by Yan Lianke
Upon saying this, Uncle departed.
He walked out of the room, like a doctor leaving a sickroom after having examined a patient. “Don’t exhaust yourself to the point that you’re making papercuts and wreaths in your sleep, only to earn a few extra dollars . . . If you need money, you can sell a few barrels of that oil.” After leaving our house and going into the street, Uncle glanced back, but then looked away again. He got into a car waiting in the entranceway, and turned on the ignition. Two columns of light shone onto the street, and as Uncle was about to drive away, he rolled down the window and exchanged a glance with my father, who had come out to see him off.
My father stood there watching my uncle’s car drive off. “When will I have a chance to make you a wreath.” This seemed to be both a statement and a question. His voice was neither particularly loud nor particularly soft. When he turned and saw me standing behind him, he stared in shock. Then he patted my head and, with a smile, proceeded back inside.
He then went into the crematorium.
2. (21:21–21:40)
Bodhisattvas, Buddhas, Confucius, Zhuangzi, and Laozi . . . I’ve told this story in a highly fragmented and disjointed manner. Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mencius, and Xunzi, together with Buddhists and Daoists. Local deities and kitchen gods. I have knelt here for a long time recounting my woes. Have you all heard my story of what happened on this night of this day of this month of this year? Ah, ah, I see your shadows as you stand there in midair. I hear your footsteps as you walk back and forth through the air. You sound like a breeze blowing. Oh, oh. So, there is, in fact, a breeze, and as it blows over my face it feels as though you are all reaching out to caress my cheeks. Mother Wang and the Buddha. Tripitaka and Monk Sha. Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang. The Star of Literature and the Star of Heaven. Can any of you tell me where the end of the thread of my jumbled story can be found? If you can’t, I’ll have no choice but to set aside this end of the thread and start looking for the other.
In that case, I’ll start tugging at the other end of this story.
After Uncle left that night, I went to the crematorium to haul away the corpse oil my family had purchased from Uncle. That was truly a terrifying task, but I got accustomed to it and it no longer appeared so frightening—the same way that, over time, people can become companions with lions and tigers. It appeared there was no longer any boundary between day and night. The crematorium was devoted to cremating human corpses, and in this respect it marked a threshold through which people passed to another world. The crematorium had been in operation for more than a decade, and was older than I. Events from more than a decade earlier are like last winter’s dried leaves and branches, and when a new spring rolls around they are rendered inconsequential. Everyone will forget about them. Truly forget. I don’t know how my uncle became director of the crematorium. He had been running the crematorium since before I was born, and the only difference was that when he first became director no one in town was willing to speak to him, since he had switched from burial to cremation—reducing human corpses to ashes. He reduced complete and intact people to ashes, and furthermore asked the relatives to pay him several hundred yuan. Eight hundred yuan. It is as if after burning down my house and digging up my grave, you still expect me to pay for the kindling you used to light the fire. It is as though I have to pay you for your efforts in burning down my house and digging up my grave, and reimburse you for the money you spent on renting the tools you needed to accomplish these tasks. At one point, my uncle walked over to our funerary shop. Someone from behind threw a rock at him, and someone in front spat in his face. As he walked over, there was a warm and familiar voice behind him, saying, “Director Shao, Director Shao.” My uncle turned around, whereupon the voice became cold and hard. “Director Shao, I’ll fuck your grandma. Director Shao, your entire family is better off dead!” Those curses were coming from someone whose mother had been cremated a few days earlier or whose father had been reduced to ashes. The person stood behind my uncle and stared at him. In his hand, he was holding a brick that could be used to kill or a shovel that could be used to decapitate.
My uncle stood in the middle of the street, his face pale. He was one-point-eight meters tall, and resembled a sturdy yet powerless tree that could be blown over by the wind at any moment.
“Director Shao, let’s fight!” As the person hollered and cursed, Uncle looked back and said, “Let’s go! Let’s go to the outskirts of town for this. I don’t want to splatter your filthy blood all over the town’s streets.”
My uncle walked toward the man who was cursing him. He stood there silently, his face ashen. Everyone assumed that, after being cursed like this, Uncle would resign as director of the crematorium. Instead, he simply went up to the man, ground his teeth, and said, “We must change our customs to conform to the state’s policies. I will definitely send all the corpses to the crematorium, and have them reduced to ashes.”
Over the following day and a night, Uncle plastered notices and advertisements on the walls of the town’s streets and alleys, as well as the walls of the villages surrounding the town. The advertisements said, In order to leave some land for our children and grandchildren, we are switching from burial to cremation. They said, Only those people with no descendants of their own would dare to not leave any land for our children and grandchildren. They said, The state has specified that if it discovers that anyone has been secretly buried, then no matter how long that person has been buried, the corpse will be disinterred and cremated, and furthermore the family of the deceased will be fined a certain amount of money and a certain amount of land. They said, For the sake of the nation and the people, the government will award a certain amount of money and a certain amount of land to anyone who reports that a family has secretly buried a relative.
As a result, none of the villagers dared to openly bury anyone.
No one dared to let a grave be visible.
The villagers had no choice but to take their dead to the crematorium to be cremated.
One night, however, a few people went to Uncle’s villa, broke down his door, smashed his windows, and lit a fire in front of his house. From that night forward, Uncle stopped speaking to people and stopped doing things for them. He also stopped going out for solitary strolls. Instead, he stayed inside the crematorium day in and day out, as though he were so dedicated to his work that he barely even had a chance to return home.
I must confess. It was, in fact, my own father who informed on those villagers and townspeople who secretly buried their dead.
Whenever someone died and the family began to prepare for a burial while trying to keep it a secret, my father would go to the crematorium at night under the cover of darkness, and inform his brother-in-law. If he ratted out one person, he would earn four hundred yuan; and if he ratted out two people, he would earn eight hundred yuan. Villagers typically earned only a few hundred yuan a month, and even if they left the village to find work, they could never earn a thousand yuan a month. All my father had to do was to go a couple of times to the crematorium on the hill outside town, and he could earn nearly a thousand yuan.
At that point, our family and Yan Lianke’s were neighbors. Yan’s family had built a three-room, tile-roofed house, and every day the sulfuric odor from the brick wall behind his house would seep into our courtyard. My father and my grandmother would smell this odor every day. Once, my grandmother noticed the odor, then looked at the Yan family’s wall and sighed, “When will my family be able to build itself this sort of tile-roofed house? When will we ever be able to build this sort of house?”
My father stood in front of his mother.
On another day, my grandmother asked, “Will our family ever be able to build a tile-roofed house in this lifetime? Because if we can, you will be able to find a wife and get married, and I will be able to die in peace.”
Standing in front of my grandmother, my father blushed bright red.
On another day, after my grandmother fell ill, she carried over a
jar of Chinese medicine and gazed at my father, saying, “I’m afraid I won’t live to see you get married and find a job. I’m afraid you won’t ever have an opportunity to live in a tile-roofed house.” My father was twenty-two—an age at which many of the other village men had married, and even become fathers. They had all already either built tile-roofed houses or moved into apartment buildings. However, my father, apart from the fact that he resembled a twenty-two-year-old adolescent with his face covered in pimples, displayed no other hint of happiness. He stood forlornly in front of my grandmother, like a sheet of discarded wastepaper. He appeared ashamed and helpless. Autumn leaves fell from the sky, circling around Father’s head as though beating his ears.
At this point, from a location not far away, there was the sound of footsteps. “Quick, quick, Grandma Zhang is not well. Take her to the hospital . . . Take her to the hospital.” When my father heard those shouts, he rushed forward. He saw that the other villagers were also running over to the Zhang family’s house. One person rushed over with a stretcher. Another rushed over with a rice bowl, then tossed the bowl to the side of the road. They were all so anxious, it was as if they were afraid the sky was going to collapse. My father stared at the front door of the Zhang family house. His twenty-two-year-old face was bathed in sweat. He didn’t see anyone carry Grandma Zhang out of the house, so he waited a while, then a while longer. Some people entered with an empty stretcher, then reemerged with the same empty stretcher. When they entered, they looked surprised and alarmed, but when they reemerged, they appeared calm and mysterious. Beneath their mysterious expression, however, they had a look of excitement, like sunlight shining down into a deep well.
My father understood. He understood that Zhang Mutou’s grandmother, from across the street, was already on her last legs. He knew that the Zhang family, in order to avoid having her cremated, had resolved not to publicly weep or hold a funeral procession after her death. They also resolved not to wear mourning clothes. Instead, they acted as though no one had died. They closed their front door, and the entire family knelt before the corpse for three days, but were careful not to let anyone see them, or know what they were doing. They all acted as though they hadn’t seen or heard anything. As a result, the family managed to keep the death a secret. Three days later, in the middle of the night, they carried the body to a grave and buried it, then placed a pile of grass on top of the newly dug grave, together with cornstalks and tree leaves. In order to keep the burial a secret, no one breathed a word about the death, and instead everyone made only silent gestures. In those days, this was a common practice in the village after someone died.
However, my father disrupted this practice. As though he were piercing a boil, he put this secret on display for everyone to see, willingly serving as a spy and an informer. At the time, my father was only twenty-two, and the pimples on his face burned bright red. He hid in the courtyard and pinched his pimples until they were black and blue. He kept peeking out at the Zhang family’s house across the street. He kept looking at the red bricks of the wall in back of the Yan family’s new house, and kicking them. He suffered there until the sun had set, at which time he finally came out and proceeded toward the crematorium on a hill outside town.
He accepted four hundred yuan from my uncle at the crematorium.
By the time he returned, gripping four one-hundred-yuan bills, Grandma Zhang’s corpse had been exhumed and hauled away, as though a prison van had hauled away an escaped prisoner. In the quietness of the village, even as the final traces of the setting sun were fading, you could hear voices exclaiming, “The Zhang family is cursed! The Zhang family is cursed!” This was the only expression of sympathy that the villagers uttered after Grandma Zhang’s corpse was hauled away to be cremated. No one had any inkling that it had been my father who had exposed the family’s secret. How could such a significant incident have been kept a secret? If they really didn’t want people to know, they shouldn’t have done it. After exposing the Zhang family’s secret burial and returning to the village, my father was wandering the village streets in twilight, and when he saw other villagers eating their dinner, he acted as though nothing had happened. When he went to report the secret burial, he had taken an old hoe, explaining that he was going into town to repair it, and when he returned, he did, in fact, have a freshly welded hoe. He acted as though he were carrying it home after having had it repaired. It was truly as though nothing had happened. Under the setting sun, the birds returned to their nests, while the villagers ate their dinner and discussed their plans for the next day.
It was truly as if nothing had occurred.
The only change was that the Zhang family’s door was now unlocked. Their house was as still as the dead of night.
When my father left, he was carrying a broken hoe, but when he returned he was holding a newly repaired one—meaning that now he had something to do with his hands. He could place his hand on the hoe handle, and in this way was able to calm himself down. He was like a bird returning to its nest at dusk. He acted as though nothing unusual had occurred. When he returned, he glanced over at the Zhang family’s house. He paused and looked around, but the uncanny stillness made him return home. When my grandmother brought him a rice bowl, he looked up and stared at her for a long time. “Next year, our family should also build a tile-roofed house.” As Father was saying this, he placed the hoe under the eaves of his house, then looked out at the Yan family’s new brick house. “Next year, our family should also build a tile-roofed house. We definitely must build a tile-roofed house.” He waited until Grandmother appeared pleasantly surprised, whereupon Father took the bowl and began gulping down his rice. He then squatted there without saying a word, his face pale. Crouched, his body resembled a cremation urn.
In this way, each time someone in the village died, my father was able to purchase several extra bricks for his house.
Each time someone in the village died, my father was able to buy another large tile for his house.
If anyone tried to secretly bury a relative, eventually the people in the crematorium would know. The enforcement brigade and the cart puller from the crematorium would invariably show up at the dead person’s house shortly after the death. Amid the cries and wails, the cart puller would haul away the corpse. In this way, the law would be enforced. The corpse would be cremated. It would be reduced to ashes. At these moments, my father would never be in the village. Instead, he would always return to the village a day after the corpse had been cremated. It seemed as though every time someone in the village died, my father would just happen to be away visiting his relatives. It was as though he didn’t know a thing. He would then return to the village and stay in his house without going outside. Sometimes it would be someone living in our own alley who would pass away, and although my father would be the one who informed the crematorium so that the carter could come seize the corpse, he would nevertheless ask my grandmother to go to the family’s house to pay a condolence call and offer a funerary present. If everyone else was offering ten yuan as a condolence gift, he would tell my grandmother to give twenty yuan. If everyone else was offering twenty yuan, he would tell my grandmother to give thirty or forty.
Most of the time, however, there was no opportunity for him to offer condolences. This is because on the days when people were dying and being buried, Father was usually not in the village and presumably didn’t know what was happening. This continued for half a year, during which time more than a dozen of our neighbors and fellow villagers died, and our family managed to save five thousand yuan to build a new house. But that winter, my father once again left the village for a couple of days, and on his way back he happened to run into the legal enforcement brigade and the family of a deceased person. That was a bitter cold day, and the earth and sky were both ashy gray. The wheat sprouts in the fields resembled the earth’s body hair. My father walked back from our relative’s house. He crossed over the mountain ridge and cut through a gully, and when he reached a hillside f
ield he saw that the enforcement brigade was at the Yang family tomb. The men were like a flock of birds flying overhead and discovering pile after pile of cornstalks. With the sort of shovel typically used by prospectors, the enforcement brigade quickly dug a hole that was as thick as a man’s arm in the middle of the grave. Then they placed several jin of gunpowder into the hole, resealed it, and lit a fuse protruding from the hole. Under the gray sky, the sparks produced by the fuse made loud popping sounds. They shouted, “Step back, step back!” as they retreated to a safe distance. Then they waited. And waited. And waited until an incredibly loud rumble exploded from the grave. The hillside trembled, the ground trembled, and everyone’s heart trembled. Then everything calmed down again. The enforcement brigade returned to the grave and proceeded to kick into a pile the fragments of bone and flesh that had exploded out of the grave. Then they poured some gasoline and lit a fire. In this open-air grave, they cremated the remains of the deceased. Flames rose up into the air, as though someone’s house had caught on fire. You could hear a popping sound as the flames leaped up. It sounded like a whip, as though the corpse were being repeatedly whipped. There was the smell of gas, and of burnt flesh. The air was full of a burning smell, and the people who lit the fire stood around it for a while. It was the middle of winter, and the mountain ridge was very cold. Some of the people standing around the fire held out their hands to warm them. My father observed from a distance. He couldn’t believe his eyes, but it was real. He earned four hundred yuan from this. From the very beginning, he had been the protagonist of this story, and without him, there wouldn’t even have been a story. In the area of the sky that was still illuminated, the predusk light of the setting sun was the color of fire, like gray ashes covering a still-burning fire. There was a faint smell of something burning. It reeked of burnt flesh and bone, as though someone had been cremated in the open air. There even seemed to be the sound of anguished cries as someone was being cremated. It was very faint, yet quite distinct. It was the sound of one agonized scream after another. Later, the voice grew hoarse. As the gasoline-lit fire died down, the screams also became quieter and quieter. Finally, they were replaced with sounds of moaning. My father stood next to another family’s grave located about a hundred meters away. The trunks of the old willow and cypress trees on the family’s grave were as thick as barrels, and were blocking his line of sight. There wasn’t any trace of cold or shock on his face, and instead there was merely a look of astonishment. He continued staring at the Yang family’s grave, which had been exploded and burned with gasoline. His face had a layer of pain, from where he had gotten burned by the fire. It was as if the blood in his face had been ignited by the gasoline. His face was baked dry by the gasoline, and the skin that was left behind was painfully cracked.