Lenin's Kisses (43 page)

Mao Zhi’s complexion turned sallow, and sweat ran down her face. The winter sun was shining brightly. There was no wind, and the entire village was filled with silent sunlight and leafless trees. The oxen had been led away, the pigs had been carted away, the chickens and ducks had been carried away. The village was like a ghost town, and apart from the people who were desperate from hunger, the others showed scant signs of life. Mao Zhi gazed out at the crowd assembled at her door; some were standing while others were kneeling on the ground. Some of the women were sitting and holding their children, who were so hungry they couldn’t even cry.

Mao Zhi examined that crowd of villagers, glancing at the barren mountains and empty sky beyond the village, and began feeling faint. She felt as though the ground was spinning. She leaned her hand against the door frame to support herself, then let her body slide down to the ground. She ended up kneeling in front of the villagers, and said,

Uncles, aunties, brothers, and sisters. Everyone should relax. As long as I, Mao Zhi, am alive, just as we originally found a way to enter society, we will similarly find a way to withdraw. Two weeks ago Jumei’s father, the stonemason, starved to death in his bed. He refused to eat this leather bag. He said that he had been a stonemason his entire life, but never imagined that this bag would be the most valuable possession he would be able to leave behind for his wife and daughter. Uncles, aunties, brothers, and sisters, half of the leather bag is still left, and I’ll go and cut everyone a strip. However, I’ll also ask everyone to lend me a hand, to help me dig a hole in the back of the village, so that I may bury my husband. The weather is getting warmer, and therefore he must be buried. I, Mao Zhi, have let you all down. I’ve let you all down. My husband, however, was a good man, and I beg that, in honor of his memory, you please help me.

Mao Zhi knelt in front of the villagers as she said this, and when she was finished she bowed her head and kowtowed three times. Afterward, she leaned against the door frame to pull herself up, and invited the villagers into her house.

The villagers stared at each other in disbelief.

Mao Zhi said, I am begging you. You have my word that, because I let you down, I haven’t dared leave my house for two weeks for fear of seeing anyone. Today you have all come here, and you ask why I don’t permit Liven to withdraw from society and return to the carefree life that the village once enjoyed. I accept responsibility for what has happened. If I don’t have grain, may I starve to death; and if I have grain may I die from overeating, and after my death, may my corpse be eaten by maggots, devoured by dogs, torn apart by wolves, and pecked by vultures. But if this famine happens to spare my life, I vow to you that I, Mao Zhi, will ensure that Liven withdraws from the commune and from Boshuzi township. Now, though, I beg you to help me carry the body of my husband out of the village and bury it. Jumei is still too small, and she is terrified of his dead body lying there.

Mao Zhi’s cousin was the first to enter her house, followed by a wholer. Inside, they saw that the tall stonemason was in fact lying stiffly on the bed, his body covered by a sheet, while on the ground there was a door plank on which Mao Zhi and her daughter had arranged their beddig. Jumei was lying on this makeshift bed, chewing a strip of boiled leather. As she was chewing, she saw the villagers walk in, whereupon her emaciated and sallow face broke into a grin.

The villagers took the corpse and buried it, and while Mao Zhi was thanking them she stood in front of the grave and once again knelt down toward the villagers and swore, Uncles, aunts, and brothers, I will no longer contribute to the Revolution. I, Mao Zhi, just want to live. Given that it was I who arranged for our village to enter society, I will therefore do everything I can to make sure that we withdraw again.

These were the events of the Year of the Great Plunder.

3)
Aurality.
DIAL. Means “memory.” To say that someone lacks aurality is to say that he or she forgets that which shouldn’t be forgotten.

C
HAPTER 5:
E
VERYONE KNELT DOWN IN FRONT OF HER, AND THE ENTIRE WORLD WAS FULL OF TEARS

Grandma Mao Zhi never expected that things would get twisted around like this, like a dead-end path through the mountains that might lead deep into a forest or to a moonlit riverbank, but could also lead right up to the edge of a precipice. This mid-sized city in Subei was no different from the other cities she had seen. The buildings were tall enough to reach the clouds, and in many cases their walls were made entirely of glass. When you walked up to one of those buildings in the middle of the day, it was as though you were standing next to a fire so hot it could bake the oil right out of your body, and you could smell the noxious smell of everyone’s hair. The street was very wide, and if it were being used to air-dry grain, it would be able to hold enough wheat or corn to feed the entire world.

But the entire street didn’t contain a single grain of wheat, and instead was completely full of people and cars. The gasoline smelled even worse than the manure in Liven’s pigsties and ox sheds, which was a very familiar and distinctive odor. The odor of Liven’s pigsties and ox sheds circulated through the village as individual strands. The stench of gasoline, however, was even fouler, and could be smelled blanketing the main street, in the back alleys, and everywhere in between. Fortunately, it was raining that day, and consequently the sticky odor was not as intense as usual, having been partially washed away by the rain.

The entire city had been washed clean.

Grandma Mao Zhi walked alone out of the theater, and walked alone down the street. She hadn’t expected that the people of Liven would abruptly decide they didn’t want to withdraw from society after all, nor that they wouldn’t want to leave the performance troupe. She also hadn’t expected that after she left the theater and stood beneath the building’s awning, sheets of rain would pour down on the theater’s roof and onto the steps in front of the theater, and that she would suddenly see the troupe director and several wholers from the county standing in the rain, looking like chickens soaking in a pot. When they saw Mao Zhi, they all looked excited, as though they had suddenly stumbled onto a bonfire in the dead of winter. Grandma Mao Zhi didn’t know where they had gone on their stroll, but upon seeing them she immediately realized they were on their way back from somewhere, and they were standing in the rain discussing something. When they saw Grandma Mao Zhi, they appeared to reach some sort of agreement and began walking toward her.

They said, “Grandma Mao Zhi, it’s good that you happened to come out, since there is actually something we would like to discuss with you. Chief Liu just called and said that the Lenin Fund is almost complete. At the end of the month the contractual term of your traveling troupe will have expired, and therefore the county has agreed that as of the first day of next year Liven will no longer fall under its jurisdiction.

“But,” they added, “Chief Liu said that everything should proceed in accordance with the will of the people, and before we take you back to Shuanghuai, he wants us to take a poll. He said that the people of Liven should all vote, to see how many of them wish to remain in Shuanghuai and under the administrative jurisdiction of Boshuzi, and how many of them wish for the village to remove itself from the county’s jurisdiction and enjoy a carefree existence.”

The rain was coming down harder than ever, but everyone continued standing on the steps in front of the theater. Some had umbrellas, while others simply let the rain pour down on their heads. One way or another, everyone’s face was completely soaked, and the smell of water smothered everybody’s own odors. You couldn’t tell what the group had been discussing, or what those discussions foretold. It was as though they had just received Chief Liu’s phone call when they ran into Grandma Mao Zhi, and had immediately proceeded to tell her about it.

Grandma Mao Zhi’s heart started pounding, as though a heavy instrument was slamming into her chest. This group didn’t know that the other troupe had just voted behind the stage, and that the vast majority of them indicated that, after having been part of the traveling troupe over the past five months, they no longer desired to withdraw from society, but rather wished to remain under the jurisdiction of Shuanghuai county. Grandma Mao Zhi didn’t mention the vote, and instead asked the wholers,

“What about the other performance group?”

The wholers asked, “Which other group?” They immediately added, “Do you mean the other traveling troupe? They already voted in Guangdong, and out of the entire troupe of sixty-seven people, not a single person wished to withdraw from society. Instead, all of them indicated that they hoped their troupe would never disband, and instead would continue traveling and performing forever.”

Grandma Mao Zhi felt a knot in her throat. She wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

Appearing to understand Grandma Mao Zhi’s reaction, the county cadres who came to supervise the two troupes took advantage of the situation to announce their decision, and proceeded to describe the plan they had formulated while standing in the rain. They said, “Grandma Mao Zhi, we have a proposition we would like to present to you. We know you have struggled your entire life to help the village of Liven maintain its independence and that now, to borrow your own expression, you wish to have the village withdraw from society and enjoy a carefree existence. We also know, however, that the people of Liven who have gone out with the traveling troupes have all earned a large bundle of cash, and are concerned that if they withdraw from society they won’t be able to continue performing and earning money. If you want to withdraw from society, you just need to agree to one thing, and if you do, then we’ll report to the county that the people of Liven have voted and unanimously agreed to withdraw from society. This way, when you return to Shuanghuai next year, you will no longer fall under the jurisdiction of Shuanghuai county and Boshuzi township, and indeed will have completely withdrawn from society.”

Grandma Mao Zhi cast her gaze over those county cadres, and waited for them to tell her what they wanted her to agree to do.

“Actually, what we are requesting is not anything particularly extraordinary,” one of them said. “We have been leading the traveling troupes for the past five months, and are exhausted. We want to divide the ticket revenue from these final few days among ourselves, and all we need is for you to sign your approval on the registration form, stating that because it was raining each of the final ten days, the troupe had no way of performing.”

They added, “We have already discussed this with the other troupe, and they agreed to do the same thing. Everyone knows that it rains heavily in the south, and no one would doubt that bad weather prevented them from performing.”

They added, “For the remaining shows, we could increase the ticket price from five hundred to seven hundred yuan per ticket, and each time you perform we will receive two seats, meaning that each of us would be able to earn more than a thousand yuan a day.”

They added, “For seven hundred yuan a ticket, though, we should add a new event, one that everyone would feel they absolutely have to see.”

They added, “Tonight, we will pack up and prepare to move on to the next city—Wenzhou. It hasn’t rained there recently, and the sun is shining bright. The people of Wenzhou are even richer than the people here, and families, when their children get married, paste brand-new hundred-yuan bills together on a sheet of red paper to form an auspicious double
happiness
character, and then take these enormous characters and post them on walls throughout the city. In fact, many families don’t even burn fake money after someone dies, but instead burn one bundle of real money after another.”

They added, “It wouldn’t be hard at all to add a new event to the program. You, Mao Zhi, could also perform something. You could contribute the closing act.”

They added, “We could move the act featuring the hundred-and-twenty-one-year-old man to the end, and after the audience has expressed their astonishment, we could then wheel you out in a wheelchair and announce that you are two hundred and forty-one years old, and that the nonuplet girls are your great-great-great-granddaughters. We could say that they are your family’s ninth-generation descendants. This event could be called Nine-Generations-Beneath-One-Roof.’”

They said, “We should think of a way of bringing up your residential permit and your identification card. Actually, it doesn’t really make a difference whether you perform or not. In fact, it doesn’t matter whether or not you agree to write on the performance record that the final shows were canceled on account of rain. It doesn’t even matter whether or not we are able to keep the proceeds from the final performances. The important thing is whether or not you will permit the people of Liven to withdraw from society.
That
is the crucial question.”

They said, “Just think, if you agree to have the troupe move on to Wenzhou, then tomorrow night they will start performing there.”

They said, “With each performance, you can earn three hundred seats. If that is not enough, we could increase your share to four hundred seats.”

Mao Zhi listened to all of this and thought it over, then said,