The Explosion Chronicles (7 page)

There was a large open field in front of Explosion, right where the main road entered the village. It was there that the town mayor erected the stele in Zhu Ying’s honor. The stele was made of marble
and was an inch thick, eight inches wide, one foot two inches high, and it was carved with bowl-size Chinese characters.

The base of the stele had already been placed in a pit.

Around the base, the villagers added not only dirt but also a ring of concrete. There was a fresh smell of cement in the air. When the sun was directly overhead, the town’s cadres either stood in the sun or sat on their cotton shoes, staring intently at the mayor’s face and watching his mouth open and close as he spoke. He said,

“Tell me, who here is Zhu Ying’s equal? Does anyone know? When Zhu Ying first arrived in Guangzhou, she was merely an assistant in a hair salon, but now she has opened an amusement park in the provincial capital, which is large enough to accommodate nine hundred men and women bathing at the same time. Every day she earns enough money to buy several sedans or even build a small house!

“How can we not erect a stele for her?” the mayor asked. “Not only did she help her family build a new house, she also helped the families of a hundred other young women construct new tile-roofed houses and other buildings.” He added, “She not only helped the families of these young women construct new tile-roofed houses and buildings, she also helped provide Liu Gully and Zhang Peak with electricity, running water, and a paved road. Where did all this money come from? It was donated by Zhu Ying and the other women! It was all donated from the money earned by these hundred-odd young women working for Zhu Ying.

“There is also something else.” The mayor paused, gazing down at the cadres, then he cleared his throat and said, “Zhu Ying said that next spring she is going to repave the cement road leading from the town to the village. She is going to convert the dirt road into a national-standard paved road. Do you know how much it will cost to repave this road?”

The mayor shouted, “It will cost millions!”

He added, “As mayor, I have no way of rewarding Zhu Ying other than to erect this stele in her honor.”

Accordingly, an enormous stone stele as big as a wall was erected, and everyone in attendance saw the basket-size characters inscribed on its front:

His listeners began applauding the erection of the stele, applauding so hard that their palms were soon covered in blood.

4. KONG DONGDE AND HIS SONS

I.

As everyone was appealing for spring to return, the paulownia tree sprouted its pink blossoms and the apricot tree sprouted its jade-white blossoms. When spring finally did in fact arrive, Kong Dongde saw that all of the graves in the village square were covered in winter jasmine—but while at this time of year they normally would be bursting into green and sprouting flowers, these particular plants were neither green nor flowering. The willows along the river and next to the well were also no longer producing new growth. There was no lingering winter chill, and each day was warmer than the last, as people removed their padded clothing. Once you passed the Qingming holiday and began approaching the fifth solar term, spring should have started to arrive. But this year, even though it was already the beginning of the third lunar month, the spring greenery was still not willing to emerge.

One morning, Kong Dongde thought about the spring, then took a couple of mynah birds he had raised and hung their cage from the willow tree next to Zhu Qingfang’s grave in the middle of the village square. Then, like city residents who go to the parks in the morning to do their daily exercises, he proceeded to exercise in the open area in the square in front of the graves. He didn’t really want to exercise, but it was just that the preceding few years had convinced him that life was good, and he had now entered a period of calm and refinement. During the first half of Kong Dongde’s life Zhu Qingfang had always forced him to crouch in submission; now Kong Dongde was smiling happily while Zhu Qingfang was buried six feet under.

So, every day after getting up, Kong Dongde would take those two mynah birds and hang their cage in front of Zhu Qingfang’s grave, and then he would exercise right there in the square, happily greeting everyone who passed by. The days were gradually becoming warmer, and after exercising he would soon be covered in sweat. He would remove his jacket, but rather than hang it from a nearby tree, he would instead make a point of walking past several graves to hang it on the same tree on which he had already hung the cage with the pair of mynah birds. He would then walk back over the same graves, would stomp several times on Zhu Qingfang’s grave mound, and only then would he return to his exercises.

During that period, the air was brisk and there was a humid breeze. Every morning, Kong Dongde would walk back and forth over Zhu Qingfang’s grave. There was a path leading up to the grave, and the earth of the mound itself was packed down very hard. The new soil that had been deposited during the Qingming grave-sweeping holiday had already been stomped into the ground, to the point that the grave mound appeared quite low. One day, Kong Dongde decided that the
MOST LOYAL OLD COMMUNIST
inscription on Zhu Qingfang’s tombstone was displeasing, and therefore proceeded to plaster
it with mud. Another day, he decided that the entire gravestone was displeasing, so he asked some villagers to knock it down—but before they had a chance to finish, he told them to stop.

“Let’s just leave it like this. For better or worse, he did live and walk this earth, so let’s leave his gravestone as it is.” From that point on, the gravestone stood at a precarious angle, as though it were about to topple over. Kong Dongde felt that the grave and tombstone were somehow more acceptable this way, as though Zhu Qingfang was forever bowing down before him. It was as though Zhu Qingfang’s grave was abandoned. Every morning Kong Dongde would get up and go down to the village square to do these things—thinking about the good fortune his family had enjoyed. Kong Dongde’s eldest son was now a teacher and was now the assistant principal at an elementary school; his second son was the village chief and the emperor of the village; his third son was in the army, and, although not a general, he was nevertheless a security officer for his regiment, and sooner or later he would surely be promoted to cadre; and his fourth son was enrolled in high school in the city, receiving excellent grades, and would soon take the college admissions exams.

With luck, he would be able to pass the exams easily.

Kong Dongde had absolutely nothing to complain about. Had Zhu Qingfang’s daughter not gone into the city to earn money to buy a house, and had the town mayor (who was also someone who should have met with misfortune) not erected an enormous stele in front of the village, there would not have been a single thing in this life that would have given Kong Dongde any displeasure.

Several months earlier, Mayor Hu Dajun had erected this enormous stele for Zhu Ying, the first line of which read,
TO GET RICH, LEARN FROM EXPLOSION,
while the second read,
TAKE ZHU YING AS A MODEL.
However, Zhu Ying was herself a resident of Explosion and therefore should be under the direction of the village chief—which is to say,
Kong Dongde’s son, Kong Mingliang. But this made Kong Dongde feel as though there were a needle pricking his throat. He naturally couldn’t simply go knock down the stele the mayor had erected, and furthermore Mayor Hu could very well end up being promoted to county mayor. So Kong Dongde had no recourse but to blur out the inscription on the tombstone that had been erected in the name of the father of that whore, Zhu Ying. Moreover, he had to settle for blurring out the inscription on the nearly overturned tombstone of that whore’s father, because he naturally couldn’t blur out the inscription on the enormous stele the mayor had erected.

In the end, Kong Dongde felt that everything was again as it should be, and it was as though that bone in his throat had been removed.

He exercised in front of that grave, humming a tune while swinging his arms and legs around. He did this every day, coming every morning to announce his feeling of victory and delight to the person in the grave. On this particular morning, however, as he was exercising in the square, he suddenly noticed that the winter jasmine had not yet begun flowering, even though it was already the end of the third lunar month; and while there were a handful of willows that had begun to bud, those buds had already dried up and the hint of green had retreated to the very center of the branch.

Kong Dongde felt rather unnerved by this.

He remembered that when Mingliang returned from his meeting in the provincial seat the previous day, he had mentioned that both the county and the town wanted to initiate a reform movement. They wanted to use Explosion as a model and have the villagers hold an election for village chief. At the thought that Zhu Ying might be elected, however, Kong Dongde’s heart skipped a beat and his arm froze in midair. He turned to look at Zhu Qingfang’s grave, then listened as the two mynah birds squawked, “I’m better than you!
I’m better than you!” He nodded and exchanged a few words with villagers who passed by, accepting everyone’s greetings and well-wishes. Then he completed his exercises and walked over toward Zhu Qingfang’s grave.

After waiting until no one was around, he proceeded to urinate on the grave, peeing all over the area where Zhu Qingfang’s face would have been. Then he put on his clothes, picked up the two “I’m better then you!” mynah birds, and returned home.

II.

There was indeed an election.

On the ballot provided by the town there were two names: Kong Mingliang and that whore, Zhu Ying!

Kong Mingliang had bags under his eyes. He rushed to the town and the county seat, and bought a lot of wine and expensive cigarettes to give away. It turned out, however, that there was no way to change things. There would be an election, and one of the candidates would in fact be that person who had opened the Worldly Pleasures brothel in the city and the provincial seat. As a result, Kong Mingliang and Zhu Ying would inevitably collide on this narrow path to the village chiefdom, and only one of them would succeed. From the break of dawn until the sun was high in the sky, Kong Mingliang struggled to predict who in the three villages would vote for him and who would vote for Zhu Ying. He understood that every family in Explosion was like a watertight bucket and family members would definitely vote for whomever they said they would. He ripped two empty pages from his brother Minghui’s school notebook, and on one sheet he wrote
Village Chief
followed by his own name, and on the other sheet he wrote
Whore
followed by Zhu Ying’s name. He calculated from Explosion Village to Liu Gully, and then from Liu Gully to Zhang Peak, and after he tabulated his totals he concluded that most of the residents
of Explosion would vote for him, though most of the residents of Liu Gully and Zhang Peak would vote for Zhu Ying. He was the one who had enabled Explosion to grow wealthy, while she was the one who had enabled those other two villages to achieve prosperity. By Mingliang’s calculations, there were 105 households and a total of 525 individuals who would vote for him, while there were 165 households and a total of 825 individuals who would vote for Zhu Ying.

So, it appeared that he would lose.

Kong Mingliang threw away those two sheets of paper and walked out into the courtyard. He stood there for a moment, but when he looked back he saw that those two sheets of paper were fluttering in the air like white funeral paper. Then, those two sheets became rain clouds, floating for a while before drifting away. He turned his face toward the sun overhead and, frowning, repeatedly wet his lips with his tongue. As Mingliang was worrying about the election, his father emerged from his bedroom, and when he arrived at the doorway he saw the birdcage hanging outside. He came over and stood in front of his son, and asked,

“Do you realize you won’t be elected village chief?”

Kong Mingliang looked at this father without saying a word.

Kong Dongde handed his son two sheets of paper covered in writing. Mingliang took the sheets and saw with surprise that they were also labeled
Village Chief Kong Mingliang
and
Whore Zhu Ying,
respectively. On the sheet labeled
Village Chief,
there were the names of some of the households in each village, and below, written in red: “Total: 105 households, or 535 individuals.” On the sheet labeled
Whore
, there was an even longer list of names of households, below which, in red: “Total: 165 households, or 825 individuals.”

This was identical to Kong Mingliang’s own calculations.

Kong Mingliang stared in shock at those two sheets of paper, until finally his father asked, “Given that you won’t be elected village
chief, do you know what you need to do to be elected?” It was only at that point that Mingliang snapped out of his daze. He simultaneously nodded and shook his head. In a fog, he seemed to hear the words “Come with me,” then saw his father turn around and head back to his bedroom. His hunched shoulders resembled a pair of balls rolling forward. Mingliang followed in his father’s footsteps, into his father’s room.

III.

In accordance with their father’s arrangements, the Kong family sprang into action. They rode a tractor into the county seat to purchase malted milk, crackers, cigarettes, and wine, and when they returned they distributed cigarettes and wine to all of the heads of household who smoked and drank, and gave health supplements to some of the elders. Mingliang himself also went out, accompanied by his elder brother Kong Mingguang and his fourth brother Kong Minghui. Together, the three of them visited the families of those villagers who had lost their lives unloading goods from the trains. In the families’ homes, they placed the gifts on the table, exchanged some pleasantries, and then Mingliang said very bluntly,