The Day the Sun Died

by Yan Lianke

  All of you spirits and human spirits . . . I beg you to protect our village. Protect our town. Protect that author, Yan Lianke. I’ve read many of his books. Because he is my family’s neighbor, the books he writes when he is out traveling the world are mailed back to his house, and so I can go to his house to borrow them . . . Years of Sun, Watery Hardness, Kissing Lenin, Ode, Hymn, Ballad. There were also Ding of Dream Village, The Dead Books, and so forth. I read and devoured all of them. However, I have to tell you the truth—which is that when I read his books, it is as though I were asking my eyes to eat rotten fruit or to harvest dried-up winter crops. But, since there were no other books available, I was forced to find flavor even in these rotten fruits and dried-up crops. Who made me a bit stupid? Whose fault is it that my brain is a bit slow? Who was it that permitted me to finish elementary school, but then left me without anything to do? Good or bad, his books contain writing—and even though I may be stupid, I still like to read. Therefore, I read Thousand Year History many times over, to the point that I was able to memorize every stem-and-branch traditional date that appears in the work.

  In early autumn, Uncle Yan, in order to write down the story of what happened to our town that night, once again moved out of his home and into a three-room house he had rented next to a reservoir to the south of town. It was a house with a courtyard, and he locked himself in there as though he were in jail. He remained in that courtyard for two full months, but in the end—despite covering the floor with discarded drafts and empty ink bottles—he didn’t even manage to finish the opening of the story. When faced with the reality of what happened that year, that month, and that night, he found himself in a state of confusion—at a complete loss as to where to begin.

  When it came to his writing, he felt an abject sense of hopelessness.

  He felt a similar sense of hopelessness at the thought of living on this earth but being unable to tell stories. Once, I saw him gnawing on his pen until it was completely chewed up. His mouth was making loud grinding sounds, and he spat the plastic pieces all over the floor, the table, and the piles of wastepaper that surrounded him. Then he began banging his head against the wall, as though his head hurt so badly that he would be better off dead. Then he began pounding his chest with his fist, as though he wanted to beat the blood right out of his heart. Tears cascaded down his face, but his inspiration, like a dead sparrow, refused to take flight.

  During that period, I would go every other day to walk around the ruins surrounding the crematorium, to look for Little Juanzi, who had disappeared. Along the way, I would often stop to see Uncle Yan Lianke, and give him some vegetables and noodles. And some fruit, and oil and salt. Then, I would borrow some books. On that particular day, I was taking him some spinach and soy sauce, when I saw him standing in the doorway. He was facing the side of the reservoir and the lake, and his face was as impassive as if it were a brick that had been removed from an old wall.

  “Please leave the vegetables inside.”

  He didn’t look at me, and his voice sounded like dust falling from a brick and flying everywhere. As I walked past him, I left that bag of spinach in his kitchen. Then, as I was proceeding into the room he used as his bedroom and study to grab the copy of The Dead Books that I wanted to borrow, I saw that the floor was covered in piles and piles of paper that he had written on and then ripped up—like someone who is ill and has vomited all over the ground. It was at that moment that I realized he had completely lost his inspiration. His imagination was dried up. He was unable to write the story he wanted to write, and consequently was so upset that he simply wanted to die. Astonished, I walked out of his room, and saw him heading toward the lake, like a ghost heading toward a grave. At that moment, I decided I would walk this fifty-li-long road by myself, and climb to the mountaintop—on behalf of our village. For our town, for our territory, for the people who live there, and for Uncle Yan Lianke, I want to tell you what happened that night. I ask that you . . . you spirits . . . protect our village and our people. I ask that you protect the dark night and the bright day. I ask that you protect the town’s cats and dogs. That you protect that author, Yan Lianke, whose ink has now run dry. Please give him some heavenly inspiration. Please give him an inexhaustible supply of heavenly ink and heavenly paper. Please permit him to keep writing and keep living. Please let him finish writing his Night of the People in three days and two nights, so that he may then include my family in his narrative and describe us in a complimentary fashion.

  BOOK ONE

  Geng 1: Pheasants Enter People’s Minds

  1. (17:00–18:00)

  Where should I begin?

  Let me simply begin here.

  Those last few days had been the dog days of summer. It was the Dragon Festival, held on the sixth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar, and it was so hot that the earth’s bones were bending and breaking, and the earth’s body hair had turned to dust. All the sticks and branches had dried up, and the fruits and flowers had fallen to the ground. Caterpillars were hanging in midair—desiccated and reduced to powder.

  A car was rumbling down the street, but it hit a bump and its tire blew out. The car then swerved in the direction of the blown tire. The villagers rarely used horses and oxen anymore, and instead most of them used tractors, but when they were busy with the crops, families with more money would sometimes use cars. When the car had a flat out in the fields, a family needed to use an old broken-down truck, or a tractor that smelled of red paint. Horses and oxen periodically appeared pulling carts, and there were even more people carrying bundle after bundle of wheat on their shoulders to the threshing grounds. They crowded greedily around the field and, as the road became blocked, they began arguing with one another.

  Someone was even killed. In fact, several people were killed.

  The night of the festival—the Dragon Festival was held on the sixth day of the sixth month—some people died because it was too hot, and my family’s funerary shop sold its entire stock of burial shrouds.

  Our funeral wreaths were also sold out.

  Our golden foil was also sold out.

  There had been boy and girl figurines made from yellow, white, and striped paper. There were gold and silver pots made from bamboo. Gold and silver mountains, and gold and silver horses. The entire room had been full of spirit money, like a bank that had just received a new shipment of coins. There was a white dragon-horse treading on the black hair of the child leading it, and several jade girls riding on the back of a green dragon. If you had walked into our family’s funerary shop—which was called New World—several days earlier, you would have been startled by the opulent goods. But this was actually just as well, because on the eve of the Dragon Festival business suddenly exploded, and in the blink of an eye all of the store’s goods were sold out. It was like when prices are about to soar, people go to the bank to withdraw their money in order to spend it. People empty their accounts, and even withdraw their old, overdue money. Then they buy the remaining goods from the stores along the main street.

  2. (18:01–18:30)

  Dusk arrived.

  Dusk was embraced by the muggy air. There was no breeze blowing, and walls and pillars of all of the houses were covered in ash. The world was burned to the point that it was almost dead, and people’s hearts were burned to the point that they were almost dead.

  After working in the fields all day, everyone was exhausted . . . utterly exhausted. Some people fell asleep while harvesting their wheat, while others fell asleep while threshing it. The wheat crop was excellent that year, and the grains were as large as beans—so large that flour poured out of the gaps between the grains. It poured out. The golden ears of wheat covered the road, as people stumbled over the grains. The weather forecast predicted that there would be a thunderstorm in three days, after which the sky would remain overcast—meaning that those who didn’t quickly harvest their wheat would find it rotting in the fields.

  So, people quickly went to harvest their wh
eat.

  They rushed out to harvest and thresh the wheat.

  All of the village’s scythes were busy, and people were hunched over whetstones sharpening them. Between heaven and earth, and between the fields and forest, there were people everywhere, and there was sound everywhere. Throughout the fields and throughout the entire world, there were people everywhere, and there was sound everywhere. One sound rubbed against another, as people with carrying poles brushed past each other and got into fights. Two families came to blows over a threshing machine, while, in the distance, my third and fifth uncles came to blows over a millstone.

  I huddled in the doorway of the shop, reading Yan Lianke’s novel Kissing Lenin’s Flowing Water Like Years. My parents had dragged my cot out into the entranceway, and as the light swung back and forth I could see the words NEW WORLD on the sign above our family’s funerary shop. The sign was written in gold characters on a black background, and in the twilight the gold characters appeared dull yellow. Not long after finishing dinner, my father brought out a glass of water, then sat on his bamboo cot on the side of the street. My mother hobbled over and handed him a paper fan, whereupon a man came and stood in front of him. The man was tall and had rolled up the sleeves of his white undershirt. A smell of sweat and wheat emanated from his head and body. He had a ruddy face and short hair, with a wheat leaf stuck in it like a tiny flag. He panted heavily, as though a rope were being pulled in and out of his throat. He said,

  “Brother Tianbao, please prepare three wreaths and five paper ornaments for my father.”

  My own father stiffened, and asked, “What’s wrong with your father?”

  “He died. At midday today he went to sleep in his room . . . he had been harvesting wheat for two days straight, so I told him to take a nap. He went to sleep, but suddenly sat up in bed, grabbed a sickle, and said that if he didn’t harvest more wheat, it would rot in the fields . . . if he didn’t harvest it, it would rot on the ground. Then he got out of bed and headed to the fields. He wouldn’t respond when anyone spoke to him, and didn’t even acknowledge anyone’s presence. He continued forward, focusing only on himself. When he encountered other people, they all remarked that it looked as though he was sleepwalking, and when others spoke to him, it appeared as though he couldn’t hear them. It was as though he were sound asleep and no one could wake him. He kept talking to himself, seemingly walking in another world and speaking to another version of himself. When he reached the wheat fields, he said he was thirsty and wanted to drink some water, then he proceeded to the canal at the base of the West Hill, and drank from it. After drinking—and while still asleep—he fell into the canal and drowned.”

  This man who told us that his father had fallen into a canal and drowned was from the Xia family on the east side of town. I later learned that I should address him as Uncle Xia. Uncle Xia described how his father had drowned in his sleep, but also said that his father had been fortunate—Uncle Xia hadn’t seen anyone dreamwalking for many years, but all of a sudden his father started dreamwalking, and since his father had died in his sleep, he must not have suffered in the slightest. With this, Uncle Xia stumbled away, his face ashen. He was wearing a pair of white cloth shoes, and his heels slipped into and out of the shoes.

  I watched as Uncle Xia hurried away, like someone who remembers he has forgotten his key and runs home to fetch it. I sat under the light in the entranceway idly browsing a book. It was Yan Lianke’s Kissing Lenin’s Years of Sun. This novel was about revolution, which is like a year-round tornado, and revolutionaries run around in all directions like crazy people. The four oceans are frothing and the clouds are seething; the five continents are trembling and lightning is flashing. When navigating the ocean, it is necessary to rely on a helmsman; and when living things grow, they must rely on the sun. These sentences sputtered out like a string of firecrackers, like a thunderstorm in the heat of summer—dense and muddy, loud and raucous. The general plot of the novel involved a group of locals who wanted to go to Russia to purchase Lenin’s preserved corpse. This was clearly a fabrication, but Yan Lianke wrote it as though it were true. I didn’t like this story, nor did I like the tone in which he told it. At the same time, I couldn’t figure out why this particular story was so seductive. As I was reading, Uncle Xia had come over, said something, then left again. I glanced up at my father, who was sitting on his cot in the entranceway. I saw that his expression was even darker than Uncle Xia’s—as dark as a cement wall. If Uncle Xia looked as though he had lost his key, my father looked as though he had just found an entire bundle of keys—including both useful and useless ones—and was unsure whether to throw them away or wait for the person who had lost them. Father hesitated, then stood up. Mother called to him from inside the shop, “Did someone else die?” Someone else had died. Father turned to her. “It was Old Xia from the eastern side of town, who fell into the West Canal while dreamwalking and drowned.”

  A question and an answer—the same way that when the wind blows, the tree leaves move. Father got up slowly and walked into the funerary shop . . . First I should say a few words about our shop. The shop was the sort of two-story redbrick building that you find along every northern town street. The second floor was used as a residence, while the first floor was used for business. In the front of the store there were two salesrooms, both of which were completely covered in papercuts and wreaths . . . including cutouts of oxen and horses, gold and silver mountains, and boys and girls. These are all traditional goods. As for modern goods, there were paper television sets, refrigerators, cars, and sewing machines. My mother was crippled and it was hard for her to get around, but she knew how to make papercuts, and she could make papercuts of window flowers, magpies, and mynas sniffing wheat and looking as if they were about to burst into song. She could make a papercut of a tractor, spurting plumes of smoke into the air. When villagers got married they would always ask her to make them festive papercuts, and even the village chief said that my mother was a master paper cutter.

  But making papercuts for weddings wasn’t profitable, because no one was willing to pay for them. Later, my parents opened our New World funerary shop. My father designed bamboo frames and my mother made papercuts. When the bamboo and papercuts were combined, they became funerary objects that people could purchase.

  People were willing to buy things for funerals, but not for weddings. It was all very curious.

  Everyone believed in dreams, but didn’t believe in reality. It was all quite odd.

  Speaking of my father, he was indeed very short—under one-point-five meters tall. As for my mother, she was very tall—much taller than my father. She was a head taller, though her right leg was shorter than her left. This was a result of having broken her leg in a car accident when she was young. After the accident, she was left crippled—permanently crippled. Therefore, my mother and father rarely went out walking together. My father was short, but when he walked, it was as though he were flying. He was short, but when he spoke his voice was as loud as thunder. When he became angry, the house would shake so hard that dust would fall from the rafters and petals would fall from the paper wreaths. My father, however, was a good man. He seldom got angry, and when he did, he usually didn’t hit anyone. In the fourteen years I’ve been alive, I saw him beat my mother only once, and I saw him curse her only a dozen or so times.

  The one time that he beat her, my mother simply sat there and let him. My father, however, was a good man, and after striking her a few times, he stopped.

  Whenever my father cursed my mother, she also simply sat there and let him curse her. My mother was a good woman, and whenever she let my father curse her, after a while he would stop.

  Both Mother and Father were good people, and they never beat me or cursed me.

  Our family opened the New World funerary shop, which sold wreaths, burial shrouds, and paper ornaments. Our family made a decent living profiting off dead people. Whenever someone died, it was a happy day for our family. But my parents never a
ctively hoped someone would die. In fact, sometimes they didn’t hope for anything at all. When business at the funerary shop was good, my father would ask my mother, “What do you think is going on? What’s going on?” My mother, in turn, would ask him, “What’s going on? What’s going on?”

  I heard my father inside the funerary shop asking, “What’s going on? What’s going on?” I turned to look, and saw that the funerary ornaments, which had been piled up as high as a mountain, were all gone. My mother was sitting in the same spot where there had previously been a pile of wreaths, and in front of her there were mounds of red, yellow, blue, and green paper. She was holding a pair of scissors in her right hand, and had a stack of folded red paper in her left. The floor was covered with paper scraps. In that pile of colored paper, my mother . . . actually . . . actually my mother continued cutting until she fell asleep.

  She fell asleep leaning against the wall.

  She became so exhausted making funerary ornaments that she fell asleep.

  My father stood in front of her and asked, “What’s going on? What’s going on? Someone placed an order for three wreaths and five paper ornaments, and tomorrow morning he will come to collect them.”

  I now looked back into the house, and when I saw my mother I was reminded of how Old Xia had died while dreamwalking. I was reminded how so-called dreamwalking is really a result of the way in which whatever you are thinking about during the day becomes engraved in your bones, so that after you go to sleep at night you continue your thoughts from when you were awake, and try to carry out those thoughts in your dreams. This is similar to what bureaucrats call to implement, but in popular discourse we simply say to carry out. In their dreams, people try to put their thoughts into practice. At that point, I began to wonder what I would do if my mother and father were to start dreamwalking. What thoughts might they have deeply engraved in their bones?