Howard Goldblatt (Editor) - Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today

Here there's a slight problem: who actually was the first to jump in at the scene of the fire? By the time the Professor and Abe Lincoln raced over, that particular act of our little drama was already concluded. It's true that Four Eyes stood outside the house, immobilized, like a piece of wood nailed to the wall, but it's difficult to say why he did so. The villagers were divided over the issue of who entered the house first: some said it was the Crabman, some said it was the team leader. However, that's relatively unimportant.

In any case, it was the Crabman and the team leader who helped Old Chen out of the house, one on either side-that much was obvious to everyone.

After he helped Old Chen out, the Crabman charged back into the sea of flames and succeeded in rescuing an old quilt. At the same time, the villagers managed to take out of the house anything of the slightest value. (Frankly speaking, there was nothing of any real value. If there had been, how could Old Chen have qualified for a government pension for all these years?) According to the newspaper, as soon as the Crabman's foot was out the door, a burning beam crashed and knocked a millstone-sized hole in the floor. Of course, the hole was no larger than the size of a teacup, and the beam hadn't caught his leg, as the report implied. The rescue work was completed by the time the people on the ridge came racing down. They watched the fire burn for about six or seven minutes before they heard the crash of the burning beam as it fell to the floor. But no one questioned this point. After all, when writing a story, how can you keep from spicing things up a bit? Everyone understands that. Don't forget that even though most of the villagers aren't literate, they still possess a fair amount of common sense.

The fire was extinguished. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, except for the pensioner himself, who was sitting on the ground and bellowing cries of anguish. Things could have been worse: at least no one died. And anyway, what's one house? At most, it came to a mere two thousand catties of straw, and since the beam wasn't made of solid pine or fir, it could certainly be replaced easily enough by any odd-shaped piece of lumber.

Because of all this, the team leader was feeling quite good. He was pleased that they'd now be able to take the rest of the day off, and it appeared that for all intents and purposes, the incident was over and done with.

After he returned home, our hero, the Crabman, changed into his swimming trunks and went for a dip in the large pond beyond the village. Four Eyes, the Professor, and Abe Lincoln were busy getting dinner ready. They had just made the dough, rolled it out into wheat cakes, and were now waiting for the wok to heat up. As they stood near the hot stove, a quarrel erupted because Abe Lincoln kept pestering Four Eyes about why he hadn't helped put out the fire.

Four Eyes, defending himself, said, "There were already plenty of people inside the house. If I'd gone in, it would only have added to the confusion."

"That's no reason," said Abe Lincoln.

"I couldn't go. 'I think therefore I am; if I take action, I shall perish,' " Four Eyes said.

"That's the Prince of Denmark speaking-not Four Eyes," the Professor said.

Four Eyes flew into a rage. "So then what am I? It sounds like you won't be satisfied until my body is consumed by a sea of flames! I know what you want me to say. OK, I'll admit I was scared. Now are you satisfied? The truth is I wasn't scared at all, and I was quite clearheaded about everything. But for some reason at that moment, I just couldn't get my feet to move."

That was one minor episode. There was another. The team leader was squatting near the doorstep, smoking a pipe. After he'd had enough nicotine to satisfy his craving, he knocked out the ashes, then vented his moral outrage over the way the Crabman had shamelessly paraded by in a pair of low-cut swimming trunks. The team leader was speaking in behalf of the untainted youth of the village. As the Crabman splashed about in the pond, the teenagers were so shocked that they covered their faces and cried out. "We don't go in for that sort of thing in our little village," the team leader remarked. "Just look how skimpy his trunks are. Why, you can see his pubic hair!"

Just then the team leader's wife broke in, shouting at her husband at the top of her lungs that there wasn't any water in the vat, and he rushed off to get some. This left unresolved the question of whether the teenagers had cried out from shock or whether they were just joking around. Were they so scandalized that they'd run off, or were they still hanging around at the edge of the pond?

When they covered their faces and closed their eyes, had they, in fact, peeked through their fingers? Although these suspicions filled everyone's head, the answers remain unknown. This, however, is irrelevant. The reason we include these minor episodes is merely to prove that at this point in our story, no one in the village considered the Crabman much of a hero. Nor did anyone forgive his lack of modesty because of his earlier show of bravery. But did the team leader really have the right to berate him this way? After all, the two of them had dashed into the sea of flames at practically the same moment. In any case, by the time evening fell, neither the Crabman nor anyone else in the village, apart from the team leader (who was still concerned about the couple of thousand catties of straw he would have to give Old Chen to rebuild his house), was thinking about the fire that afternoon.

The whole matter would have been forgotten if it hadn't been for the team leader's son, Little Shuanzhu, who was a student at the commune middle school. Since he couldn't come up with anything better to write about, the event found its way into one of his compositions. And if it hadn't been for his teacher, who had always wanted to be a writer herself and who corrected and practically rewrote the story by turning it into a radio script; and if it hadn't been for the fact that the commune broadcasting station stepped in and sent the script to the district; and if it hadn't been for the fact that when the script arrived at the district broadcasting station, a reporter from the Eastern Anhui News happened to be there (God only knows why: did he have some official business, or was he visiting friends or relatives, or was he just so tired from walking that he'd stopped there to take a break?)-in any event, he was there and he happened to see the script; if it hadn't been for all these coincidences, the entire incident of the fire would certainly have been closed. Now you know, were it not for all the "if it hadn't been for's" that one encounters, one's achievements and potential ability (in politics, military service, cultural and artistic endeavors, etc.) would no doubt sink into oblivion. Some people have, in fact, disappeared into oblivion precisely because they lacked the "if it hadn't been for's" in certain situations. When you think about it, don't you just want to sigh in despair?

At this point, "coincidences" fade into the background as we touch upon the reporter from the Eastern Anhui News who happened upon the script. At once, his keen, X ray-like investigative abilities surfaced as he realized the potential value of this bit of news. He put aside the work that had brought him to the broadcasting station in the first place (God only knows what it was), hopped onto the last bus of the day, and spent the night cramped up in the dark, dingy, commune hostel. The next day, he found the soundman at the commune broadcasting station, through whom he was able to contact the middle school teacher, who in turn put him in touch with Little Shuanzhu. On the third day, he personally went to visit the small brigade.

I don't need to tell you that from the very first day Shuanzhu brought home the news that the fire would make the papers, the entire village was in an uproar. "Reporters-"coming-" "to investigate." Investigate what? The villagers whispered among themselves and engaged in endless debates-after all, nothing like this had ever happened before. The eldest resident in the village, the venerable Mr. Liu, could date events as far back as 1905. But no one knew much about anything that had happened before then. In any case, no one with comparable experience of those early days had come to this little village. Even during the time of the Great Leap Forward, when more than fifty people in the village had starved to death, no one came to investigate. So the older people said assuredly, "This, and I'm speaking of the peculiar circumstances surrounding that fire, is going to cause a real stir, just you wait and see."