The Years, Months, Days

by Yan Lianke

  As his grain sack grew fat, the Elder stopped going out to the fields in the middle of the night to find rat nests. Instead, he would take the dog, whereupon each of the nests would be revealed—though half of them actually contained no grain. The Elder and the blind dog now had a surplus of grain, and within a few days, the grain sack was filled to the brim. However, just when the Elder felt that he could sleep comfortably and was able to forget about having to frantically dig up all of the rat nests on the ridge, it turned out that the rats had stopped digging up the corn seeds and taking them back to their nests for storage, and instead had begun competing with the Elder to see who could consume their stored grain the fastest. One day—when the sun appeared much nearer than it had in the past and the soil along the mountain ridge had become like a burning-red iron plate—the Elder couldn’t sleep, and decided to weigh his grain. He took his scale, and when he weighed the grain in the shade, it came out to one liang, but when he took it into the sunlight, the scale instead read 1.2 liang. The Elder was startled. He took the scale up to the hill, where the sun was shining even brighter, and there the scale read 1.25 liang.

  Astonished, the Elder found that when the sun was shining brightly, its weight could register on the scale. The Elder ran up to the mountain ridge, and found that at the top of the ridge the scale read 1.31 liang. After subtracting the one-liang weight of the plate itself, that meant the sunlight weighed 0.31 liang, which is to say 3.1 qian. The Elder quickly climbed four more mountain ridges, each taller than the last, and found that at the top of the tallest ridge the sunlight weighed 5.3 qian.

  From this point on, the Elder repeatedly weighed the sunlight. When the sun first came out in the morning, the sunlight around the shed weighed two qian, by midday it had increased to four qian, and at sunset it had reverted back to two qian.

  The Elder also weighed his rice bowl and water bucket. Once, as he was weighing the blind dog’s ear, the dog knocked the scale’s balance arm and struck his face, so he hit the dog in the head.

  By the time the Elder decided to weigh the corn seeds again, he had already been weighing the sunlight for four days, and had eaten several servings of corn. When he added up the weight of all the corn, the Elder stared in shock. It turned out that the remainder would only last him and the blind dog for another half a month, at most. It was then that it occurred to him that it had been several days since he and the blind dog had gone out to the fields to look for rat nests.

  It was already too late! In just a few days, the rats, as though they had received advance notice, had consumed all of the grain they had stored up in their nests. The Elder spent an entire afternoon leading the blind dog to seven different hillside fields, where the two of them dug up thirty-one rat nests. They worked until they were about to drop, but only managed to dig up eight liang of corn. At sunset, the sun’s blood-colored light shone down from the western mountains onto the ridge, the corn leaves that had been curled up during the day finally began to uncurl and exhale. The Elder brought over that half-bowl of corn mixed with rat droppings, and it suddenly occurred to him that the rats up on the ridge were now competing with him and the blind dog for grain.

  The Elder wondered, Where have they taken all of their grain?

  He thought, No matter how clever they may be, they’ll never be able to outsmart me.

  That night, the Elder and the blind dog went to listen for rats in an even more distant field. They visited three different fields that night, but didn’t hear a sound. Just as the eastern sky was beginning to lighten, the Elder returned with the dog, and he asked, Have the rats moved away? If so, where did they go? Wherever they went, there must be grain, so we have to find them. The sunlight shone down on the dog’s empty eye sockets. The dog cocked its head and walked away with its back to the sun without hearing what the Elder was saying.

  The Elder asked, Could the rats be hiding somewhere, to compete with us?

  The dog paused, then turned and followed the sound of the Elder’s footsteps.

  When they arrived at the shed, the Elder went to inspect the cornstalk, and found that the stem was now as wide as a child’s wrist. Then he prepared to return to the village to fetch some water. He collected two empty buckets, and wanted to take the dog along with him. The dog, however, was lying motionless under the shed. The Elder said, Let’s go. Let’s go to the village and see which houses have rats in them, so that we can know where to look for grain. Only then did the dog get up and accompany him. In the village, apart from two rats that had drowned in the well, they didn’t see a single rodent in the streets, alleyways, or the entranceways of the houses whose doors they had pried open. When the Elder returned to Baliban Hill with his load of water, he discovered that everything was in disarray. When they were half a li from the hillside field, the dog began to act ill at ease, and periodically barked a purplish yelp. The Elder quickened his pace. He climbed the ridge, and when the field appeared before him, the dog suddenly stopped barking and instead began running like crazy toward their shed. In the process it almost fell off the cliff. The hard sunlight on the ground was shattered by the dog’s footsteps, producing an explosive sound like a bottle shattering, and its sharp, frantic barks saturated the fields like red blood.

  The Elder stared in shock.

  The Elder was standing at the far end of the field, and in the intervals between the dog’s barks, he could hear the squeaking of rats, like drizzling rain. Then, he went to the shed in the middle of the field and saw that the grain sack he had hung on one of the poles had fallen. Its contents had spilled onto the hardened ground. A black mass of rats—numbering three to five hundred, or perhaps even a thousand or more—were fighting over the spilled corn seeds. They were running back and forth, and the seeds rolled around under their feet and dribbled out of their mouths. The sound of them chewing mingled with their excited laughter, and the sound rained down on the hillside like a thunderstorm. The Elder stood there speechless, as the dog ran over and bumped its head on one of the poles. Blood spurted into the air, whereupon the dog and the rats fell into a stupor. After a moment they came to their senses, and the dog once again began running around barking, becoming so frantic that it hit one of the posts with its paw. The rats didn’t realize the dog was blind, and were so terrified by its frenzy that they began crying darkly. The result was a cacophony of cursing and terror, as the mountain ridge, which had been deathly quiet for the past two months, suddenly began to boil over. As the Elder ran through the mass of rats, he stepped on one and heard a scream, as hot blood splattered over his other foot. The Elder ran to the enclosure and dove inside, and as he feared, there were two thirsty rats eating that watery-green cornstalk. When the rats heard the Elder barge in, they paused and then ran out through an opening in the side of the enclosure. Upon seeing that the cornstalk was standing there intact, the Elder relaxed. He turned and left the enclosure, and saw that several starving rats were still scurrying around in the grain sack under the shed. He grabbed the hoe leaning against the mats and used it to hit the sack, whereupon a multitude of red droplets spurted out. He struck the sack several times in a row, as rat fur flew everywhere and the ground became splattered with blood. The remaining several dozen rats shrieked in terror and shot out in all directions, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

  The blind dog stopped barking.

  The Elder leaned against his hoe, breathing heavily.

  The Balou Mountains suddenly became very silent—a thick and heavy silence that was several times more ponderous than it had been in the past. The Elder guessed that hundreds and thousands of rats must be hiding nearby, and would come rushing back as soon as he left. He glanced at the mountains around him, then sat down on the hoe handle and picked up the corn seeds that had spilled. He said, Blindy, what are we going to do? Can you guard this? The blind dog lay on the ground that had been warmed by the sunlight and stuck out its tongue. The Elder said, I don’t have any water. I, you, and the cornstalk—none of us has a single drop to drink
.

  The Elder didn’t cook any food that day. He and the blind dog went hungry, and after nightfall they stood guard by the enclosure around the cornstalk. They were afraid it would take a couple of rats just a few bites to gnaw through the stalk, so they kept watch until dawn. In the end, they didn’t see any rats. Around noon the following day, the Elder noticed that one of the leaves had begun to curl in the sunlight, and only then did he go fetch a pair of empty buckets.

  The Elder said, Blindy, I want you to stand guard by the cornstalk.

  The Elder said, You can lie in the shade, and keep your ear to the ground. If you hear even the faintest sound, then bark loudly in that direction.

  The Elder said, I’m going to go fetch some water, and you must stay alert.

  When the Elder returned with half a bucket of water, everything appeared to be all right. The only problem was that when he had hauled the quilt out of the well, he found that it contained four drowned rats whose soaked fur was full of fleas. The Elder ate his meal, then placed the corn seeds on a couple of stones. As he was grinding the seeds, he began to feel anxious. His corn reserve had been devoured by the rats to the point that he now had only half a sack left. The Elder weighed the remainder, and found that he still had six jin and two liang. If he consumed only half a portion for each meal, three times a day, then he and the dog would consume one jin each day. What would they do in six days, after their provisions were exhausted?

  The sun was about to set, and the mountain ridge to the west was drenched in a bloody red aura. The Elder gazed at the myriad colors under this sheet of red, and it occurred to him that he would soon use up their food, and would run out of water two or three days later. He looked at the cornstalk, and saw that the top had begun to turn pink. He tried to calculate how long it would be until it started producing tassel, and how long until it produced an ear. It occurred to him that many, many days had already passed, and he could no longer remember what day or even what month it was. He noticed that apart from not knowing whether it was day or night, morning or dusk, sunrise or moonset—these sorts of time periods that occur each day—he had even lost all awareness of time. His mind was a complete blank. He said, Blindy, have we already passed the first day of autumn? But he didn’t look at the dog, and instead merely mumbled to himself, For all we know, we’ve already entered the following solar term, and it’s generally around this time that corn begins producing tassel.

  The Elder squinted, and proceeded to grind the corn seeds on the stone’s surface. He watched as the blind dog sniffed the ground, then picked up a dead rat and carried it over to the gully. When the dog was several feet from the edge of the gully, it shook its head and tossed the rat in.

  The Elder noticed a faint stench.

  The dog returned and grabbed another dead rat, then took it to the edge of the gully as well.

  The Elder needed a calendar. He stared at the dog, and it occurred to him that without a calendar, there were no dates; and with no dates, he had no way of knowing when the corn would ripen. There were perhaps still thirty or forty days until the autumn harvest. But what would he eat during this intervening period? The rats had consumed all of the seeds in the fields. The Elder raised his head and heard shrill screams coming from the west. He peered into the distance, and between the two mountain peaks he could see the sun being swallowed by another mountain peak. The remaining blood-red stain flowed from the peaks down to the foot of the mountains, then back up to the Elder. The entire world became completely silent. It was once again the quietest time of day, between dusk and nightfall. In the past, this would be when chickens returned to roost and sparrows went back to their nests, and the entire world would be filled with rain-like chirping. But now there wasn’t a sound. There were no livestock, no sparrows, and even the crows had fled the drought. There was only silence. The Elder saw that the setting sun’s bloodlike glow was becoming fainter and fainter, and he listened as it was blown farther away from him, like a sheet of silk. He collected the ground-up seeds from the stone and thought, Another day has ended, but how will I endure tomorrow, when the sun is again overhead?

  Three more days elapsed, and no matter how hard he tried to economize, he still used up more than half of the remaining corn. The Elder wondered, Where have all the rats gone? What are they living on?

  On the fourth night, he summoned the blind dog over to the cornstalk, and said, I want you to keep watch, and if you hear any movement, just bark. Then, the Elder grabbed a hoe and headed north up the mountain ridge. When he reached a field located farthest from the village, he placed his hoe in the middle of the field, then sat down on the handle. He sat there until the dawn light was visible in the east, but didn’t hear a sound. The next day he led the blind dog out to this field, and the dog helped him find seven rat nests. After he dug up the nests, however, he discovered that inside there were no rats or grain, and apart from some droppings the only thing he found was hot, rocky soil. He searched for the hoe marks from when the field’s owner originally sowed the corn, then dug several new holes—but still didn’t find any seeds.

  It finally struck him that in this entire mountain ridge there wasn’t a single speck of food left.

  Blindy, the Elder said, What do you think? Are we going to starve to death?

  The blind dog stared into the sky with its eyes that were as dark as the bottom of a well.

  The Elder said, I don’t think the stalk will ever mature.

  They entered the fifth night, and as soon as the sun set, darkness arrived with a crackling sound. The entire mountainside was covered in moonless and starless darkness. At this point, the desiccated old trees on the mountainside had just received some moisture, and they quickly let out a delicate sigh. The Elder sat down with his dog next to the cornstalk, and scratched his nose with one of the leaves. He inhaled several gulps of fragrant air, whereupon the scent of grain rushed toward his intestines like a horse-drawn carriage careening down the street. He waited until the odor reached his belly, then he clinched his abdomen, trapping the odor inside his stomach. As he was doing this, he heard the faint sound of moonlight falling to earth, and said, Blindy, you should come over and have a few bites. That way you won’t be hungry. He called to the animal a couple of times, but didn’t see any movement. When he turned, he saw that the dog was lying on a mat like a pile of mud. He reached over to touch it, then jumped back in alarm. The dog’s stomach was poking through its skin, so sharp that it cut his hand like a knife. The Elder then felt his own stomach. He first peeled off a layer of cracked, dirty skin and tossed it to the ground, then he touched the soft skin beneath it, and found that he could feel his lower vertebrae poking through from his back.

  Blindy, the Elder said, look, the moon has emerged. You should sleep, because if you do you won’t be hungry. You can treat your dreams as though they were food.

  The dog stood up and staggered to the shed.

  Don’t climb onto the shed, the Elder said. Just sleep on the ground. That way you can save your energy.

  The dog returned to where it had originally been lying, and stopped moving.

  The crescent moon slowly emerged from behind a cloud, and the mountain ridge appeared as though it were covered in water. In the haze, the Elder stared into the dark night, and prayed, Am I about to starve to death? Please give me some grain, so that I may survive a few more days. At the very least, I want to outlive the dog, so that after it dies I can pick a good spot and bury it. That way the rats won’t be able to devour its corpse, and won’t be able to prevent it from returning to the mortal world in the next life. After the dog dies, please let me survive to watch this cornstalk. After the corn is ripe, don’t let me die. I must make it until the next rainfall—until the villagers return to the ridge, so that I can give them this ear of corn. This corn belongs to the mountain ridge. As the Elder was praying, he caressed a corn leaf with one hand, while continuing to peel off some dead skin from his stomach. As the Elder was about to go to sleep, he gently placed hi
s feet on the dog’s back, and said, Go to sleep, Blindy. After you fall asleep, you’ll forget your hunger. With this, the Elder’s eyelids slammed shut and he staggered off into dreamland.

  As the Elder was sleeping, he kicked his feet that had been resting on the dog’s back, and the dog’s barking shattered his sleep like a stone. The Elder sat up and heard the faint sound of rats squeaking on the ridge, and the sound of their tiny paws. The dog was standing outside of the reed mats, barking in the direction of the mountain ridge. The Elder patted the dog’s head and told it to go back inside the enclosure to guard the cornstalk. This happened just as the sun was about to rise, the moonlight was beginning to fade, and the air had a faint scent of moisture. The Elder climbed onto the shed and squatted down on the side facing the mountain ridge. He noticed there was a strong, dark-red rat stench, and there was also dust flying everywhere. He blinked his eyes, but all he could see was a cloud-like mass over the mountain road, rapidly moving south. He climbed back down off the shed, afraid that the swarm of rats would suddenly turn around and begin rushing toward the stalk. He looked at the enclosure, and saw that the stalk was still standing straight. The blind dog’s ears perked up, and the Elder patted its head and said, You mustn’t bark. You mustn’t remind the rats we are here. They know that wherever there are people, there will also be food.

  At that point, the roar on the mountain ridge, which sounded like an approaching thunderstorm, suddenly died down. The Elder patted the dog’s head again, then quietly made his way toward the ridge. When he arrived, he saw that a steady stream of rats, in groups of ten or twenty, were breaking rank and, squeaking loudly, were heading south. He couldn’t believe his eyes—the road, which had previously been as hard as an iron plate, was now covered in a finger-thick layer of dust. The rats’ paw prints piled on top of one another, to the point that there wasn’t enough empty space between them to insert a needle.