Yan Lianke - Dream of Ding Village

‘Uncle, since you asked me to be honest, I might as well tell you the truth. I’m engaged to someone. She’s younger than Lingling, prettier and taller, and with lighter skin. She’s educated and classy, and she doesn’t want a penny of my money. All she wants me to do is go to the hospital and take an AIDS test to prove I don’t have the fever, to prove I never sold my blood. She’s going to take one, too. That’s our wedding present to each other. Blood tests. We were supposed to get married this month, but now Lingling and Ding Liang are shacked up together, and everyone in the village knows about it. I even hear they want to get married, make it official and all that, so they can be buried together when they die. Now I don’t feel like getting married right away, because I don’t want to give Lingling a divorce. If she and Ding Liang want to get married, they can wait — they can wait until they’re dead!’

Listening to Xiaoming’s angry, wounded talk, his smug and vengeful words, Grandpa realized that the situation was hopeless. When Xiaoming had finished speaking, Grandpa clambered down the embankment and began walking back towards the school.

The sunset reflected off the sandy soil, flooding the landscape with red. The cries of the season’s first cicadas rose from the plain, a collective buzzing like a chorus of tiny cracked bells off somewhere in the distance. After Grandpa had taken a few slow steps, he turned around and saw Xiaoming rise from the embankment as if he, too, were heading home. Their eyes met, and Grandpa halted. From the way Xiaoming was staring at him, it seemed the young man had something left to say. Grandpa stood and waited for him to speak.

‘Let Liang and Lingling wait,’ Xiaoming shouted. ‘Let them wait until they’re dead! Because that’s the day I’ll get married. When they’re both good and dead!’

Grandpa turned and continued on his way.

Further along, on a sandy shoal that had once been surrounded by water, a stand of mugwort grew as tall as pines. Grandpa was reminded of the pagoda pines and cypresses he’d seen in the city of Kaifeng. Mugwort grew wild all across the plain. In some of the other villages, they called it wormwood. Here was a small forest of it, a cluster of wormwood pagodas covered in a profusion of pale green and yellow leaves.

Grandpa followed the narrow path through the mugwort, displacing clouds of grasshoppers that clung to his shoes, trousers and shirt. He walked slowly, silently, through the last rays of the setting sun. The light had nearly faded, and he was about to turn from the path in the direction of the school, when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned to see Xiaoming a few dozen paces away, running to catch up. Xiaoming was sweating and gasping for breath, his face streaked with sand and dirt that he’d kicked up along the way. When he saw Grandpa turn around, he stopped in his tracks.

‘Hey there, Uncle!’ he shouted.

‘Xiaoming? What are you doing here?’

‘I came to say I’ll give her a divorce. I’ll let them be together, on one condition. You have to agree to it, and so does Ding Liang.’

‘What is it?’

‘First you have to promise.’

‘First tell me what it is.’

‘Well, I’ve thought it over, and I’m willing to give Lingling a divorce, right now, and let her marry Ding Liang. They want to make it official before they’re dead, right? Well, I can agree to that if Liang promises to write a will saying I’ll get the house and all his property when he’s dead. Once your other son leaves the village, he won’t be coming back, and his house will be empty. His house is nicer than Liang’s, anyway. You can stay in Hui’s house, so you’ll have a place to live in your old age, and Liang can leave his house and property to me.’

On one side of the path was a clump of mugwort; on the other, a deep ditch. Grandpa stood between the two, staring at his nephew, his eyes narrowed to a squint.

‘So what do you say, Uncle? If you agree, I’ll go into town tomorrow and file the divorce papers, and they can go into town the day after and apply for a marriage licence.’

Caught between a ditch and the wormwood, Grandpa continued squinting at his nephew.

‘Did you hear what I said, Uncle? You know the old saying: don’t let your fertilizer flow into a stranger’s field. Keep the wealth in the family, right? It’s better for Ding Liang to will his property to me, his own cousin, than let it go to an outsider like Song Tingting. Or worse, let the government get their hands on it.’

Ditch. Wormwood. Nephew. Grandpa caught between them, squinting.

‘When you think about it, Uncle, it makes perfect sense. What does Hui need with his stuff once he’s dead? He can’t take it with him. That’s what you should tell him. Besides, it’s not like I’m going to be using it while he’s still alive. I won’t move into the house until he and Lingling are both gone. But he’s got to promise to put it in his will. Otherwise, I won’t give Lingling a divorce, and they’ll never be able to get married. If he dies without making an honest woman of her, that’s something he’s going to take to his grave.’

In that moment, Grandpa’s vision blurred, turning what was left of the sunset — a sheet of red and gold — into a haze of blood and fog. Grass and trees, wormwood and brush, mugwort and sedge swam before his eyes, swirled around his feet and spun off into the distance. Even his nephew seemed to have receded, and was now a tiny spinning blur. .

‘I’ve got to go.’ The voice sounded far away. ‘But you tell Liang about what I said, and tell him to think it over. After all, how many happy days do any of us have? You come into this world with nothing, and you leave the same way. You can’t take it with you. All you can do is enjoy it while you can. Happiness. . that’s the only thing that’s real.’

With these words of wisdom, Xiaoming took his leave. He sauntered down the road and disappeared into the setting sun, leaving the wormwood and the ditch far behind him.

On the far reaches of the plain, along the western horizon, trees and villages seemed immobilized against the sunset, as static as drawings on a sheet of paper. The banks of the ancient Yellow River, now just worn-down sand dunes, were covered with patchy vegetation. Where they faced the sun, the grass grew tall, but where they lay in shadow, the surface was bare, the sandy soil encrusted like a scab over an old wound. The tops of the embankments were uniformly bald, their sand-strewn pates reflecting sunlight like gold. The thick, sweet stench of sun-baked soil and wild grass spread like molasses over the plain. At dusk, the plain was like a vast lake of salt-sweet warmth, a body of water stretching endlessly and giving off a moist, sweet stink.

A lonely goat wandered towards the village from the direction of the school, its thin bleating causing ripples in the silence like a reed floating on the surface of a lake. A man led his cattle in single file back to the village after having taken them out to graze. Their mooing echoed through the fields, their bodies like a field of mud advancing slowly across the plain and into the dusk.

A man stood on the outskirts of the village and shouted to his neighbour working in the fields.

‘Hey there! Are you busy tomorrow?’

‘Not really. Why?’

‘My dad died, and I was hoping you could help me bury him.’

There was a moment of silence. Then the man in the fields asked: ‘When did he die?’

‘Earlier today.’

‘Have you got a coffin?’

‘Yes, Yuejin and Genzhu gave us one of the willow trees.’

‘What about the funeral clothes?’

‘My mother has had them ready for a while.’