One Man Read online

  In the rain, Qian's hair got wet, and rain was running down her face, but she had just put down her head and kept walking. He now wondered if she had been crying then. He had simply said don't worry, I'll light the fire when we get home, and you can warm up. He had never lived with a woman before and couldn't work out why she was throwing a tantrum like this just because she had got wet in the rain. He didn't know what to do. He thought he loved her and had done everything he possibly could for her, but maybe that was the extent of human happiness in the world.

  He went out and headed for Maomei's home. Why had he gone to her house and not anywhere else? Because it was the second house into the town, it was still raining, and also because Maomei's mother said if he wanted to eat chicken she would catch one for him. Maomei's mother was in front of the house, getting some vegetables, and said she would get him an old hen right away, kill it, and have it sent over. He said there was no hurry, and that tomorrow would be fine.

  When he returned home and pushed open the door, he got a shock. The wet clothes that had been drying on the basket were strewn all over the floor, and the basket had been trampled and flattened. Qian was lying in the bed, her face to the wall. He held back his anger and forced himself to sit at the desk. The rain outside the window kept falling.

  With nowhere to dissipate his frustration, he immersed himself in writing and kept writing until he could no longer see and put down his pen. Maomei was at the door, calling out to him. He got to his feet and opened the door. She was holding a plucked chicken and a bowl of innards. Not wanting her to see the clothes strewn on the floor, he took the chicken and quickly went to shut the door. But Maomei had seen it and looked at him in surprise. He avoided Maomei's startled eyes, closed the door and latched it, then sat quietly by the overturned stove, looking at the glowing charcoals on the floor.

  "You don't believe in God, don't believe in Buddha, don't believe in Solomon, don't believe in Allah. The totems of precivilization peoples, the religions of civilized peoples, and the even larger number of contemporary creations, like all the idols put up everywhere and the fabulous Utopias in heaven, all mysteriously make people go crazy…" This filled several pages, all written on thin letter paper purchased in the little town. Qian had read this after she had started throwing her tantrum, and it was too late to burn it.

  "You are the enemy!" The woman who had slept with him in the same bed angrily spat out this sentence. The woman in front of him, hair disheveled, clad only in her underpants, stood there in her bare feet, petrified with fear.

  "What are you shouting for? People will hear, have you gone mad?" He went up to her.

  The woman retreated step by step. Huddled close to the wall and brushing so hard against it that bits of sand started falling off, she yelled, "You're a counterrevolutionary, a stinking counterrevolutionary!"

  He felt that her last sentence was less rabid, so he said, "I'm a counterrevolutionary, a genuine counterrevolutionary! So what!" He had to keep on the attack in order to control the woman's madness.

  "You deceived me, took advantage of my momentary weakness, I've fallen into your trap!"

  "What trap? Talk sense. That night by the Yangtze? Or this marriage?"

  He had to turn the topic to their sexual relationship to hide his inner terror, and, trying hard to sound calm, he forced himself to say, "Qian, you're talking nonsense!"

  "I'm quite clear-headed, I couldn't be more so. You can't hoodwink me!"

  "What are you making all this fuss about?" He suddenly got angry and went up to her.

  "Do you want to kill me?" Qian asked in a strange sort of way. Probably she had seen the anger flashing in his eyes.

  "Why would I want to kill you?" he asked.

  "You yourself know best," the woman said quietly, holding her breath, frightened.

  If the woman had again shouted he was the enemy, probably he would have killed her right then. He couldn't let her come out with those words again, he had to make the woman feel secure, trick her into bed, make a pretense of being a caring husband. He went up to her and slowly said, "Qian, what is troubling you?"

  "No! Don't come near me!"

  Qian picked up the chamber pot in the corner and hurled it at him. He raised his arms to fend it off, but he was soaked. The acrid smell was worse than the humiliation. He gritted his teeth and brushed off the urine streaming down his face. His lips were salty and bitter, and he spat out with unconcealed derision, "You've gone crazy!"

  "You want me certified as mad, but it's not that simple!" the Woman said with a smirk. "I'm not going to let you off lightly!"

  He understood what she was threatening, and, before things erupted, he had to burn up those sheets of paper on his desk. He had to bide his time and he had to restrain himself from charging at her. At that point, the urine in his hair had again reached his lips, and he spat it out in disgust but without making a move.

  The woman squatted on the floor and started wailing loudly. He could not let the villagers hear her, and could not let anyone see this sight. He dragged her to her feet, twisted her arm to stop her from stamping her feet, and pushed her onto the bed. She struggled, weeping and yelling, so he grabbed a pillow and pressed it over her mouth. He thought he was in hell. This was his life, yet he was seeking to live in this hell.

  "Make a noise and I will kill you!"

  He made this threat as he moved away from her, took off his clothes, and wiped the urine off his face. The woman was afraid of being killed, and convulsed as she quietly sobbed. The fat plucked hen, innards removed and feetless legs sticking up, looked just like a woman's corpse. It thoroughly disgusted him.

  For a long time afterward, he found women disgusting. He had to use disgust to bury his pity for this woman in order to save himself. Maybe Qian was right, he didn't love her, he had simply enjoyed her, he had for some time needed a woman and needed her flesh. What Qian said was right, too, he had not shown her tenderness, it was contrived, he had been trying to manufacture a make-believe happiness. The expression in his eyes when he ejaculated during intercourse must have betrayed that he didn't love her. However, under the circumstances of those times, terror had induced lust from both parties, which afterward did not become love but, instead, simply left behind the hatred that grew out of carnal release.

  Qian sobbed and kept repeating, "You've killed me, I've been killed by you…" Through her sobbing and mumbling, he made out that Qian's father had been chief engineer in a factory during the Nationalist period, and that during the period of purifying class ranks, he had been classified as a historical counterrevolutionary by the Army Control Commission. Qian didn't dare curse the injustice against her father, didn't dare curse the revolution, so she could only curse counterrevolutionaries and she could only curse him. But she was also terrified of him.

  "It is this era that has killed you," he retaliated. Qian herself had said something like that in her letter. "The reality is that there is no escape for anyone, and it's our fate to care for one another, so don't talk about love!"

  "Then why did you pick me? You could have picked that randy little slut. Why did you have to marry me?"

  "Who? Who are you talking about?" he asked.

  "That Maomei of yours!"

  "I don't have anything to do with that village girl!"

  "You're in love with the randy little slut, so why are you using me instead?" Qian sobbed.

  "I can't make any sense of all this! We can get divorced right away, we can go to the commune tomorrow and announce we had fraudulently signed our names, say it was all a joke, an abominable farce to give the village cadres and the villagers a good laugh!"

  Qian, however, said as she sobbed, "I won't make any more trouble…"

  "Then go to sleep!"

  He got her to get up, and pulled off the urine-soaked sheet and covers from their nuptial bed. Qian, pathetically, stood out of the way. When he had remade the bed, he threw her some clean clothes from her bag, and told her to get changed and lie down. He g
ot water from the water vat, washed himself all over, and sat on the stool by the fire all night.

  Would he go on forever like this, caring for her? Wasn't he just a piece of straw to save her? He had to wait for her to fall asleep so that he could get those sheets of paper from the desk and burn them all. If she had a fit again, he would just have to say that she was psychologically disturbed. He would never write anything down again, he would just rot in this stench.

  Qian said she hoped that she would die soon. She would never go with him again to desolate places, along cliffs or riverbanks. He would push her down. He could stop thinking about tricking her to go out the door, she would just stay in the house and not go anywhere!

  As for him, he wished that she would drop dead, disappear forever, but he didn't say this. He regretted not having got himself a village girl who was physically and mentally healthy and who had not been educated. She would simply sleep with him, cook, and bear his children, she would never invade his inner mind. No, he hated women.

  When Qian left, he took her to the bus stop at the end of town. Qian said, "You don't have to wait for the bus to leave, go home."

  He said nothing, but hoped that the bus would move off soon.

  44

  It was winter again, and he was sitting by the brazier made by one of tlie locals, which he'd bought for two yuan. The brazier had an earthenware inset, which kept the hot coals and ashes warm, and to this he added a wire cover on top for his cup of tea. The winter nights were long, and it had already been dark for some time. In the off season in the countryside, the villagers would do their private work during the day, and at night it was pitch-black everywhere, only his house still had a light on. The incident of his quarrelling with his new wife had the villagers talking for ten to fifteen days, then no one asked about it and everything became peaceful again.

  People now came to his house, and, without calling out, just pushed open the door and came in to look around, chat, smoke, and drink tea. That was how he received guests, and if people came, he would offer them a cigarette. He had got to know the village cadres well and established a pattern of life that would let others familiarize themselves with this scholar who did not meddle in village affairs. There were always copies of books by Marx and Lenin on his desk, so the village cadres who could read a little had a certain respect for him. Maomei once knocked at his door and asked if he had something good to read; he gave her a copy of Nation and Revolution. She took one look and said, "That's scary, how would I ever manage to read it?"

  Maomei had a primary-school education but didn't dare take the book. Another time, his door was open, and having boiled a kettle of water, he was busy washing his sheets. Maomei came to the door and, leaning against the frame, said she could take them to the pond and pound them with a washing rod. She said they would be cleaner, but he declined her kind offer.

  The girl stood there for a while, then asked, "Aren't you going away?"

  He asked, "Where?"

  Maomei pouted and, with an incredulous look, asked, "Then why did that person in your house go away?"

  She was asking about Qian, but had avoided saying "your woman" or "your wife." Her bright, beautiful eyes looked seductively at him as she twisted the hem of her shirt and looked down at her shoes. But he couldn't have a sexual relationship with the girl, he no longer trusted women and wouldn't let himself be seduced again, so he said nothing and concentrated on washing the sheets in the tub. Maomei finally got bored and went off.

  It was only through writing, and so engaging in a dialogue with himself, that he was able to dispel his loneliness. However before he could start writing, he had to plan things in advance. The thin letter paper could be rolled up and stuffed into the bamboo handle of the broom he kept behind the door: he had removed the inside membranes at the joints of the bamboo handle with a metal spike. When the pages accumulated, they would be put into an earthenware jar for preserving salted vegetables, with a layer of lime on the bottom, and sealed with a piece of plastic tied over the top. He dug a hole to store the jar in the earthen floor of the hut and covered the hole with the big water vat. He wasn't intending to write a book to hide in some famous mountain so that it could be read by later generations. He had not given the matter any thought because it was impossible to think about the future. He did not entertain any wild hopes.

  Dogs were barking in the distance, then all the village dogs started barking. Afterward, it gradually became quiet. The dark night was long, but, as he was writing alone under the lamp, the excitement of pouring out his feelings made his heart palpitate. He felt vaguely worried that there were eyes in the dark at the front and back windows. He thought that maybe cracks in the door had not been properly sealed, and yet he had carefully examined the door many times. Still, he could sense footsteps outside the window. He sat stiffly by the brazier, holding his breath to listen, but there was no further movement.

  Hazy moonlight came through the glass window pasted with paper on the inside. The moon had appeared in the middle of the night. He again detected movement outside the window and, holding his breath, quietly tugged the light cord looped over the bed headboard. A hazy figure silhouetted on the window disappeared in the next instant. He clearly heard noises in the bushes outside die window. Without putting on the light again, carefully and without a sound, he put away his manuscript, got into bed, and stared in the dark at the moonlit window pasted with white paper.

  In the bright moonlight, there are eyes everywhere, spying, observing, surrounding, and watching you. In the hazy moonlight, there are traps everywhere, waiting for you to do the wrong thing. You don't dare open the door or the window, don't dare make a sound. Don't let yourself be tricked by the tranquility of this moonlit night when everyone is asleep. If you panic and lose control, those lying in ambush all around will for sure charge forward to arrest you and bring you to trial.

  You mustn't think, mustn't feel, mustn't pour out your feelings and mustn't be solitary! You must either be doing hard physical labor or else snoring when you sleep, or else copulating and producing sperm so that children can be bred and a labor force nurtured. Why are you crazily writing? Have you forgotten the surroundings in which you are living? What is it, are you thinking of being a rebel again? Do you want to be a hero or a martyr? This stuff you're writing will have you eating bullets! You've probably forgotten how counterrevolutionary criminals were executed when revolutionary committees were established in the counties, haven't you? Those only count as minor events compared with today's public denunciations. Hands tied behind their backs, the prisoners are paraded with placards on their chests: written in black are the person's surname and crime, the surname crossed out in red. Wire is tied around their necks so tightly that their eyes bulge. This is the latest red authority's new idea for stifling any protests before executions, so that even in the netherworld those executed needn't think they might become martyrs. Two trucks with military police shouldering loaded rifles escort them as they are paraded through the villages of the commune. The loudspeaker on top blaring slogans, a jeep at the front leads, sending up a cloud of dust and driving chickens and dogs into a wild frenzy. Old women and grown-up girls come to the road at the entrance of the village, and children rush about and run after the trucks. Families wanting to collect a corpse have first to pay a fifty-fen bullet fee. But there will be nobody to collect your corpse. By then, your wife will have exposed you as the enemy, and your father is in the countryside undergoing reform through labor. And now you also have an old counterrevolutionary father-in-law, so on the evidence of all this, it won't be a miscarriage of justice to have you shot. Moreover, you have no miscarriage of justice to complain about, so stop writing before it's too late!

  But you say you're not demented, that you have a brain, and it's impossible for you not to think. How about it, if you're not a revolutionary, and not a hero or a martyr, but are also not a counterrevolutionary? All you do is let your thoughts and imagination roam beyond the regulations of this
society. You're crazy! It's clearly you who are crazy, and not Qian. Look, this person actually wants to let his thoughts and imagination roam! What a preposterous joke! All the women, the old people and the youngsters, will all come out to watch this lunatic eating bullets!

  You say you seek a reality in literature? Stop joking! What reality does this person seek? What sort of toy is reality? A very cheap bullet! All right, so does that reality demand that you risk your life to write? But don't worry about that bit of moldy reality buried in the ground rotting, you'll be finished well before that happens!

  You say what you want is a transparent reality, like a heap of garbage captured through the lens of a camera. The garbage is still garbage, but through the lens it has the imprint of your grief. What is real is your grief. As you are photographing, you will pity yourself, and you must find a state of mind that will allow you to endure the pain so that you can go on living to create a realm that is purely yours, that is beyond this pig's pen of a reality. Or, one might say, it is contemporary myth. By locating present reality in myth, pleasure can be derived from writing, so that it is possible to achieve existential and psychological balance.

  He copied a myth he had written into the notebook left to him by his mother. He attributed the work to "Alipeides," a foreigner he'd invented, who could have been from Greece or some other place, and he attributed the translation to the poet Guo Moruo. At the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, that old poet announced in the newspapers that all his past writings should be destroyed. For this, he received special favors from Mao and was able to survive. He could say it was a translation Guo made half a century ago and that he had copied it down while at university. Who would be able to check it out in this mountain village, or even in the county town?

  Less than half of the notebook was the diary his mother had kept while doing farm labor before she drowned. Seven or eight years earlier, in the years of famine wreaked by the Great Leap Forward, his mother had gone to work on a farm to be reeducated, just as he had gone to the May Seventh Cadre School. She worked hard and had saved up several months of meat and egg coupons to supplement her son's food supplies when he came home. She looked after a chicken farm but was bloated from starvation. At dawn, after working a night shift, she went to the riverside to wash herself and fell into the river; it was not clear whether she was overfatigued or weak from malnutrition. At daybreak some peasants herding ducks to the river discovered her corpse in the water. The hospital autopsy listed the cause of death as cerebral ischemia. He wasn't able to see his mother's corpse. All he had was this diary, which recorded impressions of her reform through labor, as well as a mention that she wanted to accumulate leave so that she could spend a few extra days with her son when he came home for the summer vacation. After he had copied out the myth written under the pseudonym of Alipeides, he placed it in the pot for salting vegetables with a layer of lime on the bottom, and buried it in the earth under the water vat in his house.