The Four Books (20 page)

The Theologian also considered for a while, and said, “Should I continue from where I left off?”

“As you wish,” the Child replied.

While pulling the cart, the Theologian thought back to the time when he had met the Child alone and told him stories from the Bible. He remembered that he had already told the Child how, in Genesis, God created earth and man, and how man sinned and was expelled from the Garden of Eden. He had already told the Child about Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel, Moses and the Ten Commandments, together with the stories of the golden calf, the bronze snake, and the first king of Israel. The Theologian wanted to tell the Child all of the Bible’s best stories, and therefore decided that he should tell him about the birth of Jesus. So, while pulling the cart through the snow and light, he said, “Joseph was a carpenter from Nazareth, and his fiancée was Mary, whose portrait you took from me. At that time, Mary was still young, but as she was preparing to marry Joseph, she unexpectedly became pregnant. Joseph was very distressed by this, and assumed that Mary had betrayed him. Just as he was about to call off the marriage, however, God appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Don’t act rashly.’ He said, ‘Mary’s child will be born with God’s power and spirit. You must marry her, and raise her son as your own. You must name the child
Jesus
. The name
Jesus
means “savior” . . . and a
savior
refers to someone who will always, always go into adversity to rescue others.’”

As the Theologian was telling the Child about the birth of Jesus, he became very animated. “In this way,” he concluded, “Mary delivered her child, and Jesus was born. As a result, the people were given Christ the Lord—an idol to worship in the form of Jesus and Mary.”

After describing the birth of Christ, the Theologian pulled the cart another ten
li
, until they could barely make out the buildings in the ninety-ninth. The Theologian was so thirsty that he began sucking on the snow from the side of the road. He had sand in his shoes, and when he took them off, he found they were also full of steam from his sweat. The Child looked at this steam, and then gazed up at the sky and asked softly,

“Have you finished your story?”

“I’ve finished.”

The Theologian continued pulling the cart forward. The snow on the ground became increasingly thin, and in some places the sandy earth was visible. In order to reach town sooner, and since the cart was relatively light, they decided to take a shortcut. On this shortcut, they encountered a hill, which was facing the sun and therefore had relatively little snow. Then they reached a sunny area where the snow had almost all melted. On the sandy road, a yellow light could be seen. So it came to pass. The Child got down from the cart, and as he was helping push he asked,

“Who got Mary pregnant?”

The Theologian said, “It was God.”

“Jesus’s father was God?”

“Jesus didn’t have a father, but he is God’s son. Jesus is God.”

“That’s crazy.” The Child was dissatisfied, and said, “I won’t penalize you for your superstitious beliefs, but if Jesus didn’t have a father, how did Mary, his mother, get pregnant?” Determined to get to the bottom of this, the Child looked intently at the Theologian, and added, “I don’t believe any of what you are telling me. You need to explain how Jesus’s mother could have gotten pregnant without Jesus having a father, and if you can’t, that will mean you are simply spouting nonsense, and if you are spouting nonsense, I will have no choice but to make you forfeit your red blossoms.” As his voice rose, he continued pushing the cart. The Theologian turned around to look at him, but as he was about to explain, they arrived at a hill. The hill was about ten meters long and as steep as the roof of a house, or about forty degrees. Whereas the Theologian and the Child would have to struggle to push the cart up other hills, this time they found that they didn’t need to exert much effort, as the cart rolled forward at the slightest touch.

Going up the hill was as easy as if they were going down.

The Theologian turned to look at the Child.

The Child looked back at the Theologian.

They stopped pushing and pulling the cart forward, and found that it proceeded up the hill on its own accord. The Child and the Theologian laughed with surprise. Holding the cart’s handle, they followed it up. When they reached the top, they gazed down at the bright white expanse of snow below them, and realized that this was the former course of the Yellow River. The hill was a vestige of the old riverbank. They pushed the cart down the other side of the hill, then watched to see if the cart would again move forward by itself, and the cart’s wheels did indeed start moving on their own. While resting at the top of the hill, the Child picked up a bottle on the side of the road, and when they got to the bottom, he put the bottle on the ground and found that it started rolling up the hill by itself. But when he tried to roll the bottle back down the hill, and no matter how hard he pushed, it simply wouldn’t move.

It was all very strange.

The Child and the Theologian looked at each other and smiled. They then unloaded the pentagonal star from the cart and placed it at the top of the hill. The cart, the bottle, and a straw hat, all of which were round, rolled up the hill on their own accord. However, when this star was placed next to the road and away from the top of the hill, the cart, the hat, and the bottle wouldn’t roll, no matter how hard they were pushed. The Child opened the quilt in which the star was wrapped, together with the silk cloth and the paper, then returned the star to the top of the hill, to the side facing the sun. The sun was extremely bright, and the sky was perfectly blue. Everything was so quiet you could hear the clouds sliding through the air. The star was placed in the red light. It was one foot, eight and a half inches in diameter, and two-point-three inches thick. The back was the greenish black color of newly smelted steel, and was branded with the Child’s name, together with the date and time when it was removed from the furnace. The star was painted red on the front, and smelled of ink. It was like fire descended from the sky, burning at the top of this peculiar hill. The Child then took the cart, the bottle, and the straw hat to the side of the hill facing the sun, and once again they started rolling up the hill toward the star on their own accord.

The Child laughed.

The Theologian also went to try. He announced, “This is indeed a strange hill.”

“No, it’s not,” the Child said. “You no longer need to explain how Jesus’s mother could have gotten pregnant without there being a father.” Then, he again wrapped the star in the paper, silk, and the quilt and followed the cart forward, his step now much lighter than before.

So it came to pass.

C
HAPTER
10

Provincial Seat

1.
Heaven’s Child
, pp. 280–300

A provincial seat is larger than a district one, but a district seat is larger than a county one. A county seat, meanwhile, is more lively than a town. The people who went into town for a meeting slept on mats on the ground, while those who went to the county seat all slept in cots—with four, five, or even six people to a room. At the district level, they slept two or three people to a room, while at the provincial level everyone had their own room, with hot water, a bathtub, as well as a running toilet. When the Child needed to use the toilet, however, he locked the door, lifted the lid, and squatted over the toilet bowl. When he was done, he flushed the toilet and then used toilet paper to wipe down the footprints he had left on the toilet seat.

As a result, no one ever realized that the Child didn’t know how to use a Western-style toilet.

Everyone who had come to deliver the steel and attend the meeting stayed in the same building. The stairs were made of wood, and the railing was painted red. The ground was made from smooth cement. The bedsheets were white, and the walls were also painted white. The quilt had a cover, and the mattress was extremely soft. The first time the Child sat on the bed, he was startled to discover that he sank down into it. Later, he would lock the door and jump up and down on the bed, with the mattress springing him high into the air. He would jump up and down before going to bed at night, and would jump completely naked upon waking in the morning. When he washed his face he wouldn’t use the white towel from the bathroom, and instead used his pillowcase. The pillowcase was printed with an image of Tiananmen Square, in red, and it felt warm and soft against his face. When he was summoned to go eat, he would eat; and when he was summoned to attend a meeting, he would attend. He was issued a red certificate with his name on it. Everyone was also issued a red silk blossom with a yellow ribbon cut into a swallowtail. Everyone pinned their name badge to the left side of their chest, with the red blossom right below it. Once they did so, they wouldn’t need to pay to ride the bus, nor would they need to purchase tickets to enter the park. When they went to the market, the salespeople would welcome them with a smile. All they had to do was glance at an item, and the salesperson would introduce its origin, function, and quality.

The sales items were divided into different categories, including one for hardware, one for general merchandise, one for fabric, and another one for farm tools. The tools section sold only farm tools, and the fabric section sold only fabric, including both handwoven cloth and colorful machine-woven fabric. The general merchandise section sold towels, hats, apparel, toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap, matches, kerosene, and countless other goods. Consequently, this building was called a department store.

The Child was particularly fond of visiting this department store.

When the Child went there, he was most interested in the tools section. He was familiar with almost all of the goods on display, but there was one thing that struck him as rather odd—a clay shotgun that looked just like a real one. The barrel of the gun was about five feet long, and after you loaded it with gunpowder and pellets, it could kill a fox or wild boar. If there were birds in the trees, you’d be able to hit several at once. The shotgun was hanging on the wall, and anyone with a hunting license could purchase it. And even if you didn’t have a license, as long as you could prove that wild animals threatened your family and livestock, they would sell you a shotgun as well.

Over the course of two days of meetings, the Child snuck out three times to go look at that shotgun. In the meetings, they read reports, read the papers, and ate two tables of food. The food in the serving plates was arranged into blossoms. Every county in the province had assigned representatives to come deliver their steel, and as a result the auditorium was filled to the brim. The long-awaited meeting began. The steel that each of the representatives had brought was arranged onstage, behind a curtain. It was covered by a red cloth. After two days of preparations, the officials would go up onstage to examine and evaluate these steel offerings. They would identify the top three offerings, and the one in first place would represent the province in the nation’s capital. The ones in second and third place wouldn’t be sent to the capital, but those districts would also be handsomely rewarded.

So it came to pass.

The Child decided that if his pentagonal star ended up winning a prize, he would request that shotgun. He sat restlessly in the auditorium, and kept wishing that they would cut short the meeting and move directly to the glorious selection of the steel-smelting prizes. There was a banner posted at the very top of the hall that read, “Provincial Model Congress on Heroic Steel Smelting.” There was also a portrait of that great, great man, that highest of higher-ups. Below the portrait, there was a large flower basket with an illuminated border. The Child sat in the audience below the stage, in the middle of the first row of seats. On either side of him were two very high-up cadres: revolutionaries. The higher-ups proudly told the Child that during the war they weren’t afraid of standing in the line of fire—back before the Child was even born.

The higher-up sitting to one side of the Child patted him on the head.

He ruffled the Child’s hair.

The Child had a lot of respect for this higher-up. He gazed at the ceiling of the auditorium, and felt that the world was good. The auditorium could hold more than a thousand people. It was full of gleaming red leather seats, and even smelled of red leather. Along the ceiling, there was an array of white lights. They were arranged in the shape of a pentagonal star, and were blindingly bright. The Child was reminded of how, in the story the Theologian had told him, the sky was filled with bright light when Jesus was born, as countless angels hovered in the air singing hymns praising God. Jesus was born. So it came to pass. The world was given a savior.

Finally the moment arrived, and a higher-up told each group of delegates to come onstage and examine those nearly one hundred pieces of newly smelted steel, assessing the purity and hardness of each.

All of the delegates stood up and began applauding madly.

The province’s highest higher-up walked to the front of the crowd and led everyone onto the stage in groups from the right-hand side. Taking a small hammer, he went to evaluate the donated steel, carefully striking each piece. Some of the pieces were in the shape of a pancake, and some were rectangular, square, or even triangular. The Child’s donation was displayed on the innermost table, where it was leaning against the wall. Because it was star-shaped and painted red, when placed with that other piece of steel that was also painted red and was branded with the word
loyalty
, they resembled a pair of peacocks or phoenixes standing tall amid a flock of chickens.