Lenin's Kisses (41 page)

Mao Zhi didn’t reply.

After another three days, Mao Zhi’s household had no more grain, and had to borrow a bit here and there from the neighbors, and some of those begging for food ended up starving to death in Liven.

They were buried along the village’s mountain ridge road.

More people starved to death, and were buried at the entrance to the village.

In Liven, there came to be a cluster of graves belonging to outsiders.

One night, something momentous took place. It was as if an explosion had rocked the village of Liven to its core. At the end of the first month of every year, there are always a few days in the Balou mountains that are as cold as hell. If this year had been as cold as in the past, the refugees in the streets would have been stomping around trying to keep warm. On this particular night, however, there was no sound of footsteps or of a bonfire. The village was so quiet it seemed as though there wasn’t a single refugee around. Occasionally a child in one of the village homes would cry out in hunger, but he or she would stop after one or two cries and the silence would return.

Mao Zhi didn’t realize that buried within this silence there was an imminent explosion, and therefore she, as usual, cooked a pot of sweet potato soup to give to the refugees outside her door. When she returned, her husband had already warmed up her bedding for her, so she took off her clothes and said, Stonemason, in the future you needn’t warm my bed for me. Given that you are not getting enough to eat yourself, your body doesn’t have any excess warmth. Her husband laughed, and then sat at the head of the bed and said, Mao Zhi, the chisel, hammer, and apron that I cleaned today were all hanging on the wall, and they fell to the ground of their own accord. I’m afraid this is an omen that something calamitous will happen to us, which will mean I won’t be able to continue warming your bed for much longer.

Stonemason, how can you still be superstitious under the new society?

Mao Zhi, Tell me the truth—do you regret marrying me?

Why in the world do you ask that?

Please, just tell me the truth.

Mao Zhi didn’t answer, and instead gazed silently into the distance.

Her husband asked, Why are you afraid to answer?

Do you really want me to answer?

Yes, go ahead.

Okay, then I will.

Then answer.

I always do feel a little regret.

The stonemason immediately turned pale, and stared at her in shock. He saw that though she was still very young, only thirty-something years old, she looked as though she were almost fifty.

He asked,

Is it because I’m so old?

She replied,

I regret that Liven is so isolated and is full of blind, deaf, and crippled people. If it weren’t for you, when we joined the commune I would have moved to the county seat to become the chair of the local women’s federation, or even the county chief. But now, I am still in Liven directing people to farm the land, and don’t even know if this counts as part of the Revolution or not. If it doesn’t, I will always regret that I spent the latter half of my life here in Liven without having a chance to contribute to the Revolution.

When she got to this point, the situation erupted. First, someone began knocking on the gate, and after a while someone else climbed over the wall. The stonemason asked, Who’s there? The footsteps came up to the door of the house. Mao Zhi asked, Who are you? Are you starving? If so, we’ll cook you a bowl of soup. The person didn’t say a word, and instead pushed open Mao Zhi’s door, and in rushed five or six burly wholers. They were all carrying clubs and shovels, and once they entered they immediately stood in front of the bed, waving their clubs and shovels at the stonemason’s head and at Mao Zhi’s face. They said, We are sorry for this; heaven is not fair. But we are all starving to death, while no one in this village of one-armed, one-legged, blind, deaf, and crippled villagers has experienced hunger, to the point that there isn’t a new gravestone in the entire village cemetery.

The speaker took out a letter of introduction from the county—stamped by both the county committee and the county government—directing him to collect grain from Liven. He thrust the letter, which was written with a brush on grass paper, onto the bed in front of Mao Zhi and said, You have already seen this sort of letter, yet you don’t permit Liven to distribute any more grain? You leave us with no choice but to take matters into our own hands. This is not stealing, but rather simply collecting what the government says is already rightfully ours. As he was saying this, he signaled to the men behind him, and immediately two middle-aged men took a cloth sack and went into another room to look for flour. They peered into the kitchen pot for something to eat.

By this point, the stonemason had already gotten down from the bed. He grabbed his cleaning sack from the bedpost and pulled out a hammer. But at that moment, someone waved a hoe at his head and shouted, Don’t forget that you come from a crippled family! The stonemason glanced at Mao Zhi, then stood motionless. Another man waved a club at her head and said, Be smart. Given that you fought in the Red Army and contributed to the Revolution, how is it that you don’t know that you should distribute grain to the masses? At this point, Mao Zhi’s daughter Jumei was awakened by all the commotion, and started howling as she tried to crawl into Mao Zhi’s lap. Mao Zhi stopped her, then stared at the burly young man who was now holding her hair. She recognized him as the father of the children to whom she would give a bowl of soup every day. She looked at him coldly and said, You, how can you be so lacking in compassion?

The man said, We have no choice. We have to find a way to help our families survive.

Mao Zhi replied, You are willing to steal to survive? Have you no principles?

The man said, What do you mean by principles?
We
are your principles! How can you speak of principles when people are starving to death? I’ve also fought in the Red Army, with the Eighth Regiment.

The sound of a bowl could be heard coming from the kitchen. Needless to say, this was the sound of a bowl shattering on the ground. The sound of jars and vats could be heard from another room, as the men searched desperately for food. Looking over the outer wall, the stonemason could see that one of the men had found their corn and poured it into his bag, and was now stuffing a handful into his own mouth. The stonemason said, You should eat more slowly; that jar had rat poison in it. The other man replied, I’d be happy to die of poisoning; at least it would be more pleasant than slowly starving to death. The stonemason said, In that case, you should just put the poison inside a baked bun, so that you don’t also poison your wife and children. The other man then held the light up to the opening of his cloth sack, and from inside he pulled out a dried bun and tossed it behind the door.

In the house, everything was in tumult. Jumei was in Mao Zhi’s lap, her shrill sobs reverberating throughout the room. Mao Zhi opened her shirt and stuck her nipple in Jumei’s mouth, immediately stanching her cries. The only sounds that remained in the room were those of footsteps and the sound of drawers being opened and closed. One man didn’t find any grain, or anything else, and walked disappointedly out of the kitchen. He stood in front of Mao Zhi and, with knife in hand, said, I didn’t find anything, and didn’t take anything. My child is only three years old, and is cold and hungry. You must give me something. Mao Zhi picked up Jumei’s padded jacket from the bed, handed it to him, and asked, Is this jacket too small?

He replied that it was fine if it was a little small.

Mao Zhi said that it was a girl’s jacket.

He said it was fine that it was for girls.

At this point there was a pause. Everything in the room that could be eaten or worn had been taken, and the men returned to Mao Zhi’s bedside. One of them was somewhat older, and he looked first at Mao Zhi and then at the stonemason. He bowed down before them, and said, Forgive me, I’m just borrowing this. Then, he led the other wholers out the door.

It was as if a tornado had blown through the house.

The room was quiet. The stonemason looked at the wall where his gun had been mounted, and remarked that it was a good thing the militiamen had not taken it. Mao Zhi turned around and glanced at the empty wall behind the bed, then placed Jumei down, whereupon she and her husband proceeded to get dressed. When they stepped out into the courtyard, they discovered that the men had latched the gate from the outside, leaving the entire family locked inside the house.

Mao Zhi and her husband stood alone in the courtyard. They could hear people shouting in the street, saying, They’ve buried their grain beneath the bed, their grain is beneath the bed! Then, they heard some wholers next door looking for pickaxes, shovels, and hoes, together with the sound of them digging a hole and refilling it. They heard one house after another being ransacked, as though there was a war going on. The stonemason saw Mao Zhi growing increasingly anxious, as she kept asking, What are we going to do? How can the wholers be so heartless? What are we going to do? How can the wholers be so heartless? He brought a stool over and placed it at the foot of the courtyard wall, then climbed over the wall to open the gate from the outside.

The moon was bright, and you could see halfway across the village. In the fields, there were many clusters of shadowy figures moving busily about. It was unclear what they were carrying. Some of the people were rushing into the village, while others hurried out, their footsteps resounding. Several wholers were leading oxen, while two strong ones were carrying a pig and some young ones were carrying chickens. The entire area was filled with the sound of chickens squawking, pigs oinking, and whips striking the backs of the pigs and oxen. Some of the wholers were rushing around urgently, and as a result the things they were carrying often fell off their backs and rolled over to the side of the road, at which point they would put down their things and go look for what had fallen. Then, other wholers passing by would pick up the things the first wholers had put down, and carry them off. In the resulting chaos, it seemed as though the entire world was in tumult.

Every family in Liven was sobbing. Under the bright moon, you could see the villagers’ shouts and cries flying around the village like dried-up blood clots. The blind man whose home had been robbed was standing under the eaves of his house, hugging his wife and child, who were also blind. He sobbed as he pleaded, Our entire family is blind; please leave us at least a handful of grain. A wholer walking out the door with a sack of grain asked, How is it that you blind people are living better than us? Who ever heard of disabled people leading better lives than able-bodied ones? He added, We haven’t come to steal your grain; we were sent by the government. There was nothing the blind family could say, as the three stared darkly at the wholers carrying off all of their grain.

One of the deaf people was quite strong, but since he couldn’t hear the footsteps of wholers entering his courtyard, they were able to catch him and tie him up to the legs of his bed. The deaf-mute couldn’t hear, but he could sense what was going on, so the wholers knocked him out with a stick. A seventy-seven-year-old crippled man wanted to go stop the wholers, but they said, If you move, we’ll break your good leg. The cripple suddenly remembered that he was disabled, and therefore had no option but to watch helplessly as the wholers took all of his family’s belongings.

A wholer asked, Where is there a lamp?

The woman lifted her only arm and pointed, It is there, on the corner of the table.

The wholer said, Go light it.

So she went to light the lamp, and handed it to him. She said, Famine is sweeping the land, and I know you are hungry. But my own child is only one year old. Could you at least leave him a quart of mixed grain flour? The wholer said, We are also from Boshuzi commune, and have a letter from the people’s commune instructing us to come collect grain. The letter is stamped by the county government, and if you don’t believe me I can fetch it. There isn’t a single person in your village who has had to go hungry, while four people out of our family of seven have already starved to death. On what grounds could you refuse to give us grain, given that we have a letter from the commune? As he was speaking, he pulled out the jar of grain that was hidden beneath the bed, ladled out the last quart of mixed grain flour, and carried it off.

When he reached the end of the courtyard, he turned and said,

Just think, who ever heard of disabled people being better off than able-bodied ones?

Every household was robbed.

The street was filled with the sound of footsteps.

The entire village was filled with cries and sobs.

The entire Balou region was in tumult.