Lenin's Kisses (50 page)

The audience immediately calmed down, as though they were seeing someone about to leap to his death from a precipice or a tall building.

Huaihua reappeared and stood in a corner of the stage. Speaking in a normal voice, she explained that Deafman Ma was forty-three years old this year, and since he had been fond of setting off fireworks ever since he was small, he had perfected his Firecracker-on-the-Ear technique. Huaihua did not claim that Deafman Ma had been deaf since infancy; rather, she said that he began setting off fireworks at the age of seven, and after practicing his technique had reached the point where he wasn’t afraid of
any
sound next to his ear. Later, Huaihua took a raincoat from the corner of the stage and had Deafman Ma put it on in order to protect his lantern outfit. Then, she told him to stand at the front of the stage, placing a thin iron sheet between the firecrackers and his face.

She then lit the fireworks herself.

These two hundred red firecrackers emitted a cloud of smoke as they began exploding around the left side of his face. The audience was petrified with shock, and everyone—adults as well as children—immediately turned pale. In order to prove that he really wasn’t afraid of the firecrackers, Deafman Ma turned his head so the audience could see the left side of his face, and so that the fireworks were now exploding in their direction. This stunned everyone into silence.

After all of the fireworks had been detonated, Deafman Ma calmly removed the iron sheet from his face and struck it a couple of times, as though he were striking a drum. He then picked up a firecracker that had failed to detonate and placed it on the sheet. He lit it, and it sounded as though an explosive were being detonated on the surface of a drum. Afterward, he showed the audience the blackened left-hand side of his face, convincing everyone that although his face was completely blackened, he was unharmed. Finally, he smiled blankly at the audience.

With this, the audience seemed to awake from their stupor and erupted into a flood of applause. The sound echoed through the quiet mountain region, the white applause mixing with the purple sound of people’s voices. The sound flew out from the square, resonating within the memorial hall and throughout the valley. The sound reverberated through the quiet night, to the point that the entire region was enveloped in hot white applause and purple chatter. The calm night absorbed this sound, as if one were waking up from a dream to find the entire land filled with cries of enjoyment.

The audience called out, shouted, applauded, and waved their fists toward the stage as they hollered,

“Hang a gong from your face!
. . .
Hang a gong from your face!”

How could the audience have known that Deafman Ma was deaf from birth, and consequently his entire life had never been able to hear any shouts, explosions, or thunder? He had seen lightning countless times in his life, but had never heard the accompanying thunder. Accordingly, he hung a bright yellow bronze gong shaped like the lid of a small pot over his ear, and then placed a string of five hundred firecrackers on it and lit them. As the audience shouted in amazement, he threw the gong to the ground and smiled stupidly, hitting his own face as though he were striking a stone. As he lay on the canvas covering the stage, he removed an explosive as big as a turnip from his pocket and placed it on the upward-facing side of his head, then gestured to the audience to indicate that he wished for someone to come up on stage to help him light it.

At this point, the audience became deathly silent. The shouts and applause had all ceased, and the entire land seemed as if it had been pushed into a valley of death. Everyone could hear the sound of the light striking the stage. They saw one another’s eyes, which were riveted on the stage like moths drawn to a flame.

Deafman Ma was still gesturing to them.

At this point, Huaihua emerged, smiling, from a corner of the stage, and announced, “Young people, friends, please come up on stage to light the firecracker. When we were touring down south, we didn’t perform this routine even for people paying a thousand yuan per ticket. Instead, it is one that we prepared specifically for our fellow villagers today.”

With this, a young man from the audience hopped up onto the stage.

He struck a match, then squatted down and lit the explosive.

It exploded.

The sound of the explosion rang out, and was followed by a cloud of light and smoke. The lights hanging from above waved back and forth. Deafman Ma, however, continued lying there calmly as though nothing had happened. Then he clambered to his feet and shook the ashes from his body. He touched his cheek and discovered that it was covered in blood and ash, so he accepted a white handkerchief from Huaihua and wiped his face. Finally, he bowed to the audience and walked off the stage.

After a period of stupefied silence, the audience once again broke into wild applause and cheers of approval.

Grandma Mao Zhi was standing on the side of the stage.

Deafman Ma wiped the blood off his face and asked, “Will this earn me a big bonus from Chief Liu?”

Before Grandma Mao Zhi could respond, the troupe director laughed and said, “Absolutely, you’ll definitely get your thousand-yuan bonus.”

Deafman Ma smiled as he went to find someone to bandage his face.

Then, the troupe’s second act went on. The first act had been extremely raucous, but the second one was extraordinarily peaceful—consisting of One-Eye threading a needle. In the past, when One-Eye threaded a needle, he would take eight to ten large needles used for mending shoes and hold them in his left hand between his thumb and index finger, while in his right hand he would hold a strand of thread. He would then twist the thread with his fingers, aim carefully, and align the eyes of all the needles in a row. Finally, he would pass the end of the thread through the eyes of the needles as though it were an arrow flying down an alley.

This time, however, he reached into a cardboard box and took out a handful of embroidery needles, inserting more than a hundred of them into the cracks between the fingers of his left hand. Then, with his palm facing downward, he lightly knocked on a wooden board, as those hundred-odd large-eyed needles lined up one against the other. He turned his hand over so that his palm was now facing upward, toward the light, whereupon he proceeded to open his own eye wide and, using the index finger and thumb of his right hand, rolled up the four rows of needles in his left hand, such that the eyes of the needles were all aligned toward his own. Through those four rows of needle eyes, he could see the bright splendor of the lights overhead. He took a strand of thread that had been twisted as straight as a metal wire, and proceeded to thread it through each of those rows of needles. In the blink of an eye, all four rows of needles were suddenly hanging from a red thread.

Initially, he was able to thread eight to ten needles in the time it took to swallow a gulp of saliva, and he could thread forty-seven to seventy-seven large acupuncture needles in less time than it would take to eat a steamed bun. This night, he managed to thread one hundred and twenty-seven embroidery
needles almost instantly, needing no more time than it takes to chew and swallow a bite of steamed bun. Moreover, he was able to repeat this performance three times, threading two hundred and ninety-seven embroidery
needles in all.

He asked, “Can I receive the bonus that the county chief referred to?”

The troupe director replied, “Yes, certainly.”

The Leaf-Embroidery performance was also different from usual. Not only was Paraplegic Woman able to embroider images of grass, flowers, grasshoppers, and butterflies on a sheet of thin, brittle paper; she could even embroider an image of a tiny moth on a cicada shell hanging from a tree in the middle of winter. To give the tiny moth a colorful highlight, she didn’t use red thread but rather pricked her hand with the needle, producing a tiny drop of blood. With this, the tiny moth was transformed into a flower red butterfly.

Little Polio Boy’s performance was also different from usual. Wearing a glass bottle on his foot, he hobbled around the stage three times, backward and forward. Then, he suddenly stopped and gazed out at the audience, and energetically stomped on the bottle, shattering it. He lifted his foot, and the audience watched as he deliberately stepped on the shattered glass with his shriveled appendage. The glass was white and clear, and was covered in bright red blood.

By this point the audience had reached the point where they couldn’t shout and applaud anymore. When they saw Polio Boy lift his tiny foot into the air, blood dripping like rain onto the canvas, they noticed that his face was yellowish white, like a translucent sheet of paper. Someone in the audience suddenly shouted, “Does it hurt?”

The boy replied, “I can bear it.”

Someone else said, “I dare you to get up and walk around the stage!”

Polio Boy therefore stood up and, with his forehead covered in sweat and a trace of a smile on his lips, lowered the foot that had been cut by the shattered glass. He then leaned on that leg, which was as thin as a stick, and proceeded to walk around the stage three times.

It was pitch dark outside, as though the sun had fallen into a deep, dark hole. Chief Liu had agreed that it would be at this performance that he would announce his decision to permit the village of Liven to leave the jurisdiction of Shuanghuai, and that he would read the corresponding document aloud to the audience. At the end of this final act, however, he still had not appeared. Pacing nervously backstage, Grandma Mao Zhi didn’t see any headlights in the street or hear the sound of a car approaching. She asked, “Chief Liu couldn’t fail to show up, could he?” A county cadre replied, “How could he?” He added, “Perhaps his car broke down, or he was delayed by another emergency.” He said, “Why don’t you go up and perform as well. You could perform several more acts while waiting for Chief Liu. He is certain to come; he said he would read the withdrawal-from-society document.”

Grandma Mao Zhi agreed to perform several additional acts while waiting for Chief Liu to arrive.

She called out to the bloody Polio Boy, saying, “Boy, if you can, please walk around the stage several more times.”

The moon was already directly above the mountains, and people to the north had already gone to watch the sunrise over the mountaintop. The moon seemed to be suspended from a giant tree on the mountain. It was in its final quarter, and in the shape of a crescent, as it hung there between the branches. The stars were fading and the air was now as cool as a midsummer’s night. But it was, after all, still winter, and there was a chill in the air. Some people in the audience put their padded jackets on, together with the sweaters and sweatshirts they were holding in the crooks of their arms. In the past, everyone would be sound asleep by this time, but the audience in front of the memorial hall were not sleepy at all, and instead continued watching the performance with wide eyes.

Polio Boy had already started walking around the stage again on his bloody and deformed foot. Alternating between walking and running, he hobbled around the stage three times and back. He left the stage covered in a thick pool of blood, and every few feet the canvas was marked with one of his bloody footprints. These sticky footprints were initially bright red, but they quickly faded to deep purple, and then to black. Polio Boy’s forehead was still covered in sweat, but he maintained a sweet and bright smile on his face, as though he had finally conquered himself. After he finished making six loops, he went to the front of the stage to take a bow, and even lifted his leaflike deformed foot to show the audience. They saw that the glass bottle in which he had originally inserted his foot was gone, and that instead the shards of glass were now embedded in the sole of his foot, such that he left a trail of bloody footprints everywhere he went, as though he were walking not on a foot but rather on one of those water faucets that city-dwellers use.

Finally, it was Grandma Mao Zhi and Mothlet’s turn to perform. By this point the moon was on the other side of the mountain, and the humid peacefulness of the mountain range extended throughout the entire region. In the pauses in the audience’s commotion, it was possible to hear the wind in the trees, together with an occasional birdsong emanating from somewhere deep in the mountains. The stage lights pierced the sky like an arrow. There was a winter chill in the air, combined with a refreshing summer-night scent.

Grandma Mao Zhi had said, “When you return, you must remember to bring the document certifying our withdrawal from society.”

Before he left, Chief Liu had said, “Grandma Mao Zhi, even if they tried to beat me to death, I would still return to read out the document certifying Liven’s withdrawal from society.”

One of the higher-ups now said, “Grandma Mao Zhi, you should hurry and perform. I can hear a car coming up the mountain.”

Grandma Mao Zhi therefore went on stage. This was her special finale, and as soon as she appeared the audience would gasp in astonishment. First, however, her granddaughter, who had already become a wholer, went to the front of the stage and directed a series of questions to the audience, including, Is there anyone in your family who is eighty years old? Anyone who is ninety? Anyone who is over a hundred? And, if so, have their teeth already fallen out? Has their vision faded? Can they still eat peanuts and walnuts, and chew soybeans? Can they still thread a needle and sew shoes?