Yan Lianke - The Four Books

After another half a month, everything began to calm down again, and noticing anything out of the ordinary was like finding a needle in a haystack.

After yet another half a month, a higher-up came to the ninety-ninth. He arrived in a mule cart, his face pale and mottled. When he arrived he examined those steel-smelting furnaces, then walked over to the district’s dormitories. After collecting several books, he once again went off in search of iron. He magically seemed to know where each person had hidden their iron rice bowls, teeth-brushing cups, and stainless steel spoons. He then called the Child over, and they proceeded to have a long discussion. The Child’s face was pale and sweaty, and he repeatedly wrung his hands. Eventually, the higher-up climbed back onto his cart, which was now transporting a newly forged steel ingot half as large as a millstone, and rode away.

A week later, the higher-up returned to the ninety-ninth. He left his mule cart in the entrance to the district courtyard and went directly to the furnace to collect the newly forged steel. The raw iron they had initially brought to the furnace had been as large as a millstone, mysterious and lustrous as a chunk of granite. In the furnace, however, it became as small as a sieve, and its surface was covered with tiny depressions. After smelting the iron for another week, what they removed from the furnace was a couple of chunks of steel the size of winter melons. No longer bright green, this newly smelted steel was instead brownish yellow, and was honeycombed like high-quality tofu.

The winter sun was still warm, and a cool breeze blew over from the Yellow River. The six furnaces had only managed to smelt those two chunks of steel. While looking at the Child, the higher-up kicked the rice-ball-sized chunk of steel that had rolled out of the furnace.

The Child appeared deathly pale.

After his initial silence, the higher-up became kind and affable. He called the Child over and told him many, many things, then patted the Child’s head, squeezed his shoulder, and led him to the mule cart. Inside there was half a cartful of books that the higher-up had confiscated from other districts.

Standing in front of all those books, the Child broke into a broad grin.

The Child ran up to the furnace, counted the number of people working there, and proceeded to look in the women’s dormitory, but couldn’t find the Musician anywhere. Then he led the higher-up over to the tree-cutting team stationed near the river. Before they had walked very far, they reached a group of men chopping down trees, and asked them a few questions, then spoke to another group of men farther down the river. Finally, they went to an empty ditch between these two groups of people. Initially they walked openly, but soon they were sneaking along like a pair of cats, and in the end they were literally crawling forward. After a moment, the higher-up rushed into the ditch, and reemerged with the Scholar and the Musician.

They had been caught.

They were led away.

The Child’s face was as pale as the moon.

When they all reached the district courtyard, the higher-up patted the Child’s head and squeezed his shoulders. Then, his hand still resting on the Child’s head, the higher-up smiled and said, “The books in the cart are all for you.”

The Child looked at the Scholar and the Musician, and asked, “What about them?”

“The adulterers will be taken away.”

The Child turned white as a sheet, as the Musician and the Scholar were both led away in the cart.

4. Old Course , pp. 100–108, pp. 133–39

That day, it was the Technician’s turn to watch the furnace. Every night he tried to catch the adulterers, but he always returned empty-handed. He didn’t feel at all tired, however, and instead remained very excited. Even though his eyes were so bloodshot that they looked like a fishnet or spiderweb, they also resembled a field of red, yellow, and blue blossoms on a fertile plot of land in early spring. His eyes were as colorful as two mirrored gardens in which there were different groups of multihued people walking back and forth. In these groups of people, the Technician was continually observing the Musician and the Scholar. He had already figured out their rules and whereabouts, and had discovered their secret tactics for arranging their rendezvous. At mealtime every day, Re-Ed criminals would gather in the canteen, where the Technician noticed that the Musician and the Scholar no longer ate together as they had before, passing tasty morsels of food back and forth to each other’s bowls, but rather they increasingly drew apart, as if aware that they were being watched.

At mealtimes and when everyone else was out working, the Musician would always want to stay with me, telling me about her experience learning to play the piano when she was young. She said when she began using a Western piano to play traditional folk music she became the youngest music teacher and professional pianist in the entire province. Every time she would sit at the piano and play pieces like “Flower Bridge,” “Jasmine Blossom,” and “Blue Sky of Liberation,” the audience’s eyes would be riveted on her. She would gaze down from her position up onstage, looking out at that mass of eyes like a flock of crows about to fly at her. When she was performing the Chinese national anthem, “March of the Volunteers,” her fingers would dance back and forth over the piano keys like summer raindrops on the mountains, and the piano produced incredibly realistic sounds of gunfire, soldiers shouting, and battle sounds, all the killing, victory, and celebration. The audience’s thunderous applause seemed to go on forever, making her feel as though she were in a beautiful fantasy.

The Musician became a member of the first generation of locally trained musicians following the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Seven nights in a row, her romanticism led her to dream that someone was telling her: All you need to do is, during your next performance, substitute one of the melodies in your piece with another, and in this way you’ll find your beloved. The dream also revealed to her the full name of her future beloved — and it was the Scholar. It turned out that her next performance was in celebration of the provincial governor’s sixtieth birthday. The guests in attendance were all soldiers and revolutionaries, and it was in the presence of these esteemed guests that she performed three tunes: one was called “On the Front Lines,” another “Roar On, Beloved River,” while the third was the Chinese national anthem, “March of the Volunteers.” While playing this third piece, she remembered her dream, and she suddenly switched from “March of the Volunteers” to the Hungarian composer Liszt’s “Dreams of Love.” No one in the audience had ever heard the latter piece before, and they felt as though water were flowing delicately past their ears. When she finished, the applause rained down like thunder, as every soldier and revolutionary gazed brightly at her.

The next day someone notified the Musician that within three days she would need to leave the provincial seat and relocate to the Re-Ed district next to the river. In a sense, therefore, it was in search of her beloved Scholar that she relocated to Re-Ed. Like two fruits on separate trees, they were unable to be together until after they had been eaten by worms and fallen to the ground.

The Technician had already discerned that the Musician’s habit of socializing with me was merely a subterfuge, and he was so familiar with their meeting patterns he felt he could easily catch them whenever he wanted and take them to the Child, thereby earning twenty small red blossoms. After the Technician finally resolved to take action, however, he went more than half a month without seeing the Scholar place his chopsticks over his bowl after eating, and he never saw the Scholar and the Musician strip naked and lie down together in a passionate embrace. The Technician was desperate to catch them in an adulterous union, even if it was only once, so he could then go to the Child and make a report and collect at least twenty red blossoms. The Technician had never really been in love, and he thirsted for this scene the way a parched man thirsts for a sip of water. But it was precisely at this point that the Musician and the Scholar were unexpectedly caught by the Child and the higher-up, and the credit for making the report went to the Child, and not to the Technician.