The Explosion Chronicles (48 page)

“The time has arrived for us to correct the arrogance of Europe and the United States. Citizens of this new provincial-level metropolis, all I need is three days of your time. All I want is that during these three days, you follow me and do as I say. If you do, then China will no longer be the way it is now, and neither will the world be the way it is now. None of those in Explosion will be the way they are now!”

At this point, Mingyao paused and undid the top button of his uniform, as his middle-aged face had a flash of a youthful glow. Then, with a throat that was almost bleeding, he shouted, “Compatriots, brothers and sisters, my beloved people—the world will not grant us very much time or opportunity. But now that the United States has once again been plunged into a severe financial recession and the EU is on the verge of falling apart, please everyone come with me. We can spend three days lending the United States and Europe a hand, after which they will no longer be as arrogant and biased, or as rude and unreasonable.

“In three days, we will first fix all of America’s problems, and then we’ll fix Europe’s. After this, we will proceed to fix China’s problems, and even all of the world’s. This is an opportunity that has been granted us by heaven, and a responsibility that has been granted us by world history. Accordingly, the people of Explosion and I should shoulder this responsibility. Let us set off proudly from the new provincial-level metropolis of Explosion!!”

After this, an image of Mingyao and his army practicing a march appeared on the television screen. Meanwhile, the entire city of Explosion became quiet, and remained so until dusk, whereupon the whole city began surging toward the airport, toward the train stations, and out to the suburbs. No one in the city had any way of knowing that the mayor, at that precise moment, was in fact dying in his office in the city government compound. His wife, Zhu Ying, had rushed over and parked in front of the entranceway, just as the sun was slipping
behind the mountains, and as that entranceway, which was built in imitation of the Arc de Triomphe, was bathed in silence and bloodred light. At that point, soldiers from two companies or an entire battalion were running out of the government compound holding their weapons, their footsteps echoing on the pavement. Zhu Ying had a premonition that something momentous was about to unfold. She followed the wooden corridor with the grape trellis that her husband took every day, and when she burst into Kong Mingliang’s office in the city government compound, her husband had already died at that immense mahogany desk. The army had taken away the directive he had been forced to sign just before his death: “Agreement to permit General Kong Mingyao to borrow the city’s residents for three days.” After the mayor signed this directive, the army had been worried that he would sign another one ordering the recall of those residents who were still en route. When he returned to take care of some business for Explosion or for the nation, a rather ordinary dagger had stabbed him in the back, in such a way that the tip could be seen poking out of his chest. There was a clot of blood on the tip of the dagger, and he lay there at his desk as though he were merely asleep. The blood flowing out of his chest was as black as ink. Not a drop fell onto the desk, however, and instead all of it poured onto his right pants leg and into his shoe, finally pooling on the floor under the desk.

Before he died, the mayor used his right index finger to write a line of characters on his desk using his own blood. The line read,

“My people, I’ve let you down!”

When Zhu Ying burst into his office, she stood motionless in front of her husband, sweat pouring down her forehead like rain. She stared at the line written in blood on the desk, then lifted her husband’s shoulders to see his anguished expression. She paused for a moment in that deathly silence, then walked out of the office. As she did so, she glanced up at the thousands of squirrels and birds
that emerged from the fields and forests. They all stood on the lawn, in the orchards, and in the flower gardens of the city government compound, watching Zhu Ying without making a sound. They all had a look of anxiety and foreboding, as though they knew a disaster was about to unfold.

Zhu Ying walked out silently under the gaze of those birds and squirrels.

She did not return to her own home and instead proceeded back to the Kong family mansion. At that point, Minghui happened to have just emerged from his home and was standing in the middle of the street. He was holding the almanac, with the stuck-together pages he had finally succeeded in separating. He was looking out in alarm at Explosion, as though he, too, knew that something momentous had occurred. It was then that he saw Zhu Ying rushing over from the other end of the alley. She stopped in front of him, and said,

“Your second brother has died. He was assassinated by someone sent by your third brother.

“… Your third brother is now leading the military and all of the city’s residents to the airport, the rail station, and the pier. Meanwhile, I will take a thousand girls to go with them.

“… His army needs these girls. For the sake of your second brother, I’ll see to it that your third brother will die either at my hand or at the hand of one of those girls.

“… I’ll entrust your nephew Victory to you. He is the only blood link between your second brother and myself, and is also one of your Kong family’s roots.”

Upon saying this, Zhu Ying quickly turned and walked away. But before she had proceeded more than a few steps, she walked back and hugged Minghui, who was still standing there in shock, then kissed his cheek with her icy lips. “In this life I have dealt with countless men, but I have never before voluntarily kissed one—including
even your second brother.” She added, “Today, you’re the first man whom I have voluntarily kissed. I’m begging you not to tell your nephew, after he grows up, all of the things that his father and mother have done. Just tell him that his parents were killed in a car accident, and the accident was so bad that their corpses could not even be recovered afterward.”

Then she left.

That night, she recruited a thousand girls and had them join Mingyao’s army under the name Women’s Support Troops. That night, Mingyao left with his army and all of the people of Explosion that he could take. They departed in a chaotically disordered sound of feet marching and truck tires screeching, as Minghui’s hoarse voice could be heard everywhere, shouting and beseeching,

“Third Brother, where are you? Please leave behind the elderly and the children!

“Third Brother, where are you? Please leave behind the elderly, the children, and the women!

“Third Brother, as your brother I’m begging you, please leave behind the elderly, the children, the women, and the disabled!”

Following these cries, none of those soldiers, residents, and people heading toward the train station and airport made any effort to stop, though some old people, children, and women were pushed out of the group. Furthermore, when the soldiers passed the city government compound, they followed Mingyao’s instructions—they goose-stepped and, while facing the government compound, observed three minutes of silence in memory of the father of the city, Kong Mingliang.

That night, Zhu Ying took all of the girls and left with the army. As for another several hundred girls who had just returned from the capital, they didn’t need to leave the train station. For the next several days, all of Explosion’s stores and companies closed, and the city was
reduced to a virtual ghost town. When someone occasionally came out into the streets, it would invariably be one of the old people, children, weak, or disabled who had stayed behind, who all had a look of fear and confusion in their eyes.

In this way, the city’s prosperity abruptly came to an end.

A brilliant historical period reached its conclusion.

One morning a month later, the first to appear in the city’s streets and squares was not a person from Explosion but rather a broken clock that someone had thrown out. With this, the city’s trash bins, its gardens, and the ground were littered with all sorts of discarded clocks and cheap watches that had suddenly stopped working and couldn’t be fixed. Throughout Explosion, the hands of all the clocks and the watches stopped in the middle of the night, and in most cases their hour, minute, and second hands had completely fallen off. In this way, the city came to resemble a junk pile of broken clocks and watches, to the point that the old people and children couldn’t even walk through the streets because of all the broken clocks and watches. In this way, the city was buried under a mountain of broken clocks and watches.

After the people who had been left behind in Explosion spent several days cleaning up all of the broken clocks and watches, Minghui dragged his nephew Victory to Mingguang’s house. Mingguang was looking after his wife, who had just given birth. Their first child was a son, and this time she had given birth to boy and girl twins. Minghui and his nephew arrived just after Mingguang’s wife successfully gave birth, and as Mingguang was carrying a basin with the umbilical cords and amniotic fluid, preparing to throw them out and bury them. The two brothers stood in the front of the house. Facing each other, they had the following exchange:

Mingguang said loudly, “We now have both son and daughter. Our Kong family has its own descendants.”

Minghui said, “Second Brother, Second Sister-in-Law, and Third Brother all died in a car accident. Now, you and I are the only ones left.”

Mingguang asked, “What day is today? I need to remember my son’s birthday.”

Minghui replied, “We should go weep at their graves. As Explosion has been transformed from a village to a town, from a town to a county, from a county to a city, and from a city to a provincial-level metropolis, the people of Explosion have lost the habit of weeping at the graves of their relatives.”

It was that evening that it also occurred to the people who were left behind in Explosion that it had been several decades since they last visited the cemetery to express their joys and sorrows. Accordingly, several of them headed to their family’s grave sites during the period between sunset and moonrise, and by the time the moon had appeared there was the sound of someone weeping as he returned from his family’s grave site. Afterward, the entire city—including its old city and new city, its east side and west side—was filled with the sound of weeping. The remaining people of Explosion all came out of their houses and, weeping, knelt down facing the graves of their ancestors, tearfully recounting their miserable fate, calling out the formal and diminutive names of their deceased relatives. In this river of tears and under the light of the moon, some people saw the Kong family emerge, weeping, from their old mansion in the old city section of Explosion. This included Eldest Brother Kong Mingguang; Fourth Brother Kong Minghui; Mingguang’s wife, Cai Qinfang, who had just given birth; and Zhu Ying’s son Victory Kong. They emerged together, supporting one another. After kneeling down in front of the museum on Explosion’s former main street, they proceeded toward the cemetery on the outskirts of the city on their knees, leaving behind a trail of blood.

The next day, the sun should have come up in the east, as usual, but it never appeared. Instead, the sky was filled with a black haze that the people of Explosion had never seen before. Even in the middle of the day, they couldn’t see anything more than a few meters away. In this haze, all of the birds, including phoenixes, peacocks, pigeons, orioles, and so forth, were poisoned to death, while the people started coughing up blood. When the haze finally receded thirty years later, Explosion no longer had any birds or insects left. But the people who were still alive thirty years later saw that, along the trail of blood and dried-up tears that they had left behind as they were dragging themselves to the cemetery on their knees, there had sprouted some gorgeous roses and peonies. Meanwhile, along the bloody path that the Kong family had left behind on their way to the cemetery, there were not only flowers but also all different kinds of trees.

Dear readers,
Explosion
is finally finished, as I, like an old ox, finally managed to drag this train car to the top of the mountain.

The very next day, I had this work printed and bound. Carrying several bound volumes, I excitedly departed from the Beijing airport, sitting in first class (the Explosion city government helped pay for my ticket), and flew directly to the Explosion airport. Upon walking out of the plane, I saw that officials from the Explosion city government were waiting on the tarmac. They shook my hand and chatted with me, offering me flowers. They took me to a company car and, escorted by three police cars, they drove me to a hotel directly in front of the Explosion city government building. There, they put me in the presidential suite, where countless world leaders and dignitaries had previously stayed. For dinner, Explosion’s city mayor, Mayor Kong, personally hosted a banquet in my honor. Of course, in real life he and I are just as the manuscript describes us—we are both in our fifties and of average height, and we both have a square
face. Although we didn’t say much, every sentence was meaningful and resonant. The dishes at that night’s banquet were so good that they can only be described as exquisite. If I were to describe the food in more detail, I would have to wait until I’m on my deathbed and these would be the last words I’d ever utter.

While we were eating, I handed my manuscript to Mayor Kong, who was sitting at the head of the table. He excitedly leafed through it, then handed it to his secretary and said,

“If Author Yan runs into any problems, please resolve them. If he needs any money, no matter how much, please give it to him.”

The mayor offered me a toast, then we proceeded into another room to take pictures with some important guests representing national institutions, who had arrived from Beijing before me.

After dinner, there was nothing.

The entire night, there was no word.

The following morning at eleven, Mayor Kong’s secretary came to the hotel to escort me to Mayor Kong’s office. The mayor’s office was exactly as I described it in the preceding chronicle, and was located in a “city government complex” behind the main city government building. In the city government complex there were a series of newly constructed courtyards along the grape trellis corridor. The courtyards came in different sizes, ranging from two to five suites, and under the eaves of every courtyard there was an old painting in black, yellow, and red, together with a Buddhist story or legend. I followed the mayor’s secretary down the corridor and past all of the Buddhist pictures, and after several turns we arrived at a five-suite courtyard. The mayor’s office was in the third suite’s meeting room. Because the function of that courtyard’s meeting room was different from that of the others, its furnishings and decorations were also different. In the main room of that third suite, because it was the mayor’s office, when you entered you would see the sun’s rays illuminating every corner of
the room, even though the windows did not appear particularly large when seen from the outside. The secretary took me into the mayor’s office, then disappeared. I, meanwhile, stood in front of the mayor’s mahogany desk, which was about six square meters in size. I glanced at the office’s bookshelves, couches, and bonsai plants, and was about to say a few complimentary words about how enormous and luxurious the mayor’s office was, when I suddenly noticed that the mayor had been staring at me coldly ever since I entered the room and had not said a single word. His face was livid, and his mouth was clenched so tightly that his lips were turning purple. The inch-thick bound copy of
The Explosion Chronicles
was placed neatly on the desk in front of him.

“Have you finished it?” I stammered. “It’s a first draft and still needs to be revised.”

“No need!” With this, the mayor took out a lighter and held it up to the manuscript, then set it on fire. As the fire was about to singe his hand, he threw the manuscript down, then kicked it until the pages were reduced to ashes and all that remained was the spine and some burning embers. Then he looked up and said three things:

“As long as Explosion and I are here, you shouldn’t even think about publishing this book in China.

“… If you try to publish this book anywhere outside China, you’ll never be permitted to return to your hometown in the Balou Mountains as long as you live.

“… I want you to leave Explosion today. If you don’t leave today, there’s no telling what I’ll do to you!”

By that point, it was noon and the midday sun was streaming in through the mahogany-rimmed window. In that bright sunlight, I gazed at the mayor’s livid face, then smiled and said, “Thank you, Mayor Kong. You are this book’s first reader, and your response reassures me that I have written a pretty good work.” Then, I retreated from the mayor’s office.

I retreated from the city government complex.

That afternoon, I left the Explosion airport to return to Beijing, and shortly after I landed in the Beijing airport, an evening thunderstorm rained down. It rained continuously for four and a half hours, flooding the entire city and tying traffic into knots. As a result, I and countless other travelers were stuck in the airport for more than ten hours. The next morning, I finally returned home from the airport, and when I turned on the television I learned that this was the largest thunderstorm Beijing had experienced in the past six hundred years. Thirty-seven people drowned, and countless houses and lives were inundated. With this, the capital’s prosperity became blunted.