Hard Like Water

by Yan Lianke

  I carried her to the earthen bed.

  “Aijun, quick, enter me,” she said. “I’m about to pass out, Mayor Gao. You must enter me. If you don’t, I’ll die!”

  She cried out incoherently while gripping my thigh with both hands. “I’m about to die, Aijun. You must enter me … If you don’t, I’ll be tortured to death. You went to all this trouble to dig this tunnel, was it not so that we could be together like husband and wife?”

  I knelt down in front of that black chrysanthemum between her legs.

  “Enter me, Aijun. For my sake, and so that in the future we’ll be able to focus on the revolution. Quick, enter me. What are you waiting for?”

  I bit my lower lip.

  She said, “Revolutionary, military strategist … quick, enter me!”

  My god! … I finally released my lip, which I had nearly bitten in half. I once again collapsed spectacularly, like a mountain crumbling or a house falling into rubble.

  She said several bright, pink things, then her voice gradually faded away. Eventually, she stopped speaking altogether. It was as if she had suddenly understood something. She rested on the bed for a while, then sighed, sat up, and looked at the wet spot I had left in the middle of the earthen bed. She looked at me without saying another word.

  After my second collapse, it was as if our ardor had been doused with a bucket of water, and instantly a chill descended on the nuptial chamber. Even the lamp appeared less bright than before. Hongmei sat down in front of me, the look of disappointment on her face as gray as the bed beneath us, a pair of tears working their way down from the corners of her eyes. In order to express my regret and powerlessness, I slapped my own face twice. The sound of those slaps was bright and sharp, but in the tunnel they sounded low and dull, as though we were inside an urn. When she saw I was slapping my own face, she turned pale, and that pallor made me feel reassured—as though I had wronged someone, and then that other person had turned around and offered a self-criticism. In order to make her feel guiltier, I once again knelt down before her and began slapping my own face. By the time she had recovered from her initial shock, I had slapped myself five or six times.

  Acting as though she had committed a monumental mistake, she knelt down and grabbed my hand. “Aijun, what are you doing? Did I criticize or blame you?”

  Upon hearing this, I began to slap my face even harder, while also pounding my chest and pinching my thighs and my member. I exclaimed, “You’ve let me down! You’ve let me down! I painstakingly dug this tunnel, and this is how you repay me.” The more I said and did this, the harder she tried to pull me away, as though in terrified self-reproach. But the more she tried to pull me away, the harder I beat myself. I felt a feverish combination of pleasure and pain in my face, body, thighs, and everywhere else, as the sound of her self-recriminatory tears washed over my heart.

  As she was crying and I was beating myself, choosing her words carefully, she said, “Aijun, let’s try to direct the loudspeakers into this tunnel. Earlier, when we were out in the fields, wasn’t it the case that you were always raring to go whenever the loudspeakers were broadcasting music and revolutionary songs, but stymied when they stopped?”

  I stopped hitting myself.

  I hugged her tightly, as the lamp ran out of oil, the light flickered, and then the tunnel became as dark as a tomb.

  3. Dialectical Contradiction

  There are two levels to the question of the differences between the particular and universal levels of contradiction. The first level notes that contradiction can be found in the development of all things, while the second is that a contradictory movement can be found in the development of every particular thing.

  Lenin explained the universality of contradiction as follows:

  “In mathematics, there are positive and negative numbers, and differential and integral equations.

  “In mechanics, there is force and reaction.

  “In physics, there are positive and negative charges.

  “In chemistry, there are processes of atomic combination and decomposition.

  “And in social sciences, there is class struggle.”

  In life, there is birth and death.

  In humanity, there are men and women.

  In literature, there is truth and fiction.

  Because of the extraordinarily vast scope of things and their endless development, some things are characterized by their universality in some situations and their particularity in others, and conversely other things are characterized by their particularity in some situations and their universality in others.

  The question of the relationship between the universality and the particularity of contradiction is precisely that of the relationship between the generality and the specificity of contradiction.

  This principle of the relationship between generality and specificity, between absoluteness and relativity, is precisely the quintessence of the question of contradiction—and if you don’t understand this, then you have essentially abandoned all dialectics.

  Chapter 9

  Prosecuting the New Revolution

  1. The Development of Contradictions, and an Important New Contradiction

  Things develop gradually, but the arrival of a total contradiction is abrupt. As soon as one contradiction has been resolved, another is created, the latter often coming unexpectedly. We may think that the latter contradiction is completely without basis, but in reality, even as we are resolving the first contradiction, we are already establishing the foundation for the second. That is to say, we are inadvertently interchanging the essential and nonessential aspects of contradiction. The nature of things follows from this elusive kind of development. At a certain stage in the development of these two types of contradiction, they may exchange places, the second replacing the first. Alternatively, the first contradiction may be resolved and disappear, while the second becomes the first. A third contradiction may appear and take the place of the second.

  Perhaps the day will come when the third contradiction will rise to the position of the first. This is the law of the development of contradiction.

  This was the state of things.

  This is how things were.

  Hongmei’s husband, Cheng Qingdong, died. After I spent three years laboriously digging this tunnel, and after Hongmei and I happily used it for another two years, this same tunnel then became her husband’s tomb. This was the state of things. After one fundamental contradiction is resolved, a new one is created.

  The tunnel was finally completed in the twelfth lunar month, nine months after my appointment as deputy mayor. It was completed more than half a year behind schedule, and the primary reason for the delay was that after I was appointed deputy mayor, the number of meetings I had to attend increased exponentially. Given that I was a revolutionary youth, I not only had to organize and attend countless meetings in my hometown, I also had to attend additional meetings in the county seat and sometimes even in the district seat. Every time I left Chenggang, however, my horizons were broadened, my theoretical knowledge was expanded, my political awareness was increased, and I was able to meet more high-level political leaders. All this helped lay a solid foundation for the next step of my career, but the drawback was that it delayed the completion of my great, divine tunnel of love, which in turn further exacerbated my corporeal longing for Hongmei.

  Fortunately, we were able to set up our underground nuptial chamber even before the remainder of the tunnel was completed. Using the goodwill I had gained as a result of having helped connect electrical and broacasting cables to several elderly households covered by the nation’s Five Guarantees social safety net, I asked the production brigade’s secretary to go into town and purchase some insulated wire and cable. Next, I drilled a couple of small holes below the window in the back of my house, and threaded the electrical wire and broadcasting cable through the holes into the tunnel. Inside the tunnel, I connected the wires to several lights and also installed a two-hundred-watt bulb in
the underground nuptial chamber; then I took some old broadcasting equipment that the town’s radio station had previously thrown out and moved it into the tunnel. (Although as deputy mayor I wasn’t released from work requirements and still had a rural residency permit, by this point my revolutionary career had entered a crucial transitional phase, where I could look forward to being promoted to town mayor or county head. When I said I wanted to borrow the equipment in question, the broadcaster fixed it for me and sent it to my home that same night. Such is the strength of power!) I installed three loudspeakers in the ceiling of the nuptial chamber and inside the earthen bed. Next, I laid out some straw and reed mats on the bed, then constructed a two-layer wooden box with a crack in it, filling the crack with moisture-resistant lime. I used the box to store the radio microphone, a blanket, a mattress, and other items that were sensitive to moisture. Hongmei furnished the bed with blue bedsheets she had received when she first got married, together with a pillow and a pillowcase decorated with mandarin ducks. In that way, that underground room became a true nuptial chamber. After I finished excavating the tunnel, Hongmei used moisture-resistant oilpaper to cut out a “double happiness” character connoting matrimonial bliss and posted it over the bed. Meanwhile, on one of the room’s other three walls she posted large portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong; on the second she posted portraits of Li Yuhe, Li Tiemei, Yang Zirong, Ke Xiang, Wu Qinghua, and Yan Weicai, while on the third she posted classic quotations and slogans, such as: IT IS THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY THAT IS LEADING OUR INDUSTRY’S PRODUCTIVE FORCE; FIGHT SELFISHNESS, REPUDIATE REVISIONISM; ALL THE NATION’S PEOPLE SHOULD UNITE AND CARRY OUT THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION; and so forth. Furthermore, she had carefully laminated the paper on which these portraits and slogans were printed, demonstrating the loyal meticulousness with which she approached revolution and love in this damp environment.

  Our understanding of dialectical materialism had not yet been perfected, just as our study of the theories of contradiction and practice remained merely academic. We hadn’t used these theories for revolution or production, or to help us understand the reality of life or the contradictions of love. We had assumed that once the tunnel and the underground nuptial chamber were completed, and after Hongmei had quarreled with Qingdong as usual, she would move into our new mansion and furthermore would bring with her the bureau, chest, and table that had come with her dowry. When Qingdong was teaching at school, I dug the last few loads of soil to extend the tunnel to the area immediately behind Hongmei’s bureau. I then removed the bureau’s baseboards and arranged Hongmei’s clothing so that it covered up the special plank. Assuming that all this was completed perfectly, we would manage to resolve all the revolutionary contradictions pertaining to our love or lust for one another.

  The day I finished digging the tunnel, we did that thing on the earthen bed. We wanted to do it more, but at that moment my member still wasn’t working properly. I tried having her slap me several times, as a result of which my member did in fact become hard, and we happily proceeded to do that thing several more times. In the days that followed, after the radio microphone and the speakers were connected, whenever we wanted to do that thing, we would turn on the broadcasting equipment, adjust the needle to the Central People’s Broadcasting Station or the provincial radio channel, where revolutionary songs would inevitably be playing. The speaker that was placed over the head of the bed was originally a low-frequency woofer, and combined with the naturally low acoustics of the tunnel, the result was that every time a piece of music or a song was played, every time a marching slogan was shouted, and every time an important revolutionary leader’s speech and the newest, highest directives were broadcast—the tunnel would be filled with bright red music and an atmosphere of deep excitement. Hongmei and I would find that we couldn’t restrain ourselves, and we would throw ourselves onto the bed, tear off our clothes, and luxuriate in the red music flowing over our sheets, as I caressed Hongmei’s smooth, white skin. We listened as those portraits and slogans resonated to the music, as my blood coursed through my veins. In this atmosphere I would do that thing with Hongmei for what seemed like an eternity. This was how we were able to enjoy several times more happiness and beauty than a typical married couple. In fact, precisely because we weren’t yet married, we were able to enjoy several hundred times more pleasure than an actual couple. Every time we did that thing, we would lie on the bed afterward and exclaim, “The revolution is certainly worth it, and even death itself would be worth it!” During that brief, beautiful period, we had countless opportunities to enjoy our status as great revolutionary lovers, which was wonderful and profound, terrifying and exciting. In winter, we could be completely naked in that tunnel and yet wouldn’t feel cold at all. Instead, every time we did that thing, we would find ourselves covered in sweat. In the heat of the summer, all the villagers would go to the open area in the front of the village, where they would lie down on their reed mats, enjoying the breeze and shooing away mosquitoes with cattail fans. At the agreed-upon time, after waiting for everyone to leave their homes, Hongmei and I would enter the tunnel and lie together on the cool earthen bed. Once, when I was waiting for Hongmei in the underground nuptial chamber and she didn’t show up, I proceeded to where the tunnel opened up under her house. I knocked lightly on the bottom of her bureau, whereupon I found a note that read:

  Esteemed Mayor Gao, Great Revolutionary,

  I am having my period and have gone down to the banks of Thirteen Li River to help my daughter wash her clothes. Therefore, there is no need to wait for me today. Please use your firm and indomitable revolutionary perseverance to think of me. Without perseverance, there can be no extraordinary pleasure—this is something that you have constantly taught me.

  Your revolutionary lover, a Hongmei plum blossom.

  A revolutionary salute!

  Written at noon.

  Dejectedly, I returned from her house, not realizing that by that point she had already finished washing the clothes and had entered the tunnel through the opening under my own house. Standing naked in the underground nuptial chamber, she had already prepared the bed and turned on the music, and had even washed several cucumbers and placed them at the head of the bed, so that we could eat them after doing that thing. In the winter of the previous year, I had been sleeping one night during a snowstorm, when I seemed to hear someone tapping on my window. I got up and went into the tunnel, but the nuptial chamber was empty. I initially assumed I must have been hearing things and was about to return to my bedroom, when Hongmei suddenly jumped out of the chest at the head of the earthen bed. Completely naked, she lunged at me like a white butterfly. During those two years (and what a short two years they were!), we would meet in the tunnel almost every day we were both in the village, and we would do that thing almost every time we met. Sometimes I would have to leave for three to five days, and when I returned I wished I could sneak into her house through the tunnel and crawl into her bed. Of course, in doing so, I would have been taking an enormous risk, and if I made a mistake I could easily end up burying our revolutionary futures—particularly since by that point Hongmei’s daughter, Tao’er, was ten years old and would sleep at the foot of Hongmei’s bed every night. Therefore, every time I returned from a meeting in the county or district seat, I would send someone to Hongmei’s house to formally notify her: “Branch Secretary Xia, Mayor Gao requests that you go listen to his report on the spirit of the meeting.” (The villagers called me simply “mayor,” never adding the modifier “deputy”—which was good, because not only did it sound better, I regarded it as an anticipation and a premonition of my future status.) When I gave her my report, it would always be on that earthen bed, and we would do that thing while I told her about the spirit of the meeting and related anecdotes. Once, I returned from a meeting and found that I couldn’t restrain my desire for her, and I yearned to see her like a starving man yearns for food. I therefore sent someone to tell her, “There�
�s an extremely urgent matter that needs our attention. Come immediately!” If I wanted to see her on a particular night, I would tell her what time to show up in the production brigade meeting hall. Based on the time I specified in my message, she would always be waiting for me punctually in the tunnel (my soul, my flesh, my revolutionary lover and life!). Sometimes, before “come immediately,” I would add “you must.” If it happened to be a mealtime when I sent someone to tell her “you must come immediately,” within minutes she would appear in the tunnel, her hands still covered in flour from kneading dough or mud from washing vegetables. During that period, every time we finished crazily doing that thing, the sheets, our bodies, and the loudspeakers would all be covered in her white or yellow fingerprints. Naturally, when she herself went to the county or district seat to attend some meeting (though this didn’t occur very often), upon returning she would have someone ask me if I wanted her to report on the spirit of the meeting, whereupon I would proceed into the tunnel and wait for her. I always resented the fact that she didn’t report to me on the spirit of the meeting more promptly and instead kept me waiting—to which she replied, “You should be thankful that I return home first to wash up and change my clothes. After a long-distance bus ride, I always return completely covered in dust.”