Lenin's Kisses (49 page)

3)
For nothing.
For no direct compensation. The phrase means “to do something in vain.”

C
HAPTER 11:
T
HE WEATHER IS INCREASINGLY WARM, AS WINTER BECOMES A SWELTERING SUMMER

Liven’s two special-skills troupes had never before performed together. The first time they did so was during the inauguration of the Lenin Mausoleum, just before Chief Liu was scheduled to cut the ribbon. Liven’s special-skills troupes perfunctorily performed in the square in front of the mausoleum, and then dispersed to show off their skills at various sites throughout the area. One-Legged Monkey led little Polio Boy, who inserted his foot into a bottle, to perform at the Black Dragon Pool, while someone else led Deafman Ma, who exploded firecrackers next to his ear, to perform at the Silver Apricot Forest. Paraplegic Woman, who could embroider a leaf, went with Blind Tonghua, who could listen acutely, to perform at the Deer Looking-Back Riverbank. Grandma Mao Zhi and her nine little mothlets took their performance to another mountainside, where they could watch the sunset and the sunrise.

After visiting the mausoleum, you could proceed to the Nine Dragon Cataract, the Stone Cliffs, the Mountain-Top Stone Forest, and the Cave of the Green and White Serpent. If you still had some free time, there was also the old legend, invented by the town’s literati, about the monstrous black python that emerged from the Black Dragon Pool. These sites were all located along a path beside the creek, and the performances took place along the same path. Perhaps these mountains and streams were not particularly interesting, but Liven’s performances were truly extraordinary, and you couldn’t help going to watch them.

Everyone knew that the money used to purchase Lenin’s corpse was raised by Liven’s performance troupes. They knew that when the troupes were performing down south, they would charge up to a thousand yuan per ticket. Balou families, however, typically couldn’t even earn eight hundred yuan a year. Needless to say, for them to be willing to spend the equivalent of their entire annual salary in order to watch some blind, deaf, mute, and crippled performers, the performances had to be really extraordinary, consisting of something that wholers would never dare try to do themselves.

There was a moment of quiet just before dusk, as the sun was slipping behind the mountain. In the distance, the mountain creeks fell silent, as though the entire land had fallen into an old well.

Previously, you couldn’t find anyone carrying anything. Now, however, when everyone went to the square in front of the mausoleum to watch Liven’s troupes perform, they were all holding something to eat—including cold steamed buns, bags of peanuts, fava beans, baked buns, and shop cookies and cakes, together with the tea-eggs that peddlers were hawking, and as a result the entire area was filled with the sound of people munching away on their food and sipping their drinks.

The villagers who sold food and drink struck pay dirt, and proceeded to sell even their families’ years-old grain, which had already gone bad. The villagers who didn’t have anything to sell would take a large pot normally used for slaughtering pigs and use it to boil water, which they would then haul up the mountain in buckets, where it would become liquid gold.

It was the middle of winter, yet here it felt like a summer evening. Even in the middle of summer, though, it remained cool in the mountains, and in this particular region it could get quite chilly. This summerlike evening, therefore, signaled a respite not so much from the midday heat, but rather from the bitter chill typically associated with a midwinter night. Everyone—villagers and urbanites, old and young, men and women—were either standing in the square or sitting on the fifty-four kowtow steps leading from the square to the mausoleum. Those kowtow steps provided an ideal position to watch the performance, while the stone railing on either side of the steps offered the young people a perfect perch from which to view the festivities.

A stage was set up on the side of the square in front of the mausoleum. It was surrounded on three sides by new yellow canvas, and the top of the stage was also covered in new canvas. The canvas’s odor of fresh paint was as thick as the fragrance of summer wheat, moistening people’s hearts. The leader and deputy leader of the Balou tunes opera troupe were attending the villagers’ performances and, having learned from Chief Liu’s example, they were several times more respectful of Grandma Mao Zhi’s performances than he had been. What they were most certain of, however, was how much extra money Shuanghuai could earn from each of these additional performances and, by extension, how much extra money their own families might receive.

Earlier that day, Chief Liu had said, “Soon, Liven will no longer fall under our jurisdiction. Do you not realize this?”

The troupe director added, “Grandma Mao Zhi, during the day everyone will perform separately, and at night everyone will come together for a collective performance. But no matter what, you absolutely must give us some additional performances.”

Grandma Mao Zhi said, “Chief Liu, we agreed that at our final performance, you would read aloud from the stage the document affirming our withdrawal from society.”

Chief Liu said, “Let’s agree that you will first perform continuously, drawing everyone up to Spirit Mountain, where our influence is as vast as the earth and sky.”

Grandma Mao Zhi said, “Chief Liu, you agreed that one-third of the proceeds from the Spirit Mountain performances would go to Liven.”

One-Legged Monkey added, “The county authorities said that the ticket revenues must be distributed immediately following the performance.”

Now, meanwhile, the troupe director said, “Quick, quick. Go summon the villagers and Grandma Mao Zhi. The audience is growing impatient, and if they have to wait any longer, they may very well tear down the stage.”

The performance was delayed half an hour.

This was the troupe’s final performance, at which Chief Liu had agreed to read aloud the document permitting Liven to withdraw from society. But when it was time to begin the performance, Chief Liu still had not appeared. Grandma Mao Zhi asked, “Will he come or not?” The county official replied, “Chief Liu has never gone back on his word. The organizers of a meeting sometimes may wait before starting the meeting without him, but he would invariably arrive at the very last moment, just as the meeting was about to adjourn.”

The county official added, “There is no way that Chief Liu wouldn’t come for this.”

The performance, therefore, got under way. The program was one that the troupers had already performed hundreds, or even thousands, of times while touring the country, and they were as familiar with it as rural women are with preparing rice, rolling dough, tying thread, and mending shoes. The only difference was that they had previously been touring as two separate troupes, while now they were united into a single troupe, and they had to eliminate the duplicated acts and rearrange the order of the overall performance.

Chief Liu had said, “Go perform. Perform all the special-skills routines that people haven’t seen yet, and I’ll give a bonus of a thousand yuan to whoever performs well.”

Grandma Mao Zhi had said, “Certainly. At any rate, this will be our final performance.”

This final performance did, in fact, turn out to be unlike any of the preceding ones. From the very beginning, it was different. The beauty of Huaihua was absolutely out of this world. She was now a goddess among wholers, with a slender physique, a moonlike face, and limpid white skin that looked as though she had been doused in milk. When she stood in front of the stage in her role as announcer, she wore a clear dress, and up on stage she appeared like a moon hanging from a willow branch. Her hair was so black it looked as though all of the spotlights were shining directly on her head. Her lips were as red as ripe persimmons, and her teeth were as white as agate jade.

Everyone knew that when she left Liven she had been a tiny nin like her sisters Tonghua, Yuhua, and Mothlet. While out performing over the preceding half year, however, she had developed into a wholer. Her performance troupe had watched as she’d become increasingly radiant, but, like parents observing their children grow up, they did not find her transformation extraordinary, having watched it unfold day after day. Once she returned to Shuanghuai and encountered the villagers from the other performance troupe, however, those who hadn’t seen her for several months were left speechless. The trash collector stood in amazement and ceased collecting trash, the porters stopped in their tracks, and people who had been squatting around all stood up and stared at her, to the point that the fairylike Huaihua began to feel rather discomfited, as if she had somehow wronged them by taking something from them.

When the Paraplegic Woman saw Huaihua, she suddenly leaped into the air. When she fell back to the ground, she exclaimed in amazement,

“Heavens! My heavens! Huaihua, how you have grown!”

Grandma Mao Zhi had been quietly watching her granddaughter from a distance. She stared in astonishment, but eventually laughed and said, “It has been worth it then. These past six months of touring and performing have certainly been worth it.” She said this as though the villagers’ touring and performing had taken place not to enable the village to withdraw from society, but rather to enable Huaihua to grow into an extraordinary wholer. As for Mothlet, she stood there with a look of surprise and envy, then eventually pulled Huaihua aside and asked, “Sis, how did you manage to grow so tall?”

After first glancing around furtively, Huaihuai whispered,

“Mothlet, if I tell you, will you still listen to me?”

Mothlet said, “Why wouldn’t I?”

Huaihua replied, “Tonghua and Yuhua no longer listen to me. They act as though, in becoming a wholer, I’ve somehow taken something from them.”

Mothlet said, “Tell me, Sis. I won’t be like them.”

Huaihua said, “You’re already seventeen years old. It’s time you were with a man. And it should be a wholer. You should sleep with a wholer.” Mothlet stared at her whole and beautiful sister in astonishment. It seemed as though she was about to say something, but she suddenly noticed someone walk into the theater. It was Secretary Shi, and when Huaihua saw him she laughed and immediately rushed over.

After a while, Huaihua announced that she was going to accompany Secretary Shi back to the county government building to take care of some affairs, and then walked out with him. She retired to his room, and remained there until the two troupes were about to ascend Spirit Mountain. As the trucks carrying the troupes were ready to leave the county, she suddenly hurried back to rejoin them.

The moon rose at the usual time, and the stars also appeared in the sky as scheduled. For tens or hundreds of
li
outside the mountain region, everything was still frozen in the dead of winter, but here in Balou the weather was unusually warm. The evening was like the middle of summer, and the sky was so indigo it seemed fake, as though it had been artificially dyed. The night was extremely tranquil, without a trace of wind, and the milky white moonglow flowed over the mountain and the gorges, looking as though water were flowing over the landscape.

The entire land was in a state of peace, and it was only in the memorial hall that there were lights and the sound of human voices. It was as if everyone in the world had suddenly vanished, and the only survivors were the people in the memorial hall, who were celebrating their survival. Huaihua walked leisurely up to the front of the stage, her waterlike dress complementing her moonlike face. At that moment, the thousands of people in the audience were astonished by Huaihua’s beauty and instantly fell silent, like a mountain sparrow suddenly glimpsing a phoenix. Everyone’s gaze was riveted on Huaihua, on her body and her face, and everyone was waiting for her to speak. As she continued to stand there silently, a faint smile on her face, the audience became increasingly anxious, and finally she said softly,

“Comrades, friends, village elders. To celebrate the completion of the Spirit Mountain Lenin Memorial Hall, and to celebrate the impending arrival, in two or three days, of Lenin’s corpse, the village of Liven’s two special-skills troupes have arranged tonight’s performance.

“This special-skills performance is one that people simply can’t believe when they hear about it, or even when they see it with their own eyes. You are welcome to believe it or not. Seeing is believing. Now, the performance will begin, and the first event will be
. . .
Firecracker-on-the-Ear.”

Who could have imagined that not only would Liven’s Huaihua be transformed from a tiny nin into a beautiful wholer, but furthermore that her stage voice would become soft and smooth, such that she now sounded just like a professional announcer? In fact, watching her was like watching a performance in itself. Nevertheless, she looked as though she could hardly bear to talk, and instead merely offered a few brief comments, then bowed to the audience, took a couple of steps back, and walked off the stage—like a sparrow that happened to fly onto the stage and then immediately flew away again. Everyone’s eyes and hearts were left empty, as though they had lost something they truly loved.

Fortunately, as soon as Huaihua stepped off stage, the actual performance began.

The opening act was no longer One-Legged Monkey’s Leaping-Over-a-Mountain-of-Knives-and-Crossing-a-Sea-of-Fire routine, but rather Deafman Ma’s Firecracker-on-the-Ear. Because in the mountains they performed out in the open, the troupes didn’t have to follow the same order as they did in the city, but rather they needed to immediately quiet down the rambunctious audience so that everyone would fall into a stupefied daze. Therefore, they decided to use Deafman Ma’s Firecracker-on-the-Ear as their opening act, and he left the audience so astonished that they didn’t know what to do. Tonight, he was wearing the sort of white silk lantern outfit that an acrobat might wear. Whereas in the beginning he had been paralyzed by stage fright, now he was a seasoned performer. All of the disabled residents of the village of Liven had become seasoned performers. Deafman Ma slowly walked onto the stage, bowing deeply to the audience. Then, someone wrapped a string of two hundred firecrackers over his ears.