Yan Lianke - The Four Books

What ensued was like something out of an opera. The surrounding wasteland was completely silent, and after several days of strong winds there wasn’t even a bird left in the sky. The fields and roads were covered in a thick layer of dust. The road leading to the ninety-eighth was flat and empty, but with a series of fresh two-inch-deep footprints. I suddenly felt revitalized. I knew that the bamboo pole in the entranceway had been left there by the higher-up from the ninety-eighth, and that it was his sign to the Musician that he wished to see her. I trailed the Musician at a safe distance, as though she were a fire in the middle of the wilderness. She didn’t seem to care whether she was being followed, and instead hurried forward without looking back. Even when she had to stop and rest, she still didn’t look back.

Everything unfolded more or less as I had expected. The Musician followed that dimly marked path, pausing three or four times to catch her breath. When she reached the ninety-eighth, she headed toward the spot where in the past she had stuck that bamboo pole. Unable to find the stick that she had used so many times before, she began searching around the sandy soil for a new one. In order to have the man from the ninety-eighth see her as soon as possible, she found three short sticks, then took a handkerchief out of her pocket, tore it into strips with her teeth, and tied the sticks together end-to-end and planted the now meter-high stick into the ground on the edge of the plot as though it were a flagpole. The Musician nudged the stick a few times to make sure it wouldn’t fall down, then headed off toward the furnace.

As the Musician walked away, she used her fingers to smooth her hair while straightening her clothes. On her way to the furnace this time, she proceeded slowly, and kept glancing back at the stick she had planted by the side of the road. She seemed worried that it might fall over, or that the man might not appear. However, it turned out that her concerns were unwarranted. Not long after she entered the furnace, the man approached, as though he had been hiding nearby just waiting for the stick to appear. I, meanwhile, was tucked in a nearby ravine, and I had to crawl over the sand and dirt. I saw that when the man approached from the ninety-eighth, he was still wearing the same military uniform as before and was carrying a bag. The smell of fried soybeans emanated from this bag, making my nostrils flare with anticipation. Each time the man took a step forward, the bag would rub against his leg. Even though the bag kept getting in his way, he still walked briskly, not at all like someone who was famished. When he reached the stick, he tossed it aside. When he turned and headed toward the furnace where the Musician was waiting, I immediately stood up in the ravine where I was hiding and quickly walked over, until I was standing right in front of him. My appearance seemed to make him extremely anxious. He stared for a moment with a look of astonishment. I was standing two steps from him, and saw that he was at least half a head taller and his shoulders were as wide as a door, but his ruddy face was marred by more than a dozen prominent pockmarks. Furthermore, he was missing several front teeth, and in their place he had gold crowns that sparkled in the sunlight. I had never expected he would be so ugly, and upon seeing him I was suddenly filled with loathing for the Musician. The fact that she was willing to have sex with someone so repulsive made me feel as though my chest were full of filthy flies. I stared at that gold-toothed, uniform-wearing man, and saw that he had large patches on his jacket and his pants. I gazed at him disdainfully and said, “I’m already aware of your activities in the furnace. If you don’t want me to tell anyone, then you have to give me at least half of the soybeans you have in that bag.”

Gold-tooth gazed back at me and asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m from the ninety-ninth, like the Musician.”

“So, you’re a fucking criminal.” Gold-tooth suddenly laughed, then held up the bag he was carrying. Appearing very relaxed now, he asked, “Do you want some? Come here and let me kick you. If I don’t succeed in kicking the life out of you, this half bag of soybeans is yours, and if I do succeed, then at the very least you will have been relieved from your hunger.” As he was saying this, he waved the bag in front of me, and the scent of soybean oil wafted over. “Do you smell this? A handful of these would be enough to save your life. Come here and let me kick you, and if you survive then this is yours.” Even though he was clearly telling me to step closer to him, he nevertheless headed in my direction. He had a look of deadly fury, as though he were a wall that was about to collapse onto me, leaving me no choice but to retreat.

“What I meant to say was, how could I really tell anyone about your meetings?” As I said this, I backed away, and just as I was about to turn around and start running, he suddenly laughed and came to a stop.

“Are you scared?”

I didn’t respond, and instead stopped as well.

“Do you know who I am?” He glanced at me disdainfully. “I swear to you, I am a higher-up from the ninety-eighth, and when I was in the army I could kill a man as easily as an ant. If you want to live, then you should get out of my sight and quickly return to your compound.”

At this point, his voice grew loud, and he regarded me with the attitude of a higher-up looking down at a criminal in a struggle session. After he finished speaking, a hint of a smile appeared in the corners of his mouth, and he dramatically spit at my feet. I turned and tried to flee the instant his spittle hit the ground. Like someone with their head down who suddenly runs into a brick wall, I had no choice but to go back to the district. After I had proceeded forward a few paces, I felt that he had already headed to the furnace to find the Musician, whereupon I allowed myself to slow down and let out a long sigh. But at that point, I heard his voice from behind me, saying, “Wait. wait a moment.”

I fearfully turned around.

“Do you want to go with me into the furnace, to watch how I fuck that woman from your district?” He stood on a patch of bare earth, shouting to me. “You’re all highfalutin scholars, and this pretty young woman tells me she is a pianist. I fuck her like I’m playing the piano, and it feels so good. I fuck her until her cunt is soaking wet.”

Not daring to speak or even continue standing there, I ran back to the ninety-ninth, like a dog that has just been savagely beaten.

When I got back to the compound, I noticed that in the entranceway there were not only the footprints that the Musician and I had left in the dirt when we came out; there were also a large number of other footprints from people leaving the compound and heading into the fields. I knew that these had been left by people going to forage for grass and roots. The Child’s door, however, remained tightly closed. There were two rows of footsteps from the Child’s door and window, but I wasn’t sure if these had been left by someone searching for food, or by someone wanting to speak to him. It had already been more than ten days since I last gave him an installment of my Criminal Records , since recently I had been so famished I literally didn’t have the strength to pick up a pen. Even before that, the Child had become increasingly stingy, and sometimes when I gave him more than a dozen pages of densely written prose, he would give me only a dozen or so fried soybeans in return. Given all the effort I expended in writing those pages, consisting of several hundred characters, I began to lose interest in the project.

After approaching the Child’s door, which seemed as though it had been closed forever, I quietly headed back to my own room. The courtyard was as silent as an abandoned grave that had just been swept clean by the wind. Surrounded by disappointment, I felt as though I could squeeze putrid fluid from a corpse. After standing for a moment in the building doorway, I proceeded into my room, whereupon I suddenly discovered that the Scholar had not in fact gone out to forage for wild roots and seeds, as I had assumed, but rather was quietly sitting on my bed. When he saw me enter he leaned forward and asked, “You’re back?” He said this in a way that seemed to indicate he already knew where I had gone. Embarrassed, I nodded and laughed bitterly. “It looks like I won’t be able to return the food I stole from you after all.”