Yan Lianke - The Four Books

The sun rose, turning the eastern sky as red as the fires along the riverbank the preceding winter. The old course of the Yellow River consisted of a salt desert that extended as far as the eye could see, but under the sunlight, green grass and wildflowers emitted a bright glow. I gazed up at the rising sun, then ran across the wild grass, hoping to be able to reach the point where the sun in the eastern sky touches the golden water of the plains. Shouting “Ah, ah!” I ran through the wilderness like a breeze. I ran down to the well where I go every morning to get water, and it was only then that I realized that I was still naked.

Embarrassed, I looked down at my lower body, then out at the empty fields, where there wasn’t a soul to be seen. There were several orioles flying in the sky, their shadows resembling black stones. Next to the wall, moist air surged up, as though it had suddenly been covered by a wet towel. I wanted to write. In fact, I had to write. I had already chosen the title and the opening of my true book. That is to say, it was precisely because I had spent the previous night lying awake trying to formulate the title and opening of my book that the flowers finally started to bloom and the ground came to be covered in green.

The title I came up with was Old Course .

I stood naked next to the well and washed my face, then I began to walk back to the shack. Even though it was the middle of spring, the early morning air still had a late winter chill. Because I had been running around outside completely naked and had stood next to the well for a long time, my entire body was covered in goose bumps. Although it was a bit cold, I still walked deliberately, in order to prolong my excitement at seeing all the flowers blooming. But as I was about to reach the shack, I suddenly sped up, and after going inside I put on some pants and a shirt. I realized that I had to quickly write the beginning of Old Course , before my memory of that scene began to fade. I pulled the writing desk I had cobbled together from wooden boards toward the door, then brought over a stool from behind the door. From the head of the bed I took the old newspapers that the higher-ups had told me to read and study. After laying the newspapers out on the table, I sat down, closed my mouth, and made an effort to quiet my racing heart. Once I had begun to calm myself, I knew that that pivotal moment had arrived.

With a trembling hand, I wrote the following opening passage:

“Re-Ed has China’s most distinctive scenery and history. It is like a scar on an old tree, which then becomes an eye through which one can see the world.”

In this way, I wrote the opening of Old Course . I reread these words and sighed, then stretched and continued dressing myself. I put on my socks and shoes, then went outside and stood on the top of the sand dune.

At that moment I felt like a powerful giant, as though I had just won a critical early battle. As the sun came up in the east, the redness flowing over the wasteland disappeared. A blindingly bright yellow light covered the sandy plateau. By this point, the sun had already risen one rod-height in the sky. Throughout the entire wasteland, which overnight had become covered in green grass and blooming flowers, an indistinct sound began to emanate forth, like the sound of falling rain. A flock of sparrows flew overhead and alighted on the hill, all singing in unison. It was only when I gazed toward the sparrows that I realized they had landed right in the middle of my wheat fields. I hurried over, but as I approached they all flew away, disappearing into the endless sky. I stood at the front of the field looking at my wheat sprouts, and saw that they had already adapted to the soil, each of them bright green with a core of blackness. They were each growing five inches apart, thereby allowing each of them to fully enjoy the rich soil and bright sunlight. In an ordinary wheat field, the sprouts are crowded together, with only enough space left between the rows for hoeing. But here, each sprout was like a small tree, with ample space between it and the others.

Standing in front of that plot of land, I noticed that two of the sprouts on the second tier had begun to wilt. I walked over and saw that they were not only beginning to turn yellow, but the leaves closest to the ground had started to dry up. Thinking that the stem might be infested by some sort of parasite, I lay down and began digging out the surrounding soil. A buried thorn poked my hand, and blood began to gush as though from a fountain. I quickly squeezed my finger to stop the bleeding, then used my left hand to continue digging. It turned out that there were no insects in the soil, though I did notice that at the point where the stem of the wheat sprout entered the ground the soil was all gone, and instead there was only grayish yellow sand. Given that this sand was unable to retain any moisture, it was necessary for me to water these two sprouts individually. I brought over half a bucket of water from the cooking hut behind my shack, and used my rice bowl to water the plants. As I was doing so, I accidentally uncovered the wound on my index finger, allowing it to reopen and the blood to flow into the bowl. Two to three drops of blood fell into every bowl of water, and I gave two to three bowls of water to each sprout with yellow leaves. As the blood dripped into the water it initially appeared crimson, but then it quickly dissipated, leaving the water with a light tint of red and a faint scent of blood. I then poured this bloody water into the irrigation ditches around the sprouts, and as soon as it soaked in I covered it with fresh soil, patting it down with my hand so that the wind would not blow directly onto the roots of the sprouts, while also allowing the sprouts to absorb the water and air through cavities in the soil.

The next day I went to check on those two wheat sprouts, and found that the withered leaves were revived. In fact, the dark green leaves of those two sprouts were even thicker and brighter than those of the plants growing in richer soil. The leaves appeared somewhat crazed. The leaves of all the other sprouts had a tint of blackness and hung down onto the ground, but these two plants had leaves that were growing straight upward. I realized that my blood had given them energy. In this way, I proceeded to tend to my wheat — hoeing it when it needed hoeing, and watering it when it needed watering. In mid-spring, when it was time to fertilize the soil, I didn’t apply fertilizer and instead assigned each of the wheat sprouts a number, then used a knife to carve a hundred and twenty little signs, numbered each of them from one to a hundred and twenty, and positioned each of the signs in front of the wheat sprout with the corresponding number. I carefully noted which sprouts were beginning to wilt and in the morning, when my blood was thickest, I pricked my finger and allowed the blood to drip into the bowl of water — giving a few drops to the sprouts that were only slightly thin, and a dozen or more for those that were very thin — then poured the water around the base of the plant. In this way, I was able to help the sprouts recover overnight, returning them from yellow to dark green, and from thin to succulent.

When I went back to the ninety-ninth to claim my grain allotment, the Child asked if I remembered what I had promised when I planted my wheat; he explained that the higher-ups were pressuring him. From that point on, I kept a daily record in my Old Course manuscript of how much the wheat sprouts had grown and how they had changed. I planned to wait until the Child couldn’t hold out anymore, whereupon I would bring out these daily records, while keeping my manuscript hidden under my pillow.

This is how things progressed, day after day. Every three or four days I pricked my finger with a needle or a small knife, draining the blood in a bowl and then using it to fertilize the wheat. One day I would prick the tip of the finger, and the next I would prick the ball of the finger. In this way, it would take me twenty or thirty days to complete a full circuit of each hand, by which time the first fingertip would already be healed and I could prick it again. By the end of the fourth month, it was warm enough that during the day I could wear only a single layer of clothing. My wheat sprouts were beginning to branch, and one night as I was lying on the floor of my shack, I heard what sounded like a rasping noise coming from underground. Initially I thought that the sound was merely the nocturnal murmurings that often come from the earth, particularly in the middle of the night when the stars come out and the moon is hanging low in the sky and they sound like flowing water as they move through the sky and wild plants produce a mysterious language as they emerge from the earth. I couldn’t distinguish between the sound made during the harvest season and this new one coming from underground. I rolled over in bed and began to plan out what I was going to write in my manuscript the next day. Only after I had thought through how I was going to record the day’s events could I relax and fall asleep.