The Explosion Chronicles (29 page)

“Are you fucking trying to kill yourself?”

Mingyao proceeded over to the tractor and asked,

“Did you know that the United States just bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia?”

The driver opened his door a crack.

“The lunatic asylum is on the edge of the city, and if you want to go I’d be happy to take you.”

Next, Mingyao stopped a middle-aged man leading an oxcart and saw that he was wearing a military-style cap. Mingyao said gently, “My name is Kong Mingyao, and in the army I received a special
commendation. Today, I withdrew from the army. It looks as though you are also a former soldier. Did you see today’s news? Do you know that China and the United States are about to go to war?” He then asked, “If I were to give you some money, would you go with me to join the army? When the country is in trouble, the troops have a responsibility. Did you not hear this saying when you were in the military?” Eventually, the middle-aged man walked over, holding the bridles of two yellow oxen. He glanced at Mingyao with a strange expression, walked around him, then headed toward a nearby location where developers were about to build a shopping center.

By this point the sun was about to come up, and the stars were beginning to fade. Under the sky, which was as dark as a sheet of black ice, dew was falling over the enormous cement square. It was so humid that if you reached out your hand, you could feel the streams of dew on your fingertips and palms, and soon your hand would be drenched. Mingyao proceeded into the center of the square, where there was no typical hero memorial, nor a memorial of a national founder or a saint, but rather a newly erected fifteen-meter-tall bronze statue of Kong Mingliang on a pedestal about fifteen steps high. However, Kong Mingliang’s name wasn’t inscribed on the base, and instead there appeared the word
Trailblazer
written in vigorous characters. Standing below the statue, Mingyao gazed up at his brother’s face, which was bathed in light and covered in dew. In a mournful tone, he exclaimed,

“Brother, there is an important battle to be fought, but no one here knows anything about it.”

Then he sat under the statue, staring out at the square and at the shopping center, the International Conference Center, and the World Trade Center that were being built all around him. He suddenly burst into tears, and the sound of his crying was as loud as the Yellow River plunging down the Hukou Waterfall.

1. WOMEN AND THE MILITARY

At dawn of the second day, as the moon was still hanging in the sky but the sun had already begun to rise in the east, Mingyao suddenly stood up and looked out into the empty square. His eyes were completely bloodshot, but his pale face had a look of firm resolve. It was as if his realization the preceding evening had helped him understand something. As he was about to leave—just as everyone who tended to wake up early was in the square running around or spitting on the ground—Mingyao saw Zhu Ying walking toward him. When she saw him, her face lit up with delight, as though she had opened a door and found her lost keys.

Zhu Ying reminded him of Fragrance’s slender and voluptuous body, and an odd feeling of discomfort began to rise in his breast. He stood in the middle of the square, waiting for Zhu Ying to approach. He stared at her and noticed that although she had already washed her face and applied her makeup, her features nevertheless revealed her
age. Her eyes were surrounded by crow’s-feet like autumn branches, and even her forehead was no longer as resplendent as before. But when he peered more closely into her eyes, he saw that they were still as fiery as he remembered. The two of them stood next to a flower pond on the east side of the square, silently staring at each other. Eventually he asked, “Sis, where are you going?” She replied, “I’ve been searching for you for so long that my feet are swollen.” Zhu Ying glanced down at her feet, then looked around. Upon seeing that no one else was nearby, she turned back to Mingyao and suddenly exclaimed,

“So, I wasn’t mistaken. It was in fact on account of Fragrance that you decided to leave the army and return here.”

She added, “Fragrance no longer lives here. Other than myself, no one else here knows where she is. If you want to see her—if you want her—then you must do as I say.”

As Zhu Ying said this, she broke into a pleased smile. She raised her head and saw that the red-tinted sunlight had receded from the square, and the moon overhead now illuminated the entire square in white light, as though the sun had suddenly returned in the middle of the night. She could also make out the sound of cocks crowing in the distance.

“If you come back and work with me, I can give you a lot of money, and can arrange for Fragrance to return and wait on you every day.

“… But right now, I have something I need to ask of you—could you arrange for Cheng Qing to leave your brother? If you can arrange for that whore to leave your brother and return him to me, I will not only return Fragrance to you, I will even give you several hundred thousand yuan.

“… How about a million yuan? You’ve served in the military for so many years and have been awarded so many orders of merit, let
me give you a million yuan, and all you need to do is find someone to go break Cheng Qing’s arms or legs, or throw acid in her face.

“… If you feel it’s not safe for you to do this, I have an even better idea, which is that either you or someone else could invite her out somewhere, and then rape her in an abandoned area behind the hotel. If you or someone else rapes her, I’ll give you a hundred thousand yuan, and if you rape her ten times I’ll give you a million yuan.”

Zhu Ying paused, then looked around again. She saw the moon shining in the sky, and the cars in the streets driving up to the square all had their brights on. Meanwhile, the people who had gotten up early to exercise were also looking up at the sky, appearing as though they were saying something while gazing at that crescent moon. Turning back to Mingyao, Zhu Ying saw that he was still wearing his military clothing, which in the night light appeared to have a thick layer of green. As he looked at the sky along with everyone else, he bit his lower lip until it had snowy white teeth marks.

“Does Explosion really have a girl named Fragrance?” he asked Zhu Ying. “How do you know her? Fragrance is actually a whore, a mere streetwalker. Isn’t that right?

“… I’m telling you, Fragrance tried to seduce me, saying I looked like her brother, but I deliberately ignored her. Of all the fucking women in the world, there isn’t a single one who can seduce me, just as there isn’t anyone capable of suddenly making this town square collapse into a bottomless pit. Fragrance summoned me to a hotel and wanted to take off her clothes, but I slapped her face and she ran away in tears.”

As he was saying this, Mingyao gazed out at the square. He looked around in all directions, then back up at the sky.

“The sky seems different,” he said quietly. “Something momentous is about to occur in Explosion, as well as in all of China. This momentous occurrence will dwarf anything concerning Fragrance
or Cheng Qing, just as the ocean would dwarf a small creek or a mountain would dwarf a broken tile.

“I didn’t return for that girl, Fragrance.” He looked once more at Zhu Ying, as his voice became even firmer and more affirmative. “It was on behalf of Explosion that I withdrew from the army and came home. I returned on behalf of the future of Explosion, and of China.

“… The embassy has just been bombed by the United States, and if I were now to be distracted with romantic concerns involving Fragrance and Cheng Qing, it would mean that all those years I served in the military would have been in vain.” As Mingyao said this, he glanced at the moonlit sky and saw that the moon was gradually receding like a piece of silk after getting wet. A golden red light pressed down on the moonlight, covering it like a red cloth covering a white one. That red cloth was thick and bright, and as its eye-piercing light landed on the white moonlight, the dim moonlight appeared dark and suppressed, like a sheet of white paper that has been exposed to fire and bursts into flames. “OK!” Mingyao said very emphatically. “I’ll do as you say and break Cheng Qing’s arms and legs, or destroy her face. In return, I don’t want a single cent of your money, and instead I just want you to find me a gun.

“… Get me a gun, and I’ll break one of her limbs. Find me two guns, and I’ll break two of her limbs. Get me three guns, and I’ll make sure she disappears from my brother’s life altogether, without his even knowing a thing. Brother will obediently return to your side, to be your man and your husband, while the entire county of Explosion will belong to you and my brother.

“… Can you find me a gun?

“… The embassy has been bombed, killing three Chinese diplomats and wounding more than twenty others. Can you make the United States apologize for what it did?

“… Can you help me establish an army in Explosion?”

As Mingyao was asking Zhu Ying these questions, his gaze bore down on her face like a pair of flames. By this point, the moon had receded and the moonlight disappeared completely from the sky. The people and cars approaching from a distance to come in to work were all illuminated by the winter sunlight, which rushed into Explosion like a flood of water pouring into the square. Seeing that Zhu Ying wasn’t answering and instead was staring at him as though she had mistaken him for someone else, Mingyao walked out of the square. After he was far away, he heard Zhu Ying shout something that he would regret for the rest of his life:

“Mingyao,” she shouted, “if you, your brother, and I could be united, we could accomplish almost anything. We could elevate Explosion from a county into a city, and then from a city into a metropolis. By that point, your Kong family would be regarded as having performed a meritorious service, and its name would go down in history. Can you believe it?!”

Zhu Ying stared at Mingyao from a distance, while Mingyao turned around under the bright sunlight and looked back at her. He gazed at her as though he were looking at a nun standing in the middle of the square. After a while, he turned and walked on.

2. THE POST-MILITARY ERA (1)

Mingliang and Mingyao met up two days after Mingyao saw Zhu Ying in the square. Because Mingliang was so busy, he didn’t have enough time to return home and he offered to meet Mingyao in his office. Apart from being fairly large, Mingliang’s office was actually no different from that of any other local official. It consisted of several rooms, each of which was several hundred square meters
in size. His room had a couch against the wall, and an exquisitely trimmed bonsai plant, a hibiscus plant, and a rubber plant—often called an ingot plant. The walls were covered in maps, the desk was covered in documents, and one wall was filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases that were full of books ordered from a list provided by a scholar. The books included the twenty-four dynastic histories and classic works such as
Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government
and
The Hundred Schools of Thought,
in editions that included both the original literary Chinese and a translation into modern Chinese. Two bookcases contained more than a thousand volumes, including
Dream of the Red Chamber, Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
and the other four Ming-Qing master novels in both hardback and thread-bond editions. Foreign books included
On the Origin of Species
,
The Essence of Christianity
,
The Decline of the West
,
The New Science
,
Utopia
,
The Republic
,
The City of God
, and other world classics. When Mingyao entered the office, Mingliang was in his conference room holding a meeting in preparation for elevating Explosion from a county to a city. Mingyao therefore waited alone in his brother’s office. He stood in front of the bookcases, and suddenly felt that he had grown apart from his own family during his years of struggle in the military, to the point that now he almost couldn’t remember his brother’s name or even what he looked like. He stood for a moment in front of the wall of books and then suddenly he pulled down a well-thumbed copy of
The Carnal Prayer Mat
and began rapidly leafing through it as though shuffling a deck of cards. He remembered Fragrance’s slender and voluptuous body, while at the same time dimly recalling his own brother’s name and appearance.

As Mingyao was leafing through that copy of
The Carnal Prayer Mat
, he saw that his brother had marked many passages in red, and was surprised that all of the marked passages contained descriptions
of sexual scenes and techniques. Bewildered, he wanted to throw the book away or rip it up, but at the same time he had an intense urge to read those underlined passages. In the end, he quickly returned the book to its position on the shelf. After he managed to calm himself, he found himself looking down on his brother while remaining optimistic about his own future.

Fortunately, during this moment of calm following his initial excitement, he managed to remember what his brother looked like. As a result, when the door opened and he turned to see his brother enter, Mingyao discovered that his brother did indeed look exactly as he remembered him. The only difference was that while his brother had previously worn a homespun cloth shirt, after being appointed village chief he had begun wearing a uniform. Later he was promoted to town mayor, and then to county mayor … and as he led Explosion from a village to a town, and from a town to a county, and after he had helped all of the natural villages in the Balou mountain region become prosperous counties in their own right, Mingliang began wearing brand-name suits. During this period, Mingyao was merely serving in the army, having been promoted from private to private first class. In the end, Mingliang had his success, while Mingyao had his. Therefore, when Mingliang came in and shouted Mingyao’s name, Mingyao turned around and suddenly remembered what his brother looked like. He smiled briefly, then became serious and said in a resentful and mysterious tone,

“Brother, yesterday the United States fucking bombed our embassy. Did you know that?”

Mingliang stared at Mingyao and asked, “What kind of tea do you want?”

“Did they issue any statement?” Mingyao continued. “Not only did Clinton not fucking apologize, he even claimed that, in war, it was completely normal to bomb the wrong target.”

“Here I have half a
jin
of high-quality Longjing tea,” Mingliang said. “It sells for three hundred and fifty yuan a
jin.
”

“War is about to break out.” Mingyao pulled over a chair and sat down, as his look of disappointment changed to one of dejection. “But I picked just this moment to return home.”

Mingliang gestured toward the door. There was clearly no one there, but as soon as he lowered his hand, a girl promptly walked in like a nymph emerging out of a pool of water. She brought two cups of steeped tea, in which each individual tea leaf appeared bright green. Mingyao stared in surprise, but after a moment he noticed that his brother’s hair was beginning to turn gray and his forehead had some prominent wrinkles. “You look older than you are,” Mingyao said. “Ma says that you’ve been so busy that you haven’t been home in over a year, and when she wants to see you she needs to come to your office herself.”

With a wan smile, Mingliang replied,

“Tell me, Brother, why is it that you’ve come back to Explosion? Explosion County belongs to our Kong family. Do you want to go into government or business?

“… In the army you were not promoted to cadre, but if you want to enter the government all I need is to say the word, and in less than an hour you’ll be designated a national cadre.

“… Eldest Brother is a fool, and although Fourth Brother is quite smart, if he sees a feather on the ground he will feel a pang of anguish on behalf of the sparrow from which it fell. Our Kong family, therefore, must rely on you.

“… I thought we could have Eldest Brother go into government and have you go into business. After a few years, when Explosion is redesignated from a county to a city, Eldest Brother could become mayor and you could have several tens of million yuan, or even a billion or a trillion.

“… In the mountains there are gold, copper, and coal mines. Coal is a huge industry in China, so how about if I were to transfer the country’s largest coal mine over to you?

“… Just think how, in this day and age, if you have money there isn’t anything you can’t do. In the army, you weren’t even promoted to cadre, but if you have enough money it’s entirely possible for you to be promoted to regiment commander.”