have spent the past thirty years or more in a state of dream; but I must still be careful. Why did the Zhaos’ dog look twice at me?

  I have reason to be afraid.

  II

  No moon tonight; a bad sign. I went out this morning – cautiously. Mr Zhao had a strange look in his eyes: as if he feared me, or as if he wished me harm. I saw a group of them, seven or eight, huddled around, whispering about me, afraid I would catch them at it. Everywhere I went – the same thing. One of them – the most vicious of the bunch – pulled his lips back into a grin. I prickled with cold fear; their traps, I realized, were already in place.

  Refusing to be intimidated, I carried on my way. A gang of children blocked my path ahead – they, too, were discussing me, their eyes as strange as Mr Zhao’s, their faces a ghastly white. What quarrel could these children have with me, I wondered. ‘Tell me!’ I shouted, unable to stop myself. But they just ran away.

  Mr Zhao, all the others I saw that morning – what was the source of their hatred? All I could think of was that twenty years ago, I stamped on the Records of the Past, and it has been my enemy since. Though he has no personal acquaintance with this Past, Mr Zhao must have somehow got wind of the business, and resolved to take up the grudge himself. He must have rallied everyone else I saw against me. But what about the children? They weren’t even born twenty years ago – so why do they stare so strangely at me, as if they fear me, or wish me harm? I am hurt, bewildered, afraid.

  Then the answer came to me. Their parents must have taught them.

  III

  My nights are sleepless. Only thorough investigation will bring clarity.

  Those people. They have been pilloried by their magistrate, beaten by their squires, had their wives requisitioned by bailiffs, seen their parents driven to early graves by creditors. And yet, through all this, none looked as fearful, as savage as they did yesterday.

  The most curious thing of all – that woman, hitting her son. ‘I’m so angry, I could eat you!’ That’s what she said. But looking at me all the while. I flinched in terror, I couldn’t help myself. The crowd – their faces bleached greenish-white – roared with laughter, exposing their fangs. Mr Chen rushed up to drag me home.

  To drag me home. Back home, though, everyone was pretending they didn’t know me, that same look in their eyes. The moment I stepped into the study, the door was latched on the outside, as if I were a chicken in a coop. I had no idea what lay at the bottom of it all.

  A few days ago, one of our tenants – a farmer from Wolf Cub Village – came to report a famine. The most hat
ed man in the village had been beaten to death, he told my brother, and some of the villagers had dug out his heart and liver, then fried and eaten them, for courage. When I interrupted, the farmer and my brother glanced at me – repeatedly. Now – now I recognize the look in their eyes: exactly that of the people I passed yesterday.

  I shiver at the very memory of it.

  If they are eating people, I might well be next.

  That woman scolding her son – ‘I could eat you!’ – those bleached faces and bared fangs, their roars of laughter; the farmer’s story; the signs are all there. I now see that their speech is poisoned, their laughter knife-edged, their teeth fearfully white – teeth that eat people.

  I don’t think I’m a bad man, but I now see my fate has been in the balance since I trod on those Records of the Past. They keep their own, secret accounts – a mystery to me. And they can turn on you in an instant. When my brother taught me to write essays, he would always mark me up if I found grounds to criticize the virtuous or rehabilitate the villainous: ‘It is a rare man who can go against received wisdom.’ How can I guess what they are really thinking, when their fangs are poised over my flesh?

  Only thorough investigation will bring clarity. I seem to remember, though only vaguely, that people have been eating each other since ancient times. When I flick through the history books, I find no dates, only those fine Confucian principles ‘benevolence, righteousness, morality’ snaking their way across each page. As I studied them again, through one of my more implacably sleepless nights, I finally glimpsed what lay between every line, of every book: ‘Eat people!’

  All these words – written in books, spoken by the farmer – stare strangely, smirkingly at me.

  Are they planning to eat me, too?

  IV

  I sat quietly a while, through the morning. Mr Chen brought me some food: a bowl of vegetables and a bowl of steamed fish – its eyes glassily white, its mouth gaping like the village cannibals. After a few slippery mouthfuls, I could no longer tell whether I was eating fish or human; up it all came again.

  ‘Tell my brother,’ I said to Chen, ‘that I feel stifled inside – that I want to take a walk in the garden.’ Chen left me without a word but shortly afterwards unlocked the door.

  I did not move; I wanted to see what they planned to do with me next; I knew they would not relax their grip so easily. And so it proved. My brother brought an old man in to see me. My visitor approached slowly, head bowed, afraid I would catch the savagery in his eyes, sneaking glances at me through his spectacles. ‘You seem well today,’ my brother said. ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Dr Ho here has come to examine you,’ my brother went on, ‘at my request.’ ‘Be my guest!’ I replied. My executioner, of course! Come to check how fat I was, while he pretended to take my pulse. Presumably his fee would be a slice of my flesh. Yet I felt no fear: my nerve remained steadier than those of the cannibals about me. I held out my wrists to see how he would go about it. Taking a seat, the old man closed his eyes, held my wrists for a considerable length of time, stared blankly a while longer, then opened those terrible eyes of his. ‘Avoid overexcitement,’ he pronounced. ‘A few days’ rest and you’ll be fine.’

  Avoid overexcitement! Rest! Of course: they want to fatten me up, so there will be more to go round. ‘You’ll be fine’? They were all after my flesh, but they couldn’t be open about it – they had to pursue their prey with secret plans and clever tricks; I could have died laughing. Indeed, I burst into uncontrollable roars of mirth – a laughter that rang with righteous courage. The old man and my brother blanched at the robustness of my morale.

  But my boldness succeeded only in sharpening their appetites – the braver the prey, the more glory for the hunter. ‘To be eaten immediately!’ the old man muttered as he left. My brother nodded. Et tu! And yet I should have foreseen it all: my own brother in league with people who wanted to eat me!

  My own brother was a cannibal!

  I was the brother of a cannibal!

  And destined to be eaten myself – this brother of a cannibal.

  V

  These last few days, I have reconsidered a couple of my earlier suspicions: perhaps the old man was not my executioner, perhaps he really was a doctor. But he will still have eaten people. In his Book of… what is it? Herbs?… Li Shizhen openly observes that boiled human flesh is perfectly edible.1 He must have tried it himself.

  Neither were my suspicions of my own brother unfounded. When he was teaching me history as a boy, he once told me people could ‘exchange sons to eat’ in times of scarcity; or then again, while discussing a notorious villain, he told me death alone was too good for him; that ‘his flesh should be devoured, his skin flayed into a rug’.2 For hours afterwards, my heart pounded with fear. A few days ago, when the farmer from Wolf Cub Village told him about the business with the heart and liver, he merely nodded; nothing surprises him. At heart, he is ruthless; still perfectly ruthless. If sons are fodder for the dinner table, then anyone could be. I used to just let him preach at me – to let his sermons pass me by. Now, I know his lips were smeared with human grease, his thoughts only of eating people.

  VI

  There is darkness all around me. I cannot tell day from night. The Zhaos’ dog has started barking again.

  Fierce as a lion, cowardly as a rabbit, cunning as a fox…

  VII

  I know their ways. They do not want, or dare, to kill me openly; they fear the vengeance of the ghosts. Instead, they conspire to drive me to suicide. I see through their plans, most of them – I remember their looks on the street from a few days ago, and my brother’s behaviour. Their first, fondest hope is that I should sling my belt over the beam in the ceiling and hang myself; that they will achieve their heart’s desire without staining their hands with my blood – I hear their gasps of jubilant laughter already. Failing that, I could always pine away, of melancholy or nerves. Though my corpse would have less fat on it, it would still be a corpse.

  They can eat only carrion. I remember reading in some book somewhere about a fearfully ugly creature called a hyena, with terrifying eyes and a fondness for dead meat, capable of chewing the most enormous bones down to a pulp. I shiver just to think of it. This hyena is cousin to the wolf, the wolf cousin to the dog. The way the Zhaos’ dog looked at me the day before yesterday, he’s in on it, too; and that old man who couldn’t look me in the eye – but he couldn’t fool me either.

  It’s my brother I feel sorry for. He’s only human: he must feel the dread of it, and yet still he conspires to eat me. Has he become hardened over time – can he no longer see how wrong it is? Or is his conscience in pieces: does he commit his crimes in the full knowledge of their evil?

  A curse on all cannibals – beginning with my brother. And if I am to turn them, I must begin with him, too.

  VIII

  They should have been able to see it for themselves.

  Suddenly, another visitor. A young man, barely in his twenties, his features a blur – except for his broad grin. He greeted me with a nod; I found no sincerity in his smile. ‘Is it right to eat people?’ I asked him. ‘What are you talking about?’ – his smile did not flicker. ‘No one’s eating anyone; it’s not a famine year.’ I knew then that he, too, was of their number: that he too feasted on human flesh. Screwing my courage, I determined to press him further.

  ‘But is it right?’

  ‘I – I don’t understand the question. What a… sense of humour, you have… Lovely weather we’re having today.’

  The weather is indeed fine, and the moon indeed bright. But I will repeat my question: ‘Is it right?’

  ‘No…’ he mumbled, beginning to sound vexed.

  ‘So it’s wrong? Then why is it going on?’

  ‘It’s not…’

  ‘They’re eating each other here and now – in Wolf Cub Village. Look here: it’s written in all the books, in fresh red ink!’

  His face went a ghastly white. ‘Maybe,’ his eyes bulged, ‘maybe tha
t’s how things have always been…’

  ‘But does that make it right?’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this. You shouldn’t be talking about it.’

  I sprang to my feet, my eyes flying open. He had disappeared. I was covered in sweat. He was much younger than my brother, and yet already he was in on it with the rest of them; his parents must have taught him. And he will have taught his son; even the children stare at me like wild beasts.

  IX

  Craving flesh, dreading the teeth of others, eyeing each other with fear…

  If only they could leave it all behind them, how easy, how comfortable their lives would become. Such a tiny thing. But they are all part of it – fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, wives, friends, teachers, pupils, enemies, perfect strangers, pulling each other back.

  X

  Early this morning I went looking for my brother. I found him standing by the door to the hall, staring up at the sky. Approaching from behind, I placed myself between him and the doorway.

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ I said, taking care to keep my voice soft, meek.

  ‘Go on.’ He spun round to face me, nodding.

  ‘A few, difficult words. Primitive men probably did eat human flesh. But their thinking changed, developed over time, and some of them stopped – they were determined to become human, genuinely human. Those who wouldn’t give it up remained reptiles, some of them changing into fish, birds or monkeys, then finally men. But they remain reptiles at heart – even today. The shame of the cannibal, brother, before the non-cannibal! Greater than the reptile before the monkey.