by Yan Lianke
But as it turned out, life under the new regime was not so simple. There would be many other dodgy schemes and fishy goings-on in both the village and the school.
Ding Village had changed, and life would never be the same.
3
Jia Genzhu’s little brother, Genbao, was getting married. This was not a dodgy scheme but a joyous event. Though Genbao had the fever, his family and neighbours – the whole village, in fact – had colluded to keep it secret and help him find a wife. When talking to outsiders, they would go on and on about how healthy he was, and what a great appetite he had, and how he could polish off two plates of food, two bowls of soup and three steamed buns at a single sitting. Genzhu had finally managed to convince a young, healthy, uninfected woman from another village to marry him. Now that the happy event was approaching, the family needed ten large tables for the wedding banquet, but all the banquet tables in the village had been used for making coffins. Unable to borrow the tables they needed, Jia Genzhu and his brother decided to take some desks from the school.
Jia Genzhu had spent the better part of the morning moving desks from the classrooms and loading them on to carts. As he was getting ready to leave, Grandpa stopped him at the gate and said that the desks were for student use only, and no one was allowed to move them. If Genbao wanted to take the desks out of the school, he’d have to do it over Grandpa’s dead body.
The yellow painted desks were brand new, stacked six to a cart. Grandpa began unloading desks from one of the carts, while twenty-two-year-old Genbao loaded them back on again. This had led to an argument, and all the residents had come out to watch.
Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin were there, as well.
The two men had been in charge of the school for three days. In that time, they had never eaten more than their fair share at mealtimes, nor had they taken any more communal medicine than was their due, but they had already made two trips into the nearest town to ask local cadres for help on behalf of the residents of the school. So far, they had managed to negotiate a subsidy of 10lbs of flour and 10lbs of rice for each sick villager, plus a one-third reduction in their household land taxes, collected after the harvest. It was an unexpected boon: not only were they getting free food, they were saving money on their taxes. At the very least, it would save them the trouble of arguing with tax collectors, come harvest time. It was in this happy atmosphere that Grandpa had to go and pick a fight with Jia Genzhu’s little brother.
‘No one is allowed to take the desks out of the school,’ Grandpa told Genbao.
‘But Professor Ding,’ said the young man, ‘I’ve got the fever, too, don’t you know?’
‘If you’ve got the fever, what are you doing marrying that girl?’
‘What do you expect me to do, stay a bachelor until I die?’
When Grandpa blocked the gate so that Genbao couldn’t take out his cart, the crowd tried to reason with him.
‘What’s wrong with borrowing a few desks?’ one man asked Grandpa. ‘It’s not like he won’t give them back.’
‘With everyone in the village dying, it’s no easy thing to find a wife,’ said another. ‘Professor Ding, you’re not trying to get back at Genzhu for taking over the school, are you?’
Grandpa maintained his position at the gate and said nothing. A warm sun shone high in the sky. At this time of day, most of the residents had stripped out of their padded coats and jackets. Some wore sweatshirts or old woollen sweaters; one man was wearing only a cotton shirt with a jacket draped over his shoulders. The season was too chilly for a single layer, too warm for a padded coat, and too apt to change, so wearing layers was a good solution. Grandpa wore a yellow sweatshirt of indeterminate age that made his skin look sickly. Beads of perspiration stood out on his sallow forehead like water oozing from a yellow loess plain. He had wedged his body in between the school gates, one hand gripping each side, his feet rooted to the ground like wooden stakes. Staring at their faces, Grandpa addressed the crowd:
‘If anyone here can guarantee that after you die, your children won’t come here to learn to read and write, I’ll let Genbao walk off with these desks right now.’
No one answered.
‘Can you guarantee me that?’ Grandpa asked, raising his voice.
Everyone was silent, not moving a muscle. The atmosphere grew chill. As they were standing in the schoolyard, wondering what to do, Jia Genzhu appeared. His step was unhurried, but his face was dark with suppressed rage. The crowd parted to let him pass. When he was standing face to face with Grandpa, he said: ‘Professor, did you forget what we talked about three days ago?’ His voice was cold and menacing.
‘As long as I’m still the custodian of this school,’ Grandpa answered evenly, ‘no one is allowed to take those desks.’
‘And you’ve done a fine job as custodian,’ Jia Genzhu conceded. ‘But doesn’t this school belong to the village? Isn’t it called Ding Village Elementary?’
Grandpa couldn’t deny such an obvious fact. ‘Of course it is,’ he answered.
Jia Genzhu had the voice of reason – not to mention the official seal of the Ding Village party committee – on his side. Taking a piece of paper and the village seal from his pocket, Genzhu squatted down and spread the paper on his knees. Then he put the seal to his mouth, blew on it to moisten the ink, and placed a round, bright-red mark upon the paper. Handing the paper to Grandpa, he said: ‘Is that proof enough? Now will you let him through?’
Seeing that Grandpa was not about to budge from the gate, Jia Genzhu squatted down again and scrawled the following line in pencil on the paper: ‘After a thorough investigation into the matter, we hereby grant permission for Jia Genbao to remove twelve desks from the Ding Village Elementary School premises.’ After signing his name with a flourish over the official red seal, he stood up and waved the paper in Grandpa’s face. ‘Got anything else you want to say?’
Grandpa briefly glanced at the paper, taking in the pencilled words and the official-looking red seal, then squinted suspiciously at Jia Genzhu. It was the sort of look one might give a little boy prone to telling fibs, a look of mingled pity and disdain. Everyone in the crowd, including Jia Genzhu, picked up on it, but they seemed to feel that this time, it was Grandpa who was in the wrong. After all, it wasn’t the end of the world, just a few desks. And didn’t he have a signed and sealed document, with words like ‘after a thorough investigation’ and ‘we hereby grant permission’, saying it was okay to release school property? Besides, it didn’t seem right to treat Genbao so badly on the eve of his wedding.
Uncle squeezed through the crowd to plead the boy’s case. ‘Dad, it’s not like the desks belong to us. Why bother yourself?’
‘Shut your mouth,’ Grandpa snapped. ‘If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this mess.’
Uncle smiled and said nothing. Still smiling, he melted back into the crowd, adding: ‘All right, all right, I’ll stay out of it. I suppose it’s none of my business.’
Zhao Xiuqin was the next to step forward. ‘Professor Ding, you can’t be that short-sighted. I don’t see your name written on any of these desks.’
‘How would you know, Xiuqin?’ Grandpa retorted. ‘You wouldn’t even recognize your own name.’
Zhao Xiuqin’s mouth fell open, but no sound emerged. For once, she was speechless.
Now it was Ding Yuejin who elbowed his way through the crowd, pushing people aside. ‘Professor, I gave Genbao permission to take those desks. Get out of the way and let him through.’
‘Oh, just because you gave permission, that makes it okay?’ Grandpa pushed his face so close to Yuejin’s that it seemed he might swallow him up.
Yuejin, unafraid of Grandpa, stared right back at him. ‘Jia Genzhu and I both gave permission,’ he declared loudly. ‘We talked it over and decided to let his brother take the desks.’
Grandpa stiffened and stared up at the sky, ignoring Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin. Then, with a quick glance at the crowd of villagers, he raised his c
hin and said: ‘If you want to get past this gate, you’ll have to drive right over me.’
Grandpa yanked the metal gates on either side of him shut, so that his body was trapped in the middle. It was as if he were soldered to the gate, and no amount of pushing, pulling or punching on the part of Genzhu or Yuejin was going to separate him from it.
The situation had reached a deadlock. The atmosphere had turned to ice. No one in the crowd said a word. They looked from Jia Genzhu to Ding Yuejin to Grandpa, waiting to see how the three men would break the impasse. By now, everyone realized that Grandpa’s refusal to let the desks leave the school had nothing to do with desks, or with the affair between Uncle and Lingling. It was a struggle for control of the school . . . and everything in it.
And so, silently, they waited. A black mood prevailed over the three men. Despite the early spring sunshine, the atmosphere sent a chill through everyone in the schoolyard.
The signed and sealed document trembled in Jia Genzhu’s hand. Ever so slightly, but the tremor was there. His face was the colour of storm clouds, his lips taut as strung wire. He eyed Grandpa warily, as if the old man were an ageing bull that hadn’t lost its strength to fight. An old ox who simply refused to die.
Unlike Jia Genzhu, Ding Yuejin showed no sign of anger. His was the helpless expression of a man whose face has just been spat in. For better or worse, Grandpa was still his uncle, and his former teacher, besides. There was very little Yuejin could do in this situation. Instead, he looked to Genzhu, hoping that the other man would do something to get Grandpa to step away from the gate and allow Genbao to leave with the desks. Since it was Jia Genzhu’s brother getting married, and his family who wanted the desks for the wedding banquet, it seemed up to Genzhu to resolve the situation. Everyone knew that Genzhu’s twenty-two-year-old brother had the fever, but since he had never sold his blood, it wasn’t clear how he’d become infected. The only reason Genbao had been able to find a wife – that is, to trick a girl from another village into marrying him – was that the entire population of Ding Village had conspired to hide the truth about his infection from outsiders. Genbao’s fiancée, two years his junior, was a pretty, well-educated young woman who had taken the university entrance exam and failed. She’d failed by just a few marks. A few more marks and she would have passed the exam, entered university and never had to marry Jia Genbao. But she hadn’t passed, and now she was marrying into Ding Village, marrying into the fever.
‘But mother,’ the girl had complained, ‘they say everyone in Ding Village has the fever.’
‘The villagers swore to me that Genbao doesn’t have it,’ her mother had answered. ‘Since he’s not infected, what are you so worried about?
‘I sent you to school for ten years,’ she reminded her daughter, ‘and you didn’t even pass the university exam. I haven’t fed and clothed you for twenty years to see it all go to waste. You think I’m going to let you live at home until you die an old maid?’
The girl had burst into tears.
Eventually, tearfully, she had promised to marry into Ding Village. The wedding was to take place in a matter of days. Once he was married, Genbao would be a real man, a man who might have descendants to carry on his family name. Because he had the fever, he probably wouldn’t live long enough to get to know his own children, but at least he wouldn’t die with so many regrets. He had been eagerly awaiting his wedding, happily making preparations, and now the only thing left was to find a few tables for the wedding banquet. Genbao never imagined that a few days before his wedding, he’d find Grandpa blocking his path.
Grandpa wasn’t just standing in the way of the desks, he was standing in the way of his happiness. A thin, frail young man, Genbao was still in the early stage of his disease. The initial fever hadn’t faded yet, and it had left him weak and listless. Because he was so small and sick, and because Grandpa was so many years his senior, Genbao could do nothing but look pitiful and hope his big brother would come to his rescue. Genzhu had promised that as long as he was alive and in charge of the school and the village, he would see to it that his family’s future was secure. This included paying for his younger brother’s wedding, making funeral arrangements for his elderly parents and adding a few extra rooms to the house, something they’d hoped to do during the blood boom but had never been able to afford. Yet here was Grandpa, blocking the gate and refusing to let Genbao borrow a few crummy desks. It was pitiful to see the way Genbao looked at his older brother, as if hoping he’d say something to make Grandpa get out of the way and let them leave with the desks he needed for his wedding banquet.
With a half-hopeful, half-embarrassed expression, Genbao stared up at his big brother, waiting for him to speak. After a few moments, Genzhu said calmly, ‘Genbao, take these desks back to wherever you found them.’
Genbao stared at his brother in confusion.
‘Do as I say. Put them back where you found them.’
Sadly, reluctantly, Genbao turned his cart around and began trudging back to the schoolhouse. The wheeled cart, groaning under the weight of so many desks, left a trail of dust in its wake. As they watched the cart move slowly across the schoolyard, the faces of the residents registered disappointment and dismay. They couldn’t understand why Genzhu had backed down, or why the confrontation had come to such an abysmal ending. The sun had shifted to the centre of the schoolyard, and the atmosphere was thick with the scent of early spring. Grass and trees sprouting on the plain filled the air with moisture, like dampness rising from a river.
Grandpa, too, was surprised that things had ended this way. He certainly hadn’t expected Jia Genzhu to be so reasonable, or to give in so easily. He suddenly felt guilty, as if he’d wronged Genzhu somehow, or ruined his little brother’s wedding. Gazing towards the schoolhouse at the frail young man unloading desks from his cart, Grandpa turned to Genzhu. ‘I’ll help you borrow some tables. I can’t believe there isn’t a single banquet table left in this village.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Genzhu answered icily. His words were cold, enunciated, deliberate. As he brushed past Grandpa at the gate, his face was hard and angry, the veins on his neck standing out like pale blue willow branches. Everyone in the crowd saw it: the coldness he directed towards Grandpa as he passed through the gate and began walking towards the village. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Clutching his walking stick, a tree stump with the branches removed, he limped slowly across the plain.
4
Events were beginning to form rings. First one ring, then another, interconnected like links in a chain.
Jia Genzhu’s return to the village was followed closely by my aunt’s departure: my aunt Tingting sweeping out of the village and down the road like a whirlwind, making straight for the elementary school. With her mouth twitching, and dragging my cousin Xiao Jun by the hand, she walked so quickly that he had to run to keep up with her, his little feet pounding the dirt.
The plain was an expanse of tender young wheat shimmering in the sunlight. In untilled fields where vegetation grew wild, tiny plants pushed their heads through the soil, reaching up to get a better look at the world. Across the plain, in Two-Li Village and Yellow Creek, those well enough to work were out in the fields, irrigating or tending to their crops. Their figures stood out beneath the distant sky like scarecrows swaying in the wind. And now, blowing in from the village, was another small figure, dragging a child behind her. It was a scene not unlike that night in the school, when Ding Xiaoming had pulled his wife from the storeroom and marched her back home.
It was midday, the hour when the villagers would normally be eating or preparing lunch. But on this day, no one in Ding Village was cooking, much less eating. Housewives who would usually be stoking fires had doused them. Cold water was poured into pots to stop them from boiling. Bowls were left empty on the sideboard. No one knew quite what had happened, but there was a sense that something big was about to take place. A crowd of men and women, young and old, adults and tiny children rolled
along behind my aunt like a cavalry, leaving clouds of dust in their wake.
A man standing in a doorway shouted to his wife who had just joined the crowd: ‘Haven’t you meddled enough already? Get back home!’ His wife detached herself from the mob and slunk into the house.
An old woman in the village square grumbled. ‘Haven’t enough people died already? Now you’re going to march over there and hound those poor people to death?’ Her son and grandson stayed where they were and didn’t join in the fun.
But other mothers snatched the bowls from their children’s hands and urged them on. ‘Go on, go and see what all the fuss is about . . . Hurry up, you don’t want to miss out on the fun.’ Their sons and daughters scampered off and followed the crowd towards the school.
Ding Village hadn’t seen this much excitement in years. Not since the fever arrived had there been so much drama. It promised to be even more exciting than Ma Xianglin’s big performance. This was something bigger and better: a real-life drama, not someone reading lines on a stage.
At this time of day, the school was quiet. Zhao Xiuqin and her two assistants were cooking in the kitchen. Most of the residents were in their rooms. The schoolyard was as silent and deserted as winter on the Central Plain. That is, until my aunt came rolling through the gate with her son in tow, followed by a large mob of villagers and their cavalcade of footsteps. As they pushed open the school gate, there was a metallic screech loud enough to make the roots of your teeth ache.
Grandpa and Uncle were the first people in the school to hear the noise. They were sitting in Grandpa’s quarters, arguing about what had just happened, and about whether or not Grandpa was right to have treated Jia Genbao the way he had.
‘Dad, you ought to remember that Genbao has the fever, too.’
‘All the more reason not to trick that poor girl into marrying him.’
‘It’s not like she’s from Ding Village. She’s not one of ours . . . why should you care?’