by Yan Lianke
I didn’t find this remark at all unexpected. Instead, it was as though this was precisely what I most wanted to hear. I was moved by her confession. I’m not sure whether what I said at that point was something I had been planning for a long time or whether it was something I came up with on the spur of the moment in order to validate her heartfelt confession. I stared at her face and at a strand of black hair that lay across her ear. With a rare pleasure and happiness rippling across my heart, I asked, “Is this true?”
She seemed surprised and confused by my question, and replied, “You don’t believe me?”
“I do believe you,” I said. “But do you know what I want most right now? Right now, I suddenly have a desire to take some explosives and, like the Communist hero Dong Cunrui, blow up Cheng Temple, so that we can then stand naked where the temple used to be and, fearing neither heaven nor earth, crazily do that thing.”
She asked, “How did you come up with that?”
I replied, “I don’t know. I just suddenly had the idea.”
She said, “Blowing up Cheng Temple is not our revolutionary objective.”
I said, “But ever since I was little, whenever I saw the Cheng clan gathered there to worship their ancestors, I always imagined how one day I would demolish the temple and memorial arch.”
She shook her legs, which had gone numb, then carefully stood up and squatted down again. Looking carefully at my face, she asked, “Why would we crazily do that thing in Cheng Temple?”
I replied, “To do that thing in Cheng Temple would be so much more pleasurable than slapping the temple in the face or kicking it in the groin.”
She said, “Do you think they’ll ever release us?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
She said, “If we’re able to get out of here, I’ll do whatever you want!”
At this point we heard footsteps outside. A soldier climbed a wooden ladder, pushed open the window, and peered inside. Then he climbed back down again, and it was unclear where he went after that. From his comings and goings, however, we realized that it was already dark outside and that it must be long past dinnertime. We suddenly felt very hungry. Our calves ached, and our feet were numb. I desperately wanted to call out to that person who had come to check on us—so that we could ask him to bring us some food or at least bring us a bowl of water. However, by this point his footsteps had already faded into the distance. We decided that the next time someone looked in on us, we would ask him for food and water. As it turned out, however, that night no one else looked in on us.
I had underestimated the revolutionary punishment to which we were subjected in that detention chamber. With hunger descending and our mouths dry from talking, after we finally managed to make it through the night, alternating between squatting and standing on those stools, we finally experienced the true cruelty of our torture.
Fatigue assailed us from all directions. Piercing sunlight assaulted our eyes like needles driving into our eyeballs. The glowing nails poking up through the seat of the stool were like fangs or claws. We were unable to sit; our legs grew weak when we tried to stand, and when we squatted our legs became numb. I have no idea how we managed to make it through the night—squatting and standing, standing and squatting. When we truly couldn’t stay awake any longer, we squatted down and dozed while grasping the edges of our stool. But we knew we absolutely couldn’t get down. We understood that it would be an incredible mistake if we were to step on the Chairman Mao poster, move one of the Chairman Mao busts, or touch any character in any of the Chairman Mao quotations. For even if we didn’t utter a word about our original crime, the act of touching one of these Mao icons would constitute a far greater crime. We were people who had emerged from the revolutionary storm. We were true revolutionaries and therefore could certainly appreciate the consequences of getting down from the stools. We were intelligent, wise, and talented, and definitely wouldn’t permit ourselves to be sent to the guillotine.
In the latter half of the night, when everything was completely still, we could just barely make out a mechanical sound from a factory and the rumbling of two trains traveling down the tracks. From those sounds, we determined that we were located at least thirty or fifty li from the county seat. The cool night air seeped into the detention chamber. The heat of the spotlights made us feel irresistibly drowsy, and on several occasions we dozed off and almost fell off our stools. Moreover, when we fell asleep and sat down onto the stool seat, the nails would poke us in the butt. Once, Hongmei was poked by a nail, whereupon she screamed so loudly that dust was shaken down from the ceiling, but after she woke up, fatigue continued to weigh down her eyelids. She said, “Aijun, I’m afraid we won’t survive this torture.” I asked, “Are you unable to stay awake any longer?” She replied, “Sooner or later, we’ll both fall off these stools and immediately become active anti-revolutionaries.” I said, “Even when it feels as though you can’t endure anymore, there’ll inevitably be a turn for the better, and victory will be within our grasp.” She said, “My feet are numb, my legs are rubbery, and my eyelids are sore. I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold out much longer.” I said, “You can hold the edge of the stool and shut your eyes. That way, you can nap while listening to me count. When you hear me get to ten, you can open your eyes, and if you can’t rouse yourself, I’ll wake you up.” She therefore grasped the edge of the stool and closed her eyes, as I began to count out loud while watching her carefully. When I saw her head begin to tilt, I quickly called out to her. We continued in this way, with one of us napping while the other watched and counted to ten, whereupon the person who was counting would wake the other person up.
Relying on our fortitude and our wisdom, we somehow managed to make it through that endless night.
When the sun came up, and that young soldier, holding the toothbrush and cup he had just used to brush his teeth, opened the door, he placed his toothbrush and cup on the floor inside the doorway, then randomly pushed aside those four streams of Mao busts, opening up a path through them. In the process, he revealed a couple of Chinese characters or graphic elements written in chalk on the ground. He came to a stop in front of our stools and stared down at the Chairman Mao poster between us. Using the sunlight shining in through the door, he checked to see whether or not the poster had any footprints or handprints. After confirming that neither of us had stepped on it, he turned his attention to the Mao busts positioned around the stools. He spent at least ten minutes inspecting the area around the stools, and when he finally confirmed that we had indeed remained on the stools the entire night, he looked up at us in surprise.
I said, “We really didn’t get down.”
He said, “You are the first ones who have managed to stay on the stools for an entire night.”
I said, “We are starving and parched. You must let us eat something, even if it is just a sip of soup.”
He said, “There is something to eat and drink, but I’m afraid that if I give you anything, then I’ll be the one who’ll have to stand on those stools.”
I said, “You can’t refuse this most basic humanitarian request.”
He said, “Confess! Once you do, you’ll be able to get down from these stools. Otherwise, not only will you be forced to confess, your crimes will be doubled, and you’ll be labeled an acting counterrevolutionary.”
I inquired, “What do you want us to say?”
He stared at me coldly and said, “You’re asking me? You know perfectly well what crimes you committed, and if you’re not willing to confess, then you can simply stay on those stools and let your crimes to be doubled.” Upon saying this, he again started to back out of the room, and as he did so he returned each of the Mao busts to its original position. At times, he appeared to forget where a particular bust should go, and then he would turn it over and look at the base and at the Chinese character or graph on the ground and then would move a different bust to its place. Hongmei and I were completely engrossed by his actions. We couldn’t hea
r what he was muttering, but we could see his mouth repeatedly opening and closing. We watched as he revealed the characters and graphs beneath two of the streams of busts leading up to us. Under the first stream, there were the graphs 五、山、委、辶、月, and under the second there were the graphs, 人、氵、水、扌、云. In order to quickly engrave these ten graphs in our memory, we fashioned their corresponding characters into a phrase: 五山委走月，人水水手云, which literally means, “Five mountain committee walks moon, person water water hands cloud.” After the young soldier left the detention chamber, I repeated those two phrases to myself, then turned to Hongmei and said, “Do you remember what graphs appeared under those busts?”
She replied, “I remember seven or eight of them. The front four are five, mountain, committee, and something else, and the rear four are person, water, water, and hand.”
I asked her, “Do you know what that means?”
She replied, “If I knew, then we would be able to get down from these stools.”
I began to ask myself, What is the relationship between these ten graphs and Chairman Mao? And how does each graph indicate the correct orientation of the corresponding Mao bust? We knew that every graph accomodated a different bust, but what was the relationship between the graphs themselves? We were absorbed in this game for a long time, trying to use this exercise to forget our hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, and also to endure the endless wait. We speculated that the graphs with a greater number of strokes might correspond to the taller busts, but we noticed that the bust placed over the 委graph was in fact a half-body bust that was only as large as a fist. Then we speculated that maybe the graphs with fewer strokes corresponded to the larger busts, but then we noticed that a full-body Mao statue was sitting on a 云 graph that had only four stokes, while an average-size bust was sitting on a 人 graph that had only two strokes. We speculated that only the busts positioned on full characters were oriented toward the east, northeast, or southeast, but then we noticed a bust positioned on a graph that was also oriented toward the east. We speculated that all the busts positioned on graphs might be oriented toward the west, or toward the northwest or southwest, but then noticed that the bust positioned on the graph 氵(meaning “water”) was oriented due east. We speculated that the characters and graphs might combine to form a sentence, an aphorism, or a line from a poem, but for the life of us we couldn’t figure out what “five mountain committee walks moon” or “person water water hands cloud” could possibly mean, though we did recognize that the “moon” at the end of the first line appeared to parallel the “cloud” at the end of the second line. We scoured our memories for all the poems we knew, reviewing the pitifully small number of old poems with the words “moon” and “cloud” that we could recite from memory, but none of them could be linked to the lines “Five mountain committee walks moon, person water water hands cloud.” We knew all of Chairman Mao’s poems by heart, but his poetry was always concerned with themes of humanity and heroism, and you definitely couldn’t find one that rhapsodized about moons and clouds and the like. Therefore, we eventually found ourselves in a dead end. It was as though we had walked into a dark room and found the door locked behind us or as though we had entered a gully and found ourselves facing a sheer cliff. Accordingly, we had no choice but to turn around and go back.
“It seems we couldn’t figure out the meaning of those graphs even if our lives depended on it.” Upon saying this, Hongmei looked away from those four streams of Mao busts.
At this point I noticed that, once again, a sentry was walking back and forth in front of the window, which was now open. I saw the sunlight shining in through the window, like light from a spotlight. After a moment, I began to feel a faint warmth circulating through the room. Hongmei was standing there massaging her knees and calves, after which she began pounding the soles and heels of her feet. We had already been standing and squatting on those stools for an entire night and the better part of a day—at least fifteen hours in all—and if Secretary Guan didn’t send someone to talk to us soon, we’d have to remain on those stools for another day and night. It seemed certain that the task of making it through that next day and night, through a combination of standing and squatting, would become our most hated enemy. Needless to say, in the end, we would be defeated generals in this battle. However, we couldn’t permit ourselves to say anything without first having a formal discussion—even if it were to take the form of an interrogation. We couldn’t sell ourselves out before achieving our objective. We had to talk to Party secretary Guan from the prefectural Party committee. After all, we were Red successors who had been recognized by Secretary Guan, and therefore, perhaps, in recognition of our revolutionary feats and achievements, Secretary Guan could erase our crimes with a mark of his pen. At the very least, Secretary Guan was a high official, and therefore might be able to be lenient toward us. When Director Liu left us, didn’t he say, “If someone who has killed more than a dozen people can still become an official, then what is so extraordinary about what the two of you have done?” If you want revolution, then you must sacrifice, and death will become something common. Secretary Guan must surely understand this revolutionary law and revolutionary logic. We surely just had to wait for him to arrive, or at the very least wait for him to send someone to see us. Meanwhile, at the present moment, the most pressing thing was that we had to find some way of passing the time while remaining on those twelve-by-twenty-centimeter stool seats, and we somehow had to find a way to forget our hunger and thirst, our sore backs and weak legs, and our aching tendons and numb feet. At the same time, we absolutely couldn’t fall off the stools and thus step on the Chairman Mao poster.
Hongmei said, “Aijun, will someone come to arraign us today?”
I replied, “Irrespective of whether or not we are arraigned today, we absolutely mustn’t fall off these stools.”
Hongmei said, “Aijun, I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it to nightfall. I’m afraid I’ll fall off the stool and step on the Chairman Mao poster. My feet and ankles are already so swollen they feel like leavened dough.”
I told Hongmei to roll up her pants legs, and sure enough her ankles were bright and shiny and as thick as her calves. She asked, “What should we do? Will we die here on these stools?” I said I would tell her a story, but she replied that she didn’t want to listen. I said that there was someone who was very loyal to Chairman Mao, very loyal to the Party, and whose thought was even more enlightened than ours. When that person heard that tens of thousands of students could see Chairman Mao at Tiananmen Square, he asked himself why shouldn’t he go as well? Therefore, he proceeded to sell all of his pigs and goats, as well as his household’s grain and lumber, and then used the money to go to Beijing. He traveled by car and by train, and when he reached mountain regions that couldn’t be traversed by vehicle, he instead proceeded on foot. He traveled from spring into summer and from summer into fall—until he finally reached the vast square in front of the gate tower in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Can you guess what he said while standing there?
Hongmei simply looked at me.
I repeated, “Can you guess what he said?”
Hongmei said, “Did he shout, ‘Long Live Chairman Mao’?”
I said, “No, he didn’t.”
Hongmei said, “Did he shout, ‘Long Live the Communist Party’?”
I said, “No, that’s not right either.”
Hongmei said, “In the center of Tiananmen Square, there is the Monument to the People’s Heroes. He must have gazed at that monument and composed a poem, such as:
After you become free, you mustn’t forget the Communist Party,
And after you are liberated, you mustn’t forget Chairman Mao.
When you drink water, you mustn’t forget who dug the well, and when you are happy you mustn’t forget to plant a red flag.
Or something like that.”
I said, “No, that’s even less right.”
Hongmei asked, “
Then what did he say?”
I replied, “Guess again.”
Hongmei said, “I really have no idea.”
I said, “He walked around the square, and then he stood in the middle and exclaimed, ‘Heavens, this is really huge! I can’t even calculate how many mu it is. It doesn’t have any trees and is immaculately clean. Why doesn’t Chairman Mao issue a directive that all the country’s grain be brought here to dry in the sun?’”
When I said this, Hongmei laughed. She laughed so hard she almost fell over, and had to hold the edge of her stool with both hands to steady herself. The sentry stationed outside heard her and peered in, tapping the window. But after he did so, Hongmei forgot about her swollen ankles and the fact that she hadn’t slept all night. She even forgot that we were in a detention chamber inside a prison. Instead, she said, “Aijun, tell me another one.” So, I proceeded to tell her three revolutionary jokes in a row. Afterward, she still wanted more, but I was completely out of stories. (I discovered I was a revolutionary, but not a revolutionary storyteller or comedian.) Therefore, we proceeded to engage in a game of exchanging poems. She would begin by offering a line and I would supply the next.
She said, “My family lives in Anyuan at the head of the Ping River, and for three generations we have relied on coal mining to raise our horses and oxen.”
I said, “When I bow my head and think of the old society, I can’t restrain my tears from flowing.”
She exclaimed, “Good! The moon shines on our path to battle, and the wind is refreshing. The air forces launch a surprise attack against Shajiabang.”
I said, “We sing as we march, the moon is dark and the winds are strong, but they are not able to suppress our happy heart, our strong will, or our fighting spirit.”
She said, “That’s merely average—it sounds like it was borrowed from some opera lyrics. Now, pay attention. I’ll say a few words, and you must say a few words in response. They have to rhyme, match in both sound and sense, and they must be original.”
