by Yan Lianke
She asked, “Am I beautiful?”
He said, “I want to get divorced.”
She smiled and said, “I want to marry you, and I wouldn’t care even if you were unimaginably poor or ugly.”
He replied, “I can earn a lot of money. I can have every student in the school pay significantly more tuition every semester, and all of that tuition will then belong to us. We’ll have so much money that you won’t even be able to spend it all. We’ll have so much money, you won’t even be able to hide it all.”
She suddenly turned serious and said,
“Hurry up and get divorced. I can’t keep waiting anymore.”
“I’ll get divorced later this year.”
“I can’t wait that long.”
“I’ll get divorced later this month.”
“I can’t wait that long.”
“I’ll get divorced later today.”
“I can’t wait that long!”
“I’ll get divorced as soon as we finish eating.”
She considered for a moment, then nodded. Her hair bun had come undone, and her black hair now covered her shoulders. Then she brushed past him as she went into the kitchen to cook the food. As she walked back and forth naked in the kitchen, cooking him lunch, she resembled a glimmer of sunlight. When they encountered each other, he touched her breasts with his fingertips, but she pulled his hand away and said, “Go get divorced. I can’t keep waiting.” She glanced at him, then continued cooking. In all, she prepared eight dishes and two bowls of soup. She carried these dishes into the courtyard, where she placed them on a reed mat. The sun was shining brightly, so that the mat glowed in the sunlight. Completely naked, she lay down on the mat, her tender skin resembling white jade and her body like an agate statue. Then she carefully picked up each of the dishes on the mat and placed them on her chest, on her breasts, on her belly, and on her thighs—so that he could sit next to her and eat off her own body the banquet she had prepared for him. She also poured him a glass of wine, and handed him both the glass and his chopsticks. Then she repeated,
“Go get divorced. I can’t keep waiting.”
His right hand, holding his chopsticks, trembled slightly. He wanted to use his left hand to stroke her jade-like body, which was covered with white and blue dishes, but discovered that his entire right arm was shaking. He saw her jet-black hair hanging down from her apple-red face to the snow-white reed mat. He saw her black, round eyes right under the tree’s shadow. He saw her nipples peeking out from between several of the dishes. He also saw her porcelain-like skin and her navel, which resembled an eye staring back at him. He licked his lips, swallowed his saliva, then looked up. He looked at the sun overhead and at the sunlit courtyard, and then in a voice as dry as fire he asked, “Do I have to go get divorced right now?”
“I’ll serve you a naked banquet every day.”
Without saying a word, he placed his chopsticks on a plate of grilled fish that was sitting on her belly and immediately headed home to get divorced. He walked quickly and resolutely, but when he went out the gate he turned around and said to her,
“Don’t move. If I don’t bring back a divorce agreement when I return, then you can throw all of these plates and dishes at my head!”
She stared at him from beneath those plates and dishes, and nodded.
IV.
Kong Mingliang was hosting an oath ceremony in the town’s assembly hall, affirming everyone’s determination to have the town be redesignated as a county as quickly as possible. Because this was such a momentous event, the ceremony continued for an entire day and night, and still had not concluded. Eventually, his secretary called him down from the podium. Behind the podium, apart from a curtain, a table, and the auditorium’s lamps, chairs, electrical cables, and some drums, there were also some portraits of leaders and some discarded tissues used by couples who had come for secret sex.
When Mingliang retreated behind the curtain, he saw his brother Mingguang standing next to an enormous portrait of a leader. Mingguang’s face was sallow, and sweat was running down his cheeks like rain. Before Mingliang had a chance to walk over, Mingguang rushed up to him and exclaimed,
“Mingliang, do you want me to kneel down before you?”
Kong Mingguang proceeded to kneel down in front of his brother. He said, “Don’t forget that when you were village chief, this brother of yours wrote your speeches for you. When you transformed the village into a town, this brother of yours wrote the initial drafts of the documents you needed. I wrote hundreds, and even thousands, of pages for you, but now all I want is for you to give me one page in return.” Mingguang knelt as he was saying this, and continued kneeling. Mingliang was so startled that he took several steps backward until he bumped into a table. The corner of the table poked him in the back, awakening him from his daze. He glanced over at the town secretary, who had called him down from the stage, and after waiting for the secretary to step aside, he proceeded to pull his brother to his feet.
“If you have something to say, then get up and say it!”
Mingguang leaned forward and said, “I just need one sheet of paper.”
“What is it?”
“A divorce certificate.”
“Brother, have you gone mad?”
“I’ve found love.” Mingguang became emotional. “I’ve found love. All I ask is that you give me one sheet of paper. If you don’t, then our work to secure this town and its corresponding mayoral seat will have been for nothing. Having a brother as town mayor will have been for nothing. And if tomorrow you were to be appointed county mayor, that will also have been for nothing.”
Mingliang stood there staring at his brother.
“If you can’t even provide me with this one sheet of paper, then what’s the point of having the town be promoted to a county and of you becoming the new county mayor?”
Mingliang stared back at his brother.
“If you can’t even provide me with this one sheet of paper, then what’s the point of having our Kong family produce a county mayor, a city mayor, or even an emperor?”
Kong Mingliang turned pale. He spat on the ground in front of his brother, then wiped his mouth. After glancing down again at his brother kneeling before him, Mingliang gestured toward the town secretary, who was standing a fair distance behind him, and said a few words to him. Then he led his brother out of the auditorium. The sound of people talking onstage was broadcast over loudspeakers to every corner of the auditorium. The sound echoed off the walls like waves bouncing off a riverbank. The two brothers retreated from this noise, with the mayor walking in front and his brother following behind. They quickly proceeded down the town’s main street, then passed through two small alleys. Bathed in sweat, neither of them spoke a single word, as though they were silently going to assassinate someone. When they got home, they didn’t see Cai Qinfang but knew that she had gone out to buy some food—since it turned out that after Little Cui and Mingguang moved out together, Qinfang continued caring for her father-in-law like a maid. Therefore, Mingliang took his brother to the market to look for Qinfang, while at the same time sending someone ahead to find her. As a result, when they ran into Qinfang in front of the town bridge, she was being escorted back.
The bridge was full of people trying to do business. There was shop after shop selling watches and sunglasses. Opera lovers also went to the bridge to sing, expressing their delight through their music. When the mayor and his brother ran into Qinfang on the bridge, the vegetables in her basket were still dripping wet. Vegetables sellers were chasing after her, trying to stuff even more into her basket. They said, “If you take more of our vegetables, it will be as though we are expressing our appreciation to the mayor… . So please, take some of our vegetables!” The mayor and his brother reached the bridge, where countless people crowded around and listened quietly as the mayor said,
“Sister-in-law, you should get divorced. For the sake of the Kong family, you should get divorced.
“…
What is so extraordinary about getting divorced? You should approach it as a business transaction. Is forty thousand yuan enough to buy a divorce?
“… How about eighty thousand?
“… How about a hundred thousand? Would that be enough for this divorce?”
Qinfang didn’t answer. She stared blankly at the mayor, her forehead flushed and covered in sweat. By this point it was already past lunchtime, and the afternoon sun shone down on her face like a fiery red cloth, piercing her eyes. When the people who had crowded around—including those who had just been trying to stuff her basket with more vegetables—realized what the mayor was saying, they began shouting, “A hundred thousand, a hundred thousand! It’s really a hundred thousand!” After they recovered from their initial shock, they all began entreating Qinfang on the mayor’s behalf, saying, “It would definitely be worth it. Definitely worth it… . You would make more from this one transaction than a girl from Otherworldly Delights could make from selling herself for her entire life.” They enviously urged her on. Hearing their encouragement, Cai Qinfang gradually calmed down and looked intently at the mayor without saying a word. The mayor became increasingly anxious and took ten blank sheets of paper out of his pocket. Then he squatted down, placed the papers on his knees, and proceeded to sign them, then handed them to his sister-in-law, saying, “This should do it. If in the future you or your family should need anything, just write what you need on one of these sheets of paper. Since the sheets of paper all carry my signature, their instructions will be carried out.”
Cai Qinfang accepted the stack of signed pages and looked at them. She carefully rolled them up, then said,
“There is something else.”
The mayor said, “Go ahead.”
“After the divorce, I want you to continue calling me Sister. Even after you become county mayor, I want you to continue calling me Sister. When I go out, I want to be able to tell people—my brother Mingliang is the town mayor, county mayor, or city mayor.”
The mayor agreed.
During this entire discussion, Kong Mingguang was standing to the side behind the crowd that had gathered on the bridge. Not until everyone had dispersed and his wife was walking away did he finally come forward and exchange a final look with Cai Qinfang, then he spat on the ground in front of her as he had just done to his brother. At this point Kong Mingliang said, “You should go get divorced. Even though you are the mayor’s brother, you still need to follow the appropriate procedures. Now take your divorce agreement directly to the civil administration board.” He then took out another sheet of paper and, while squatting down and leaning it against his knees, wrote two lines and then signed, “Town Mayor: Kong Mingliang.” After handing the sheet of paper to his brother, he hurried back to the auditorium to continue hosting the oath ceremony.
By the time Kong Mingguang finally had the divorce certificate in hand, it was already late afternoon. This document—which was printed on stiff red paper that was as large as a man’s palm and was stamped with the seal of the town hall office—formally released him and his wife from their matrimonial bonds. He then wanted to marry Little Cui. People were walking into and out of the town hall in a continuous stream, and every office was busy with meetings and telephone calls. People were walking up and down the streets, buying and selling goods, coming and going, friends and strangers, like red and yellow leaves in autumn. Many people nodded or spoke to him, or stopped to chat, but he pretended he didn’t see or hear them. Instead, he rushed to his house in back of the town. Little Cui was still lying naked under the tree, and he was afraid that after the shadows moved the sun would shine directly on her body. Perhaps she would get tired of waiting for him, and would remove the dishes from her body and get dressed. Or perhaps she would still be lying naked under the tree, and when he brought the divorce certificate she would let him continue eating the banquet from her naked body, and after eating they could have earthshaking sex right there in the courtyard. After that, he could take her back to the civil administration board to register the marriage, so that they could then spend the rest of their lives together, spending the rest of their days madly in love.
The town was the same as before. But aside from Mingguang himself, no one knew that in that courtyard there was a girl with skin like white jade lying completely naked on a new tatami mat, with eight dishes and two bowls of soup carefully arranged on her chest, abdomen, and thighs. She had prepared those dishes for him while completely naked, and the courtyard was filled with the delicious steam from the food combined with the sweat fragrance from her body. Like an idiot, the rest of the world wasn’t aware of a thing. Only the two of them knew about this, and between them they enjoyed many secrets and pleasures.
Only Mingguang knew that the pleasure Little Cui was able to give him was one that most men would never have a chance to hear about, much less experience.
Once Mingguang arrived in the village behind the town, where the streets were almost empty, he practically ran home. He pushed open the gate and, waving his divorce certificate, shouted, “We can now get married!” But then he suddenly froze in the entranceway and stood there motionless for the longest time.
Little Cui was not lying naked beneath the tree, nor was she dressed and waiting for him in the courtyard.
The tree’s shadow had retreated to the side of the mat, and the sun was shining down brightly on it. The dishes that had previously been arranged on her body were now scattered all over the ground, and a large number of crows, sparrows, turtledoves, and orioles were busy pecking at the food. There were more than a dozen different kinds of birds, including black, gray, yellow, and red ones, and of each kind there were more than a dozen individual birds. They were all busy eating the vegetables and soup. There were also a couple of wild chickens and peacocks, which no one had seen for many years. It was as if an avian convention were being held right there in the courtyard. The birds that had already eaten their fill were chirping and hopping around, or else were perched on the wall or the tree branches, while the rest were still pecking for food. When the birds heard the gate open, some of them looked at him in surprise, while others ignored him and continued going from one overturned dish to another.
With a sense of foreboding, Mingguang shouted, “Little Cui! Little Cui!” as he made his way through the flock of birds toward the house. When he went inside, he discovered that Little Cui had already left, and her clothing and traveling bag were also missing.
For the next several years, he never succeeded in finding her. It was as if she had never existed, as if they had never been together.
2. TREES
After Little Cui and Mingguang moved out, Kong Dongde rarely spoke. He acted as though he were completely exhausted, and at mealtime he couldn’t even extract any flavor from his fish and meat. The only time he managed to have any energy was when he got angry. His wife brought him every meal and entreated him, “Can’t you eat just one bite?” When she left, she complained to her eldest daughter-in-law, “Why can’t he die? If he died, at least we would be at peace.”
When Little Cui had still been living with them, she was most solicitous of Kong Dongde’s needs. When he wanted dumplings she would make him ingot-like dumplings, and when he wanted fish balls she would make him jade-like fish balls. Once she stuffed some dough with meat filling, carefully fashioned it into the shape of an official seal, then boiled it and served it to him. Another time, she cut the dough into the shape of hundred-yuan bills, then painted them to make them look like actual money. On another occasion, she labored in the kitchen for the longest time, trying to roll some dough into the shape of an official seal, but the dough was too soft and consequently after she boiled it, it came out looking more like a woman’s breast.
When she brought out that bowl of pasta resembling a cross between an official seal and a woman’s breast, he kept staring up at her chest. Little Cui stood there and let him look at her, and only after he had finished did she take the bowl and walk away.
> Eventually, Little Cui and Mingguang had become intimate.
They then moved out of the house together, and Kong Dongde never saw Little Cui again, spending the rest of his days fuming and refusing to eat. On that particular day, he suddenly said to his daughter-in-law Qinfang, “I want to eat dough in the shape of an official seal, but leave the dough on the soft side. Also, cook me several dishes of tender vegetables, so fresh that they are still dripping water.” Qinfang went to the kitchen to knead the dough, and went to the market to buy fresh vegetables. But the moment she left the house, a boy from the village came running in and handed something to Kong Dongde before running back out again. At that point, Kong Dongde was sunning himself in the courtyard and had just dozed off. He took a look at what the boy had handed him and immediately woke up. He became so emotional that he couldn’t speak, and his blood surged to his head. He abruptly stood up, then went inside to take off his old clothing and put on a set of neatly pressed new clothes. Then he walked outside.
