by Yan Lianke
The village chief’s house was located in the entrance to the second alleyway off the main street. It was a new three-story house, built with red bricks and red tiles, which resembled a large fire burning day and night. There was a seven-foot-tall courtyard wall and a two-yard-tall gatehouse made from old bricks with a roof that had the inscription GONG MANSION in large gold characters. The light bulbs below the door resembled the eyes of the village chief’s wife, as if she stood in the street cursing people. Father and I arrived at the village chief’s house, and as we were about to knock on the door, we saw that it was already ajar. The courtyard was as illuminated as though it were the middle of the day. The house was also as illuminated as though it were the middle of the day. Although it was already well past midnight, and was even entering the latter half of the night, the village chief and his wife had not yet gone to sleep. Instead, they were preparing hot and cold dishes, and drinking wine. The smell of the wine filled the house, and drifted out into the courtyard and into the street. There were pear and apple trees in the courtyard, and in the lamplight the fruit was dangling there like miniature hammers. Mosquitoes and moths flew around tirelessly, and the village chief, who was in his fifties, was shooing them away while drinking wine. He was neither fat nor thin, and was a bit hunchbacked. His thick, mournful mien was wooden and gray. Hanging on the wall, there was an image of a deity and a landscape painting. There were portraits of Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong. The village chief’s shadow fell on the latter portrait. There was also an enormous painting of the eight celestials crossing the ocean, which was hanging on the wall between the two main rooms, making it appear as though the entire wall were a deep blue sea. The village chief was sitting on the seaside drinking wine. When he raised the cup to his lips, it made a whistling sound like ocean waves; and when his chopsticks knocked against the side of his bowl, they sounded like oars striking the shore. “Damn it, you’re not opening the door. How dare you not open the door?” He continued cursing as he drank, running through a litany of complaints. “I never did anything to offend you. I’ve treated you well, but now, regardless of how loudly I knock and shout, you still won’t open the door for me.” He wife emerged from the kitchen with a plate of eggs and chives. Her shirt was half-unbuttoned, revealing breasts that resembled fallen eggplants. She walked past me and Father as though walking past a pair of stone columns. She was under fifty years old; her smiling face, which, was reddish-brown, was like a pile of dried paint. “Gong Tianming, I’ve prepared another dish of eggs and chives for you. Now you can say who treats you better—me, or that widow!” She sat down in front of her husband, served herself a cup of wine, then toasted him. “Apart from her youth, I don’t see any way in which that widow is better than me! Now you can determine whether her treatment of you is real or fake. Not only did she throw you out, she even slapped you in the face.” The chief’s wife pushed the plate of eggs and chives up to her husband. “Here, have some. These green chives are the shreds of that widow’s skinny flesh, while this yellow egg is her fatty meat. The dish is called fat with fried widow.” She then placed a bowl of soup in front of him. “This is a soup made from her ribs . . . This is a cold dish prepared from the widow’s tongue . . . These are the widow’s breasts prepared with garlic sauce . . . Eat her. Drink her. In this way, you can help resolve my anger, and can also help resolve your own anger.” The chief gazed at his wife, looking resentful and befuddled. But, in the end, he did accept her toast. Looking at her face, which resembled a pile of dried paint, he didn’t say a word. Instead, he put his chopsticks in that dish of skinny-fat widow eggs and chives.
Father and I knew that the village chief was dreamwalking, and we knew that his wife was also dreamwalking. While sleeping, they would eat, drink, and complain about each other. In the entranceway to one of the halls, there were two pots of Chinese roses that were as red as blood. That night the village chief and his wife were drowned in the smell of food, flowers, and wine, like a pond full of mud and blood. Standing in the entranceway to the village chief’s house, I gazed at the faces of that couple who had lived together for nearly thirty years, like a board that had been split in two.
“The two of you are both dreamwalking.
“The two of you are dreamwalking, so you should wash your faces or drink some tea. If you do that, you’ll wake up.”
My father walked into the hallway of the village chief’s house and stood next to the small table where they were drinking wine. “Chief, you have to wake up. I have to find a way to ensure that no one else in this village falls asleep tonight, because if people do, they’ll start dreamwalking, and if they dreamwalk, there will be major problems. Some people have already died. In fact, quite a few people have already died. Some of them drowned themselves in the river, while others were beaten to death while being robbed. If you don’t attend to these issues of life and death, the village and town may well fall into utter chaos—becoming as chaotic as a bowl of porridge.” Upon saying this, Father went to look for the village chief’s face basin, then brought it over, half-filled with water. “Wash your face. Wash your face and wake up, so that you can quickly attend to the village’s affairs. You can’t simply stand by and watch as one villager dies after another.”
The chief looked at my father and at the basin, then poured himself another cup of wine. He said, “I had thought you were Wang Erxiang, but it turns out you aren’t. Given that you are not Erxiang, why are you asking me to wash myself? And drink wine? And eat vegetables?” My father turned to the chief’s wife. “I want you to wash the village chief’s face.” He glanced at the wife, then quickly looked away again. Her breasts were visible through her shirt, like sagging eggplants.
“Go wash the village chief’s face, and also wash your own.
“Given that there has been a momentous incident in the village and in town, as village chief he has no choice but to look into it. If he doesn’t attend to people’s lives, then one by one they will all be lost.
“After you wash your own face and wake yourself up, you should wash the village chief’s face. Hey, don’t start eating now. You should first wash your face to wake yourself up, and then wash the village chief’s face.”
Father stood there while saying this. Meanwhile, the village chief and his wife ate and drank as though no one were around. In the end, when Father and I attempted to wash the chief’s face ourselves, he grew angry. He immediately stood up and threw down his chopsticks. “You fuckers, who do you think you are? How dare you touch my face? Do you think you’re my wife? Do you think you’re Wang Erxiang? If you make another move, I’ll have my wife fry you as though she were frying Wang Erxiang, and then I’ll consume you with some wine.” He said this in a powerful voice, such that his entire face appeared to be possessed by an angry and heroic spirit, and as though he wanted to grab a stool and smash it over my father’s head and body.
My father froze. “I am Tianbao. Don’t you recognize me?”
My father took a step backward. “I am Li Tianbao, who sells wreaths. I am awake, and you are asleep.”
“Get out!” The village chief sat down again, and poured himself a cup of wine. He picked up a pair of chopsticks and, without wiping off the dirt, stuck them into a dish of cold vegetables. His wife laughed as she watched her husband and my father. “You say we are dreamwalking. Look at your own face, with sleepiness as thick as a wall. What are you doing coming over to our house in the middle of the night, rather than going back to sleep in your own? It’s the middle of the night. Why can’t you let my husband rest in peace? He’s the village chief, and not your family’s hired hand, whom you can summon at will. And you, you are eating and drinking, and saying that this is meat from that widow’s thigh, that it’s meat from that widow’s breast. You claim you are eating her and drinking her—but if you eat her and drink her, it is as if you were sleeping with her. There is no need for you to long for her so fervently.” She thought that, in saying this, she would be flattering her husband, but the vill
age chief raised his wine cup while staring coldly at his wife, whom he hated. She immediately looked away, and her voice dropped to a whisper.
“If someone doesn’t open the door for you, is that my fault?
“If someone pushes you and slaps your face, is that my fault?”
Father and I emerged from the village chief’s house, and from his family’s dream. The night was as it had been, and there were still footsteps and mumblings everywhere. The night was seeped in mystery and disquiet, which circulated everywhere like air. It was as if there were someone hiding behind every tree and every wall. For some reason, all of the streetlamps along the main street were suddenly extinguished, as were all of the streetlamps in the entire town. It was unclear whether they had been extinguished on schedule—during the chou period from one to three o’clock in the morning—or whether they had been shattered by dreamwalking thieves. At any rate, the road now consisted of sheet after sheet of darkness, and in isolated alleys there were streams of thick blackness. Through this black night, the sound of invisible footsteps was simultaneously murky and indistinct but unusually clear and resonant.
The night became a good night for thieves and bandits.
The town became a good town for thieves and bandits.
The entire world became an optimal world for thieves and bandits.
My father tugged at my hand. “The electricity has gone out. Don’t be afraid.” In the darkness, I nodded in my father’s direction, and gripped his left hand even more tightly than before. Every day, he would split bamboo to make wreaths, leaving his fingers as rough as the bottoms of a pair of sandstone shoes. We headed back, and after taking a few steps through the darkness, we could make out some stars in the sky. I noticed that the road under our feet seemed to be emitting a muddy glow. As we proceeded forward, we heard footsteps following us. We stopped and spun around. Without waiting for the footsteps to get closer, Father offered a pleasant greeting. “Hi, whoever you are. You can do whatever you want. My son and I didn’t see anything, and we won’t say anything to anyone.” However, the shadow continued to approach, with the footsteps becoming faster and faster.
“You two, whoever you are, was it you who just came to my home?
“It must have been you who came to my home.”
It turned out that this was the village chief.
The village chief had been chased out of his home, and out of his dream. He was holding a flashlight, which he shone on me and my father. Then he turned off the flashlight and stood there in the murky darkness. In the darkness, he appeared to be pondering something. “Chief Gong, if you have any tea leaves at home, you should have your wife brew you some tea to drink. Otherwise, you should go back and I’ll have Niannian bring you a bowl of tea.” The village chief initially didn’t say anything, but after a while he remarked:
“A moment ago I was very sleepy and confused, but now I am less so, and feel as though a seam has opened in my brain. Just now, when you were in my home, were you saying that in the village there had not been just one death, but many?”
“Ah, yes, there really have been many. They are all people who either died while dreamwalking or were beaten to death. This is why you must wakefully attend to these things.”
The night was eerily quiet, but in the stillness there were some people who were feeling irritable because it was hot and stuffy. When Father spoke, I could sense his anxiety, and could feel his sweaty hand. The village chief, however, remained calm. In the murky darkness, the chief’s face dissolved into the depths. In the dark depths, it appeared as though he had no face, but only a body standing before us like a column. This body stood there silently for what seemed like an eternity.
“Li Tianbao, given that you can sell wreaths and burial shrouds every time someone dies, you will surely make some money. But, it won’t be very much. I’ll give you more, if tonight you can help me with something. OK?
“I want you to go fetch some poison. Then, I want you to take advantage of the fact that my son’s family is not home and the entire town is out dreamwalking, and go slip some poison into my wife’s wine cup or soup bowl, so that Erxiang and I can marry each other. OK?”
Upon saying this, the village chief stood there motionless, staring at me and my father. It was as though he were staring intently at something he couldn’t see. The sweat that had accumulated in my father’s palm began to drip. His warm palm became a pool of cold liquid, and then became a mass of frigid air. “What are you talking about, Chief? How could I, Tianbao, possibly do what you are asking? I came to find you simply because I was worried that the town’s dreamwalkers might run into trouble . . . You can continue doing whatever you were doing, and I’ll return home and fetch you a bowl of thick tea.” As Father was saying this, he pulled me away and we quickly left the village chief and headed home. Initially we took small footsteps, but then we shifted to large strides. As we broke into a run, Father glanced at the dark shadow following behind, and immediately slowed down.
“Go back, Chief, go back! It’s not easy to be alive. I’m going to go home and fetch you a bowl of tea.”
The village chief didn’t immediately respond. After a while, however, his voice emerged from the darkness. “I really do like Erxiang, so what do you suggest I do? What should I do?” His voice sounded hot, anxious, and helpless, but it also seemed to have hints of warmth. It was unclear whether he had really woken up, or was still asleep. Father focused only on dragging me home, and when he spoke again, it was to look back and gesture symbolically. “Chief Gong, go home. In the entire town, there is no one as tight-lipped as I. I’ll go fetch you some awakening tea.”
We heard the village chief’s footsteps as he turned around and headed home. He proceeded very slowly, as though he remained bewildered over whether or not he should murder his wife and marry Erxiang.
2. (2:21–2:35)
In town, there was a police station.
The police station was located in a courtyard across from the town government compound. In the courtyard there were trees, lamps, and electric fans. The station’s police were all in the courtyard taking advantage of the coolness to sleep. The yellow lamplight was like a bright pond. The courtyard gate was made of iron and steel bars, and if you climbed up, you would see that inside there were five bamboo cots nestled together like corpse pallets. The five township policemen—who were asleep on the cots like soldiers in the barracks—each sat up, one after another. Like soldiers, they put on their shoes, then turned and proceeded to the wall in the rear of the courtyard, where they urinated against the wall, each of them holding his member with his hand. After they finished, someone—perhaps it was the station chief—said something, and the five policemen shook off the remaining drops of urine, then turned and marched back.
In a neat and uniform fashion, they removed their shoes and lay down to sleep. The sound of their breathing and snoring flowed out into the courtyard like water through a canal.
“A deadly event has occurred in town. Aren’t you going to do anything? . . . A deadly event has occurred, aren’t you going to do anything?” Father and I both shouted through the gate’s iron bars. Three policemen sat up, and together they hurled a curse at the gate as though throwing a brick. “Get out! . . . What are you doing, making such a commotion in the middle of the night? Do you want us to arrest you? . . . Do you want us to arrest you?” After they finished shouting, the policemen lay back down in an orderly fashion, and there was the sound of their bodies striking the wooden cots—as though a wreath’s several dozen bamboo strands simultaneously snapped in the middle of the dark night.
Then, all was silent again, except for the rhythmic sound of teeth grinding.
3. (2:36–3:00)
The town government cadres also began dreamwalking.
They began dreamwalking, going off in all directions. Only the light bulbs and fluorescent tubes were awake and shining. The cracks in the old bricks used to pave the town government courtyard were clearly visible. If a needle w
ere to fall into one of those cracks, it could be located immediately. Mosquitoes and moths were flying around in the light. Standing in the interstices between light and darkness, the grape trellises resembled a mysterious matrix of light and shadow. This building was more than a hundred years old, and the bricks and tiles looked as though they had been taken from an old temple, or from Beijing’s Imperial Palace. It had originally been a home belonging to a member of the landed gentry from the Republican era, and later it had been adopted as the site of the town government. One town government regime after another used this as its office complex; and one town mayor after another worked and relaxed in this brick and tile structure. Here, officials would read newspapers, study official documents, and hold meetings. They would oversee the various villages under the town’s jurisdiction, together with everything in the Funiu Mountain region. On that particular night, however, all of the town government cadres began dreamwalking. The town mayor and the deputy mayor also began dreamwalking. As the mayor and the deputy mayor began dreamwalking, the other people in that tile and brick building—including both important and unimportant ones—began dreamwalking in accordance with the mayor’s decree.
