by Yan Lianke
This plan sounded simple and easily implementable: it appeared she was proposing that we use bowls of tea in order to repay our debts. I took the bowl and hurried down the street in a state of confusion. It was as if I knew that a bowl of tea could cancel our debt, but I also felt that a single bowl couldn’t possibly be enough. When I reached the house of Fifth Grandpa, I shouted, “Fifth Grandpa, outside everyone is stealing things. If you drink this tea you won’t fall back asleep, and that way you’ll be able to guard your house and prevent people from robbing you.” After the door opened, Fifth Grandpa looked suspiciously at that bowl of tea, as though it were a bowl of soup into which someone was planning to add poison. “If you don’t trust me, you can try it. If you take a few sips, you’ll find you aren’t sleepy at all. You really won’t be sleepy at all.” Clearly skeptical, he brought over a bowl and asked me to pour him a little of the black-red tea. Under the streetlamps the ground was the color of yellow mud, while elsewhere it resembled a pool of sewage. Some people ran by in front of me, while others ran behind me. They ran frantically, to the point that if they dropped something—like a pair of plastic sandals or a red silk dress—they wouldn’t even stop to pick it up. Meanwhile, I accepted the bowls of thick tea that Mother handed me, and delivered them as she directed. At each house, I would first knock and then hand over the bowl of tea. I would always say the same thing, and as I was leaving I would keep an eye on the ground and pick up whatever I found.
As I was delivering tea to the sixth household, I encountered a family of three in the intersection. The man was in his forties. He was shirtless and wearing shorts, and was carrying a pair of bamboo baskets. In one of the baskets there was a sewing machine, and in the other there was its stand. There were also some neatly folded piles of cloth, and some newly sewn clothes. The family had just robbed a tailor’s shop. They must have robbed a tailor’s shop. The man’s wife was carrying a bundle of cloth. When some of the cloth fell to the ground, I immediately knew which shop it had come from. When they saw me, they all scurried into the street, as if they had just seen the owner of the tailor shop returning home, or they had just seen the owner’s family come out. I stood there watching the family of three. Under the lamplight, their faces appeared sallow and were covered in sweat. “Have some tea. If you drink this tea, you won’t fall asleep, and neither will you dreamwalk.” When the child—who was several years younger than I—saw me, he quickly went over and held his mother’s hand. His hand went from yellow to white, becoming the same color as hospital walls. The man immediately stood in front of his wife. “Go away! You’re the ones who are dreamwalking. If you take another step forward, I’ll kill you.” He shifted his bag from one shoulder to the other, so that the sewing machine was now in front. I stood there, staring blankly. I tried again to explain, “This is a bowl of tea that has been specially designed to dispel drowsiness and give you a lift.” I extended the bowl to him, and took a small step forward. “This is thick tea, and upon drinking it people who are drowsy will no longer feel drowsy, and people who are dreamwalking will suddenly wake up.” I extended the bowl to him, and when it was close enough that he could reach out and grab it, he put down the baskets he was holding. From the side of the sewing machine, he took out a knife—a cleaver. The back of the blade was black with rust, but the edge still gleamed brightly.
“Do you want to live or not? If you take another step, I’ll chop you down.”
I stood there frozen, and pulled back my hand.
“Get out of here. If you don’t, then regardless of how young you may be, I’ll still chop you down.”
“It really is just a bowl of tea. If you drink it, you’ll wake up and will no longer be drowsy.”
As I was stepping back, the tea splattered my hand. It was neither hot nor cold, but rather lukewarm. I looked at this man and his family, and proceeded into the middle of the street—but wasn’t sure whether I should drop the bowl of tea and run home, or continue to the house of the sixth family. This sixth family was surnamed Gao, and when a member of the Gao family died, my father had secretly earned four hundred yuan. When my uncle cremated the family’s relative, he let all of the corpse oil flow out, and then took some ashes and bone fragments from the furnace, and gave them to somebody. The Gao family didn’t know about any of this—the same way that, during the day, people may well forget about what they dreamed the previous night, or the way that people, while dreaming, don’t remember what occurred when they were awake.
In the meantime, I continued standing in the middle of the street until I saw someone walking over. The man who had just robbed the tailor’s shop also saw this person approaching, and he quickly put his knife away and placed his bag back on his shoulder. “When the sun comes up tomorrow, if you dare tell others that you ran into us tonight, I’ll send your entire family to the crematorium.” He made a point of telling me this before leaving, to frighten me. He also gave me a fierce glare. It was as if he either hated me or feared me. Because I feared his gaze, it was as if it were a blade of light slicing my face in half. As the family walked away, the pace of their footsteps suddenly increased, such that it sounded as though they were fleeing. It was not until they were already far away that it finally occurred to me that I should have checked to see what the man looked like, what his family looked like, and whether or not they were from Gaotian. However, I was so frightened I completely forgot. My mind was a complete blank, like a bald mountain in the middle of winter, or like Yan Lianke’s novels that resemble deserted graves. It was as though everything was a dream, and everyone was dreamwalking. Was I also dreamwalking? If so, that would certainly be a very odd occurrence—an extraordinary occurrence. I tried to take a sip of the tea I was holding, then vigorously pinched my thigh. It hurt, but my throat felt moist and comfortable. In this way, I confirmed that I was awake and wasn’t dreaming. I felt somewhat disappointed. The light on the street was unevenly distributed, and I moved a step from an illuminated area to a darker one, where I saw that family of three walking away.
However, someone else was approaching.
The person came closer, with footsteps that sounded as familiar as a sentence in a book I had read.
The footsteps sounded as familiar as the titles of Yan Lianke’s novels and the names of the characters in them.
It was my father.
It really was my father. He was returning from the banks of the river outside town.
But the closer he got, the less he sounded like my father. His body was so hunched over that he looked like a rat running down the street, and he was breathing coarsely and heavily, like an elephant that had hiked a long distance. His clothing was wet and there was a gaping hole in his left breast, where the fabric was still hanging from his chest. His pants had a long rip, through which you could see a bloody wound. His round face was yellowish-white, or pale yellow.
He had been beaten. At least it looked as though he had been beaten, and no mild beating at that. The left side of his mouth was bruised and swollen, and it looked as if the blood were about to start flowing but was still bottled up inside.
Outside town, my father had done something very saintlike. On the West Canal, he had washed the faces of many dreamwalkers, as though performing baptisms, and in this way he had succeeded in waking them from their slumber. He had used a bamboo pole to reach into the canal and fish out the bodies of several old people who had jumped in while dreamwalking, and then woken up realizing that they didn’t want to die. Someone said that after Father awakened all of the old and young dreamwalkers, he carried back to the village the corpse of someone surnamed Yang, whom he hadn’t managed to wake in time. He returned to the east side of town, but as he was making his way back to the center of town from an alley on the east side, he ended up like this. Like a mouse. Like a lamb. Like a chicken that had been killed by a cat or dog. Like a dog that had been beaten by someone passing on the road. He was sick. He was disabled. But he was also extraordinarily sleepy. He was exhausted. It was as th
ough, in a single breath, he had sown several decades worth of crops, or had walked for several decades. But as soon as he stopped, he would fall asleep, and as soon as he fell asleep, he would topple over. Therefore, so as not to fall asleep and topple over, he stood in front of me—as though a short, rotten post that had been buried underground for many years suddenly rose up before my eyes.
“Father . . . Father . . .”
I repeatedly called out to him. I called out to him twice, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t answer, and instead stood planted in the middle of the street as though he were in the middle of a deserted field. He looked at me as though he were looking at something else.
“I deserved to be beaten. Who told us to let everyone down?
“I really did deserve to be beaten. Who told us to let everyone down?”
It was hard to tell whether he was saying this to me, or simply speaking into the void. He seemed to be talking to himself, mumbling to himself. As he spoke, a sallow smile hung on the corners of his mouth—an ambiguous, forced smile. As he smiled, he cast a glance toward South Street behind me. “Niannian, you are my son. Given that you are my son, you should go with me to kneel down in front of the others. We must let them beat us and curse us. Who told us to let them down? Who told your uncle, that beast, to let them down?”
I saw the whites of Father’s half-closed eyes, which resembled two pieces of dirty white cloth, while his pupils resembled drops of ink that had fallen onto the cloth. The ink was no longer black, and the white cloth was no longer white. Instead, they were now mixed together, so that the boundary between the black and the white was no longer discernible. If you looked carefully, you could see that the white portions of his eyes were dirty, that the pupils were a mixture of black, yellow, gray, and white, with some parts being slightly darker—enough to show that these were his pupils.
I knew Father was dreamwalking.
I knew that now Father was also dreamwalking.
His expression was like a brick or a block of wood. Perhaps no one had beaten him. Perhaps he had fallen while dreamwalking, and had ripped his clothing and hit his mouth. His mouth wasn’t terrifyingly swollen, it was just the sort of swelling that’s the color of blood, and his expression was not entirely like a brick or a block of wood. “Father, what’s wrong? Take a few sips of this tea Mother brewed.” I handed him half a bowl of the tea, which had already cooled down. But he was still in a somnambulistic state, and his entire attention was directed toward whatever it was he was thinking about. He knocked over the tea bowl I was holding and the tea splattered to the ground—the same way that he had deliberately knocked over the face-washing basin I had handed him earlier. “Are you or are you not my son? If the other townspeople look down on your father, you must do so as well.
“Even if I were shorter than I am now, I would still be your father.
“Even if I had sinned more than I have, I would still be your father.
“Let’s go. Go with me to those families’ homes, to kneel before them.”
Father led me to those households on the south side of town. It turned out that those were the same households I had visited to deliver tea. They included the homes of Fifth Grandpa, Uncle Liu, Auntie Wu, and Sister-in-Law Niu. When we reached the first house, Father pounded on the door, and when it opened, he pulled me down to kneel in front of the person opening the door. He looked up at the person’s face and, without waiting for the person to realize what was happening, he began to sob and plead. “Fifth Grandpa, you must beat me. You must beat me. I, Li Tianbao, am not a person, but rather a beast. You must beat me!”
Fifth Grandpa was terrified by this.
In front of the entrance to Fifth Grandpa’s home, there was a small ten-watt bulb, which produced a dim and muddy light. Fifth Grandpa’s complexion was oddly sallow. “What’s going on? What’s going on?” Staring in shock, Fifth Grandpa came over to lift me and Father from the ground. But as he was standing in front of Father, Fifth Grandpa seemed to remember something. He turned pale, and stared as Father’s eyes turned icy cold and his voice turned frigid.
“Tianbao, what are you talking about?”
Father looked up. He appeared to be still half-asleep, and when he spoke his voice was somewhat hoarse. “More than ten years ago, it was I who went to the crematorium to inform on people. It was I who reported that Auntie had been buried, as a result of which her body was pulled from the grave and burned.”
Fifth Grandpa froze.
Fifth Grandpa stared at my father as though staring at a dog eating human flesh. As I knelt next to Father, I looked up at this old man in his eighties. His gray hair moved in the lamplight, as did his goatee. The sagging and wrinkled skin of his face tensed, trembled, and then tensed again. It seemed as though he wanted to say something, or as though he were about to slap Father’s face. At the same time, he was still an old man in his eighties, who was unable to hit or curse anyone. The corners of his mouth trembled, as he turned to look at the courtyard behind him. Then, as he turned back, his face appeared red and frightened.
“Tianbao. You and your son must go quickly.
“You mustn’t let the rest of my family know about this.”
My father peered into Fifth Grandpa’s courtyard, then stood up, whereupon I stood up as well. When Fifth Grandpa pulled us forward, we peeked into the courtyard behind him. “Father, who is it?” This was the sound of his son shouting to him from some room. Then, the sound of Fifth Grandpa answering his son drifted back into the courtyard. “It’s nobody. It’s the village notifying every household to guard against theft.” Then everything was quiet again. In the ensuing silence, Fifth Grandpa pushed me and my father out of his house. Father frantically knelt down and began kowtowing, then he and I frantically backed out of Fifth Grandpa’s house. We stood on the side of the street, as Fifth Grandpa waved and repeatedly warned us not to mention this to anyone. “You can say that Niannian brought us some invigorating tea, but you mustn’t mention what else happened.”
Fifth Grandpa quickly shut the door and, in the process, he shut the events of the past into the back of Father’s mind.
Father and I stood on the side of the street. I saw Father let out a long sigh—a sigh as long as a rope tied around a bundle of wheat stalks, and when the rope is undone the wheat stalks will fall apart. Father was also relaxed, and under his somnambulistic pallor his face was blushed slightly.
“Let’s go. Let’s go to the next house. The more I think about it, the more I think this is not a big deal. If we go to a few more households, I’ll be able to put everything I’ve done in this life behind me. Then, you’ll be able to live happily with your mother.”
The hand with which Father was holding mine was covered in sweat.
My own hand also had a small pool of sweat. When Father released my hand in order to wipe his own on an electrical pole, I felt a chill on the back of mine. I hadn’t realized that I had clenched my hands into fists, but after I released them, I discovered that in each of my palms there was a pool of coolness.
With this coolness, I suddenly felt very relaxed. It was as though there were no somnambulism. It was almost as if there were no longer any somnambulism. Father could now think and speak clearly. Apart from the fact that when I looked down at his face I saw that it was the color of wood or brick, even Fifth Grandpa, who was awake, did not think my father was sleeping. Father, however, was half-asleep when he knelt down in front of others to atone for his acute sense of guilt and shame. This is really how he was. It’s the way someone talks and acts after getting drunk, but then forgets everything the next day after sobering up. He swayed slightly when he walked, but otherwise no one would have been able to guess that my father was asleep—or even half-asleep.
We proceeded forward. We went to the next house, which belonged to Uncle Liu. Out in the street, it seemed as though terrifying sounds were hidden everywhere, but when you listened carefully, you couldn’t hear anything. The moon remained as it had been, murky grayi
sh-white. The air seemed to be both moving and congealed. The clouds remained as they had been, accumulating in some areas and dispersing in others, and leaving the town’s streets and alleys muggy and murky. What time was it? I didn’t know what hour and what minute of this day and night it was. I followed my father. I left the empty bowl on a stone in front of Fifth Grandpa’s home, planning to take it back when I returned.
We reached the next house, and knocked on the door.
We knocked, and also called out.
A man opened the door, and Father—upon seeing that it was the head of the household or someone important in the family—immediately knelt down in front of him. As he did, Father cried, “Beat me . . . You must beat me . . . Spit in my face . . . You must spit in my face . . .” Then he described how, when someone in this family had died, he had informed on the family for money. When he said this, the man who opened the door appeared startled, speechless, and at a loss. After all, the events in question had occurred more than a decade earlier, and the regulations on burials and cremations were determined by the state. My father and I had not only confessed, but even knelt down in front of the man. What else could be done? The other man simply stared for a while, and reflected. “So, Tianbao, this was really something you did.” Still kneeling, Father nodded. The other man was angry for a while, but then expressed forgiveness. He said something that was a mixture of hot and cold. “I never imagined you could have done something like this. You are such a small person, I never imagined you were capable of accomplishing such an extraordinary deed. Everyone says you and your wife at the New World funerary shop are completely different from the director of the crematorium. The wreaths you sell are large and cheap, and you never try to profit from the families of the deceased. I would never have imagined that you were capable of something like this . . . Get up! It’s certainly true that you can’t judge a book by its cover . . . Get up! I’ll never strike someone who is offering an apology . . . Get up, it’s the middle of the night, and the two of you should return home and go to sleep. Just now, your wife told Niannian to bring us a bowl of tea to prevent us from falling asleep and dreamwalking.”
