Dream of Ding Village (2 page)

‘So you’re jealous of me, is that it?’ shouted my father, Ding Hui, planting his shovel in the ground. ‘Can’t stand it that I’m rich and didn’t get the fever? Well, fuck you and all your ancestors! First you kill my chickens, then my pigs, and now you think you can get away with poisoning my boy?’

Shouting and cursing, the brothers stood at the crossroads from noon until the sky grew dark, but not a single villager came out. No one wanted to answer to my uncle, or face up to my father.

In the end, all they could do was bury me.

They put me in the ground and buried me.

By tradition, I was too young to be buried in the ancestral grave, so Grandpa carried my little corpse to the elementary school, where he lived as a caretaker. He made me a narrow wooden coffin, filled it with my schoolbooks, notebooks, pencils and pens, and buried it outside the schoolyard, behind the back wall of his house.

Grandpa had always fancied himself as a scholar. He’d gone to school, spent a lifetime as the school caretaker and bell-ringer, and was known throughout the village as Professor Ding. So it was only natural that he’d want to bury me with my books: a favourite storybook, a collection of folk tales, a few volumes of Chinese myths and legends, and a Chinese and an English dictionary.

After I was gone, Grandpa would sometimes stand at my grave and wonder if the villagers would try to kill anyone else in our family. Would they poison his granddaughter, my
younger sister Yingzi? Or his only remaining grandson, my uncle’s boy Little Jun? He began to think about making my father and my uncle go to every house in the village and kowtow. Make them kneel in the dirt, knock their heads upon the ground three times and beg the villagers not to poison any more of our family. Beg them not to leave us without descendants to carry on the Ding family name.

At about the same time Grandpa was mulling this over, my uncle came down with the fever.

Grandpa knew that it was retribution. Uncle was sick because he’d once worked for my father, buying blood from the villagers and reselling it at a profit. When Grandpa found out that Uncle was sick, he changed his mind about asking him to kowtow to all the villagers, and instead decided to have my father do it alone.

The ninth thing my grandpa learned was that within a year, perhaps two, the fever would spread across the plain. It would burst upon us like a flood, engulfing Ding Village, Willow Hamlet, Yellow Creek, Two-Li Village and countless others in its path. Like the Yellow River bursting its banks, it would surge through dozens, maybe hundreds of villages. And when that happened, people would die like ants. The dead would litter the ground like fallen leaves. In time, most of the villagers would die, and Ding Village would vanish for ever. Like leaves upon a dying tree, the villagers would wither and fall to the ground, to be swept away by the wind.

The tenth thing Grandpa learned was that the higher-ups wanted to quarantine all the sick people in the village so that they wouldn’t spread the fever to the healthy ones, to those who hadn’t sold blood.

‘Professor Ding,’ the cadres said. ‘Your son was the biggest blood merchant in the village, so it’s only fair that you step up now. You have to use your influence to convince everyone who is sick to move into the village school.’

When he heard this, my Grandpa was silent for a very long time. Even now, it makes him uncomfortable, makes him think thoughts that are better left unspoken. When Grandpa
thought about my death, he wanted to force my father, the blood kingpin, to go down on his knees and kowtow to every family in the village. And when that was done, my father could throw himself into a well, swallow some poison, or hang himself. Any method would do, as long as he died. And the sooner, the better, so that everyone in the village could witness his death.

It was a shocking thought to imagine my father grovelling before the villagers and then being made to commit suicide, a thought Grandpa hadn’t thought himself capable of. But when the shock had passed, Grandpa began walking into the village in the direction of our house.

He was really going to do it. He was going to ask my father to apologize to everyone and then to kill himself.

Because the sooner my father died, the better
.

What happened to Ding Village was unthinkable: in less than two years, this tiny village of fewer than 200 households and 800 people had lost more than 40 people to the fever. Over the last year, there had been an average of two or three deaths per month. Hardly a week went by without someone dying. The oldest were in their fifties and the youngest just a few years old. In each case, the sickness started with a fever lasting several weeks, which is how the disease got its nickname ‘the fever’. It had spread until it had the village by the throat, and now there seemed no end to the stranglehold. No end to the dying, and no end of tears.

The village coffin makers had worn through several sets of tools and had to keep replacing their hatchets and saws. But the season of death had only just begun. In the months to come, the dead would number like the autumn grain, and graves would be as common as sheaves of wheat.

Death settled over Ding Village like deep, black night, blanketing the neighbouring hamlets and villages. The news
that passed back and forth along the streets each day was just as dark. If it wasn’t that another person had come down with the fever, it was that someone had lost a family member in the middle of the night. News even spread that a woman whose husband had died from the fever was planning to remarry into a distant mountain village, as far away as possible from this fever-ridden, god-forsaken plain.

The days were slow and tortuous. Death hovered in the doorways, buzzing from house to house like a mosquito spreading disease. Wherever it touched, you could be sure that three or four months later, someone else would be found dead in his or her bed.

So many people were dying, so many were dead. In one household, a family might weep for a day before burying their relative in a black wooden coffin that had cost their life savings. In another household, there might be sighs instead of tears, a family gathering around the corpse in silent vigil before the burial.

The three elderly village carpenters worked all day long building coffins. Two of them came down with backaches from overwork. The paulownia trees used to make the coffins were all chopped down. There was no timber left in the village.

Old Mister Wang, the maker of funeral wreaths, was kept busy cutting and snipping paper flowers, until his hands were covered in blisters that dried into hard, yellow calluses.

The villagers became indolent and indifferent to everyday life. With death camped on their doorsteps, no one could be bothered to till the fields or do any planting. No one bothered to leave the village to look for seasonal work. The villagers spent their days at home, their doors and windows shut to stop the fever from coming in.

But that’s what they were waiting for, waiting for the fever to rush in and kill them. Day by day they waited and watched. Some said that the government was planning to send trucks and soldiers to round up people with the fever and bury them alive in the Gobi Desert, like they used to do with plague victims long ago. Although everyone knew that this was just
a rumour, somewhere in their hearts they believed it. They locked their doors and windows, stayed at home and waited for the fever to come, and for more people to die.

As the villagers died off, so did the village
.

The earth grew barren. No one turned the soil
.

The fields grew dry. No one watered the crops
.

In some of the homes that had been touched by death, the families had stopped doing the housework. They no longer washed the pots and pans. From one meal to the next, they cooked rice in the same unwashed pot and ate with the same dirty bowls and chopsticks.

If you hadn’t seen someone in the village for weeks, you didn’t ask where he or she had gone. You just assumed they were dead. If you happened to run into them a few days later, perhaps while drawing water at the well, you’d just stop and stare in shock. There would be a long silence as you stared at each other in amazement. Then you’d say: ‘My God, you’re still alive.’ And he might answer, ‘I was in bed with a headache. I thought it was the fever, but as it turns out, it wasn’t.’ After some relieved laughter, you would brush past each other, you with your shoulder pole and wooden buckets filled with water, he continuing his way to the well with empty ones.

That’s what our village had become.

Ding Village in the days of fever, the days of agony and waiting.

After making up his mind to talk to my father, Grandpa left the school and trudged down the road to the village. It was sunset, and the light had already begun to fade. When Grandpa reached the centre of the village, he saw Ma Xianglin sitting outside his house repairing his three-stringed fiddle. Ma Xianglin was an amateur singer and storyteller. And Ma Xianglin had the fever. The instrument he used to accompany his singing hadn’t been played in many years; its lacquered surface was chipped and peeling. Ma Xianglin had built his family’s three-bedroom brick house by selling his blood. Now,
as he sat beneath the tiled eaves of the house he’d bought and paid for, he took up his fiddle and began to sing hoarsely, in a voice as rough as tree bark:

The sun that sets in the western hills
and rises from the eastern sea brings
another day of joy,
or another day of misery
…

The grain you sell for pocket change
brings another day of plenty,
or another day of want
…

Listening to Ma Xianglin sing, you would never guess that he was sick. But Grandpa could see that the colour of death was on him. As he drew closer, he noticed a greenish tinge to Ma Xianglin’s skin. Then there were the sores, pustules that had hardened into dark red scabs, dotting his face like shrivelled, sun-dried peas. When Ma Xianglin caught sight of Grandpa, he put down his fiddle and smiled. It was the sickly, hopeful, overeager smile of a beggar hoping for food.

‘Professor Ding,’ called Ma Xianglin in his sing-song voice. ‘I heard you had a meeting with the higher-ups.’

Grandpa couldn’t help but stare. ‘Xianglin, since when did you lose so much weight?’

‘I haven’t lost weight. I can still eat two steamed buns at one sitting … so what did they say?’ Ma Xianglin asked impatiently. ‘Have they found a cure?’

Grandpa thought for a moment. ‘Sure. They said the new medicine will be here any day now. One shot and you’ll be cured.’

Xianglin grinned. ‘When do we get the new medicines?’

‘It won’t be long.’

‘How long is not long?’

‘Not long. No more than a few days.’

‘How many days, exactly?’

‘If we don’t get the medicines in a few days, I’ll go back and ask them.’ Grandpa turned and continued towards my father’s house.

Turning into a narrow alleyway, Grandpa noticed white funeral scrolls pasted on the lintels of every house. Some of the scrolls were old and yellowed; others new and blindingly white. With all that white paper fluttering in the breeze, the alley looked like it had been hit by a snowstorm. Further down the alley, Grandpa passed the house of a family whose son had died of the fever just before his thirtieth birthday. The funeral couplet pasted on the lintels read:
Since you have gone, the house is empty, it has been three seasons now / Extinguish the lamps, let the twilight come, we must endure the setting sun
. Then there was the Li family, whose daughter-in-law had died of the fever not long after marrying their son. She had been infected with the disease in her hometown and passed it on to her husband and newborn child. Hoping that their son and grandchild would take a turn for the better, the family had pasted up this couplet:
The moon has sunk, the stars are dim, the family home is dark / but there is hope that come tomorrow, the sun will shine again
.

At the next house there were two white scrolls, one on either side of the door, with no calligraphy at all. Curious as to why anyone would bother to paste up blank funeral scrolls, Grandpa took a closer look. It was only when he ran his fingers over the scrolls that he discovered two more layers of paper underneath. At least three people in this house had died from the fever. The family, either too tired or too superstitious to write yet another funeral couplet, had simply pasted up the new scrolls and left them blank.

As Grandpa stood in the doorway staring at the empty scrolls, he heard Ma Xianglin, who had followed him down the alley, shouting after him.

‘Professor Ding! Since the new medicine will be here soon, why not celebrate?’ Grandpa turned around slowly.

‘Tell everyone to come to the school, and I’ll put on a concert for the whole village. You know how well I sing, and
people need an excuse to get out of their houses,’ said Ma Xianglin.

‘The school is the perfect place for a concert.’ Ma Xianglin took a few steps forward.

‘If you ask, everyone will listen. Just like they did when you asked them to sell their blood. And it was your son Ding Hui they sold it to, even though everyone knew he used the same needles and cotton swabs again and again. Not to bring up the past … but every time I sold my blood, I went to your son, reused needles or not. I sold him everything I had, and now when I run into him on the street, he can’t even be bothered to say hello. Of course, that’s all in the past, no point bringing it up now. All I ask is that you tell everyone to come to the school so I can sing them a few songs. I don’t mean to harp on the past, Professor, really I don’t. Just let me sing a few folk songs so I won’t feel so depressed. Otherwise, I’m afraid I won’t live long enough to see those new medicines.’

Ma Xianglin, now standing a few paces away, stared into Grandpa’s eyes. A beggar hoping for food. Over Ma Xianglin’s shoulder, Grandpa saw several other villagers gazing at him expectantly. There was Li Sanren, the former village mayor; Zhao Xiuqin, a local loudmouth known for her delicious cooking; and Zhao Dequan, a simple, honest farmer. Grandpa knew them well, and knew that they all had the fever. He knew exactly what they had come to ask.