by Yan Lianke
Fully dressed, Lingling had lay down on the straw mat and fallen asleep. She had died in her sleep. Even in death, she looked as if she were sleeping. Her features were contorted, but only slightly, as if she’d suffered only a little bit. For the most part, her face looked serene and peaceful.
When Uncle sat up in bed and saw Lingling lying on the floor, he called her name. When she didn’t respond, he called her ‘Mummy’. When she still didn’t respond, he leaped out of bed, kneeled beside her and began shouting for her to wake up. His heart skipped a beat when he realized she couldn’t hear him. Fearing that she was already dead, he tugged at her hand, cradled her head in his arms and howled. ‘Mummy . . . Mummy . . .’
When Uncle took Lingling in his arms, she did not stir. Her head remained slumped against his chest. She was like a girl who couldn’t wake up. Although there was still a bit of pink in her cheeks, her lips were dry and cracked, as scaly as the wings of a dragonfly. He realized that she must have been running a very high fever when she died, a fever brought on by dousing herself in freezing water so many times the night before.
As one fever raged, another even worse fever had rushed in and claimed her, taken her from this world against her will. Taken her from Ding Village and from Uncle. Knowing she was going to die, but not wanting to disturb Uncle from his sleep, she’d got out of bed, put on her nicest clothes, lain down on the floor and let the fever claim her.
The fever had burned her alive. Her parched lips looked as if they’d been charred. And yet they were frozen in a faint smile, one of satisfaction for what she’d done for Uncle, and for what she’d done in life. A smile with no regrets.
CHAPTER FIVE
1
By the time Grandpa arrived at the house, Uncle had already plunged the knife into his thigh, releasing a fountain of blood. The day before, after he’d fallen in the courtyard, the pain had nearly killed him. But the gash in his leg would finish the job. It was his turn to die. Lingling was lying on the ground, waiting for him to join her, and Uncle was eager to catch up.
Grandpa showed up like the wind at the door, like a character out of a dream. He had struggled out of his dream and somehow made his way to Uncle’s house. When he arrived, his son was already dead. Uncle had won his race with death, and caught up with Lingling.
He died at about noon. The village was as warm and silent as it had been the day before, and the villagers were taking their midday nap. Inside the school, the sick residents searched for a bit of shade where they could lie down and rest. Grandpa was napping in his dream. In his half-muddled state, he imagined he heard Lingling’s voice shouting: ‘Daddy . . . Daddy . . . Daddy . . .’, her cries slicing through the air like bright shiny razors. Thinking she was calling to him, Grandpa sat up in bed and looked around the room, but Lingling was nowhere to be found. He lay down again and let the cicadas buzzing outside his window lull him to sleep. Again he heard the piercing cries, a confusion of sound ringing in his ears. Grandpa knew that he was dreaming, but he allowed the dream to wash over him, let himself be carried on the tide, moving past the school, across the plain, into the village and towards Lingling’s voice . . .
Grandpa saw Uncle step out of the house and into the courtyard. Lingling was on the ground behind him, clinging to his leg and crying. ‘Daddy, you can’t do this! You don’t want to end up like me . . .’ Grandpa couldn’t understand why Lingling was calling her husband Daddy, instead of by his name.
Mystified, Grandpa stood in the courtyard and observed them shouting and struggling, as if he were watching a performance on stage. He saw Lingling clutching Uncle’s leg, trying to prevent him from leaving, but she was too weak and frail to hold him back. Uncle began crossing the courtyard, dragging Lingling along behind him.
The courtyard was the same as it had been before Uncle and Lingling had moved in. There were the paulownia trees, with their thick canopies of green. Dazzling sunlight streamed through gaps in the leaves, leaving scattered pools of light on the cool, shady ground. There was the same washing-line strung between two trees, their trunks deeply scarred by the metal wire wrapped around them. There were rusted shovels and hoes propped against the outside wall, and a pig trough right outside the kitchen door. Tingting and her pigs were gone, but the disused trough remained. Hardly anything had changed. The only difference was an aluminum bucket, half-full of water, which someone had carelessly left in the middle of the courtyard, where anyone might stumble over it. When the bucket wasn’t being used, it was always kept in the kitchen. Grandpa guessed that someone had used it to wash on a hot summer day and had neglected to return it to the kitchen.
As Uncle passed through the courtyard, he stopped and stared at the bucket for a few seconds before limping into the kitchen. Lingling was still clinging to his leg. When Uncle picked up a knife from the cutting board and raised it over his head, Grandpa assumed that he meant to stab Lingling. He was about to rush forward and stop him when he saw his son raise his left leg, place his foot on the cutting board and plunge the knife into his thigh.
As the knife entered his flesh, Uncle screamed: ‘You fucking bastard, your wife’s dead – why are you still alive?’
At Uncle’s cry, Grandpa froze. He saw a flash of something white, sunlight glinting from the blade, and then a stream of blood as Uncle pulled the knife from his leg. Blood spurted from the wound like water from a public fountain, a mushroom-shaped projection that spattered the ground with droplets of blood, shining red pearls. A ray of sunlight pierced the kitchen window, transforming the fountain into a translucent pillar of blood, a shaft of clear red glass stuck sideways into Uncle’s leg. The blood rose at an angle and arched through the air before splashing to the ground, or streaming down Uncle’s leg. Droplets of blood littered the ground like grains on a threshing-room floor.
Lingling, who had been kneeling on the floor and weeping, suddenly fell silent. Her skin was ghastly pale, her face wet with tears.
‘Oh Daddy,’ she moaned. ‘How could you be so stupid? You’re the one who’s always saying we should take every day we can get. Why are you in such a hurry to join me?’
Uncle smiled down at Lingling. It was a weak and sickly sort of smile, as if he didn’t have the strength. It didn’t stay on his face for long. A sudden burst of pain rocketed through his body, causing him to drop the knife and clutch his leg, wrapping both hands around the gash that went through his flesh and down to the bone. Doubled over, he crouched next to the cutting board, his forehead covered with pellet-sized beads of perspiration . . .
Wrenching himself from his dream, Grandpa leaped out of bed and raced towards Uncle’s house, taking every shortcut he knew. When he burst through the gate, he saw the shiny white aluminum bucket standing in the middle of the courtyard, just as it had been in his dream. The bucket was half-filled with water, and a ladle bobbed on its surface like a tiny boat. Cicadas buzzed in the paulownia trees, their cries dropping from branches like pieces of overripe fruit. Among the pools of sunlight, Grandpa saw a trail of blood leading from the kitchen into the house, a long red string snaking across the courtyard. The air was filled with the stench of blood. Grandpa stared around him in a daze, then raced into the house and burst through the bedroom door. As soon as he saw Uncle lying on the ground beside Lingling, Grandpa knew that his boy was dead, that both of them were dead. Ding Liang and his new bride lay face-up, side by side on a straw mat. The hem of her skirt, soaked with his blood, bloomed with bright-red flowers.
2
Funerals were all about keeping up appearances. Sometimes they were a way of rehabilitating one’s reputation, or settling old scores.
As it happened, the bodies were piling up. Ding Yuejin’s younger brother, Ding Xiaoyue, passed away on the same day as Uncle; and Jia Genzhu lost his little brother, Jia Genbao, on the same day that Uncle lost Lingling. Four deaths in less than two days. Four bodies to bury, but not enough hands to go around. When Grandpa went into the village to ask for help digging the grave, he found that D
ing Yuejin and Jia Genzhu were a step ahead of him. Everyone Grandpa approached gave variations on the same answer:
‘Sorry, but I already promised Director Jia [or Director Ding] I’d help him.’
‘If you can wait a few days until we’ve buried Xiaoyue and Genzhu, I’ll be glad to help.’
‘Maybe you can set the bodies aside until we’ve got time to bury them.’
‘Genbao died before Lingling, and Xiaoyue beat Liang by a few hours. You know how burials are . . . first-come, first-served.’
When Grandpa went to Jia Genzhu’s house to ask if he could spare a few men, Genzhu stared at him for a long time without speaking. ‘Why don’t you ask your son?’ he said at last. ‘I hear the higher-ups are giving nice coffins to the heads of all the village task forces, to reward them for their hard work. Yuejin and I are directors of the Ding Village task force. Why don’t you go and ask your son where our coffins are?’
When Grandpa went to ask his nephew Ding Yuejin for help, the young man raised his chin and stared at the sky. ‘You tell me, Uncle . . . all the other village cadres got free coffins from the higher-ups. How come Hui hasn’t given us ours?’
Grandpa trudged back to Uncle’s house in disappointment. He sat beside the bodies of his son and his wife, gazing at the sky, staring at the floor, and waiting for his son Hui to return from his business in the city.
It was after dusk by the time Hui arrived at the house. When he saw the bodies lying side by side on two wooden doors in the living room, he shook his head and sighed. For a long time, he and Grandpa sat in the moonlit courtyard, heads bowed, each immersed in his own thoughts. The night was silent and still, as if there were not a living soul left in the village. Some time after midnight, they heard footsteps. The men who had gone to dig graves for Yuejin and Genzhu had returned to the village and were passing by the front gate. Grandpa raised his head and looked at his son.
‘We can’t wait. We have to bury them. Another day, and the bodies will start to stink.
‘You see how it is, Hui,’ he continued. ‘It’s not that there aren’t enough people to help. It’s that the villagers hate us. You should have listened to me when you had the chance. If you’d have got down on your knees and apologized, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
Ding Hui slowly rose to his feet. He looked at his father, then at the bodies of his brother and Lingling, and gave a derisive little snort.
‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll give them a funeral like no one has ever seen, and I’ll do it without asking anyone in Ding Village for help. I won’t even borrow one of their shovels. Just watch me.’
With this, Ding Hui stomped out of the courtyard and headed for home. He walked quickly and angrily, his feet pounding the streets with enough force to loosen cobblestones, or send bits of rock and brick hurling through the village and over the plain.
Grandpa was left alone to watch over the two corpses.
3
The night passed silently and uneventfully. But the next morning at daybreak, a group of strangers appeared in Ding Village: a dozen or so stout, strong men from neighbouring villages, all between the ages of thirty and forty, with years of experience digging foundations and constructing tombs. They arrived with an elderly man whom the villagers later learned was a seventy-year-old master engraver. It took them one day and one night to dig Lingling and Uncle’s grave. In our family plot, south-west of the village, they dug an open trench next to my mother’s grave, cut an entrance into one side, and proceeded to hollow out a large underground burial chamber. It was as spacious as a small house, vastly bigger than a typical grave. By then, the fever had swept across the plain and people were dying in droves, dropping like autumn leaves. With so many bodies to bury, graves had shrunk to about half their former size. But Uncle’s was a king-sized grave, a tomb built for two, and it dwarfed even the his-and-hers graves that people had dug before the fever. Uncle’s tomb was bigger: a lot bigger.
More important than the size of the tomb was the care that went into its construction. Working with a knife, shovel and miniature spade, the elderly engraver covered one wall of the tomb with an elaborately carved map of Dongjing, the capital city of the ancient Song dynasty (now the modern city of Kaifeng). His depiction of Dongjing’s famed pavilions and pagodas, gardens and lakes, temples and ancestral halls was like a painting in the palace of an emperor. It lent the tomb a classical air, a whiff of elegance and antiquity.
On the opposite wall, he engraved a landscape of modern-day Kaifeng that included high-rises and landmark buildings, fountains and public squares, the city hall and municipal communist party committee offices, thriving commercial districts and crowded shopping streets lined with vendors’ booths. Bold calligraphy above the classical landscape identified it as ‘Song Dynasty Capital’. The modern depiction was entitled ‘New Kaifeng’. Although the landscapes were a bit rough – not as fine as if they had been painted on a scroll, say – they were still an artistic marvel, a rarity in these parts. It was as if all the wonders under the sun had converged on Ding Village, to live in vivid detail on the walls of a tomb. The news spread quickly through the village, and people began flocking to see it.
They came in droves. They arrived in groups, like travellers on a package tour.
Everyone who climbed into the tomb emerged singing its praises. What exquisite craftsmanship, what elaborate carvings, what lifelike detail! The dragons and phoenixes on the Dragon Pavilion . . . so real that you could reach out and touch them. And the crowds of people . . . it was as if you could hear their voices. As the wondrous tales passed from person to person and spread through the village, the tomb drew even more curiosity-seekers. Young and old alike came to gawp at Uncle and Lingling’s grave. It was as if an imperial palace had suddenly sprung from the soil, or a long-lost city been unearthed on the plain.
The day that Uncle and Lingling were to be buried, people flocked to their grave like sightseers at an imperial tomb. It was just after sunrise, and the eastern horizon was a crimson lake, a sea of fire. The fields were brilliant with light, and shining golden stalks of wheat that now stood nearly knee-high. Around the fields there were clumps of grass in shades ranging from jade green to dull yellow. Uncle and Lingling’s twin grave was located at the far end of our family’s plot. Two mounds of soil stood on either side of the trench marking the entrance to their tomb. Even though the feet of many visitors had trampled the earth, the smell of freshly turned soil was still thick and fragrant in the air.
Villagers climbed down into the trench and emerged chattering and clicking their tongues in amazement. When others emerged from the trench after inspecting the tomb, they would ask: ‘Can you believe it?’ And the newcomer would say something like: ‘It’s almost worth dying for.’ Or ‘I wish someone would build me a tomb like that.’ Or ‘If I could be buried in there, I’d take the fever a hundred times over.’
Soon, the men who were helping to bury Jia Genbao and Ding Xiaoyue arrived to see the tomb. They were Ding Village’s most experienced excavators, gravediggers and bricklayers. The other villagers made way for them, so that they could see for themselves. As they descended into the tomb, the men seemed sceptical, but they emerged smiling and thoroughly convinced. One of them, a middle-aged gravedigger, asked the young man who was sitting outside the tomb, guarding the tools: ‘Did you do those carvings?’
‘No, my uncle did.’
‘Where’d he learn to carve like that?’
‘It’s a family tradition.’
‘You think he’d be willing to do some carvings in the two graves we’re digging?’
‘This is an imperial-style tomb,’ the young man answered. ‘Back in the old days, you’d have to be an official of the fourth rank to get a tomb like this. Of course, nowadays things are different, but even my uncle still needs permission from the higher-ups to do these carvings. Without a signed and sealed order from a government official, he can’t do it. You can’t go around carving this stuff on any old tomb.’
‘His brother Ding Hui is chairman of the county task force.’
That ended the conversation. The local craftsmen and gravediggers went back to the village. It was nearly time for the other villagers, who had promised to help bury Genbao and Xiaoyue, to begin preparing the bodies and placing them in the coffins that waited outside their families’ front gates. The two coffins had been constructed some time before, after the big tree-felling. Both were made of four-inch-thick planks of paulownia wood, with three-inch-thick planks of cedar on either end. The ends of the caskets, engraved with large funeral ideographs touched up with gold or silver paint, glittered like metallic flowers. The coffins were nice enough, but the graves Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin had dug for their younger brothers were nothing compared to the tomb my father had built for his younger brother. Uncle’s was an imperial-style tomb, befitting a high-ranking official. And my father had filled it with engravings of Kaifeng’s glorious past and present, so that Uncle might be laid to rest in the company of that inspiring scenery.
Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin thought the only pity was that the village adulterers should occupy such an elaborate tomb. They couldn’t help but take it personally, as a loss of face. Fortunately, their younger brothers had fine coffins, the sort usually reserved for the oldest and most venerable villagers. The sort of coffins usually afforded only by well-to-do families with a certain amount of power and influence. Caskets that reflected the wealth and status of their occupants, or their occupants’ relatives.
The two families lived on the same lane, just a few doors away from each other. As the villagers milled around the coffins at the two front gates, they talked about how nice the caskets looked, and how Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin had done their brothers proud, and although their graves weren’t nearly as fancy as the one Ding Hui had built for his brother, wasn’t it nice that they’d managed to come up with two such lovely coffins . . .