by Yan Lianke
In that instant, two trucks drove into the village and parked in front of Uncle’s house. Each truck contained a coffin wrapped in several layers of cloth and heavy paper. When the coffins had been unloaded, they were placed on long wooden benches and carefully unwrapped.
By now, the trucks had attracted a crowd of curious villagers. They clustered around Uncle’s front gate, eager to get a look at the coffins. What they saw were a pair of his-and-her caskets. Both were made of gingko, an extremely rare and expensive timber.
With the spread of the fever, death had become commonplace on the plain. People died like falling leaves, like lamps being extinguished. Timber was in short supply, and the dead needed coffins as badly as the living needed houses. Paulownia trees were as scarce as silver, and cedar as precious as gold. But the coffins my father had delivered were not made from paulownia or cedar, but from the finest gingko. Uncle’s coffin was slightly larger, and it even had a name: the Golden Casket. It was made from three-inch-thick planks cut from a 1,000-year-old gingko tree. The grain was flawless, the wood soft to the touch but very solid, perfect for carving or painting on. With the exception of the base of the coffin, the side that would rest against the soil, every surface was engraved with extravagant scenes and famous landscapes. There were classical landscapes with mountains, rivers and heavenly clouds. Big-city scenes with broad avenues and narrow streets, streams of cars and pedestrians, bridges and interchanges that looped like intestines. There were tree-filled parks peopled with tiny figures flying kites or boating on lakes.
In the past, his-and-her coffins had been engraved with classical scenes such as images of piety from The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars; the legend of Meng Jiangnu, the loyal wife who cried down a section of the Great Wall while mourning her husband; and the legend of Liang and Zhu, the ‘Butterfly Lovers’, a Chinese Romeo and Juliet. But the engravings on Uncle and Lingling’s caskets were mostly big-city scenes depicting famous landmarks: Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl television tower, Guangzhou’s high-rise hotels, and various bustling commercial districts, department stores, suspension bridges, fountains, parks and public squares. Needless to say, whoever had done the engravings must have been well travelled, in order to depict these cosmopolitan scenes so realistically. He had brought to life the wealth and splendour, the bustle and excitement of the modern Chinese metropolises of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Every scene was in vivid colours, highlighted with red, gold and silver paint.
The villagers crowded around the coffins, gasping at their splendour.
‘Good heavens,’ exclaimed one woman. ‘Can you believe this thing? I’ll bet even emperors never got caskets this nice.’
Gingerly, she reached out to touch the engravings. ‘Come here, you’ve got to feel this. It’s smoother than a baby’s bottom!’
The villagers clustered around, touching the engravings and running their fingers over miniature high-rises, overpasses crowded with cars, street lamps lining public squares and people sitting beside lakes. Another woman, noticing that the cover of the casket was ajar, peeked inside and saw that the interior was also engraved. Gingerly, she raised the lid, revealing more engravings and an enlarged photograph of Ding Liang pasted at the head of the casket. The engravings presented an idyllic portrait of big-city life: a flat with refrigerator, washing machine, television set, home-entertainment centre, microphone, speakers and karaoke machine. A sumptuous banquet waited on a table: mouth-watering platters of chicken and duck, meat and fish, bottles of expensive wine, cups and wineglasses and festive red chopsticks. There were high-rises and office buildings, cinemas and theatres, all clearly the property of the Ding clan. Signs over the entrances to the buildings read ‘Ding Family Theatre’, ‘Ding Family Cinema’ and ‘Ding Family Towers’. Even the appliances and electronics were labelled with Ding Liang’s name.
But perhaps most important of all was the building engraved at the foot of Uncle’s coffin. A sign above the entrance to the building identified it as the ‘People’s Bank of China’. In this way, the accumulated wealth of an entire nation, the fruit of decades of Chinese economic development, would accompany Uncle into the afterlife. All the power and glory and prosperity of the world, stuffed into one casket.
The villagers turned to Lingling’s coffin. Although her ‘Silver Casket’ was a shade smaller than Uncle’s, it was made from the same material, the rare and expensive timber of the gingko tree, and the exterior was engraved with the same big-city scenes. Inside, at the head of the casket, was a photograph of Lingling smiling. Engravings on the inside of the casket showed silks and satins, clothing and jewellery, dressing tables, make-up boxes and other feminine items. There was also a handy assortment of kitchen items that no woman should be without: sideboards filled with bowls and plates, cups and glasses, modern cooking ranges with exhaust fans, aprons and bamboo steamers. There were potted plants and flowering bushes, grapevines and a pomegranate tree, a symbol of fertility. The engraving even included a miniature Lingling, hanging Uncle’s freshly washed shirts and trousers to dry under the pomegranate tree.
As the villagers were marvelling over Lingling and Uncle’s coffins, Grandpa emerged from Uncle’s house, beaming and looking years younger than he had just a few days before.
‘Professor Ding, these coffins are incredible,’ said one villager. ‘Liang and Lingling are very lucky.’
‘I don’t know about lucky,’ Grandpa said, standing beside the coffins. ‘But at least they will be buried with respect.’
‘What kind of coffins are these?’ asked another.
‘The old-timers used to call them “gold and silver caskets”, but these are more modern versions. You probably noticed all the city scenes.’
It was nearly time to place the bodies in the caskets. With the exception of Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin, everyone in the village seemed to be gathered outside Uncle’s house. Ding Yuejin’s own mother was there, as were Jia Genzhu’s wife and son. Crowds of people, some from neighbouring villages, milled outside the house and overflowed into the streets. The atmosphere was lively, as if Ding Village were putting on a performance and everyone had come out to see it. There was a crowd of laughing, chattering, jostling people: men and women, elderly folk and children, locals and visitors. Some of the kids were perched in trees or on the tops of brick walls, as if they were waiting for the show to begin.
The sun had risen, and was nearly overhead. Bright streaks of sunshine animated the crowd, turning a mournful event into a celebration. Turning a funeral into a public performance. My father was still at our house, talking to the men who had delivered the caskets from the city. My mother was at Uncle’s house, serving tea and passing out cigarettes to out-of-town guests who had come for the funeral. My little sister was running around in the crowd, squeezing through a forest of adult legs and generally getting underfoot.
At last, my father set out for Uncle’s house, trailed by a crowd of locals and visitors from the city and surrounding villages. When the mob outside Uncle’s gate saw him approaching, someone shouted: ‘Are you going to put the bodies in the coffins?’
‘Yes,’ my father answered. ‘It’s time.’
The time had come to dress the bodies and place them in their coffins with the items they would be buried with: brand-name liquor and cigarettes for Uncle, and a change of clothes and costume jewellery – that looked just like the real thing – for Lingling. As the villagers surged into the house, eager to help carry the bodies and funeral items, my father noticed that among them were a few of the gravediggers, bricklayers and others who were supposed to be helping with Jia Genbao and Ding Xiaoyue’s funerals.
Although my father was gratified by all the attention, he didn’t want to be thought rude for stealing people away from Genbao and Xiaoyue’s funerals.
‘Hey, you there!’ he shouted. ‘Why don’t you go and help Genbao and Xiaoyue’s families? They’d be embarrassed if no one showed up.’
‘We dug their graves fi
rst,’ answered one man. ‘So it’s only fair that these two get buried first.’
Grandpa was also uncomfortable with the situation.‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t seem right, does it?’
Ding Yuejin’s mother piped up. ‘Oh, I don’t mind if these kids get buried first. After all, we’re one big family, right?’
‘Exactly,’ said Jia Genzhu’s wife. ‘We’re all friends and neighbours here. What does it matter who gets buried first?’
And so it was that Genbao and Xiaoyue’s funerals were pushed aside, temporarily forgotten as the whole village pitched in to help bury Uncle and Lingling.
Uncle and Lingling’s funeral was very well attended. A crowd of nearly two hundred mourners watched as their coffins were placed in the burial chamber and the entrance sealed with brick. My father had paid for a fancy tombstone, an imposing granite monument with the following inscription:
Here lie Ding Liang and Xia Lingling,
star-crossed Butterfly Lovers
When the monument was raised, the crowd broke into applause as loud as spring thunder. The thunderclap that heralds the passage of winter and the coming of spring. The rumbling that can be heard when the insects awake, and the sleeping dragon raises its head.
VOLUME 6
CHAPTER ONE
1
Uncle and Lingling were buried.
Ding Xiaoyue and Jia Genbao were in the ground.
The funerals were over, and my family was leaving town.
The day he buried his brother, my dad moved his family to the city. They were leaving Ding Village for ever, and they had no intention of ever coming back. They blew out of town faster than fallen leaves carried on an autumn wind. As for the chances of my family ever returning to Ding Village, it was about as likely as a pile of leaves hopping back on to the tree they had fallen from. There was no going back to the tree.
The whole family, my whole family, hitched a lift on one of the trucks that had delivered Uncle and Lingling’s coffins. They took only their most precious possessions: the television set and refrigerator, some boxes tied with string and a few suitcases filled with clothes. In the rush to leave, belongings were tossed willy-nilly into the back of the truck, to be sat on by the army of gravediggers, bricklayers, engravers and others who had come to help with the funeral and were now heading back to the city. The workers rode in the back, and my parents and sister sat in the cab of the truck.
They left just after midday, after the funeral was over and the golden sun was beating down on the plain, burning up the soil. Waves of shimmering heat swept across the plain like a fast-moving blaze. Before they left, my father stood beside his brother and Lingling’s freshly dug grave, rich with the scent of fragrant soil. He called my grandfather over and asked: ‘So, are we finished here?’
Grandpa glanced around, slightly confused by the question. ‘Uh, yes, I suppose we’re finished.’
‘In that case, I’d better be going.’ My father turned to his crew of helpers and shouted that it was time to go. After the men had set off in the direction of the village, he turned back to see Grandpa still standing by the grave, staring at the headstone. On the surface, Grandpa seemed calm, as if nothing unusual had happened. Then again, he seemed dazed, as if he knew that something had happened but he wasn’t quite sure what it was, or what it meant. He appeared lost, caught halfway between confusion and understanding. He stared at the words on the tombstone as if they were some ancient calligraphy he couldn’t read.
His thoughts were interrupted by my father walking over to stand beside him.
‘So, did I do right by my brother?’ my father asked. ‘I think Liang would have been proud. I gave him a tomb fit for an emperor, and two fancy caskets. The question is: did he deserve it?’
Grandpa said nothing.
‘You tell me, Dad . . . what did those two ever do for anyone?’
Grandpa remained silent.
‘I’ve done enough for them to last a lifetime, but what did they ever do for me? I’ve done my duty to my brother, and now I expect him to do something in return.’ My father spoke softly, emphasizing each word carefully. ‘I want you to remember this, Dad . . . if anyone ever brings up the blood-selling, I want you to tell them it was Liang who was responsible, and that I had nothing to do with it. Ding Liang was the bloodhead, not me. I never touched a drop of blood in my life.’
Grandpa stared at his son for a very long time before he spoke.
‘Hui, I want you to be honest with me. Is it true that the higher-ups are giving coffins to all the local village cadres? And if it’s true, why haven’t you given Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin theirs?’
‘I spent the money on Liang and Lingling’s funeral,’ my father answered matter-of-factly. ‘Do you think fancy caskets made from gingko trees just fall from the sky? I had to trade a hundred paulownia coffins to get those, not to mention what it cost to dig the grave.’
My father turned away. Without looking at Grandpa, he said: ‘I’ve got to go, but I’ll come back to see you.’
He said it casually, as if he were taking a trip, not moving out of the village permanently.
My father walked away, leaving Grandpa standing by Uncle’s grave.
Before he disappeared, he turned back and shouted: ‘Don’t forget, Dad! If anyone brings up the subject of blood-selling, tell them Ding Liang was the rich bloodhead, not me. And if they don’t believe you, they can dig him up and ask him!’
Leaving Grandpa with those instructions, my father ran to catch up with the others. His feet pounded the sunlit ground, kicking up the soil and leaving his shiny black leather shoes covered in dirt.
2
For some time now, the inhabitants of the plain had been dying, falling like autumn leaves, never to return to the tree. With so many dead, burials had become perfunctory. Burying a dead relative was like going to the outskirts of the village with a shovel, digging a hole and burying your dead pet dog or cat. There was no grief, no tears. Cemeteries were silent. Tears were like raindrops on a blazing summer’s day, evaporating before they hit the ground.
So it was that Lingling, Uncle, Jia Genbao and Ding Xiaoyue’s funerals were just four more bodies, four more coffins to put into the ground. When the funerals were over, my parents and sister left Ding Village and moved to the big city. They were city people now.
They left Uncle and Lingling lying in their sealed grave, with their tombstone that read: Here lie Ding Liang and Xia Lingling, star-crossed Butterfly Lovers. Everyone in the village agreed that it was a fitting inscription.
But three days later, not quite three days after their burial, the grave was broken into and robbed. Uncle and Lingling’s caskets were gone, stolen by grave robbers, and the walls of their tomb defaced. Someone had stolen the carvings – those big-city scenes and dragons and mythical beasts – right off the walls.
The night the tomb was robbed, Grandpa had a dream:
The sky was filled with bright-red suns. There were five, six, seven, eight, nine of them, crowding the sky and scorching the plain below. Drought had left the soil parched and cracked. Across the plain and well beyond, crops had died, wells run dry and rivers vanished. In an effort to banish the suns from the sky, to rid the sky of all the suns but one, strong young men had been chosen from each village, one man for every ten villagers. Armed with pitchforks, spades and scythes, they chased the suns across the plain, trying to drive them to the ends of the earth, topple them from the sky, and toss them into the ocean. Because surely one sun in the sky was enough.
As the men drove the suns towards the horizon, their women and children and old people stood outside the village gates, banging on drums and gongs and washbasins to spur the men on and boost their morale. The suns raced across the sky, pursued by gangs of armed men on the plain below. Everywhere they went, the earth trembled and the air was filled with fire and smoke and the sound of their killing cries. Smoke rose from the grass and soil, trees and houses went up in flames, consumed by the
heat of too many suns. There was fire and smoke and ashes, ashes everywhere . . . the mob had caught up with one of the suns and were just about to bring it down, to topple it from the sky, when Grandpa heard someone pounding on his door.
*
One of the village men had run into the schoolyard and was shouting and pounding on his door.
‘Professor Ding, Professor Ding, come quick! Someone broke into your son’s grave!’
Grandpa awoke from his dream to find sunlight streaming through his window, warming his bed in its fire. He leaped out of bed and raced towards the cemetery with the man from the village. When they arrived, a crowd was milling around the entrance to Uncle’s tomb, inspecting the broken bricks and toppled headstone. All the soil used to fill the entrance to the grave had been dug up, leaving a gaping pit and mounds of dirt on either side. Grandpa took off his shoes, climbed down into the pit barefoot and peeked into the burial chamber. He saw that Uncle and Lingling’s corpses had been pulled from their coffins and tossed on the ground. The coffins and the items inside them – brand-name liquor and cigarettes, expensive clothes and jewellery – were gone. The thieves had apparently brought tools, because some of the engravings were missing from the walls. A large chunk had been gouged from the left-hand wall of the tomb, leaving a small pile of debris beside Uncle’s head, and bits of soil clinging to his hair and skin. The big-city scene on the right-hand wall looked like it had been hit by an earthquake: houses and buildings toppled, bridges and overpasses collapsed, and the ground around Lingling’s body littered with clods of dirt and chunks of debris. The tomb had been ransacked. Grave robbers had taken everything.