by Yan Lianke
No way were they coming back.
No way in hell.
And so Grandpa found himself alone in the school. He was caretaker to the doors and plate-glass windows. He looked after the desks, chairs and blackboards. Grandpa was the school watchman in the wretched days of fever that swept the village and the plain.
Even now, years later, the place still had that new-school sulphur smell. On certain late autumn nights, the fumes from the school were even stronger than those from New Street. But Grandpa always found the smell of sulphur to be calming. It set his mind at ease, and made him think of days gone by.
On this particular autumn evening, dusk had come and gone and the school was bathed in silence. The blanketing silence of the plain, a quiet that seeped into the schoolhouse and billowed out again like fog. Grandpa sat on the base of the basketball hoop in the centre of the schoolyard and raised his head to the sky, enjoying the feeling of the moist autumn air on his face. It was only then that he realized he was hungry. Because of his trip to the county, he’d hardly eaten that day. His hunger set his nerves on edge and made his heart feel tight in his chest. With each pang of hunger, each tug of his nerves, Grandpa’s shoulders trembled.
His mind drifted back to springtime many years earlier. One by one, the events appeared before his eyes as if it were yesterday. Like freshly budding leaves, the images unfurled and rose up before him, as crystal clear as the full moon in the sky.
Grandpa saw each detail of that spring with perfect clarity, and he knew.
A sudden gust of wind set the leaves rustling in the trees, reminding him of a long-forgotten spring. And with that spring came the county Director of Education, with two cadres in tow, to mobilize the villagers to sell their blood. It was only halfway into the spring, but the village had already settled into the warmth and comforts of the season, the fresh spring air and pleasant fragrances wafting through the streets. Until, that is, until the Director of Education blew in to meet with Li Sanren, the village mayor, and informed him that the higher-ups had decided to organize a blood-selling drive among the villagers.
‘You want them to do what?’ Mayor Li’s jaw had dropped in shock.
‘Good Lord. Who ever heard of asking people to sell their blood?’
Three days later, when the mayor had still not held a meeting to mobilize the villagers to sell their blood, the county director made another visit to Ding Village. While the director pleaded his case, Mayor Li squatted on the ground and chain-smoked in silence.
A fortnight later, the director returned again. This time, he hadn’t come to lobby the mayor about the blood drive, but to sack him.
After forty years as the mayor of Ding Village, Li Sanren was fired from his post.
Following a brief announcement, a village meeting was held. Li Sanren sat through the meeting slack-jawed, too shocked to speak. Not that it mattered, because the county director did most of the talking. After taking control of the meeting, he made a personal appeal to the villagers to sell their blood. He talked at length about the past, the future, the development of a ‘plasma economy’ and the need for a ‘strong and prosperous China’.
When he had finished his spiel, the director stared at the silent villagers.
‘Well, did you hear what I said? Speak up!’ he barked. ‘I’m not here just to hear the sound of my own voice, you know. What’s wrong with you people? Did you leave your ears at home? Has the cat got your tongues?’
His shouting frightened the poultry. Far from the meeting site, chickens fluttered and squawked. His barking frightened the hounds. A dog that had been lying on the ground beside its owner stood up on its haunches, hackles raised, and began snarling at the director. This in turn frightened the dog’s owner, who aimed a kick at the animal’s belly and shouted: ‘Shut up, for God’s sake! Shut up! You’ll bark at anyone!’
The dog ran off whimpering and with its tail between its legs.
The county director threw down the files he had been holding and slumped in his chair, defeated. A short while later, he left the meeting hall and went to the school in search of my Grandpa.
Although Grandpa wasn’t officially a teacher at the school, he might as well have been. He was certainly the oldest person there. As a boy, he could recite the Three-Character Classic, rattle off the Book of Family Names and calculate birth-dates and fortunes according to the old Yuan dynasty lunar calendar. After the Communist revolution, there was a big drive to stamp out illiteracy in the countryside. The higher-ups opened a small school in the village temple and Grandpa became a teacher there. The first thing he did was to teach his students to read all of the surnames in the Book of Family Names. Next he taught them how to trace the Three-Character Classic in the dirt with sticks. After the higher-ups decided to gather all the students from Ding Village, Willow Hamlet, Yellow Creek and Two-Li Village into the temple school, they sent a qualified teacher to replace Grandpa, who began teaching the new curriculum: the Revised Three-Character Classic, Chinese poetry and civics (‘Our country is the People’s Republic of China and our capital is in Beijing.’) It was after Grandpa stopped teaching that he took on the role of caretaker. He rang the school bell, looked after the grounds and made sure that no one stole anything from the temple.
And so it went on for decades. While the other teachers were rewarded with salaries, Grandpa received his compensation in the form of excrement and urine from the school toilets, which was used to fertilize our family’s fields. Year after year, decade after decade, Grandpa took care of the school and was treated as a teacher, at least by the villagers. Yet when it came to paying salaries, the school didn’t treat Grandpa as a teacher. Only when it suited them: when they were short-staffed or needed someone to teach a class. Then they were only too glad to call him in as a substitute.
That afternoon, when the county director arrived at the school, Grandpa was out sweeping the courtyard. When he learned that the director had come to see him personally, he flushed with excitement, tossed aside his broom and hurried to greet him. At the sight of the director standing at the school gate, grandpa’s face turned an even deeper shade of autumn.
‘Hello, chief! Come on in and sit down.’
‘No time for a sit down,’ the director answered. ‘Professor Ding . . . every committee in the province has been ordered to go into the villages and get the peasantry to sell blood. My department has been assigned fifty villages. That is why I’m here today. I called a meeting to mobilize the villagers, but before I could say more than a few words, I ran into a bit of a snag.’
‘Sell blood, did you say?’
‘You’re respected throughout the village, and everyone looks up to you. Since Ding Village doesn’t have a mayor right now, it is time for you to step up,’ said the director.
‘My God . . . you want them to sell blood?’
‘The Department of Education has been ordered to mobilize fifty villages as blood plasma resource centres. Ding Village is one of them. If you won’t take the lead in this, who will?’
‘But good heavens, you’re asking people to sell their blood?’
‘Professor Ding, you’re an educated man. Surely you must know that the body’s blood is like a natural spring: the more you take, the more it flows.’
Grandpa stood before the director, the colour draining from his face.
What had been autumn crimson was now as barren as a winter plain.
‘Professor Ding,’ the director continued. ‘May I remind you that you’re a caretaker and bell-ringer at this school, not a teacher. But every time you were nominated as a model teacher, I gave my seal of approval. And as a model teacher, you received award certificates and cash bonuses. Now I’m giving you one small assignment and you refuse to carry it out. Are you trying to show me disrespect?’
Grandpa stood at the school gate in silence. He remembered how every year, when it came time to nominate a model teacher, the maths teacher and the language teacher would vie for the honour. So intense was the competit
ion between them that there could be no consensus, so the school always nominated Grandpa instead. After the county director had approved the nomination, Grandpa was summoned to receive his award certificate and cash bonus. Although the bonuses never amounted to much, just enough to buy two sacks of chemical fertilizer, he still had the bright-red certificates of merit hanging on his walls.
‘Other provinces have developed at least seventy or eighty villages as blood plasma resource centres. If I can’t even come up with forty or fifty, I’m going to lose my job,’ the director pleaded.
Grandpa made no answer. By now, students were leaning out of their classrooms to stare at Grandpa and the director, their heads filling the doorways and windowsills of the school.
The two instructors who had never been chosen as model teachers were watching from the sidelines, with odd expressions on their faces. Both seemed eager to have a few words with the director, but he didn’t even acknowledge their presence.
The only person the director was interested in was Grandpa.
‘Professor Ding, I’m not asking for much. Just talk to the villagers and explain that selling blood is no big deal. Tell them that blood is like a natural spring: the more you take, the more it flows. That’s all you need to say, just a few words on behalf of myself and the Department of Education. Won’t you do this for me?’
‘All right,’ Grandpa mumbled at last. ‘I’ll give it a try.’
‘Just a few words, that’s all I ask.’
Grandpa rang the bell, signalling everyone to gather in the village square for another meeting. The Director of Education reminded him to keep his speech short and to stay focused on the topic: the body’s blood is like a natural spring; the more you take, the more it flows, etc.
Grandpa stood beneath the scholar tree in the centre of the village and gazed at the assembled villagers for a very long time before he spoke:
‘Follow me to the riverbed,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’
Dutifully, the villagers followed Grandpa to the riverbed east of the village. Despite the recent rains, the riverbed was dry. Ding Village had the misfortune to be situated along an ancient path of the Yellow River, and when the river had changed course, Ding Village and the surrounding villages and hamlets were left high and dry. It had been this way for as long as anyone could remember. For hundreds, even thousands of years. Nowadays, the only water in these parts came from the spring rains.
With a shovel in his hand, Grandpa led the procession. The Director of Education and two county cadres followed close behind. The villagers brought up the rear.
When Grandpa reached the riverbed, he searched around for a moist patch of sand, rubbed it between his hands and began to dig a small hole. Before long, the hole was half-filled with water. Grandpa produced a chipped ceramic bowl and began ladling the water from the hole and pouring it on to the sand. Again and again he ladled, pouring one bowl of water after another on to the sand. Just as if it seemed that the hole had gone dry, Grandpa paused. In a matter of moments, the water began to seep in, and the hole was once again full of water.
The more water he took, the more it flowed. It was just like the director had said.
Grandpa threw down the bowl on the sand and dusted off his hands.
‘Did you see that?’ he asked, glancing around at the villagers. ‘Water never runs dry. The more you take, the more it flows.’
He raised his voice. ‘It’s the same with blood. Blood always replenishes itself. The more you take, the more it flows.’
Grandpa shifted his gaze to the county director. ‘They’re waiting for me at the school,’ he explained. ‘If I’m not there to ring the bell, the kids won’t know when class is over.’
The director, who couldn’t care less whether or not the students knew when to leave class, looked first at Grandpa and then at the villagers. ‘Do you understand now?’ he barked. ‘Water never runs dry, and you can never sell too much blood. Blood is like spring water. That’s just basic science.
‘You can get rich or stay poor,’ the director continued, kicking at the bowl lying in the sand. ‘It’s up to you. You can travel the golden road to wealth and prosperity, or you can stay on the same dirt path and live like paupers. Ding Village is the poorest village in the province. You haven’t got two coins to rub together. Rich or poor, it’s your decision. Go home and think about that.’
‘Think it over,’ he continued. ‘Other places in the province are selling blood like crazy. In other villages, they’re putting up rows of multi-storey buildings. But decades after liberation, after decades of socialism and Communist Party leadership, all Ding Village has to show for itself is a bunch of thatched huts.’
When the director had said his piece, he left. So did Grandpa.
The villagers dispersed, each to their homes. They had a lot to think about.
Rich or poor, it was their decision.
As dusk fell, a bleak chill settled over the dry riverbed. Rays of setting sun washed over the sandy soil, leaving pools of red and russet, patches like congealed blood. The fresh green smell of vegetation wafted in from distant fields of wheat and flowed across the sand like water, leaving invisible ripples on the shore.
My father, who had stayed behind after the others had left, lingered on the riverbed beside the hole that Grandpa had dug. He stared into that hole for a very long time. Finally he bent down, cupped his hands and began to drink the water, splashing it on his face and laughing.
He plunged his hands into the hole and started to dig, transforming the half-dry pit into a living spring. Water gurgled up past the rim of the hole and overflowed onto the dry sand. A broken chopstick, caught up in the eddy, was carried away like a willow twig.
My twenty-three-year-old father sat back on his heels and laughed.
2
It was after midnight when Grandpa went to bed. Images of blood-selling filled his dreams. He saw plainly the course of the fever: its causes and effects. He felt the pulse and flow of the blood-selling business and blood-wealth. Cause and effect were clear: what you plant in spring, you harvest in the autumn. You reap what you sow.
Grandpa slept in a squat, two-room brick building next to the school gate. The only furnishings in the inner room were a bed and desk. The outer room contained a simple stove, stools, bowls and chopsticks, a basin and a chopping block. If there was one thing Grandpa knew, it was the importance of keeping those two rooms shipshape. Each night before bedtime, he stacked stools against the wall, arranged bowls and chopsticks on the chopping block and stowed pails of drinking water beneath the stove. In the inner room, he swept up bits of broken chalk and placed them in a box on the top-right-hand corner of the desk. He gathered piles of old textbooks and homework notebooks and stacked them in desk drawers. If Grandpa could keep his house in order, with a place for everything and everything in its place, then he could keep his dreams neat and orderly as well. And in the morning, when the sun rose and Grandpa opened his eyes, the dreams of the night before would stay with him, as vividly real as stalks of wheat in a field or beans upon a vine. Not a word forgotten, not a detail lost.
Each night before bedtime, Grandpa put his house in order. And, each night, his dreams were as neat and orderly as the homework of a diligent student.
In his dreams, he saw so clearly the events that had led to the blood-selling.
In his dreams, he finally understood.
With a clanging of hammers, they drove in the stakes of Ding Village’s first blood-collection station, a dark-green canvas tent that sprang from the soil like a fresh green turnip. Red lettering on a wooden signpost outside the tent identified it as the County Hospital Blood Bank. But on the first day, not a single villager came to sell blood. It was the same on the second day. On the third day, the county Director of Education showed up at the gate of the school in his Jeep. He had a few things to say to Grandpa.
‘Professor Ding, the county governor is going to fire me if I don’t get this blood station up an
d running. What do you suggest we do?
‘I’m not trying to put you in an awkward position, Professor Ding. Tomorrow I’ve arranged for trucks to take some people from Ding Village on a tour of Cai county. It is the richest county in Henan; a model for the whole province. All I need you to do is recruit one person from each household to join the tour.
‘In addition to giving each person a travel subsidy of ten yuan per day, we’ll also be passing through the provincial capital, so everyone will have the chance to see the sights and do some shopping.
‘I’m sorry, Professor, but if you don’t help me organize this trip, you needn’t bother ringing the bell at this school any more, because Ding Village won’t have a school.’
With this, the Director of Education climbed back into his Jeep and set off for the next village on his list. The vehicle sped into the distance, the engine purring softly, unlike the noisy tractors that rumbled across the plain. Grandpa stood at the school gate and gazed at the clouds of exhaust that the Jeep left in its wake. His face had turned pale. He had always heard that Cai county, located in another region of Henan, was destitute. How on earth had it become a model of wealth for the entire province?
After the county director breezed out of the village, Grandpa had no choice but to go door to door and try to recruit one member of each household to gather bright and early at the village marketplace and wait for the trucks that would take them to Cai county.
