The Real Story of Ah-Q (31 page)

‘I… I’m not sure what it means,’ he prevaricated.

‘Nonsense! You’re lying. The youth of – ’

‘What’s wrong with you tonight?’ his wife suddenly interrupted. ‘Picking on him while he’s eating his dinner. They’re just boys.’

‘What?’ About to launch into a further diatribe, Siming noticed her sunken cheeks had a menacing bulge to them, her face had undergone a disturbing change of colour and her slanted eyes were blazing. ‘I’m not picking on him,’ he quickly changed tack. ‘I’m just offering constructive criticism.’

‘He’s not a mind-reader.’ She seemed to be getting angrier. ‘If he was, he’d have skipped dinner to go and fetch that girl of yours back home. One more bar of soap, and she’ll scrub up nicely.’

‘What are you talking about? I never said that, it was – ’

‘But you were thinking it! Give her a good scrubbing, and there’s your tasty morsel – happy families all round.’

‘What’s all this got to do with anything? Just because I remembered you needed some more soap – ’

‘What’s this got to do with anything? You bought it to give
her
a good scrubbing. Not me:
I’m
not good enough. I don’t want to bask in your saintly beggar’s glory.’

‘What on earth are you talking about? Women…’ Siming stammered, his face running with sweat – just like Xuecheng’s after a boxing practice – probably because his rice was too hot.

‘What d’you mean, “women”? You men are the problem. When you’re not bad-mouthing girl students, you’re eyeing up girl beggars. “Scrub up lovely”! You’re all disgusting.’

‘I already told you, it wasn’t me who – ’

‘Siming, old chap!’ a voice boomed out of the darkness.

‘Daotong? Be with you in a moment, old chap!’ Siming joyfully exclaimed, as if clutching at an amnesty. ‘Xuecheng, light another lamp and show Mr Ho into the study!’

The wick lit, Xuecheng led Daotong to the western end of the house, Bu Weiyuan following on behind.

‘I must apologize for not coming to the door!’ Siming emerged, still chewing his food, both hands clasped together in salutation. ‘Could I interest you in sampling our humble dinner?’

‘We dined prior to our arrival.’ Weiyuan stepped forward, also clasping his hands in greeting. ‘We’ve come to settle on a subject for the Eighteenth Essay and Poetry Contest of the Society for Improving the Fabric of Society. Tomorrow’s the seventeenth – remember?’

‘Heavens! It’s the sixteenth already?’ Siming exclaimed.

‘You nincompoop!’ Daotong shouted.

‘If we want to get it into tomorrow’s paper, we’d better send it off tonight.’

‘I’ve already thought of an essay topic. What do you think?’ Daotong fished a slip of paper out of a bundle inside his kerchief and passed it to Siming.

Walking over to a candlestick, Siming opened the paper and read out:

‘ “We respectfully propose that the united people of our nation petition, with one voice, our esteemed president to issue a special proclamation to the effect that the Confucian classics should be revered above all other works, and that sacrifices should be made to the virtuous mother of Mencius, in order to reverse the process of national degeneration and preserve the national essence.” First class, quite first class. A little on the long side, though?’

‘Don’t worry!’ Daotong brayed. ‘I’ve totted it up – doesn’t take us over the word limit. But what about the poem?’

Siming suddenly felt himself overcome by feelings of reverence so intense they took almost physical form. ‘How about: “The Filial Granddaughter”. I got the idea from someone I saw in town today. A real role model – ’

‘No, no, no,’ Weiyuan interrupted him, waving his hands about. ‘I know who you mean, I saw her, too. She wasn’t from round here, I don’t think – I couldn’t understand a word she said, and I don’t think she could understand me, either. I couldn’t work out where she was from. Everyone was going on about how virtuous she was, but when I asked her if she could write poetry, she just shook her head. We need a subject who writes poetry themselves.’

‘Surely we could make allowances for someone of such superior – ’

‘Out of the question!’ Weiyuan now bore alarmingly down on Siming, presenting his flattened palm in a gesture of refusal. ‘If she wrote poetry – now that might be interesting.’

‘Or how about,’ Siming put some distance back between them, ‘we add an explanatory note, to extol her virtues as a reproach to society. You won’t believe it, but I watched for ages, and no one gave her a cent. The world we’re living in – it breaks your heart – ’

‘Easy there, old chap!’ Weiyuan invaded his personal space again. ‘I didn’t give her any money, either, but only because I happened not to have any on me at the time.’

‘Don’t take it personally, old chap.’ Siming nudged him back into retreat. ‘Of course I wasn’t pointing the finger at you. Let me finish: they had a great crowd gathered around them, laughing at them in the most disgraceful way. The worst of the bunch were these two lowlifes who were – just wait for it – saying, “Reckon she’d scrub up lovely with a couple of bars of soap.” Can you imagine?’

‘Two bars of soap!’ Daotong erupted into deafening guffaws. ‘What’re you waiting for, then? Ha-ha-ha-ha!’

‘Not so loud, old chap,’ Siming stammered out, his ears buzzing with alarm.

‘Scrub up lovely, ha-ha-ha!’

Siming tried looking severe. ‘Be serious – this is no laughing matter. Now, let’s have the newspaper print these two topics in tomorrow’s edition. I’m afraid I’ll have to trouble you two esteemed gentlemen to deliver the text.’

‘Of course,’ Weiyuan readily agreed.

‘Scrub up lovely… ha-ha-ha…’

‘Daotong!’ Siming roared.

This last remonstration finally killed the joke for Daotong. Once they’d decided on the wording for the explanatory note, Weiyuan made a fair copy, then rushed off with Daotong to the newspaper’s offices. Candlestick in hand, Siming saw them out, then returned apprehensively to the sitting room. After a brief hesitation outside the door, however, he strode in. There, he was greeted immediately by the sight of the small, rectangular, palm-green packet of soap – its gold insignia surrounded by a fine network of patterns – lying in the centre of the dining table.

Xiu’er and Zhao’er were playing underneath the table, while Xuecheng sat along its right side, consulting his dictionary. Finally, in the corner of the room furthest from the lamp, he discovered the shadowy figure of his wife on the high-backed chair, her face inscrutable in the dim light, eyes fixed on the middle distance.

‘ “Scrub up lovely”! You’re all disgusting…’

Siming thought he heard Xiu’er mutter something behind his back, but when he spun round, her lips betrayed no movement, while Zhao’er was scratching at her own cheeks.
^*

Sensing he was on enemy territory, Siming blew out the candle and went into the courtyard. As he paced up and down, the hen and chicks kept on waking up to protest about the noise, forcing him to tiptoe further away. Eventually, the hall lamp shifted towards the bedroom. He gazed at the moonlight, carpeting the ground like a bolt of white silk. A full moon nestled, like a jade dish, between the clouds.

He felt overwhelmed by sorrow – forsaken, alone, like the virtuous beggar-girl. Sleep eluded him until far into the night.

But next morning, the soap was officially deployed. He woke rather later than usual to find his wife bent over the washstand rubbing at her neck, lather massed luxuriantly up behind her ears, like the bubbles in a crab’s mouth – nothing like the scanty layer of foam generated by her old acacia pods. For little less than half a year, his wife’s skin took on a scent that might or might not have been olive, after which (according to everyone who smelt it) the fragrance changed to sandalwood.

22 March 1924

One overcast afternoon in spring, the atmosphere in the only teahouse in the village of Goodlight clotted with tension, a faint, but persistent imperative lingering in the ears of the assembled company:

‘Put it out!’

The anxiety was not, of course, universal. Most of the villagers weren’t great ones for stepping out – and on the rare occasions they did, they would first consult the
Imperial Guide to the Seasons
,
¹
to check whether the date they had in mind was deemed cosmically unsuited to exeat. And even if no such warning was issued, they would be sure to turn their steps first in the direction in which the God of Happiness was to be found, to ensure no mischance would come of the excursion. The smattering of village youth wild and spontaneous enough to resort to the teahouse in defiance of calendrical prohibition were, quite understandably, regarded as spendthrifts and prodigals by their more conservative neighbours.

And it was among precisely this community of profligates that the tension was now mounting.

‘Same old story?’ one of them – Triangle-Face, to his friends – asked, picking up his bowl of tea.

‘So I hear,’ another – Square-Head – replied. ‘ “Put it out! Put it out!” – all he ever says. Eyes flashing like… flashes. Hell and damnation! It’d be the ruin of the village. It’s no laughing matter. We have to get rid of him somehow!’

‘Easy. His ancestors helped pay for that temple, and now he wants to blow out the Lamp of Eternity at the altar. So all we have to do is head into town and turn him in for disgracing his forebears!’ Kuoting heatedly joined the debate, thumping the table with his clenched fist. A lid precariously positioned over one of the bowls of tea clattered on to the table.

‘Can’t do that. Only a parent or a maternal uncle can play the unfilial card with the authorities,’ Square-Head objected.

‘And he’s only got the one uncle, on his father’s side…’ This took the wind quite out of Kuoting’s sails.

‘Any luck at mahjong yesterday?’ Square-Head suddenly shouted at Kuoting, who glared silently at him.

‘If he puts the lamp out,’ Zhuang Qiguang and his fat face now entered the fray, ‘what’ll happen to the village? I’ve heard the old folks say Emperor Wu of the Liang
²
lit it, and that it’s burned ever since – it’s never once gone out. Not even when the Taipings came… Bright green, it is,’ he clicked his tongue wonderingly. ‘Anyone who comes by the village always wants to take a look at it.’ Another click of the tongue. ‘It’s the best thing we have… Why’s he making all this fuss?’

‘Because he’s mad, of course!’ Square-Head witheringly replied.

‘We can’t all be as clever as you!’ Sweat began to seep out of Zhuang Qiguang’s face.

‘I reckon we should trick him again, just like the last time,’ interjected Mrs Hui, proprietor and waitress of the teahouse in question. She’d been keeping a close ear on the debate, and hurriedly steered them back on to the straight and narrow of the serious business in hand.

‘What happened then?’ a surprised Zhuang Qiguang asked.

‘He went crazy before, right, just like he has now. That was back when his father was still alive. We played a trick on him, and the problem went away.’

‘What trick? How come I didn’t know about it?’ Zhuang Qiguang sounded even more surprised.

‘Why would you? You lot were knee-high to a grasshopper back then – you didn’t know anything except how to shit and drink milk. I was younger, too. My hands used to be so white, so soft…’

‘You still are, to me,’ said Square-Head.

‘Shut your face!’ Mrs Hui was smiling beneath her glare. ‘This is serious. He was still a boy, back then; and his old man was a bit gone himself. People say that one day his grandfather took him to the village temple and told him to kneel before the Earth God, the Plague General and the Guardian of the Gate, but for some reason he got scared and refused to kneel, then ran out. And he’s never been the same since. Back then, he was just like he is now, telling everyone he met he had to put out the Lamp of Eternity. It’d bring an end to locusts and plagues, he was always saying – like it was this great public service. I reckon a demon’d got into him, and was scared of meeting the proper gods. Why else would he run away from the Earth God? That tea of yours gone cold? Here, have a bit of hot water. So: some time after that, he charged in and tried to blow it out himself. His old man loved him too much to have him locked up. The whole village went to have it out with the father – no joy. Luckily, my late unlamented had a brainwave: cover up the lamp with a thick cotton quilt, so everything looks dark, then take him into the temple and tell him it’s been put out.’

‘Stroke of genius.’ Triangle-Face sighed in admiration at the ingenuity of it.

‘Waste of time,’ Kuoting fumed. ‘Beat him to death, I say, and your problem’s solved. Hmph!’

‘You out of your mind?’ she gesticulated vigorously. ‘Don’t you remember his grandfather had an official rank?’

Glancing around at each other, Kuoting and the others tacitly agreed that the only course open to them was the one already tried by the Late Unlamented.

‘Everything was fine afterwards.’ She wiped a few specks of spittle from the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand as her delivery gathered speed. ‘For years and years, he never set foot back inside the temple, or brought the whole business up again. But he went crazy again a few days after seeing the temple carnival – just like before. He passed by here around midday, set on going to the temple. You go and tell his uncle, your best bet is to play the same trick on him. The moment that lamp’s put out, the whole village’ll be swallowed up by the sea and we’ll all turn into mudfish. Go and tell his uncle, quick as you can, or else – ’

‘Let’s check round the temple first,’ Square-Head declared, sweeping magisterially out.

Kuoting and Zhuang Qiguang followed smartly after; Triangle-Face bringing up the rear. ‘Put it on my slate, all right?’ he turned to say, as he reached the door. ‘Those tight…’

Nodding, Mrs Hui walked over to the east wall where – beneath a drawing of a triangle – she charcoaled up another couple of short lines below a long queue of identical marks.

As they surveyed the temple, they noted several other presences: the problem himself, a couple of idle onlookers and three children.

The door to the temple was locked fast.

‘Excellent!’ enthused Kuoting. ‘The door’s still shut.’

As soon as the fearless tea-drinkers approached, the children seemed to take courage and drew in closer. Their adversary turned from the door of the temple to face them.

He looked much the same as ever: square, sallow face above the usual tattered blue gown. Only his eyes – large and elongated beneath heavy eyebrows – indicated that some kind of a situation was brewing: there was a curious glitter to his melancholic, distrustfully unblinking stare. Two stalks of rice straw had attached themselves to his short hair – probably helped up by the children behind his back; whenever they looked at his head, they shrank back, giggling and sticking their tongues out.

Everyone stood about, exchanging glances.

‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ Triangle-Face at last spoke up, taking a step in towards him.

‘I’ve asked Mr Hei to open the door,’ he said in soft, subdued tones. ‘That lamp has to be put out. All the gods have got to go, too – Blue-Face, with his three heads and six shoulders, Three-Eyes, Tall-Hat, Half-Head, Ox-Head and Boar-Tusk – every last one of them. Once they’re gone, there’ll be no more locusts, or swine-fever, or – ’

‘Rubbish!’ Kuoting snorted. ‘Put that lamp out, and we’ll get even more locusts. And you’ll end up with swine-fever yourself!’

Now Zhuang Qiguang began to giggle as well.

A bare-chested child pointed a reed at the would-be vandal, opened wide his little cherry of a mouth, and blew down hard – ‘Pow!’ – on his imaginary blowpipe.

‘Go home! Or your uncle’ll break every bone in your body!’ Kuoting bellowed. ‘Look – I’ll put the lamp out for you. Come back in a few days to see for yourself.’

Their antagonist now turned his flashing eyes directly on Kuoting, who quickly looked away.

‘You?’ A mocking smile quickly faded into resolution. ‘No thanks! I don’t need help from you lot. I’ll do it myself, right here and now!’

Kuoting sagged anticlimactically with defeat. Now it was Square-Head’s turn.

‘I’ve never thought of you as a particularly stupid person, but it looks like I’ll have to spell things out for you,’ he drawled. ‘Even if you blow out the lamp, we’ll still have locusts, and swine-fever. Stop being such an idiot! Go home and sleep it off!’

‘I know that, I know.’ His lips curled into a malicious smile, which faded just as quickly. ‘But this is the best I can do for now,’ he forcefully resumed. ‘This is the first, the easiest step. That lamp’s got to be put out, and I’m the only one who can do it!’ He turned back round and pushed hard at the temple door.

‘Now, wait a minute!’ Kuoting was beginning to get angry. ‘You live here, just like the rest of us. D’you want us all to become mudfish? Go home! The door’s not going to open! You won’t get at the lamp! Just go home!’

‘Not a chance! I’m going to put it out!’

‘You won’t get that door open!’

A pause.

‘You won’t get that door open!’ Kuoting re-emphasized an earlier point.

‘I’ll think of something else, then,’ the madman went on, rather more calmly, glancing back at the group of them.

‘Care to enlighten us?’

No response.

‘Ha! Big talk!’

‘I’ll burn the place down.’

‘What?’ Kuoting feared his ears were playing tricks on him.

‘I’ll burn it down!’

A paralysing silence descended. Soon enough, though, our principal actors were conferring in whispers, the upshot of which was a group withdrawal from the immediate precinct of the temple.

‘Mr Hei!’ Zhuang Qiguang shouted, a few moments later, from beyond the wall round the back of the temple. ‘We’ve still got a situation out here! Keep everything locked up! D’you hear me? Keep it locked! We’ll be back as soon as we’ve thought of something!’

By which point our arsonist’s deranged eyes were busily scanning the ground, the air about him, bystanders – presumably for a firebrand.

By the time Square-Head and Kuoting had shuttled in and out of the various great houses of the village, the inhabitants of Goodlight were united in turmoil, those four terrifying words – ‘I’ll burn it down!’ – ringing in their ears. Though there were, of course, a good number of exceptions – those who remained isolated from the goings-on of the wider world. But in general, more people were infected by the tension than not, and understandably uneasy that they were about to become mudfish and the world to come to an end. There was, assuredly, a glimmering realization that only Goodlight would be affected by this global apocalypse, and yet – as Goodlight represented the summation of the entire civilized world – it amounted to much the same thing.

Soon enough, news of the affair reached the hall in which the madman’s uncle received his visitors, and in which the virtuously venerable Mr Guo – his face as gnarled as a wind-dried orange – occupied the seat of honour, tugging on the white beard sprouting from his lower jaw, as if plotting to pluck it out.

‘Out to the west,’ he intermittently pronounced, releasing his beard, ‘on the antemeridian – on which the aged Fu had his stroke – his son – said – the Earth God was – disturbed. If – by some evil – chance – catastrophe – should befall – the village – redress – will be sought – from your esteemed self… Yes, from you. And that – means trouble.’

‘Indeed,’ the master of the house mused, also tugging distractedly at the greying catfish moustache on his upper lip. ‘Retribution for the sins of the father. All his life, my brother refused to worship the Buddha. I tried to argue with him, but he took no notice. Now what’s to be done?’

‘You – have – one chance – I think. Yes – one chance. Tomorrow – tie him up – take him into the city – and force him to spend the night – yes – the whole night – at the Temple of the Town God – to exorcize – the demon.’

Thanks to the great public service they were performing in spreading panic, Kuoting and Square-Head had not just (for the first time in their lives) effected entry to the hall in question – an environment of which they would not normally be considered worthy – but even found themselves sat between the venerable Guo and the master of the house,
and
being served tea. Entering behind Mr Guo, they had made their report, then concentrated on drinking their tea. Once that was done, they fell silent, until Kuoting suddenly produced an opinion.

‘There’s no time! A couple of us are having to keep an eye on him as we speak. The question is, what do we do
now
? If he really does burn it down – ’

(Mr Guo’s chin began trembling with fear.)

‘If he really does burn it down – ’ Square-Head reinforced the proposition.

‘Then,’ Kuoting finished off, ‘we’ll be in the soup!’

A girl with brownish hair returned to replenish their tea bowls. Kuoting fell silent again and applied himself to his tea. Convulsing, he set the bowl back down on the table, licked his upper lip then removed the lid to blow on it.