Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

BUT TIME HAS sneaked by while we were mesmerized by our young man’s face. Now we have Sony and Panasonic; we have Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson. We have imported movies in which men and women hold hands freely in the street, and they even kiss each other without a trace of fear in their eyes. Our life, we realize, is not as happy as we have been taught to think. People in those capitalist countries are not waiting for us to be their liberators. They never know of our love for them.

This must be a difficult period for our young man as well. Biographies and memoirs about the dictator appear overnight like spring grass. Unlike the books written collectively by the government-assigned writing groups, these books spell trouble the moment they appear. Soon they are decided to be illegal publications, and are confiscated and burned in great piles. Yet some of the words have spread out, bad words about the dictator. Mouth to mouth the rumors travel, how under his reign fifty million people have died from famine and political persecution. But if you looked at the number closely, you would realize it is far less than what the dictator was once willing to sacrifice to American nuclear bombs. So what is all the fuss about?

Still, we start to think about what we have been led to believe all these years. Once doubt starts, it runs rampant in our hearts like wildfire. Our young man’s face appears on the television regularly, but the face has lost its aura. Those of us who have been waiting for his proposal are eager to sell our daughters to the first offer available. The young man’s mother, now a garrulous old woman, walks in the street and grabs whomever she can to tell his stories, none of which impresses us anymore. From his mother we have learned that he is touring across the nation with our present leader, a trip designed to inspire our national belief in communism. So what? we ask, and walk away before the mother has the chance to elaborate.

The tour ends early when a protest breaks out in the capital. Thousands of people rally for democracy in the center of the capital, where the dictator’s memorial museum is less and less visited. Threatened and infuriated, our present leader orders the army to fire machine guns at the protesters. Astonishing as the event is, it slips out of our memory as soon as the dead are burned to ashes in the state-supervised crematoriums. The leader has said, as we later read in newspapers, that he is willing to kill two hundred thousand lives in exchange for twenty years of communist stability. Numbed by such numbers, we will echo his words and applaud his wisdom when we are required to publicly condemn those killed in the incident.

In no time the big-brother country above us no longer exists. Then one by one our comrades in arms take turns exiting the historical stage. Confused as we are, we do not know what to think of them, whether we should envy, despise, or pity them.

LIFE IS PRESENTING a big problem to our young man at this time. Although out of habit we still call him our young man, he is no longer young but in his forties. Even worse, he is a man in his forties who has never tasted a woman in his life. Can you believe it? we will ask one another after all that is to come. Incredible; we will shake our heads. But it is true: our young man spent most of his twenties wanting a woman but we were unwilling to hand our daughters to him; when we were ready, he had become a man too great for our daughters. Time passes ruthlessly. Now that none of our daughters is available anymore, he starts to fantasize about the women he should have had long ago.

Once the desire is awakened, he is no longer able to live in peace. He watches women walking in the streets, their bare arms and legs in summer dresses deliciously attractive, and wonders how it would feel to have a woman of his own. Yet which woman is worthy of his greatness? Sometimes his blood is so unruly that he feels the urge to grab anyone passing by and make her his woman. But once his desire is subdued, after successful masturbation, he is no longer driven by blind craving. At such moments he sees his life more clearly than ever, and he knows that no woman is great enough to match him.

“But you need a wife to give birth to a son,” his mother, eager for a grandson, reminds him when he calls long distance to speak to her. “Remember, the first and the foremost duty of a man is to make a son, and pass on his family name.”

He mumbles indistinct words and hangs up. He knows that no woman’s womb will nurture a son with a face as great as his own.

NOW THAT THE dictator’s life has been explored and filmed thoroughly, our young man has more time on his hands. When there is no celebration to attend, he wanders in the street with a heavy coat, his face covered by the high collar and a pair of huge dark glasses. Sometimes he feels the temptation to walk with his face completely bare to the world, but the memory of being surrounded by hundreds of people asking for autographs stops him from taking the risk.

One day he walks across the capital, in search of something he is eager to have but unable to name. When he enters an alley, someone calls to him from behind a cart of newspapers and magazines.

“Want some books, friend?”

He stops and looks at the vendor from behind his dark glasses. “What kind of books?”

“What kind do you want?”

“What kind do you have?”

The vendor moves some magazines and uncovers the plastic sheet beneath the magazines. “Yellows, reds, whatever you want. Fifty yuan a book.”

He bends over and looks from above his dark glasses. Underneath the plastic sheet are books with colorful covers. He picks one up and looks at a man and a woman, both naked, copulating in a strange position on the cover. His heart starts to beat in his chest, loud and urgent.

“That’s a good yellow one,” the vendor says, “as yellow as you want.”

He clasps the book with his fingers. “What else do you have?”

“How about this red one?” The vendor hands him another book, the dictator’s face on the cover. “Everybody loves this book.”

He has heard of the book, a memoir written by the dictator’s physician of thirty years, banned when it was published abroad, and smuggled into the country from Hong Kong and America.

He pays for the two books and walks back to his room. He studies the dictator’s portrait and compares it with his own face in the mirror, still perfect from every angle. He sighs and plunges into the yellow book, devouring it like a starved man. When his erection becomes too painful, he forces himself to drop the book and pick up the red one.

He feels an emptiness that he has never felt before, switching between the books when one becomes too unbearable. In the yellow book he sees a world he has missed all his life, in which a man has an endless supply of women, all of them eager to please him. Yet for all he knows, the only man who could have as many women as he wants is the dictator. He leafs through the red book one more time, looking at the pictures of the dictator in the company of young attractive nurses, and realizes that he has misunderstood his role all these years. To be a great man means to have whatever he wants from the world. Blaming himself for this belated understanding, he stands up and goes out into the night.

He has no difficulty locating a prostitute in the dimly lit karaoke-and-dance bar. As a precaution he keeps his dark glasses and heavy coat on the whole time they are bargaining. Then he goes away with the young woman to a nearby hotel, sneaking through a side door into a room the woman has reserved, while she deals with the receptionist.

What comes next is perplexing to us. All we can figure out from the rumors is that when he is asked to undress, he refuses to take off either his dark glasses or his heavy coat. To be a great man means to have a woman in whatever way he wants, our young man must be thinking. But how is a man like him able to resist the skillful fingers of a professional like the woman he has hired? In a confusing moment, he is as naked as the woman, his face bare and easy to recognize. Before he realizes it, the woman’s pimp, dressed up in police uniform, rushes in with a pair of handcuffs and a camera. Lights flash and snapshots are taken, his hands cuffed and clothes confiscated. Only then does the couple recognize his face, and we can imagine how overjoyed they must be by such a discovery. Instead of the usual amount, they ask for ten times what others pay, because our young man is a celebrity and should pay a celebrity price for the pictures.