Yan Lianke - The Four Books

By this point the sun was already in the west, and people would soon begin returning from foraging for roots and seeds. I stood in the middle of the compound, absorbing the silence around me. I instinctively headed toward the women’s dormitory, but as I rounded the corner I saw the Musician coming out of the Scholar’s building. After quickly ducking from sight to wait for the Musician to pass, I then headed over to the Scholar’s. Given that virtually no outsiders ever came to the compound, and furthermore that none of the criminals had anything worth stealing to begin with, no one other than the Child bothered to lock their door.

I went into the Scholar’s dormitory and proceeded to his bedside. I saw that his comforter was the only one in the room that had been neatly folded into a square and placed at the head of his bed. However, it looked like this had been done recently, and the puffy areas had not yet flattened out. I suspected that it was the Musician who had folded it when she came in. My gaze came to rest on the neatly folded blue comforter. I reached in and, as I expected, found a cloth bag that was as wide as someone’s arm. I opened it and found a couple of handfuls of fried soybeans inside. I grabbed some and quickly gulped them down, while placing the remainder into my pocket. Then I unfolded the Scholar’s comforter, leaving the bed unmade like everyone else’s.

I left the Scholar’s room and proceeded directly to mine.

The next day, I again followed the Musician to the ninety-eighth, which was about eight or nine li away. I again saw her plant the stick at the front of the field, whereupon the uniform-wearing man again emerged from the compound. After the two of them had done their thing, I followed the Musician home. This time I found half a steamed bun inside the Scholar’s neatly folded comforter. It had been half a year since I had eaten any flour and rice, to the point that I had already forgotten what it tasted like. I grabbed the bun and didn’t even take a moment to look at it before immediately stuffing it into my mouth. It was so hard I initially started to choke, but then my saliva began to soften it and the flavor of fried sesame flooded into my mouth, making my gums, my tongue, and even my entire body tremble in ecstasy. I didn’t stop to savor the taste, and instead quickly began shoveling the rest of the bun into my mouth. After I had eaten half of it, I paused, and decided that the flavor of the pieces of bun caught in my teeth was actually not sesame, but rather a combination of wheat starch and peanut oil. Savoring that taste now, I stared blankly at the Scholar’s bed. I finished the bun and felt a keen sense of regret, as though I had lost something very valuable. I then proceeded to mess up the Scholar’s sheets, leaving them looking as though he had just rolled out of bed in the morning. Then I left the room.

Standing in the middle of the empty courtyard, I reminisced about the taste of that bun. I suddenly remembered my eighteen ears of wheat that were even bigger than ears of corn. It occurred to me that whoever had those ears of wheat would be able to survive this famine simply by enjoying that distinctive wheat scent.

On the fifth day, when everyone went out to forage for food, I left with them. As everyone else headed northwest, I alone headed southeast. After reaching a small depression, I squatted down and waited for the Musician to emerge from the compound, take the stick from the side of the road, and plant it at the front of the field. But even after the sun was high in the sky, she had still not emerged from the women’s dormitory. Concerned that she might have passed without my noticing, I — under the guise of looking for wild seeds — proceeded to the furnace where she and the man in the military uniform would have their secret rendezvous. Inside, the comforter had been moved into a sunlit area, but the comforter was still neatly folded and covered in grass and sticks, as though no one had touched it.

Evidently, the Musician and the middle-aged man had not been here.

I returned to the compound, walking straight to the second door of the women’s dormitory, and when I entered I found the Musician washing her clothes, and specifically the pink underwear I had seen her wearing. Standing in the doorway, I asked her, “Do you by any chance have a needle?” The Musician quickly shook her hands dry and went to fetch her sewing kit from her drawer. “What have you torn? Would you like me to mend it for you?” As she handed me the kit, which was recycled from an old medicine package, I clearly saw her face’s ruddy glow. Even though it was not the color of a ripe peach, it was at the very least the color of a normal woman’s face.

“You didn’t go out foraging for wild seeds?”

“I don’t feel very well today.”

“Would you like me to go collect some for you?”

Shaking her head gratefully, she explained that the past few days she had found a lot of seeds, and still had enough for another meal. Things were left at that, and she didn’t ask me why I myself had returned so soon, and I naturally couldn’t ask her why she hadn’t gone to the empty furnace for her regular rendezvous. But on the sixth and seventh days she still didn’t go meet the man. Instead she once again started going out with everyone else to forage for roots and seeds. When everyone was drinking their wild seed soup, however, I noticed that she would take only a few sips, and then would suddenly duck into a ravine, where she vomited it all back up. I suspected that this was not because she was pregnant, but rather because she had gotten used to eating the grain that the man brought her every day, to the point that she could no longer tolerate this grass soup that everyone else had to drink. Hidden from the others who had come to this reed-filled area to boil their soup, I watched from a distance as the Musician threw up, then curled up on the ground in a fetal position. I very much wanted to go over and pat her on the back, but in the end I stayed where I was.

After vomiting, the Musician lay on the ground for a while, staring at where there once had been countless furnaces along the riverside. She reflected for a moment, then dumped out the soup she had boiled in the tea cup and headed back toward the district. Given that many people were already so famished that they were more dead than alive, most people didn’t pay much attention to each other. Everyone saw the Musician pour out her soup and leave, but no one was interested in what she planned to do afterward. No one, that is, but me. I wanted to know why she had stopped meeting that man, so that I could make a record of her whereabouts and her secrets. After handing over this record, I would be awarded some grain and food. I quickly gulped down my soup, which felt like a saw going down my throat, and came up with an excuse to follow her.

When I reached the compound, I saw something I found even more startling, and felt as though I were witnessing a most inappropriate plot in a play. This is how the play proceeded. On that day the Child had returned from the headquarters, whereupon the lock that had been hanging on his door suddenly disappeared, and the original chain was again there as before. I think this must have been near the end of the twelfth lunar month, which is to say January or February, but I do remember that the sun was unusually bright. This had been a dry winter with little snow, and every day the sun would rise right on schedule and hover high in the sky. All of the trees had been chopped down for the steel-smelting furnaces, and during the ensuing famine all of the wild roots had gotten dug up. As a result, the sandy earth lay bare under the sky, and the slightest breeze would kick up enormous clouds of dust, creating a vast yellow canopy that blanketed the sun. But on days when there was no wind, the air would be so clear that you could see a tiny leaf floating in the sky like a feather.