by Yan Lianke
We stood up.
We proceeded to another house.
Then we proceeded to yet another.
This home belonged to a man called Gu Hongbao, who was a bit older than my father, and a bit taller. I needed to get the tea bowl we had left in front of Fifth Grandpa’s house, and take it over to Gu’s house. I just needed to take it to Gu’s house. But first I needed to get the tea my mother had prepared. My pace was a bit slower now. I placed the refilled bowl in the entrance of Fifth Grandpa’s house on the southern side of the intersection. By this point, things were different from before. They had gotten blown out of control, and had exceeded Father’s plans. They had exceeded even my own wildest imagination. We knocked on that door, then went inside. When we saw Gu Hongbao standing in his courtyard, we immediately knelt before him.
“What are you doing? What are you doing? Li Tianbao, what are you and your son doing here?”
The light in his courtyard was very bright, and it was not entirely clear why his family had so much money. The piles and piles of money seemed to come from nowhere. They had money to go drinking, and money to gamble. They had built a three-story house lined with white porcelain, and were able to lead a very prosperous life. Under that fiery red light, we could see that the doors to the house were made of iron and were painted red with touches of silver and gold. The windows had green steel bars that had been soldered into the shape of flower blossoms. The courtyard was full of flowers and plants, and there was also a flower pond. A black sedan was parked in the courtyard under a new tile-roofed garage. Father and I knelt down on the concrete in front of the door to the garage, and could smell the alcohol coming through Gu Hongbao’s pores. Father told Gu about how he had previously served as an informer. He described his feelings of shame and guilt, and how he had always wanted to find an opportunity to confess, but had been hesitating for more than ten years. He explained that on that night, while all of the townspeople were dreamwalking, he himself felt simultaneously clearheaded and confused, as though he were dreaming as well.
He therefore had come to confess.
He therefore had come to acknowledge his crimes.
“If you want to hit me, go ahead.
“If you want to curse me, go ahead.
“Brother Hongbao, if you want to hit or curse me, you are perfectly entitled to do so.”
We thought nothing would happen. We thought that, at worst, Gu Hongbao would simply utter a few cold words, like the previous families, particularly since his mother’s cremation was not actually the result of my father’s actions. Before my father went to inform on him, the crematorium somehow already knew that the Gu family was planning to conduct a secret burial. The hearse was already parked in front of the family’s entranceway, but my father still went to the crematorium, and my uncle still gave him two hundred yuan as a reward. This is why my father had now come to the Gu family—to confess his sins. What he didn’t expect, however, was that after hearing what Father had to say, Gu Hongbao would immediately turn green with fury. He stared straight ahead, then suddenly grabbed a pole from in front of the garage and held it up.
“Damn your mother, so it was you after all!
“Damn your grandmother, so it was you, Li Tianbao!
“Damn your great-grandmother. All these years, I’ve never forgotten about that. I never expected that on this night of the somnambulism, you, Li Tianbao, would come over in such a confused state and confess.”
It turns out that when Gu spoke, his voice was high-pitched like a woman’s. When men with high-pitched voices get angry, it is as though their bodies are suffering an electric shock. Jumping and hopping around, he had grabbed a wooden pole and continued hopping around under the lamplight while mumbling to himself. Afterward, he looked off in another direction, like a frightened horse that lowers its head and runs away. When Gu uttered his first curse, my father, who believed he was sleeping in his bed, reacted as though someone had just punched him in the gut. He appeared as though he wanted to wake up, but was sleeping too soundly and simply couldn’t rouse himself. But when Gu screamed at him a second time and reached for his pole, my father finally woke and opened his sleepy eyes. “Aiya, what’s going on?” he shouted, then pulled me away from Gu Hongbao’s raised pole. He pulled me and I quickly took a couple of steps back, then he positioned me in front of him, to block him from the pole.
“Brother Hongbao, were you really going to hit me?
“I’m not scared that you’ll hit me, but were you really going to hit your nephew Niannian?
“Go ahead, hit me. Hit me. If you can, go ahead and beat Niannian to death.”
My father pushed me toward Gu’s wooden pole, even as he simultaneously gripped my shoulders and prepared to pull me away.
Ultimately, it was I who blocked Gu’s pole. It was I who, on account of my age, was able to defeat him. At the time, I was frightened and confused, and my mind was in turmoil. My head and body were covered in sweat, and sweat also dripped down my face. But when Gu Hongbao saw my father push me under his pole, his hand suddenly froze. In fact, his entire body froze. My father had won—he used wakefulness to defeat sleep.
“Brother Hongbao, just now I was speaking to you in my sleep. Did you take what I said as the truth? You often get drunk, but after you sober up, do you take what you said while you were drunk as the truth? In court, they don’t accept what people say when they are drunk or asleep to be reliable evidence, and instead they treat it as equivalent to the ravings of a madman. So, how could you accept what I just said while asleep as true? How could you accept what I said or did while dreamwalking to be true?”
Gu Hongbao stared in shock. He stared at the spot where my father had been kneeling, as the pole remained frozen in midair. Perhaps he was remembering how he liked to get drunk, or was thinking about the oddness of that somnambulism. He stared at Father’s face, and into his eyes, as if he wanted to determine whether or not my father was, in fact, dreamwalking. At any rate, after staring blankly for a while, he ultimately put down the pole he was holding. My father seemed to be afraid they would continue to argue over something, so as soon as Gu Hongbao put down his pole, Father pulled me toward the front entrance of the house and walked away. He walked very quickly, as though he were fleeing. He ran as though he were fleeing. “How could I have been sleeping, woken up, and then fallen back asleep? And then start dreamwalking again? How can I endure a beating, and then fall back asleep and start dreamwalking again?” He was talking to himself. He was muttering to himself. He strode over to the entrance, then turned around and looked back at Gu, who had followed him out, and shouted:
“Gu Hongbao, what people say while they are dreamwalking doesn’t count as true, and you mustn’t take what I said as true. Just now, the mother of Yang Guangzhu, who lives at the eastern end of the street, went to look for her husband, who died more than ten years ago, then proceeded to drown herself in the river. It was I who carried his mother home from the river, but after doing so, I told his family that it was I who killed his mother, his father, and his grandmother.
“If you say that I harmed the three members of his family, then how could I tell his family?
“Such an insignificant person as myself, could I have harmed the three members of his family?
“Gu Hongbao, did you hear? Don’t forget that several times when you fell down drunk on the side of the street, I was the one who carried you home.
“Gu Hongbao, go to sleep. I’m telling you that the fact that your mother’s body was taken away and cremated has nothing to do with me. Like you, for the past ten years or more, I had no idea who in town could be so amoral, and therefore, while asleep, I confusedly attributed this act to myself.
“Go back to sleep. Don’t forget that my own mother wanted to be buried, but in the end was afraid someone would inform on her, and so it was I who took her to the crematorium.”
Standing in the middle of the street, my father told Gu Hongbao many things. Standing in the doorway, Gu li
stened intently as my father told him everything that had happened. It was as if he were sobering up, and was slowly remembering everything he had said and done while drunk. Initially, when Gu and my father first encountered each other, one of them had been asleep and the other had been awake, but now that they were both awake, the more they spoke and listened, the more confused and murky the situation became, and the harder it was to distinguish between truth and falsity.
After everything became confused, we really did leave.
Father kept saying, “I don’t dare sleep, I don’t dare sleep. If I fall asleep, I’ll start dreamwalking, and something awful may happen. Something deadly.” Ignoring Gu Hongbao, who was still standing in the entranceway, Father pulled me away and said we had to return home.
Then we hurried home.
BOOK SIX
Geng 4, Part Two: An Entire Clutch of Chicks Hatch
1. (1:51–2:20)
Something awful occurred.
Something deadly.
After Father pulled me away, we hadn’t gone very far before we arrived at the tailor’s shop, which was positioned kitty-corner from the Gu family home. When we initially arrived on that street, we had focused only on getting to the Gu family home, and didn’t see the tailor’s shop. On our way back, however, I noticed the tailor’s shop. Out in the street, there were the sounds of countless footsteps going back and forth. The dreamwalkers were stealing things, while those who were not dreamwalking also took the opportunity to steal. “Thief! . . . Thief!” It was unclear where this cry was coming from. It was as though a piercing wind were blowing over. In the street and alleys, the yellow lamplight seemed as though it were there to let the thieves find their way, while remaining dim enough to obscure their faces. Another crowd of people came forward, carrying an assortment of bags. When they passed us, I turned to look at them, but Father pulled me back. “You’re all busy. Very busy. We didn’t see anything.” Father hugged me close, then led me over to the entrance of the tailor’s shop.
The door was open. The shop was located on the side of the street, and there was a wooden sign in the entranceway. On the sign, there was the word TAILOR in large red characters, though in the darkness the red characters appeared black and indistinct, yet at the same time very clear. In this clarity, a pungent smell of blood wafted over. When I turned in the direction of the smell, I saw that in the entrance to the shop someone was lying in a pool of blood. He was dead. His arms were extended awkwardly in front of him like a couple of tree branches, and he was still grasping a sewing machine belt. When my father and I saw this, we both gasped and stood there frozen. Before I had a chance to look more closely, Father used his body to block my sight. He didn’t want me to see that bloody corpse, but I still saw it. The blood looked like mud, and the corpse’s skull had been shattered like a melon. The body and the blood were mixed together, as though someone were trying to wash himself by crawling through the mire. My father stared silently at the body, and continued to stare until finally he shouted, “Hey . . . Tailor Liu . . . Something horrible has happened at your home . . . Something deadly . . . You are all still sound asleep . . . Heavens, you are all still sound asleep!” At this point, I remembered how, a little earlier, that family of three had passed me while carrying a sewing machine, some cloth, and a large knife. It was only then that I noticed once again that, although my father was not very tall, his voice was nevertheless as tall as a tree. It was so loud that if you were to place the sound upright, it would be like a ladder reaching the sky and leaning against the clouds, such that people could use it to grasp the moon and stars.
Then, a light appeared in a window in back of the tailor’s office, and Father quickly led me home. We ran like crazy.
Someone had died.
Someone really had died.
Because they were dreamwalking, people had died one after another. Not all of them committed suicide by jumping into a river or hanging themselves. Others had been cut down while robbing and stealing. Out in the streets, it seemed as though the footsteps of thieves and bandits could be heard everywhere, but it also seemed as though there wasn’t anyone there at all. There were shouts of “Stop, thief! Stop, thief!” followed by a deathly stillness. It would become so still that you could hear the fear circulating through the town streets. From one street, you could hear the sound of stealing and killing coming from a different street, but when you went to another street, you would hear sounds coming from an alley off the first street.
Everyone appeared to be very busy. Very, very busy. People were muttering to themselves, and when they brushed by one another in the street, they acted as though they didn’t even know one another. They acted as though there wasn’t anyone near them. They acted as though the entire world were asleep, and as though they were the only ones who were awake and busy doing things. One person who didn’t know what he wanted was simply running around aimlessly. He wandered back and forth, and if he bumped into a wall he would simply turn away, but if he bumped into a tree, he would slap his own forehead, followed by his thigh or butt. It was as if he had just woken up, or had realized that this was not what he should be doing. He simply stood there staring blankly, then went to either do something or not do something. He wandered aimlessly along that street, like someone swimming through a muddy pool—and he was making an awkward snoring sound, as though it was not easy for him to breathe while underwater.
The street resembled a market—not the sort of bustling market where everyone was constantly bumping into everyone else, but rather the sort of idle market that comes at the end of the busy harvest season. It was as if everyone had finished work and was now simply relaxing, and had come out to the street to take a stroll and look around. People didn’t have any fixed plans to buy or sell anything in particular. But in the process of strolling about, someone began anxiously running, his feet moving so fast that it seemed as though he were flying. It was as if he were trying to catch a car or a train. In the ensuing tumult, no one knew what was happening.
Or what might happen.
In fact, someone died.
Someone really did die. And it wasn’t just one person, but rather several.
Many people walked past the body of a dead person, acting as though they hadn’t seen anything. They looked at a dead body on the side of the road as though it were someone sleeping on the riverbank or on the roadside. But my father woke up and saw all of this with me. He even climbed up onto several corpses to take a closer look. He had woken up when he came out of Gu’s house, and as soon as he saw the corpse in front of the tailor’s shop, he lost all traces of drowsiness. It turned out that a corpse could dispel drowsiness. The stench of blood could drive away a person’s drowsiness, just as insect repellent can drive away mosquitoes. “We have to tell the village chief about this. We have to tell the town government about this. We have to go immediately to the town’s police department and report this, and ask that the township police take care of it.” My father originally wanted to take me home, but when we reached the intersection, he changed his mind. Instead, he led me to the house of the village chief. We strode past one dreamwalker after another—one group of dreamwalkers after another—as though we were striding through a forest. As the dreamwalkers proceeded, they lifted their feet and then lowered them again, over and over. They were all stumbling along, but only very rarely did any of them fall down because they couldn’t see the road clearly.
I’m not certain what time it was at this point. It must have been around chou period, from one to three o’clock in the morning, and more accurately perhaps around the fourth geng, which is to say, two o’clock. On our way to the village chief’s house, we ran into our neighbor Yan Lianke, who was returning from his writing studio on the embankment. He appeared to be dreamwalking as well, and quickly crossed over from the other side of the street. Like the others, he alternated between high and low steps. But unlike the other’s, his clothing was neatly arranged and his shirt was tucked in. He was wearing a pair of sli
ppers, as though he had woken up to go to the bathroom, and then had simply continued walking until he reached the town. He didn’t say a word, and his face was like a book full of miswritten characters that no one could read. When he walked past me, I shouted out to him, “Uncle Yan, what’s wrong? . . . You’ve come back to town.” He ignored me, and continued onward. In a dream, he continued walking in the direction of his house.
So, it turned out that even this author could dreamwalk. Even he could be infected with this secret disease. I tugged at my father’s hand, and pointed to Yan as he walked away. My father looked at him as though looking at a tree that could walk. He watched as that tree crossed from one side of the street to the other. “The fact that even he can dreamwalk is incredible, simply incredible!” As my father was saying this, he took my hand and quickly led me to the house of the village chief. It was as if he thought that in finding the village chief, he would be able to make everyone stop dreamwalking. As if in that way, he could make daytime be daytime, and nighttime be nighttime. As if in that way, he could make it so that people would do things when they were supposed to do them. Dreamwalking is like being summoned or infected, and it turned out that even this author was capable of being summoned or infected. Even people located in remote and isolated locations were capable of being infected. It was quite possible that this somnambulism affected not only Gaotian Village, Gaotian Town, and the Funiu Mountain Range, but also the entire county, the entire province, and even the entire nation. It was quite possible that the entire world was dreamwalking in the middle of the night, with only my father and myself still awake, together with the thieves and the bandits. As we proceeded forward, my father and I mumbled to each other as though talking to ourselves. I gazed up at Father’s face, and he patted me on the head, saying, “Father won’t go back to sleep.” His head was as clear as a mountain stream, and he didn’t have the slightest trace of drowsiness. The fact that he wasn’t sleepy was actually a torment, because it meant that he had no choice but to attend to the dreamwalkers, the same way that those who were able to stand erect and walk had no choice but to help those who had fallen by the side of the road. Father had no choice but to assist them to their feet, and to help them pick up what they dropped. Of course, many items simply fell and rolled away, and someone helping to retrieve them might be tempted to slip something into his own pocket. This was to be expected. I myself picked up many items lying in the street and took them home—including a pot, a pouch of milk, a milk bottle, as well as some clothing and shoes that thieves had stolen and then dropped by the side of the road. There was also a scythe used to harvest wheat, and a cloth sack used to collect it.
