Yan Lianke - Dream of Ding Village

6. Extra-marital sex, hanky-panky and lewd behavior will not be tolerated in the school. Anyone caught engaging in immoral acts or corrupting public values will be marched through the village with a sign around their neck and a tall paper hat, and have fever-infected blood poured all over them.

7. Anyone who disagrees or does not comply with the above regulations will be cursed for life, have nightmares about dying and pass the fever to all their family, friends and relatives. Plus, he or she will be sent home immediately and never allowed back in the school. If said person does try to come back, his (or her) fever will become full-blown.

The villagers milled around the tree, reading the new rules and regulations. Some read aloud, others silently, but all wore smug smiles, as if they’d just given someone a good, well-deserved cursing. Everyone agreed that the rules were very well written, acceptable and satisfying. They turned to look at Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin, who were squatting against a wall, finishing their lunch. Both men wore stern expressions, their faces dark as thunderclouds. They had drawn up the rules and regulations, inaugurated a new regime, and that was how it was going to be.

But as it turned out, life under the new regime was not so simple. There would be many other dodgy schemes and fishy goings-on in both the village and the school.

Ding Village had changed, and life would never be the same.

Jia Genzhu’s little brother, Genbao, was getting married. This was not a dodgy scheme but a joyous event. Though Genbao had the fever, his family and neighbours — the whole village, in fact — had colluded to keep it secret and help him find a wife. When talking to outsiders, they would go on and on about how healthy he was, and what a great appetite he had, and how he could polish off two plates of food, two bowls of soup and three steamed buns at a single sitting. Genzhu had finally managed to convince a young, healthy, uninfected woman from another village to marry him. Now that the happy event was approaching, the family needed ten large tables for the wedding banquet, but all the banquet tables in the village had been used for making coffins. Unable to borrow the tables they needed, Jia Genzhu and his brother decided to take some desks from the school.

Jia Genzhu had spent the better part of the morning moving desks from the classrooms and loading them on to carts. As he was getting ready to leave, Grandpa stopped him at the gate and said that the desks were for student use only, and no one was allowed to move them. If Genbao wanted to take the desks out of the school, he’d have to do it over Grandpa’s dead body.

The yellow painted desks were brand new, stacked six to a cart. Grandpa began unloading desks from one of the carts, while twenty-two-year-old Genbao loaded them back on again. This had led to an argument, and all the residents had come out to watch.

Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin were there, as well.

The two men had been in charge of the school for three days. In that time, they had never eaten more than their fair share at mealtimes, nor had they taken any more communal medicine than was their due, but they had already made two trips into the nearest town to ask local cadres for help on behalf of the residents of the school. So far, they had managed to negotiate a subsidy of 10lbs of flour and 10lbs of rice for each sick villager, plus a one-third reduction in their household land taxes, collected after the harvest. It was an unexpected boon: not only were they getting free food, they were saving money on their taxes. At the very least, it would save them the trouble of arguing with tax collectors, come harvest time. It was in this happy atmosphere that Grandpa had to go and pick a fight with Jia Genzhu’s little brother.

‘No one is allowed to take the desks out of the school,’ Grandpa told Genbao.

‘But Professor Ding,’ said the young man, ‘I’ve got the fever, too, don’t you know?’

‘If you’ve got the fever, what are you doing marrying that girl?’

‘What do you expect me to do, stay a bachelor until I die?’

When Grandpa blocked the gate so that Genbao couldn’t take out his cart, the crowd tried to reason with him.

‘What’s wrong with borrowing a few desks?’ one man asked Grandpa. ‘It’s not like he won’t give them back.’

‘With everyone in the village dying, it’s no easy thing to find a wife,’ said another. ‘Professor Ding, you’re not trying to get back at Genzhu for taking over the school, are you?’

Grandpa maintained his position at the gate and said nothing. A warm sun shone high in the sky. At this time of day, most of the residents had stripped out of their padded coats and jackets. Some wore sweatshirts or old woollen sweaters; one man was wearing only a cotton shirt with a jacket draped over his shoulders. The season was too chilly for a single layer, too warm for a padded coat, and too apt to change, so wearing layers was a good solution. Grandpa wore a yellow sweatshirt of indeterminate age that made his skin look sickly. Beads of perspiration stood out on his sallow forehead like water oozing from a yellow loess plain. He had wedged his body in between the school gates, one hand gripping each side, his feet rooted to the ground like wooden stakes. Staring at their faces, Grandpa addressed the crowd:

‘If anyone here can guarantee that after you die, your children won’t come here to learn to read and write, I’ll let Genbao walk off with these desks right now.’

No one answered.

‘Can you guarantee me that?’ Grandpa asked, raising his voice.

Everyone was silent, not moving a muscle. The atmosphere grew chill. As they were standing in the schoolyard, wondering what to do, Jia Genzhu appeared. His step was unhurried, but his face was dark with suppressed rage. The crowd parted to let him pass. When he was standing face to face with Grandpa, he said: ‘Professor, did you forget what we talked about three days ago?’ His voice was cold and menacing.

‘As long as I’m still the custodian of this school,’ Grandpa answered evenly, ‘no one is allowed to take those desks.’

‘And you’ve done a fine job as custodian,’ Jia Genzhu conceded. ‘But doesn’t this school belong to the village? Isn’t it called Ding Village Elementary?’

Grandpa couldn’t deny such an obvious fact. ‘Of course it is,’ he answered.

Jia Genzhu had the voice of reason — not to mention the official seal of the Ding Village party committee — on his side. Taking a piece of paper and the village seal from his pocket, Genzhu squatted down and spread the paper on his knees. Then he put the seal to his mouth, blew on it to moisten the ink, and placed a round, bright-red mark upon the paper. Handing the paper to Grandpa, he said: ‘Is that proof enough? Now will you let him through?’

Seeing that Grandpa was not about to budge from the gate, Jia Genzhu squatted down again and scrawled the following line in pencil on the paper: ‘After a thorough investigation into the matter, we hereby grant permission for Jia Genbao to remove twelve desks from the Ding Village Elementary School premises.’ After signing his name with a flourish over the official red seal, he stood up and waved the paper in Grandpa’s face. ‘Got anything else you want to say?’

Grandpa briefly glanced at the paper, taking in the pencilled words and the official-looking red seal, then squinted suspiciously at Jia Genzhu. It was the sort of look one might give a little boy prone to telling fibs, a look of mingled pity and disdain. Everyone in the crowd, including Jia Genzhu, picked up on it, but they seemed to feel that this time, it was Grandpa who was in the wrong. After all, it wasn’t the end of the world, just a few desks. And didn’t he have a signed and sealed document, with words like ‘after a thorough investigation’ and ‘we hereby grant permission’, saying it was okay to release school property? Besides, it didn’t seem right to treat Genbao so badly on the eve of his wedding.