by Yan Lianke
‘And I’ll buy you a pair of red high heels, the sexy kind, like the ones city girls wear.’
For a long time, Lingling was silent. She scrutinized Uncle’s face, as if she were unsure about something.
‘Forget it. It’s better if you die first. Otherwise, I’d worry too much,’ said Lingling.
‘But I’d give you a great funeral. I’ve got my dad and brother to take care of mine. But if I’m not around when you die, who’s going to make sure you get a proper burial?’
‘You say that now,’ said Lingling, with tears in her eyes, ‘but I’d still worry about you.’
‘What, don’t you trust me?’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
After a few more complaints about what Uncle might do if left to his own devices, Lingling said: ‘I think it’s best if we die together.’
‘No, let’s not. If I die first, you should be free to enjoy the time you have left. And if you die first, I should be able to do the same.’
‘You’re not thinking about me, you’re thinking about yourself.’ Lingling pouted. ‘What you really mean is that you should be free to enjoy the time you have left.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘That’s exactly what you meant.’
They continued to argue, like two children playing at being angry, until Uncle turned around and accidentally knocked the bowl of ginger tea from the bedside table. It fell to the floor with a crack and shattered into pieces.
The fighting stopped.
Lingling and Uncle stared at the broken bowl. Both knew that breaking a bowl of medicine was a bad omen. It meant that a person was going to die soon – so taking medicine was pointless. They stared at each other in silence. The room grew still, the atmosphere oppressive. They could feel themselves beginning to sweat, like buns in a bamboo steamer, or peas boiling in a pot. Both of them had grown thin, so very gaunt and thin. Lingling’s once-voluptuous bosom seemed to have collapsed. The breasts that Uncle had adored now hung from her chest like two sacks of withered flesh. Her moist and rosy skin, which had maintained its glow despite the many rashes and spots, had turned ashen, marred with discolouration like patches of rust.
Her eyes were sunken, the hollows as large as hen’s eggs. Her cheekbones jutted out like the poles of a funeral tent. Her person was so shrunken, so diminished, that she seemed hardly a person at all. Her dry, dull hair, which hadn’t been combed in days, lay on her pillowcase like a tangle of rust, a clump of wormwood that had sprouted from the pillow. As for Uncle, he still managed to put away as much food as ever, but Lord only knows where it went. His square face had become hatchet-like, his cheekbones sharp as knife-blades. His eyes held none of their former light: the pupils had shrunken, leaving too much white.
After breaking the bowl, he stared for a long time at the ceramic shards that littered the floor.
‘Lingling, when I said I wanted you to die first, I wasn’t being selfish. I was only thinking of what’s best for you. If you don’t believe me, I’ll kill myself right now.’
‘Kill yourself how?’
‘I’ll hang myself.’
‘Go ahead, then.’ Lingling sat up in bed and ran her fingers through her tangled hair. Her expression was calm and composed. ‘We’re both going to die soon, anyway. Go get some rope. When I see you stand on a stool and put your head in the noose, I’ll put my head in another noose and we’ll both kick the stools away at the same time. If we can’t live together, at least we can die together.’
Uncle stared at Lingling, unsure if she was serious.
‘Go get some rope,’ she repeated.
Uncle didn’t move.
‘Go on. I think there’s some under the bed.’
Backed into a corner, Uncle stared at Lingling for a long time before he bent down and began rummaging under the bed. He found the rope, fashioned two nooses, stood on a bench and hung them from the rafter above. When he had finished this task, he turned to look at Lingling. It was as if he were sizing her up, testing to see who was more courageous. It was a tender look, a teasing challenge. Uncle was surprised to find that Lingling – so gentle in life, so wild in bed – would be so steadfast in the face of death. After Uncle had secured the nooses, Lingling stood up calmly, washed her face, ran a comb through her hair and went out to lock the courtyard gate. When she returned, she stepped up on to the wooden stool and looked at Uncle.
‘If we die together,’ she declared, ‘it will prove that our love was not in vain. That we have no regrets.’
It was barely noon, and the sun hung in the eastern sky, its fiery rays streaming through the window and on to the bed. The quilt was neatly folded, the clothes in their cupboards, and the chairs and tables lined up against the walls. Everything they had moved from the threshing ground had been unpacked, and the room was in perfect order. Lingling had even laundered the curtain that hung from the door, washing it until it was sparkling clean. She had made this house her own, washing and scrubbing until every last trace of Song Tingting was gone. It was her house now. She had even removed Tingting’s mattress and replaced it with one that she and Uncle had slept on. Time and again, she had wiped down the boxes and trunks that Tingting had used, to rid them of the other woman’s smell. She had collected the bowls that Tingting had eaten from and taken them out to the coop to use for chicken feed. This was her and Uncle’s home now, and Lingling would die happier knowing that her house was in perfect order. She had even taken the shovels and hoes from behind the doors and stored them beneath the eaves of the courtyard. Lingling glanced around the four corners of the room and saw that everything was neat and tidy. Four square walls of a tomb. There was nothing left to unpack, nothing to tidy up, nothing left to do but die. Satisfied that the room was perfect, Lingling picked up a damp towel from the washstand and wiped her face. Then she stepped calmly on to the stool that Uncle had prepared for her, grasped the noose dangling from the rafters and turned to look at him.
At this point, there was no retreat. No moving forward and no turning back. The only choice was to stick one’s neck into the noose. Uncle took the circle of rope in both hands. Lingling did the same. She stared hard at Uncle, her gaze compelling him to put his head into the noose, so that she could follow suit. They were boxed into a corner now, at a dead end, and the only thing left to do was die. But at that moment, Uncle broke into a grin, a wicked, devil-may-care sort of grin, and said: ‘Still, I’ll take every day I can. If you want to die, you go ahead, but I want to go on living.’
With this, Uncle stepped off the stool, sat down on the bed and looked up at his wife, still clutching the noose in her hands.
‘Lingling, come down from there. If you do, I promise to be your servant, and wait on you hand and foot.’
Uncle stood up, took Lingling in his arms and lifted her down from the stool, then laid her gently on the bed and began removing her clothes. He gazed at her nude body, at the skin that had once been so fair but was now as dry and dull as withered grass after a long winter. Her face was pitiful to look at, wretched and gaunt, streaked with resentful tears.
‘Let’s do it,’ she begged. ‘Let’s just hang ourselves.’
‘No, let’s not. Each day we’re alive is better than being dead. And just think about how much we have to live for. We’ve got food to eat, a place to live, and we’ve got each other. If we’re hungry, we can fry up some cakes in the kitchen. If we’re thirsty, we can drink sugar-water. And if we get lonely, we can go out into the street and talk to people. I want you so much, Lingling. I want to stroke your face and kiss your lips . . . the only thing I worry about is not being able to make love to you.’
But that is exactly what Uncle did, summon all of his strength and make love to his wife.
Uncle always was a rascal.
Afterwards, Lingling thought of something. ‘Liang, we didn’t even apply in person. Do you think your brother will come through with our official marriage licence?’
‘Don’t worry about tha
t,’ Uncle answered smugly. ‘I hear they’re promoting him to head of the county AIDS task force. Getting a marriage licence should be a piece of cake.’
2
As it happened, my father did take care of everything. He handled two divorces and one marriage without Tingting, Lingling, Xiaoming or Uncle ever having to set foot in a government office. Uncle and his wife got a divorce, Lingling and her husband got a divorce, and Uncle and Lingling got two bright-red booklets embossed with an official seal from the civil-affairs department of the local district government.
When my father went to the house to give Uncle and Lingling their little red marriage certificates, most of the villagers were taking their midday nap. The sun was a bright poison hanging overhead, the air was filled with the buzzing of cicadas, and summer heat flowed through the streets like scalding water. The village was very, very still. Trampling the silence, my father left his house and walked through the village. He had some business to attend to in the county, but first he made a stop at my uncle’s house.
Uncle’s courtyard gate was unlatched, but instead of walking in or shouting to see if anyone was home, my father pounded on the wooden gate with his fist. When no one answered, he knocked more loudly.
‘Who’s there?’ my uncle called from inside the house.
‘Liang, it’s me. Come outside for a minute.’
Dressed in a pair of white cotton underpants, Uncle went out and opened the gate. He seemed surprised to find his brother standing there. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he mumbled groggily.
‘I got those coffins Tingting asked for,’ my father said coldly. ‘Two Grade-A coffins with carvings of houses, buildings and appliances. I’ll wager no one in her family has ever had such a fancy, expensive casket.’
Still only half-awake, Uncle stared at his brother in silence.
‘Is it true what I’m hearing? That you willed this house and courtyard to Ding Xiaoming?’
Uncle was suddenly wide awake. Without answering, he turned his head away, darting sideways glances at his brother and at the courtyard.
From his pocket, my father produced the marriage certificates, printed on shiny red paper. He flung them at my uncle through the open courtyard gate. They hit Uncle in the chest, clinging to his naked skin for just a moment before fluttering to the ground like falling leaves.
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ my father hissed. ‘You could die any day now, and here you are, signing away the family property and raising all kinds of hell over a woman. You’re going to die without descendants, and there’ll be no one to make offerings at your grave. You’ve got nothing to live for, so why don’t you just die now?’
My father spun on his heel and began to walk away. After he had taken a few steps, he glanced back at Uncle. ‘Four divorce certificates plus two marriage licences. Do you know what those six pieces of paper cost me? I had to promise the official one of my most expensive coffins, for free!’
This time the words were not hissed, but shouted. My father stalked off without looking back. He was the same father I’d always known, a skinny man, lean as a sheet, but now that he could afford to buy his clothes in the city, he dressed a little better. He wore an unlined blue jacket with upturned collar and contrasting red stitching, and a pair of grey cotton trousers, neatly creased. My mother must have laid out the jacket and folded the trousers very carefully to get them to look like that, because she didn’t own an iron.
My father’s clothes set him apart from the other villagers. He looked like a city man now, a county cadre who worked in the city. Then there were his shoes, his shiny black leather shoes. A lot of the village men wore shiny black shoes, but they were mostly imitation leather. If they were real leather, they were probably pigskin. But my father’s shoes were made from real cowhide, the genuine article. They were a gift from someone for whom he’d helped procure coffins. The black patent leather had been polished until it shone like a mirror. As my father strode through the streets, the trees and houses of Ding Village were reflected in his shoes. Although, of course by then, there weren’t many trees left, so the trees reflected in his shoes were mostly tiny ones.
After he had watched my father turn the corner, Uncle seemed to regain his senses. He bent down and picked up the marriage booklets. Flipping through their pages, he found nothing new. They were nearly identical to the ones he and Song Tingting had received so many years ago. Only the date and one of the names had changed. The differences were so minor that Uncle began to feel like remarriage was a bit of an anti-climax, a futile exercise. For a few moments, he stood in the courtyard, feeling disappointed. When he turned around, he saw Lingling standing behind him, looking very pale. Uncle realized that she must have heard everything his brother had said, and seen him throw the marriage certificates. She looked like she’d been slapped across the face.
‘If I’d known it was such a hassle, I wouldn’t have bothered,’ Uncle groused.
Lingling stared at him but said nothing.
‘I mean, fucking hell, who cares if we shack up or get buried together without a marriage licence? What are they going to do, chop our heads off? Dig up our graves?’
‘You think they’d bury us together if we weren’t married?’ Lingling asked. ‘Your dad and brother would never allow it.’
Lingling took the booklets from Uncle’s hand and scrutinized them closely. After she had looked through all of the words and pictures, she wiped the dirt off carefully, as if she were washing her own face.
3
Oddly enough, as soon as she and Uncle had their marriage certificates in hand, Lingling’s temperature retreated. Her fever went down and her strength returned. It was as if she were cured, as if she were well again. Although she was still far too thin, she had regained her spirit, and some of her former glow.
After my father left, Lingling and Uncle went in for a nap. Uncle fell asleep quickly, and awoke to find Lingling sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for him to wake up. While he had been napping, she had wiped down the furniture, laundered their clothes and given the floor another sweeping. She had even found time to go out into the village and buy a few packets of cigarettes and several pounds of festively wrapped fruit candy.
When Uncle saw Lingling sitting on the edge of the bed and smiling, he asked: ‘What’s with you?’
Lingling laughed. ‘I’m better. My fever’s gone.’ She took his hand and placed it on her forehead so he could feel. ‘Now I want to go out and tell everyone in the village we’re married!’
Uncle put his hand to her forehead again, wondering if she was delirious.
Lingling grabbed the bag of candy and plopped it down on the bed.
‘Liang, Daddy, I swear I’m much better. Let’s go into the village and tell everyone we’re married. Because of the fever, I know we can’t have a big celebration, but the least we can do is pass out candy and cigarettes and tell everyone the good news!
‘Even though it’s a second marriage for both of us, I’m only twenty-four, so it’s kind of like a first marriage for me,’ she enthused. ‘Come on, let’s make the rounds and tell everyone! When we come back, I promise to call you Daddy a hundred times, as many times as you want.
‘Hurry up, Daddy,’ she tugged at his hand. ‘Don’t you want to come back home tonight and hear me call you Daddy again?’
Taking Uncle by the hand, she led him to the washstand, moistened a towel and began washing his face. She was careful to wipe the corners of his eyes and the sides of his nose, and to scrub the palms and backs of his hands. When this was finished, she picked out a pair of trousers and a shirt and helped him to get dressed. After she had buttoned Uncle’s shirt, she grabbed the bag of candies, took him by the hand and led him out of the door, like a mother taking her child out to play.
Uncle and Lingling went from house to house, announcing their marriage and showing their certificates. They were husband and wife now, and had the booklets to prove it. From house to house they went, spreading the joyous news an
d passing out candy and cigarettes. At the first house they visited, a woman in her late sixties opened the door, their elderly neighbour. Lingling thrust a handful of festively wrapped candies at the woman, saying: ‘Hello granny, we brought you some wedding candy. Ding Liang and I are married – we just got the certificates. With everyone so sick these days, we can’t have a banquet, but we wanted to come over and tell you the good news.’
At the second house, a middle-aged woman in her forties opened the door. ‘Hello, auntie,’ Lingling greeted her. ‘Liang and I just got married! Because of the fever, we’re not having a banquet, but we wanted to come and tell you the news, and bring you some wedding candy.’ After she had stuffed the woman’s pockets full of candies, Lingling pulled out her marriage certificate and held it up for the woman’s approval.
At the fifth house, a young woman known around the village as Little Green came to greet them. Little Green was a newlywed herself, but she had recently moved back in with her mother. She and her husband, a man from another village, seemed to have had some sort of falling-out, but the details were sketchy. Almost as soon as she opened the door, Lingling handed her one of the red booklets and said: ‘Little Green, can you take a look at this and tell me if it looks the same as yours? I don’t know why, but it looks fake to me, like the red’s too red or something.’
‘Isn’t it just like the one you and Ding Xiaoming got?’ Little Green asked.
Lingling blushed. ‘I’ve compared them a hundred times, but they still look different. It’s like the red on this one is brighter.’
Little Green stood in the doorway, turning over the booklet in her hands and examining it from every angle. She even held it up to the sunlight, as if it were a suspected counterfeit bill. Unable to find anything wrong with it, she said as much to Lingling. ‘I can’t see anything different. It’s the same size as mine, the same colour, with the same words and the same seal.’
