Yan Lianke - Dream of Ding Village

Mystified, Grandpa stood in the courtyard and observed them shouting and struggling, as if he were watching a performance on stage. He saw Lingling clutching Uncle’s leg, trying to prevent him from leaving, but she was too weak and frail to hold him back. Uncle began crossing the courtyard, dragging Lingling along behind him.

The courtyard was the same as it had been before Uncle and Lingling had moved in. There were the paulownia trees, with their thick canopies of green. Dazzling sunlight streamed through gaps in the leaves, leaving scattered pools of light on the cool, shady ground. There was the same washing-line strung between two trees, their trunks deeply scarred by the metal wire wrapped around them. There were rusted shovels and hoes propped against the outside wall, and a pig trough right outside the kitchen door. Tingting and her pigs were gone, but the disused trough remained. Hardly anything had changed. The only difference was an aluminum bucket, half-full of water, which someone had carelessly left in the middle of the courtyard, where anyone might stumble over it. When the bucket wasn’t being used, it was always kept in the kitchen. Grandpa guessed that someone had used it to wash on a hot summer day and had neglected to return it to the kitchen.

As Uncle passed through the courtyard, he stopped and stared at the bucket for a few seconds before limping into the kitchen. Lingling was still clinging to his leg. When Uncle picked up a knife from the cutting board and raised it over his head, Grandpa assumed that he meant to stab Lingling. He was about to rush forward and stop him when he saw his son raise his left leg, place his foot on the cutting board and plunge the knife into his thigh.

As the knife entered his flesh, Uncle screamed: ‘You fucking bastard, your wife’s dead — why are you still alive?’

At Uncle’s cry, Grandpa froze. He saw a flash of something white, sunlight glinting from the blade, and then a stream of blood as Uncle pulled the knife from his leg. Blood spurted from the wound like water from a public fountain, a mushroom-shaped projection that spattered the ground with droplets of blood, shining red pearls. A ray of sunlight pierced the kitchen window, transforming the fountain into a translucent pillar of blood, a shaft of clear red glass stuck sideways into Uncle’s leg. The blood rose at an angle and arched through the air before splashing to the ground, or streaming down Uncle’s leg. Droplets of blood littered the ground like grains on a threshing-room floor.

Lingling, who had been kneeling on the floor and weeping, suddenly fell silent. Her skin was ghastly pale, her face wet with tears.

‘Oh Daddy,’ she moaned. ‘How could you be so stupid? You’re the one who’s always saying we should take every day we can get. Why are you in such a hurry to join me?’

Uncle smiled down at Lingling. It was a weak and sickly sort of smile, as if he didn’t have the strength. It didn’t stay on his face for long. A sudden burst of pain rocketed through his body, causing him to drop the knife and clutch his leg, wrapping both hands around the gash that went through his flesh and down to the bone. Doubled over, he crouched next to the cutting board, his forehead covered with pellet-sized beads of perspiration . .

Wrenching himself from his dream, Grandpa leaped out of bed and raced towards Uncle’s house, taking every shortcut he knew. When he burst through the gate, he saw the shiny white aluminum bucket standing in the middle of the courtyard, just as it had been in his dream. The bucket was half-filled with water, and a ladle bobbed on its surface like a tiny boat. Cicadas buzzed in the paulownia trees, their cries dropping from branches like pieces of overripe fruit. Among the pools of sunlight, Grandpa saw a trail of blood leading from the kitchen into the house, a long red string snaking across the courtyard. The air was filled with the stench of blood. Grandpa stared around him in a daze, then raced into the house and burst through the bedroom door. As soon as he saw Uncle lying on the ground beside Lingling, Grandpa knew that his boy was dead, that both of them were dead. Ding Liang and his new bride lay face-up, side by side on a straw mat. The hem of her skirt, soaked with his blood, bloomed with bright-red flowers.

Funerals were all about keeping up appearances. Sometimes they were a way of rehabilitating one’s reputation, or settling old scores.

As it happened, the bodies were piling up. Ding Yuejin’s younger brother, Ding Xiaoyue, passed away on the same day as Uncle; and Jia Genzhu lost his little brother, Jia Genbao, on the same day that Uncle lost Lingling. Four deaths in less than two days. Four bodies to bury, but not enough hands to go around. When Grandpa went into the village to ask for help digging the grave, he found that Ding Yuejin and Jia Genzhu were a step ahead of him. Everyone Grandpa approached gave variations on the same answer:

‘Sorry, but I already promised Director Jia [or Director Ding] I’d help him.’

‘If you can wait a few days until we’ve buried Xiaoyue and Genzhu, I’ll be glad to help.’

‘Maybe you can set the bodies aside until we’ve got time to bury them.’

‘Genbao died before Lingling, and Xiaoyue beat Liang by a few hours. You know how burials are. . first-come, first-served.’

When Grandpa went to Jia Genzhu’s house to ask if he could spare a few men, Genzhu stared at him for a long time without speaking. ‘Why don’t you ask your son?’ he said at last. ‘I hear the higher-ups are giving nice coffins to the heads of all the village task forces, to reward them for their hard work. Yuejin and I are directors of the Ding Village task force. Why don’t you go and ask your son where our coffins are?’

When Grandpa went to ask his nephew Ding Yuejin for help, the young man raised his chin and stared at the sky. ‘You tell me, Uncle. . all the other village cadres got free coffins from the higher-ups. How come Hui hasn’t given us ours?’

Grandpa trudged back to Uncle’s house in disappointment. He sat beside the bodies of his son and his wife, gazing at the sky, staring at the floor, and waiting for his son Hui to return from his business in the city.

It was after dusk by the time Hui arrived at the house. When he saw the bodies lying side by side on two wooden doors in the living room, he shook his head and sighed. For a long time, he and Grandpa sat in the moonlit courtyard, heads bowed, each immersed in his own thoughts. The night was silent and still, as if there were not a living soul left in the village. Some time after midnight, they heard footsteps. The men who had gone to dig graves for Yuejin and Genzhu had returned to the village and were passing by the front gate. Grandpa raised his head and looked at his son.

‘We can’t wait. We have to bury them. Another day, and the bodies will start to stink.

‘You see how it is, Hui,’ he continued. ‘It’s not that there aren’t enough people to help. It’s that the villagers hate us. You should have listened to me when you had the chance. If you’d have got down on your knees and apologized, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

Ding Hui slowly rose to his feet. He looked at his father, then at the bodies of his brother and Lingling, and gave a derisive little snort.

‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll give them a funeral like no one has ever seen, and I’ll do it without asking anyone in Ding Village for help. I won’t even borrow one of their shovels. Just watch me.’

With this, Ding Hui stomped out of the courtyard and headed for home. He walked quickly and angrily, his feet pounding the streets with enough force to loosen cobblestones, or send bits of rock and brick hurling through the village and over the plain.