“You’re on my land! We struck a deal many years ago, and now it is my right to sever your Achilles tendon. But I’m in a good mood today, so I’m going to let you off.”
Hong rolled right off of Lan Lian’s land and, by holding on to a scrawny mulberry tree, got to his feet.
“I refuse to accept it. Old Lan, after thirty years of struggle, you still wind up the victor, while those of us of unquestionable loyalty and hard, bitter work spend thirty years of blood and sweat, only to wind up the losers. You’re right and we’re wrong…”
“In the land distribution, you got yours, didn’t you?” Lan asked in a less confrontational tone. “I’ll bet you got every inch you had coming. They wouldn’t dare shortchange you. And you still receive your six-hundred-yuan cadre-level pension, don’t you? And will they take away your monthly army supplement of thirty yuan? Not hardly. You have nothing to complain about. The Communist Party is paying you for everything you did, good or bad, every month like clockwork.”
“These are two different matters,” Hong replied, “and what I won’t accept is that you, Lan Lian, are one of history’s obstacles, a man who was left behind, and here you are, part of the vanguard. You must be proud of yourself. All Northeast Gaomi Township, all Gaomi County, is praising you as a man of foresight!”
“I’m not the sage. That would be Mao Zedong, or Deng Xiaoping,” Lan Lian said, suddenly agitated. “A sage can change heaven and earth. What can I do? I just stick to one firm principle, and that is, even brothers will divide up a family’s wealth. So how will it work to throw a bunch of people with different names together? Well, as it turns out, to my surprise, my principle stood the test of time. Old Hong,” Lan Lian said tearfully, “you sank your teeth in me like a mad dog for half my life, but you can’t do that anymore. Like an old toad used to hold up a table, I struggled to bear the weight for thirty years, but now, at last, I can stand up straight. Give me that canteen of yours.”
“What, you’re going to take a drink?”
Lan Lian stepped over the boundary of his land, took the liquor-filled canteen out of Hong Taiyue’s hand, tipped his head back, and drank every last drop. Then he flung away the canteen, got down on his knees, and said with a mixture of sadness and joy:
“You can see, my friend, I held out long enough, and now I can work my land in the light of day…”
I didn’t personally see any of this, so it has to be considered hearsay. But since a novelist by the name of Mo Yan came from there, fact and fiction have gotten so jumbled up, figuring out what’s true and what’s not is just about impossible. I should be telling you only stuff from my personal experience or things I saw or heard, but, I’m sorry to say, Mo Yan’s fiction has a way of wriggling in through the cracks and taking my tale to places it shouldn’t go.
So, as I was saying, I hid in the shadows outside the gate of the Ximen family compound and watched as Yang Qi, who by then was pretty drunk, picked up his glass and, wobbling back and forth and swaying from side to side, made his way over to the table where the bad people from earlier days were sitting. Since they had gathered for a special occasion, everyone at the table was in an agitated mood as they recalled the wretched times they had survived, approaching a point where they could easily be intoxicated without the aid of alcohol. So they were shocked to see Yang Qi, the onetime head of public security, who, as representative of the dictatorship of the proletariat, had used a switch on them, shocked and angry, as he braced himself with a hand on the table and raised his glass with the other.
“Worthy brothers,” he said, his thick tongue blurring the words a bit, “gentlemen, I, Yang Qi, offended all of you in the past, and today I come to offer my apologies.”
He tipped his head back and poured the contents in the direction of his mouth, most making it only as far as his neck, where it soaked his necktie. He reached up to loosen his tie, but wound up making it tighter, and tighter, until his face began turning dark. It was almost as if the only way he could rid himself of the torment he was experiencing was to commit suicide this way and expatiate his guilt.
The onetime turncoat Zhang Dazhuang, at heart a good man, stood up to rescue Yang by removing his tie and hanging it from a branch of the tree. Yang’s neck was red, his eyes bulging.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “the West German chancellor got down on his knees in the snow before a memorial to the murdered Jews and asked forgiveness for the deeds of Hitler. Now I, Yang Qi, the onetime head of public security, kneel before you to ask your forgiveness.”
The bright light from the lantern lit up his face, which had grown pale, as he knelt on the ground beneath the necktie that hung over his head like a bloody sword. How symbolic. I was deeply moved by the scene, even if it was slightly comical. This coarse, disagreeable man, Yang Qi, not only knew that the West German chancellor had gone down on his knees to ask forgiveness, but his conscience had told him he had to apologize to men he had mistreated in the past. I couldn’t help looking at him with new eyes, giving him a bit of grudging respect. Vaguely I recalled hearing Mo Yan say something about the West German chancellor, another piece of information he’d gleaned from Reference News.
The leader of this band of onetime bad characters, Wu Yuan, ran over to help Yang Qi to his feet, but Yang wrapped his arms around a table leg and refused to stand.
“I’m guilty of terrible things,” he wailed. “Lord Yama has sent his attendants to flay me with their lashes… ow… that hurts… it’s killing me…”
“Old Yang,” Wu Yuan said, “that’s all in the past. Why hold on to those memories when we’ve already forgotten? Besides, society forced you to do what you did, and if you hadn’t beaten us, somebody else would’ve. So get up, get up now. We’ve come through it and have been rehabilitated. And you? You’ve gotten rich. And if your conscience still bothers you, donate the money you made to the cause of rebuilding a temple.”
Racked by sobs, Yang roared: “I won’t donate money I worked so hard to put aside. How dare you even suggest that!… What I want is for you to come beat me the way I beat you years ago. I don’t owe any of you a thing. You owe me…”
Just then I saw Hong Taiyue walk up on unsteady legs. He passed right by me, reeking of alcohol. In all the years I’d been on the run, this was the first time I’d been able to closely observe the onetime supreme leader of the Ximen Village Production Brigade. His hair, which had turned white, still stuck up in the air like spikes. His face was puffy and he was missing several teeth, which gave him a somewhat dull-witted look. The moment he stepped through the gate, the clamor stopped abruptly, surefire evidence that the men in the compound had not lost their fear of the man who had ruled Ximen Village for many years.
Wu Qiuxiang rushed up to greet him, and the onetime bad individuals jumped to their feet as a sort of conditioned reflex. “Ah, Party secretary!” she called out with enthusiasm and familiarity as she took Hong Taiyue by the arm, something he was not at all accustomed to. He jerked his arm free, nearly falling over in the process. Qiuxiang reached out and steadied him; this time he let her hold his arm as she led him to a clean table, where he sat down. Since it was a bench, Hong was in constant danger of falling backward; sharp-eyed Huzhu reacted by quickly moving over a chair for him. Resting one arm on the table, he turned sideways to stare at the people under the tree, his eyes bleary and unfocused. After wiping the table in front of Hong in a practiced move, Qiuxiang asked genially:
“What can I get for the Party secretary?”
“Let’s see, what’ll I have…” He blinked, his heavy eyelids moving slowly up and down. Then he banged his fist on the table, sending the dented old revolutionary canteen bouncing into the air. “What can you get?” he shouted in anger. “Liquor, that’s what! That and two ounces of gunpowder!”