Lenin's Kisses (70 page)

In accordance with Liven’s repeated requests that it be permitted to “withdraw from society”—which is to say, to voluntarily leave the administrative jurisdiction of Shuanghuai county and Boshuzi township—the county committee and county government have carefully studied this matter and reached the following conclusion:

1) As of today, the village of Liven, located in the depths of the Balou mountains, will no longer fall under the administrative jurisdiction of Shuanghuai county and Boshuzi township. Shuanghuai and Boshuzi will no longer have any authority over Liven, and conversely Liven will no longer have any obligations toward Shuanghuai and Boshuzi;

2) Within a month of the day when this document is issued, Boshuzi township must collect and destroy all of the residency permits and identity cards that had previously been issued to the residents of Liven, and if it is discovered that anyone in Liven is still using the township’s residency permit and identity cards, they will be treated as illegal counterfeits;

3) From now on, all of the administrative maps printed by Shuanghuai must have their borders revised such that they no longer contain the section of the Balou mountains where Liven is located, and the county’s administrative maps must never again include the village of Liven;

4) Beginning today, Liven’s freedoms and rights—including the right to citizenship, the right to property, the right to housing, the right to disaster relief, the right to medical treatment, and so forth—will no longer have any relation to Shuanghuai or Boshuzi. On the other hand, Shuanghuai and Boshuzi must not interfere with Liven’s informal contacts with the county, township, or any of their associated regions.

At the end of the document, there were just the signature and the stamps of Shuanghuai’s county committee and county government, together with the date on which the document was issued.

When One-Legged Monkey finished reading, he folded up the document and placed it back in the envelope. At this point, the sun was directly above the tree, and its heat flowed over the village like boiling water. Several turtledoves and flocks of sparrows alighted on the branches of the honey locust tree, and their chirps poured from the sky like rain, pounding down on everyone’s head and body. Even after the villagers had heard and understood the announcement, they kept standing and sitting there, staring intently at Monkey’s hands, as though he had not finished reading, as though he had not read the most understandable part and consequently there were still many parts that were not yet clear. Everyone looked calm, as though Liven’s withdrawal from society had been expected and was nothing to get excited about. It was also as if this earth-shattering news of Liven’s withdrawal from society could not be announced just like that, with a sheet of paper and two stamps. The withdrawal seemed somewhat unreal, and the people almost didn’t allow themselves to believe it. Each of them just stared in a daze, like someone who has only half woken up from a deep sleep.

At this point, One-Legged Monkey hopped down from the stone riser. Then, something occurred to him, and he asked loudly, “But now, if we want to establish our own performance troupe, to whom will we go for a letter of introduction?” He added, “If we don’t have a formal letter of introduction, will we still be able to earn as much money from our performances as before?”

This question was directed to Grandma Mao Zhi, but just as One-Legged Monkey was asking it he turned around and saw that she was leaning against the tree on her bamboo stool, completely motionless, as though she were fast asleep. Her burial clothes sparkled as though they were still brand-new, with the sunlight shining on them just as the spotlight had done when she was performing. She just sat there on her stool, leaning against the honey locust tree, her head cocked to the side. Her glowing face had a calm smile and a livened appearance, like a child in the middle of a pleasant dream. One-Legged Monkey repeated his question, and again he didn’t receive a response, and he was about to ask a third time when the question got caught in his throat.

He exclaimed with alarm, “Granny Mao Zhi, Granny Mao Zhi.
. . .
”

Jumei added her own cries, “Grandma
. . .
Grandma
. . .
”

Huaihua and her three nin sisters jostled their way into the crowd and cried out together, “Grandma, Grandma, what’s wrong? Why can’t you say anything?”

The crowd then erupted, as the entire hillside began crying and shouting at Grandma Mao Zhi.

Despite all the shouts and shaking, Grandma Mao Zhi didn’t respond.

She had departed.

She passed away peacefully, with a smile on her lips. When she died, that look of satisfied livening on her face was as warm and bountiful as the sun.

She was seventy-one years old, and hers should have been a joyful funeral. It was inevitable that there would be cries of mourning, but privately people remarked that she had earned her death and that the peaceful look on her face when she died was something very few people could hope for.

They buried her three days later. There was no need to hurriedly prepare her burial clothes, and she had even prepared her own coffin. As a result, everything proceeded calmly. On the day that they picked up her coffin and walked toward the graveyard, located several
li
from the depths of the Balou mountains, something happened that the villagers would never have expected. Huaihua was pregnant, and therefore couldn’t escort her grandmother to her grave. This was an age-old rule. Jumei and her daughters Tonghua, Yuhua, and Mothlet, meanwhile, were women and girls, and since Mao Zhi had no male descendants, the women had to recruit some men and boys before the funeral procession set out. The villagers—be they young or old, blind or crippled—were all younger than Mao Zhi, and they all felt a certain sense of filial obligation toward her, and felt that it was correct and sensible to escort her to her grave.

On the day they were about to set off with the coffin, they saw that pack of sixteen disabled dogs abjectly following it. The dogs were not weeping and crying like the humans as they escorted Grandma Mao Zhi’s corpse, but each one of them had two streaks of dirty, dusty tears below its eyes. As they followed behind the coffin and the procession of filial mourners, just as they used to follow Grandma Mao Zhi around when she was alive, their tears continued to fall. By the time the coffin had been carried half a
li
out of the village, the original pack of sixteen dogs had grown to include more than twenty animals, and then more than thirty. Perhaps they had come from neighboring villages, or perhaps they had come from beyond the Balou mountains. They included black, white, and gray dogs, together with a handful of thin and dirty disabled cats, and as the funeral procession advanced, that pack of thirty dogs gradually grew to over a hundred, eventually outnumbering even the human residents of Liven.

By the time the procession reached the graveyard, the entire mountainside was full of domestic dogs, wild dogs, feral cats, and what have you, the vast majority of which were either blind, crippled, missing an ear or tail, or suffering from some other disability. Not a single one of them moved or made a sound. Instead, they all just lay there peacefully, watching as Grandma Mao Zhi was put to rest.

As the mourners were leaving, someone remarked, “That’s an awful lot of dogs. I’ve never seen so many dogs before in my entire life.”

Someone else said, “Yes, and they’re all disabled.”

Then, everyone suddenly heard a wailing sound coming from the area around the grave. The sound was coming from that enormous pack of disabled dogs and cats. Unlike people, who complain about things while they are weeping, these animals instead just opened their mouths and wailed, like a winter wind blowing through the village’s back alleys. Grandma Mao Zhi’s relatives and fellow villagers on the mountain ridge all turned around to look at the grave area, where they saw that the dogs and cats that had been scattered across the mountainside had waited for the people to leave and had then proceeded to gather in front of Grandma Mao Zhi’s grave. The mountainside field where the grave was located was blossoming, the bean sprouts were already green and craning their necks, and the red earth from the new grave was eye-catching. The dogs lay down in that green field, their heads facing Grandma Mao Zhi’s grave. As they gazed at the site where she had been buried, the dogs resembled a pile of multicolored stones lying in a pool of water. And then, as they lay there wailing, dozens upon dozens of disabled dogs started digging at the new grave, scattering earth everywhere, as though they were trying to dig Grandma Mao Zhi right out of the ground.

The villagers on the mountain ridge all shouted,

“What do you think you’re doing? If someone is already dead, what good is it trying to dig them back out?”

They shouted, “Come back.
. . .
Grandma Mao Zhi is already gone, but Liven is still your home.”

Gradually, the huge pack of dogs stopped digging at the grave, and instead proceeded to wail even louder, as though the entire world were filled with a winter wind blowing through the village’s back alleys.

The blind and crippled villagers said many things to the dogs and cats, and then slowly made their way back to Liven, mutually supporting one another. When they reached the mountain ridge where the village was located, they suddenly saw wave upon wave of people streaming toward the village from outside the Balou mountains. Like the villagers themselves, these people were almost all disabled—either blind, crippled, paralyzed, deaf, mute, missing a limb, or having an extra digit. Very few of them were wholers. They were supporting one another, one family after another, pulling carts and toting carrying poles full of bedding, food, or other things. Clothing, pots, chopsticks and utensils, sand and tiles, jars, tables, chests, chairs, bed frames, electrical cords, and ropes, as well as chickens, ducks, cats, piglets, and sheep—all this and more was piled high on those carts and carrying poles. Dogs were running behind the crowds of people, their tongues hanging out. Oxen were being slowly led forward, together with stout mountain goats.

One group after another poured into the valley. The blind were pulling carts with paraplegics riding on top, directing them where to go. Deaf and mute people were toting carrying poles, shouting and signing. Cripples were leading oxen and goats, and when the animals stopped walking the cripples would beat them with a stick to urge them on. There were wholers pulling carts, on which there were no possessions, only children and the elderly. Some of the children were blind or mute, and the blind ones would ask a question while the mute ones would sign something in response, but since the former couldn’t see what the latter were signing they would inevitably start fighting. In this way, the procession gradually moved toward the mountain ridge where Liven was located.

As the villagers returned from escorting the coffin, they stood on the side of the road staring in surprise. They asked, “Where are you moving to?”

The people in the procession asked in return, “Are you from Liven?” They said, “We have come from far away, where the government built a dam and forced everyone in the way to move. They gave every family a sum of money, and said that we could either relocate together or each take the money and relocate separately.” They said, “We have already found a new location, which is even better than this village in the depths of the Balou mountains.” They said that Liven was located at the junction of Shuanghuai, Gaoliu, and Dayu counties, while the place where they were going was located at the junction of six different counties, including Baishizi, Qingshui, Mianma, and Wanbozi, where there was a small gorge that didn’t appear on any administrative map and didn’t fall under anyone’s control or jurisdiction, and in which there was fertile soil and abundant water. Therefore, these hundreds of disabled people had all agreed to relocate to that gorge in order to pitch a camp and establish a village, to farm the land and liven.

They said, “Don’t worry. We will enjoy a better life than you have here in Liven.”

The villagers asked, “And where exactly is this place you are talking about?”

They replied, “It is over on the far end of the Balou mountains, on the other side of Spirit Mountain.”

While this conversation was still going on, the migrants began pulling their carts and hoisting their carrying poles. Then they bade farewell to Liven and the villagers and proceeded into the depths of the Balou mountains. The residents of Liven stood on the mountain ridge path and gazed at that slowly disappearing crowd of hundreds of blind, crippled, deaf, and mute disabled people from the land of wholers.

The villagers waited until their shadows had faded into the distance, then continued toward Liven, looking as though they had just lost something. When they passed Sister Hua Slope,
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they looked at the mountainside full of fertile soil, which was not planted with crops but instead was full of carriage-wheel chrysanthemums, moon grass, and green summer flowers. The villagers said,

“We’ve already withdrawn from society. Why are we still sowing loose earth?”
⁵

Others said, “Of course we’re sowing loose earth. Having loose days,
⁷
how could we not sow loose earth?”