Yan Lianke - The Four Books

I had intentionally remained at the back of the procession, and now finally took the opportunity to walk over. Grabbing the Scholar’s bag, I said, “We’re almost there. Don’t worry.”

The Scholar smiled, then said gratefully, “Thank you!” I didn’t hear a trace of sadness or irony in his voice. He and the Musician apparently still didn’t know that it was on account of what I had written about them in my Criminal Records that they had been seized.

5. Heaven’s Child , pp. 200–205 (excerpt)

So it came to pass.

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. He divided day and night. The Child said, “The men should live over here — and the women should live over there.” The men and women were thereby separated. Below the Yellow River embankment, everyone cleared the underbrush and built some thatched huts, giving them somewhere to sleep. They also pitched the tent they had dragged over, giving the Child somewhere to live. They piled up some stones and lit a fire, and in this way had somewhere to cook their food. They used the magnets to gather the black sand, and in this way they had iron to smelt.

If it was stipulated that five people were needed to dig a small furnace, then you would call for five people, and if it was agreed that ten people were needed to build a large furnace, then you would call for ten.

Everyone walked on the ground, and the great earth supported their feet as they searched for black sand. They looked for places where water had flowed and left behind a dark line in the sand, then placed the bar and horseshoe magnets over the area and walked forward in small steps, using their clothes and their cloth bundles to carry the black sand to the furnace. After three to five days, they would remove a steel ingot from the furnace.

God said, There is a sign for the covenant I made with all of you and with every living creature on earth, which is a rainbow I placed in the clouds. Light is like the rainbow, and fire is like light. The fire in the furnace burns continuously day after day and night after night, warming this cold and desolate land and illuminating the dark and cold night. The Child made a stack of these ingots, which were black and green, round and pie-shaped. He piled them up, one on another. During the day, the steel had a light red smell, and at night the scent of the moon and the stars hovered over the river surrounding the Child’s home, like mist over a lake.

The Child was living in a marshland a fair distance from the furnaces.

There were trees in this marshland. The Child’s tent was supported by poles, and the four corners were anchored to trees or stones. Rocks and sticks were used to hold down the sides of the tent, and the inside was full of straw. In this way, the inside of the tent was warm and shielded from the wind. There was a lantern suspended from the ceiling, and when the wind blew there was a whistling sound as the lantern swung back and forth. The light looked as though it were flowing like water. The Author walked into the tent and handed over his Criminal Records , which was written neatly in blue ink on red graph paper. He placed all the pages on the wooden stand next to the Child, who said, “Please sit.” The Author sat down under the lamp, his shadow like a chunk of black steel in the moonlight. “Let’s see,” the Child said, leafing through the manuscript, eventually stopping at a certain point in the text.

“The day we first arrived,” the Author said, “I noticed the Musician and the Scholar walking together, and furthermore noticed that she was carrying his bag for him.”

“I also noticed,” he added, “that the Musician somehow managed to find some pickled vegetables and chili peppers, which she gave to the Scholar.”

“Can you believe it?” The Author looked at the Child. “On the surface, the Theologian appears to be good, but the book he was reading — no one would believe this even if they were beaten to death — wasn’t actually a copy of Capital , which he had helped translate and had even revised in accordance with the higher-ups’ instructions. The volume was this big, and this thick.” The Author gestured with his hands, as his voice rose. “The Theologian had carved a small hole inside that copy of Capital , where he hid his small copy of the Bible. Everyone thought that every night, when the Theologian didn’t have anything to do, he would pretend to read Marx’s canonical text, while in reality he was actually leafing through the Bible ensconced inside.”

A look of shock passed over the Child’s face.

“He hid the book in his pile of bedding.”

Another look of shock passed over the Child’s face.

“Also, the Physician was a thief. Whenever she saw no one near where they stored the black sand, she would go and take a fistful and dump it into her flour sack.”

Another look of shock passed over the Child’s face.

The Author said, “I already wrote about all of this in my Criminal Records .”

The Child stared for a moment, then said, “How many blossoms do you want me to award you today?”

The Author replied modestly, “That is up to you.”

The Child went to the head of his bed and removed a wooden box from his chest, from which he produced three small blossoms. The Author reached out to accept them, and the Child handed them to him, together with a notebook and a bottle of ink.

The Author accepted them and left the tent.

The Child also left the tent. So it came to pass. The Child had reached an agreement with the criminals collecting the black sand, specifying that each person must contribute ten bowls of black sand every day. They must smelt the iron once every five days, producing a steel ingot no smaller than a wicker basket and weighing at least three hundred jin . Those responsible for providing firewood must not let the furnaces go out. Now the Child emerged and stood next to the tent. The winter wind blew, and the furnaces burned bright. The sound of the river, which the embankment could not muffle, resonated loudly. Everyone stopped to rest, returning to their huts to sleep. These furnaces that were dug out of the river embankment burned brightly, illuminating the earth and half the sky. The Child stood on a lump of steel, gazing out at a distant hut. After a moment of silence, the Theologian walked over and stood in the light next to the smelted steel. He heard the Child say,

“You have some gall, don’t you?”

The Theologian looked surprised.

“You said you had handed everything over, but it appears that you hid a small book inside a larger one, and read it every day. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

The Theologian immediately knelt down, trembling uncontrollably. He seemed to want to say something, but no words came out.

“Go get your book, and turn it in.” After saying this, the Child returned to his hut.

When he reached the hut, he stretched and sat in a chair. In the blink of an eye, the Theologian returned. He stopped a step before reaching the Child, his body still trembling uncontrollably, looking as though he was prepared to kneel down again at any moment. The Child accepted the Theologian’s volume, which was as thick as a brick and had a hard cover and a red and black spine. On the cover appeared the title Capital , together with the author’s full name. The text itself was most persuasive, and virtually demanded to be read. The Child knew this volume as intimately as he did his own rice bowl, so he did not actually read it — just as he would never eat his own rice bowl. Instead, he merely leafed through it, and after several dozen pages he confirmed that someone had in fact carved out a hole in the volume. The cavity was three inches wide, three inches long, and one inch deep, and was just big enough to hold a small Bible. The Bible had no cover and instead consisted merely of paper printed with characters as tiny as fly droppings or grains of black sand. After closing the book, the Child peered disdainfully at the Theologian and the Theologian quickly kneeled back down. Outside, there were people walking around, and one of them shouted, “Number Two Furnace needs more firewood!” Then everything lapsed back into silence. Apart from the sound of the fire and of the river in the distance, everything was completely silent.