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

"A wild rapist is simply one type of womanizer. Most men are perverts of one kind or another. It's like class distinctions. There are a few at the two extremes, with the vast majority falling somewhere in between," Four Eyes was quick to explain.

The next day was another scorcher. Even the early-morning sun was so hot that everyone was panting from the heat. By the time the sun came out, the air was so suffocating that the ground seemed to tremble and the straw on the roofs softened into clumps The two factors needed for combustion to occur were once again present; a single spark from a chimney might produce another story that would move you to song and tears. It was at this point that Abe Lincoln displayed a sign of that "wild" quality in keeping with his personality type (we really don't have the courage to repeat the particular indelicate term used earlier). He ran into the team leader's house, insisting that he immediately send someone to repair the leak in the chimney. "Otherwise, if a fire starts," he said, pointing to the roof, "I can promise you that as sure as two times two is four, it's going to be your house that goes up in flames next!" The team leader, who had been sitting on his heels by the doorstep, proceeded to give Abe Lincoln a sound dressing-down. "To talk like that in a farming village is counterrevolutionary. Why, it's even more reactionary than being counterrevolutionary!" Nonetheless, after lunch, he went over to Old Chen's and rounded up a couple of workers to replace the stovepipe for the students.

Since it was such a hot day, they didn't go to work until quite late in the afternoon. When Four Eyes woke up, sunlight had flooded the room. One particular patch of light was already boring its way into the door across from him. Two mud walls away, the team leader gave an earth-shattering yawn.

Four Eyes said, "Now for guys like us, whoever has a girlfriend, whether or not she's-"

The Crabman interrupted him: "I swear on that sacred portrait that I struggled so long and hard over that if anyone ever says that again, I'll smash his face in. I'm giving you fair warning, so don't anybody accuse me of turning against a friend."

"That reminds me of a poem," the Professor said as he sat up in bed.

"If you're planning to recite from a book or something, please spare us," said Abe Lincoln.

"It's nothing like that; it's not from a book. Listen: 'On such a calm and peaceful day, how sweet it is to play hooky.''

The sound of the team leader's whistle split the long silence.

When a story begins to repeat itself, it's time to end it. But don't be in such a hurry, be patient for a couple of minutes longer, for we still have a short epilogue. That afternoon, the final touches were put on Old Chen's house. The last thing the team leader did was plaster the mud on the ridge of the roof and, for effect, place two gray bricks at an angle on the very top. After he came down from the roof, Old Chen began to set off firecrackers and gleefully passed out cigarettes. The house turned out pretty well. The straw was smoothed out flat and even, the hay for the eaves was clipped off all nice and tidy. The newly broken-off wheat stalks shone like strands of platinum. The team leader took a look inside the house and nodded his head in satisfaction. "It looks OK, doesn't it?" he said. "It's just lacking one thing." He unbuttoned his tunic and took out a sacred portrait of Chairman Mao that had been tucked away close to his heart. As he placed the portrait in the Crabman's hands, he said in a voice full of compassion, "Go hang it up. It was you who rescued it; now it should be you who hangs it up again."

While the Crabman was hanging the portrait, his hands were trembling. There was a moment when he was actually on the verge of tears, but he quickly rubbed his eyes and looked up at the straw room divider, acting as if a speck of dust or something had flown into his eye. We know he must have been feeling that he had somehow lost face (it appears that for the most part, all this was predetermined by personality type). But once again, he was wrong: no one laughed at him, not even Four Eyes. In fact, quite the contrary- Four Eyes told him later that this was the single most emotional and moving scene the production team had experienced in over three years.

Translated by Madeline K. Spring

On a summer night in 1990 in his muggy apartment, the stranger opened and read a telegram of unknown origin. Then he sank into deep reverie. The telegram consisted of just two words-return quickly-and indicated neither the name nor the address of the sender. The stranger, filing through the mists of several decades of memory, saw an intricate network of roads begin to unfold before him. And in this intricate network, only one road could bring the slightest of smiles to the stranger's lips. Early the next morning, the lacquer-black shadow of the stranger began to glide down that serpentine road like an earthworm.

Clearly, in the intricacy of the network that constituted the stranger's past, one memory, as fine as a strand of hair, had remained extraordinarily clear. March 5, 1965. A simple string of digits, arrayed in a specific and suggestive order, had determined the direction in which the stranger had begun to move. But in reality, at the same time that the stranger had decided upon his course, he had also failed to discover that his forward motion was blocked by yet another group of recollections. And because he had been standing at a remove from the bright mirror on his wall, he had been unaware of the ambiguity that had plagued his faint smile in the moments after he had deciphered the telegram. Instead, he had felt only stubborn self-confidence. It was precisely because of this excessive faith in himself that the procedural error that was to occur later on became unavoidable.

Several days later, the stranger arrived at a small town called Mist. It was here that the procedural error became apparent. The rror was revealed to him by the punishment expert.

Imagine for a moment the stranger's face and posture as he walked through Mist. Besieged by several different strata of memory, he had been left virtually incapable of perceiving his immediate surroundings with any sort of clarity or accuracy. When the punishment specialist caught sight of the stranger for the first time, his heart cried out like a trumpet. The stranger entered the punishment specialist's field of vision like a lost child.

When the stranger walked past a gray, two-story building, the punishment specialist blocked his forward movement with an exaggerated grin. "You've come."

The punishment expert's tone sent a shock through the stranger's body. Although the stranger could hardly credit his own suspicions, it certainly seemed as if this man were hinting at the existence of a certain memory as he stood before him, his white hair gleaming.

The punishment expert continued, "I've waited for a long time."

This statement did nothing to help the stranger determine what role the man might have played in his past, if any at all. Perhaps he was simply a mote of dust floating across the vast expanse of his memory. The stranger sidestepped past the old man and continued on his way toward March 5, 1965.

Just as the punishment expert had hoped, however, the stranger failed to continue on toward March 5, 1965. Instead, a short and simple dialogue took place between the two men. And because of the punishment expert's warning-which was issued casually and without premeditation-the stranger began to understand his predicament. He discovered that his present course* would not lead him to the desired destination. And thus he turned in the opposite direction. But the fact of the matter was that March 5, 1965, was receding farther and farther from him.