Hard Like Water

by Yan Lianke

  The tomb became so still, it was as though both of us had just died.

  She stared up at the tomb’s ceiling.

  I stared at her.

  I began making my way down her body. She was so tender and sensitive that, regardless of whether it was her calf, her thigh, her belly, her breasts, her shoulders, or her neck, no matter where I caressed her, her entire body would begin to tremble and shudder, filling the tomb with her hot breathing. Finally, after I slowly peeled the mud off her toes to reveal those ten toenails that resembled shattered sunrays, she pulled me close, grabbed my hand, and placed it on her breasts.

  At this point, the throbbing of her breasts suddenly seemed to surge into my palms. I knew she was very restless and, like me, couldn’t wait any longer. Her fire already burning hot, she was about to explode. Our revolutionary love had reached a critical point, and now everything was hanging by a thread. A pair of sparrows were chirping as they flew around their nest. One of them was bringing food, and the other was bringing straw to fortify the nest, and together they proceeded to work happily while singing a revolutionary song. Revolution is like climbing a tall mountain, at the top of which the sun appears large and round. With each step, we felt more enlightened, as though the sun were shining directly into our hearts. As our hearts warmed, we felt as though our happiness would surely last for millennia and millennia, millennia and millennia, millennia and millennia …

  But … but, ah, but … Just as I spread her legs and was about to enter her, something sharp poked my knee. I felt around in the straw and pulled out an object—which turned out to be an old bone. Like a jujube or elm branch that had been buried underground for an eternity, the bone was black and gray. It was as thick as a finger, about four centimeters long, and its surface was riddled with worm holes. It was clear that this was a finger bone from the corpse that had been buried here. When I realized that this was a dead person’s finger, I felt as though my entire body were enveloped in a frigid wind, and the blood that had been pounding through my veins had suddenly frozen solid.

  I collapsed, and the dawn light disappeared.

  I quickly threw the bone out of the tomb, but after doing so I discovered that I could no longer remain hard.

  Hongmei sat up and gazed at me with a pitying look. I took her hand and used it to slap my own face several times. She struggled to retrieve her hand, after which she attempted to reach out to stroke my cheek.

  I began to cry.

  We leaned against one another and began to stare into that damp, dark red tomb as though looking at our own coffin. We were completely silent.

  The sun retreated further from the opening of the tomb. The shadow in front of the tomb was light red, and there was a gleam of sunlight on every stem and leaf of the weeds growing on that pile of soil. The inside of the tomb remained as light as before, and even the silk-like legs of the spider in the corner were clearly visible. It was even possible to discern the vapor-thin layer of hairs on the spider’s legs, which swayed back and forth when it walked. The straw beneath us had an indentation where Hongmei had been lying. The smell of death and decay mixed with the scent of damp straw to produce a greenish-red and milky-white mist that drifted through the tomb, and when it reached the tomb entrance and was struck by sunlight, it disappeared without a trace.

  3. A Major Explosion (II)

  It seemed that, in the dead of night when everyone was sleeping, a storm was rolling in.

  None of you can possibly understand how this miracle occurred. Revolutionaries believe that miracles are created only by the revolution. For revolutionaries, the revolution is the source and the engine of all miracles. It is the sun and rain, the spring breeze and fertile soil. The revolution is the time and season of all miracles. So who could have anticipated what would subsequently unfold? Who could possibly have anticipated it?

  First, as Hongmei and I were leaving the tomb, we became enveloped by a depression that was as deep as snow. Neither of us had anticipated that our fiery desire would be extinguished by the chill of that buried bone. We sat there waiting for our lust to be reignited, but the longer we waited, the more we became enveloped by that icy depression.

  Eventually, however, we emerged hand in hand from the tomb and quietly proceeded forward, as though heading toward the tomb of our own love. As we walked along like a pair of corpses, neither of us uttered a word, but when we were about to reach the road to the mountain peak we heard the faint sound of a loudspeaker coming from a village. It was as though during the second lunar month’s Waking of Insects solar term, the sound of thunder was transmitted from beyond the mountains. By this point the sun was already nearing the western horizon, and the fields along the mountain ridge were empty. In the distance, in the hills and fields along the ravine, several mountain goats were grazing, and it was unclear whether the goatherd was resting somewhere or if he had returned home to eat. In the periodic silences between the loudspeaker announcements, you could hear the goats walking around.

  We followed the path toward the road to the west of the tomb. The thistles had thorns that were half a finger long and would catch on our clothes. As we were walking along the road, our pant legs became completely covered in these shiny, black thorns, and our nostrils were assailed by a warm smell of vegetation.

  I asked Hongmei to put her arm through mine, the way people do in the city, and she did. The sun was warm, and the fields were empty. Butterflies, moths, and locusts kept crossing the road, moving from one field to another. When we were halfway up the hill, we again heard the sound of a voice being broadcast over a loudspeaker. Because the loudspeaker was blocked by the trees, we couldn’t hear clearly what was being said, but after the conclusion of the announcement, the loudspeaker broadcast the water-like sound of a flute and an erhu fiddle, followed by a revolutionary melody. We could see the notes of that melody hovering in the air like leaves and flower petals floating on the surface of a river. We picked up the pace, our hunger dispelled by the music. We listened as we walked, and when we got to a particularly exciting part of the song, we stopped in the middle of the road in order to hear the music and the lyrics. We stood there and impulsively kissed each other. She rolled up her tongue and inserted it into my mouth and had me suck it, and then blew cool air into my mouth through her curled-up tongue, accompanied by her sweet saliva. From her fresh breath and her mouth, I detected intoxicating hints of chrysanthemum, plum, peony, lotus root, pagoda blossom, apple, pear, orange, grape, as well the pungent smell of the wildflowers growing on the hill, including the light white fragrance of carriage-wheel blossoms, the heavy yellow smell of spring-greeting blossoms, the pungent and slightly sweet odor of dried branches and grass, the sticky and pungent smell of thatch grass and horsetail, and the black and sweet medicinal licorice smell of dragon creepers and climbing palm. As I held her tongue in my mouth, I once again heard the sound coming from the loudspeakers behind us. First there was some indistinct local dialect, then the bold and unrestrained sound of a revolutionary song. At this point, to our left and right, near and far, in villages and stockades—in short, wherever there were people and houses—it seemed as though everyone had received the order to turn on their loudspeakers and start broadcasting music and songs, so the entire mountain range became filled with bright rhythms and musical notes. The pagoda tree leaves by the side of the road trembled to the music, and the wheat stems in the fields swayed back and forth. The musical notes in the air bumped into each other, and the melodies on the ground surged forward. Hongmei and I were both aroused by this music. We surmised that the higher-ups must have had a new development they wanted to transmit into the hearts of the masses. We very much wanted to run up to the top of the mountain to hear this newest and highest command, but we were captivated by that music—it was as if we had been struck by a bullet of pure red passion. We couldn’t restrain ourselves, extricate ourselves, or heal ourselves. Hongmei’s cheeks had a deep red glow; her eyes possessed an insatiable hunger, and her mouth and nostrils tr
embled uncontrollably. I pushed her tongue out of my mouth, then forced my own tongue into hers as though it were a dagger. With the tip of my tongue, I searched for the roof of her mouth and the base of her tongue, in order to suck out her tongue’s sweetness and crispness. We sweated, gasped, and struggled to breathe. Perhaps a village fifty li away was also making a broadcast. Maybe the loudspeakers in all the villages within two hundred or even five hundred li of us had begun broadcasting. From the city to the countryside, from the red pines on Daxing’an Peak to the coconut trees on Hainan Island, throughout the nine continents and the nine oceans, throughout heaven and earth, throughout the universe and beyond—there were loudspeakers everywhere, and they were all broadcasting songs and music. My ardor, which had subsided inside the tomb, once again began to course through my veins, from my head, my feet, and my hands, flowing directly to my member. I couldn’t understand why those passionate songs and bright red melodies were able to ignite the fire in my veins and awaken my member as though rousing a sleeping lion, leaving it as erect as a piece of iron or steel. Hongmei didn’t know whether she was aroused by the music or by my own fiery ardor, but in any event her entire body went limp, her face became flushed, and she once again grasped my neck with both hands—as though she would have fallen to the ground had she loosened her grip. I stuck my tongue deep into her mouth, caressed the roof of her mouth with the tip of my tongue as though my tongue were a live fish being roasted over an open flame. She reacted as though she had been assaulted, pulling away from my hard embrace. But then she lunged toward me again, pressing against my hardness like a soft cloth pushing toward a sharp blade, like a moth drawn toward a flame.

  She moaned, “Aijun … Aijun …”

  I picked her up and rushed toward an area to the east of the road. I knew this great moment would finally arrive, and if we didn’t seize it we would regret it forever—and I would be so ashamed that there would be nowhere I could hide my face. I was afraid that the loudspeakers would suddenly stop broadcasting and that my member, which had been aroused by the music, would wilt again. For that reason, I didn’t go back to that area on the other side of the grove and instead made for the ravine below the road to the north, where the road formed a natural cliff. There was a dense cluster of pagoda trees over the cliff, and it was there that we proceeed to do what we hadn’t been able to do inside the tomb. As I was entering her body, I heard her cry out with a joy that resembled a golden-red sun at dawn on a spring morning. This cry rose up from our interlocked bodies and surged toward the dense canopy overhead, staining the leaves of the pagoda trees dark red. I saw her gaze up at the stars, at the moon, and at the cry that emerged from her soul like the sun rising over the mountains, and as this cry’s blazing-white and fiery-red rays pierced through the gaps in the canopy overhead, they seared the edges and tips of the leaves, making them curl up and fall off. The leaves fell onto my shoulders and back and onto her flushed and radiant face and chest. Wave after wave of music continued to resound from the loudspeakers. The song lyrics glittered like pearls as they tumbled down from the roadside cliff, and the musical notes shone like silver and gold as they slipped into our ears like moonlight through the gaps in the pagoda leaves. The song coming from the east was the black-iron and white-steel “Carry Revolution to the End”; the one coming from the west was the uplifting and fiery-red “Beijing Has a Golden Sun”; the one coming from the south was the sonorous and forceful “Overthrow the Reactionary American Imperialist and Soviet Revisionist Party”; and the ones coming from the north were the clear and fragrant “Please Drink a Cup of Buttermilk Tea” and the warm-sweat and salty-teared “Denouncing the Evil Old Society.” The song coming down from overhead was the profound and earthy-smelling “Not Even Heaven or Earth Are as Vast as the Kindness of the Party,” while the one emerging up out of the earth was the hopping and fluttering “The Sky of the Liberated Areas Is Bright.” We were surrounded by songs. We were lying on songs, breathing songs, and covered in songs. Songs gave me strength and passion, determination and tenacity. Whenever I found a tune with a rhythm like one of the marching songs we sang in the army, I would grab it and place it between her body and mine, so that we could thrust to it—fast or slow, light or heavy, we would match it until the song reached its climax, as her gasps rang out interminably. As soon as we heard that “Ah …” over the loudspeakers, Hongmei and I would also shout out “Ah!” until our cries drowned out the ones being broadcast over the loudspeaker, at which point they would shake down the green and yellow pagoda tree leaves overhead. Only then would we stop, victorious, as the sun shone brightly onto the earth.

  Hongmei and I grabbed a tree branch and clambered out of the ravine and back to the main road. We followed the road to the top of the mountain, and only then did we hear—following the song and music—the Xinhua News Agency broadcast an important news release, which was that Chairman Mao was announcing another high directive.

  Chapter 5

  Policy and Strategy

  1. A Turning Point (I)

  Summer passed.

  I spent that entire summer pondering a single question: How could I extract the strength of Chenggang’s masses from their flesh and bones?

  We had to rely on the masses. The masses are the true heroes—this is a truth universally acknowledged. When Hongmei and I bid each other farewell in the village entrance, she said, “We definitely must carry out the revolution to the end.” I replied, “Don’t worry, Hongmei. As long as we rely on the masses, we’ll be able to reclaim the village’s political power in no time at all.” Then we bid each other farewell, and I watched as she walked next to the well platform on Front Cheng Street, after which she turned into Rear Cheng Street and hurried home.

  I spent the entire summer sitting at home contemplating the great and profound phrase, We must rely on the masses. This phrase made me realize why the leaders of Chenggang’s production team were unable to advance and instead found themselves all bottled up. Apart from the fact that local leaders all wore the decadent mantle of the Cheng clan, more important was the fact that we ourselves hadn’t yet mobilized or succeeded in relying on the masses. We hadn’t yet written an essay around the verb to dare, nor had we mastered the corresponding policies and strategies. What are strategies? Strategies are the methods by which policies are implemented. And what are methods? Methods are the processes by which you assess and evaluate revolutionary insight. The verb to dare is a yardstick against which you may measure and check your revolutionary genius. This verb gives you both courage and a strategy, so how can there be masses who cannot be mobilized? There are no low-consciousness people, only low-quality cadres. Similarly, there are no weak masses, only impotent intellectuals. These are some very deep insights.

  In order to mobilize the masses, I had to come up with a plan. I recorded four objectives in my leather notebook:

  Establish a three-person leadership committee, consisting of myself, Hongmei, and either Cheng Qinglin or Cheng Qingxian, an activist whom we recently cultivated.

  Search newspapers and broadcasts—as well as accounts from Jiudu, the county seat, and various towns and villages—for examples of people who tried to obstruct the revolution and came to a bad end.

  Print up flyers containing these examples and distribute them to every household and every commune director, thereby generating a sense of tension and uncertainty within Chenggang’s political atmosphere.

  In the resulting tense and uncertain atmosphere, mobilize the masses and seek an opening for revolutionary intervention.

  To achieve the first objective, Hongmei and I went to see Cheng Qinglin as soon as autumn arrived. I said, “Qinglin, we have something to propose. Do you want to join the cohort of revolutionary leaders? After we overthrow the Chenggang production team’s Party branch secretary, you will become the production team’s deputy village chief.” Cheng Qinglin replied, “As long as I can become a village cadre, I’ll do whatever you ask.” With this, our three-person leadership committee w
as established, and there was no longer any need for us to consider Cheng Qingxian.