Hard Like Water

by Yan Lianke

  Meanwhile, as the sun rose in the east and illuminated the four seas, my spirit welled up in my chest. I saw the dawn’s rays lighting up the sky, the mountains and rivers full of love, and the road of socialism stretching ahead—as we proceed forward, hand in hand, onward and onward, onward and onward.

  2. A Major Explosion (I)

  The next morning, I got up and went to meet Hongmei.

  My fighting spirit was soaring, and my passion was overflowing. I proceeded briskly down the road toward her, crushing the roadside forests and mountains beneath my feet.

  Chenggang was a journey of about seventy-nine li from the county seat, of which sixty li was through the mountains. A long-distance bus typically needed about an hour and a half to traverse this distance, and if the bus was on the slow side it could take more than two hours. I assumed Hongmei would have breakfast and then take the bus, meaning that she would be on the first bus to reach town and would arrive not long after sunrise. I reached a peak eighteen li from Chenggang and waited there. This was a high peak from which you could see for more than ten li in all directions. At that time of year, the foliage of the pagoda trees on the side of the road was green and lush, and the ground was covered with a thin carpet of leaves that had withered prematurely. There were also some blossoms swaying forlornly on a branch, like stubborn clumps of snow. The hills on either side of the road were full of waist-high wheat stalks. Some of the stalks were green and gave off a damp odor, while others were yellow and weak. A layer of bare yellow earth was visible through the stalks and leaves, giving a strong earthy odor that spread in all directions. Ridges of peaks that nearly reached the sky extended in every direction, making this a truly wonderful setting. The road snaked out behind and in front of me like a gleaming silk thread. It ran through the Balou Mountains and disappeared into the Funiu Mountains. The air looked as though it had been washed clean, and the trees were a bright green. The sky appeared almost black, and the wheat fields dark blue. The rolling hills resembled a camel’s back, each hill like a hump of clay. The endless mountains and rivers would wait patiently while revolutionary sentiment remained.

  On that peak, I waited for Hongmei for what seemed like forever. I climbed up onto an aqueduct to see farther into the distance. From this perch, I felt as though I were hovering in midair, as though I could simply reach out and grab a handful of cloud. I suddenly thought of Chairman Mao standing on the gate over Tiananmen Square, serenely waving to the millions who had gathered before him. I impulsively stood up and, facing the hills before me, waved my right hand.

  I waved and waved. The Yangtze flows toward the east, with endless waves … For truly great men, look to this age alone.

  After I finished waving, I felt an unprecedented sense of vastness. I had never felt so satisfied. I felt like sand that has been parched for a long time and suddenly finds itself inundated by spring showers—as trees start to bud, weeds start to bloom, birds start to sing, and butterflies start to fly around. If this wasn’t love’s power, then what was it? If this wasn’t great love, then what was that? Only revolutionary love could bring about revolutionary strength. Only proletarian love could permit revolutionaries to soar through the sky. I waved my right hand, then extended both arms as though I were about to fly away. I began to sing songs, like “Beijing Has a Golden Sun,” “I Love Beijing’s Tiananmen,” “The Core Strength That Leads Our Industry Is the Communist Party,” as well as “Unity Is Power” and “The Giant Blade Chops Off the Devil’s Head.” My hoarse singing was like a golden silk ribbon fluttering in the sunlight, filling the sky with color. And the lyrics sliced through the air like the whip of a flag in the wind, each word rushing through the air like a dagger or a bullet. I saw a middle-aged peasant plowing his field with an ox, and when he reached that irrigation canal he raised his hand to shield his eyes and inspected me carefully. After determining that I wasn’t about to commit suicide by jumping into the canal, he directed his ox toward me. I was relieved he hadn’t assumed I was possessed, and I resolved that after the revolution—and after I was appointed town mayor, county head, or provincial governor—I would definitely seek out this peasant the way an emperor looks for the man who gave him a steamed bun when he was once in need, and either build him a three-room tile-roofed house or else find a job for his son or daughter. I watched as the peasant drove his ox from the main road toward a gully and remembered clearly his head full of black hair with a patch of gray on the top. After the revolution, I would rely on this memory in order to find him.

  As the peasant approached the gully, I faced him and, with my right fist raised high, I shouted, “The revolution will definitely succeed … If you say it will succeed, then it definitely will …

  “I resolve that I won’t fear sacrifice, and will pursue victory against all odds …

  “I doesn’t matter if I lose my head. As long as my ideology remains true, then you can kill me, Gao Aijun, for others will take my place …”

  As I was shouting and shaking my fist, a bus appeared. It was following a coal truck that was slowly making its way down the mountain. I hopped down from the irrigation canal, and as the bus approached I stood in the middle of the road and blocked its path.

  The bus stopped in front of me, and the driver poked his head out.

  “You want a ride?”

  I leaned against the door and peered in through the window.

  “Is Xia Hongmei on board?”

  The driver released his foot from the brake and drove away, saying, “You lunatic!”

  I chased after the bus, shouting, “Xia Hongmei! … Xia Hongmei! … ”

  Then, after a short while, another bus arrived.

  Once again, I stood in the middle of the road.

  The driver brought the bus to a stop.

  “What the fuck? Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  I leaned up to the vehicle’s window.

  “Is Xia Hongmei on board?”

  The driver drove away, exclaiming, “Who the fuck is Xia Hongmei?!”

  I chased after the bus, shouting, “Damn it. Xia Hongmei is Xia Hongmei, that’s who!”

  A third bus stopped in front of me, and the driver said, “You do realize that this isn’t a bus stop, don’t you?”

  I leaned up against the driver’s-side door.

  “Xia Hongmei isn’t on your bus, is she?”

  “Who the hell is Xia Hongmei?”

  “She’s my little sister.”

  “If you’re looking for your sister, then you should look for her at home.”

  “She’s returning from the county seat today, and I have something urgent to tell her.”

  The driver turned back toward the inside of the bus and called out, “Is there a Xia Hongmei on board? Please look around!”

  No one said a word, whereupon the driver turned to me, shook his head, and then drove away. The vehicle left behind a plume of smoke.

  In all, I stopped eight buses heading from the county seat toward Jiudu. When I first went out that morning, I saw many peasants going to work, and by midday I began seeing peasants returning home—but still there was no sign of Xia Hongmei. I read her letter again and confirmed that the appointment was indeed for the twenty-sixth day of this month. At that moment, I saw a ninth bus rushing toward me. As before, I stopped the vehicle and spoke to the driver, who in turn called me a lunatic and asked whether I was possessed. I told him that sooner or later the day would come when he would have to eat his own fruits and would crush his own foot with the stone he was trying to carry. He asked what in the world I was talking about, and I replied that if he cursed me, he would be cursing a revolutionary—and if he cursed a revolutionary, he would be cursing Chairman Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He replied, “If I say you’re crazy, then you’re crazy. Do you really think you’re sane?” Then he drove on, sailing away in the wind.

  Immediately after that ninth bus departed, Hongmei suddenly emerged out of the cloud of dust that the vehicle had left in its w
ake. It turned out that she had hitched a ride on a coal truck, and when she saw me on the side of the road arguing with the bus driver, she told the driver of the coal truck to pull over. Then she ran toward me, carrying a faded military satchel.

  “Aijun, what are you doing here?”

  I stared at her in astonishment.

  “I came to meet you and have been waiting here since the very first bus this morning.”

  She stood in front of me, her face appearing as though shrouded in a mist of excitement. She had a burning light in her eyes, and after a pause, she stepped forward and grabbed my neck with both hands, positioning her face only a centimeter from mine. She was waiting for love to overtake her. Her warm breath enveloped my face as the corners of her mouth trembled. I could clearly see the bright light in her eyes, so fiery it seemed to melt my bones. I felt that if I didn’t accept her embrace, I would surely collapse. With impudence, shame, and delight, I longed to strip off my clothes and immediately enter her body. However, another bus was approaching, and when the driver reached us, he stuck out his head and shouted, “It’s broad daylight. What are you, a couple of corrupt elements?”

  I reacted as though I’d just been hit over the head with a club. I felt chilled to the core, and my ardor immediately faded.

  Hongmei continued to hang from my neck and said to the driver, “We just got married and are now husband and wife. I just went to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where the Central Directorate received me. Today, I’ve returned home, and my husband came to meet me.”

  When the driver heard this, he replied, “Oh, OK.” Then he put his foot on the accelerator and drove away.

  After the bus departed, Hongmei released her grip, and I noticed that the bridge of her nose was covered in sweat. We both knew we had gotten a little carried away and had forgotten the revolutionary situation of this revolutionary age. In the distance, a couple more peasants were returning home after having spent the morning working in the fields.

  Neither of us uttered a word, and instead we headed north. I walked in front, Hongmei several paces behind me, as though we didn’t even know each other. Later, we would recall how we had pretended to be strangers that day. Eventually the morning warmth was replaced by a midday heat, which was tempered only by the shade of the pagoda trees along the side of the road. We walked quickly, burning with an unquenchable thirst. People on the other side of the street would occasionally look at us skeptically, glancing back at us even after they had walked past. At the same time, there was a steady stream of cars driving by. After we had proceeded forward for a while, we noticed a cluster of thornbushes halfway up the hill on the side of the road, through which there ran a small path. Without hesitation, I turned onto that path, and Hongmei followed me.

  The path eased the nervousness and uneasiness we had felt before the storm, and we sighed with relief.

  I said, “How is it that you went to your mother’s house without telling me?”

  She said, “After they dragged me home from the memorial arch, Guizhi’s father asked someone to go find a Chinese medicine specialist to perform acupuncture on me. I escaped by scaling the bathroom wall and fleeing to the bus station.”

  I replied, “Damn it. If it hadn’t been for the revolution, we would never have been able to be together.”

  She said, “The county seat has already been turned upside down.”

  I said, “If you look at history, every revolution has been initiated in response to the actions of those in power.”

  She said, “In the county seat, they have tied up the county committee secretary and are parading him through the streets.”

  I said, “It’s like the Chen Sheng-Wu Guang uprising, Li Zecheng’s insurrection, the Xinhai revolution, or the Shaoshan revolt …”

  She said, “It’s been reported that the new county committee secretary is only twenty-eight-and-a-half years old.”

  I paused. “What did you say?”

  She walked over to me. “The current county committee secretary is only twenty-eight-and-a-half years old.”

  I was silent for a moment, then asked, “What happened to the former one?”

  She said, “He was engaging in counterrevolutionary activities, which is why the masses paraded him through the streets. It was only upon seeing the revolutionary heat rising up to the sky that I decided to write you and return home today.”

  I gripped her hand—as though I had just lost something and needed to grasp onto something else. I noticed that her hand was not calloused like that of someone who was out working the fields every day. Although she of course performed housework like chopping vegetables, cooking meals, and washing clothes, her hands remained smooth and supple, and her fingers felt like silk. She didn’t realize what an impact her words had had on me—it was as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head. I was twenty-six years old, but the new county committee secretary was only twenty-eight years old. I immediately felt a deep sense of urgency. I was determined to return home and eat Cheng Tianqing alive, shatter the protective sheet of glass covering the town Party secretary’s desk, then bury alive Wang Zhenhai, who was now serving as both mayor and Party secretary. The revolution had not yet succeeded, so our comrades needed to continue to struggle. In the ravine to the east, someone was herding a couple of sheep to the river to drink, and I had no choice but to release Hongmei’s hand and pass along the west side of the road.

  On the west side of the road ran a long and narrow valley with wheat fields at the bottom. The peasants irrigating the fields stared at us. Behind us was a road, to our left was the valley, and although there weren’t any wheat fields on the hills to our right, the weeds were waist-high. The hill faced a bend in the road, and as soon as the people coming up the road rounded that corner, they could see the entire hillside. We suddenly felt as though we had no place where we could hide. Neither of us dared to say openly where we wanted to go or what we wanted to do, but we both knew we desperately wanted to find somewhere we could do that thing. Hongmei’s pink shirt was soaked in sweat and stuck to her body, making her breasts appear more pert than ever. Because of the sweat, her face became red and alluring and generated an aura of warmth that made her entire body emit an intoxicating fragrance that permeated the hillside. We had an unspoken understanding, like the one that exists between our shoes and the road beneath our feet. By that point we had already been walking through that hillside for quite some time. But Hongmei never suggested that we give up, and therefore neither could I. Indeed, I came out so early to wait for her precisely in order to find a quiet place for us to go—a quiet place where we could burn, explode, and revolt, shattering our iron chains and establishing a new love.

  We headed south for a while and eventually stopped next to a knee-high clump of weeds. This was a gentle slope with a pile of soil at the top. The clump of weeds growing there was green and lush; it was almost as if that pile of soil had been placed there precisely in order to permit the weeds to thrive. Behind the weeds, there was an opening that attracted our attention.

  We walked over to it.

  A cold breeze emerged from inside and blew toward us.

  This was an old tomb, and even after the bones had been dug up and reburied, the empty tomb remained at the base of the cliff. Hongmei and I both knew that in this mountainous region of western Henan, this sort of provisional tomb is often used for children who are too young to be buried in the family tomb, outsiders who die unexpectedly, old people who die when their spouse is in ill health and isn’t expected to live much longer—in these sorts of cases the deceased may be buried in this sort of tomb, and after several years their remains may be dug up and reinterred in the family tomb.

  Hongmei and I stood there motionless.

  I said, “There are people everywhere. Where have they all come from?”

  She looked around hopelessly, then gazed up at the sky.

  I said, “If we return to town, we won’t attract a single glance.”

  She said,
“But I think I hear footsteps approaching.”

  I said, “This is actually the safest place for us to be. No one will come here.”

  She said, “Aijun, are we crazy?”

  I said, “Hongmei, this is simply revolutionary love and affection. We aren’t crazy in the least!”

  I grabbed her hand and headed toward the other end of the tomb. It turned out that there was indeed someone coming toward us from the road. The footsteps drew closer, until we heard them directly over our heads. As we squatted down inside the tomb, I hugged Hongmei and grasped her hands. I waited until the footsteps receded into the distance, then turned and began crazily kissing her face.

  I asked, “Are you scared?”

  She replied, “What is there to be scared of?”

  I looked around the old tomb.

  She said, “I’m not afraid—what is there to be afraid of? That someone will eat us? Still, if we were to be caught it would certainly be the end of us. We would never be able to go back to Chenggang and rejoin the revolution.”

  I said, “But where could be safer than here?”

  I told her to sit down while I went to the opening of the tomb to look out. The tomb was a meter and a half wide and two meters deep, meaning that it was as large as a small room, and it was tall enough to stand up in. The damp ground was perfectly flat and had a red tint. There were two wooden planks to support the coffin and a dozen or so bricks scattered around. In the areas that were shielded from the wind, the walls were covered in dust and cobwebs. In the deepest parts of the tomb, there was a thin layer of moss. Needless to say, after the corpse and the coffin had been removed, no one had gone back inside. It occurred to me that it would be ideal if this tomb were closer to Chenggang, because then Hongmei and I could use it as a secret rendezvous site.

  Unfortunately, we were eighteen li of mountain road away from Chenggang.

  Unfortunately, Hongmei and I lived in Chenggang, where finding somewhere to meet was more difficult than ascending to heaven.