Yan Lianke - Dream of Ding Village

At the fifth house, a young woman known around the village as Little Green came to greet them. Little Green was a newlywed herself, but she had recently moved back in with her mother. She and her husband, a man from another village, seemed to have had some sort of falling-out, but the details were sketchy. Almost as soon as she opened the door, Lingling handed her one of the red booklets and said: ‘Little Green, can you take a look at this and tell me if it looks the same as yours? I don’t know why, but it looks fake to me, like the red’s too red or something.’

‘Isn’t it just like the one you and Ding Xiaoming got?’ Little Green asked.

Lingling blushed. ‘I’ve compared them a hundred times, but they still look different. It’s like the red on this one is brighter.’

Little Green stood in the doorway, turning over the booklet in her hands and examining it from every angle. She even held it up to the sunlight, as if it were a suspected counterfeit bill. Unable to find anything wrong with it, she said as much to Lingling. ‘I can’t see anything different. It’s the same size as mine, the same colour, with the same words and the same seal.’

‘Well, that’s a relief.’ Her worries laid to rest, Lingling turned and began to walk away. Then, realizing that she had forgotten to give Little Green any wedding candy, she raced back to the house and stuffed several handfuls of sweets into Little Green’s cupped hands.

After they had rounded the corner and were about to knock at the first door on the next street, Lingling suddenly realized that, so far, she was the one doing all the work. While she had been knocking on doors, delivering the happy news, passing out cigarettes and sweets, accepting congratulations and trading small talk, Uncle had been standing behind her, grinning his lazy grin and chomping on wedding candy. She paused at the door, lowered her hand and turned to Uncle. ‘It’s your turn,’ she told him. ‘This family’s mostly men, so it’ll probably be a man who comes to the door. You should be the one to knock.’

Uncle tried to shrink away, but Lingling grabbed his hand and dragged him to the door.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But remember what you promised. You have to call me Daddy at least a hundred times tonight.’

Lingling’s cheeks coloured, but she nodded her head.

Uncle grinned. ‘Maybe just once, right now.’

‘Daddy.’

‘Say it louder.’

‘Daddy!’

Smiling, Uncle stepped forward and knocked on the door.

‘Who is it?’ A man’s voice rang out from the courtyard.

‘It’s me, Uncle. I wonder if I might borrow something of yours.’

When the door swung open, Uncle grinned, passed the man a cigarette and lit it for him. ‘So, what did you want to borrow?’ the man asked.

‘I was just joking. Actually, Lingling and I are married. We just got the papers today, and she insisted we come over and give you some cigarettes and wedding candy.’

At this, the man broke into a broad smile. ‘Congratulations, kids. That’s great news. I’m really happy for you.’

After Uncle and Lingling had said goodbye, they moved on to the next house, which was Ding Xiaoming’s. Having mustered up his courage, Uncle was about to knock on the door when Lingling grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away.

After Uncle and Lingling had made the rounds of the village and handed out all their candy and cigarettes, they went home to get some money so they could buy more candy and cigarettes for the residents of the school. They planned to visit the school to tell Grandpa and the others their good news. But along the way something happened: a minor incident that would have major consequences.

As Uncle was walking into his own courtyard, he stumbled over the wooden threshold and took a tumble. His thin summer clothes were torn, his elbows and knees scraped and bloodied. It was nothing serious, some minor scrapes and a bit of blood, but the pain from his injuries was nothing compared to the pain Uncle felt in the rest of his body. The fall triggered a cold, piercing pain that radiated from his spine and caused him to break out into a sweat. Uncle felt it as soon as he sat up from the ground and began wiping the blood from his hands.

‘Lingling,’ he moaned. ‘It hurts all over.’

Lingling hurried him into bed and helped him get cleaned up, mopping the sweat and blood from his face, arms and legs. Uncle knelt on the bed, shrimp-like, his head bowed and his body curled up into a ball. Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead on to the bedclothes. His lips were pale and contorted, his whole body shivering with pain. He clutched Lingling’s hand so tightly that his fingernails dug into her flesh. ‘Mummy,’ he said. ‘I’m scared that I won’t have the strength to get past this.’

‘You’ll be fine, Daddy. Just think of all the other people who got the fever when you did. They’re all dead now, but you’re still alive, right? You always make it through.’

Uncle’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Not this time. It’s like the pain’s tearing through my bones.’

Lingling gave him an herbal pain remedy and fed him half a bowl of soup. When the pain had subsided a bit, she sat beside him and they talked for a long time, about many things.

‘Do you really think you won’t get past this?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think I can,’ Uncle answered grimly.

‘What am I going to do if you die?’

‘Go on living. Take every day you can get. And keep an eye on my dad and brother to make sure they dig us a big grave, roomy enough for both of us. I want it to be big and deep and wide, like a house or a courtyard.’

‘What about the coffin?’

‘My brother promised to get nice coffins for us. The good kind, made of cedar or tung, at least three inches thick.’

‘What if he doesn’t?’

‘He’s still my brother. No matter what, he and I are family. Why wouldn’t he?’

‘Didn’t you see the way he threw our marriage licences on the ground? And then he yelled that you were raising all kinds of hell and signing away the family property on my account. He hates that you married me. If you die first and he doesn’t give me a coffin, or dig a big enough grave for both of us, what am I supposed to do?

‘And another thing, coffin prices have skyrocketed. You used to be able to get a decent coffin for four or five hundred yuan, but now they sell for seven or eight. If your brother were to give us both nice coffins, it would come to about one thousand five hundred yuan. Do you really think he’s willing to part with that kind of money?

‘Seriously Liang, if your brother decides not to give me a coffin, there’s not a thing I can do about it. If anyone has to die first, it should be me. That way, you can make sure they dig the grave big enough for both of us, and give us two fancy coffins, as nice as houses. So you’ve got to go on living, Daddy, okay? If one of us has to go first, let it be me.’

They talked without stopping, hardly pausing for breath. They talked long into the night, until the pain was nearly forgotten. Tonight was supposed to be the night when Lingling called him Daddy, again and again, a hundred times over. She’d promised to wait on him, to serve him any way he liked, to let him sit back and enjoy. But now the fever had taken hold of him. Pain had grown roots. If it weren’t for Lingling’s voice, he wouldn’t have been able to stand it. What had begun as a flesh wound, just broken skin, now went deeper, because of his body’s inability to fight back. Having lost his ability to resist pain, the tiniest twinge became an agony in his joints and in his bones. A pain that seeped into the marrow like hot knives plunging into his joints, digging and gouging. Like metal rods prying his bones apart, or a rusty needle, threaded with twine, passing up through his spine. The pain was inhuman. Uncle clenched his jaw until his teeth ached and sweat poured down his face like rivulets.