Yan Lianke - The Four Books

After first having a bite to eat shortly after noon, I hurried back to the district, holding the pea-sized and peanut-sized grains of wheat tightly in my hands. At that point the entire region was still taking a midafternoon nap, and apart from a handful of birds and locusts, I didn’t see a single living thing. Because the soil in the river’s old course was alkaline and wet, the wheat plants here had only just begun to ear, and would need at least half a month before they were able to start producing grain. In all directions as far as the eye could see, there was an endless expanse of green and knee-high wild grass. The tree stumps from the year before had begun to produce new growth that was already as tall and healthy as my wheat stalks.

When I got back to the district courtyard, I happened to come upon the Theologian tying his pants as he emerged from the toilet. I deliberately stood there and waited for him to come over. When he saw me, he exclaimed,

“My God, what has happened to you? You’re as pale as a ghost.”

I smiled. “I have grown ears of wheat that are even larger than ears of corn.”

He continued staring at me, then asked, “What’s wrong with your hands and arms? You don’t even seem human.”

“Look at the wheat I’ve grown.” I walked over and reached out to him. My hands holding the pea-sized and peanut-sized grains of wheat were moist with sweat, and when I opened my fingers several of the grains were stuck together. The Theologian stared at the grains in my hand, and he opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

“I want to go home.” I pulled back my hand and said, “I want to take my five stars and post them onto that wooden board and leave this place, just like the Technician last year.” When I mentioned wanting to leave, the Theologian walked over to the Child’s room and, without knocking, pushed the door open. The Child was in the middle of his nap, and the fan he had been using had fallen off his bed. The sweat was pouring down his face and onto the stone he was using as a pillow. When he heard the door open, the Child sat up in bed, and before he even had a chance to fully wake up I held out the enormous wheat grains in my hands and shouted, “The wheat I planted is now ripe, and every ear is larger than an ear of corn! Quick, come with me and have a look!”

The Child rubbed his eyes, then touched the wheat grains I was holding in my hands. He repeatedly looked up at me, then back down at the grains. All traces of sleep were immediately wiped from his face and, beaming, he turned to get his clothes in order to go with me to see those wheat plants with the ears that were even bigger than ears of corn. As we were emerging from his tent, the Theologian, as I had anticipated, called over his roommates, together with the Musician, the Physician, and several other women who had been woken up by the commotion. A group of more than a dozen people followed me and the Child back to the sand dune. Everyone was carrying one of the light red pea-sized or even peanut-sized grains of wheat in their hand, and they chatted as they hurried along. We arrived at that four-level terrace field just as the sun was going down.

But when we arrived, I stopped in my tracks, then shot like an arrow into the field. The ears of wheat that I had carefully wrapped in newspapers and clothing before I left were all gone, having been cut down and taken away. Only the newspapers and clothing were left behind, scattered between the wheat stalks and draped over the wooden frames. Some of the now-earless wheat stalks were still standing in the middle of the field, like small trees, while others had been trampled and were lying on the ground in disarray. Screaming, I rushed around the field and grabbed at the decapitated wheat stalks. I went to each of them, finally reaching what had been the tallest, and found that someone had left a note on the wooden frame. With trembling hands, I took the note down and read it, and saw that it contained a short message:

“I’m sorry. This year these blood ears will be donated to the higher-ups, and to the capital, and next year the entire country will be using blood to raise wheat, the same way they began using black sand to smelt steel.”

That was all the note said. The florid characters were written on a page that had been torn out of a notebook, but it was impossible to tell whose notebook it had come from. Looking first at that note and then at those decapitated wheat stalks, I collapsed helplessly in the middle of the field. I saw the Child and the others, who looked like a couple of dozen figures in a woodblock print, standing under the setting sun with astonished expressions. I began wailing inconsolably.

1. Heaven’s Child , pp. 340–50

This is how things fell apart.

The Child smashed bowls and plates, and crushed the pots in the canteen. He shouted, “I’ll award five pentagonal stars to whoever can give me these missing ears of wheat!” When no one came forward, the Child pulled out his gun and held it up to his forehead, saying, “If no one hands over the wheat, I simply don’t want to live anymore. And you will have been responsible for taking my life!”

Still no one came forward.

The Child began wailing in front of the crowd. For several days, there was no light in the sky, and the Child’s face grew dark. After the wheat ripened and was harvested, he returned to the headquarters in town for a meeting, but was not awarded any red blossoms or certificates. He also did not manage to produce the fifteen thousand jin of grain per mu that he had promised the year before. In their experimental field, they had sowed more than a thousand jin of wheat seeds, and if you calculate that each seed would produce an ear of wheat, and each ear would have thirty grains, then the field should have yielded more than thirty thousand jin of wheat. Even if each ear produced only twenty grains, the field should still have yielded twenty thousand jin . If each ear produced ten grains, that would still have yielded ten thousand jin . But when has there ever been an ear with only ten grains? Even if the grains are all dried up, twenty grains per ear would yield more than ten thousand jin of grain. He had always assumed that it would be very straightforward to produce ten thousand jin per mu . When the wheat plants sprouted, however, one crowded another, but by the time they were knee-high a thunderstorm knocked them all down, and they never again straightened up enough to grow taller than a man’s waist.

The criminals from the ninety-ninth irrigated the plants regularly, but the sprouts were growing so closely together that you couldn’t even poke a needle between them and there was no way for the water to make its way inside.

Within three days, the wheat stalks had dried up and died. Every single one of them.

Unable to receive any red blossoms or red certificates, the Child was heartbroken. He didn’t eat anything for three days, becoming as emaciated as the wheat stalks in the experimental field. He went to observe villages in other districts, and found that they had all submitted the amount of wheat per mu that they had promised — be it one thousand, two thousand, five thousand, or even eight thousand jin . Other villages had built row upon row of new granaries, where the sacks of wheat were piled to the rafters. When the higher-ups came to check on the granaries, they used a sharp bamboo pole to poke one of the sacks near the door, whereupon the wheat grains would pour out. The higher-ups, including those from the headquarters, the county, the region, and the province, took the ninety-ninth as a model and originally reported fifteen thousand jin of grain per mu , though later, to be safe, they lowered it to ten thousand. When the ninety-ninth discovered the black sand steel-smelting method and smelted the steel star, they almost succeeded in representing the province at the capital. The whole group of higher-ups also went to the ninety-ninth to conduct a thorough examination.