by Yu Hua
The stranger reassured him:
“I don’t mind if it takes two.”
“But,” the punishment expert said, “the punishment only allows for a single stroke.”
The stranger told the punishment expert he didn’t understand why he insisted on being so fussy.
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“Because it would defile the integrity of the punishment,” he explained.
“On the contrary,” the stranger asserted. “You might actually contribute to the development of the punishment.”
“But,” the punishment expert quietly explained to the stranger, “if we proceed with the experiment, your own experience of it would be ruined. I would hack your waist to mincemeat. Your stomach, your intestines, and your liver would tumble to the ground like overripe apples. I wouldn’t be able to place your torso on the glass. You would just fall over. And all you would see as you approached the end would be heaps of wriggling earthworms and lumpy toad skin. And worse.”
The punishment expert delivered his judgment with
incontestable authority. There was no longer any doubt that events would begin to move in an entirely different direction. The stranger began to put his clothes back on. He had thought he would never need them again. His pants felt like oil paint as they smeared up his legs. His eyes were hooded and dark with disappointment. Through them, he could see the dark figure of the punishment expert standing by him like a distant memory.
The stranger could no longer avoid the realization: the punishment expert was powerless. The punishment expert could not reunite him with his past. And though the stranger was baffled and angered by the way in which the punishment expert had so beautifully laid his four dates to waste, he was not without a certain compassion for the punishment expert’s predicament. The punishment expert suffered because he could no longer muster the strength to carry out his marvelous experiment. His own pain came as a result of being unable to reunite with his past. But they were bound together by their common suffering.
The silence that ensued was as heavy as night. It was only after they returned to the living room that they were finally The Past and the Punishments 125
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able to dispel the oppressive quiet that had enveloped them following the failure of the experiment. They had moved to the living room after standing motionless, enveloped by the glitter of the glass that suffused the little room. Having arrived in the living room, however, they were able once more to take up something resembling a conversation.
Soon after they had begun, the punishment expert’s voice began to grow hoarse with passion. As they spoke, the punishment expert rapidly recovered his composure, despite the gravity of his defeat. For his final punishment was the best of all. His final punishment was his life’s work, his master-piece, his crowning glory. He told the stranger:
“It is my own creation.”
The punishment expert began to tell the stranger another story:
“There is a man. Strictly speaking, a scholar. A true scholar, the kind of scholar that simply doesn’t exist any more in the twentieth century. He wakes up one morning and finds several men in gray suits standing around his bed.
These men lead him out of his house and push him into a car. The scholar, mystified, repeatedly asks the men where they are taking him. His questions are met with stony silence. He begins to grow uneasy. He stares out of the car window, trying desperately to determine what is going to happen next. He watches as they pass through familiar streets, drive by a familiar stream, and finally move into un-charted territory. Soon, they arrive at a grand public square.
The square is big enough for twenty thousand people. In fact, there are already twenty thousand people gathered in the square. From afar, they look like so many ants. When they pull up to the edge of the square, he’s pushed through the crowd and onto a platform set up at one end of the square. He gazes down at the crowd. The square looks as if it’s choked with weeds. A few soldiers with rifles stand with him on the platform. They aim the muzzles of their rifles 126 yu hua
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directly at his head. The scholar is terrified. But a moment later they lower their guns, having forgotten to load them.
The scholar watches bullets glint in the sunlight as, one by one, they are stuffed into the rifles’ magazines. Then the rifles are leveled once more at his head. At this point, a man who looks like some kind of judge climbs up onto the platform. This man tells the scholar that he has been sentenced to death. The scholar, unaware of having committed any offense, is dumbfounded. The judge, seeing the shock of his pronouncement ripple across the scholar’s face, adds:
‘Just look at the blood dripping from your hands.’
“The scholar looks down at his hands but can’t find the slightest trace of blood. He extends his hands toward the judge to protest his innocence. But the judge simply moves to the side of the platform without even seeming to notice.
The scholar watches as people in the crowd stream up to the edge of the platform to give their testimony. One by one, they relate how he bequeathed his punishments on their loved ones and relatives. At first, the scholar tries to argue with those who have come forward to condemn him. He tries to make them understand that one must sacrifice everything in the name of science. He tells them that their relatives have been sacrificed in the name of science. As the procession of plaintiffs continues to stream toward the platform, however, he finally begins to realize the gravity of his predicament. His predicament is this – in a few moments, a hail of bullets will fly in the direction of his head. His head will shatter like a roof tile. He sinks into a despair that is as vast as the crowd that unceasingly streams toward the platform to air its grievances. The denunciations continue for ten hours. And for ten hours, the soldiers keep their rifles trained on the scholar’s head.”
The punishment expert paused at this point in his narrative, commenting with an enigmatic air:
“The scholar, of course, is me.”
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He proceeded to tell the stranger that it had taken him a whole year to perfect each and every detail of the ten hours he would spend on the platform.
“In the ten hours immediately following the scholar’s realization that he has been sentenced to death, he falls victim to terrible psychological torment. In those ten hours, his mind becomes a whirlwind of emotions, careening from one spiritual state to another, passing through lifetimes of feeling in mere moments. One moment he is awash in terror and abject cowardice. The next moment floods him with bravery, resolve, and indomitable courage. Seconds later, he feels a stream of urine trickling down his legs. Seconds after he has begun to welcome the prospect of death, he starts to realize just how beautiful it is to be alive. And throughout the turbulent hours, each of these moments is felt just as sharply as a knife piercing his flesh.”
It was clear to the stranger that this punishment was almost perfect. When the punishment expert had brought his narrative to a conclusion, he clearly and unmistakably proclaimed to the stranger:
“This punishment is reserved for myself.”
He told the stranger that this punishment represented ten years of blood, sweat, and tears. He told the stranger that he couldn’t possibly give the product of years of hard toil to someone else. By someone else, he clearly meant the stranger himself.
The stranger smiled. It was a noble smile. It was a smile that successfully hid the doubts he harbored concerning the punishment from view. For he sensed that the punishment was not nearly as perfect or complete as the punishment expert would have liked to think. There seemed to be a flaw that the punishment expert had overlooked.
The punishment expert rose from his seat and told the stranger that he would carry out the experiment that very evening. He hoped tha
t the stranger would appear by his bedside in twelve hours, because by then:
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“You’ll still be able to see me, but I won’t be able to see you any more.”
After the punishment expert retired to his bedroom, the stranger sat for a long time in the living room, mulling over the fact that he was really far less confident as to the out-come of the experiment than the punishment expert himself. And later, when he got up to go to his own bedroom, he felt certain that, when he stood by the punishment expert’s bedside the following morning, the old man would still be able to see him. He had discovered the flaw that lay beneath the polished surface of the punishment, a flaw so crucial as virtually to ensure the failure of the punishment expert’s experiment.
The scene the next morning confirmed the stranger’s suspicions. The punishment expert lay atop his bed, face pallid with fatigue, and told the stranger that everything had gone smoothly the night before. But just as he had approached the end, he had awoken. With a tragic sweep of his hand, he threw aside his quilt to show the stranger what had happened:
“I was so scared that I wet the bed.”
The bed was sopping wet. The stranger estimated that the punishment expert must have urinated at least ten times over the course of the night. He gazed at the punishment expert panting on the bed. He was satisfied. He didn’t want the punishment expert to succeed. For his four dates, his memories, were in this frail old man’s hands. The old man’s death would spell eternal separation from his own past. And this was precisely why the stranger was unwilling to point out the nature and position of the flaw in the punishment that had led to his failure the night before. Thus, when the punishment expert invited him to come again at the same time the following day, he merely smiled and carefully made his way out of the bedroom.
The scene on the second morning was much like it had been on the first. The punishment expert lay prone on his The Past and the Punishments 129
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bed, staring anxiously toward the stranger as he pushed open the door to the bedroom. In order to hide his sense of shame and humiliation, the punishment expert once again pushed aside his quilt to reveal that he had not only wet the bed but also soiled it with a pile of his own shit. But the experiment had progressed in much the same manner as the night before – he had woken up at the last moment. In a voice tinged with sorrow, he said:
“Come back tomorrow. I promise that I’ll be dead by tomorrow.”
The stranger failed to give these parting words his full attention. He gazed with pity on the punishment expert, feeling as if he should tell him about the flaw. The flaw was simply this: after ten hours, a bullet should appear, a bullet that would shatter the punishment expert’s head. The punishment expert had spent ten years perfecting the ten-hour process that would lead to his death but had neglected to include the bullet with which the episode must inevitably culminate. At the same time, however, the stranger was all too aware of the danger of such a revelation. His past would die along with the punishment expert. And he sensed that, as long as he was with the punishment expert, his past was never far away. He left the room without having revealed his secret, secure in the knowledge that the flaw would ensure that his past was not lost.
On the third morning, however, the stranger found an entirely different scene when he pushed open the door to the punishment expert’s bedroom. The old man had fulfilled his promise of the day before. The punishment expert was dead.
He hadn’t died on the bed. Instead, his body hung from a rope about a yard away from the bed.
Confronted by this reality, a withered clump of weeds began to tangle around the stranger’s heart. The punishment expert’s death would forever preclude the possibility of any kind of connection with the four memories he had once sought. To gaze on the punishment expert now was to 130 yu hua
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see the lynching of his own past. He distantly recalled March 5, 1965. And at the very same moment, he remembered the punishment expert’s fury when he had spoken of death by hanging. The punishment expert had finally chosen to take his own life by means of a degraded punishment.
It wasn’t until he left the room much later that he discovered a note written on the back of the door:
I have redeemed this punishment.
The punishment expert had clearly been quite lucid and sober as he had written this message, for he had concluded by carefully noting the date:
March 5, 1965.
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1986
Many years ago, a mild and unassuming high school
history teacher suddenly disappeared, leaving behind his young wife and a three-year-old daughter. From that time on, nothing more was heard of him. Over the course of several years, his wife gradually began to resign herself to her loss. On a hot, dry Sunday afternoon, she married another man. Her daughter also changed her last name to match that of the new husband, for the old name was inextricably tied up with the pain and difficulty of those years. A dozen years had gone by since that day. They lived a tranquil life.
The past receded farther and farther behind them, until it almost seemed to have dispersed like so much mist into the air, never to return.
Her husband, of course, was only one of the many who disappeared during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution. When the tumult died down, many of the families whose relatives had been lost began to receive word of their whereabouts, even if it was only to learn that they had died years before. She was the only one who had never heard any news. All she knew was that her husband had disappeared the night he was taken away by the Red Guards. The person who told her was a store clerk who had been among the group of Red Guards who had broken into their home that night. He said, “We didn’t hit him. We just took him to his office and told him to write a confession. We didn’t even send a guard to watch him. But the next morning, we discovered that he was gone.” She remembered that they had come to the apartment the morning after to search for her husband. The clerk had added, “Your husband was always nice to us students, so we didn’t torture him.”
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Not long before, she and her daughter had taken a pile of old newspapers to the recycling station. Standing among the scrap heaps littering the recycling station, she discovered a yellowing sheet of paper dotted with mildew. The writing on the sheet of paper, however, was still legible: The 5 punishments: branding
, nose-cut
, leg-cut
, castration , dismemberment
.
Former Qin dynasty: roasting in oil, disembowelment, beheading, burning at the stake.
Warring States period: flaying, drawing and fifthing, halving.
Early Liao dynasty: live burial, cannon fodder, cliff hanging.
Jin dynasty: skull crush, death by cudgel, skin peel.
Drawing and Fifthing
: To tie the victim’s head
and each of his four limbs to five horse-drawn carts and, by driving in different directions, rend him in fifths.
Slow Death
: To mince the victim’s body with
knives.
Disembowelment
: To tear open the abdomen in
order to view the victim’s heart. . . .
An old man wearing Coke-bottle glasses stood by a scale in the middle of the clutter. The daughter, grown-up and loath to see her mother tire herself out, carried a heavy pile of waste-paper over to the man and set it down on the scale. She wiped the sweat off her face with a handkerchief, as her mother crouched down by another pile of wastepaper behind her. The old man had to bend so close to read the numbers on the scale that she couldn’t suppress a grin, but at that moment a sharp cry rang out behind her
. When she turned to look, her mother had already slumped unconscious to the ground.
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As soon as they took him to his office at the school, they sat him down and told him to write a sincere, honest, and thorough confession. Then they left without even assigning him a guard.
The office was large and lit by two piercingly bright incandescent lamps. The northwest wind whistled over the roof. He sat for a long time at his desk, sat like the building itself, squatting quietly under the bright pale moonlight as the wind whistled around its walls.
He saw that he was washing his feet as his wife sat on the edge of the bed watching over their little daughter. Their daughter had already fallen asleep. The crook of her arm was sticking out from underneath the quilts. His wife hadn’t noticed them yet. His wife was staring into space. As always, she wore her hair in two braids. Red silk bows, tied in the shape of butterfly wings, were fastened around the end of each braid. They were just the same as the first time he had ever seen her, the time they had passed each other without a word.
Now he seemed to see those pretty red butterflies floating through the air, towing two shining black braids behind them.
It had been three months since he had first told his wife to stay inside at all times. She had listened intently and done as she was told. He didn’t go out very much either.
Every time he left the house he saw the women – feather dusters and toilet seats dangling around their necks, half their hair shaved to make a yin-yang pattern on their scalps.
He was afraid that they would cut off his wife’s braids and ruin the lovely red butterfly bows. That was why he had told her not to leave the house.
He saw snow flurrying through the streets all day long.
The snow never fell anywhere else. He saw everyone bend to gather a handful of flakes. He saw them stop to read them.
He saw someone slumped beside a postbox. He was dead.
The blood was still fresh, still wet. A leaflet drifted through 134 yu hua
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