Lenin's Kisses (30 page)

When a leader comes to attend a meeting, he must always arrive a little late. Chief Liu, however, was never late, and in fact he would always be the first to arrive. After everyone else showed up he would sit down and get ready for the meeting, but before beginning he would pick at his toes for a while. In this way, the people at the meeting would be reminded of how talented and prestigious he was, together with the fact that they were his subordinates and needed to be deferential in his presence.

Chief Liu didn’t pick at his toes for very long—just long enough for the standing committee members to steep some tea. Once he was finished, he slapped the table with both hands, making a sound like the people of Balou when they are hoeing the soil. He removed his feet from the chair in front of him, put his shoes back on, and took a sip of his tea. He laughed and said, “You must excuse me, I am disheveled, and have become a ragged wolf.”
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Then he became serious and announced solemnly, “Everyone take up your pens and notebooks, and help me make a calculation.”

The standing committee members all took their pens and notebooks, and then leaned forward to begin recording.

Chief Liu said, “Everyone calculate: A premium ticket costs two hundred and fifty-five yuan, second tier costs two hundred and thirty-five, while third tier costs two hundred and five. If we assume that the tickets on average will cost two hundred and thirty-one yuan each, and if we have one performance a day, and each performance sells an average of a thousand one hundred and five tickets, how much will we earn each day? And, if we have two performances a day, then how much will we earn? Quick, help me calculate these sums.”

At this point, Chief Liu paused and glanced around at the standing committee members seated around him. He saw that they were all writing down the numbers he had just given them, and were plugging them into equations. The room sounded like a classroom full of students doing their homework.

Chief Liu cleared his throat and said, “Actually, you don’t need to calculate this, since I’ve already done the math for you. If each performance sells an average of a thousand one hundred and five tickets, and each ticket costs an average of two hundred and thirty-one yuan, then each performance will bring in two hundred fifty-five thousand, two hundred and fifty-five yuan. Fuck, let’s be generous—we don’t even need those five thousand, two hundred and fifty-five yuan. Even without them we would still earn two hundred and fifty thousand yuan a day, and if we have two performances a day, we would make five hundred thousand yuan. If we could raise five hundred thousand yuan a day, then in two days we could earn one million yuan, in twenty days we could earn ten million, and in two hundred days we could earn a hundred million yuan. How much money is a hundred million yuan? If we took freshly printed hundred-yuan bills and bundled them into bricks of ten thousand yuan each, then a hundred million yuan would be ten thousand of these ten-thousand-yuan cash bricks. If we stacked them up, the pile would reach the roof of this building.”

When he mentioned the roof of the building, Chief Liu glanced up at the ceiling. When he looked back down, he saw that the standing committee members were also staring at the ceiling. He noticed that each face was blushed like the eastern sky at dawn and that the eyes were as bright as marbles in the sunlight. He also noticed that, since he was speaking rapidly and his mouth was opened wide, the conference table in front of him was completely covered in spittle.

The nearest deputy committee member, afraid that his face would get soaked in spittle, was leaning as far away from him as possible. Chief Liu was displeased by this and glared at him, whereupon the council member quickly pulled his chair closer, as though waiting to be showered with saliva. As if in retribution, as Chief Liu spoke he oriented himself even more toward this county member, such that all of the spittle that had originally been sprayed onto the table was now landing directly on this committee member’s face. Chief Liu deliberately opened his mouth even wider and lifted his head even higher, such that the entire room, the entire building, the entire country, and even the entire world was filled with his soaring voice. It was as if it wasn’t just a few county committee members who had come to the meeting, but rather all of the county’s eight hundred and ten thousand residents. It was as if this were a mass meeting attended by a hundred thousand or even a million people. Chief Liu fired off his calculations, his voice roaring, resonating through the entire land.

“From this point on, Shuanghuai county will soar. If a performance troupe can earn ten million yuan in two hundred days, then in four hundred days it can earn twenty million. . . . Of course, you can’t guarantee that the troupe will be able to have two performances every day. In moving from one theater to another, for instance, after having taken care of the stage sets, the lights, and other assorted hassles, they might well end up losing a day, thereby resulting in five hundred thousand yuan in lost income. Similarly, when they move from one city to another, or from one district to another, they might get sidetracked and lose several days loading the truck or riding the train, resulting in several million more yuan in lost income. Then, there is also the troupe members’ salaries and bonuses to consider. Each performer should earn at least half of a hundred-yuan bill for every performance, and therefore a one-hundred-yuan bill for two performances. Accordingly, they could earn a hundred yuan a day, and three thousand yuan a month. Three thousand yuan is actually double the monthly salary of your county chief. But we should calculate these accounts carefully—if one performer earns three thousand yuan, then ten performers will earn thirty thousand, and sixty-seven performers will earn two hundred and one thousand a month. . . . If we calculate it like this, then it becomes clear that in two hundred days we actually won’t earn ten million yuan. But could we earn that much in three hundred days? If we can’t earn it in three hundred days, could we earn it in a year?”

This last statement was phrased as a question, but it also functioned as an assertion, reassuring everyone that they could definitely earn ten million in a year. Chief Liu excitedly stood up in his chair and began dancing like an eagle soaring through the sky.

“I’m telling you, I calculated these expenses as we were returning from Jiudu. Because all of our performers are disabled, the government doesn’t collect taxes from them. If the performers don’t pay taxes, every cent they earn counts as income for our county’s coffers. The twenty-one days I was away, we performed thirty-three times, and as a result seven million and ten thousand yuan have already been deposited into the county coffers. Knowing this, are you still concerned that we won’t earn enough to buy Lenin’s corpse? Don’t forget that the district government is also going to give us a large donation, but even if they didn’t we still wouldn’t have to worry about being able to raise this amount of money.”

With this last point, Chief Liu threw up his arms, then quickly lowered them again. He leaned over to get his glass and took a sip of water, and proceeded to hop onto the county committee’s conference table. The committee members were so startled by this that they pushed back from the table, but Chief Liu paid them no heed. He was, after all, the county chief, and there was no need for him to pay any attention to things like this. He stood on that long red table without looking down at the committee members sitting below him. Because he was standing tall, he could see through the window that the hallway outside the conference room was full of county committee cadres. A dark mass, they were all crowded around the conference room’s doors and windows, craning their necks to watch him, like the audience at a performance of the Liven troupe. As for the people assembled outside the building, somehow everyone knew that Chief Liu had brought back good news from the district, and they gathered to hear the speech he gave at the three-story conference hall. As a result, the area in front of the door was full of cadres from the county committee and the county government, along with county-level workers.

The seventh-month sun was blazing hot. Since the ground in front of the county committee building was made of cement, after the sun shone down on it all day long it became hot enough to fry an egg. But all the people stayed, their faces covered in sweat, as they stood on their tiptoes and peered upward, trying to catch a glimpse of Chief Liu’s shadow through the third-floor window and to hear his brilliant proclamation.

Chief Liu recited in a booming voice:

“I assure you that by the end of this year or the beginning of the next, Shuanghuai will no longer be the same county you know now, because by that time we will have brought back Lenin’s corpse and installed it in the mausoleum in the Lenin Forest Park. At that point, thousands of tourists will come pouring in every day. Tickets will sell for a hundred yuan each, with ten people paying a thousand yuan, a hundred people paying ten thousand yuan, a thousand people paying a hundred thousand yuan, and ten thousand people paying a million yuan!”

Chief Liu stood on the conference table hollering and shouting, his voice sounding like a thunderstorm, and it left the entire building and courtyard completely soaked. He was calculating so furiously that he cracked his knuckles. As he was explaining how much money this would be, and specifically how much they would raise from admission tickets to the Lenin Park each day after they succeeded at bringing in Lenin’s corpse, he paused and brought his fists to his chest, like an eagle soaring in the sky that folds its wings as it glides toward the earth. He peered down at every committee member so that each could hear his oration more clearly. For their part, the committee members leaned even farther back in their seats so as to see more clearly his gestures and facial expressions. He noticed that people in the hallway had left the door to the conference room ajar, and their faces were all pressed flat as they tried to watch him through the cracks in the door and the window. He saw that not only was the field in front of the courtyard full of people, but there were people standing along the border of the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, while some had even climbed onto the fountain itself. He saw that everyone’s face was glowing with amazement, and their eyes were as bright as the sun and the moon. He raised his voice to the point that it enveloped the mountains and the clouds.

He roared: “One million a day, ten million in ten days, a hundred million in three months, and three hundred and seventy million in a year. Three hundred and seventy million—and this would be just from the sale of admissions tickets. In addition to the Lenin Mausoleum, the Lenin Forest Park will also have a Nine Dragon Cataract, a Thousand
Mu
Pine and Cypress Forest, and a Ten Thousand
Mu
Wildlife Mountain. You can climb the mountain to watch the sunrise, and come back down to see the Heavenly Lake, the Deer Looking-Back Stone, the Fairy Pond, the Cave of the Green and White Serpents, and the Hundred Herb Garden. . . . Spirit Mountain will have endless scenery for you to enjoy. If you climb the mountain to visit the Lenin Mausoleum, you will need to purchase a constant stream of admission tickets, to the point that it will even be necessary to remain up on the mountain for a night or two. This, in turn, will involve paying for a hotel room and for meals. Even a box of tissues will cost two yuan. . . . Just think, a tourist visiting the mountain will, at the very least, need to spend five hundred yuan. How much money would ten thousand tourists spend? They would give us five million yuan! And what if each of them were to spend a thousand yuan, or even thirteen or fifteen hundred yuan? And what if, during the peak tourist season in the spring, we don’t have ten thousand tourists a day, but rather fifteen, twenty-five, or even thirty thousand?”

Chief Liu looked around at the cadres and spectators inside and outside the building, took a sip of water, and cleared his throat. Then, acting as though he were reaching the conclusion of a meeting, he smiled helplessly and said,

“It’s such a large amount of money, I can’t even calculate it. Please, help me figure out how much money Shuanghuai would earn in a year. . . . By that time, the question will not be how much money we can earn, but rather how we could possibly spend all the money that we do earn. Our primary challenge will be finding ways to spend all that money.”

He once again gazed at his audience, who were all listening attentively and with bright faces. Then, he announced at the top of his voice,

“Spending the money we earn will be our most difficult challenge. Whether you are shopping or constructing buildings, how much money can you possibly spend? Even if we extend the county committee and county government buildings halfway to the sky, and build separate office buildings for each department and board committee, and even if you were to paint the walls and pave the streets in gold, the endless flow of money would continue pouring into the government’s coffers, like a river of gold. How much can you possibly eat? How much can you possibly spend? Even if all of the county’s peasants were to stop farming while continuing to receive a paycheck from the county every month for just sitting there, you would still end up with more money than you can spend. If you become anxious about not farming, you could plant your fields with flowers and grass, so that they would be colorful and fragrant all year round, thereby attracting more tourists. If you have more tourists, however, you will end up bringing in more money. . . . Shuanghuai will become a county in which it is ridiculously easy to make money, but excruciatingly difficult to spend it. What do you propose to do once we reach that point? What will we do? Even I, as county chief, don’t know what we’ll do. All I know is that if we bring back Lenin’s corpse and install it in the Lenin Forest Park, we will end up with more money than we can spend—money that will be as abundant as autumn leaves on the ground. By that point, every family and every household will have so much money that their food will no longer taste fragrant, and they won’t even be able to sleep at night. Each household will undergo extreme hardship in their attempts to spend the money. However, this is not my concern as county chief, but is rather an issue each of you must face, since it is a new problem encountered by Shuanghuai’s revolution and reconstruction. It would take a much more capable county chief than I to solve this problem. The district or province would need to send someone down to investigate the situation for ten days to two weeks, or even three to six months, before we can hope to solve this difficult problem. . . .”