by Han Shaogong
If those people hadn't passed by quite so fortuitously, in another few hours Yanwu's blood would probably have been sucked completely dry by mountain leeches.
In the end, none of his displays helped him that much or got his strange talent redirected toward some higher end. Twice when universities were recruiting students from the workers, peasants, and soldiers, Commune Head He usurped Benyi's authority, pushing Yanwu forward as "Re-educable Youth," but as soon as the motion reached the higher-ups he was sent back again. What's more, on the eve of every important holiday, the peasant militia routinely ransacked his house and lectured his brothers: even if it was just a cosmetic exercise, the militia still had to do what the militia had to do.
After I'd been transferred to work in the county, I heard the county public security bureau had hauled him into jail on suspicion of writing reactionary slogans. The reactionary slogans had been discovered at the joint arts performance on National Day, apparently written along the stage just before the performance. I never found out what they actually said. All I knew was the reason the public security bureau grabbed him: at the time he'd been backstage playing the huqin and voice-dubbing very close to the scene of the incident, he had a reactionary family background, he had culture, he had class, he had the strangest talent, so surely he was the person most likely to get up to reactionary shenani-gans under cover of darkness.
What I found surprising was that not only were all Yanwu's worshippers, the men and women, young and old of Maqiao totally unconcerned that their idol had been arrested, they even viewed his being reactionary as something that gave them face. Their response was perfectly calm, as if such an outcome was entirely natural. They'd snort with obdurate contempt whenever someone mentioned a suspect from a neighboring village: him, reactionary? Yanwu could produce handwriting as good as his with his feet, he'd never manage anything more reactionary than stealing a cow or some rice.
To them, being reactionary wasn't just petty thievery and pickpocketing, it wasn't the stuff of which ordinary men were capable. Yanwu was the most qualified to be reactionary, was the classiest reactionary: his riding off, ashen-faced, in the police car was every bit as glorious as a cavalcaded state procession to enroll at the university in the city.
There was no one else who could touch him.
People even came to blows over this business. Someone who'd come to drive pigs from Longjia Sands happened to mention in idle conversa-ion that someone in Longjia Sands had a relative who was also a great reactionary in Xinjiang, who'd been regiment commander a few years previously, who'd had his photo taken with bigwigs like Lin Biao. Maqiao's lads weren't going to stand by and listen to this: What d'you mean regiment commander, they said, we heard he was only a warehouse watchman, that he had no military rank at all. If Yanwu'd been born twenty years earlier, he'd have ranked head and shoulders above corps commander, never mind regiment commander. He'd probably have been a high-ranking official under Chiang Kaishek and right now he'd have been in Taiwan riding in cars everyday.
The man from Longjia Sands said: "Yanwu might be a strange talent, but he's not that much of a strange talent; when he paints Chairman Mao's portrait, the head's too big and the body's too thin, he looks like Oldie Wang from the supply and marketing cooperative."
"You reckon Yanwu can't paint a likeness?" the Maqiao people said. "He's reactionary, so 'course he paints like one."
"How'd his painting make him a reactionary?"
"You haven't seen him painting dragons, he can paint one in the blink of an eye."
"There's nothing special about painting dragons, any odd-job painter can knock one out."
"He can teach, too."
"Can't Li Xiaotang teach, too?"
"Oldie Li can't hold a candle to him."
A Maqiao lad gave an example: when Yanwu explained the word "neck," the explanation took a good ten minutes. What was a "neck"? It was the cylinder of body tissue in between head and shoulders containing hundreds of blood vessels that could shrink down and turn this way and that. Pretty good, hey? How much learning could Li Xiaotang show off? A neck is a neck, Oldie Li would just give his own neck a couple of pats and leave it at that. What kind of teaching was that?
"Way I see it," said the man from Longjia Sands, "I'd rather have a couple of pats."
Long and hard they argued: over the question of whether or not Yanwu was in fact a strange talent, over the question of whether he couldn't paint a likeness of Chairman Mao or whether he deliberately didn't paint a likeness, over the question of whether or not he was actually reactionary. Then the Longjia Sands man trod accidentally on someone's foot, the victim flared up into a temper and threw tea in his face quick as a flash. If there hadn't been people nearby to restrain them, there could've been a major incident.
As I said before, the word in Mandarin for "strange" is also "censure(d)." The phrase "strange talent" always made me secretly uneasy, made me feel that no good would ever come of it. And the public security bureau and Maqiao people ended up proving this point. When presented with reactionary slogans, they suspected neither Yanwu's same-pot brother Yanzao nor other bad elements from neighboring villages, principally because neither Yanzao nor anyone else in the area could match Yanwu's strange talent. With a feeling this was perfectly justified, perfectly natural, not even worth thinking about or seeking agreement on, they defined cleverness as the enemy, brilliance as treachery-even though they secretly worshipped cleverness and brilliance. They weren't trying to eradicate reactionary slogans, as such; it was more the case that they'd long sensed that the abnormality represented by the phrase "strange talent" would sooner or later need locking up. Despite his life-long displays of cleverness, Yanwu had unfortunately never scrutinized the implications of this word, its critical undertones in Maqiao dialect; he'd been so pleased for so many years with his own strange talent, with how he'd kept in with cadres and his fellow villagers, with how he'd managed his own fate like the strange talent he was, that he'd got a little bit over-optimistic.
Whether he woke up to this in jail, I couldn't say. All I know is that he remained pretty distinctive whilst in jail, he didn't let pass any opportunities to exercise his strange talent. There, where even belts were confiscated, he actually succeeded in attempting suicide. For several nights, he rolled around wildly on the floor clutching his stomach, yelling and groaning, until he got the doctor to come and gave him an injection. He secretly hoarded the injection bottle until finally he smashed it and swallowed the pieces.
Tears streaming down his face, his mouth filled with blood and he fell into a dead faint. The guards sent him to the hospital for emergency treatment, but when the doctor heard he'd swallowed fragments of glass, he said even a fluoroscopy wouldn't be able to make out where they were and an operation was of even less use, so there was no hope of saving him. As soon as the two little convicts who'd been ordered to carry him on their backs to the hospital heard this, they burst into piercing wails. The sound of their crying brought an old man from the hospital kitchens over: luckily, he'd had a bit of experience in such matters and suggested they pour leeks down into him. Unchopped leeks, he said, lightly boiled then poured into the stomach would wrap round and tie up glass fragments before they were finally shat out. Somewhat skeptical, the doctors did as he said, but were then amazed to see the balls of leeks in his faeces unroll one after another to reveal the glass fragments inside.
*Reincarnation
: The bloody business of butchering pigs, cows, and the like is called "reincarnation" in Maqiao, a turn of phrase that makes it sound like a loftily noble undertaking. The old-timers said that domestic animals had fates, too, that they'd sinned in previous lives and were paying for it in this life, that they suffered more than any other creature, that by killing them you were letting them be reincarnated earlier, releasing them from their sea of bitterness, that it was a deed of great charity. By this reckoning, butchers could slaughter away, as if right were on their side, and diners could merrily chew and munch,
their mouths running with grease, their hearts fully at ease.
Language can change the way people feel: altering a word can mitigate, even erase, the pity that scenes at a slaughterhouse evoke, until blood-letting stimulates nothing but blank, unmoved stares.
After Benyi gave up his post as Secretary, he made a living for several years as a reincarnater. Right up until his health began to fail, as long as he could still get out of bed, all it took was for him to hear the sound of a pig squealing and, quite uninvited, he'd go and stick his nose in, having a go at this person's ancestors, this person's mother-no one at the slaughterhouse would escape a tongue-lashing. He was addicted to wielding that knife of his, was pretty nifty at it too: he was the most famous butcher around here during those years, never needed anyone to catch the pig, or tie it up for him, didn't matter how big it was, or how truculent, after just one look he knew exactly what to do. Catching it unawares, he'd suddenly raise his knife, and then, as if with borrowed strength, overcome the beast with great economy of effort. One hand would grasp the pig's ear, the other would bury itself in the skin on the underside of the pig's head-meanwhile, the knife had long since plunged into its chest, turning once, deep inside, before being briskly drawn out. The pig was flat on the ground before it'd had time to squeal. Then, chuckling away to himself, he'd wipe a few bloody, smudgy marks on the quivering pile of flesh, slowly, calmly, wiping the knife clean.
This was called slaughtering on the run, or mute slaughtering- something he was a real pro at.
Sometimes, when he'd had a bit too much to drink, his hand would slip, one knife-stroke wouldn't get the job done and the floored pig would jump up and run crazily about. He'd glare furiously, all the veins in his neck throbbing with pent-up rage, chasing about the place, waving the bloody knife. At times such as these, he'd always be cursing, "Look at you run around the place, you show-off, you, think it's your lucky day, don't you, think you've got the upper hand…"
People didn't generally have a clue who he was cursing.
*Jasmine-Not-Jasmine
:
• It's going to rain, it doesn't look as if it will (concerning the weather).
• I'm full, I'm full, one more bowl and then I'll be full (concerning eating).
• I reckon the bus isn't going to come, you'd best keep waiting (concerning waiting for the bus).
• This newspaper article is well written, I can't understand a single word (concerning the newspaper).
• He's an honest man, he just doesn't talk honestly (concerning Zhongqi).
Anyone who came to Maqiao had to get used to this kind of double-talk: ambiguous, vague, slippery, vacillating, first this, then that. This rather unsettling way of talking was what Maqiao people called "jasmine-not-jasmine." I found out that Maqiao people weren't generally unsettled by this, didn't even find anything strange about it. It appeared they would quite happily produce statements that weren't really statements, that had no basis in logic. They weren't used to the principle of noncontradiction, it seemed. If sometimes they couldn't avoid speaking a little more clearly than usual, they regarded it as a hard and thankless task, a concession to the outside world which they would make while knowing it was beyond them. I could only suspect that they basically felt double-talk came more naturally to them.
It was because of this that I never really figured out how it was that Ma Zhongqi died. Here is a summary of what people said: Zhongqi was a bit greedy, but he wasn't that greedy; he was always very above-board, it was just that he was a bit underhanded; he'd never had things that rough, it was just that he had bad luck; his wife's illness was obviously curable, it was a pity they couldn't find the right medicine; he always acted like a cadre wherever he went, it was just that he never looked like one; he built a new house, sure, but it wasn't his after he'd built it; fifth old Huang treated him best, it was just that he never helped him out; he was respected, but he didn't have speech rights; it would be unfair to say he stole things, but he walked out of the butcher's with a piece of meat he hadn't paid for; he took the yellow-vine brew himself, suicide doesn't fit the facts. After all this, was anything clear to me? Or was nothing at all clear?
I know generally that for Zhongqi, who'd long nursed a sickly wife, life was very difficult and he never had enough money to buy meat. On the Double Ninth Festival, unable to help himself, he stole a piece of meat from the butcher's, was publicly arrested, and his self-criticism was stuck on a wall. He probably thought he couldn't take the shame and on the next day drank yellow-vine brew. It was that simple. But Maqiao people can't explain simple things clearly and precisely. They have to slip into an ever more ambiguous "jasmine-not-jasmine" way of talking. This can only prove that Maqiao people are unable, or unwilling, to accept a fact this simple. Perhaps they feel that outside every factual link lie yet more facts beyond explanation and clarification; thrown into confusion, crushed and scattered by all these blurred facts, their own remarks can only lapse into irrelevant nonsequitur.
Throughout his life, Zhongqi wrote innumerable "agreeds." The final one was written, through force of habit, on his own self-criticism for the theft of the meat and stuck on the wall for all to see. In the self-criticism, he cursed himself for being a thief, a shameless rogue, a reactionary element, ashamed to stand before Party and government and ancestors. Some of what he wrote was rather exaggerated in tone, indicative of the depths of his terror at the time. He'd spent his life knowing too much of other people's secrets, knowing of too much widespread deception and villainy, while he himself remained law-abiding all his life, not daring to take even a stalk of rice straw that hadn't been allocated to him. And what good did his honesty ever do him? None at all. He was cast aside by a group of people of whom he utterly disapproved, watched wide-eyed as they got rich while he fell on increasingly hard times. He couldn't even buy pork dripping, let alone afford two spare ribs to rub together. Ought he to have changed? As I imagine the scene, he walked into the butcher's, felt around in his own empty, empty pockets, breathed in the oppressive merriment of the festival atmosphere, and finally decided to make a new start with a piece of meat. Unfortunately, he didn't get any meat, only endless public humiliation and censure.
What should he have done then?
Should he have gone on being honest, or gone on being dishonest?
If he was standing before me right now and asked me such a question, I would probably hesitate a while. I would find it very difficult to give a straightforward reply. At this point, I expect I would secretly feel a haze of "jasmine-not-jasmine" creep irresistibly over me.
*Kuiyuan
: In 1968,1 helped out in the making of a survey. A mass association called "Forever Eastwards" in the CCP Hunan Provincial Party Committee organ, wanted to expel two cadres from the Provincial Party Committee. Firstly, though, they had to carry out a thorough political investigation of all these cadres' relatives. So as to avoid being attacked by the opposing faction, they agreed to accept public scrutiny and invited the Red Guards to send someone along to help out with the survey. And so it was that I managed to get onto a cadre inspection team while I was still barely out of diapers, that I wangled my way onto this cushy number, onto a publicly funded pleasure trip around the whole country.
First of all we went to a number of prisons in Beijing, Jinzhou, and Shenyang to find out about a male cousin of one of the cadres. The cousin used to be a broadcaster at an important broadcasting station, but after mispronouncing the name of the important Communist Party member "An Ziwen" as that of the important GMD member "Song Ziwen" during a live broadcast in the 1950s, he was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years, and had been serving out his sentence in the above-mentioned prisons. I discovered, to my surprise, that however many appeals he wrote, all his hearers felt it was entirely right and proper that he should pay for one single written character with fifteen years of his life. By the time we spoke to him, he'd thought things through for himself, was full of apologies to the Party and to Chairman Mao, and no lo
nger felt his own sentencing was overly harsh. "Government," he addressed me-me! all of fifteen-year-old me-"I won't appeal again, I'll concentrate on reforming my thinking."
As I walked out from under the electric wire fencing and high walls, back to the hotel where we were staying, a sudden terror rose up in me: a nameless terror toward "An," "Song," and all other such words.
Round upon round of gunfire from armed struggles resounded outside the hotel; everywhere there were street barricades, bullet holes, and gunpowder smoke; convoys of vehicles bearing yelling, screaming combatants with guns loaded and at the ready would often whistle past on the street, waking the people in the hotel up to violent starts. In Liaoning in 1968, the "Red Company" was locked in battle with the "Revolutionary Company," while the "Mao Zedong Thought" faction was encircling the "Mao Zedongism" faction. A brutal battle being fought near the station brought all the trains to a stop, trapping me and three colleagues in the hotel for a full two weeks. All this is perhaps very hard for later generations, like my daughter, for example, to understand. In the eyes of those who were born later, in terms of thinking, theory, conduct, interests, expressions, dress, or language there was nothing much to choose between those fighting on opposite sides, beyond the slight linguistic differences between, for example, "Red Company" and "Revolutionary Company"; in other circumstances, they would have done business or worked together, studied for diplomas or played the stock-market, would have done all sorts of things together. So how did these endless bouts of furious hand-to-hand fighting come about?
