Hard Like Water

by Yan Lianke

  (Did you dream of me?

  (I dreamed that as we were doing that thing on the desk in the production brigade’s office, one of the desk’s legs snapped.

  (My god! Hongmei, last night I also dreamed we were doing that thing on the desk. When I thrust, you cried out, and blood appeared between your legs. Then one of the desk’s legs snapped, and we fell to the floor.

  (Did you really see blood in your dream?

  (I dreamed that blood was flowing like a river from between your legs.

  (That’s good, Aijun. If you dream of blood, that is a sign that you’ll enjoy success.)

  The law of revolution—this is something no political leader or anyone directing the revolution can avoid studying and resolving.

  The law of mass revolution—this is something no political leader or anyone directing a mass revolution can avoid studying and resolving.

  The law of China’s mass revolution—this is something no political leader or anyone directing China’s mass revolution can avoid studying and resolving.

  The law of northern China’s mass revolution—this is completely distinct from the law of mass revolution that arises out of a revolutionary base in southern China, for it is determined by the politics, culture, geography, and living conditions of northern China. No one leading a northern mass revolution can avoid considering and resolving this question.

  The law of the Balou Mountains’ mass revolution is completely different from that of the rest of northern China and even the rest of the northern Henan mountain region. This is because this law of mass revolution is determined by the specific history, politics, and culture, and the specific geographic conditions and living conditions of the Balou Mountains, and it is something that anyone who participates in, guides, directs, or leads a mass revolution in this region must consider, study, and resolve. All other questions and contradictions derive from this.

  (Aijun, have we reached Wangjiayu Village yet?

  (Oh, we’re almost there. It may be that village up ahead.)

  The revolution we are currently pursuing is historically unprecedented. Our revolution pertains to the specific geography of this Balou mountain region, and consequently we must study not only ordinary laws of revolution but also particular laws of revolution, as well as even more particular laws of mass revolution in northern China’s western Henan, Balou mountain region.

  I, Gao Aijun, was born and bred in the Balou Mountains. When I was in school I was a talented student, and when I was in the army I was an outstanding soldier, and when I was a squad leader I was the most outstanding squad leader in the entire military company. Some lines from poems and songs that I wrote while I was enlisted are still popular among soldiers, and it is possible that several decades after my death they will remain on everyone’s lips—such as the line: The bright moon in front of the bed is like a layer of frost on the ground. One poem I wrote was:

  A revolutionary warrior is a fired brick that can be taken to wherever it is needed;

  A revolutionary warrior is a piece of clay that can be carried to wherever it is needed;

  A revolutionary warrior is an adobe slab that can be placed wherever it is needed.

  Another slogan that was derived from my writings was: View your military garrison as your hometown and view the People as your parents. Some of my rousing words were published in the Liberation Army Daily and the Engineering Corps Daily, and during the years I spent pursuing revolution in the countryside after being demobilized, various provincial-level and district-level newspapers would periodically write me and ask for manuscripts. I was cultured, experienced, and had a good memory. I was eloquent, decisive, and not afraid of sacrifice. I was bold, crafty, and had the best understanding of all the people and things of the Balou Mountains, hills and streams, trees and shrubs, birds and animals, men and women, old and young, sand and dirt, worms and cicadas, pigs and dogs, sex and love, spring and fall, tree leaves and mountain paths, guiding principles and regional dialects, policies and oxen, poverty and affluence, marriage and burial customs, happiness and women, livestock and annals, air and houses, sluts and chastity, greatness and men, revolution and famine, well-being and crops, as well as the Cold Dew and Winter Solstice solar terms, success and power, worship and ravens, cow demon snake spirits and landlords rich peasants anti-revolutionaries bad elements rightists, the masses and poor and lower-middle peasants, the proletariat and farm tools. From the moon and stars above, down to dog farts below, there is nothing that I don’t know and nothing that I don’t understand. So, how could I not reach Wangjiayu Village and immediately achieve success? How could I not become the Balou Mountains’ powerful and revolutionary new star and rise high in the sky?

  I went behind enemy lines to eliminate the devils.

  I was willing to risk dismemberment in order to topple the emperor from his throne.

  2. Going behind Enemy Lines (II)

  Now that I reflect and try to add up everything that happened to me, I discover a great law that I certainly would never have discovered on my own—which is that the most complex things in the world are always the simplest, and the simplest things are yet the most complex. This is because revolution has a beautifully exquisite variation, a profundity and simplicity that allows revolutionaries to derive pleasure and stimulation from revolution and to fearlessly throw themselves into the revolutionary torrent.

  Would it be difficult to cure Hongmei’s depression?

  Would it be difficult to overthrow Mayor Wang?

  Would it be a simple matter to prove my suspicion that Mayor Wang was carrying on an adulterous relationship with Secretary Zhao? And was there any difference between accomplishing these objectives and achieving my broader revolutionary goals?

  In the end, I succeeded.

  In the end, I accomplished my objectives easily. Not only did I bring down Mayor Wang, I had him designated as an active anti-revolutionary and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. The unexpected ease of this truly made me and Hongmei appreciate the magic and stimulation of the revolution. It allowed us to reemerge from under the cloud of Qingdong’s death and return to the sunlit stage of revolutionary struggle. In this way, we came to understand why everyone—even the blind and the crippled, even stupid pigs and wild dogs—wanted to pursue revolution. They all wanted to become, and indeed could become, revolutionaries.

  Hongmei and I arrived at the Wangjiayu production brigade just before sunset. This was our first trip into the depths of the Balou Mountains, and to reach this location we had to travel sixty li. We walked half the distance, and for the remaining half we hitched rides on horse- and ox-drawn carriages. On our way there, we had many delightful discussions, and sometimes we even stopped on the side of the road in uninhabited areas, and twice we took off our clothes and did that thing (Hongmei had finally regained her earlier passion and screamed with pleasure). When we reached Wangjiayu Village, I was so exhausted that my eyesight was blurred, my legs were burning, and all I wanted to do was to go to someone’s house, drink a bowl of cool water, and fall asleep in a bed. Located on a hillside, Wangjiayu Village was a natural village within the Wangjiayu production brigade. The village was where the production brigade department was located. Secretary Zhao, however, lived several li away, in Zhaojiawa. Wangjiayu Village was located only three li from the horse path leading up to the mountain peak, but that three-li path was as twisty as a sheep’s intestines. Some of the wheat growing on the hillside had already broken out of the winter cold and was lush and green, while the rest looked as though it had recently been sowed. When that terrain was viewed from a distance or from high up, some parts appeared dark with vegetation, like thick clouds, while others were a patchwork of yellow and red, brown and purple—such that the entire hillside resembled an enormous carpet. There wasn’t a soul to be seen along the ridge or on the path, only a couple of mountain goats grazing on the cliffs next to the road. The sweet, earthy smell that drifted up from the fields was warm and bright as it circled around
beneath my nostrils. Under the light from the setting sun, the smoke that emerged from the village’s chimneys came to assume a beautiful red hue, as though it was so many strands of silk fluttering in the breeze. On that day Hongmei was wearing a red sweater I had bought for her using production brigade funds, under which she had a four-button, small-collared shirt, and as she walked she used her shirt flap to fan her face, until eventually she stopped walking altogether.

  As we were walking, a hare suddenly dashed out of the field next to us. It was yellow and white, and it stopped in the middle of the road and stared at us with its fiery eyes. When Hongmei waved at it, the hare took a couple of steps back toward the field, then turned around and looked at us again.

  Hongmei shouted, “Aijun, quick, come look!”

  Perhaps this hare was some sort of spirit? And guess what it was directing me to see! I saw that the field containing the burrow was square in shape and more than two mu in size. Half the wheat sprouts were jet black and about fifteen centimeters tall, while the other half were still greenish yellow and only about eight centimeters tall. If you looked toward the edges of the field, however, you would see an area full of sprouts that looked like they had just emerged from the soil but had not yet woken from their winter slumber, as though they had just been sown. (We must carefully analyze this occurrence, searching for its causal relations and grasping its principal contradictions or the clues to its principal contradictions, and only in this way will it be possible to resolve the contradiction and complete our work.) Was it possible that this wasn’t even a field? Yet it clearly was a field, and the large ridge grouped these three different kinds of wheat sprouts together. But why does a single field have three different kinds of wheat sprouts?

  Hongmei shouted, “Aijun, look at this hare!”

  (Oh, that great hare!) I took another several steps forward, reaching another field, this one triangular. I noticed that in this new triangular field, there was again a combination of wheat sprouts that had just emerged from the earth and others that were already green and flourishing.

  (Without discovery, there can be no creation, and without creation, society will keep walking in place and will never be able to advance.)

  Hongmei shouted, “Aijun, where are you going?”

  I said, “I’m going to take a piss.”

  “Do you have to walk that far to take a piss? Is it that you’re afraid of me? If you’re afraid of me, then tonight you shouldn’t sleep with me.”

  I went to the front of that same field with the two or three different kinds of wheat sprouts and kicked some clods of earth in an area where different-colored sprouts were growing. As I was kicking the second clump of earth, I made a remarkable discovery. My foot struck something with a thud, and it was as if a tower suddenly emerged out of the ground. I noticed that there was a wooden stake buried several centimeters underground, and when I leaned over and pulled it out, I saw that it had a name written on it: Wang Baomin. I proceeded to another field with different-colored wheat sprouts and unearthed another stake, which also bore a name: Wang Dashun.

  Altogether, I dug up six wooden stakes, each of which had a different name written on it. At this point, my brain exploded, as though a bright light were shining directly into my head. It was as though a red flag had just been planted in recently recovered enemy territory. It was as if a clarion call suddenly rang out from the top of a tall mountain, or a lighthouse suddenly appeared amid a vast ocean. Hongmei stood next to me and asked with surprise, “What are you doing?” I handed her one of the stakes, then proceeded to dig at a different location—to prove my astounding discovery. Hongmei stared at the stake for a moment, then dropped it and ran over to help me dig in that new location. Soon we succeeded in digging up yet another stake with a name on it.

  Like mad dogs searching for food, we quickly dug up four more stakes.

  Finally, we dug up a short and thin stake, and when we noticed the name written on it, the excitement on our faces immediately melted away. We both knelt down, our hands trembling, as though we were trying to hold a red-hot iron. Our bodies trembled, and we couldn’t catch our breath.

  Written on that final stake was the name of our mayor: Wang Zhenhai.

  At this point, we heard the murky sound of ox hoofs and footsteps coming from the mountain path. When we looked up, we saw an old man pulling a plow and driving an ox down from the mountain ridge. Neither Hongmei nor I said anything, and instead she merely looked at me. I hugged her tightly to my chest as I rolled under the earthen ridge next to us. As though we had just thrown a grenade and were taking cover, we rolled under a sixty-centimeter-tall earthen embankment, and then, still hugging each other tightly, we lay there without moving. The entire time, the tips of our tongues were fighting each other like a pair of snakes—sometimes mine would succeed in entering her mouth, while at other times hers would make inroads into mine. I sucked her sweet saliva into my mouth and held it there, whereupon she acted as though she had been wronged and tried to suck it back, leaving me no choice but to use my tongue to push even more saliva back into her mouth. As the ox hoofs and footsteps approached, they seemed to press down on us like stones or clay slabs—suppressing our excitement, such that we didn’t dare speak, move, or even breathe loudly. Instead, all we could do was use the tips of our tongues to celebrate our great discovery, the brilliant success of our early battle, and the unparalleled greatness of our victory. The ox hoofs proceeded along the overgrown path, as soft and leisurely, peaceful and comforting as a hollow paulownia board striking a muddy surface, with the old man’s footsteps sounding equally leisurely and amiable. As those sounds drifted by us, Hongmei and I continued to hold our breath and to remain perfectly still. I kept grappling with her dexterous tongue, trying to capture it like a slumbering snake. I lay on her supple body and waited for the old man and the ox to pass. Once they entered Wangjiayu Village, which was bathed in the light of the setting sun, I returned the tip of Hongmei’s tongue to where it belonged. Hongmei and I both sighed, and, holding the wooden stake with Wang Zhenhai’s name on it, we hugged each other under the earthen embankment.

  She exclaimed, “So, the people here really do dare to distribute land to every family!”

  I replied, “What Chairman Mao called ‘capitalism’ will return, but it really isn’t that frightening.”

  She said, “This is much more significant than the idea that Wang Zhenhai and Zhao Xiuyu may be having an affair.”

  I said, “Let’s collect these stakes, as well as some additional evidence that this was supported by Mayor Wang. If anyone refuses to remove him from office, they themselves should be removed from their own positions.”

  Then, with a clatter, the sun set behind the mountains. The only sound to be heard from the mountain ridge was this clattering sound of the sunset—a sound that only rural deities like mountain folk are able to hear.

  3. Going behind Enemy Lines (III)

  That night we stayed in a small courtyard with three adobe-tile-roofed houses. Because Hongmei was worried about lice and fleas, we picked a family in which the son had just gotten married, where the color of the twin characters above the door of the nuptial chamber hadn’t yet faded. When we entered the village, the commune members all stared at us in surprise. We discovered that life in this village was really heavenly. Those families that had dinner early brought their rice bowls to the doorway, while also holding a fried or steamed bun in their hands. (Fuck his ancestors!—this is the kind of food that people in Chenggang can eat only on New Year’s, but here people have it every day!)

  Everyone stared at me and Hongmei (but mostly at Hongmei), as though we had just fallen from the sky. They stared at Hongmei’s jade-white skin, jet-black hair, long neck, and red sweater, at the tender whiteness of her small-collared shirt, and the straight-leg pants that these people from the countryside had never had a chance to wear. (Most locals still wore pants with a wide waist and thin legs, and the men would fold the pants down at the waist and wear
them with a belt, while the women’s pants had an opening in the waist, which could be on either the left or right hip, since there was no difference between the front and back of the pants.) When the women and girls saw Hongmei, their eyes lit up even more brightly than when they saw me. Meanwhile, when the men and boys looked at her, they immediately turned away, shifting their gaze to me instead. Seeing her, they all stopped eating and instead sat there with their bowls, chopsticks, and steamed buns frozen in their hands.

  We told them that we were county cadres who had come to conduct soc-ed (socialist education) sessions in the countryside, but now we needed to hurry back to attend a meeting in town. Given that dusk had already fallen, however, we hoped to stay over until morning. At that point, a middle-aged man (we later learned that this was the leader of the production brigade and his name was Li Lin) placed the rice bowl he was holding onto a stone and said, “You can stay in Jiao Degui’s house. His son just got married last month, so the house has a new bed and bedding.”

  (What simple and sincere proletarian emotion!)

  We were escorted to Jiao Degui’s home, and as soon as we entered we saw that it was a large compound with a courtyard. There was a brown cow tied to a date tree and an old plow hanging from the eaves, and the person who greeted us was none other than the old man we had seen just before sunset. Hongmei stared at me for a moment, and I glared back—whereupon she immediately followed my example and acted as though nothing were wrong. Old Man Degui led us into his front room, then had his new daughter-in-law go to the kitchen to fry us some scallion pancakes and fix us some egg and noodle soup. Then he told his son to straighten up the nuptial chamber. In order to prevent the possibility that Brigade Leader Li Lin might send someone to notify Secretary Zhao that some county cadres had come to Wangjiayu Village to conduct soc-ed sessions, we kept chatting with him. After Li Lin finished eating with us, he had Degui’s son take his rice bowl back to his home.