by Yan Lianke
“Do you realize you’re not wearing any clothes?
“You are Zhang Jie, from the street in front of ours, aren’t you? Do you realize you aren’t wearing any clothes?”
3. (24:01–24:15)
Our old house was still quietly ensconced there. The door handle resembled a bird sleeping in a summer night. The house was still a house, and the door was still a door. There were several containers of grain propped against the wall, and apart from some rat droppings, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. Grandmother’s portrait was still sitting on a table in the main hall, and the spiderweb was still hanging from the wall. The stools were covered in ashes, as were the chairs. When the door opened, the ashes and dust blew around. The stale air also blew around. There was the sound of a straw hat falling off a nail in the wall. Our footsteps were echoed by the sound of night sparrows singing. In the courtyard, there were trees—tung trees and poplars—that were growing crazily with no one to stop them. One tree trunk had a fork resembling a pair of legs that had taken a wrong turn. There were old chests, old clothes, and rusted hoes and scythes. There was an unused well in the courtyard, and dried-up flowers in a pot. There was also the musty stench of death that had accompanied us home. The house had a lonely and desolate smell, as though no one had entered for a long time. We looked around, and eventually came out and stood in front of the rear wall of Yan Lianke’s house, which abutted our courtyard. The bricks in the wall were no longer new, and had long since lost that fresh sulfur smell of new bricks. Yan Lianke’s house was not as good as ours. Originally, it had been a new three-room mansion, but now it was an old three-room tile-roofed house. Residents of the west side of town had all headed to the east side to buy luxuries, purchase apartments, and do business, and only Yan Lianke’s house was left in this empty, empty alley. Every year, that famous Yan Lianke would say he wanted to go to the developed region to buy a house, but in the end he never did. Perhaps he wasn’t earning enough from his book royalties. In any event, he never bought a new house, and he stopped being one of the wealthiest people in town. In fact, even my family ended up with more money than he. When Yan Lianke wrote novels, he wanted people to live in his stories. My family’s business, meanwhile, helped people live in another world after they died. We used different methods to achieve a similar goal. We both had the same basic objective. Our family opened a funerary shop and sold funerary objects, and anytime anyone died in the village or the town, the relatives would come to us to purchase funerary objects and burial shrouds. Currently, our family is one of the town’s richer households, like a great tree in a prosperous forest. This way, every time my father returned to the old compound and saw the Yan family’s house and wall, he would stand there and reflect for a while. He would reflect, then go to the Yan family’s rear brick wall and knock several times. He would knock several times, reflect for a while, then kick the door. But on that particular night, Father didn’t knock on the Yan family’s rear wall and then kick the door. Instead, he knocked on the wall, then gazed up at the sky. “His family doesn’t have anyone out working in the fields, so there won’t be anyone dreamwalking . . . His family doesn’t have anyone out working in the fields, so there won’t be anyone dreamwalking.” Father had a skeptical expression, and his eyes had an impatient look. It wasn’t clear whether he hoped someone from the Yan family would start dreamwalking, or whether he was afraid someone might do so. In the end, I simply stood beneath the family’s rear wall and waited. I listened carefully, and heard an urgent shout coming from the alley outside our house.
“Has anyone seen my mother? Has anyone seen my mother?”
“Your mother is on the riverbank at the base of West Hill. There are several elderly people there. They appeared to be discussing whether or not to jump into the river, but they were stopped by a passerby.”
Both people were shouting at the top of their lungs. Upon hearing the sound of shouting and footsteps, Father rushed out to stand in the doorway. “It appears that Guangzhu from North Street is looking for his mother,” Father muttered to himself as he watched Yang Guangzhu’s shadow go around the wall, as though a log had fallen into a gully.
After a brief hesitation, Father locked our house’s front gate behind him, then together we followed Yang Guangzhu’s footsteps.
I remembered how others had said that the year before my parents married, a grave that had been exploded, so that the corpse inside could be cremated, actually belonged to none other than Yang Guangzhu’s grandmother. His father had led him to the ancestral grave, and when his father saw that his mother’s corpse had been exploded, her flesh scorched, and her hair burned, he began to curse—but before he finished, his breath caught in his throat and he fell into the grave. He had suffered an aneurysm, and never recovered consciousness. Therefore, Yang Guangzhu simply buried him in the grave that had just been blown open. He was not cremated, and instead was buried. After the burial, Yang Guangzhu knelt down on the grave holding a cleaver and a shovel, waiting for someone to come spy on him so as to reveal this secret burial. He waited for someone to come from the crematorium to blow up the grave and burn the corpse. He even made a grenade from gunpowder, which he hooked to his waist—so that when anyone arrived he could simply detonate the grenade and die as the grave was blown up.
However, the enforcement brigade never arrived.
He waited day after day, but they never arrived.
He waited week after week, but they never arrived.
He waited month after month, but they never arrived.
Finally, he placed a dagger in his belt and walked down the street shouting, “I buried my father’s uncremated corpse in our ancestral grave. The informer can go to the crematorium and inform on me. I buried my father’s uncremated corpse in our ancestral grave. The informer can go to the crematorium and inform on me.”
His shouts landed in the street’s quiet and deathly solitude. The village’s quiet and deathly solitude. The town’s and the entire world’s quiet and deathly solitude. No one went to inform on him. No one went back to blow up his family’s ancestral grave and burn the corpse. For a day, for a week, and for month after month, he kept watch over that grave like a wild hare sitting in a field. In the end, he returned home. In the end, he stopped in the village’s empty streets and shouted, “Informer, come out! Don’t make me wait for months. If you come out, we won’t fight or curse. All I want is for you to tell me why you are serving as an informer. I just want to know who you are. I want to know why you are acting as an informer. I want to know why, despite the fact that your family has been living in the area for generations and has close ties with the other residents, you nevertheless are still not able to turn down the few hundred yuan you might earn from serving as an informer.”
He shouted, “You informer, come out! Let me see you!”
He cried, “Come out! Let me see you, so that I can know who you are! How did our Yang family ever wrong you? It was your fault that my ninety-year-old grandmother’s grave was exploded and her corpse burned up. It was your fault that my father died on her grave because of this. When he died, he had just turned sixty, and he didn’t have a trace of illness.”
He cried and shouted as he knelt down on the side of the village road. “Come out, come out! You owe me two lives, but if I beat you when you come out, I won’t even be considered a person. I’ll be a beast, a pig, a dog. So, I won’t curse you or beat you, and won’t even say a word. If I want to say something or do something, I’ll be a beast, a pig, a dog—and as soon as I go outside, I’ll be run over by a car. I can be tossed onto the hearse, like a pig. I can be cremated in the furnace, like a pig. My ashes can then be scattered over the grass and muddy ground of the crematorium, as though they were pig or cow manure. They can be poured into the reservoir next to the crematorium, to feed the fish and the shrimp.
“You must come out. You must come out!
“You must come out, so that I can see who you are. You must come out!”
As
he shouted, the sun set.
As he shouted, the sun came up again.
He shouted and cried day after day, as the sun repeatedly rose and set.
The daytime heat was left on the streets of the village, and when night fell the heat and dryness would be scattered everywhere. At midnight, when ordinarily the temperature should be cooling off, the daytime heat would still blanket the streets and the entire world. There was the sound of footsteps, and people’s shadows were also flickering all around us. In the square up ahead, it appeared as though there was someone heading west. He seemed to be in a hurry, and his footsteps alternated between being light and being heavy. He lifted his feet and lowered them again, as though he had noticed a depression—or a series of depressions—in the street. With every step, he would lift his foot and then lower it again. Someone was following him, hurriedly following him, as though running after him. The person following him was shouting, and the sound of his voice was like water that had just been released from a sluice gate.
“Father, don’t you dare go down to the riverbank!
“Father, don’t you dare go down to the riverbank!”
Father and I were stopped in our tracks by these shouts. We rushed over to the square, and saw a middle-aged man following an old man, as they both headed toward the riverbank to the west of the village. The old man was in his seventies, and his son was in his fifties. When the son caught up with his father, he hugged him tight. “Have you gone mad? Have you gone insane? Have you gone mad? Have you gone insane?” Then, the son half-hugged and half-carried his father home. When they reached us, both of them stopped and stared as though they had suddenly run into a doctor.
“Tianbao, you’ve returned home! Tell me, do you think my father has gone insane? He was sleeping, then suddenly got up and ran outside.
“I’m going to find my mother. You know, more than ten years ago my mother was still alive when she was taken to the crematorium to be cremated. She was in the hospital and her catheter had not yet been removed, whereupon the doctor announced that there was nothing else he could do. He said that if she didn’t want to be cremated, then she should be taken away while still alive. I don’t know who called to notify the people at the crematorium, but the crematorium’s hearse was waiting in front of the hospital. We hadn’t yet decided whether to bury her or have her cremated, but they proceeded to haul her away to the crematorium. As she was being hauled away, her heart was still beating, and she was cremated while still alive. It is because of this that my father, whenever he falls asleep, keeps repeating over and over again that he has to go and find my mother, he has to go and find my mother.”
As the son was saying this, he dragged his father in front of me. My own father stood there, remaining perfectly still. It was as though someone had slapped him in the face. He was as pale as the moon, and his forty-year-old round face appeared as contorted as though he were in his fifties or sixties. He looked cold, though the night was actually very hot and humid. Father stood there without saying a word, as though he were cold. The look of comprehension with which he had been watching the dreamwalkers was replaced with an expression of utter confusion. Bewildered, he said to me, “Go home and see your mother. I’m going to the West Canal, to take a look.” Then he headed toward the West Canal.
He headed out of town.
BOOK FIVE
Geng 4, Part One: Birds Lay Eggs There
1. (24:50–1:10)
When I returned to Town Street, I was astounded by the dreamwalking chaos I found there. Initially, everything was very calm, and as I walked along I could hear people grinding their teeth in their sleep. They were talking in their sleep, and I also heard rapid footsteps in front and in back of me, as though people were running around. All of the dreamwalkers appeared to be anxious and confused. I saw a young man jump out of the window of a hair salon, hugging bottles of shampoo and conditioner to his chest. He was also holding a pair of electric hair clippers and scented soap. Someone else was standing in the street and shouting, “Thief! Thief!” As that person was shouting, I saw someone else break down the door of a meat shop and, without stealing anything, he placed a large pot used for boiling mutton over his head. He then went up to the person who had been shouting, removed the pot, peered at the other person’s face, and slapped it.
The person stopped shouting.
The world became quiet.
Then, like a pair of brothers, the two men picked up the pot and walked away.
It was all extremely odd. The world had become an exceedingly strange place. Originally, it had been just old people who were committing suicide while dreamwalking, while strong and healthy dreamwalkers either went to harvest grain or else went to steal things. For instance, the young man who was robbing the hair salon had also opened a hair salon of his own on the other side of town, but because business wasn’t as good at his own salon as at this one, he came and stole from it while dreamwalking. In his mind, it was the owner’s fault for not arranging for someone to keep watch, and simply leaving the salon open at night. I would come to this salon every month to have my hair cut, and after the young man ran off, I went up to the window to peek inside. I saw that not only had it been robbed, but furthermore everything inside had been smashed. The mirrors on the wall had been shattered, and either the pictures of models with beautiful hair had been crunched up into a ball and thrown to the ground, or they had been torn up into pieces and tossed in the air. A lamp was rolling around under a table, and a salon chair was lying on its side next to the table. There was also an electric fan that had been crushed and left on the floor behind the door. The fluorescent ceiling light tirelessly illuminated all of this, like the sun coming out from behind some clouds to shine on the desolate earth. On this night of this month of this year, the world was suddenly turned upside down, as though a strong wind had toppled an entire forest. Trees had been uprooted, and the leaves and branches were left broken and bare. On the side of the road and in the fields, and in the entranceways and on the walls in front of every home, there were piles of leaves and branches and plastic bags that had been deposited there by the wind. The world was no longer as it had been, and the mountain ridge was no longer as it had been. Gaotian Town was also no longer as it had been. I stepped back from the window of the hair salon and stood astonished in the middle of the street, where I saw people running back and forth. One person was dragging a sewing machine, and as he ran past, some yarn fell to the ground, as though he had spit out a spiderweb.
Someone else walked past me carrying a television set, and the sound of people grinding their teeth while they slept was like a television.
I was completely discombobulated. The world had become a world of thieves. Worried about my mother, I hurried home, and when I arrived I discovered that on East Street every house and every store had its lights on. Some people were standing in their doorways watching the excitement, even as they stood guard by their own houses. Someone brought out a large glass of water, and placed a chair in the entranceway to his store. He waved a fan as he drank his water. Next to the legs of his chair, he had either a knife or an iron rod. When I walked over, we glanced at each other, as we always did, and I held up my knife. After waiting for him to recognize me, I put it down.
“Oh, it’s you. Li Niannian. You’re running up and down the street like a ghost.
“If you’re not going to go to sleep, where are you heading?
“With all these people dreamwalking, why are you not home watching your parents and your store? Why are you running around like a ghost?”
I returned home, and when I pushed open the door to our family’s store, the first thing I saw was that there were now six or seven more wreaths than before. The front room was completely full of wreaths, with some placed on top of others. The entire room had twenty or thirty wreaths, which would be enough for ten families to buy wreaths at the same time. In the past, it had been exceedingly rare for two townspeople to die on the same day. But tonight was different. I d
idn’t know what might happen tonight. I didn’t know how many people might die. Perhaps our shop wouldn’t have enough wreaths to meet the demand. Perhaps even two or three stores wouldn’t be enough. When I thought of the dead people, I didn’t feel at all frightened, and instead merely had a faint sense of unease. Walking through the wreaths in that room, I felt as though my heart were a pot of boiling sweat, and as though my body were dry, cold, and pure. My body was dry and cold and pure, but my heart had a layer of warm sweat, like a ripe peach that had been rinsed in water.
“Mother, Mother!” I shouted as I entered the room. As I passed through the world of funeral objects, the sound of my shouts remained stuck in the first-floor entranceway.
My mother was not sleeping in the upstairs room. After passing back through the room filled with wreaths, I found that she had boiled herself some water in the kitchen behind the stairs. She boiled it in a large aluminum pot used for steaming buns, then poured the water into the teapot and added some tea leaves. She wasn’t sure how many tea leaves she should add, so she kept adding one pinch after another. She blew away the steam from the teapot, as though she were serving freshly cooked rice.
