Lenin's Kisses (4 page)

The villagers noticed that the county chief waiting on the ridge was getting impatient.

They also saw Grandma Mao Zhi striding up to meet him.

She passed a pair of blind men leading each other down from the ridge. They were each carrying a basket of wheat, and one called out in greeting: “It’s Granny Mao. I can tell it’s you from the sound of your crutch. Other people’s crutches make a hard thump in the snow, but yours sounds like a soft puff of air.”

Grandma Mao Zhi asked them, “Are you returning from harvesting wheat?”

The blind man replied with a request. “Please ask the county chief for more money. Ask him to give every family in the village ten thousand yuan.”

Grandma Mao Zhi asked skeptically, “Would they even be able to spend that much money?”

He replied, “If they can’t spend it all, they can always stuff it under their mattresses for their grandchildren.”

A deaf man came over and called out, “Granny Mao, please tell the county chief that all he needs to do is provide everyone in Liven with a pair of those headphones that are all the rage back in the city.”

A mute approached and used his notepad to communicate the fact that his family had endured considerable suffering, and that their wheat was buried so far down beneath the snow they couldn’t dig it out. He worried that this year he once again wouldn’t be able to find himself a wife, and asked Mao Zhi to request that the county chief help him find one.

Mao Zhi asked him, “What kind of wife do you want?”

He gesticulated to indicate a tall figure, a short one, a fat one, and a slender one, and then waved his hands in the air.

A one-armed carpenter walked over and instantly understood what was going on, explaining, “He means that any kind of wife is fine, as long as she is a woman.”

Mao Zhi turned to the mute and asked, “Is that correct?”

The mute nodded.

In this way, Mao Zhi took the hopes and wishes of the entire village with her when she went up the ridge.

The two chiefs were waiting anxiously, their impatience written all over their faces. When the township chief saw Mao Zhi hobbling, he quickly stepped forward to help her. To his surprise, however, before she reached him she stopped in front of the county chief and brought her icy gaze crashing down on him, whereupon he immediately looked away and stared off in the direction of a mountain on the far side of the ridge. The township chief said, “Mama Mao Zhi, this is the county chief and his secretary.” Mao Zhi turned pale and placed her crutch behind her for support. Whenever she was about to use her crutch to hit something, she always began by positioning it behind her for support.

The township chief said, “This is the recently appointed county chief, Chief Liu. . . .”

Mao Zhi looked intently at the county chief, then dropped her gaze and cried out, “
This
is the county chief? My god, how could
he
be the chief? He is but a pig, a goat, a maggot crawling in a putrid piece of pork! He is a flea on the corpse of a cold dead
⁷
dog!” And then . . . and then, she puckered her toothless mouth and spit in his face. The sound was surprisingly loud, reverberating through the air and blowing away the clouds on top of the ridge.

As things began to calm down, Mao Zhi abruptly turned and began hobbling back to the village, leaving the township chief, the county chief, and his secretary—together with Jumei and her surtwin daughters—all staring after her in shock.

After a long pause, Chief Liu kicked at a stone and cursed, “Blast your grandma. What’s her problem?
I’m
the only real revolutionary here!”

C
HAPTER 5:
F
URTHER
R
EADING—
C
OLD DEAD DOG

1)
Surtwin
. In Balou, multiple births of three or more siblings are called surtwins. In the middle of the twelfth month of the
gengshen
year, nothing particularly noteworthy was taking place in Balou—or in the rest of the country, for that matter. Apart from a Party Assembly being held in Beijing, everything was the same as before. On television and in newspapers, however, that assembly was subsequently compared to Mao Zedong’s founding of the People’s Republic of China thirty-one years earlier. The event lasted for five days, and on the last day Jumei went into labor. Her belly was swollen tight as a drum, and she cried in agony as she delivered three daughters—this being the triple phoenix birth that everyone in Balou had heard about but never before witnessed. Although the babies were no larger than kittens, each was nevertheless a tiny person, able to wail and nurse. As Jumei lay there, her blood flowing down the legs of the bed and her forehead bathed in sweat, Mao Zhi elatedly brought the midwife one bucket of boiling water after another. The midwife washed her hands and placed a hot towel on Jumei’s forehead, asking, Is your belly livening yet? Jumei replied, It hurts, and feels like I’m still having contractions. The midwife was eating a bowl of bean noodles that Mao Zhi had prepared for her, and asked in surprise, You’re still having contractions? I’ve been delivering babies my entire life, but this is the first triple phoenix birth I’ve ever seen. How could there possibly still be a fourth or fifth child in there?

After finishing her noodles, the midwife got ready to leave. Before she left, however, she again felt inside Jumei, then cried out in astonishment: Heavens, there really
is
another baby in her belly!

Jumei proceeded to give birth to a fourth child.

This was Balou’s legendary surtwin birth. All four of the infants were girls. The eldest was called Tonghua, or “Tung-Oil Tree Blossom”; the second was called Huaihua, or “Pagoda Tree Blossom”; the third was called Yuhua, or “Elm Blossom”;
and because there happened to be a moth flying around the room when the fourth was born, she was called Si’e, or “Fourth Moth,” and was nicknamed Mothlet.

3)
Little nin
. A girl whose growth is stunted. Because Jumei gave birth to quadruplets, each of them was born small, and therefore everyone called them little nins.

5)
Wholer
. A term of respect used in Liven to refer to healthy people. The term is used to designate those of us who are normal and are neither blind, deaf, mute, nor missing any limbs.

⁷⁾
Cold dead
. D
IAL
. This was originally used to refer to cold weather, but here it is used to suggest that someone’s heart is as cold and hard as that of a dead man.

There was a reason why Mao Zhi cursed the new county chief like this. The chief’s name was Liu Yingque, and he was once just an ordinary person like us. Prior to the
dingji
year, he had been a soc-school babe
¹
in the county seat,
and it was from there that he ended up as a temporary worker in the township of Boshuzi. Every day he would sweep the courtyard of the town hall and fill the boilers in the canteen, for which work he was paid twenty-four and a half yuan a month.

During that era, people throughout the land were deeply engrossed in the dance of Revolution, though in remote Balou they were concerned primarily with trying to fill their bellies. The people of Balou eventually came to realize that they needed knowledge and enlightenment, just as the nation needed to develop a socialist education movement, promote soc-ed,
³
and emphasize rationality and pedagogy. Personnel were needed to promote soc-ed, so Liu Yingque was summoned. Given that he was young and fit, and was regarded as the soc-school babe, he was sent to Liven a hundred
li
away to help promote soc-ed and lead the people.

In Liven, Liu asked the villagers if they had ever heard of Wang, Zhang, Jiang, and Yao.

The villagers stared at him blankly.

Liu explained that Wang, Zhang, Jiang, and Yao were the infamous Gang of Four, and asked how it was possible that the villagers didn’t know about them.

The villagers continued staring at him blankly.

Liu then convened a meeting, during which he read from some official documents. He explained that the Gang of Four was comprised of Deputy Party Chair Wang Hongwen, the conspirator Zhang Chuqiao, Chairman Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, and the hooligan Yao Wenyuan. At this point, the villagers nodded and Liu, his work complete, prepared to return to the commune. As he was leaving, however, he happened to notice a wholer walking over from the other side of town. She appeared to be about sixteen or seventeen, and as she walked her braids waved back and forth like a pair of black crows perched on her shoulders.

You can just imagine what it must have been like to hold a meeting in Liven and gaze down from the stage at the crowd of blind, crippled, deaf, and mute people below. In this sea of disabled people, Liu’s eyes would have felt to himself like a pair of lanterns, his legs like flagpoles, and his ears like satellite dishes. Here, he would have felt like a commander in chief, even an emperor—but even so, he wouldn’t have wanted to stay too long; he would have been afraid that if he did his eyesight might begin to fade, his legs might grow weak, and his hearing might deteriorate.

This was the third lunar month. The vegetation was green, flowers were in bloom, and a refreshing fragrance hung in the air. In Liven there was a pair of century-old honey locust trees, whose canopies shrouded the entire village in shade. The village was located in a gorge at the base of a cliff, and consisted of a scattering of houses connected by a road. The region facing the ridge to the west was comparatively flat and populous; most of the inhabitants were blind, but when they went out they didn’t need their canes as long as they stayed close to home. The central region was hillier and less populated; most of the residents were cripples but, since their eyesight was good, if they needed to get around they could hobble along by leaning on their crutches and against a wall. In the easternmost region, meanwhile, the terrain became extraordinarily steep and the road was exceedingly poor. Most of the residents there were deaf-mutes, but since they had good eyes and strong legs they were not particularly concerned over the condition of the road.

Liven’s main street was two
li
long, and extended from the river to the mountain. The region to the west with the concentration of blind inhabitants was called the blind zone, the region to the east with a preponderance of deaf-mutes was called the deaf zone, and the region in the middle where cripples predominated was naturally called the cripple zone.

The wholer was walking over from the cripple zone, though she herself was not crippled and instead seemed to flutter along like a leaf blowing in the wind. Liu Yingque had set out from the commune early the previous morning, and after spending the night on the road had arrived in the village around noon. He had originally planned to convene a meeting under one of the honey locust trees, read his official documents, and then leave this world of the crippled and the blind and the deaf and dumb as soon as possible—spending the night on the road and returning to the commune the next day. Upon seeing this young wholer appear before him, however, he resolved instead to stay in Liven another night. He stood in the middle of the road, his white shirt tucked into his pants, waiting for the woman to approach so that he could examine her delicate figure, flushed cheeks, florid shirt, and embroidered shoes. Back in town, those shoes were as ubiquitous as the
zongzi
bamboo leaf wrappings that always end up scattered everywhere after the annual Duanwu Festival, but here in Liven she was the only person who wore them, her shoes resembling a couple of blossoms in the middle of a winter landscape. Liu stood in the middle of the road as though trying to block her path, and asked, Hey, what’s your name? Why didn’t you come to the meeting today?

She blushed and looked around, as if trying to escape, explaining, My mother is sick, and I needed to get her some medicine.

He introduced himself as Cadre Liu from the commune, and asked if she knew who Wang, Zhang, Jiang, and Yao were. When she didn’t respond, he proceeded to educate her, explaining that an event had taken place in China that was so momentous that it was celebrated throughout the land as a second Revolution. He asked her how it was possible that she didn’t know who Wang Hongwen and Zhang Chuqiao were, or even that Jiang Qing was Chairman Mao’s wife. Afterward, he still didn’t leave, but stayed in Liven another night. He was determined to teach this girl and her isolated village many things about the outside world—about the commune, the provincial capital, and indeed the entire nation.