Gao Xingjian - One Man

"Where are they?" Old Tao, who was outside, asked.

"They're squatting in the courtyard."

"Are they wearing clothes?"

"The woman is, but the metal worker is naked."

"Get him to put on his trousers!"

"He's got his trousers on, but he didn't have time to put on a shirt. Weren't we told to catch them in the act? Otherwise they wouldn't own up to it!"

Lu called out to them from the room, "Get them to write confessions and let them go!"

Before long, the same militiaman shouted from outside, "Reporting to Secretary Lu, the man says he can't write!"

"Take down what he says and get his thumbprint on it!" This was Old Tao talking.

"Let's go and get some sleep," Lu said, putting on his shoes, then coming out of the room with him. Lu said to Old Tao, "Let them go, we can't worry ourselves with these sorts of things, let them go."

In the courtyard, the woman was cringing by the wall, with her head down. The metal worker, bare to the waist, came forward to kowtow to Lu, saying, "Secretary Lu, you are a kind man, a kind man, I won't forget you as long as I live!"

"Go home, the pair of you, and stop making fools of yourselves! In future, don't do it again!"

Having said this, Lu and he left the courtyard.

It was before dawn and the air was moist, laden with heavy dew. He thought to himself, Secretary Lu's magnanimity was like a mountain, and had given him an escape route. Life would be bearable as long as it was in the domain of this mountain boss.

From then on, he was greeted whenever he ran into commune cadres on the small street of the county town, and even the policeman from the local police station greeted him. They would pat one another on the shoulder, or give one another a cigarette. The middle school subsequendy opened, and those big children who had not completed primary school were enrolled for two more years of study but counted as junior-middle-school students. He moved from the village into the town primary school, which had been idle for several years. The villagers all addressed him as "Teacher," and doubts and suspicions about his background vanished.

If you can use the smiling face of Buddha to look upon the world, you will be happy, your heart will be at peace, and you will be in nirvana.

You eat and drink with the village cadres, listen to them raving about nothing, bullshitting, and talking about women. "Have you ever touched Maomei?"-"Don't fuckin' talk nonsense, she's a pristine virgin!"-"Come on, have you ever touched her?"-"Hey, hold on, how do you know she's a pristine virgin?"-"Don't keep spouting rubbish, she's been promoted in the militia!"-"So what? You're just bullshitting, come on, out with it!"-"She's a successor to the revolution with the right genealogical background. How about saying something decent!"-"It's you who fuckin' never says anything decent!"-"That's crap, you've had too much to drink!"-"Hey, do you want to have a fight?"-"Come on, just drink up!"

This is life, and you have to drink like this to be happy! And you have to talk about how you managed to get a fir log and had two cupboards made from it. You tell people you are collecting cheap timber at the state price. You've settled here and, sooner or later, you will have to build a house, and building a house requires long-term planning. You will get a vegetable garden going, then build a pig pen, because for a person to get by, he has to keep a pig. Your meaningless chatter and gossip gradually makes you into a normal person, and your existence is no longer conspicuous.

You look at what is on the table. Virtually nothing is left of the big bowls of food, and the group has finished off nine and a half bottles of fiery sweet-potato liquor. You move away from the drunk who has slid under the table and is resting his head on your thigh, push the wooden bench, and stand up. The drunk falls to the floor and starts snoring. Everyone in the room, above the table or on the floor, is a rotten drunken mess with an idiotic smile on his face. It is only the host, Hunchback Zhao, who is sitting upright at the top end of the table, loudly slurping chicken soup. He rightly deserves to be Party secretary of the production brigade, because he can drink a lot but knows how to manage his liquor.

Over the past five days, there had been concerted training for seventy or eighty militia personnel from the villages. On the morning of the first day, they assembled in the commune courtyard, sitting on their bundled bedding, as they listened to instructions from the director of the Revolutionary Committee. Afterward, led by Old Tao, they did target practice on the threshing square, then they laid detonators, let off dynamite, and practiced with explosives under the cliff by the river. Also, on the harvested, drained paddy fields, they practiced squad and platoon assaults, scattering ranks like lightning, as they threw hand grenades, which noisily exploded and sent dirt flying into the air. They had been engaged in heavy action for days, and, on the last night, they were brought to this village. Hunchback Zhao, Party secretary for twenty years, had the credentials and the status for giving a really good feast to these brave stalwarts. Apart from the military-training food subsidy from the commune, there were also ten or so live chickens presented by the villagers. Hunchback's wife wasn't stingy either, contributing an old hen that was still laying, so there were meat and fish dishes, as well as salted vegetables and bean curd.

The heads of the militias were seated at the table in Hunchback's dining hall, the rest were looked after in the granary by the family of the brigade accountant. Those able to dine at Hunchback Zhao's table, naturally, had some standing, and he had been designated by Secretary Lu, as the school representative, to take part in the military training.

"Teacher, you've come from being at the side of Chairman Mao in the capital, you're willing to suffer hardship here, and you're one of our Secretary Lu's people, so don't stand on ceremony. Come and sit in the place of honor at the table!" Hunchback Zhao said.

The women customarily did not sit at the banquet table. Hunchback's wife was in the kitchen cooking, and young Maomei, who was just eighteen and had been promoted to company leader in the militia, was serving the food and running to and from the kitchen. The eight men at the table drank and ate from dusk till midnight. A bottle of liquor just filled a big soup bowl, and this was passed around, for each person to ladle out one scoop. Everyone was given the same amount, no more and no less. After a few rounds, when bottle after bottle had been emptied, he said he couldn't drink as much as everyone else, and, having refused several times, got away without drinking any more.

"That you, a distinguished person from the capital, will consent to drink liquor from the same bowl as us, country bumpkins with mud caked on our legs, is a great honor. Bring Teacher some rice!" Zhao said.

Maomei served him from behind a very big bowl of rice.

Flushed with alcohol, everyone became very talkative, and there was much laughing and joking. From revolutionary rhetoric they turned to talking about women, and started getting crude, so Maomei fled to the kitchen and didn't reappear.

"Where's Maomei? Where's Maomei?"

The men, all with red faces and thick necks, giggled and kept clamoring. Hunchback's wife came out to mediate, "Why do you want Maomei? Don't start getting reckless with your arms and legs just because you're full of alcohol, she's a pristine virgin!"

"Don't pristine virgins think of men?"

"Hmph! Her flesh is not for your lips!"

Everyone then turned to praising Hunchback's wife, saying this and that about her. "She knows how to manage the household and knows how to care for people. Old Zhao is really lucky!"