Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

“Lao Da’s son died a bad one.”

“As if there is a good way to die!”

“Those seventeen, weren’t theirs good? Fast and painless.”

“But in the city, they said those seventeen all died badly.”

“Mercilessly murdered — wasn’t that how they put it in the newspapers?”

“But that’s true. They were murdered.”

“True, but in the city, they wouldn’t say the boy died badly. They didn’t even mention Lao Da’s son.”

“Of course they wouldn’t. Who would want to hear about a murderer’s son? A dead son, not to mention.”

“Even if they had written about him, what could they have said?”

“Drowned in a swimming accident, that’s what was written in his death certificate.”

“An accident happens every day, they would say.”

“The boy’s death wasn’t worth a story.”

The seventeen men and women’s stories, however, were read aloud to us at Lao Da’s trial, their enlarged pictures looking down at us from the top of the stage of a theater, a makeshift courthouse to contain the audience. We no longer remember their names, but some of the faces, a woman in heavy makeup who looked like a girl we were all obsessed with when we were young, a man with a sinister mole just below his left eye, another man with a pair of caterpillarlike eyebrows, these faces have stuck with us ever since. So have a few of the stories. A man who had been ice-swimming for twenty years and had never been ill for one day of his adult life. A mother of a teenage girl who had died earlier that year from leukemia. An official and his young secretary, who, as we heard from rumors, had been having an affair, but in the read-aloud stories, they were both the dear husband and wife to their spouses. The stories went on, and after a while we dozed off. What was the point of telling these dead people’s stories to us? Lao Da had no chance of getting away. He turned himself in to the police, knowing he would get a death sentence. Why not spare those relatives the embarrassment of wailing in the court? Besides, no story was read aloud about Lao Da. He was an atrocious criminal was all that was said about him.

“Think about it: Lao Da was the only one who died a good death.”

“A worthy one.”

“Got enough companions for the trip to the next world.”

“Got us into trouble, too.”

“It wasn’t his mistake. Heaven would’ve found another reason to squeeze us.”

“True. Lao Da was just an excuse.”

“Maybe — I have been thinking — maybe Heaven is angry not because of Lao Da, but for him?”

“How?”

“I heard from my grandpa, who heard from his grandpa, that there was this woman who was beheaded as a murderer, and for three years after her execution, not a drop of rain fell on the area.”

“I heard that from my grandpa, too. Heaven was avenging the woman.”

“But she was wronged. She did not kill her husband.”

“True.”

Lao Da was not wronged. You killed seventeen people and you had to pay with your life. Even Lao Da nodded in agreement when the judge read the sentence. He bowed to the judge and then to the guards when he was escorted off the stage. “I’m leaving one step earlier,” he said. “Will be waiting for you on the other side.” The guards, the judge, and the officials on and off the stage, they all tried to turn their eyes away from Lao Da, but he was persistent in his farewell. “Come over soon. Don’t let me wait for too long,” he said. We never expected Lao Da to have such a sense of humor. We grinned at him and he grinned back, but for a short moment only, as the judge waved for two more guards to push him to the backstage before he had time to give out too many invitations.

“Lao Da was a man.”

“Spanked Heaven.”

“But who’s got the upper hand now?”

“It means nothing to Lao Da now. He had his moment.”

“But it matters to us. We are punished for those who were wronged by death.”

“Who?”

“Those seventeen.”

“Not the wife of the cuckold, I hope.”

“Certainly not. She deserved it.”

“That woman was smaller than a toenail of Lao Da’s wife.”

“That woman was cheaper than a fart of Lao Da’s wife.”

“True.”

“Good woman Lao Da had as a wife.”

“Worthy of his life.”

We nod, and all think about Lao Da’s wife, secretly comparing her with our own women. Lao Da’s wife worked like a man in the field and behaved like a woman at home. She was plump, and healthy, and never made a sound when Lao Da beat her for good or bad reasons, or for no reason at all. Our wives are not as perfect. If they are not too thin they are too fat. If they are diligent, they do not leave us alone, nagging us for our laziness. They scream when beaten; even worse, sometimes they fight back.

“That good woman deserved better luck.”

“She deserved another son.”

“But her tubes were tied.”

“The poor woman would’ve lived if not for the Birth Control Office.”

“A group of pests they are, aren’t they?”

The Birth Control Office had been after Lao Da and his wife when they had not reported to the office after their firstborn. One child per family, they brushed in big red words on Lao Da’s house. Only pigs and dogs give birth to more than one child, they wrote. But Lao Da and his woman never gave up. They played hide-and-seek with the Birth Control Office, hiding in different relatives’ places when the woman’s belly was growing big. After three daughters and a big debt for the fines, they finally had a son. The day the boy turned a hundred days old, Lao Da killed a goat and two suckling pigs for a banquet; afterward, the wife was sent to the clinic to have her tubes triumphantly tied.

“What’s the point of living if she could not bear another son for Lao Da? What’s the use of a hen if it doesn’t lay eggs?”

“True.”

“But that woman, she was something.”

“Wasn’t she?”

We exchange looks of awe, all knowing that our own women would never have had the courage to do what Lao Da’s wife did. Our women would have screamed and begged when we faced no other choices but divorcing them for a fertile belly, but Lao Da’s wife, she never acted like an ordinary woman. When we, along with Lao Da, dived into the reservoir to look for the body of Lao Da’s son, she drank all the pesticide she could lay her hands on, six bottles in a row, and lay down in bed. Six bottles of pesticide with that strength could cut her into pieces, but she did not make a single sound, her jaws clenched, waiting for death.

“An extraordinary woman.”

“Maybe Heaven is angry on her behalf.”

“She was not wronged by anybody.”

“But her soul was let down.”

“By whom?”

“Lao Da.”

“Lao Da avenged her, and their son.”

“Was it what she wanted?”

“What did she want?”

“Listen, she was making room for a new wife, so Lao Da could have more sons. She didn’t poison herself just to make Lao Da lose his mind and carry out some stupid plan to shoot seventeen people. Think about it. Lao Da got everything wrong.”

“Her death could have borne more fruits.”

“That’s true. Now she died for nothing.”

“And Lao Da, too.”

“And those seventeen.”

“And the three daughters, orphaned for nothing.”

We shake our heads, thinking about the three girls, their screaming and crying piercing our eardrums when the county officials grabbed their arms and pushed them into the jeep. They were sent to different orphanages in three counties, bad seeds of a cold-blooded killer. Lao Da should have listened to us and drowned them right after they were born, sparing them their troubles of living in pain.