by Yan Lianke
Before Yingzi could reply, my mother grabbed her by the elbow and hustled her into the house, brushing past Grandpa without a word.
After they had gone, my dad and Grandpa were left alone on the street, locked in a father-son stalemate. The sun overhead cast a harsh light on the walls and tiled rooftops of New Street. From the fields outside the village came the faintest autumn chill, mingled with the delicate fragrance of freshly turned soil. When Grandpa raised his head to find the source of this scent, he saw Zhao Xiuqin’s husband Wang Baoshan in the distance, working his private plot of land. Not long earlier, Wang Baoshan had decided to let the field go fallow. Since his wife had the fever, he’d said, what was the point in ploughing or planting? Pretty soon, he wouldn’t have any family left to feed. But now that he’d heard the news about the new medicine, he was back outside, working in his field.
Turning the soil helps to keep it moist.
There’s still time to plant some winter cabbage.
Even if we don’t plant this year, it makes sense to keep the soil in shape.
There’s always next year.
Grandpa watched Wang Baoshan at work, ploughing his field and turning the soil. He turned back to my father with a smile. ‘You should come to Ma Xianglin’s concert tonight, too.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because the whole village will be there. It’s a good opportunity. You can kneel on stage and kowtow, tell everyone you’re sorry and that will be the end of it. One little apology, and we can put this whole mess behind us.’
‘Dad, have you lost your mind?’ asked my father, staring in disbelief. ‘No one in this village tells me what to do, least of all you. And no one else is asking for an apology.’
Grandpa looked carefully at his son’s face. It was as thunderously angry as a poster of a household god, those fierce deities that the villagers plastered on their doors to ward off evil spirits.
‘Do you take me for a fool, Hui?’ he snorted. ‘You think I don’t know that when you drew blood, you used the same cotton swabs on three or four different people? God only knows how many times you reused those needles.’
The look he received in return was pure hatred. ‘Old man, if you weren’t my own father, I’d slap you across the face.’ With this, my father brushed past Grandpa and followed my mother into the house.
‘Hui!’ Grandpa shouted at his son’s retreating back, ‘All right, I won’t make you kowtow in front of the whole village. But can’t you at least say a few words of apology?’
My father didn’t even bother to turn around. He had heard enough.
‘You’re not even willing to apologize?’ Grandpa pleaded, chasing after him. ‘Is that what you’re telling me, son?’
As my father reached the courtyard gate, he paused. ‘Don’t waste your time hating me,’ he spoke loudly and clearly. ‘Because before the end of this year, I’m moving my family out of the village and you’ll never see any of us again.’
My father ducked into the courtyard and slammed the gate behind him, leaving Grandpa standing like an old wooden hitching post on a new and more fashionable street.
But Grandpa had the final say: ‘Mark my words, Hui . . . you’ll come to no good end. You just remember that!’
2
Later that day, after the sun had set and the moon had risen, the villagers gathered at the school for music, songs and storytelling.
Using electrical cables from the classrooms, Grandpa and some of the village men rigged up several 100-watt bulbs and hung them from the basketball hoop, flooding the schoolyard with incandescent light. They placed wooden doors on piles of bricks to construct a makeshift stage. To this, they added a high stool for Ma Xianglin to sit on as he performed, and a slightly lower stool with a teapot and mug, in case he got thirsty. Once everything was in order, the performance could begin.
Villagers crowded into the basketball court in front of the stage, both the sick and the healthy sitting cross-legged on the ground, eager to join in the fun and see what all the fuss was about.
Nearly 300 villagers had turned out to see the concert. They filled the basketball court and the schoolyard like a flock of crows in a field. The sick sat towards the front, near the stage. Those who were healthy, still untouched by the fever, sat at the back.
The season was nearly over, and a late autumn chill had crept into the still night air. In Two-Li Village, Willow Hamlet, Yellow Creek and other nearby villages, they felt it too. The late autumn chill had spread through the county, the province, and all across the plain.
Some of the villagers who had come to see Ma Xianglin perform wore padded cotton jackets or had them draped over their shoulders. For those with the fever, catching cold was of vital concern: already more than a few people in the village had caught a cold and died. Even the tiniest cold could be life-threatening for someone with a weakened immune system, and the sick villagers sat huddled in their padded coats as if it was the middle of winter. The schoolyard was a jumble of laughing, chattering people. They talked about the new medicine and the fact that the fever could now be cured with a single injection. They talked about their good fortune and traded words of consolation, each as fragile as the wings of a cicada.
By now, the moon had risen over the schoolhouse. Ma Xianglin sat on the stage, perched on a stool clutching his fiddle. His face had a greenish tinge, the colour of death. The villagers realized that Ma Xianglin’s illness had reached a critical stage, and that he didn’t have much longer to live. If the new medicines didn’t get there soon, he would probably be dead within a couple of weeks.
And yet if he could spend each day like this, playing his fiddle and singing his cares away, maybe he could alter his fate. Maybe the difference between life and death really was that simple. Maybe he would manage to hang on for a few more weeks, or even a few more months. As long as he was willing to sing, and the villagers were willing to listen.
Grandpa emerged from his rooms with a thermos of hot water and two empty bowls. ‘Anyone thirsty?’ he called to the people gathered in front of the stage. He even bent down to ask several of the elderly villagers if they wanted anything to drink. When everyone had assured him that they were fine and not at all thirsty, Grandpa placed the thermos and bowls in a corner of the stage and turned to the ailing Ma Xianglin.
‘Shall we get started?’ Grandpa asked loudly. ‘The moon’s already risen.’
‘Let’s begin,’ answered Ma Xianglin in his sing-song voice.
With these words, Ma Xianglin was miraculously transformed. He began tuning his fiddle and confidently testing the strings (the instrument was already in perfect tune, and he knew it). Everyone knew that his white hair, scabby skin and purplish lips and gums were bad omens, signs that death was near. But as Ma Xianglin started to play, his face regained some colour, a glow that seemed to come from deep within. He smiled at the villagers and then, composing his expression, drew the bow across the strings of his fiddle. He looked as cheerful as a rosy-cheeked young man preparing for his wedding. Even the sores on his face glowed red beneath the stage-lights, like tiny spots of brightness.
The blood seemed to have returned to Ma Xianglin’s darkened lips, turning them red again. Eyes half-closed, he bobbed his head in time with the music, playing only for himself, as if the audience didn’t even exist. The fingers of his left hand moved up and down the neck of his instrument; now slowly, now more quickly. With his right hand, he drew his bow back and forth between the strings; now quickly, now slowly again. The sound that emerged was like water flowing across parched desert sands. Clear and cool, but with an undercurrent of stifling heat; hot and prickly, but with a promise of something fresh and clean. After nodding a few times, Ma Xianglin announced that he would open with ‘Words on Leaving Home’, a ballad known to all the villagers. He cleared his throat and began to sing:
A son left home to journey far away
His mother saw him to the village gates
Her words fell light upon his ears
Oh son, she said, my son
The world out there is not like home
Remember to dress warmly
When the weather’s cold
And keep your pantry stocked
So that you never starve
When you meet an old gent
Respect him as you would your father
When you meet an old woman
Address her as you would your mother
Call the older ladies ‘Auntie’
And the younger ladies ‘Ma’am’
Treat young women as your sisters
And young men like brothers of your clan . . .
When Ma Xianglin had finished singing the song, he launched into another about Mu Guiying, the famous female general of the Song dynasty. He sang about Cheng Yaojin, a salt merchant who had led a peasant uprising during the Sui dynasty. He recounted the adventures of the ‘Three Knights-Errant and the Five Sworn Brothers’ and other well-known heroes from Chinese history.
As Ma Xianglin basked in the glory of being on stage, the villagers became conscious of small details they had forgotten about him. For one thing, Ma Xianglin had never had a talent for remembering lyrics. As a young man, he’d failed to master the big book of lyrics and librettos that all students of Hunan folk opera were required to memorize. Although he had been an enthusiastic student, his inability to memorize lyrics and his tendency to play and sing off-key had led his operatic master to dismiss him from the theatre troupe. Thus deprived of a professional career, Ma Xianglin had spent a lifetime singing and playing his three-stringed fiddle in the confines of his family’s courtyard. This night, before an audience of 300 people, was no different: Ma Xianglin had still not mastered that big book of lyrics and librettos. Unable to remember all the words, he simply sang the passages he could remember. Fortunately, those he remembered were the best ones.
Ma Xianglin performed well-loved songs, extracts from his favourite plays and bits from operas. Not only was it his first time performing for the villagers, it was the first time he’d played on a real stage. It was his first proper performance, and perhaps his last. For all these reasons, and because Grandpa had gone to so much trouble to arrange the concert, Ma Xianglin put forth all the passion and concentration he could muster. He stood straight and tall, his head held high. He sang with half-closed eyes, seeing no one, completely immersed in his music. As the fingers of his left hand danced up and down the strings of his fiddle, he drew the bow in his right hand back and forth. Although his voice was a bit raspy, its coarseness was like a pinch of salt in a pot of pork-bone soup: it only made the broth seem tastier.
He sang in the local dialect and his audience could understand every word. He sang about generals and rebels, robbers and heroes, and real-life characters from Chinese history, all of whose names were known to most of the villagers, at least the older ones, and whose faces often decorated colourful Chinese New Year posters. Although these characters had lived hundreds, even thousands of years ago, their adventures were as familiar to the villagers as if they’d happened yesterday. For those who knew the stories already, hearing Ma Xianglin perform was like eating from only the finest dishes at the banquet. For teenagers and children who didn’t know the background to the stories, watching Ma Xianglin’s gestures and expressions was enough.
As Ma Xianglin bobbed his head in time to the music, his forehead began to perspire, giving his face an even ruddier glow. Beads of sweat flew from his face, spattering the people sitting nearest. The rhythmic tapping of his feet on the willow planks of the stage sounded like someone striking a wooden fish-drum over and over. When he reached a particularly exciting passage, he would begin stomping on the boards with his right foot, like he was pounding a gigantic drum.
Although the schoolyard was filled with music and song, the evening was eerily silent. No one in the audience made a sound. The moon and stars above were milky-white; they cast a stark, radiant light over the plain. From distant fields of wheat, now blanketed in pale-green seedlings, came the whisper of new life, a sound as imperceptible as a cloud of feathers drifting through the air. In fields that had been allowed to go fallow – for some of the villagers, there seemed little point in planting this season – rows of withered stalks gleamed pale beneath the moonlight, giving off a whiff of futility and decay. Closer still, from the ancient path of the Yellow River, the smell of sand: as if the grains had been heated over a fire and then doused with water. The scents converged in the schoolyard, mingling with the cool night air and touching the proceedings with a different kind of atmosphere, something peaceful and hypnotic, set to the strains of Ma Xianglin’s music.
Ma Xianglin smiled and nodded, bobbing his head in time to the beat. Like a maestro giving the performance of his career, he was so immersed in his singing that he scarcely noticed when his voice grew hoarse. The villagers were equally rapt. Watching Ma Xianglin’s impassioned performance, it was easy to forget that they were just like him: that they too had the fever and that any day might be their last. His passion was infectious. It was so easy to forget about everything. To think about nothing but the music, losing themselves in Ma Xianglin’s singing, the sound of his three-stringed fiddle and the rhythmic tapping of his feet on the boards of the stage.
That was all there was. Nothing else mattered.
A strange deathly silence had settled over the schoolyard. An audience of nearly 300 people, as quiet as an audience of one, listening to Ma Xianglin’s voice:
With sword in hand,
Xue Rengui marched west
For days and nights and hundreds of miles
His men and mounts withstood the test
Exhausted and outnumbered,
Through hamlets, villages and towns
They felled a mighty army
And struck their enemies down.
Suddenly, the schoolyard was not as silent as before. It started with whispers, which turned into loud conversations. Some of the villagers began turning to look behind them. Although it wasn’t clear what they were looking at, others followed suit. In the midst of all this looking and pointing, whispering and talking, Zhao Xiuqin and her husband Wang Baoshan stood up from the audience and shouted: ‘Professor Ding . . . Professor Ding!’
The music and singing came to an abrupt halt. Grandpa rose from his place near the front of the stage. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Are there really new medicines that can cure the fever?’ Zhao Xiuqin asked loudly, looking at Grandpa. ‘And don’t lie to me like you’ve been lying to the whole village.’
‘I’ve been a teacher all my life,’ answered Grandpa. ‘Have you ever known me to tell a lie?’
‘But your son Ding Hui is sitting back there,’ Wang Baoshan took up his wife’s argument, ‘and he says there is no such thing. He says he’s never heard of these new medicines that are supposed to cure the fever.’ He turned to look towards the back of the schoolyard.
As if on cue, everyone in the audience swivelled their heads to look.
There, standing at back of the crowd with my sister Yingzi, was my dad. No one had imagined that he would actually show up at the concert. But he hadn’t wanted to be left out, so had come to join in the fun, to listen to the music and stories just like the rest of the villagers. And while he was there listening, he had apparently told someone that there weren’t any new medicines that could cure the fever.
That was what had caused the ruckus, and the trouble that followed.
By now, all of the villagers were staring at my dad. They waited for him to speak, as if his words might hold the cure they had been hoping for.
Ma Xianglin was no longer singing. He stood on stage, watching the events below. The silence that followed was deafening. The sort of silence one hears after the fuse has been lit on a bundle of dynamite or a keg of gunpowder. The villagers seemed to be holding their breath, as if the slightest exhalation might set off an explosion. They stared at Dad and Grandpa and wait
ed to see what would happen. They waited for the explosion, and the aftermath.
My dad spoke first. ‘What’s the point in lying?’ he shouted over the heads of the crowd. ‘Why don’t you just tell them the truth? There aren’t any new medicines.’
Once again, all eyes turned to Grandpa.
Grandpa said nothing.
He stood stiffly, staring back at the villagers. Then, skirting the edge of the audience, he began walking towards my dad. He moved slowly and deliberately, threading in and out of the crowd, struggling under the weight of its gaze, until he had reached the back of the schoolyard and was standing face to face with his son. In the yellow glare of the light bulbs, Grandpa’s face was a mottled blue and purple; his eyes, two angry red orbs bulging from their sockets. As he glared at his son, he clenched his fists unconsciously and chewed at his lower lip, raking it with his teeth.
Dad stared back at Grandpa, his face impassive, daring him to do his worst. Father and son stared at each other coldly, stubbornly, neither willing to back down. With so many villagers watching, the schoolyard seemed to have as many pairs of eyes as trees in a forest; the atmosphere was as dense as the sandstorms that blew across the plain. The looks that passed between father and son were cold as ice, as sharp as daggers. Looks that could kill.
The moments stretched on. Grandpa was still clenching his fists, perspiration dripping down his back. The corner of his mouth began to twitch as if being tugged by an invisible string. There was another involuntary twitch, and then, with a loud cry, Grandpa attacked. Arms outstretched, he lunged forward and grabbed my dad by the neck, throwing him off balance. Before anyone could react, Grandpa had wrestled Dad to the ground and had both hands wrapped around his throat, and was choking him.
‘How would you know there aren’t any new medicines?’ Grandpa shouted. ‘How would you know? . . . I’ll teach you to buy people’s blood! I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget!’
Still shouting and cursing, Grandpa dug his thumbs into my dad’s throat, expertly cutting off his airway. Dad lay sprawled on the ground where he had fallen, flailing his legs and trying to push Grandpa away, but Grandpa was now straddling his chest, thumbs pressing down hard on his Adam’s apple. With a sickening crunch, Dad’s windpipe collapsed, and his eyes rolled back in his head, bulging from their sockets. His kicking slowed; his feet pedlled the ground a few times and then stopped. His hands grew weak, then fell away from Grandpa’s chest.