by Yan Lianke
I said, “OK.”
She said, “At the cock’s crow, the land brightens.”
I thought for a moment, then replied, “With the cries of the oriole, praising the moon.”
She thought for a moment, then said, “On the broken bridge beyond the post station.”
I thought for a moment, then said, “Lonely flowers bloom brilliantly.”
She thought for a moment, then said, “The Red Army doesn’t fear the travails of a Long March.”
I laughed and said, “Holding light ten thousand crags and torrents.”
She said, “Don’t laugh. Whoever laughs first loses. Five Ridges’ meandering peaks are but rippling waves.”
I said, “Mountains and hills like balls of mud.”
She said, “That isn’t a line of verse, but rather a mere jingle. Warmth from Jinsha waters crashing onto cliffs. Now you have to respond with a matching line from a seven-character regulated verse.”
I pondered for a moment but didn’t immediately respond.
She said, “Think carefully. Didn’t you say that when you were in the army, you published poems in the Liberation Army Daily?”
I still didn’t say anything.
She repeated, “Warmth from Jinsha waters crashing onto cliffs. You’ve been thinking for a long time.”
Finally I said, “What did you just say? Was it Five Ridges’ meandering peaks are but rippling waves?”
She said, “The previous line was Five Ridges’ meandering peaks are but rippling waves. The current one is Warmth from Jinsha waters crashing onto cliffs.”
I suddenly had a flash of inspiration and heard a cracking sound inside my skull, as though a mountain were splitting in half. I suddenly grasped the connection between the two strings of graphs, 五、山、委、辶、月 and 人、氵、水、扌、云, on the one hand, and the two lines of verse, Five Ridges’ meandering peaks are but rippling waves and Warmth from Jinsha waters crashing onto cliffs, on the other. As a result, I was able to figure out the corresponding pattern of the Mao busts on the floor. I suddenly grasped the golden key that would permit us to open the revolutionary eight-diagram configuration in front of us. It was in that instant that I realized that 五、山、委、辶、月 corresponded to the first five characters of the line Five Ridges’ meandering peaks are but rippling waves (五岭逶迤腾), and that 人、氵、水、扌、云 corresponded to the first five characters of the line Warmth from Jinsha waters crashing onto cliffs (金沙水拍云). I turned to those four streams of Mao busts, and Hongmei said, “So you’re unable to offer a response line to Warmth from Jinsha waters crashing onto cliffs, isn’t that right?” I raised and lowered my hand, indicating for her to be silent and to squat down and examine that array of Mao busts, as I was doing. She realized I had figured out how to find a path through the busts, so she fixed her gaze on that array of snowman-like figures. I counted up the busts, and found that there were fifty-six in all, which corresponded exactly to the number of characters in a seven-character regulated verse poem. Meanwhile, each of the four rows had fourteen busts, which happened to be the number of characters in a single couplet. That is to say, the fourteen busts in the first row must correspond to the first two lines of Chairman Mao’s poem “The Long March”: The Red Army doesn’t fear the travails of a Long March / holding light ten thousand crags and torrents. Similarly, the fourteen busts on the second row corresponded to the lines Five Ridges’ meandering peaks are but rippling waves / The magnificence of Wumeng Mountain is but balls of mud. The third row of busts presumably corresponded to the poem’s fifth and sixth lines, while the fourth row would correspond to the seventh and eighth lines. In order to confirm this hypothesis, I noticed a 又 graph partially visible beneath the seventh bust in the first row, and sure enough the seventh character in the first line of the poem, 难, has a 又 graph on the left-hand side. Similarly, a 口 graph was partially visible beneath the second bust in the fourth row, and sure enough the second character in the seventh line of the poem, 喜, contains a 口 graph on the bottom.
After verifying that the arrangement of the four rows of Mao busts followed that of the watermarks of the fifty-six characters in Chairman Mao’s “The Long March,” I figured out the correspondence between the orientation of each of the busts and the pronunciation of the corresponding character in the poem. In particular, I determined that characters pronounced with an even first tone corresponded to busts oriented toward the east, characters pronounced with a rising second tone corresponded to busts oriented toward the west, characters pronounced with a dipping third tone corresponded to busts oriented toward the south, and characters pronounced with a falling fourth tone corresponded to busts oriented toward the north. Next, I quietly recited the line The Red Army doesn’t fear the travails of a Long March, and noted that the seven characters that made up the line were pronounced with a second tone, first tone, second tone, fourth tone, third tone, first tone, and second tone, respectively, indicating whether the corresponding Mao busts should be oriented toward the west, east, west, north, south, east, and west. Then I looked at the busts in the first row and saw that they were indeed oriented in this matter. I quietly recited the line The three armies march on, each face glowing, noting that the tones of each character were pronounced first tone, first tone, fourth tone, fourth tone, fourth tone, first tone, and second tone, respectively. I speculated that this indicated that the last seven busts should be oriented toward the east, east, north, north, north, east, and west, respectively, and when I checked to confirm, I saw that they were indeed oriented accordingly.
I had successfully cracked the revolutionary eight-diagram code!
Everything now was self-evident. I had once again proved that I was not only a revolutionary genius and a political genius, I was also a genius in military strategy, even a revolutionary seer. When I quietly explained this to Hongmei, she counted up the Mao busts on the ground, and considered the relationship between the graphs 五、山、委、辶、月 and the characters 五岭逶迤腾 from the first line of Mao’s “The Long March.” Then, after observing the orientations of several of the busts in the third and fourth rows, her eyes lit up—as though she were someone on death row who had just received an amnesty, someone dying of thirst who suddenly saw a rushing river, or someone buried underground for eight days who suddenly saw the morning sun. The light in the room had long since been turned off, and mixed in with the sunlight coming in through the window was the sound of cars driving back and forth. The sentry stationed in front of the door kept peeking in through the window, but it was unclear what he was looking at or what he was thinking. Last night the sulfurous odor from the brick kiln had disappeared, and now the only thing we could smell was the sun-baked odor from the fields and the humidity in the room. We were energized by our great discovery and stared at each other for a long while without saying a word. I saw that the bright red excitement on her face showed no sign of diminishing, and furthermore, this was an excitement I normally only observed when we were doing that thing—and even then, only when she was about to climax. Her bright red charm and grace, together with this great discovery, combined to heat up my frozen blood to the point that it seemed about to boil. It made it such that my hunger and thirst for her began to surge through my body like the Yellow River, with flowers bursting into bloom. I looked at the Mao quotations, slogans, and posters that were hung throughout the room, and felt as though those passages and posters were blocking my veins like dikes or gates. I remembered how the first time we saw each other, on the railroad tracks outside of town, she had a relaxed beauty and impetuousness. I remembered our crazy encounter in the tomb and the warmth and casualness of our countless rendezvous in the tunnel over the course of two years. In that instant, I resolved to escape from this prison—to escape with her. Even if it were only in order to go out into the fields, strip naked, and crazily do that thing one final time. Even if it were to do that thing just once more, I simply had to escape from this place.
&
nbsp; At the thought of escaping, my palms became sweaty and my face felt as though it were being singed by fire. The sentry stationed outside the room peered in again, but when he saw we were still squatting there, he returned to his original position. I glanced at the window and then at the door. Then, I faced Hongmei and drew the characters for the word “escape” in the air. I had to write the characters five times in a row before Hongmei finally understood, but once she did she didn’t appear surprised, and instead she simply stared at me with pursed lips, after which she similarly wrote the characters for “OK” in the air.
I nodded vigorously.
With pursed lips, she considered for a while, then nodded back to me even more vigorously.
(My flesh and soul, my spirit and marrow!) With Hongmei’s nod, a great, adventurous, bizarre, unprecedented, and history-making plan was born.
Chapter 12
A Triumphant Return
1. With Frustrated Ambitions, We Vow to Never Give Up
We finally succeeded in escaping the detention chamber, and the prison too, through the “Long March” secret passage. The prison was located in a granary. We subsequently learned that during that period, there were as many political prisoners as horses and oxen, as a result of which all the prisons filled up, and the county had to look elsewhere for ideas on how to expand its prison capacity. Consequently, the county decided to transform a grain warehouse into a specialized prison for political detainees, and created this special detention chamber. On that day, we still hadn’t eaten, and they still hadn’t permitted us to drink any water (there wasn’t a single grain of humanism to be found in inside this entire granary). We were cheered by our success in cracking the “Long March” code and energized by our plan to escape. With pounding hearts and valor surging like great rivers, we escaped from the eight-diagram configuration. When the sentry got down from his post to go eat, we squatted silently, without moving a muscle. We waited for the sentry to finish his dinner and connect the electricity in our detention chamber, which would turn on all the spotlights. The sentry shouted to us, “When you’re ready to confess, let me know!” Then he got down from his sentry post.
We found ourselves caught within the enemy’s strategic encirclement. We simply had to escape from this encirclement, and until we accomplished this objective there was nothing else to discuss. So we took action.
I climbed down from my stool and stood in front of the Mao busts, then picked up the first four busts and confirmed that beneath them were the characters and graphs 红、乌、金、更. Next, I helped Hongmei down from her stool, and we quickly hugged and kissed. We pushed aside all those different-size and differently oriented busts, and after walking through the path we had created, we made sure to reposition the busts according to the “Long March” code. In this way, we were able to make it to the door in no time.
We never expected we would be able to escape so easily, nor that the detention chamber’s steel-plated door would be unlocked and fastened only with a latch. It turned out that the door to the so-called special detention chamber was still the same old warehouse door, and it even still had “WAREHOUSE 208” inscribed on the side. We didn’t have time to look around or listen to the hubbub in the room across from us, where several soldiers were playing cards. After Hongmei used her long, slender fingers to unfasten the latch, we stepped out. The sentry stationed outside the main gate was in the process of asking another sentry to bring him a glass of water, but the other sentry told him to get his own water, since the platoon leader and company leader were both inside playing cards. Then the first sentry, still carrying his rifle, headed toward the room to the west of the iron gate (the moment that the enemy is paralyzed is when we can attack and secure victory). I quickly pulled Hongmei, who by this point was trembling from head to toe, out of the detention chamber and proceeded to relatch the door. We then snuck along the base of the wall until we reached the outer gate, then proceeded to crawl out though the fifteen-centimeter-high opening under the iron door.
This was the middle of the month in the lunar calendar, and the moon was extraordinarily beautiful. As soon as we crawled under the prison’s iron gate and stood up, we felt the watery moonlight pouring onto our faces and bodies. Our eyes were so moist, it felt as though they were infected and stinging from medicine. We began to quickly back away, and the grass under our feet and the trees around us became a blur as we passed. Once we were certain the sentry could no longer hear our footsteps, we turned around and began sprinting toward a nearby hill, our bodies becoming covered in sweat, breathing heavily.
(The journey is urgent
We whip our horse to urge it forward
The moon and stars shine down on the ground
Tomorrow the sun will be bright
But tonight the night is dark and windy.
We are surrounded by enemies
Every bush and tree resembles a soldier
The wind blows and cranes call out
Heads may roll and blood may flow
But we have no fear.)
When we were halfway up the mountain, Hongmei simply couldn’t go on, so we stopped to rest. We saw we were in the middle of a forest of scholar trees, and the trees’ sharp, sweet smell assailed us from all directions. Bug-eaten leaves were fluttering in the moonlight, and when they fell to the ground they made a faint crackling and twittering sound. Through the canopy, we could see the full moon, as white as snow and as round as a dinner plate, and so bright that we could clearly make out the mountains, trees, and rivers, and see villagers, rabbits, and goats moving in the distance. It was extraordinarily quiet under the trees, so we could hear the rabbits, goats, and people. We could hear the crickets in the trees and insects fighting, as though the entire world was filled with their cries. We knew we were already safe. We glanced down at the prison located at the base of the mountain, and without taking the time to examine our entire surroundings, we looked at the route we had just taken up the mountain and saw that the crescent-shaped path following the banks of the dry river bed was unchanged from before. Seeing that there wasn’t a trace of human presence on that path, we sighed and relaxed. We exchanged a celebratory look and fell into each other’s arms. We hugged and began madly kissing and ravenously devouring each other. When my lips touched hers, I almost couldn’t resist biting off her beautiful lower lip. As I was caressing her head, neck, and chest, she bit my shoulder through my shirt, which felt both unbearably painful yet also incomparably pleasurable. I truly wanted for her to bite off a piece of my flesh and consume it. It was as if we had escaped from the prison precisely in order to come to this forest, and as if we had come here precisely in order to caress each other. The ground was covered in ankle-high grass, together with dry branches and the remains of the previous year’s fallen leaves. These leaves and branches had already fallen silent, having been buried by the early summer greenery, but because of our arrival they once again began to breathe and chatter. They began to enjoy a new youth and a new life, a new happiness and a new meaning. A well-known foreigner (whose name I can’t recall at the moment) once made a great and wise observation, that the most precious thing is when someone, in their final moments, is able to look back at their life with no regrets. At that moment we were enacting this principle. I pressed Hongmei beneath me (or maybe it was that Hongmei climbed under me). The insects grew silent as they watched us, listened to us, and smelled us. They even came up to caress us. Feeling her desire, I brought my hands up under her clothes until they reached her breasts—those breasts, which seemed both familiar and mysterious, were now trembling and covered in warm sweat, as if they were anxious to escape from my grasp and enter my body through my hands. The moonlight shining down on our heads was cool and peaceful, and at that moment we forgot that we were no more than two li away from the prison. We forgot everything we had thought and said before leaving the prison, even the direction, path, and objective of our escape. We forgot that we were not merely revolutionaries and political figures but als
o brilliant strategists and seers. We forgot about the future and about fate, as well as the complicated nature of revolution and the tasks and objectives that were hanging over our heads. We forgot about the landlords, wealthy peasants, anti-revolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists within China, and about the imperialists, revisionists, and anti-revolutionaries outside of China. We forgot about the topography and geology of the nearby terrain, and we forgot about our enemies. We forgot about everything and were heedless of everything. Just moments after our escape from prison—right there under the moon, next to the prison, in the mountain forest—we did that great, glorious, and correct thing. Just three days earlier, we had taken advantage of the period when Tao’er was in school to get naked in Hongmei’s house. Now, however, we felt as though it had already been more than three months since we had last done that thing. It was as if we hadn’t seen each other for more than three years, and we immediately needed to do that thing. We didn’t need revolutionary music, nor did we need to first strip naked and admire each other’s bodies, and much less did I need for her to spank and pinch me, like a stepmother beating her child. Without unfastening our buttons and without even a word, we fell into each other’s embrace and proceeded to passionately do that thing.
We did it in as short an amount of time as possible—shorter than half the length of a chopstick or the amount of time it takes a drop of water to fall down from the eaves of a house. After we finished, still without saying a word, we quickly straightened up, whereupon I impulsively grasped her hand, and we quickly headed along a shadowy path up the mountain. As we were doing that thing, we did not experience that soul-flying ecstasy that we had felt in the past, but nor did we experience the abrupt and sudden feeling of regret and resentment. We felt as though it was precisely in order to do that thing that we had escaped from prison, and otherwise it would have been impossible for us to attain peace of mind and calmly consider revolution and fate, our circumstances and lives. After we finished doing that thing, we were finally able to calm down, as though we were able to drink water after feeling parched or able to rest after feeling exhausted. It was like a rainstorm after a prolonged drought, like a meal after enduring acute hunger, or like stepping into a cool, shady forest after enduring excruciating heat. Afterward, although we proceeded quickly up the mountain, we didn’t feel the slightest sense of trepidation or fear. It was as though even if someone were to seize us and take us back, we wouldn’t feel much regret.