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

"That's ridiculous," said my wife. "Yesterday you lost a pair of Nikes, and today the boy's are gone. Ridiculous."

"Why make such a fuss over it?" I asked. "If Mother heard you, there'd really be trouble."

Pulling Great-Grandmother's teeth constituted a unique page in the history of my life. A drizzle was blowing that morning. You really couldn't call it rain-it was like rain and like mist but also like wind. The sky secreted a viscous historical atmosphere. The plot in our house got quickly under way. Only Great-Grandmother, who was the object of the plot, was left in the dark. We were prepared, nobody said a word. There was a sense of taking fate in our hands and of participating in the excitement of a historical mission, and there was the exhilaration of committing a crime. This is the way humanity commonly approaches history. Great-Grandmother was sitting at her window, easy as a dream, like an uneventful period in a historical record. All around her, we were motionless and silent, waiting for the signal to stand up and cast the shadow of ambush onto the ground.

Around noon, Fifth Uncle came to the house. He looked nervous and worried. Fifth Uncle called for Father. Standing under the eaves and facing Father, he said, "We can't get any anesthetic; it's too tightly controlled by the hospital."

Father's face darkened, looking like the moss on an ancient brick.

"Are we going to pull them or not?" asked Fifth Uncle.

Father said nothing. Facing Great-Grandmother's little garret, Father lowered his head and said, "Grandmother, you will just have to suffer."

It was damp everywhere. The accumulated dust swelled. For a long time, I was unable to wipe away the gray streaks from this part of my memory. All afternoon, my uncles sat in the central room, drinking. The table full of wine had been prepared for Great-Grandmother, so the old lady came downstairs especially early. She was all smiles. She couldn't see well, her eyes hidden behind an inauspicious shroud. Normally, her face wore a somewhat confused expression. As soon as Great-Grandmother sat down, my uncles toasted her. My father said, "Grandmother, you will be one hundred soon. May you outlast South Mountain and be more prosperous than the Eastern Sea."

Great-Grandmother laughed. "I can't live much longer," she said happily, holding her glass. "If I live much longer, I'll become a demon." Then she drank down the wine.

The faces of my uncles darkened, looking perplexed and alarmed. The wine glasses in their hands appeared heavy; they hesitated. Fortunately, Great-Grandmother couldn't see.

I have no recollection about the moment of silence that followed. Perhaps it was just a few minutes, or perhaps another layer of dust had settled on Great-Grandmother's shoulders-it has never been clear to me. At the end of that moment of silence, Father and his twelve brothers got up from their seats and knelt before Great-Grandmother. Her lips were slightly parted, and every tooth seemed to smile. Great-Grandmother said, "Get up, get up, my darlings, we haven't observed that custom in ages." The dark shapes of her darlings stood up. Fifth Uncle held a rope, Ninth Uncle gripped a pair of pliers, and Seventh Uncle held a redwood tray. They pounced on her and held her fast. In a few minutes, Great-Grandmother's teeth were all lying on the tray; the roots of her teeth were covered with bloody shreds of flesh. I stared at Great-Grandmother's teeth; in them, I saw humanity's direct intuition of time. It is our fear of time that makes us draw a link between teeth and their loss. Seventh Uncle handed the redwood tray to me. The thought vanished, and I can't remember much. Later, I was unable to recall what I was thinking at that time. All I remember is the swift, violent, harsh, and painful psychological experience. Later, I smelled the dynamite-the odor of the dynamite burned like ice. I was bitten by the odor.

Tenth Uncle said, "Elder Brother, I can't stop the bleeding. Should we take her to the hospital?"

Father said, "We can't. The doctor will know what happened as soon as he sees her."

Great-Grandmother had collapsed on the brick floor, her lips deeply sunken. Teeth are funny things. When they are there, they can't be seen, but as soon as they are gone, the face changes beyond recognition. Great-Grandmother's hundred-year-old blood spread around her lips and flowed more disorderedly than time. Great-Grandmother lay on the floor, breathing heavily. Her throat gurgled and creaked like oars. Her skin was slowly losing color and resembled traditional rice paper.

Ninth Uncle said, "She's fading fast."

Fifth Uncle said, "Get her some water. What are you doing standing around?"

Seventh Uncle tried several times; he lifted her head and shook it several times. It was no good, the water wouldn't go down.

At that moment, my son started crying in the west wing. I ran over and asked my wife, "What's going on? Can't you even take care of the child?"

My wife said, "If he wants to cry, what can I do? What's all that racket in there?"

I said, "It's none of your business. You are not to come out unless I call you."

While coaxing our son, my wife said, "Being in your house is like being in the eighteenth level of hell. One can barely breathe here."

I frowned and asked, "Are you finished?"

Father said, "Take down a door; the floor is too cold."

A bunch of old men scrambled to lay the very old lady on the door. I walked over and lifted her eyelids. The world of Great-Grandmother's life lay shrouded in darkness behind her cataracts. Softly, I called, "Old Ancestor, Old Ancestor." Her head slid from my elbows to my hands.

Her thirteen grandchildren all knelt at the same time. Their bowed backs made their kneeling look pious.

Great-Grandmother was laid out on the lid of her coffin. The coffin was at least thirty years old. Many familiar and unfamiliar people came to offer their condolences. They walked down the dark, dank passageway to bring funeral money and to eat a mouthful of the noodles prepared to celebrate Great-Grandmother's birthday. My father and his twelve brothers as well as the thirty-seven male members of my generation took turns burning funeral money. The ashes floated all around my house, and the smell of death from the money swirled around the people who walked through the house. The smell of death was so alive. Even the rats came out of their holes and skittered away, seeing that no one was paying attention.

Kneeling before Great-Grandmother, I felt my heart go numb. Being the son of her eldest grandson, I caught a relieved look in the eyes of my father's generation. They buried Great-Grandmother's teeth separately, eliminating the chances of her becoming a demon after death. I tried to imagine what Great-Grandmother would look like as a demon, but my imagination could not break through conventional human patterns and styles, and that left me disappointed. Several times, the flames from the burning funeral money painfully licked my fingertips. I knew that money from the underworld could burn the fingers just as the money from this world was ice-cold and thus not easily touched. Father cooked the noodles, one pot after another. Everyone from the village was there-not sure of what he or she wanted to see. Many of the people removed the paper from Great-Grandmother's face. Her mouth was ghastly looking. Death always fixes the mouth of the dead at the worst moment, making death seem hideous. People came and went, each one about the same. They came, striding over the threshold into our Ming-dynasty house; leaving, they strode over the threshold and down the ancient alleyway to leave the Ming dynasty. Everyone should have had this hallucination from the moral point of view, against which the powerful explosions were powerless.

Putting Great-Grandmother into the coffin a little early was a clear expression of how flustered my father and uncles were. The coffin housed my great-grandmother. A coffin is like a classic text that records the mysteries of life and death. My father said to us, "Hold a three-day wake for Grandmother's soul." When Father pronounced the word wake he touched the coffin. My heart jumped when I heard the word. What is a wake? In my imagination, a soul is more alive than life itself. This way of thinking left me worried, but I couldn't say it out loud, for that would spell disaster. The strip of yellow cloth from my son's clothes became a banner fluttering before my great-grandmother's soul. She relied on that vigorously waving banner to make her way with ease through the underworld where ghosts, big and small, could do nothing.