Yan Lianke - The Four Books

I went to knock on the Child’s door. The Child was in his room reading his comics — comics describing the battles and stories of the revolutionary guerrillas. The gun that, during the day, had been placed in the middle of the tray was still there, on his table, as if neither the gun nor the tray had been touched since he returned to his tent. But the bullet had been removed from the gun’s chamber, and was now rolling around next to the gun like a silkworm pupa. The undistributed stars were also still sitting on the tray. Some of the stars were lying on top of the gun, while others were wedged beneath it, and the resulting scene reminded me of an oil painting an artist had laboriously painted and donated to the nation at the dawn of the People’s Republic. The room was still as it had been, with a bed, table, stools, and the washbasin that the Child had assembled himself. The door leading into an interior room was still shut, but there were several wooden nails in the door, on which the Child hung his clothing and his bags. It seemed as if the room was more crowded than before, but it was hard to determine what had been added. I stood hesitantly in the doorway, and the Child glanced at me and said, “What do you want? It’s already been two months since you last turned in an installment of the manuscript you’re supposed to be writing. The higher-ups at the headquarters are urging you to get on with it.” As he was speaking, the Child returned his gaze to his comics.

I laughed and said, “They don’t want me to write anymore. Instead, they call me a traitor. Every time I write a few pages, no matter where I put them, others always find them and either burn them or piss on them.”

The Child looked up again from his comic and gazed at me with a suspicious expression, and asked, “Really?” I replied, “I can produce a field of wheat with ears even larger than ears of corn. But you have to trust me, and let me go live somewhere far away, where I can farm, cook, and eat by myself. Otherwise, if I raise that kind of wheat, it will be pulled up and burned by jealous criminals.”

The Child’s eyes grew large. Under the light, his eyes appeared as lucid as water, like a pair of moons.

“Yesterday, when we went out to work in the fields, someone not only pissed all over my bed, they also shat on my pillow.” I told him, “Rest assured, if I were just permitted to get away from here, I could grow you thirty to fifty ears of wheat, each of which would be even bigger than an ear of corn. You could then take these ears of wheat to the capital and bestow them as a tribute — meaning that you could take the train, tour the capital, and stay at Zhongnanhai, and even have your photograph taken with the nation’s highest higher-ups. At any rate, given that you haven’t awarded me five large stars, even if I had ten legs I still wouldn’t be able to leave this Re-Ed district. Because even if I were to leave, without those five stars others would catch me and either return me here or send me to prison.”

I told the Child, “If, once the wheat has ripened, it turns out that I haven’t managed to produce several dozen ears of wheat as large as ears of corn, then you are free to make me wear a dunce cap and a wooden placard for three, six, or even nine days, as the Scholar did when he was smelting steel, and make me kneel somewhere so that everyone in the ninety-ninth can come and shit on my head and piss all over my face.”

The air in the room was somewhat thin from happiness, as the Child seemed to tremble from excitement. He threw the comic book he was reading onto the table and abruptly stood up. Staring at me with a delighted expression, he asked, “Can you really produce ears of wheat that are as large as ears of corn?” He added urgently, “In that case, I’ll allow you to leave this compound. You can go anywhere you want within a radius of twenty li . If you are able to produce ears of wheat as large as ears of corn, I’ll give you a sheet of slick paper and a pair of scissors, and let you cut out as many stars as you wish. With those stars, you’ll be able to go anywhere in the world. But if you are not able to do so”—the Child gazed down at the pistol on the tray in front of him, then looked at me coldly—“ then you must not only shoot me in the chest so that I’ll fall forward when I die, you must also bury me in some elevated location here in the ninety-ninth, such that I’m lying in my grave with my head facing east.” Upon saying this, the Child bit his lips and looked at me, waiting for my response and consent.

I considered for a while, then nodded solemnly and spit out a single word in response: “Okay!”

2. Old Course , pp. 386–411

I left the compound, leaving behind the others. I went to a sand dune to the northwest of the ninety-ninth and erected a shack. That sand dune was two stories high and covered an entire mu of land. Perhaps it was the tomb of an emperor from a dynasty long ago, because growing on the dune there had once been more than a dozen cypresses with trunks more than two feet in diameter. If it wasn’t an imperial tomb, why would there have been more than a dozen cypresses growing on top? During the recent steel-smelting campaign, however, these trees were all cut down and burned, leaving behind this barren dune.

On the side of the dune facing the sun, the ground was covered with the sticks and leaves that, over the years, had fallen from the trees over the tomb, gradually transforming what had originally been white sandy ground into rich black soil. I spent three days walking around the perimeter of the ninety-ninth’s wheat field, until finally deciding to settle down here above the imperial tomb. To the southeast, there were several wheat fields extending for several li , and to the southwest there were more wheat fields and some salt pits. To the northeast and the northwest, apart from some salt pits there was just an expanse of wasteland. It being spring, salt-resistant wormwood and towerhead grass had begun to sprout, and consequently the salty and alkaline smell began to be replaced by the fresh scent of wild grass. Seen from the top of the hill, the wheat fields to the southeast appeared as bright and lustrous as silk. The wasteland to the northwest rose and fell unevenly, and the white patches that had not yet become completely covered with green growth resembled unwashed bedding that had been spread out on the ground. On the southeastern slope of the sand dune I cultivated a new plot of former wasteland, a square plot that I smoothed out and made it into a four-level terrace field — consisting of eight plots of land, each of which was as flat as a mirror. Then I dug up the soil made from decayed sticks and leaves on the hill, and transferred it all to those eight plots, arranging it to form a perfectly straight barrier along the side and front of each plot so that it could be used for irrigation or drainage when it rained. I also collected a number of stones from the wasteland and used them to construct a border around the four-level terrace fields, in order to prevent the terrace fields from collapsing.

The season for sowing wheat had already passed, and I naturally couldn’t simply throw the wheat seed onto the field. Instead I proceeded southeast until I reached a wheat field several li away, where I picked several wheat sprouts with thick, black leaves, pulled them up, and transplanted them to my four-level terrace. To prevent the sprouts from getting damaged in the move, I kept their roots embedded in a clump of dirt. Each time I transplanted a sprout, I poured several bowls of water onto the new field, to irrigate it. On the southeastern side of the hill, there appeared row after row of green plants in the black soil. On the first day after the transplant, the wheat sprouts began to emerge, and by the second or third day, the sprouts and the black soil mixed together. As the sprouts absorbed water and nutrients from the soil they began to come to life, and the leaves that were lying limply on the ground began arching into the air like leeks. They began using their leaves to greet the sun and the breeze, with a self-satisfied air, chattering and swaying in the wind.