by Yan Lianke
She said, “Apart from the Three Loyalties that Comrade Gao Aijun mentioned, I will also work hard to raise and educate my daughter, Cheng Tao’er. I want for her to study hard and make progress every day, so that she may become a most excellent revolutionary successor. I want to make sure that she won’t have to endure any hardship in this lifetime and will have perpetual good fortune. I want for her to have a good job, good prospects, a good husband, and a good family.”
(I suddenly realized that when I was swearing my oath, I had completely forgotten to mention my own children, Hongsheng and Honghua. After hearing Hongmei, I silently swore an oath to my children, repeating to them the same thing that Hongmei had said regarding her daughter.)
“With respect to my relationship with Comrade Gao Aijun” (I jumped with surprise and looked back at Hongmei, seeing that the skin between the joints of her pinky figure had turned red), “I know that I’ve let down my husband, Cheng Qingdong, but my relationship with Comrade Gao Aijun is of the purest sort of revolutionary love—like the relationship between Xiao Changchun and Jiao Shufeng, or between Pavel and Tonia. I swear to you, my elders, that I will be Comrade Gao Aijun’s loyal revolutionary lover until death—and in the event that I should have the slightest change of heart, may I be blinded, struck by lightning, and have my corpse be left in the open after I die!”
I said, “And how about when Gao Aijun gets old?”
She said, “When Gao Aijun gets old, I’ll remain his lifelong companion, as though I were his crutch.”
I said, “And when he becomes county head, district commissioner, and provincial governor?”
She said, “Even if he were sent to prison, I, Xia Hongmei, would still take him baskets of food.”
I said, “And what if, before he grows old, he falls ill and is no longer able to provide you with a woman’s pleasure?”
She replied angrily, “I, Xia Hongmei, am your revolutionary comrade, your battle companion, and your sister. I’m not a parasite who merely looks to you for corporeal pleasure. If you fall ill and can no longer provide Xia Hongmei with physical pleasure, she won’t have a change of heart, nor will she feel any resentment. Conversely, as long as you need her, and as long as she is able to bring you happiness and pleasure, she will make every effort to do so and will do anything you ask.”
I asked, “And what if I ask her to do something, and she doesn’t do it?”
She said, “Then you can draw that most private part of her body, including all of her moles and her veins, print the image on leaflets, and distribute them throughout the world.”
I said, “You may put your hand down.”
She said, “I want you to raise your hand again.”
I once again held up my hand.
Holding her own right hand high in the air, she swore, “With the blue sky above and these great people serving as witnesses, I declare that my oath today is completely true and sincere. If, in the future, I go back on any of these words, you may have me decapitated and leave my lifeless body lying unburied in the open.”
I was truly moved by Hongmei’s oath. I thought that I should say a few things that would be even more moving, so I lifted my right hand higher, thought for a moment, and said, “With the blue sky above and these great people serving as witnesses, I, Gao Aijun, declare that if there are any insincerities or falsehoods in what I’ve said today, you must terminate my future prospects and destroy my reputation. In front of the assembled masses, you must shred my body into ten thousand pieces and have the countless masses, including my own children and grandchildren, stomp on the fragments of my body—such that for years to come, for generations to come, I’ll have no hope of getting rehabilitation or redress.”
As I expected, the love and affection that I expressed in my final oath left her profoundly moved and overcome with emotion. (I truly did have a very rare oratorical skill and was a speaker of eternal truths.) When I finally lowered my right hand, she gazed lovingly at me with eyes full of tears.
I gazed back her.
Both of us were moved to tears by each other’s sincerity and hugged each other tightly. All we could do was hug each other, such that her smooth, naked skin pressed against mine, and my own rough skin pressed against hers. We rushed down the tunnel, rolling around together as though we were a single person. The tunnel’s moisture entered our bodies through our pores that had been opened wide by our excitement, penetrating deep into our skin, our veins, and our bones. Water droplets fell from the ceiling, splattering mud onto our bodies. We rolled around in the mud like truck wheels, profoundly moved by each other’s corporeal sincerity.
At this point, a quantitative change became a qualitative one, and a new contradiction arose.
A crisis was imminent.
The wheels of history changed course.
The revolution fell into a spiraling trap.
I have no idea how deeply we slept or for how long. At some point, however, there was the faint sound of footsteps approaching, though it was hard to tell if I was hearing them in my dream or in real life. Almost simultaneously, Hongmei and I both sat up, like two fish that had been caught and released again. We saw Hongmei’s husband, Cheng Qingdong, holding a flashlight, his face as green as iron, suddenly appear in the underground nuptial chamber. He appeared thin and frail, and as he approached through the tunnel, he didn’t know where he needed to duck, and consequently twice bumped his head against the ceiling, leaving him with clumps of mud in his hair and on his forehead. Needless to say, he had been astonished to discover this long tunnel leading to his home, but when he found me and Hongmei sleeping naked on the muddy ground, he immediately fell into shock. When we woke up, and I saw Cheng Qingdong’s iron-like face, the first thing that came to mind was that I needed to grab the pants I had left at the head of the bed—as though the significance of Cheng Qingdong’s sudden appearance was not that he was going to catch a pair of adulterers but rather that he was going to steal our clothes. Just as I was getting up to grab my pants, Hongmei asked calmly, as though she had just woken up in her own bed, “Qingdong, didn’t you go to attend a meeting in Jiudu?”
Cheng Qingdong fixed his gaze on Hongmei’s body, and from between his clenched teeth he squeezed out three greenish-purple words: “You … are … shameless!”
These three words instantly roused Hongmei, as she realized with a shock what had happened. Turning pale, she instinctively covered the area between her legs with her hands, and proceeded to kneel down before Qingdong, as though her entire body had cramped up. As this was happening, however, as I went to grab my clothes, I forgot myself for a moment and turned to see what she was doing. As a result, my intentions were revealed, and Qingdong was able to grab my and Hongmei’s clothes before I could.
Just as this extraordinary event was unfolding, a subtle contradiction developed out of this special condition. While the old contradiction had been resolved, a new contradiction emerged, as the earlier secondary contradiction was transformed into a primary contradiction. That is to say, I had assumed that once Cheng Qingdong grabbed our clothing, he would attempt to negotiate with me and Hongmei and try to coerce us in some way. Instead, however, he simply grabbed our clothing and headed back toward his house (the pink knitted underwear I had given Hongmei fell to the ground, and he hurriedly picked them up). It was actually as if he wasn’t trying to catch a pair of adulterers but instead simply wanted to steal our clothes. His pace was both urgent and flagging, and he left the tunnel as though trying to flee. He seemed to want to run, but since he was unfamiliar with the route he instead had to settle for walking quickly. In the blink of an eye, he and the shadow he cast on the walls of the tunnel disappeared from view, leaving behind only his earthy-yellow footsteps, which echoed through the tunnel and knocked up against my and Hongmei’s naked bodies and our empty skulls.
The lamplight flickered.
Qingdong’s footsteps became fainter and fainter.
Suddenly, Hongmei, who was still kneeling on the gro
und, sprang to her feet. However, as though scalded by the ground beneath her, she quickly fell down again. With both palms facing upward, she clenched her hands into fists and placed each next to her breast. Then—with her forehead covered in bead-size drops of sweat—she looked in the direction of the tunnel opening toward which Cheng Qingdong was headed and shouted, “Aijun, if Qingdong makes it out, you’ll be ruined!”
This struck an alarm bell in my mind and gave me a divine inspiration. In showing this fatal contradiction, Hongmei had given me a key with which I might resolve it. I can’t remember what precisely I was thinking about at that moment (perhaps about the basis of the theory that revolution is inseparable from violence?); or maybe I wasn’t thinking anything at all; or perhaps the phrase Revolution is inseparable from violence, and sometimes violence is still the most effective form of revolution flashed through my brain. In any case, I grabbed the shovel sitting in the corner of the nuptial chamber and began advancing (with vigorous strides) toward Qingdong.
Just think, how could Cheng Qingdong have been as familiar with that tunnel as I? He was wearing padded winter clothing and was also carrying my and Hongmei’s clothes, while I was completely naked, so how could he possibly outrun me? Just as Qingdong was about to reach the air hole located directly below his own house on Rear Cheng Street, he heard me pursuing him and panicked, tripped, and fell.
The shovel I was holding came down on his head like a blade, and I chopped off his head as though I were slicing a melon.
That was how he died. With a scream, and as his blood splattered over the tunnel’s muddy walls, he died.
2. The Shovel’s Revolutionary Song
Man: Grasp revolution, promote production With a shovel, turn over the soil.
Woman: With a shovel, undertake revolution Leave the enemy trembling with fear.
Man: With a shovel, turn over heaven and earth, A billion people burst into smiles.
Woman: A shovel can serve as a gun, As we maintain a fighting spirit.
Man: I gaze happily at the endless waves of rice and beans, And see heroes, everyone under the setting sun.
3. Struggle Is the Only Medicine for Those Afflicted with Revolution
That was a very dark day.
We dragged Cheng Qingdong’s corpse back to the nuptial chamber and buried it beneath the slogans we had posted on the northern-facing wall. After burying the corpse, we knew we would never be able to return to this tunnel, which had given us so much spiritual sustenance and corporeal pleasure over the preceding two years. With Cheng Qingdong buried there, even if we went back, we’d never again be able to enjoy the same sort of spiritual or corporeal climax.
When I took Hongmei home, the night was already three zhang deep. As we fumbled our way out of the tunnel through the opening behind her bedroom bureau, we both felt energized but also exhausted. However, as soon as Hongmei saw Tao’er, who had already fallen asleep in the moonlight while waiting for her to return, she immediately collapsed and hugged her daughter. Then, without crying or sobbing, Hongmei began trembling, as though she were freezing cold.
I said, “How can you act like this? At this time of night we should be particularly quiet.”
She said, “You should leave, before Tao’er wakes up.”
“You must remember what we said,” I exhorted her as I left her house. Then I went sauntering through the streets as though I were simply returning home late from a meeting.
I didn’t run into anyone on my way home.
I didn’t even see a dog.
One day passed.
Two days passed.
Three days passed.
Chenggang’s production brigade continued as before. The winter wind was still as cold as before, ripping to shreds the posters on the village propaganda notice board. The midday sun was still as warm as before, and the villagers who didn’t have a stove to keep them warm all gathered outside in the sunlight, to chat and check themselves for lice. Every morning, I could hear the rumbling sound of the well pulley, as people went to fetch water. Over the course of those three days, I twice went into town to attend meetings, and as Mayor Wang was reading official documents, he would still proudly nod his head. At the end of the meeting, he asked me, neither warmly nor coldly, “Deputy Mayor Gao, do you have anything to report?” I replied, “No, nothing.” He said, “OK, then the meeting is adjourned.” Everything proceeded as before—as though absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. It was only when the school was supposed to offer Cheng Qingdong’s language class and his podium remained empty—only then did the other teachers remark, “Has Teacher Cheng still not yet returned from his meeting? Then today we’ll continue teaching mathematics.”
On the fourth day, Hongmei went to Cheng Temple to see her father-in-law, the former town mayor Cheng Tianmin, and said, “Father, Qingdong went to attend a meeting in Jiudu, but why hasn’t he returned yet? The meeting was originally only supposed to last one day, and even after taking travel time into account, his trip should have lasted only three days. Today is already the fourth day since his departure.” On the fifth day, Hongmei once again went to Cheng Temple to see her father-in-law and anxiously said, “Now it has been five days, and he still hasn’t returned!”
On the sixth day, Hongmei went to Jiudu to look for her husband. Cheng Qingmin held Tao’er by the hand while escorting Hongmei to the town’s long-distance bus station. When Hongmei returned from Jiudu on the seventh day, however, she brought back a startling revelation—reporting that the “experience-exchange meeting to learn from Zhang Tiesheng,” which Jiudu’s department of education had originally planned to convene seven days earlier, had been canceled, and while some of the participants had received the notification and had aborted their trips, the participants who didn’t receive the notification had turned around as soon as they reached Jiudu and returned home. At the same time, during those several days, there had been an enormous traffic accident in Jiudu, together with two factional struggles. In the latter struggles, both sides used guns and bullets, leaving three people dead and more than a dozen wounded. The corpses of two people who had been killed by accident lay in the square for two days without anyone coming to claim them. In the end, under the novel and magnificent orders of the relevant government department, the two corpses had been taken away to be cremated.
(The sky is blue, ah, the sky is blue! The land is vast, ah, the land is vast!)
That was how Hongmei returned from Jiudu carrying a burial urn. It was dusk when she disembarked from the long-distance bus, whereupon she immediately saw a crowd of pale teachers and students waiting for her. She saw the silent production brigade Party branch cadres and commune members, whom I had brought, and she saw Cheng Tianmin sitting in the middle of the crowd, with Tao’er in his lap. Her eyes filled with tears, her legs turned to rubber, and she almost collapsed into the embrace of Cheng Qinglin, who had come to receive the ash-filled urn.
I said, “Why are you crying?”
“I saw Tao’er and realized that from now on she’ll be fatherless.”
“You don’t trust me to treat her well? I have a basic fatherly awareness and humanism.”
“I do trust you. But all the same, she still will have lost her biological father.”
“It seems you still miss Cheng Qingdong and don’t value our revolutionary friendship as much as your relationship with Cheng Qingdong. You must emerge from the shadows, gaze into the future, concentrate on the light, and focus on the big picture. You must prioritize our future prospects and our revolutionary cause. You must forget the past and join the struggle at top speed and without any burdens, so that we can more quickly and effectively realize and implement our ideals.”
“What was the spirit of the document you studied two days ago?”
“It described how we must focus on agriculture and learn from Dazhai.”
This is how things unfolded. The storm passed. No one doubted that Cheng Qingdong had been killed by a stray bullet during the rev
olutionary struggle in Jiudu. We could now look back and analyze the series of events. It was clear that Cheng Qingdong must have suspected our relationship for some time but couldn’t say anything because he had no evidence, and moreover didn’t dare say anything because Hongmei and I were openly acting as revolutionaries, and moreover wasn’t willing to say anything because he had the typical cowardice of a rural intellectual. Therefore, it was only after he went to Jiudu to attend a meeting that he had an opportunity to suddenly return to the village, whereupon he was able to enter Hongmei’s bedroom and, finding her gone, discover the opening to the tunnel. But how could he have avoided running into anyone on his way home from the bus station? Did he deliberately avoid people so as to be able to make a surprise appearance at his own home? Or did the streets happen to be completely empty on the day and time he returned? Or, perhaps someone did see him, but it didn’t make a big impression, and after Hongmei brought back the ash-filled urn from Jiudu, that person probably didn’t trust their own memory. After all, people die all the time. From now on, whenever someone dies in our production brigade, regardless of who it is—whether it’s a cook or a soldier—as long as they’ve performed some useful work, we’ll make sure to organize a funeral procession and a memorial service in their honor. This will become a tradition, and this practice will be introduced to the common people. Whenever someone in the village dies, there will be a memorial service that will help relieve our grief and unite the people. We set about organizing such a memorial service for Cheng Qingdong.
After we buried Cheng Qingdong’s ashes, Cheng Tianmin fell ill and spent half a month hospitalized in the town’s health clinic. After Cheng Tianmin was released, it was evident that he had aged precipitously—just as Cheng Tianqing had done after Guizhi’s death. Cheng Tianmin was now so decrepit that he swayed back and forth when he walked, and after returning to Cheng Temple, he almost never left again. People very rarely saw him in the village. This is how things were. Struggle is cruel; revolution is heartless and sometimes even seems barbaric. This is inevitable and even necessary. In the days that followed, and for that entire winter, Hongmei was listless and lacking in vigor. Regardless of how much I encouraged her to face reality, focus on the future, maintain her high ambitions, and attend to revolutionary principles for tomorrow’s struggle, she remained distracted, as if she wasn’t even listening to me. I told her that what needed to happen had already happened and what needed to pass would pass. She replied that whenever she fell asleep, she would see Qingdong’s head being chopped off by my shovel as though it were a melon being sliced open, and would see Qingdong refusing to close his eyes, even as we tried to bury him. In order to help her emerge from the shadows as quickly as possible, I would affectionately embrace and caress her at every opportunity, as soon as no one was around, regardless of where we happened to be. She, however, offered no response. When I took her hand, it was as though I were picking up a stick, and when I kissed her lips, it was as if I were kissing lifeless pieces of rubber. I attempted to rouse her by unbuttoning her clothes and caressing her breasts, and although she didn’t resist, she also didn’t respond in any way, acting as though I were a famished person and she were but a cold bun.