Yan Lianke - The Four Books

“I’m begging you, I really want this.” As he was speaking, the Child was facing the Musician’s naked body, but it sounded as though it left no impression on him. He sounded a bit hoarse, like a boy whose voice is just beginning to crack, and it also had a pleading tone. “I’ve been to many places and seen many things, but now this is all I want.” The Child added, “Sit on the pile of blossoms on my bed and shoot me in the chest. This is what I want. I’ve always dreamed of being able to have someone shoot me in the chest while sitting in a pile of blossoms, so that I may fall forward into the blossoms as I die.”

“If you shoot me, both of those sacks of flour and fried soybeans will be yours,” the Child said. “I’ve heard that the Scholar also has a manuscript, and I suspect that he, like the Author, is also writing a book. If you shoot me, I won’t look into the book the Scholar is writing.” As the Child was saying this, he glanced at the red blossoms surrounding the Musician. “In addition, I’ll also give you five large stars. With these stars and this grain, you won’t ever have to go hungry, but rather you’ll be free to return home and decide whom you wish to marry.”

Upon saying this, the Child suddenly became very calm. He stared intently at the Musician’s face, and even pushed the pistol toward her, waiting for her to make a move. But at that moment, the Musician recovered from her earlier embarrassment. She gazed at the Child and bit her lips, then asked him point-blank, “Do you really not want me? Is it possible that you’re not a real man?” As she asked this, she stared intently at his face, though it is unclear what she saw in it. When the Child didn’t respond, she picked up her shirt from where she had tossed it and put it back on, then sat on the edge of the bed and put on her pants. After she had gotten dressed and hopped down from the blossom-covered bed, she stood in front of the Child and said scornfully, “Get up. It had never occurred to me that you might not be a real man. In the future, I won’t come to you for more grain even if I am starving.”

Having said this, she didn’t stop to check to see whether the Child was still kneeling there, and neither did she help him up. Instead, she walked out the door while still buttoning her shirt.

As the door was slamming shut, I once again hid behind the Child’s outer wall.

4. Old Course , pp. 457–63

Several days later, there was a winter storm. The temperature dropped to thirty degrees below, and everything froze solid. When people retrieved water from the well in the courtyard, it would freeze inside the bucket if they didn’t immediately transfer the water to a pot and begin heating it. One person was sleeping soundly under his covers, and the next day he was found dead in his bed — and it was unclear whether he had starved or frozen to death. No one had enough strength to walk, much less dig a hole in the frozen ground, and therefore they stopped burying their dead in the field behind the compound and instead would merely leave the corpses piled up on a cot. At first they gave each corpse its own cot, but after a while they began assigning two corpses per cot, and eventually three to five corpses on a single cot, with two adjacent rooms serving as a makeshift mortuary. Whenever someone died, their corpse would freeze solid, and others would lift it like a board and place it on the cot, which would then rattle as the corpses clinked together like ice cubes.

Because it was so cold, everyone stopped going out to look for wild grass and seeds, afraid that they would be blown over by the bone-chilling wind. Coming in from the Yellow River, the wind made a wu wu wu sound during the day, like a man sobbing. At night it made a sharp whistling sound, like a woman wailing in front of a tombstone. The Child barricaded himself inside and nailed his windows shut. It had already been three days since he last showed his face. The Scholar came to find me and said, “We can’t let ourselves freeze to death inside our rooms.” I replied, “Let’s burn any extra cots we have.” Around noon on a day that happened to be slightly warmer than usual, the Scholar stood in front of the row of buildings and shouted,

“When everyone goes to sleep at night, every man should hug another man, and every woman should hug another woman. We will then burn the leftover cots for heat.”

The Scholar then asked me, “Do you think that the sand and dirt in everyone’s rooms can be eaten?” I looked at him skeptically, and he laughed, then went back outside shouting again in the direction of that row of buildings:

“Those of you who have leather shoes should eat them, and if you have a leather belt you should eat that, too. But under no circumstances are you to eat any human flesh!”

The wind was strong enough to uproot entire trees, but there were no trees left. It was strong enough to blow away the grass, though all of the grass within an extended radius of the district had already been eaten by famished criminals. Therefore, all the wind could do was blow the sand and dust into vast clouds, like an enormous pile of bedding in the sky. The sun and the moon disappeared from view, and everyone’s mouths were filled with sand to the point that they had to rinse them out with water.

Everyone moved back and forth, and since they would have to sleep in pairs, hugging each other’s feet and legs, everyone started hanging out with whomever they got along the best. Accordingly, the Scholar, the Theologian, a legal scholar, and I began sleeping in the same room. We brought over the bedding of those people who had already passed away and used it for our own beds. We then brought over those extra bunks and took them apart, broke up the base of the bed, and at night would burn that wood in the middle of the floor, allowing it to burn all night. The Jurist donated a pair of leather shoes and the Scholar took off the leather belt he had been wearing, and they proceeded to cut them into thin strips, which they then boiled in water. Whenever someone became so hungry that they couldn’t stand it anymore, they would pull out a strip and chew it, even attempting to swallow it. Having temporarily suppressed their hunger, they would then lie motionless under their covers, trying to conserve energy and preserve their body heat. In this way, everyone endured the sandstorms and bitter cold. One night, the fire burned out in the middle of the night, but no one wanted to go break apart another cot. They were afraid that this would leave them so tired that they might simply collapse and not be able to get back up again. So instead, they pulled their covers tightly over their heads and listened as the wind howled outside, blowing sand against the windows and the door. Unable to sleep, I listened as the Theologian tossed and turned in the bed across from me. He called out to us, asking,

“Hey, are you asleep?”

The Scholar replied, “No, we aren’t.”

“I feel God wants to claim someone,” the Theologian said. “This is just like the flood shortly after people appeared on earth.” It seemed as though he wanted to add something else, to support his contention that God wanted to claim someone, but the Scholar coughed and the Theologian fell silent. The room became quiet, except for the sound of the wind. I knew that the Scholar’s cough was referring to me, and indicated his distrust of me. I therefore let go of his legs, depriving him of the benefit of the warmth from my chest. I turned over and pretended I had already fallen asleep. But I had forgotten that the Scholar was also hugging my own legs, allowing the warmth from his chest to circulate to my own body. I couldn’t very well turn back around and grasp his legs again, because that would reveal that I had been merely pretending to be asleep. A burst of frigid air entered the bed and chilled my legs, and just as I was considering whether to pull the sheets back down, the Scholar suddenly turned toward me and in the process pulled down the sheet, such that he was once again hugging my legs and feet tightly to his chest.