Yan Lianke - The Four Books

“That was a national leader. all of the nation’s affairs are his responsibility!”

Everyone stared in shock, not sure whether to believe him. But everyone originally from Beijing suddenly had a jolt of recognition, realizing that the slender man with the parted hair, wearing a uniform and Chinese-style shoes, was in fact a national leader from Beijing. He was the nation’s high commander, and was near the very top of the country’s political leadership. Everyone quickly looked down the road leading out from the district, but other than two rows of tire tracks in the mud, the road was now empty. With expressions of delight and regret, they turned back to the Child and saw that he was now holding a teeth-brushing cup full of flour. They stared at him and said resentfully, “If you realized he was a higher-up from Beijing, why didn’t you ask him to award us a certificate or a red blossom?”

The Child stood there appearing lost, his pale face covered with streaks of tears.

2. Old Course , pp. 431–38

They had all believed that if the country’s highest higher-ups came to visit the Re-Ed region, everything would be easily resolved, like unraveling a ball of thread. At the very least their famine should be addressed, and they would be able to return to the monthly grain rations that they had received before. But apart from the two one-hundred- jin sacks of flour that the highest higher-up left behind — one of wheat flour and the other of corn meal — everything else remained as it had been. Everyone remained as desperate and hopeless as before.

By this point most of the snow had melted, and it was only in some deep ravines and at the base of some dunes and embankments that one could still find some residual snow and frozen soil. Once the two hundred jin of grain was divided, everyone ended up with only a cup or so, and within a few days the grain was gone and everyone began to starve again. Even more terrifying was the fact that now they didn’t receive their daily ration of two liang of unrefined grain. The higher-up had asked why the People should worry about feeding Re-Ed criminals if they themselves didn’t even have enough grain to eat. So the criminals continued to starve, and had no alternative but to forage for food in the wasteland. At the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, one criminal finally starved to death. People saw him one night turning over in bed, but the next morning he was lying dead under his sheets. He was a researcher at the provincial Agricultural Academy, focusing on grain cultivation, and it had been he who had encouraged everyone to cultivate that ten-thousand- jin -per- mu experimental field. But in the end he was the first to starve to death. The Scholar took some people to bury him in an empty plot behind the compound. When they were gathering his belongings, they noticed that under his pillow he had hidden his small red blossoms — altogether there were seventy of them, tucked into an envelope. If he had exchanged them for pentagonal stars, he would have almost had enough for three of them.

The researcher’s roommates burned this envelope full of blossoms in front of his grave. One person remarked that it was a pity to burn the blossoms, but the Scholar glared at him and proceeded to burn them anyway, so that they might accompany the researcher into the other world. Now that the ninety-ninth had someone starve to death, the survivors began to feel increasingly alarmed, and the researcher’s former roommates promptly moved into a different room. The Scholar once again proceeded from one bed to another, leaning on the walls for support, saying, “You mustn’t go to sleep. You mustn’t allow yourselves to starve to death, and instead you must go out and find something to eat.” Therefore they trudged to the fields, digging for roots, foraging for seeds, and looking for cornstalks from the fall that had not yet decomposed. One person wasn’t able to walk, and dragged himself forward like a dog. As everyone was crawling around foraging for seeds and berries, they looked like a herd of sheep. When the sun went down, they walked and crawled back to the compound, like sheep returning to their pens at the end of the day. But that particular evening, as everyone was walking or crawling back, someone noticed that the Agricultural Academy researcher’s grave in the back of the compound had been dug up, and there were gaping holes in the corpse’s thigh and abdomen, like holes had been dug in black soil.

People were secretly eating human flesh.

After the sunset brought a winter chill to the wasteland that had been only slightly warmed during the day, the red light of the setting sun was covered by clouds, and the wind blew in from the north. It is unclear who first noticed that the grave had been dug up, but by the time the Scholar and the Theologian arrived, everyone had crowded around the grave as though they were observing something remarkable and terrifying. Their faces were pale with astonishment, and they appeared unable to believe that someone among them would dare eat human flesh. The Musician and the Physician saw the unearthed grave and the cut-up corpse, and they immediately began retching. The Scholar stumbled up behind them leaning on a crutch, and when he saw the grave he threw his crutch to the ground, as his face became mottled with fury. “Fuck your grandmother — you dare to eat human flesh, and still call yourselves scholars?” As he was cursing, he turned and cast his gaze over those behind him, as though trying to determine which of them had dug up the researcher’s body. As everyone was quaking in fear under his glare, the Scholar turned away and began striding toward the compound, so quickly that it seemed as though he had never experienced hunger. But before he had taken more than a few steps, he had to pause and lean against a wall to catch his breath, wiping the sweat from his brow.

The Theologian led the rest of the crowd, and together they followed behind the Scholar. The people who had been crawling around on the ground stopped crawling. It was as though they all knew something important was going to happen, and as a result they suddenly recovered their strength as they followed the Scholar and the Theologian.

After catching his breath, the Scholar stumbled forward, walking into the compound. He rested again, then cut across to the last row of buildings. As the Scholar had expected, when he reached the last row and pushed open the door of the middle one, everyone stood in surprise. There were two comrades who had not gone out with everyone else to forage for food that day, and instead had stayed inside the dormitory. One of them was the director of the Provincial Culture Office, while the other was the deputy director general of the National Education Department. They were originally higher-ups in charge of overseeing others, but now they were both criminals in Re-Ed. After having satiated their hunger by eating human flesh, they had proceeded to tie nooses around their necks and hung themselves from one of the ceiling beams. Still neatly groomed, they were hanging from the rafters, staring at the Scholar and the others in the doorway. Under the window next to them, there was a rusted basin on a stone, which was still half filled with water to boil meat, and the kindling under the basin had not been extinguished. The Scholar walked in and kicked the basin, and noticed that there was a white paper package on the table next to the window. He opened it, and inside there were several dozen small red blossoms the two men had earned, together with two pentagonal stars. Furthermore, they had written a letter on the white paper, which read:

We are sorry, we are the ones who ate the researcher from the agricultural bureau. Having eaten our fill, we had energy to go out for a walk. A person’s death is like a light being extinguished, after which it is no longer necessary to worry about trying to re-educate and reform them. If any of you wish to live a few more days, you are welcome to eat our flesh. Our only request is that after you do so, that you please bury our bones somewhere, and that you later notify our families so that they can come claim our remains.