Lenin's Kisses (53 page)

She said, “Now you know what the wholers are capable of. I’d like to ask you all one thing: Do you or do you not wish to withdraw from society? Do you or do you not want to return to the livening life that we used to enjoy?” After asking this, she didn’t use her gaze to force the villagers to respond, as she might have done in the past, but rather simply turned and opened the bundle of burial clothes that was lying on the crystal coffin. She then used her teeth to rip a strip of the white lining, ripping it again and again until it was a perfect square, like one of those sheets of paper used for steaming buns. She placed it on top of Lenin’s coffin, and then walked to the side room to look for a pair of scissors. When she returned, she stood in front of everyone and used the point of the scissors to prick the middle finger of her left hand, letting the blood form a coin-sized pool on top of the coffin. Next, she dipped her right index finger in the blood and pressed it onto the white cloth, leaving a scarlet fingerprint. Finally, she turned to the villagers and said,

“Everyone who now recognizes the wholers’ true nature and wishes to withdraw from society, come leave your fingerprints on this cloth. If you disagree, you are welcome to remain there and suffer the black disasters
⁷
and red difficulties
⁹
that the wholers will give you.”

Grandma Mao Zhi spoke in a soft voice, but her words were extremely powerful. Only after she finished speaking did she look at everyone’s face. Under the hall light, the faces had a somewhat wooden appearance. Everyone seemed embarrassed, as though they didn’t know what to say or what to do. It was as if the theft had left everyone paralyzed. After Grandma Mao Zhi brought up the topic of withdrawing from society, the villagers found themselves unable to react appropriately, like horses stuck in a narrow alleyway with no way to turn their heads. As they stood there silent and petrified, time flowed as slowly as tree sap. Their resentment at having been robbed gradually faded, but it was only after they had endured countless black crimes
¹¹
and red crimes
¹³
that they eventually shifted their attention to other matters, such as whether or not to withdraw from society.

There was no one else left in the enormous hall. Even the people sent down by the county to oversee the memorial hall had all disappeared. Perhaps they had left with the higher-up wholers, or perhaps they were still sleeping peacefully in their own beds. The floor and walls of the enormous hall were made of bright marble, and in the center of the hall there was a portrait of Lenin and his crystal coffin. There was a crowd of villagers sitting around the coffin, including blind men, deaf men, mutes, and cripples, together with people suffering from a variety of other disabilities. Others were sitting or standing elsewhere, or leaning against door frames or one of those cold marble walls. The hall was absolutely silent, and this silence made the scene appear all the more solemn. It was as if they were facing a life-or-death decision of whether or not to leave their fingerprints on that white sheet.

They looked at one another, everyone waiting for someone else to make the first move.

Finally, One-Legged Monkey said, “Will we still be able to go on performance tours even after withdrawing from society?”

Grandma Mao Zhi did not respond, and instead just gazed at him coldly.

At that point, the young man who had stayed behind to watch the villagers’ things exclaimed, “Fuck, I want to withdraw from society even if it kills me. I live in fear now, and living in fear is worse than death.”

He was the first to go up to the coffin and stick his finger into the pool of Grandma Mao Zhi’s blood, and leave his fingerprint on the sheet.

The leaf-embroidering Paraplegic Woman crawled forward and said she would rather die than perform again, and was willing to die in order to return to their former way of life. As she spoke she continued to drag herself along, and when she was directly below the coffin she removed a needle from her hair and used it to poke one of the fingers of her right hand, which she then pressed against the white cloth.

Some of the older villagers began coming forward to leave their fingerprints, gradually transforming that white cloth into a sea of red dots. Eventually, however, it reached the point that no one else wanted to leave his or her fingerprints. The atmosphere in the hall became rather oppressive, as though muddy water were flowing through the air. Originally everyone had been grief-stricken over having been robbed, but Grandma Mao Zhi hadn’t told the villagers what they should do to address this problem, and had instead forced them, at this moment of hardship, to decide whether or not to withdraw from society. This didn’t seem to be the best time to decide—it was as if after someone falls into a well, you then take advantage of the situation by demanding something of him. In any event, none of the young villagers came forward, but rather they all kept their gaze riveted on One-Legged Monkey. Even Grandma Mao Zhi’s granddaughters stood behind her without moving, Yuhua and Mothlet peeking at their grandmother’s face, Huaihua staring, like the other young villagers, at One-Legged Monkey, as though urging him not to leave his fingerprint on the cloth. If he were to leave his fingerprint, they would have no choice but to do the same; and if he didn’t, they certainly wouldn’t either.

One-Legged Monkey became the de facto leader of the young villagers.

Grandma Mao Zhi directed her gaze at him.

One-Legged Monkey, however, turned away and muttered,

“If we withdraw from society, then eventually things will reach the point that we won’t even have our own shadows,
¹⁵
and if we don’t have our shadows how will we be able to perform? Now that our money has been stolen, how can we not go perform?” As he shouted this, it was as if he were explaining something, or as if he were trying to remind the villagers of something. When he finished, he hobbled back to the side room where he had been sleeping.

Huaihua glanced over at her grandmother, then followed One-Legged Monkey.

The other young people followed them into the side room, one after another, their footsteps making it sound as if an evening village meeting had just adjourned.

Only a few villagers were left standing next to Grandma Mao Zhi—perhaps ten or twenty in all, and each of them more than forty or fifty years old. They looked silently at one another, then directed their gaze back to Grandma Mao Zhi. She then said calmly, “Go back and sleep; at dawn we will return to Liven.” When she finished speaking, she turned and slowly dragged herself back to the side room. She walked extremely slowly, and it seemed as though if she were to move any slower she would topple over.

C
HAPTER 3:
F
URTHER
R
EADING
—
B
LACK DISASTERS, RED DIFFICULTIES, BLACK CRIMES,
AND RED CRIMES

1)
To borrow.
Means “to rent.” There are many situations in which the people of Balou use “to borrow” in place of “to rent,” in order to add a level of intimacy to the relationship between renter and rentee.

3)
Pile.
Originally used to refer to a pile of dirt, but here refers to a large group of people.

5)
Sentry.
Means a sentinel. To be a sentry means to stand guard.

7)
Black disasters,
9)
red difficulties,
11)
black crimes,
13)
red crimes.
These four terms are all equivalent. Only the people of Liven regularly use these words, and only villagers over the age of forty understand their historical meaning.

The black and red crimes are not merely allusions, but rather they each have their own etymologies. The terms have their origins in events that took place more than twenty years earlier, in the
bingwu
Year of the Horse, 1966. At that point the Revolution was enveloping the nation like a storm, from the mountains to the seas, from the cities to the countryside. Throughout the land, everyone was busy destroying the old and erecting the new, parading through the streets, and subjecting people to struggle sessions. Everyone was busy taking down old portraits of the god of longevity, the kitchen god, Lord Guan, Zhong Kui the demon chaser, the Tagathe Buddha, and various bodhisattvas, and replacing them all with portraits of Chairman Mao.

By the following year, these struggles had turned on the people themselves. As if feeding the Revolution’s limitless appetite, every two weeks each large brigade in a commune had to take turns sending the county seat a landlord, a rich peasant, a counterrevolutionary, or a bad egg or rightist, who would then be publically humiliated and tortured in mass struggle sessions; and if such people weren’t struggled against, they would at least be made to wear a dunce hat and sweep the streets, improving society’s political landscape and its revolutionary atmosphere. In every large brigade this period was treated like a festival, and everyone approached these struggle sessions like holiday concerts designed for the people’s enjoyment.

Over time, however, Boshuzi commune discovered that they didn’t have enough landlords and rich peasants, and it occurred to them that the Revolution had already lasted from the
bingwu
Year of the Horse to the
jiyou
Year of the Cock, and that during that three-year period they had completely forgotten about the village of Liven deep in the Balou mountains. It occurred to them that during these three years, they had not struggled against a single landlord or rich peasant from Liven. They therefore sent revolutionaries to notify Mao Zhi that by the beginning of the following month she needed to send over a landlord for them to struggle against.

Grandma Mao Zhi said, Our village doesn’t have any landlords.

The revolutionary asked, What about rich peasants?

Mao Zhi said, We don’t have any rich peasants, either.

The revolutionary said, If you don’t have landlords or rich peasants, then why don’t you just send us an upper-middle peasant?

Mao Zhi said, We don’t have upper-middle peasants, middle peasants, lower-middle peasants, poor peasants, or even hired peasants. Every household in the village contains only revolutionaries.

The revolutionary said, You blasted woman! Not only are you not willing to contribute to the Revolution, you even dare to spout nonsense in front of an actual revolutionary.

Mao Zhi replied, Liven didn’t come under the jurisdiction of the county and the commune until the collectivization movement had already concluded, and so our residents were never classified as landlords, rich peasants, and so forth. No one in the village has ever known that their household was a landlord, rich-peasant, or lower- or middle-peasant household.

The revolutionary stared at her in shock. Upon realizing that the village’s revolutionary history was lacking something, he decided it was necessary to give Liven a critical lesson, adding a new page to its history books. He sent a work team and an investigation team to Liven, and ordered that by autumn of that year they divide the villagers into landlords, rich peasants, and lower and middle peasants.

Mao Zhi said, Liven has sent the county committee a request for permission to withdraw from society, and therefore it is not necessary to divide our residents into different classes.

The revolutionary said, We realize that you know the county committee’s Secretary Yang, and that you and he both were at Yan’an. But now Secretary Yang is a counterrevolutionary, and is afraid of being hanged. Let’s see now which other counterrevolutionaries would agree to allow you to withdraw from society.

Mao Zhi said, Then I’ll ask you, okay?

The revolutionary said, Fuck, do you want to die?

Mao Zhi said, Liven originally didn’t have landlords and rich peasants, and if we are going to make class divisions now, everyone should be poor and lower-middle peasants.

The revolutionary said, If you don’t have landlords, rich peasants, and evil tyrants, then you, Grandma Mao Zhi, will need to go to the commune every day to be struggled against. You will need to wear a dunce cap and sweep the streets every day.

Mao Zhi was stunned into silence.

By that point the corn sprouts were as tall as a chopstick and the mountain ridge was full of the fresh aroma of grass and crops. The work team arrived in Liven and held a meeting for the villagers, at which they asked each household to report how much land, how many oxen, and how many horses it had before the Revolution, together with how much millet, wheat, sorghum, and soybeans it could harvest each year. Households were also asked to report whether or not they were able to eat bran, oatmeal, buckwheat, and wild vegetables on a daily basis; whether or not they went begging during famines; whether or not they worked for other people on a long-term or short-term basis; and whether, when they worked in the home of a landlord, they had to massage his back, wash his dishes, eat the dregs left over from his meals, and permit the landlord’s wife to beat their face and hands with an iron awl.