The Four Books (27 page)

Standing in front of that plot of land, I noticed that two of the sprouts on the second tier had begun to wilt. I walked over and saw that they were not only beginning to turn yellow, but the leaves closest to the ground had started to dry up. Thinking that the stem might be infested by some sort of parasite, I lay down and began digging out the surrounding soil. A buried thorn poked my hand, and blood began to gush as though from a fountain. I quickly squeezed my finger to stop the bleeding, then used my left hand to continue digging. It turned out that there were no insects in the soil, though I did notice that at the point where the stem of the wheat sprout entered the ground the soil was all gone, and instead there was only grayish yellow sand. Given that this sand was unable to retain any moisture, it was necessary for me to water these two sprouts individually. I brought over half a bucket of water from the cooking hut behind my shack, and used my rice bowl to water the plants. As I was doing so, I accidentally uncovered the wound on my index finger, allowing it to reopen and the blood to flow into the bowl. Two to three drops of blood fell into every bowl of water, and I gave two to three bowls of water to each sprout with yellow leaves. As the blood dripped into the water it initially appeared crimson, but then it quickly dissipated, leaving the water with a light tint of red and a faint scent of blood. I then poured this bloody water into the irrigation ditches around the sprouts, and as soon as it soaked in I covered it with fresh soil, patting it down with my hand so that the wind would not blow directly onto the roots of the sprouts, while also allowing the sprouts to absorb the water and air through cavities in the soil.

The next day I went to check on those two wheat sprouts, and found that the withered leaves were revived. In fact, the dark green leaves of those two sprouts were even thicker and brighter than those of the plants growing in richer soil. The leaves appeared somewhat crazed. The leaves of all the other sprouts had a tint of blackness and hung down onto the ground, but these two plants had leaves that were growing straight upward. I realized that my blood had given them energy. In this way, I proceeded to tend to my wheat—hoeing it when it needed hoeing, and watering it when it needed watering. In mid-spring, when it was time to fertilize the soil, I didn’t apply fertilizer and instead assigned each of the wheat sprouts a number, then used a knife to carve a hundred and twenty little signs, numbered each of them from one to a hundred and twenty, and positioned each of the signs in front of the wheat sprout with the corresponding number. I carefully noted which sprouts were beginning to wilt and in the morning, when my blood was thickest, I pricked my finger and allowed the blood to drip into the bowl of water—giving a few drops to the sprouts that were only slightly thin, and a dozen or more for those that were very thin—then poured the water around the base of the plant. In this way, I was able to help the sprouts recover overnight, returning them from yellow to dark green, and from thin to succulent.

When I went back to the ninety-ninth to claim my grain allotment, the Child asked if I remembered what I had promised when I planted my wheat; he explained that the higher-ups were pressuring him. From that point on, I kept a daily record in my
Old Course
manuscript of how much the wheat sprouts had grown and how they had changed. I planned to wait until the Child couldn’t hold out anymore, whereupon I would bring out these daily records, while keeping my manuscript hidden under my pillow.

This is how things progressed, day after day. Every three or four days I pricked my finger with a needle or a small knife, draining the blood in a bowl and then using it to fertilize the wheat. One day I would prick the tip of the finger, and the next I would prick the ball of the finger. In this way, it would take me twenty or thirty days to complete a full circuit of each hand, by which time the first fingertip would already be healed and I could prick it again. By the end of the fourth month, it was warm enough that during the day I could wear only a single layer of clothing. My wheat sprouts were beginning to branch, and one night as I was lying on the floor of my shack, I heard what sounded like a rasping noise coming from underground. Initially I thought that the sound was merely the nocturnal murmurings that often come from the earth, particularly in the middle of the night when the stars come out and the moon is hanging low in the sky and they sound like flowing water as they move through the sky and wild plants produce a mysterious language as they emerge from the earth. I couldn’t distinguish between the sound made during the harvest season and this new one coming from underground. I rolled over in bed and began to plan out what I was going to write in my manuscript the next day. Only after I had thought through how I was going to record the day’s events could I relax and fall asleep.

By that point I had already written several dozen pages, or almost twenty thousand words. All of these manuscript pages were in a neat pile at the head of my bed, with the smell of ink mixing with the oily and bloody odor emanating from the muddy depths of the sand beneath my cot. I didn’t know how long this book would end up being, but after writing these sixty pages, the story’s basic framework was already becoming clear to me. The night I finally achieved this clarity, I heard a sound from the earth and the moon that seemed different from before. I wasn’t certain whether this was the beginning or the end of the month, and I hadn’t noticed whether the moon was waxing or waning. Just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard the faint sound of something crawling around under my pillow. The sound disappeared whenever I lifted my head, but returned as soon as I lowered it again. When I moved my pillow to one side, cut open the straw mattress underneath, and placed my ear directly on the ground, I heard the faint scratching sound of wheat and grass roots scurrying around in the wheat field, as though they were battling one other underground. I put on my clothes and went outside, where I quickly proceeded to the wheat field and knelt down, but I couldn’t see or hear anything. So, I placed my ear on the ground next to the wheat sprouts, and once again I heard the wheat and grass sprouts struggling with one another, as though they were competing to see who would be able to get out of the ground first. That clear bright sound was like bamboo shoots struggling to make their way through fissures in a stone slab.

I couldn’t understand why the wheat sprouts would make this kind of noise. I sat at the front of the field pondering this, until the eastern sky began to lighten. In the morning light, the wasteland initially appeared gray and misty, but then, after a moment of darkness, as though a cloud were passing overhead, the field suddenly brightened. I saw that all of those wheat plants I had irrigated with my own blood were no longer individual sprouts, and instead had branched into dense clumps. The plants to which I had not given much of my own blood were still standing there as single stalks, and although they were not particularly withered, they nevertheless appeared much weaker and less vibrant than the others.

I felt as though I had let down those single-stalk sprouts, having failed to give them adequate attention. Accordingly, on that day I used a small knife to cut the tips of four of my fingers, let the blood pour into the bucket, then proceeded to give between half a bowl and a full bowl to those plants that had already received a lot of my blood, while giving two or three bowls to those that had received relatively little. That evening, I selected several plants, based on the numbers I had assigned them—including some that received half a bowl or a full bowl of bloody water, and others that had received two or even three bowls. I covered these dozen or so plants with a newspaper, weighing down the corners of the papers with rocks and sand. I stood next to the wheat field until midnight, at which point I heard a rustling sound beneath the newspapers. While the newspapers had initially been draped over the wheat sprouts, now each sheet was lifted up like an umbrella. The plants that had drunk two or three bowls of blood-water had not only lifted up the newspapers that were covering them, but some of their twigs and leafs had even punched right through. When I picked up the newspapers, I found that those wheat plants were no longer individual sprouts, but rather had divided into dense bushlike clusters.

4.
Old Course
, pp. 401–419

While my wheat plants were already growing like crazy, the plants in that large field back in the district had only just begun to come out of the ground. As those other plants were just beginning to divide, mine were already as tall as a chopstick. I had a hundred and twenty plants in all, spread across the entire field, blanketing everything in a sea of green. Once, I returned to the district and, after waiting until everyone left to work in the fields, I went to the canteen to collect my grain ration and my oil and salt allotment. I ran into the Child in the doorway, sunning himself and reading his comics. When he saw me approach, he reluctantly pulled his eyes away from his comics and said, “Remember what we agreed—what we said we would do if you don’t succeed in growing ears of wheat that are even larger than ears of corn.” As he was saying this, he looked back down at his comics. I stood in front of him, and I saw that the book of comics he was reading contained a biblical image of a female saint and a group of children playing under a tree. “Don’t worry,” I said confidently. “I’ll definitely be able to grow ears of wheat that are even larger than ears of corn. In fact, I won’t stop with only three or five. Instead, I’ll grow more than a hundred.”

The Child slowly put away his comics, then stood up and looked at me skeptically, and asked, “How is the wheat doing now?”

“It is growing like leeks or celery.”

“You seem a little pale,” the Child said sympathetically.

“This is just how I look,” I replied with a laugh.

“I could tell the canteen to issue you an extra half
jin
of oil every month.”

Shortly afterward, the Child did in fact pick up a bottle of pork oil from the canteen and come to visit me. When he arrived at the front of the field and saw that my plants were already knee-high and blanketed the ground, he opened his mouth but no words came out. After I emerged from the shack, he hopped toward me like a startled sparrow, and exclaimed, “How did you manage to do this? How can this sandy soil grow such healthy wheat?” Then he went back to the field and stroked the wheat leaf with his finger. Without waiting for me to say anything, he concluded that the reason this wheat was able to grow so crazily was not only that this plot of land was facing the rising sun, but also that for centuries there had been several dozen ginkgos and cypresses growing here. Although the trees had recently been cut down, the gold ginkgo leaves had accumulated over the years to produce a rich mulch that endowed the soil with considerable energy, while the resin from the cypresses was also very fertile and had similarly granted the soil essential vitality. Upon seeing the wheat, the Child broke into a rare smile. He sat down next to the field and spoke to me for a long time. He told me that the ninety-ninth’s experimental field, which was expected to produce ten thousand
jin
of grain per
mu
, was also growing very well, and the wheat sprouts were crowded together. He said that one of the professors had helped him calculate, and that while originally they had just planned to plant several dozen
jin
of seeds for every
mu
, now they decided to add at least eight hundred
jin
more seeds, bringing the total for the plot to more than a thousand
jin
.

The Child said, “We covered that plot with a solid layer of seeds, as though we had laid them out in the sun to dry.” Sowed in this way, however, there was no way a wheat sprout could split into several branches, and instead each seed would only produce a single sprout, and each sprout would produce only a single ear of wheat. When ripe, each ear would, at most, have only thirty grains of wheat, meaning that the thousand
jin
of wheat seeds would produce about thirty thousand
jin
of wheat. Even if they produced half that, and each ear yielded only fifteen grains of wheat, the field would still produce at least fifteen thousand
jin
of wheat. But, under normal circumstances, when does an ear of wheat not yield at least twenty or thirty grains? Having said this, the Child looked at me with a smile, while at the same time continuing to gaze at my plot of succulent wheat, his face so red that it looked as though it were painted.

“With an experimental wheat field capable of producing more than ten thousand
jin
per
mu
, and with ears of wheat larger than ears of corn, I think we’ll definitely be invited to the capital to pay tribute.” As he was saying this, the Child lay on the ground and stared at the sky with a look of hope and expectation.

About half a month later, those leaves suddenly began wilting overnight. I knew I needed to use my blood to strengthen these plants, and that this wouldn’t be a question of irrigating specific plants that had begun to wilt, but rather I would need to wait until a rainy day and cut open all ten of my fingers and then stand on the embankment above the wheat field and let my blood spray everywhere, mixing with the rain and falling together onto the wheat leaves, the wheat ears, as well as the soil between the individual plants. I waited until the next rainy day, then did indeed cut open all ten of my fingers, and stood at the front of the field letting my blood spray over my wheat plants. Three days later, the rain stopped, and I saw that all of the plants that had previously turned yellow were green again, and were producing new growth. At first those wheat stalks were as thick as ordinary ones, but within a few days they had become twice as thick, like bamboo stalks in the spring. In order to sample their flavor, I found a stalk that wasn’t growing as fast as the others and cut it open. I discovered that my wheat was different from any I had ever tasted. While other wheat stalks are hollow, mine turned out to be solid, and inside the hard outer shell there was a thick pulp with the consistency of tofu. I used my fingernail to scoop out a chunk of this pulp and tasted it, and my mouth was immediately filled with a delicious sweetness.