Yan Lianke - The Four Books

“Did the Musician return to the furnace?” He looked at me with a wounded expression.

I nodded, then sat on what had been the Theologian’s cot before he died. The Scholar didn’t ask me anything else, and neither did I volunteer any additional explanation regarding my encounter. By this point the sun was already high in the sky, and the warmth we had been missing for the past seven days began to return to this old course of the Yellow River. There was still a chill in the room, but given that the sun had come out, everyone could sit without huddling around a fire or wrapping themselves in blankets. The Scholar and I stuffed our hands inside the sleeves of our padded jackets, and we occasionally stomped our boot-clad feet on the floor. After a while, the Scholar asked, “When the Musician returns, will she bring us something to eat?” I looked at him, and saw that he had an honest expression, and not at all sarcastic. I replied confidently, “Yes, she will. This time that man didn’t bring her only a handful of soybeans, but rather an entire half bag.” The Scholar’s eyes lit up and he lifted his head from between his knees and said, “As long as she can come back and give us half a bowl of soybeans, I plan to divorce my wife and marry the Musician as soon as we have a chance to return home.”

I gazed at him in surprise.

He asked, “I assume you see her as a whore?”

I shook my head.

“But she is,” he insisted. “When I earned her five stars last year when we were smelting steel, she said she wanted to marry me, but at the time I didn’t agree.”

I didn’t know what to say to this, and had no choice but to sit there cradling my cold feet, listening to him as though I were a student. I periodically glanced out the door, hoping that the Musician would quickly extricate herself from that man in the furnace and return to the compound. I hoped she would come directly to our door and give the Scholar a bowl or two of fried soybeans. Even though she would be giving the Scholar the soybeans, he could not but give me some as well. I could almost smell the soybean oil wafting in, as wave after wave of steam rose from my belly into my mouth. My throat was extremely dry, but my stomach was rumbling noisily. I saw that the face-washing basin with the boiled leather shoes and belt was sitting on the bed, and there was some frozen black liquid at the bottom. I went over and picked up the basin and knocked it on the ground, whereupon the black ice fell out. I put it in my mouth, and the Scholar asked me calmly,

“Based on your experience, do you think this famine is merely local, or has it affected the entire country?”

I reflected for a moment, then replied, “It has to have affected at least half the country, because otherwise the higher-ups would not have failed to give us a single grain of wheat.”

The Scholar again bowed his head, and said, “Perhaps we really are of no use to the country.” He then looked at me and said hesitantly, “Many more of us would need to starve to death, and only then will the higher-ups remember we are here.”

After that we were silent. I sat and crossed my legs to keep warm, and the Scholar also sat and crossed his legs. After sitting there for a while, the Scholar retrieved his sack for collecting wild roots and prepared to go out. I asked, “You’re not going to wait for the Musician?” The Scholar stood next to his bed and laughed bitterly. “If she really does come to give us some grain, then you must at least save me some.” Then the Scholar walked out the door, his shoulders slumped and his belly distended.

I hesitated, unsure whether I should go with him to look for wild seeds. I stood up, then sat back down, as though there were something I was not yet ready for.

After a while, however, I eventually caught a glimpse through the doorway of someone entering the courtyard, and recognized that it wasn’t anyone from the ninety-ninth. The visitor looked around, as though searching for someone. I jumped out of bed and rushed toward the door, whereupon I immediately froze as though I had seen a ghost. I saw that the person who had arrived was in fact that man. He was still holding that same half bag of fried soybeans, and when he saw me he immediately headed in my direction. As he approached, the scent of fried soybeans filled the air. I could see he was still wearing that old, patched army jacket. When he had shown up for his meeting with the Musician, the jacket had nothing on it other than dirt and dust, but on his chest he now had at least ten star-shaped medals, which clinked together like music as he walked. After coming to a stop right in front of me, he looked me in the eye, then tossed me his half bag of fried soybeans and said,

“I was too generous, but shouldn’t have let her eat. If you don’t want to starve to death, then you should go bury her.” As he was saying this, he patted the medals on his chest and said, “Do you know who I am? If you want to report me, go right ahead. Tomorrow I’ll bring you a pencil and paper for you to write up the report.”

He didn’t say anything else. Instead, he turned and headed toward the entranceway of the ninety-ninth. After waiting until he had disappeared behind the wall surrounding the courtyard, I grabbed the bag of soybeans lying on the ground. I returned to my room, opened the bag, and stuffed a handful into my mouth. I stuffed several more into my pockets, then quickly headed toward that row of furnaces about eight li to the south.

Along the way, I continued stuffing the soybeans into my mouth. Because I was panting from rushing to the furnaces, I kept having to stop to catch my breath, and because the soybeans were too dry and I didn’t have any water with which to wash them down, every time I swallowed I needed to come to a complete halt and position my neck at a forty-five-degree angle, and only then could I continue forward. As a result, by the time I reached the first of the furnaces, the sun was already hanging low in the sky, illuminating the inside of the furnace. There wasn’t a trace of wind, and the furnace preserved heat like someone wrapped tightly in their covers. Inside that warm and bright hole, the Musician had died while leaning against the wall. She had died while kneeling on that grass and those blankets. Her pants were pulled to her ankles, exposing her bare buttocks. Blood was flowing down the inside of her legs. She was facing downward, and her head was tilted slightly toward the outside, revealing half of her face. When she died, her mouth was full of soybeans that she had not yet had a chance to swallow, and she was tightly grasping more beans in her hands.

She was menstruating when she died. She must have been kneeling in front of that man and ravenously eating fried soybeans. I found it impossible to reconcile that ugly posture with the beautiful young pianist I remembered. Standing in the sun in front of the furnace, I instinctively placed my finger under her nostrils to see if she was still breathing, then pulled up her pants and laid her flat on that dusty sheet. Finally, I stuck my fingers into her mouth and removed the soybeans she had been eating when she died. After a considerable amount of effort, I succeeded in extracting a fistful of partially masticated beans, until finally I was able to close her mouth. Then, partially closing her huge, staring eyes, I left her stretched out on the sheet.

There was a cool breeze outside the furnace, but inside it was hot and stuffy, like a steamer basket over a low flame. I squatted next to the Musician’s body, leaning against the side of the furnace like an insect hibernating underground. The wind blowing across the entrance of the furnace produced a whistling sound that made the silence appear even deeper. Two wild sparrows flew past, but they appeared to smell the soybeans and flew over to the opening, where they began hopping toward the pile of beans I had removed from the Musician’s mouth. At this point I noticed that the sparrows, after having had to compete with starving humans for wild seeds all winter, had become so emaciated that their caw and bones were clearly visible under their featherless breast. Perhaps they assumed that the Musician and I had both died, thereby allowing them to freely approach the soybeans. In order to show I was still alive, I jerked my leg when one of the sparrows landed on it, and both birds immediately flew out of the furnace. After a while, however, an entire flock of sparrows flew over from somewhere and landed on the roof and in the entrance to the furnace. They wanted to eat the soybeans. Chirping like pouring rain, they tried to fly inside, but upon seeing me they didn’t dare proceed, and instead had no choice but to continue soaring around outside.