Lenin's Kisses (57 page)

Grandma Mao Zhi turned around to look at those glass windows, each of which was more than ten feet tall. This memorial hall was deep in the mountains, and all of the windows were positioned two person-heights from the floor, or three, four, or even five person-heights from the ground below—so high that it was as if they were at the level of a normal building’s second or third floor. If the villagers couldn’t get the door open, it would be completely impossible for them to leave the memorial hall. All of them were disabled, of course, but even if they had been wholers there would have been no way for them to escape if they were to manage to make it up to the window in the first place.

Grandma Mao Zhi looked away from the windows.

The people outside became impatient waiting for her response. They kicked the door and shouted,

“Have you decided yet? Grandma Mao Zhi, we don’t want much of your money. There are only eight of us, and all we ask is that you give us ten thousand yuan each. Or, if you don’t have that much, eight thousand would also suffice.”

Grandma Mao Zhi said, “We don’t have any money, we really don’t. All our money was stolen.”

The people outside kicked the door again, saying, “If you don’t have any money, then forget it. But when you do manage to come up with some, then call us. If we don’t answer, you can knock at this door three times.”

Having said this, the people left, and the villagers inside the memorial hall could hear their footsteps as they walked away to somewhere beneath the kowtow steps. The memorial hall suddenly fell silent, and when Grandma Mao Zhi turned around, she saw that the villagers had all gotten up and were standing quietly behind her, the dark mass of people looking as though they were attending a meeting. Because it was so hot, the men were all topless, and some of them had draped their shirts over their shoulders. The women were not topless, and instead were wearing their summer shirts. It had been summertime when they’d all left the Balou mountains to embark on their performance tour, and when they’d returned they didn’t go back to the village but rather came directly to this mountain, so fortunately they still had their summer clothes in their suitcases.

The villagers understood the situation—each of the wholers outside wanted eight thousand to ten thousand yuan from them, and since there were eight wholers, that meant they were demanding at the very least about sixty thousand yuan. But where would those sixty thousand yuan come from? The villagers who filled half of the main hall of the memorial hall all looked at one another as the room fell silent.

The strange thing was that, by this point, the villagers were not as indignant as they had been the previous evening, nor were they as distraught. It was as if they had known all along that this kind of thing might eventually happen. No one said a word, and instead they stood behind the door or leaned against the hall pillars. The women looked at the men, while the men squatted on the ground smoking their cigarettes as though nothing had happened. Huaihua was still wearing her transparent dress, and like everyone else hadn’t yet washed her face, but nevertheless she was still seductive and ravishingly beautiful. She glanced at One-Legged Monkey, and saw that he was just standing there silently with his arms crossed, not saying a word. He would rub his upper lip against his lower teeth, and his lower lip against his upper teeth. When he realized there was nothing new to be seen, he snorted and shifted his gaze to somewhere else.

The room was filled with an interminable silence.

Grandma Mao Zhi looked over at One-Legged Monkey. It was as though she were testing him, but also genuinely wanted to ask him something.

She asked, “What are we going to do?”

One-Legged Monkey turned his head and said, “How would I know? If I still had any money, I would hand it over.”

Grandma Mao Zhi turned to a deaf man.

The deaf man had been standing, but then squatted down and loudly announced, “I don’t have a cent! All my money was stolen.”

She turned to two young wholers, who said, “We definitely don’t earn as much as you do. For each performance, you receive two seats, while the two of us combined don’t even earn the equivalent of a single chair leg. Everything we do earn we put under our pillow, and now it is nowhere to be found.”

It became clear that there was no point in discussing things further. Grandma Mao Zhi considered for a moment, then returned to the side room where she had been sleeping. After a while, she appeared with a large bundle of cash. It was not clear where the money had come from, but it was all in crisp, new hundred-yuan bills, all bound together into bundles that were each as thick as a brick. Her four granddaughters stared at her in astonishment. Huaihua stood in a corner of the room with a wooden expression, but blushed bright red as she waited for Grandma Mao Zhi to walk by her. She suddenly swooped down to her grandmother’s side and grabbed the hand in which Grandma Mao Zhi was holding the money, yanking her so hard that she almost toppled over.

Fortunately, Grandma Mao Zhi managed to keep her balance. She stared at Huaihua in astonishment, then slapped her across the face. Grandma Mao Zhi appeared to have aged considerably overnight, and while that slap was not very hard, it was nevertheless still a slap. Huaihua’s cheek immediately turned brighter red.

“That’s my money!” Huaihua shouted. “I can’t even afford to buy a single dress.”

Grandma Mao Zhi replied, “You’ve already bought enough!” She stared angrily at her granddaughter, who was grasping her hand, and then went over to the door and knocked on it. An excited response was heard outside, as the wholers said, “Exactly, all you people of Liven have your special skills, and each time you go out to perform you earn a huge profit. Why should you begrudge us a little bit?” As they were saying this, they shouted to the people below the kowtow steps, “Hey, come up quickly.”

Then, they instructed her, “Pass the money under the door. Once you have done so, we’ll open it for you.”

Grandma Mao Zhi passed the bundle of cash under the door, and the person on the other side accepted it. As he did so, he called out to Grandma Mao Zhi,

“Quick, keep it coming.”

Grandma Mao Zhi said, “I really don’t have any more. This eight thousand yuan is all I have. Everything else was stolen last night.”

The person replied unhappily, “You are welcome to try to fool ghosts and swine, but we are neither ghosts nor swine and therefore won’t let you fool us.” He added, “This is only one bundle of eight thousand yuan; you are still missing the other seven. If you don’t pass over the remainder, I’ll let you all die of hunger and thirst.”

He fell silent, and they heard the driver outside muttering something to somebody. Then he led some people down the kowtow steps. Grandma Mao Zhi called out to the departing footsteps,

“Hey, I really don’t have any more. Those eight thousand yuan were pooled together from everything we have on us.”

The person responded, “Don’t ‘hey’ me, and stop giving me your farting excuses.”

“If you don’t believe me, then open the door and come inside to search us.”

“Go fuck yourself. Do you really think that you disabled people could overpower us wholers?”

“Don’t you fear the law?”

“We wholers
are
your law.”

“Are you not afraid of Chief Liu?”

The person laughed.

“To tell you the truth, Chief Liu is in big trouble. If he wasn’t, do you think those scoundrels from the county would have dared steal your money in the first place? If Chief Liu weren’t in trouble, I would never have dared to lock you inside the Lenin Memorial Hall.”

Grandma Mao Zhi was dumbfounded, as the person walked away while talking to the people at the bottom of the kowtow steps. Then, the only sound that remained was the echo of his footsteps against the stone steps, as they reverberated against the brick walls of the memorial hall and inside the villagers’ hearts.

The air inside the hall had gotten so warm that it became difficult even to breathe. The villagers grew agitated, their mouths dry and their bodies covered in sweat. They were all parched and famished. The boy who had originally woken up because he was thirsty, then realized that the door of the memorial hall was locked from the outside, was by this point so thirsty he didn’t even have a voice with which to ask for water. The deaf man mumbled, “Fuck your grandmother, go get us some water from somewhere.” The mute gestured toward his throat and stomped his feet. There was no water in the pump, but people kept going up to try it.

Grandma Mao Zhi suddenly remembered the boy, and turned to look for him. She saw that he and his uncle were huddled together in a corner. The boy was lying in his uncle’s lap, like a baby in its mother’s bosom. His uncle was sixty-three years old, and had been acompanying the troupe to serve as their cook. He caressed the boy’s head and patted his waist, and said to Grandma Mao Zhi as she approached,

“We must find some water, the boy is running a fever.
. . .
We must find some water; the boy is running a fever.”

Grandma Mao Zhi felt the boy’s forehead, and found it burning hot. She waved her hand to cool it off, and felt his forehead again. Then, she went to knock on the memorial hall door.

The person outside said, “Pass the money under the door.”

Grandma Mao Zhi said, “A boy in here has a raging fever. I’m begging you to give us a bowl of water.”

The person outside called to someone else and said, “We need water.
. . .
”

The driver, who was off to the side, responded, “Make them pay for it.
. . .
”

The person said to the villagers inside the memorial hall, “Do you want water? Then pass us the money.”

Shocked, Grandma Mao Zhi asked, “Do you have even a trace of conscience left?”

The person outside said, “You can act as though we’ve fed our conscience to the dogs.”

Grandma Mao Zhi considered for a moment, then asked, “How much money for a bowl of water?”

“One hundred yuan.”

“Do you really not have a trace of conscience left?”

“I already told you, you can act as though we’ve fed our conscience to the dogs.”

He didn’t say anything else, and everyone inside watched Grandma Mao Zhi. She looked helplessly over at the corner of the room, where the boy’s uncle appeared so perplexed it seemed his head was about to fall off. The villagers fell into a dead silence, as though everyone had plunged into an open grave. One-Legged Monkey went up to the door and shouted at to the person on the other side:

“How can a bowl of water cost one hundred yuan?”

“You are all going to die. You have to do something.”

“How about one yuan for a bowl?”

“Go fuck your mother.”

“How about ten yuan?”

“Go fuck your mother.”

“Twenty yuan?”

“Go fuck your mother. I won’t even take fifty.”

One-Legged Monkey didn’t say anything else. At this point, Grandma Mao Zhi went back to the side room where she slept and collected several ten-yuan bills and a pile of smaller bills. Then, she shouted to the person on the other side of the door, “How about eighty yuan?” The person replied, “One hundred yuan for a bowl of well water,
¹
two hundred for a bowl of white noodles, and five hundred for a steamed bun. If you want them you can have them, and if you don’t, you are perfectly welcome to starve to death in there.” Without saying a word, Grandma Mao Zhi slipped a hundred-yuan bill under the door. After a while, the villagers heard some rustling outside. They initially assumed the people outside would open the door and pass them a bowl of water, but instead the wholers leaned a ladder against the door, climbed up, and knocked on the glass window above the door, asking someone inside to open it and take the water. The person who did so was One-Legged Monkey, standing on the Mute’s shoulder. He saw that on the other side of the window there was a twenty-something-year-old with a flattop and a red face. One-Legged Monkey said quickly, “If you leave this ladder here tonight, I’ll give you a thousand yuan. Deal?” The red-faced guy immediately turned pale, and replied, “I value my life.” Then, he quickly descended, moving the ladder to one side.

By this point it was past noon. The intense sun was suspended directly overhead. The weather was already so hot that the fields felt as though they would scald anyone who tried to work in them. Like withered grass, the people of Liven went back to their respective side rooms to lie down. Because One-Legged Monkey had accepted the water through the window, he felt somewhat awakened. He and several of the wholers found a couple of empty boxes and an old table tucked away in the corners of the memorial hall, and when they stacked them one on top of the other, they could just reach the window.

One-Legged Monkey quietly climbed up, and saw that the mountain ridge outside was empty and silent. He had no idea where all the tourists who had covered the mountainside the previous day had gone, or why now there wasn’t even a single tourist to be seen. The truck that had been used to haul around the stage props was parked under a big tree in front of the memorial hall, and those wholers—and there were about seven or eight of them—were all lying in the shade next to the truck. They had already eaten lunch, and their bowls and chopsticks were strewn about. Under the tree, some of the men were playing cards, while others had spread out their bedding mats and were taking a nap. Needless to say, the short and fat thirty-something-year-old driver was their informal leader. He had stripped down to his underwear and was sleeping next to everyone else, looking as though he wasn’t at all concerned that the villagers weren’t passing him any money.