by Yan Lianke
‘Isn’t he afraid that if I start taking ginseng,’ Genzhu sneered, ‘I’ll get my strength back and bash him over the head when he’s not looking?’
Grandpa went pale. For a moment, his smile froze, but he quickly managed to regain his composure. ‘Son, just take the ginseng,’ he said with a reassuring smile. ‘Once you’ve got your strength back, I think you’ll feel differently. Hui’s coming back to the village in a few days to exhume his son’s grave, so if you still want to bash his head in, you’ll have your chance then.’
5
At sunrise, my dad arrived in Ding Village with a big group of people and a gilded coffin. The coffin, made of five-inch-thick planks of gingko, was engraved with scenes of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other rich, modern Chinese cities. There were scenes of foreign cities, too, places that no one would have recognized if they hadn’t been labelled as Paris, New York or London. I didn’t know where New York or Paris were, and I didn’t care. All I knew what that my home was Ding Village, and that Ding Village was on the East Henan plain. I didn’t care how fancy my casket was, or if the gold paint on it was real, or if it was worth as much as all the land in the village.
The sunlight glinting off my coffin was blinding. It was like the sun had fallen from the sky and turned into an oblong square. My dad and the others paraded my coffin through the village, attracting a lot of attention. Everyone who was still alive came out to see it, to gape at the golden casket with carvings of places they’d never seen before, and never would. Right there, on my coffin, was the modernity and excitement of China’s big cities, and the wealth and grandeur of all the cities in the world.
They set the coffin beside my grave, burned incense, made paper offerings and set off firecrackers. Then they dug up my grave, transferred my bones from the plain wood coffin to the golden one, and carried it away with great ceremony.
When they lifted that golden coffin, I started thrashing around inside it, screaming for my grandpa. Not screaming for my father. Screaming for dear life.
‘Grandpa! Don’t let them take me!’
My cries shook the heavens.
‘I don’t want to leave here! Don’t let them take me!’
My screams ripped a hole in the sky.
‘Save me, Grandpa, save me . . .
’ My voice filled the schoolyard and echoed through the village and across the plain. My cries rose to the heavens, and fell like raindrops on to the parched and blighted earth.
6
The day I got married, there was a slight breeze, the weather almost cool. My mother and sister set out early to fetch my bride, or in this case, her remains. Her bones. My dad came to Ding Village to dig up my remains and take them to Kaifeng, to be buried with Lingzi. What was left of me would be travelling to my bride’s hometown, not the other way round.
The sun hung low in the sky, a brilliant ball of light against a backdrop of clear blue sky. Luckily for the villagers, there was a breeze that day, and Ding Village was pleasantly cool. Luckily for the crops and plants, the previous night had provided a little moisture to their pale, withered stems. Little bits of green had begun to appear, pushing up through sandy soil.
Several dozen people were standing around my grave near the school gate. Among them were the same men who had built Uncle and Lingling’s tomb. They had brought picks and shovels, bags bulging with fireworks and funeral offerings, and a top-of-the-range casket covered with engravings and gilded with gold. All the engravings were scenes of rich modern cities, one big city after another, like pictures from paradise. The cities were crowded with tall buildings and wide streets, parks and squares, shops and restaurants. There were engravings of diners seated in swanky restaurants, with uniformed security guards and well-dressed hostesses to greet them at the doors. In a public square, there was a garden and a children’s amusement park filled with games and rides I’d never seen: a roller-coaster twisted like a dragon; a spinning ferris wheel with tiny seats; bumper cars crashing into one another. The scene was as fresh and intoxicating as a grove of trees on an early spring morning, but instead of chirping birds there were well-dressed adults and children. So lifelike, you could almost hear their laughter and conversation, as if their voices had been carved into the wood.
Although the casket was a size smaller than an adult coffin, the interior was also richly decorated with engravings. One was a landscape of trees, flowers, bridges and a lake surrounded by wooded hills. There were even tiny boats floating on the surface of the lake. Among the trees stood an old-fashioned two-storey brick-built house with a roof of glazed yellow tiles. There was a gingko tree and a large cypress in the courtyard, which was surrounded by a stone wall. Although the two red scrolls on either side of the gate were no wider than the flat edge of a chopstick, the tiny writing was still clear enough to read: ‘In Paradise, the days stretch on and on / but the trees stay green all year long.’ A scroll above the gate identified the house as the ‘Ding Family Residence’. A cobblestone path led from the gate to the main rooms, corridors and wings of the house. If you followed the path through the courtyard and peeked through the doors and windows, you could see that each room was crammed with furniture, appliances and home electronics. Landscape paintings, calligraphy scrolls and traditional musical instruments hung from the walls. My father had been careful to include a well-stocked bookshelf filled with storybooks for me to read, and heaps of snacks and beverages, in case I got hungry or thirsty. This was the house my parents had made for me, the property they had bequeathed me. It was a place where my teenage wife and I could settle down and live happily for all eternity.
On the bottom panel of the coffin, where my bones would lie, there were engravings of a dozen or so buildings of various sizes, shapes and styles. Each of the buildings was labelled with the name of a famous Chinese bank: Bank of China, the Central Bank of China, People’s Bank of China, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Everbright Bank, and so on. It was as if every major bank in the country had set up their headquarters on the floor of my coffin. I would be laid to rest with all the money in China, and my bones would sleep upon the wealth of the world.
My father stood beside my grave, admiring the gilded coffin and the world he’d made for me. It was a world of cities, villages and dramatic landscapes, all the wealth and splendour of the plain, a kingdom of wealth and entertainments. My dad said a few quick words to his crew, who were standing around with shovels, spades and pickaxes – decorated with red ribbons to celebrate the happy occasion. The ceremony began with fireworks. My father’s helpers set off long strings of firecrackers and several boxes of large fireworks, and burned a red paper effigy of a bridal sedan chair. Then they made six circuits around my grave, three clockwise and three anticlockwise, before scattering more firecrackers on the ground for the guests to pick up and light themselves.
Ding Village hadn’t celebrated like this in years. The villagers couldn’t remember the last time they had seen a ceremony so exciting and lavish. There were tiny firecrackers that exploded with a pop, and great strings of them that popped and crackled for minutes on end. There were fireworks that exploded with a bang or a boom, and rockets that whizzed up into the air, sending down showers of sparks. It was a display to light up the sky and dazzle the senses. The noise of fireworks mingled with the babble of voices; smoke and charred bits of red paper floated through the air. Then there was the golden gingko coffin that waited beside my grave, the incense and paper offerings and plates heaped with cakes, deep-fried treats and enormous apples and pears that my father had brought from the city. The acrid stench of gunpowder and burned paper competed with the scents of incense, human sweat and apples.
Once the festivities were over, my dad and the others began the solemn task of exhuming my grave.
The sound of firecrackers had brought a surge of villagers to my graveside. They flooded into the schoolyard like visitors to a temple fair. Some came to gawk, some to help, and others, just to join in th
e fun. Everyone talked about how lucky I was to have such a grand wedding ceremony. Even though the bride and groom were dead, it was better than most weddings in which both parties were still alive.
Although Ding Village had lost a lot of people recently, the ceremony drew a big crowd. It seemed as if half the village were there. Some of the people sitting or standing around my grave wore broad straw hats to block the burning sun, while others were bare-headed. Sunlight and perspiration glinted from several bald heads, making them look like freshly washed melons bobbing in a sea of human heads. At a signal from my father, the gravediggers dug their red-ribboned shovels and spades into the ground. Before long, there were two heaps of dirt on either side of my grave. As this was happening, the middle-aged master of ceremonies began making the rounds, doling out cigarettes and treats, as if he were presiding over a celebration rather than an exhumation. There were brand-name cigarettes for the men in the crowd, and candies, cakes and sweets for the women and children.
Rarely had there been so much activity at the school gate. Ding Yuejin and several other young men walked around stomping on spent firecrackers to make sure that they were extinguished. Because the weather was so dry, he explained to my dad, it would be easy for a pile of kindling to catch fire, and he wouldn’t want to see me burned in my grave.
When Ding Xiaoming arrived, he walked up to my dad, all smiles, and asked if he needed help with anything. Seeing that my father had the situation under control, he picked up a shovel and joined the crew of men who were digging up my grave.
There was also a woman named Fen, who had been a cook at the school and a good friend of my mother’s. Fen was now horribly thin and frail, and didn’t look as if she would live more than a few days, but she still made a point of asking after my mother. She told my dad how much she missed my mum, and said that she would never forget her kindness. When Fen was a new bride, it had been my mother who went to her hometown to meet her and escort her to her in-laws’ house in Ding Village.
Then there was ‘Woody’ Zhao, a young man who had refused to leave his house for days after finding out that he had the fever. But today he had joined the celebration and seemed to be in a better mood. When he noticed that the gravediggers were getting dirt on the plates of food near my grave, he moved them out of the way and asked my dad what he should do with them. Dad waved his hand and said, ‘Take them, if you want.’ Woody stuffed a couple of steamed buns into his pockets and divided the deep-fried sweets among the children who were playing in the crowd.
The schoolyard was a sea of bobbing heads, like an audience at a concert. Nearly 100 people had turned out to watch the fireworks, or to offer help, or to see how the elderly man who was the senior master of ceremonies would conduct the ritual. At each step in the process of exhuming my grave, he set off a string of firecrackers to frighten off evil spirits. He lit the first string of firecrackers when they broke the soil and began digging, and the second string when the helpers climbed down into my open grave. After they had wiped the dirt from my coffin and were preparing to open the lid, he set off a third string of firecrackers, draped a large red cloth over the grave and asked the crowd to move back a few steps, ensuring that no one would be able to see what state my body was in. Then he lowered a red tunic and trousers into the grave so that the helpers could begin dressing my remains.
When this was done, it was time to raise my remains. This was the most solemn part of the ceremony. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for my red-clad bones to appear. At this point, the elderly master of ceremonies pulled my dad aside and told him to go and get Grandpa, and then find somewhere far away from my grave to watch from. If Dad and Grandpa saw my remains and started crying, they might scare my ghost away. He also told Dad to talk to Grandpa about whether or not there would be a wedding banquet in the village, and whether they would be needing his services. Dad promised they would talk about it, and went off to find Grandpa.
In fact, my dad had already made up his mind about the banquet. He was planning to hold it in the city, rather than in Ding Village, because what was the point of treating a bunch of sick people and their families to a big, expensive meal? Instead, he had reserved three floors of the largest restaurant in the city, and invited all his closest friends, acquaintances and influential colleagues to join the feast. Lingzi’s dad, my new father-in-law, was the highest-ranking official in the county, so no one refused the invitation. Everyone who was anyone would be there, and they were all looking forward to rubbing elbows with the county governor.
My dad searched the whole school and couldn’t find Grandpa anywhere. He went back to the gate and searched through the crowd, but Grandpa wasn’t there. At this point, my dad realized that he hadn’t seen Grandpa since they’d started digging up my grave. No one else had, either.
My dad organized a search party.
They found Grandpa sitting alone by the side of the road leading to the village. He was hunched beneath the branches of a small elm, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the village and the withered, yellowed plain. He seemed to be lost in thought. Maybe he was thinking about important things like grief and loss, death and dissolution. Feelings that were miles wide and fathoms deep. Then again, maybe he was just tired and wanted a quiet place where he could sit down and rest. A place where he could be alone. He gazed at the dead crops and dried-up plain with a melancholy and worried expression. The little elm had more branches than leaves, and didn’t offer much in the way of shade. Grandpa might as well be sitting in the blazing sun. As my dad approached, he saw that the back of Grandpa’s white cotton shirt was stained with perspiration.
‘Dad,’ he said cautiously. ‘What are you doing? It’s too hot to be sitting out here.’
Grandpa slowly turned around. ‘I suppose Qiang’s been moved from his grave?’
‘Uh-huh.’
My dad squatted down next to Grandpa. ‘What are you doing out here?’
Grandpa stared at my dad for a long time before asking the question that had been on his mind. ‘Exactly how much older is this Lingzi girl?’
My dad grinned. ‘You didn’t come out here to watch for Jia Genzhu, did you? Are you afraid he’ll show up at the grave and make a scene?’
Grandpa ignored the question. ‘I want to know, Hui. How much older is she?’
‘Qiang needs someone older to take care of him.’ My dad sat down on the ground. ‘And I wouldn’t worry about Genzhu, if I were you. I was actually hoping he’d show up today. I’d like to see him try to lay a finger on me.’
‘Is it true Lingzi had a crippled leg?’
Grandpa looked into his son’s eyes, but my dad averted his gaze.
‘Yes, but it wasn’t obvious. They say you’d never notice unless you looked really close.’
Then, changing the subject: ‘If Genzhu does cause any trouble today, I’ll make him wish he’d never been born.’
Grandpa ignored the comment. He was more interested in me. ‘And her dad is the county governor?’
Dad just smiled.
‘I also hear the girl had epilepsy.’
My dad stared at Grandpa, wide-eyed, wondering where he could have got this information.
Grandpa knew from my dad’s reaction that the things he’d dreamed were true. With a deep sigh, he turned back to the road and continued watching Jia Genzhu’s house, which was visible in the distance. Although the wooden gates were unlocked, no one had come in or out of them in a long time. Just as Grandpa was beginning to think the house was empty, a man emerged from the gate carrying a strip of white cloth tied to a bamboo pole. After he had hung it from a tree, the man calmly went back inside. In Ding Village, this was the traditional way of signalling that someone had died. When Grandpa saw that strip of white cloth hanging outside Genzhu’s gate like a flag of surrender, he felt his heart skip a beat. He turned to my dad with a look of regret and relief.
‘Hui, I’ve seen the way you put on airs, but really, did you have to marry off your son to a
girl like that?’
‘How could I have possibly found a better match?’ My dad seemed puzzled. ‘Don’t you know her father is moving up in the world? They just promoted him to mayor of Kaifeng!’
Grandpa snorted derisively and gave my dad a look of disgust. Without a word, he stood up, wiped the sweat from his face and the dirt from the seat of his trousers, and turned to the crowd of people at the school gate. The red cloth that had been spread over my grave was now draped over my golden coffin. Grandpa knew that meant the exhumation was finished, and that my remains were inside the new coffin. My leg bones were wrapped in the pair of red trousers, my ribs and arms in the red tunic, and the bones of my feet in a pair of red cloth shoes. In transferring my remains to the golden casket, the exhumation had been made a celebration, and a sorrowful event into a joyous one. When Grandpa began walking back to the school, my dad followed him.
‘Dad, you’re too old for this. Why don’t you come and live with me in the city?’
Grandpa glanced at his son and kept trudging towards the school.
‘Life is good in the city, and there’s nothing left for you here. All your relatives are gone. Why not leave this place and never come back?’
This time, Grandpa didn’t even bother to turn around.
At the school gate, eight young pallbearers lifted my golden coffin on to their shoulders and prepared to carry me from the school. The master of ceremonies lit another long string of firecrackers, and amid much noise, the procession began. Because I had died so young, there were no sons or daughters dressed in mourning to walk beside my coffin. But because I was getting married, the head of my coffin was decorated with the red cloth, which had been twisted into the shape of a flower. This was how I would leave Ding Village.
This was how they would carry me away.
They were taking me away from my grandpa and my school and my home.
They were taking me to a strange place where I’d be married to a crippled, epileptic girl who was six years too old for me.