Yan Lianke - The Four Books

The Child didn’t say anything else, and instead stared intently at the Theologian’s hands.

The Theologian reacted in shock, and immediately stopped what he was doing. He looked again at the Child’s face, and after a brief hesitation he knelt down and began collecting the beans from the floor, stuffing them into his mouth as quickly as he could. The sound of him chewing was like a hammer pounding the floor.

3. Old Course , pp. 439–57

By the time the eighth resident of the ninety-ninth starved to death, all of the wild roots, grass seeds, and tree bark in a three- to five- li radius of the compound had been devoured. If people wanted to collect more roots or more seeds, they would need to go even farther away. They would head out at dawn, each carrying a porcelain cooking pot, a porcelain bowl, and flint for a fire, and return to the compound by sunset. No one told anyone else where they were going, and instead they would simply get out of bed and leave. They would wander into the wasteland, and when they found some couch grass they would dig it up and eat it. When they found some dogtails they would pick off the seeds and roll them in a sheet of paper, and once they had accumulated a handful or so, they would get a bowl of water and pound the flint on a stone, using the sparks to ignite a cotton wick. They would then blow on the wick until it caught on fire, and use the fire to cook a wild seed soup. In order to mask the soup’s strong taste of weeds and soil, some people would break off several pieces of salt from the salt mounds on the ground and add them in, blunting the taste to the point that the soup became palatable. But if people drank too much, they would come down with such a bad case of diarrhea that they wouldn’t even be able to walk, and as a result would starve to death in the middle of winter. In order to avoid the runs, they would add more salt, but if they ate too much their stomach would feel like it was on fire, to the point that they wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. The next day someone became wobbly on his feet and collapsed on his way to forage for wild roots.

The others found a ditch in which to bury him and placed a stick on his grave, carving into the wood that so-and-so died and was buried here, to make it easier if they later wanted to send his body to his family. But the following day, the stick they left at the head of his grave was gone, and everyone forgot where they had buried him.

By the middle of the twelfth month, eighteen residents of the ninety-ninth had starved to death. One day, they were all standing around the compound, discussing how much salt they should put in the root and seed soup, whereupon I noticed that the Musician had a different complexion from everyone else. Their skin appeared sallow or else had the greenish tint of someone about to die, but the Musician’s face somehow still retained a ruddy glow. Death came and went like the wind, and everyone had long since given up washing their clothes, combing their hair, and brushing their teeth, but the Musician’s hair remained neatly combed and pulled back into a single braid, which was tied with a hairband in the shape of a flower, and her light red uniform shirt was always clean and neatly pressed.

I began to develop suspicions about the Musician. She stood apart from the crowd, and I stood directly across from her. After carefully watching for a while, observing her through the emaciated bodies of the people in the crowd, I eventually began making my way toward her. As I approached, I noticed that she had a faint yet distinct smell of cold cream. I stood behind her, feeling startled and joyful. Since the beginning of the famine, the Child would give me a fistful of grain for every page I recorded describing everyone’s conversations and behavior. Later, after the grain ran out and they stopped distributing rations, the Child would still give me a handful of grain for every five pages I submitted. Later, after even he ran out of grain, the Child would instead give me half a handful of fried soybeans each time I went to hand in my new submission. By this point everyone in the ninety-ninth was bloated and listless, and periodically someone would die, but I never found myself completely without food.

I was hungry, like everyone else, but I wouldn’t starve to death — not as long as I could secretly record everyone’s conversations and actions. But given that during this period everyone would leave to go foraging for roots and seeds, it had become increasingly difficult for me to observe all of them. It had already been five days since I last gave the Child an installment of my Criminal Records , and consequently I had not received any of his fried soybeans. I therefore decided to follow the Musician around and record everything she did, so that I might figure out what she was eating in order to keep her face so ruddy. That way I, too, would get something to eat, and hopefully I could similarly end up with a face resembling that of a living person. By this point eighteen people from the ninety-ninth had already died, but the Musician was still wearing clean and neatly pressed clothes, and had a faint smell of perfume. After debating how much salt one should add to a bowl of root and seed soup, everyone headed out of the compound, as they had been doing — some walking with the aid of crutches, while others leaned against walls for support. They all left the compound like sheep leaving their pen after a shepherd has left the gate open, all heading in different directions. Some of them headed east, and others went west. Some traveled in groups of two or three, while others headed out alone.

The sun was already almost directly overhead. The wasteland, which was gradually turning white, was enveloped by a layer of yellow light. The shadows of the departing figures shrank as they receded, eventually becoming small dots that disappeared into the horizon. I waited outside the gate of the compound for the Musician to emerge. Sure enough, she came out of her room, and then left with the Physician. At the gate, they said a few words to each other that I couldn’t make out, whereupon the Physician went east while the Musician headed southeast. The Musician proceeded at a measured pace, as though she were going somewhere to retrieve something. I followed several dozen meters behind her, carrying a bag for collecting roots and grass. If she noticed me, I would pretend I was simply out foraging for food. As I followed her, my shadow stretched long to my left like an old tree trunk. After a short while, hunger made me pant as though I had just sprinted several dozen meters. On the path ahead of me, however, she continued rushing ahead. When we reached the next intersection, she suddenly turned, and seeing that there was no one around, she permitted herself to slow down. She then took a path heading south, toward the ninety-eighth.

As she proceeded down the dirt path, I followed her through the wasteland. Upon reaching a building in the ninety-eighth about seven or eight li away, she stopped, picked up a stick as tall as a person from the side of the road, and stuck it in the ground. Then she headed toward a row of steel-smelting furnaces located about one li to the west of the district.

It turned out that everything had been prearranged, and shortly after she stuck that stick in the ground on the side of the road leading into the ninety-eighth, a middle-aged man approached. He was wearing an old, faded military uniform, and he came over and pulled up the stick and placed it back at the front of the field, then he, too, headed in the direction of that row of steel-smelting furnaces. Soon the Musician emerged from the furnace and looked around, then smiled at the man and asked, “Did you bring it?” The man took a fist-sized bag from his waist and lifted it, and then they both disappeared into the empty furnace.