The Four Books (33 page)

It had already been a week since anyone had seen the Child, and they all assumed that he had gone into town for a meeting, to be wined and dined. No one had expected that he had actually been in his room this entire time. After spending half an hour in his room, the higher-ups reemerged and slowly proceeded toward the people sunning themselves in the doorways of their buildings. The Child followed them like a lamb following a flock of sheep. When they arrived in a sunlit area in front of the first row of buildings, the slender, uniform-wearing higher-up looked excited. He gazed at the crowd, all of whom had swollen faces and legs, and immediately turned pale. He didn’t say a word, and just turned to look at the people accompanying him, who lowered their heads and muttered something, whereupon the slender higher-up’s eyes turned red.

He told the Child to have everyone come stand in the sun in front of the first row of buildings. The Child then ran around, shouting, “Everyone assemble! . . . The higher-ups have come to see you!” Everyone slowly emerged from their rooms, leaning on walls or on each other for support, and then proceeded to the open area in front of the first row of houses. The bright yellow sunlight flowed over the ground like an iridescent liquid. More than a hundred gleaming, swollen faces were reflected in the sunlight like an array of water bottles. Although it was winter, given that there was no wind, the courtyard overflowed with the midday warmth. In the wasteland beyond the courtyard the snow had not fully melted, and under the sunlight it was blindingly bright. Everyone was faint with hunger and didn’t dare look into the distance, and instead they just stared down at the moist sandy ground at their feet.

Among the group of higher-ups, they saw that the highest higher-up was wearing cloth shoes with pointed toes, with black tops and hand-sewn soles that were as white as snow, but with red stains on the soles that resembled blood from crushed fleas. He was wearing gray woolen pants that were as straight as a ruler. Everyone stood silently in front of him. He gazed at the crowd, and they gazed back at him. The Scholar, the Musician, and I all stood in front. We knew that he was one of the highest higher-ups, but we didn’t know whether he was from the district or from the province. Everything was very still, and we could hear the hunger-induced pounding in our eyes. We could also hear the sound of the sunlight splattering over the sandy ground, together with that of the people and the higher-ups gazing at each other. It was in the midst of these unusually quiet sounds that everyone stood waiting for the highest higher-up to say something. But suddenly he broke into tears and knelt down in front of everyone, repeating the same phrase that the Scholar had previously uttered: “The country needs you, and if you starve to death, the nation will starve as well. No matter what, you must find a way to survive!” Once he was finished, he kowtowed three times to the crowd and added, “The country has let you down!” He stood up and wiped away his tears, cast one final glance at the swollen faces sparkling in the sunlight like water bottles, then turned around and walked away.

The people who accompanied him also turned around and walked away.

They went back to the entranceway, where they unloaded two sacks of flour from the jeep. The slender man patted the Child on the shoulder, let the Child take the flour back to his own room, and said a few more words to him. Then they all got back into the car to go to another Re-Ed district. By this point the snow had already melted, and the jeep drove through countless puddles of muddy water.

Everyone’s faces were red with excitement as they gazed eagerly after the two sacks of flour in the Child’s room. They gathered around, forming a crowd in front of the Child. As they were waiting for the Child to distribute the flour, the Scholar appeared to remember something. He jostled his way into the crowd and exclaimed, “Do you know who those people were? . . . I just realized who they were—they were people who came from Beijing to see us!”

Everyone turned around to look at the Scholar, and waited to see what else he would say.

“That was a national leader . . . all of the nation’s affairs are his responsibility!”

Everyone stared in shock, not sure whether to believe him. But everyone originally from Beijing suddenly had a jolt of recognition, realizing that the slender man with the parted hair, wearing a uniform and Chinese-style shoes, was in fact a national leader from Beijing. He was the nation’s high commander, and was near the very top of the country’s political leadership. Everyone quickly looked down the road leading out from the district, but other than two rows of tire tracks in the mud, the road was now empty. With expressions of delight and regret, they turned back to the Child and saw that he was now holding a teeth-brushing cup full of flour. They stared at him and said resentfully, “If you realized he was a higher-up from Beijing, why didn’t you ask him to award us a certificate or a red blossom?”

The Child stood there appearing lost, his pale face covered with streaks of tears.

2.
Old Course
, pp. 431–38

They had all believed that if the country’s highest higher-ups came to visit the Re-Ed region, everything would be easily resolved, like unraveling a ball of thread. At the very least their famine should be addressed, and they would be able to return to the monthly grain rations that they had received before. But apart from the two one-hundred-
jin
sacks of flour that the highest higher-up left behind—one of wheat flour and the other of corn meal—everything else remained as it had been. Everyone remained as desperate and hopeless as before.

By this point most of the snow had melted, and it was only in some deep ravines and at the base of some dunes and embankments that one could still find some residual snow and frozen soil. Once the two hundred
jin
of grain was divided, everyone ended up with only a cup or so, and within a few days the grain was gone and everyone began to starve again. Even more terrifying was the fact that now they didn’t receive their daily ration of two
liang
of unrefined grain. The higher-up had asked why the People should worry about feeding Re-Ed criminals if they themselves didn’t even have enough grain to eat. So the criminals continued to starve, and had no alternative but to forage for food in the wasteland. At the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, one criminal finally starved to death. People saw him one night turning over in bed, but the next morning he was lying dead under his sheets. He was a researcher at the provincial Agricultural Academy, focusing on grain cultivation, and it had been he who had encouraged everyone to cultivate that ten-thousand-
jin
-per-
mu
experimental field. But in the end he was the first to starve to death. The Scholar took some people to bury him in an empty plot behind the compound. When they were gathering his belongings, they noticed that under his pillow he had hidden his small red blossoms—altogether there were seventy of them, tucked into an envelope. If he had exchanged them for pentagonal stars, he would have almost had enough for three of them.

The researcher’s roommates burned this envelope full of blossoms in front of his grave. One person remarked that it was a pity to burn the blossoms, but the Scholar glared at him and proceeded to burn them anyway, so that they might accompany the researcher into the other world. Now that the ninety-ninth had someone starve to death, the survivors began to feel increasingly alarmed, and the researcher’s former roommates promptly moved into a different room. The Scholar once again proceeded from one bed to another, leaning on the walls for support, saying, “You mustn’t go to sleep. You mustn’t allow yourselves to starve to death, and instead you must go out and find something to eat.” Therefore they trudged to the fields, digging for roots, foraging for seeds, and looking for cornstalks from the fall that had not yet decomposed. One person wasn’t able to walk, and dragged himself forward like a dog. As everyone was crawling around foraging for seeds and berries, they looked like a herd of sheep. When the sun went down, they walked and crawled back to the compound, like sheep returning to their pens at the end of the day. But that particular evening, as everyone was walking or crawling back, someone noticed that the Agricultural Academy researcher’s grave in the back of the compound had been dug up, and there were gaping holes in the corpse’s thigh and abdomen, like holes had been dug in black soil.

People were secretly eating human flesh.

After the sunset brought a winter chill to the wasteland that had been only slightly warmed during the day, the red light of the setting sun was covered by clouds, and the wind blew in from the north. It is unclear who first noticed that the grave had been dug up, but by the time the Scholar and the Theologian arrived, everyone had crowded around the grave as though they were observing something remarkable and terrifying. Their faces were pale with astonishment, and they appeared unable to believe that someone among them would dare eat human flesh. The Musician and the Physician saw the unearthed grave and the cut-up corpse, and they immediately began retching. The Scholar stumbled up behind them leaning on a crutch, and when he saw the grave he threw his crutch to the ground, as his face became mottled with fury. “Fuck your grandmother—you dare to eat human flesh, and still call yourselves scholars?” As he was cursing, he turned and cast his gaze over those behind him, as though trying to determine which of them had dug up the researcher’s body. As everyone was quaking in fear under his glare, the Scholar turned away and began striding toward the compound, so quickly that it seemed as though he had never experienced hunger. But before he had taken more than a few steps, he had to pause and lean against a wall to catch his breath, wiping the sweat from his brow.

The Theologian led the rest of the crowd, and together they followed behind the Scholar. The people who had been crawling around on the ground stopped crawling. It was as though they all knew something important was going to happen, and as a result they suddenly recovered their strength as they followed the Scholar and the Theologian.

After catching his breath, the Scholar stumbled forward, walking into the compound. He rested again, then cut across to the last row of buildings. As the Scholar had expected, when he reached the last row and pushed open the door of the middle one, everyone stood in surprise. There were two comrades who had not gone out with everyone else to forage for food that day, and instead had stayed inside the dormitory. One of them was the director of the Provincial Culture Office, while the other was the deputy director general of the National Education Department. They were originally higher-ups in charge of overseeing others, but now they were both criminals in Re-Ed. After having satiated their hunger by eating human flesh, they had proceeded to tie nooses around their necks and hung themselves from one of the ceiling beams. Still neatly groomed, they were hanging from the rafters, staring at the Scholar and the others in the doorway. Under the window next to them, there was a rusted basin on a stone, which was still half filled with water to boil meat, and the kindling under the basin had not been extinguished. The Scholar walked in and kicked the basin, and noticed that there was a white paper package on the table next to the window. He opened it, and inside there were several dozen small red blossoms the two men had earned, together with two pentagonal stars. Furthermore, they had written a letter on the white paper, which read:

We are sorry, we are the ones who ate the researcher from the agricultural bureau. Having eaten our fill, we had energy to go out for a walk. A person’s death is like a light being extinguished, after which it is no longer necessary to worry about trying to re-educate and reform them. If any of you wish to live a few more days, you are welcome to eat our flesh. Our only request is that after you do so, that you please bury our bones somewhere, and that you later notify our families so that they can come claim our remains.

Thank you, comrades. We are leaving these red blossoms and pentagonal stars for you.

Upon his seeing this letter left behind by these two higher-ups who had once managed others, the greenish tinge quickly faded from the Scholar’s face. He stood there quietly, and the Theologian asked him what the letter said. The Scholar handed the letter to the Theologian, who read it and then passed it to the others. In this way, the letter passed from hand to hand to the people waiting outside the room, until eventually someone exclaimed, “Let them down!” They proceeded to lower the bodies of these two people who, before dying, had consumed the flesh of one of their comrades.

As we were about to go bury the bodies, I turned to the Scholar and said, “We should ask the Child to come and take a look. Otherwise, he will think that the reason they disappeared is because they ran away.” After a brief hesitation, the Scholar placed these two corpses back into their own beds, and then went to the Child’s room to tell him what happened. By this point the sun had already gone down, and the last rays of sunlight were staining the ground like blood. As the Scholar stepped over these bloodlike stains, he resembled a hungry moth gliding across the stained surface. He heard his stomach rumbling with hunger, as though the water gurgling in his belly was about to wash away his innards. Not only was he hungry, but the hunger was making his intestines throb in agony. He put his hand on his belly and pressed down firmly, and in this way was able to force all of his body’s remaining energy down into his legs and feet.

A sparrow landed in the Child’s doorway looking for food, and when the Scholar saw it he felt an urge to devour it himself. After swallowing his saliva, he picked up a rock and hurled it at the sparrow. It turned out that he didn’t even have the strength to throw a walnut-sized stone, as it landed far short of its target. The sparrow looked at the Scholar, then made a mocking sound and flew away. The Scholar slowly walked to where the sparrow had been digging. He noticed that, mixed in with the dirt and sand, there were two rice-sized clumps of bird poop, and without hesitating he immediately popped them into his mouth. It’s unclear whether he chewed them or not, but after making a peculiar expression, he stretched his neck and swallowed them.