The Explosion Chronicles

by Yan Lianke

  The girl named Fragrance worked at Zhu Ying’s side like a secretary, grouping all of the girls’ names together based on the number of blossoms they had been assigned. As Fragrance was copying down these names, her wrist began to ache, and she could smell a faint plum and osmanthus scent coming from the registry. Later, her wrist became red and swollen, as that faint plum and osmanthus scent became increasingly pungent, and the entire room came to be covered in flower blossoms and petals. She paused for a moment to look at the petals on the floor and noticed that Zhu Ying, who had not rested for three days and three nights, had fallen asleep at the table amid all of those forms and photographs, as her breath wafted over like flowing water. Fragrance looked in the direction that breath was coming from, and saw that a lock of black hair on Zhu Ying’s forehead and face was gradually turning gray. First it was just a few strands, but then it was an entire clump, and furthermore it appeared as though the hair was simultaneously drying out—as though a clump of white hemp was on her forehead, below which her face quickly aged.

  Fragrance immediately stood up from the table. The pen she was holding fell, striking the flower petals on the ground.

  “Miss Zhu,” she cried out. “Quick, wake up!

  “… If you really get old and ugly, will Mayor Kong ever come back to you? And if he doesn’t come back to you, will you be able to make good on everything you have promised us?” Fragrance initially said this in a gentle voice, but she became increasingly alarmed, until finally, just as she about to shake Zhu Ying awake, Zhu Ying slowly opened her eyes, lifted her head, and looked at Fragrance and around at the registration books that filled the room. She rubbed her eyes, smiled, then tucked the clump of gray hair behind her ear. Looking at Fragrance under the light, she asked,

  “How many days have you not slept?

  “… Do you know how many five-blossom nannies we have in Beijing alone?

  “… Fragrance, Kong Mingliang is about to fall from power and will soon beg me to take him back.”

  As Zhu Ying was saying this, she stood up from the table. She wanted to get a drink of water and say something else to Fragrance, who was standing right in front of her, but as soon as she saw Fragrance’s body and face her mouth immediately tightened and her smile disappeared. She saw that Fragrance—who had been working with her all these years, tending to the vocational school’s admissions, finances, records, expenditures, and training—must be in her thirties, and yet her face didn’t have a trace of wrinkles or even a single mole. Instead, she was still a tender girl, with a thin waist and firm breasts. People could see at a glance that under her clothes her breasts were so firm that she didn’t need to wear a bra.

  Zhu Ying asked, “My God, how is it that you are so well preserved?”

  Fragrance said, “Can you really arrange for the mayor to fall from power?”

  “… Little Sis, can you tell me how I can stay young like you? If you do, I’m willing to give you half of everything I own.

  “… I can even give you two-thirds of everything I own.

  “… Either this month or next month, our meritorious service will be completed and Kong Mingliang can die at my feet. Afterward, what had previously belonged to the Kong clan will instead belong to the Zhu clan—which is to say, it will belong to me. When that day comes, what will you want?

  “… I’ll give you whatever you want. As long as you tell me how you keep your face so wrinkle-free and your breasts so firm, I’ll give you anything you want. But you must tell me, how can a woman stay forever young? How can she keep her breasts firm when she is in her fifties, sixties, seventies, or even eighties? How can she keep her face wrinkle-free and prevent her hair from going gray?”

  Then Zhu Ying poured Fragrance a glass of water, and as she was taking it to her she kicked those useless maid records and flower petals lying all over the floor. After she put the glass in front of Fragrance, she asked her again, and as she was waiting for an answer Fragrance stared back at her with a frightened and skeptical expression.

  “Can you really prevent Explosion from being promoted to a provincial-level metropolis?

  “… If Mayor Kong returns to your side and becomes your husband again, will you give me a bigger and better reward than Little Qin and Ah Xia?

  “… If I don’t want anything else, can you really arrange for me to see the mayor’s younger brother, Mingyao, again? Can you arrange for us to get married and live happily ever after?”

  At this point, as everything fell quiet, the window lit up. The red silk window curtains of this fifth-floor office were covered in the fresh scent of spring flowers and of spring. Drifting in through the curtain, some willow catkins and poplar blossoms were floating through the air and fell to the ground with a swishing sound, with the force of raindrops. The ultralight catkins landed on the registration book listing the nannies by number of flowers they were assigned and the names of the men they had snared, but since the writing in the registration book was smudged and illegible, the room was therefore filled with the smell of salty tears. Furthermore, a catkin happened to fall on the name of a department director from Beijing—and the name and phone number, which were both a mixture of ink and tears, disappeared altogether. As all of this was unfolding, Zhu Ying stood there stiffly, watching the ink from the names and telephone numbers disappear, as her hair turned completely gray.

  “What’s happening? What’s happening?” Fragrance asked repeatedly as she stared at Zhu Ying’s gray hair, then noticed that several dozen new wrinkles had appeared on Zhu Ying’s face. It was as if Zhu Ying had aged precipitately, and even her back had gotten hunched over. “With respect to the question of whether or not Explosion will be promoted to the status of a metropolis directly under the jurisdiction of the central government, Kong Mingliang already knows who will be voting and he is confident that he can guarantee that at least half of the experts will vote in Explosion’s favor.” As she mumbled to herself, Zhu Ying’s complexion turned sallow and pale, and sweat poured down her face until the entire room was filled with her sweat and her look of desolation. She stood motionless, looking down at the registration book with the names of those nannies and those men that had not yet gotten completely blurred away. After a while, once her tears had begun to subside, Zhu Ying licked her dry, cracked lips and then went over to open the curtains that had not been opened for several days, letting sunlight shine in on that room full of tears and desolation.

  “What day is today?

  “… Is it morning or afternoon?

  “… Does the train for Beijing leave this evening at eight ten or at nine thirty?”

  As she asked these questions, Zhu Ying looked out the window. In the courtyard of the vocational school, the sun was shining down on the lawn and on the surrounding buildings like a formfitting gold veneer. The lawn was as large as a ball field, and the green grass imported from Europe was growing rapidly, creating a thick carpet. There were many pigeons and peacocks wandering across the lawn, and the girls who had not yet been sent to Beijing all came out of their rooms. Some of them were sunning themselves on bamboo mats, others were lounging on bedsheets that they had placed on the ground, while others were sitting there putting on their makeup. Makeup cases, a set of eyebrow pencils, and hand mirrors were sparkling in the sunlight. There were also a couple of beauticians who specialized in placing tattoos on girls’ breasts, backs, wrists, and ankles, and even their private regions. The beauticians were in their forties and were wearing white lab coats, and because there was ample sunlight, they took their table out into the courtyard. They covered the table with a white surgical sheet and told the girls who wanted tattoos to lie down naked on top of it. Then they placed the box of tattooing equipment next to the girls, and, to help the girls cope with the pain—though in reality it wasn’t actually that painful—a towel was rolled up so that the girls could bite on it as they lay there and looked at all of the photographs of tattoos hanging in front of them.

  It was not just one or two gir
ls who wanted tattoos, but rather one or two dozen. They loitered in front of the tattoo table, sunning themselves as they waited their turn, like naked beauties on the beach. Zhu Ying opened the window and looked out at the beautiful girls on the lawn. She saw those half-naked and fully naked nannies waiting for their tattoos. She saw that one girl walking under the window had taken off her shirt and was wearing a pair of athletic shorts and sneakers, and resembled a tornado as she walked past. However, on her back where her bra straps would have been, she did not have a butterfly or flower blossom tattoo, like the other girls, but rather had a tattoo of a book. Zhu Ying could see the book’s title as clearly as if it were a flower tattooed on her own fingernails.

  The book’s title consisted of four words: New Unabridged Chinese Dictionary.

  Zhu Ying had no idea why this girl would want to have a dictionary tattooed on her back. Watching the girl pass beneath the window, Zhu Ying noticed that several Chinese characters were falling out of that dictionary, like tiny black beans. She could smell the girl’s perfume as well as the sharp odor of beans. After the girl passed by, the pigeons, peacocks, orioles, swans, geese, and sparrows on the lawn all flew over and began pecking at those beans and at those Chinese characters that had fallen out of the dictionary tattooed on the girl’s back. Only then did Zhu Ying turn around, after standing there biting her lip, and say in a soft voice,

  “Fragrance, we don’t have any other alternative. You should take these eight hundred students from our women’s vocational school and escort them to the capital. You should book all available seats on this evening’s eight-thirty train.

  “… You should use every one of these eight hundred girls on the academicians, professors, and experts listed in the second flower registration book. Tell the girls that whoever manages to snare an expert or a professor will be awarded five or eight hundred thousand yuan, and if they manage to bed an academician they will be awarded at least one million or one-point-two million yuan. If this academician turns out to be one of the organizers of the voters, the girl who snares him will be awarded at least two million yuan.

  “… I, however, can’t leave Explosion,” Zhu Ying explained. “If anyone were to see me leave and go into the capital, Kong Mingliang would immediately know what I was up to.

  “… You may think of this as my act of saving you. But at the same time, it’s actually true that I’m saving you. You should take eight hundred girls to the capital tonight, and if you don’t have enough you can also take the girls who are currently working here as cooks and grounds sweepers. As long as they’re under thirty and are reasonably attractive, then you should have them all work the streets and alleys of Beijing.

  “… You have to trust me when I tell you that the hardest men in the world to deal with are those officials. On the other hand, the easiest to deal with are those students who will go on to become professors and experts. Even if you give them a woman in her forties whose beauty is already fading, they will still hug her tight. You have to trust me, because I’m confident that within a few days after you reach Beijing you’ll surely be able to snare at least half of the men on that list.

  “… I’m begging you, and if you need to lose your virginity then do so, but as long as you can snare at least half of the men on that list, then Kong Mingliang will be mine. At that point, Explosion will belong to me, and to all of us women. When the time comes, not only will I give you everything that I currently own, I also promise to arrange for you to see my elder brother-in-law, Kong Mingyao. I promise to secretly arrange for him to like you, and even fall in love with you. That way, the two of you can get married and spend the rest of your lives together.

  “… Fragrance, I’m begging you to trust me this one time, or at least trust me when I say that I promise I can arrange for you to see Kong Mingyao, and that I can arrange for Mingyao to like you, love you, marry you, and spend the rest of his life with you.”

  2. SECOND ACT OF TRANSFORMATION

  I.

  Half a month after Fragrance went to the capital with eight hundred girls and the list of the names of men they were supposed to snare, the group of 1,110 experts began to cast their votes. The choice was between Explosion and that other city on the southern coast, to decide which of them would be elevated to the status of a metropolis under the direct rule of the central government. The final decision was in the hands of those experts. Originally, all of the delegations from Explosion to the capital projected that 80 percent of the experts would vote for Explosion, but in the end Explosion received only 30 percent of the votes, the other city on the southern coast received 40 percent, and the remaining 30 percent of the votes were abstentions.

  Thirty percent of the experts had thrown away their right to vote as though it were a dirty tissue.

  The day before the vote, Mingliang returned to Explosion from Beijing. He had already met with all of the officials and experts he needed to see, and had given away his secret extravagant gifts. The experts representing the public out of a sense of public duty should have voted for Explosion for the sake of the future of the nation’s development. After all, over the preceding decade the entire nation’s reform policy had had the distorting effect of exacerbating the wealth gap between the rich south and the poor north, and if northern China was going to achieve prosperity, then Beijing would have to elevate Explosion to the status of a provincial-level metropolis. Mingliang knew, therefore, that Explosion’s promotion was already virtually guaranteed and that the experts’ votes were merely a legal formality.

  The last time he went to visit and thank one of the officials who would decide which city would be promoted, the old man was sitting quietly in his courtyard. The old man asked,

  “Why have you come to Beijing, rather than staying in Explosion?

  “… Don’t you realize that it is taboo for you, as city mayor, to be here in Beijing?

  “… The one place where you should be right now is in Explosion. You are Explosion’s grass roots, its countryside, and its mountain region. If the city were to have a disaster, such as a devastating flood or earthquake, you should be in the headquarters at the front lines of the disaster zone.”

  On the logic that once the necessary preparations have been completed one can wait for things to take their course, Mingliang left several deputy mayors and other delegates behind in Beijing, while he himself took several secretaries back to Explosion. He did this not in order to be able to send commands from a disaster zone in the event of a flood or an earthquake, but instead merely because he was concerned that the possibility of a natural disaster like an earthquake, a flood, or a tornado would lead these experts to conclude that Explosion, on account of its geographic location and its natural conditions, was not suitable for promotion. Mingliang decided that it would be fine if he simply waited in his city government building for the experts to cast their votes. Accordingly, on June 1, Children’s Day, he told some workers to bring out a tea table from the city government’s tearoom and place it beneath the tallest grape trellis in the government building courtyard. He told them to bring out his favorite wicker chair and place on the table a red telephone connecting directly to the heart of the central government. In a tea box beneath the table, he placed two cell phones, the numbers of which very few people knew. Then he dismissed all of the secretaries and workers, steeped himself a cup of Longjing tea that he didn’t intend to drink, and proceeded to sit there with his eyes half closed, waiting for either the red telephone or one of the cell phones in the tea box to ring.

  Eventually, one of the cells phones rang.

  It was ten in the morning when Mingliang sat down there to wait, and at eleven one of the cell phones rang—half an hour earlier than he had expected. As he was reaching to answer it, he didn’t stand up and instead scooted his chair forward. But from when he picked up the phone to when he put it down, his expression quickly changed from excitement to a look of icy calm. The call was from a deputy mayor speaking from Beijing’s Shangri-La Hotel, and
the first thing he said was, “Mayor, you mustn’t get angry …” The last thing he said before hanging up was, “I’ll definitely figure out why things changed course. Don’t worry, I’ll definitely figure out how things went wrong.” After hanging up, Mingliang wanted to throw the cell phone to the ground, but instead he very slowly placed it on the table. Then it occurred to him that the other cell phone should be ringing as well, and in fact it did. He assumed that it must be his administrative secretary, Cheng Qing, calling, and in fact it was. Her voice was muffled and mysterious, as though there were someone next to her listening in. She not only pressed the phone tightly to her ear but also used her other hand to cover her mouth, making her voice sound even more mysteriously soft.

  “You know, there were only four hundred and ten votes in favor of Explosion, while there were eight hundred and twenty fucking votes against.

  “… This breakdown of votes in favor and against is identical to that of the vote when you and Zhu Ying were running for village chief. Do you belief in karma? Do you know where the problem lies? At that time, you should have failed but didn’t, but now that same evil woman has been responsible for your downfall!