Chen Xiwo: The Book of Sins

This is a dark world. I can see that, even if you can’t. When I tell you about it, you say, What you see isn’t real. You’re sick. Yes, I am a sick man. I am damned because I see a world you can’t, or won’t, see. Because I see the skull beneath the skin.

But you’re no better off. You’re like a frog that has been caught and thrown into the pot. The water warms up, you’re a bit uncomfortable, but you can take it, and you’re too lazy to move anyway. Then the water starts to boil, and now you want to jump out, but it’s too late. You should have felt the pain much earlier. Then you could have jumped out of the pot and saved your skin.

Is being alive really such a big deal? I’m not sure. What’s the point of living like a contented pig, without a scrap of dignity? In one sense, someone who dares not to live is more deserving of our respect. So I’ll risk pissing you off, to show you life as it really is. Take a good look. I know you really want to, even though you find it offensive. I know you have a longing to be outraged, to suffer. We’re all secret masochists. Take toothache: we know that if we touch a rotten tooth it will hurt more, but we still can’t help probing it with our tongue, just to make sure. We need to be sure, even if it makes the pain worse. In fact, when the pain reaches a peak, it seems to lessen.

There is light even in the darkest of places. I insist that I am an idealist. The fact that I am prepared to offend my readers whatever the consequences to me, proves that. Of course, I can’t compel you to share my idealism. I can only place this book in front of you, each chapter deeper and more terrifying than the last. Before you enter each one, I will ask you: Are you sure about this? You can shut the book now. If you still choose to read on, don’t blame me.

Are you sure about this?

You can shut the book now.

Do you choose to read on?

1

Does it hurt? Have you got a headache? The kind that makes life not worth living. The kind that hits you when you wake up in the morning, even though there was nothing wrong when you went to sleep — no cold, no bad dreams, nothing. You just fell asleep, and when you woke up, there it was. Now your whole day is wrecked. All you can do is blunder through until it’s time to go to bed again.

Then again, a toothache’s much worse. Worse than anything. A toothache grabs hold of you and forces you to do something about it.

I’ve always had toothaches. I blame my mum. All our suffering is genetic, unless you get smashed up by a car. When I was a kid, my mum had a lot of faith in preventative education, but then she was a primary school teacher. She was always really worried about my teeth. She taught me to clean my teeth properly when I was three. ‘You don’t want to get teeth like your mum’s,’ she’d say. She went on and on about the terrible state of her own teeth, like an old woman, but seemed full of confidence about her daughter’s dental health. The trouble was, I could never hold the toothbrush steady, I just jabbed it all over the place. ‘From top to bottom — at a 45-degree angle,’ she’d sigh. ‘Left side, right side, slowly, slowly, brush, brush … slow down, slow down. Remember: patience and perseverance.’

When we all had to do military drills, I stood on the school parade ground and kept thinking back to the training I’d had cleaning my teeth. My teeth earned me a lot of beatings, though they can’t have been that bad — the pain has faded now. I never dared defy my mother. If I ever said ‘no’, she’d jab her long, straight forefinger at me and make me stand with my face to the wall for hours. I just knew I had to avoid toothache, whatever it took.

I was never allowed to eat anything sweet, even candied olives. I remember leaving school on Children’s Day with armfuls of sweets — even the wrappers looked good enough to eat. But as soon as I got home, my mother grabbed them and took them away.

‘People can do without sweet things, but they can’t do without teeth,’ my mother said. ‘And once your teeth rot, you’ve had it.’

There was never any sweetness in my childhood. When I was a child, it was never: ‘The big bad wolf will get you!’ It was always: ‘Your teeth will rot!’ But they rotted anyway.

It started before I was five years old. I can see it clearly now. We were eating dinner — belly pork — when a sharp pain jabbed into my left molar. Cold sweat trickled down my spine, my mouth gaped. It wasn’t the pain so much, it was more the terrifying prospect it opened up. My mother was staring at me in horror, so I shut my mouth and carried on chewing as if nothing had happened. But my mother wasn’t so easily fooled.

‘Open your mouth!’ she commanded. I kept on munching.

‘Open!’ she shouted again, threatening me with her chopsticks. But before I could move a muscle, she threw them down in despair. ‘I’ve told you a thousand times to brush your teeth properly. Properly! But you never listen.’

God knows I tried. I mean, I was worried about my teeth too.

The toothaches which followed were so awful I wanted to die. It was all my mother’s fault, that was obvious, I’d inherited her teeth. The pain was unbearable.

As I lay in the dentist’s chair for the first time I couldn’t see his face behind the mask, all I could see were his eyes swivelling back and forth. I had no idea what he was going to do. I was full of imagined terrors. The instruments clattered in the metal dish as I gripped the arms of the chair.

The drill turned then stopped — a fierce warning — then approached my mouth.

I opened wide, not out of fear, but to please my mother, to ask for her forgiveness. The drill turned in my mouth. It didn’t hurt, it just whined and tickled — it was almost pleasant.

It started to hurt, but only a bit. I could bear the pain. When it hurt more, I dug my fingernails into my palms and put up with it. I stuck my legs out, like a boiled frog, taking it, taking it, until I passed out.

I’ll never forget that nightmare as long as I live. I gradually lost my teeth one after another. They were drilled, filled, and pulled again and again, with every conceivable kind of dental tool, but it was always the same.

‘All I can do is kill the nerve,’ said the dentist, rapping on a sore tooth.

‘That way it won’t hurt,’ said my father. ‘Pain comes through the nerve.’

My father was a medical man too, a doctor. He thought that the science lesson would calm me down, but it only made me worry all the more. Our bodies are covered with a dense mesh of nerves, he said, with blood flowing through countless veins and arteries. As the blood brushed the artery walls, a nerve might crackle into life, like an electric spark. The thought terrified me.

My head was full of weird ideas like this. When my face got red in PE I’d say ‘It’s the blood rushing to my head.’ If someone had a cold, I would explain how the white blood cells were locked in battle at that moment with the invading germs. It didn’t make me any more popular, in fact I think it made my classmates sick. I wasn’t even popular with the teacher.

She was never very sympathetic when I said I was in pain.