His elder sister was married in faraway Pingjiang County, but every time she went back home to visit, she saw Yanzao didn't have one good thing to wear, that the cooking pot was always half full of freezing gruel, without a hint of warmth in it. Out of the few dozen catties of unhusked grain allocated to him by the work team, he had to save enough to give his little brother Yanwu, who was in school, to throw into the rice-pot at school; it left his elder sister's eyes continually red with tears. They were so poor they never had extra quilts and every time the elder sister went back home she always squeezed up with her younger brother in bed. One evening, when it was raining hard, the elder sister woke up in the night to discover the foot of the bed was empty, that Yanzao was sitting there, bowed over, not having slept at all, making a sobbing noise in the darkness. His elder sister asked him what was wrong. Yanzao gave no reply, and walked into the kitchen to twist grass rope.
Also sobbing, his elder sister walked into the kitchen and extended a trembling hand, reaching for the hand of her younger brother: if you can't bear it, she said, don't treat me like a member of the family, just treat me like I'm someone you don't know… I want you to know what women taste like.
Her hair was in a mess, her underclothes already undone, as she offered her jade white breasts up to her younger brother's stunned gaze. "Take me, it's not your fault."
He whipped his hand back and retreated a step.
"It's not your fault." His elder sister's hand moved down to her own trouser string, "We don't count as human anyway."
He fled as if for his life, his footsteps disappearing into the wind and rain.
Weeping noisily, he ran to his parents' grave. When he returned home early the next morning, his elder sister had already gone, leaving a bowl of steamed sweet potatoes and a few socks, washed and darned, laid out on the bed.
She never returned home again.
It was probably from this time onwards that Yanzao would talk even less, as if his tongue had been cut out. Whatever people told him to do, he did it. If people didn't tell him to do anything, he'd go off and sit squatting to one side; when people stopped issuing orders to him, he'd silently return home. As time went on, he just about became a real mute. At one point he, along with all the other members of the commune, was called up for road-mending work. Discovering on the construction site that his rake had disappeared, he began to search everywhere, his whole face flushed bright red with anxiety. The People's Militiaman who was supervising them asked him suspiciously, what the hell was he doing, darting in and out like that? He could only howl in response.
The People's Militiaman interpreted his incoherent mumbling as a form of trickery, and feeling a thorough investigation was required, pointed his rifle at his chest with a click: "Tell the truth now: what the hell are you up to?"
Sweat beaded on his forehead, his face reddened up to his ears and down to his neck, the muscles in his rigid face pulled half-askew, trembling and quivering like jelly, his eyes widening ever farther with every tremble; his mouth-that mouth on which bystanders were waiting so anxiously-was wide open all this time, but its expansion in vain, as not a single word was spat out.
"Talk!" The bystanders were also sweating with anxiety.
Panting, wheezing, after repeated efforts that locked his faculties and features into a terrifying, tortured, life-and-death struggle, a sound finally erupted forth: "Wah-rake!"
"What rake?"
His eyes bulged, but no further words came out.
"You a mute, hmm?" The Militiaman was getting increasingly irritable.
The muscles in his cheeks erupted into repeated bursts of twitching.
"He's a mute," someone standing nearby told him. "He hasn't got much to say for himself; he said everything he had to say in a previous life."
"Won't talk?" The Militiaman turned back to glance at him. "Say'Long Live Chairman Mao!'"
Yanzao got so agitated he howled even louder; he raised an index finger, then an arm, and made a gesture of cheering, to convey "Long Live." But the People's Militiaman wouldn't let it go, insisted that he say it. His face took a few punches that day, and his body a few kicks, but still he didn't manage to get this whole sentence out. Finally, at the very last gasp, he shouted out a "Mao."
Seeing that he was a real mute, the People's Militiaman punished him by making him haul another five carrying-poles of earth and left it at that for the time being.
From this time on, Yanzao's status as a mute was formally certified. There was of course nothing bad about being a mute: too much talking saps the strength and catastrophes start at the mouth, so less talk meant fewer arguments, or at least that Benyi no longer suspected him of saying bad, reactionary things behind his back, that he could ease up a bit on his watchfulness. When someone on the work team was needed to spread pesticide, Benyi thought first of him: maybe this spawn of a poison woman wasn't afraid of poison, he said, and now that he was a dumb-ox he wouldn't say anything to anyone, couldn't easily make a fuss, so they could send him off on the job alone.
The mud in the Great Gully was freezing cold, and there'd never used to be many bugs living there. But according to what the locals said, the bugs were all driven out into the open by the noise of the diesel engines; once the engines started up, the rushes on the mountain all swarmed with them. Where there were insects, of course, there'd have to be pesticide spread. When Fucha tried it out for a day, just for novelty's sake, he came back vomiting and foaming at the mouth; face green and legs swollen, he stayed in bed for three days, saying he'd been poisoned, after which no one dared touch the sprayer again. People were afraid that if the landlords and rich peasants were sent to do this unpleasant job, they'd poison the commune's cows, pigs, or cadres with pesticide. Having thought it over several times, Benyi decided Yanzao was the most honest, law-abiding traitor around, that he'd do.
When Yanzao started out, he also suffered from poisoning: his head swelled up like a melon and was kept wrapped up in a piece of cloth all day, however hot the weather got; he looked like a masked bandit, with only his eyes, blinking away, exposed to the outside. As the days went by, he probably slowly acclimatized to the poison and took the scarf off; he wouldn't even wear the mouth and nose scarf the Educated Youth gave him, or wash his hands first at the waterside before going home to eat. The most poisonous pesticide, 1059 or 1605, something like that, was absolutely nothing to him: the hand that had just spread the pesticide could a moment later be wiping his mouth, scratching his ear, grabbing a sweet potato and stuffing it into his mouth, cupping cold water to his mouth-all of which was astounding to onlookers. He had a ceramic bowl that was plastered with pesticide residue, that was specially used to spread pesticide. Once, in the fields, he caught a few mud loaches and chucked them in the bowl; a moment later, the loaches were writhing in agony. He lit a fire to the side of the field, roasted the loaches and gobbled them down one by one, suffering no ill effects whatsoever.
After various discussions about all this, the villagers decided he must have become a poisonous being and the blood flowing through his veins could no longer be human blood.
People also said that from this time on, he no longer needed a mosquito net while sleeping, that all mosquitoes gave him a wide berth: simply touching his finger meant instant death. For a mosquito flying over him, exposure to just one breath of his would send the little creature crashing to the ground, its head spinning. His mouth was more effective than the pesticide sprayer.
*Resentment
: Some words undergo a bizarre transformation once they pass into actual usage: their opposite meaning gestates and grows within until it bursts out of them, until they end up annihilating, totally negating themselves. In this latent sense, such words always carry within them their own antonyms-if only people realized it. They harbor shadows that are very hard to glimpse.
The hidden meaning of "expose," for example, is in fact "hide." At first watching, the exposure of sex in a pornographic film can shock and stun viewers. But when
films like this become commonplace, a dime a dozen, when they're coming out of your ears, their "exposure" will have no effect at all beyond leaving viewers increasingly numb, unmoved, and indifferent; show them endless pornography and they'll just yawn and yawn. Excessive sexual stimulation results in the exhaustion, even in the total annihilation, of sexual feeling.
Criticism is the hidden meaning of "praise." Criticizing someone is most likely to win that person more sympathy. Criticizing a film is most likely to lower audience expectations before people view it, so when they do watch it, it will make an unexpectedly favorable impression on them. Anyone experienced in the ways of the world can't fail to acknowledge the logic behind linking praise and criticism, can't fail to realize the terrifying potential of what Lu Xun called "being clapped to death." Praise can pile too much glory and honor onto the shoulders of enemies, attract envy, make the general public deliberately faultfinding in a way they might not have been otherwise, vastly increasing the risk of widespread resentment. Praise may also go to an enemy's head, encourage sloppiness, result in unforced errors in the future; his reputation will end up in tatters without anyone else needing to raise a finger in reproach. More often than not, the best way of dealing with enemies is in fact to praise and not criticize.
Then what about "love"? What about Yanzao's love for his grandmother? Did that also have a reverse side lurking behind it? After the feeling of love had ebbed away, had some unexpected residue been left behind?
Yanzao's grandmother was a very peculiar character. She'd sleep during the day, then climb down from her bed in the evening to chop wood and boil tea, sometimes even humming a song or two. Yanzao would help her over to the toilet hut, then she wouldn't relieve herself; then just as Yanzao had helped her to bed, she'd start to reek of piss and shit. She'd yell and shout about wanting to eat garlic bulbs, but when Yanzao had busted a gut to borrow some, she'd yell and shout she wanted to eat crispy rice and push the garlic heads out of her bowl, all over the floor. Then, when she'd eaten up all the crispy rice, she'd announce she'd had nothing to eat at all, that she was so hungry her stomach was stuck to her spine, she'd curse Yanzao for starving her to death, for being a disloyal, unfilial good-for-nothing. For a good many years now, Yanzao had been at his wits' ends over this old woman he looked after, this old woman who'd brought him and his brother up.
Yanzao howled and roared, feeling a particularly distressed kind of love for his grandmother. As soon as he saw her going on some irrational hunger strike or other, he'd whirl around and around in agitation, blue veins bulging out of his forehead, snarling and grimacing, shouting so loud that people in the upper village could hear. The small dining table in his house had already needed repairing several times, each time thumped to pieces by him in a fit of temper. I knew, of course, that this howling and thumping stemmed from his distress. Unfortunately, I also knew that every time he became distressed, his grandmother got more and more used to his distress and valued it less and less, until finally it became valueless to her, or she insensible to it. She'd just roll her eyes and mumble wistfully about Yanzao's younger brother Yanwu. It was indisputably Yanzao who'd made her cloth shoes, but she'd insist it was Yanwu who'd made them. It was indisputably Yanzao who'd carried her on his back to the clinic to see the doctor, but afterwards she'd insist it was Yanwu who'd carried her. No one could set her bizarre recollections straight.
Yanwu was at school in distant parts, studying painting or Chinese medicine; he'd never stayed at home to look after her, hadn't even gone to see her in the hospital when she'd been seriously ill. But whenever he happened to return home for a visit, the old woman would bend his ear enumerating Yanzao's faults one by one; sometimes, her face covered in smiles, she'd delve from out of her pocket a glutinous rice cake that she'd been keeping warm for the last few days, or a couple of shriveled grapefruits, and surreptitiously press them on him.
Yanwu's great talent was for blaming and criticizing, through expressing annoyance at his brother's howling, for example, "She's an old woman, old young old young, what's the difference-you've got to treat her like a kid, what's the point in getting mad at her?"
Yanzao silently accepted the criticism.
"When she wants to make a fuss, just let her make a fuss. Her spirit's up, too much yang in there, making a fuss'U release her energy, give her back her balance, make her sleep better at night."
A true man of learning, he was, who spoke with so much erudition he barely made sense.
Still no sound from Yanzao.
"I know she gets you down. There's nothing to be done. The more you argue, the more she gets you down, there's still no way out, she's still a person, isn't she? Even if she were just a dog, you couldn't just kill her like that, could you? How could you lay a finger on her?"
He was referring to the time, not long ago, when Yanzao had lashed out at his grandmother's hand-the hand that, at that moment in time, had been stuffing a ball of chicken shit into her mouth. After the event, Yanzao didn't know himself why he'd exploded like that, why his hand had fallen so heavily-after only two blows the old woman's hand had swelled up very badly and a few days later shed a layer of skin. People said Yanzao'd had too much contact with pesticide, that he was poisonous all over, that one blow from him would burn anyone's skin off.
"Her quilt needs washing, it reeks of urine. D'you hear me?" The man of learning said his piece and left. It was like this every time he came home: he'd have a meal, wipe his mouth, dictate a few instructions, then leave. Of course, he'd leave as much money as he could. Money-he had money.
I can't say that Yanwu's chiding and his money weren't a kind of generosity-even if he was reacting from outside and after the fact, generosity was still generosity. But the prerequisite for this generosity was precisely that he'd spent very little time at home, that he'd suffered very little torture at his grandmother's hands. Neither can I say that Yanzao's use of violence wasn't a kind of callousness-even though he was confronted with a masochist who refused to listen to reason, callousness was still callousness. This callousness was the desperation that resulted from the failure of all other methods, from the failure of love. In a situation like this, love and hate swapped places, just as when a negative is developed the black is filtered into white, and the white filtered into black. When confronted with this old poison woman of Maqiao, one person's generosity was filtered into callousness, and one person's callousness was filtered into generosity.
Maqiao people had a special word, yuantou, meaning "resentment," also a little like "grievance," which carried the double implication of love and hate. "Resentment" generally developed thus: after one party has lost all lovable qualities, a torpid feeling of love for them is drained of all emotion, becomes no more than an intellectual test of endurance. Imagine what it's like: when love is totally exhausted, burned out, withered away, when one party has squandered it and stamped it flat into the ground, when only the bones and dregs of love are left, full of bitterness, full of day-after-day of torture. This is "resentment." He who loves receives some reward, gets to keep the touching, personal memories that remain after giving out love. But he who resents gets no reward, is left with nothing, he's given out and given out until he's lost everything, including anything that implies or is reminiscent of love. By this stage, he who resents has lost his right to a clear conscience before the judges of morality and ethics.
Yanzao resented his grandmother.
In the end, his grandmother died. When they buried her, Yanwu rushed back home to weep in the most heartbroken way, kneeling in front of the coffin, refusing to let other people pull him away. Anyone could see from his crystalline tears that his grief was genuine. But Yanzao was just wooden: if someone wanted him to do something, then he'd do it, his gaze remaining cavernously blank. Perhaps what with all his bathing the old woman, dressing her in her longevity clothes, and buying her coffin over the last few days, he'd just been too busy to have time to cry, and now he had no tears left.
Because of
the class status of Yanzao's family, not many people attended the old poison woman's funeral, and no one was asked to sing filial songs. The whole business was desperately bleak. The few relatives on her mother's side who came couldn't stop themselves venting their grievances toward Yanzao: at least Yanwu had some filial piety, they said, at least his eyes were red from crying, he could bring himself to kneel, but that Yanzao had no sense of decency, had treated the old woman badly, so they said, fighting with her every other day; he didn't have a word to say even now, his eyes were dry as a bone. You'd be more upset if a dog had died, wouldn't you? Should be struck by lightning, that rotten old curmudgeon, shouldn't he?
Yanzao remained silent before this sea of voices.
*Scarlet Woman
: There were a lot of snakes in the mountains. Particularly on the evenings of hot days, snakes would burrow out of clumps of grass to enjoy the cool, length after length stretched out across the road, their exquisitely patterned bodies shimmering, presenting a vision of lush greenness to passers-by, their forked tongues shooting out, quivering, glimmering, fresh and bright. At such moments, they weren't in fact necessarily dangerous. Once, as I sleepily returned home late at night, staggering dazedly to the left, then to the right, one momentary lapse of concentration led to me treading barefoot on something fresh, cool, and soft, that had suddenly come to life; before I'd had time to work out what it was, my instincts had me leaping around like a madman, trying to kick both feet above my head. Without pausing for breath, I ran ten or twenty meters, with only one word squeezing its way out of my brain: Snaaaaaake! Mustering all the courage I could, I took a look at my feet but found no wound. When I turned to look, I could see no snake's tail in pursuit.
Shaogong, han - A Dictionary of Maqiao.html Page 19
