Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today (32 page)

Kneeling before Great-Grandmother, I felt my heart go numb. Being the son of her eldest grandson, I caught a relieved look in the eyes of my father's generation. They buried Great-Grandmother's teeth separately, eliminating the chances of her becoming a demon after death. I tried to imagine what Great-Grandmother would look like as a demon, but my imagination could not break through conventional human patterns and styles, and that left me disappointed. Several times, the flames from the burning funeral money painfully licked my fingertips. I knew that money from the underworld could burn the fingers just as the money from this world was ice-cold and thus not easily touched. Father cooked the noodles, one pot after another. Everyone from the village was there-not sure of what he or she wanted to see. Many of the people removed the paper from Great-Grandmother's face. Her mouth was ghastly looking. Death always fixes the mouth of the dead at the worst moment, making death seem hideous. People came and went, each one about the same. They came, striding over the threshold into our Ming-dynasty house; leaving, they strode over the threshold and down the ancient alleyway to leave the Ming dynasty. Everyone should have had this hallucination from the moral point of view, against which the powerful explosions were powerless.

Putting Great-Grandmother into the coffin a little early was a clear expression of how flustered my father and uncles were. The coffin housed my great-grandmother. A coffin is like a classic text that records the mysteries of life and death. My father said to us, "Hold a three-day wake for Grandmother's soul." When Father pronounced the word
wake
he touched the coffin. My heart jumped when I heard the word. What is a wake? In my imagination, a soul is more alive than life itself. This way of thinking left me worried, but I couldn't say it out loud, for that would spell disaster. The strip of yellow cloth from my son's clothes became a banner fluttering before my great-grandmother's soul. She relied on that vigorously waving banner to make her way with ease through the underworld where ghosts, big and small, could do nothing.

Father said, "Great-Grandmother's bad luck can be turned to good." Father was better at dealing with the affairs of the underworld than with those of this one. All members of the older generation are like that.

The most shocking event occurred at midnight. On that blue night filled with the odor of dynamite, my house fell into an utter life-and-death confusion. We held a wake according to Father's orders. Great-Grandmother's coffin was placed in the central hall on two supports. I slept under the coffin; a soy-oil lamp flickered weakly in front of the coffin all night. A number of white candles dozed amid long coils of incense. Uncooked noodles, steamed bread, and cubes of tofu and bean jelly were covered with lead-colored ash. The sound of a pile driver could be heard outside, vigorous as a cow but a little breathless. My ancient home seemed in decline, filled with an atmosphere of death. Just after midnight, nearly everyone holding the wake fell asleep. A few of my uncles were sitting around a small square table, their eyes shining with a green light. They were playing mah-jongg. Each piece they placed on the table sounded as heavy as a coffin.

"Two."

"Eight ten-thousands."

"Match."

My ears were filled with the shouting that followed as they played. Dreams like bats fluttered at dusk, their bodies flitting nervously. I don't know if I slept or not. I'm not sure. Those days when I slept, I seemed to be awake, and when I was awake, I seemed to be asleep. And the dreams I dreamed-half the time I couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. I heard Seventh Uncle say, "Last game. After we finish this hand, let them take over." Then came the sound of shuffling mah-jongg tiles like a summer rain falling on Lake Taihu stones. Hearing these sounds, I was as if in a trance, but I clearly heard the sounds that followed. Betokened by the gods, I heard a sharp sound coming strangely from the edge of heaven. I propped myself up and barely missed hitting my head on the bottom of the coffin. I smelled the strange odor of the coffin and heard the sound of fingernails on the wood. I shook my head. It was completely quiet. Apparently, they heard something. We exchanged a look of terror. We clearly heard the sounds coming from the coffin, which functioned like a bass drum, amplifying the criticism and dissatisfaction of Great-Grandmother's fingernails against the coffin. My hands went slack, a number of my uncles looked at me, and their eyes shone to their biological limits. The scratching of her fingernails on the coffin was weak but frenzied, like the sharp, doomed cries of a rat in the mouth of a cat. Full of death's fervor, Great-Grandmother must have opened her cataract-covered eyes in the darkness and, at the same time, opened her toothless mouth. Great-Grandmother longed for light and space. Great-Grandmother's tiny three-inch bound feet-her golden lotuses- must have burst with energy as they kicked out twice, decisively opening a crack behind us as a cold wind blew in from eight hundred miles around.

Fifth Uncle said, "Open it up. Hurry! Open it up." Actually, Fifth Uncle didn't express himself in such a clear manner-his tongue was stiff as salted meat.

At first, Third Uncle didn't utter a word. Then he said, "Why weren't her fingernails clipped?"

We suddenly remembered Great-Grandmother's pointed gray nails. This threatening material became the most frightening part of a future countryside legend. We all held our breath, all our energy focused on listening. The sounds grew weaker and weaker, the pauses longer and longer. Finally, dead silence. To this day, I still believe that Great-Grandmother's left index finger was sticking up. We all knew she had her reasons for not prying with her nails, but we still waited a long time.

After the funeral procession, Great-Grandmother's descendants strode over the torches. In the field, the torches formed a wall between life and death. No, that's not accurate. After you've stepped past the torches, you've crossed over the screen between life and death. Flames blazed between each person's legs, and purplish smoke fled into the sky, where it formed a variety of hieroglyphs like difficult-to-decipher prophecies left by the ancients. All I know is that half were written on sheepskin, the other half in the sky.

Entering the passageway at home, we just had to pause. I said, "Let's take a look at Great-Grandmother's garret."

Father said, "Everyone else stay put. He and I will go up alone."

We opened the door, and a cold wind from the last century spread its long hair and long nails toward us. Her garret was devoid of furniture, save for a bed and a dressing table. Father and I were at a loss. Our curiosity was like a free-falling body in reality.

Father said, "Shoes. Your son's little red shoes." I stepped forward. My son's red shoes were under her bed, toes pointing toward the bed plank. I also saw my old, beat-up Nikes. Behind my Nikes, arranged in order of age, were a pair of green army shoes, a pair of cotton shoes, a pair of cotton slippers, and a pair of wooden clogs. I noticed that the shoes, which were laid out in a spiral, seemed to gaze at one another with a light-footed expression. Confident yet ridiculous. It was at that moment that the illusion occurred. I saw the arrival of the ranks of my clan in a long spiral procession. They greeted me in our local dialect and the inherited manner of our clan. Like time, they were toothless, their eyes clouded with cataracts.

Father said, "What's this? What's going on here?"

I was on the point of asking my father the same question. But hearing his voice, I held my tongue.

Translated By John Balcom

Dou Bao was awakened by a full bladder. Throwing off his ripped and torn quilt, he sat bare bottomed on the edge of the kang, two spindly legs feeling the ground for his sandals. When he found them, he shoved his feet in and shuffled out the door of the cave. Dou Bao never bothered to bring a chamber pot to bed at night, not even in the winter. He just relieved himself as soon as he cleared the doorway. Since it was summer, he walked a little farther, until he was standing in front of the levee. The moon was bare bottomed, too. He raised his head, and in the quiet of the night he heard his piss flow in a rivulet down the side of the levee.

He shuddered, then shook himself. As he turned around, he spotted someone sitting on the rock in front of the cave. In the bright light of the bare-bottomed moon, he could see that it was his daughter, Dou Gua. She sat there so silently, resting her head in her hands, that her body seemed to have grown out of the rock. Dou Bao's face twitched.

He shuffled past his daughter. He lit the oil lamp, then climbed back onto the kang to put on his clothes. He reached for his pipe on the stovetop connected to the kang and settled back with his legs crossed. He knocked the bowl of his pipe against the stove twice, and his daughter entered the room.

Dou Gua rested her backside on the edge of the kang but didn't look at Dou Bao. Puffing away on his pipe, Dou Bao soon finished a bowl of tobacco, and still Dou Gua hadn't spoken. He refilled his pipe, the long stem tilting stiffly upward, as if to say, Fine, go ahead and just sit there. Sit until dawn if you want. But…

"He's dead," Dou Gua announced.

Dou Bao's face twitched a second time. The stem of his pipe seemed to go limp, almost drop off, but quickly tilted upward again.

"He followed me to the Field of Ghosts. I hit him with a rock. It caught him on the forehead, and he went down. He must be dead," she said. "He was still on the ground when I left. I killed him."

Dou Gua thought she heard a swish. The whip that Dou Bao used to herd sheep hung behind the door, its thong snaking quietly down the mud wall. She knew by experience that that was how it sounded when it skimmed past her ear; she felt a muscle on her back jump. Actually, nothing moved. The oil lamp had crackled, sending off a spark and causing the shadow of the whip on the wall to flicker.

Not a hint of expression on Dou Bao's face.

Earlier, when Dou Gua had returned from the town of Shaping, it was already dark. She hadn't got anything done in town. She'd run into Teacher Chai as soon as she got there, and his brief conversation with her had left her feeling bad. She'd sat down where the stream wound toward the irrigation ditch and watched the market goers pass by, one after the other, until they had all disappeared, leaving only a parched brown road. Then she had turned and come back home.

Mangmang was waiting for her in their cave. His arms swiftly closed around her, drawing her toward the kang. When she spat in his face, Mangmang loosened his hold to wipe the spit off with the back of his hand. He looked at her, smiled a secret smile, and climbed onto the kang. Stripping off his clothes, he slipped naked beneath the quilt.

She felt miserable and spat on him.

Afterward, she had come here.

Everyone called this place the Field of Ghosts. No one ever came here, least of all at night. This piece of land had never yielded a single crop, not a single blade of grass. It was only an expanse of red soil, while everywhere else the earth was brown. And because there was only this unvarying red soil, it was called the Field of Ghosts.

She came here often, always at night.

Tonight the Field of Ghosts was shrouded in a layer of moonlight. The red, red soil was shrouded in moonlight. She sat at the edge of the field, all by herself, without even a blade of grass around.

"Lanying!" Teacher Chai had called out to her in town as he approached from the other side.

Lanying was the name she'd used in school.

"Lanying, so you've come, too," he said.

"Teacher Chai," she greeted him.

"How have you been, Lanying?"

She remembered that she'd produced a smile.

"Quanmao's come back," continued Teacher Chai. "You remember him, don't you? Last year, he passed the exam and got accepted to high school, and now he's back for summer vacation. Why don't you go see him? He came by to see me and asked about you. You two were the top students in my class… Quanmao is the first one from this town…"

She remembered that she'd produced a smile.

The smile she had to produce for Teacher Chai made her feel so miserable that she just turned around and headed back. She sat down where the stream wound toward the irrigation ditch and watched the market goers disappear, one after the other, until only a parched brown road remained. It was such a very long road.

She began walking, too. She walked and walked and became the girl of the pancake stall. She walked and walked and became Mangmang's woman.

Since it was Sunday and there was no school, she was tending the pancake stall in front of the house. A crew from Qiao Family Gully on their way to mend the terraced paddies walked by, their heads swiveling around to look in her direction.

"That's some tender young cabbage," one of them remarked.

"Belongs to Dou Bao," said another.

"If anyone on the way asks who we are, you just say we're man and wife…" Someone started a bawdy song.

She was a little frightened. She wanted to go to the latrine, but she didn't dare get up until all the men were gone.

The latrine was located west of the levee, screened by cornstalks. She had just crouched down when she heard someone laughing above her.

It was Mangmang. He was laughing. Then he laughed some more, his head tilted to one side so he could see her thighs.

To think that there could be such a shameless man on this earth! She wept. She locked herself in the cave and wept until Dou Bao came back from herding sheep.

Dou Bao already knew. His face livid with anger, he called for her to come out. She heard the swish of the whip as it skimmed past her ear and felt a sharp pain on her back as if she had been slashed with a knife.

That evening, Dou Bao went to Qiao Family Gully to look up Mangmang's father.