Lenin's Kisses (64 page)

In order to prevent the residents of the county from going crazy as soon as they became rich, Chief Liu had jotted down a dozen or so new laws and regulations in his notebook. He recognized that the real climax of the memorial hall’s opening ceremony would lie not in the villagers’ special-skills performance, but rather in his own emotional and moving speech. He knew that as soon as he finished speaking, everyone on stage would immediately begin jumping around like crazy, and he was afraid that they might start cheering him the way people had cried out, “Long Live Chairman Mao”
at the height of the Cultural Revolution, and that each household might hang his portrait in the center of the wall of the main room of their house, and that they might kowtow to his portrait the way they would to Lenin in the memorial hall. Actually, from the day that the delegation charged with purchasing Lenin’s remains left Shuanghuai and headed to Beijing, Chief Liu had hardly been able to sleep. His blood was coursing through his veins, and by the time the residents of Liven began arriving at Spirit Mountain for the performance, he couldn’t sleep at all. He hadn’t closed his eyes in more than seventy-two hours, but he nevertheless remained as wide awake as if he had just had a long bath and a good night’s rest.

For Chief Liu, waiting for the day when he would finally be able to announce the opening of the Lenin Memorial Hall was like a lake waiting for a man dying of thirst. Regardless of how thirsty the man is, it will still take several days for him to arrive at the lake. Chief Liu became increasingly impatient, but he was after all the county chief, and therefore the more impatient he became the more important it was that he remain calm.

After escorting the delegation to their car, and then returning to the district and provincial seat to attend some meetings, Chief Liu led Secretary Shi back to the countryside, to the rural side of the county beyond the Balou mountains. In order to calm his sense of agitation, he went to a mountain region at the southern end of the county, where they didn’t even have telephone coverage. He didn’t go there to conduct any research or to visit the poor, but rather simply to hang out next to a reservoir and to liven for a few days. Not until the day before the ribbon-cutting ceremony, when Liven’s performance troupe returned to Shuanghuai and went up to Spirit Mountain, did he return to Spirit Mountain and begin feeling fully livened again. However, it was at this point—when Chief Liu and the villagers had just climbed the mountain, he had just seen the new acts that the special-skills troupers had added to their repertoire, and he had just sat down in the Lenin Memorial Hall—it was at this point that an urgent matter came up.

This was an extremely urgent matter.

It was as if an earth-shattering thunderclap suddenly appeared in the middle of a cloudless sky, after which clouds immediately moved in from all sides and rain began pouring down, without a trace of sun or moonlight.

“District Secretary Niu wants you to come back to the district as soon as possible.”

“What’s the matter?”

“You must return today. Right now. At this very instant.”

“Tomorrow the memorial hall will have its ribbon-cutting ceremony.”

“Secretary Niu says you must return immediately.”

“Do I definitely need to leave today? Couldn’t I go tomorrow after the ceremony?”

“He says you have to be at his home tonight.”

“What can possibly be this urgent? Am I the only person he wants to see?”

“Chief Liu, do you think there is anyone else whom Secretary Niu would personally invite to his home?”

The person speaking to him was one of the county’s deputy secretaries. After taking the phone call from the district seat, the deputy secretary had tried desperately to contact Chief Liu, and when he couldn’t find Liu he proceeded to get a car and drive up to Spirit Mountain himself. As he was speaking with Chief Liu, he hadn’t even had a chance to wash the dust from his face, and sweat was still dripping from his forehead like drops of mud.

Chief Liu said, “Fuck, not only does he not show up for the inauguration ceremony, but he has to pick this precise moment to interrupt.”

The deputy secretary said quickly, “Chief Liu, if you leave now, then you can probably be back tomorrow in time for the ceremony.”

So, Chief Liu went. He didn’t take anyone with him, and instead drove urgently down the mountain and toward the district seat. On the way, when he was able to get a phone connection he called up Secretary Niu, who said, “What do you mean a momentous matter? This is a thousand times—no, ten thousand times—bigger than a momentous matter. You’ll see once you arrive!” With this, Secretary Niu hung up the phone as if snapping a branch in half. Then, Chief Liu told his driver to drive like crazy, and by nightfall they managed to cover the five hundred
li
to Jiudu, where they proceeded right up to Secretary Niu’s front door.

The moon was cold and bright, and it seemed as though there was a thin layer of ice on the ground, but Secretary Niu lived in a large courtyard, and inside it was as warm as the abnormal summer weather atop Spirit Mountain. In the past, whenever Chief Liu came to visit, he would plop down on the sofa in the central building, as though he were in his own home. This time, however, when he entered and saw Secretary Niu’s frosty expression, he just stood in the doorway. Secretary Niu hung up the phone and tossed Chief Liu the newspaper he was holding, as though tossing a rag onto a table.

Chief Liu said, as he was accustomed to doing in the past, “I’m starving.”

Secretary Niu said, “Then starve. Something extremely urgent has come up.”

Chief Liu said, “No matter how urgent it is, I still need to eat.”

Secretary Niu squinted at him, and said, “I myself haven’t been able to eat all day, and yet you want to eat now?”

Chief Liu still had no idea what had happened, so he merely stood there and stared at Secretary Niu. He asked,

“Could I at least have a glass of water?”

Secretary Niu stood up from the sofa, and said,

“There isn’t even time for you to drink a glass of water. The provincial governor wants to see you immediately. He wants you to come in tomorrow and go to his office.”

Chief Liu’s gaze followed Secretary Niu, and he asked,

“What has happened?”

Secretary Niu poured him a glass of water, and said,

“The group that was sent to buy Lenin’s corpse from Russia was detained in Beijing.”

Chief Liu didn’t take the glass of water, and instead his face turned deathly pale.

“What happened? Their paperwork was all in order, and they even had several blank letters of introduction that they could fill out when necessary.”

Still holding the glass of water, Secretry Niu said,

“What happened? You’ll know when you see the governor tomorrow.”

Chief Liu said,

“But I’ve never met the governor before.”

Secretary Niu leaned against the old, dark red sandalwood table, and said,

“This time, the governor wants to meet with you alone.”

Chief Liu took the glass of water from Secretary Niu, and quickly downed it. Then he wiped his mouth and said,

“If he wants to see me, then I’ll go see him. After all, it’s not like he’s Chairman Mao.”

Secretary Niu looked at Chief Liu, then paused and said,

“If you leave now, you can make it to the provincial capital by nightfall. It is quite possible, however, that after this meeting you will no longer be the county chief, and I will no longer be the Party secretary.”

Chief Liu paused, then raised his voice and said,

“Secretary Niu, don’t be afraid. I’ll take responsibility for whatever happens.”

Secretary Niu slowly broke into a smile, and said:

“What should I be afraid of? I was already planning to retire at the end of the year.”

Chief Liu went to pour himself another half glass of water. The water was still a little hot, and as he waved it back and forth he said,

“I’ll have another sip of water and then will leave for the provincial capital. You can rest assured, Secretary Niu, that there is no river that cannot be forded, and no bridge that cannot be crossed. When I see the governor, I’ll emphasize to him how important it is to Shuanghuai that we bring Lenin’s corpse back, and will also stress that it will be enormously beneficial for the district, and even the entire province.”

Secretary Niu continued smiling, his bright yellow face resembling a baked bun enveloped in a cloud of steam. Without saying a word, he took the glass from Chief Liu and refilled it. After Chief Liu drank the water, Secretary Niu urged him to quickly proceed to the provincial capital, saying that the road from Jiudu to the capital was under repair and traffic would probably be backed up, and therefore he needed to set off as quickly as possible.

Chief Liu proceeded to make his way back to the provincial capital in the dark. On the way there, his driver said that the foot he was using for the accelerator was tired and swollen, and that the car’s tires were crowding the moonlight on the side of the road and frightening away the sparrows perched in the roadside trees. Finally, at dawn, they reached the provincial capital, where buildings were as abundant as trees in a forest.

When he had set out for the county seat the previous evening, the only thing Chief Liu had been able think about was that he should kowtow to himself, burn some incense, and perhaps shed a few tears. After all, for better or for worse, he was the county chief, and there were eight hundred and ten thousand people who, when they saw him, would want to kneel down. After arriving at the provincial capital that morning, he hadn’t dared to even eat a bowl of jellied tofu, so afraid was he that he would lose time. Instead, he rushed to the government building on an empty stomach. After explaining why he was there and signing in, he entered that brown marble courtyard. When he arrived at the ten-plus-story building, he took out his county chief ID card and had the gatekeeper get in touch with the governor’s secretary. The governor said he should wait downstairs “for a while.”

This “while,” however, became a virtual eternity, to the point that he ended up spending more than ten times as long waiting than it had taken him to get there from Shuanghuai in the first place. Finally, when it was almost noon, a message came from upstairs instructing him to proceed to the sixth floor. To his surprise, the governor spoke to him only for the length of time that it takes a drop of water to fall from the roof of a building.

The governor said, “Have a seat.”

He said, “I don’t have anything to say. I summoned you here just to see what kind of person you are. I couldn’t believe that there was an official below me who would dare to raise money to go to Russia to purchase Lenin’s corpse.”

He said, “You won’t sit down? If you won’t have a seat, then you may go now. I already know how great you are. Go out and find a place better than the Kremlin to stay at. I’ve already sent someone to Beijing to retrieve the delegation you assigned to go to Russia, and when they arrive here in two or three days I want to see them as well. No matter how busy I may be, I will definitely want to have a chance to meet Shuanghuai’s glorious leaders.”

He said, “After I have met Shuanghuai’s leaders, you can escort them back to the county seat, and prepare to hand over the county’s work to your next-in-commmand.”

After having traveled through the night to reach the capital, Chief Liu discovered that this was all the governor wanted to say to him. The governor did not speak very loudly, sounding instead like a breeze passing under a door that has been closed tightly to keep out the winter chill. But when Chief Liu heard him, he felt his mind go blank, and all that was left was some black mist and white clouds. He had already missed three meals in a row, not having consumed anything at all since the two glasses of water that he had had at Secretary Niu’s house. Now, he suddenly felt so hungry that he was about to collapse on the governor’s desk, his legs as weak as a willow branch in the spring, or as the noodles that the people of Shuanghuai rolled just for him.

Needless to say, he couldn’t very well collapse in the governor’s office. He was after all a county chief, and was responsible for looking after eight hundred and ten thousand people, all of whom would kowtow when they saw him, and therefore he naturally couldn’t just collapse in the governor’s office. Outside, the sun was shining brightly on the roof of the building, and its rays were beaming in through the governor’s window. As his eyesight started to blur and he began to feel faint, Chief Liu gazed at the governor—the same way that, two years earlier when he visited the Shuanghuai county jail, those criminals had stared at him. Chief Liu wanted to sit down. There was a sofa behind him, but given that he hadn’t sat down when the governor originally invited him to, he naturally couldn’t very well do so now that the governor had already asked him to leave. He was also dying of thirst, and was desperate to find some water to wet his parched throat. Behind the governor there was some mineral water that someone had brought from the mountains. Chief Liu looked at the jug of water, and although the governor saw him staring, not only did he not offer Chief Liu any water to quench his burning throat, but he even took a black leather attaché case from the desk and tucked it under his arm.

The governor gestured for him to leave, the way one might brush away a fly.