Dream of Ding Village (20 page)

High up in the branches of the paulownia trees, the sparrows were singing, their song falling through the silent schoolyard like rain. The three men stood quietly beneath the eaves, searching one another’s faces. Theirs was a stubborn silence, a deathly silence that no one wanted to be the first to break. At last, Jia Genzhu, who had always been impatient, even as a boy, cleared his throat. ‘Well, Professor? Do you understand what we’re telling you?’

Grandpa stepped aside, just as he had been told to do. He made the announcement during lunch. Without going into too much detail, Grandpa said that he was getting old, and that his two sons were a disappointment and a disgrace. Seeing as how they had made him lose face in front of everyone, it didn’t seem right that he remain in charge of the school or the sick residents, much less the entire village. Better that he step aside and turn things over to Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin. With their youth and enthusiasm, Grandpa said, it was better that they be in charge.

The residents of the school squatted on the sunny ground outside the kitchen and storeroom, eating their lunch. Recalling how Uncle and Lingling had been trapped in the storeroom, caught in flagrante delicto, they had to agree that Grandpa seemed to have lost his mandate. How could he manage other people’s lives when he couldn’t even control his own kids? Some in the crowd began craning their necks, looking around for Uncle. They noticed him squatting against the east wall of the kitchen, as far away from the storeroom as possible. When he saw them staring, he flashed them a rascally grin, as if getting caught with Lingling was not a big deal. As if his father losing his mandate and handing over power to Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin was not a big deal. It was hard to tell if his grin was fake – maybe he was just putting up a front – or if he really wasn’t at all embarrassed about the previous night’s scandal. As the villagers puzzled over the meaning of his smile, someone near the kitchen shouted: ‘Hey, Ding Liang! Did you score some last night?’

My uncle shouted back a reply. ‘When you’re dying, every day counts. You’ve got to score wherever you can.’

Ding Yuejin and Jia Genzhu didn’t hear this exchange, nor did they see Uncle’s grin. While Grandpa was making his announcement, they set their bowls on the ground and listened attentively. As soon as he was finished, they unfurled a large red poster and began pasting it to the trunk of a cottonwood tree opposite the kitchen door.

Solemnly, silently, Ding Yuejin and Jia Genzhu plastered their poster to the tree, then stood back to admire their work. The residents, crowding around the tree for a closer look, saw that it was a list of rules and regulations:

1. Every month, all residents of the school must contribute a certain quota to the communal food supply. Anyone who tries to cheat or comes up short can go fuck their grandmother, and may their whole family die of the fever.

2. All government donations of grain, rice, cooking oil and medicine will be administered by the school. Anyone who gets greedy or takes more than their share can go fuck their ancestors, and may all their descendants die of the fever.

3. Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin will be in charge of distributing coffins donated by the government, whenever we get them. Anyone who doesn’t follow orders will not receive a coffin, plus we will tell the whole village to go fuck that person’s ancestors and curse their descendants.

4. No one is allowed to embezzle school property or take it for their personal use without the express permission of Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin. Thieves and embezzlers will die a horrible death and their graves will be plundered.

5. All matters, big or small, pertaining to the common welfare must first be approved by Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin. Any business conducted without their written permission or without a stamp from the village party committee will be considered null and void. Anyone who disobeys will die young, lose their parents and have their kids crippled in car accidents.

6. Extra-marital sex, hanky-panky and lewd behavior will not be tolerated in the school. Anyone caught engaging in immoral acts or corrupting public values will be marched through the village with a sign around their neck and a tall paper hat, and have fever-infected blood poured all over them.

7. Anyone who disagrees or does not comply with the above regulations will be cursed for life, have nightmares about dying and pass the fever to all their family, friends
and relatives. Plus, he or she will be sent home immediately and never allowed back in the school. If said person does try to come back, his (or her) fever will become full-blown.

The villagers milled around the tree, reading the new rules and regulations. Some read aloud, others silently, but all wore smug smiles, as if they’d just given someone a good, well-deserved cursing. Everyone agreed that the rules were very well written, acceptable and satisfying. They turned to look at Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin, who were squatting against a wall, finishing their lunch. Both men wore stern expressions, their faces dark as thunderclouds. They had drawn up the rules and regulations, inaugurated a new regime, and that was how it was going to be.

But as it turned out, life under the new regime was not so simple. There would be many other dodgy schemes and fishy goings-on in both the village and the school.

Ding Village had changed, and life would never be the same.

Jia Genzhu’s little brother, Genbao, was getting married. This was not a dodgy scheme but a joyous event. Though Genbao had the fever, his family and neighbours – the whole village, in fact – had colluded to keep it secret and help him find a wife. When talking to outsiders, they would go on and on about how healthy he was, and what a great appetite he had, and how he could polish off two plates of food, two bowls of soup and three steamed buns at a single sitting. Genzhu had finally managed to convince a young, healthy, uninfected woman from another village to marry him. Now that the happy event was approaching, the family needed ten large tables for the wedding banquet, but all the banquet tables in the village had been used for making coffins. Unable to
borrow the tables they needed, Jia Genzhu and his brother decided to take some desks from the school.

Jia Genzhu had spent the better part of the morning moving desks from the classrooms and loading them on to carts. As he was getting ready to leave, Grandpa stopped him at the gate and said that the desks were for student use only, and no one was allowed to move them. If Genbao wanted to take the desks out of the school, he’d have to do it over Grandpa’s dead body.

The yellow painted desks were brand new, stacked six to a cart. Grandpa began unloading desks from one of the carts, while twenty-two-year-old Genbao loaded them back on again. This had led to an argument, and all the residents had come out to watch.

Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin were there, as well.

The two men had been in charge of the school for three days. In that time, they had never eaten more than their fair share at mealtimes, nor had they taken any more communal medicine than was their due, but they had already made two trips into the nearest town to ask local cadres for help on behalf of the residents of the school. So far, they had managed to negotiate a subsidy of 10lbs of flour and 10lbs of rice for each sick villager, plus a one-third reduction in their household land taxes, collected after the harvest. It was an unexpected boon: not only were they getting free food, they were saving money on their taxes. At the very least, it would save them the trouble of arguing with tax collectors, come harvest time. It was in this happy atmosphere that Grandpa had to go and pick a fight with Jia Genzhu’s little brother.

‘No one is allowed to take the desks out of the school,’ Grandpa told Genbao.

‘But Professor Ding,’ said the young man, ‘I’ve got the fever, too, don’t you know?’

‘If you’ve got the fever, what are you doing marrying that girl?’

‘What do you expect me to do, stay a bachelor until I die?’

When Grandpa blocked the gate so that Genbao couldn’t take out his cart, the crowd tried to reason with him.

‘What’s wrong with borrowing a few desks?’ one man asked Grandpa. ‘It’s not like he won’t give them back.’

‘With everyone in the village dying, it’s no easy thing to find a wife,’ said another. ‘Professor Ding, you’re not trying to get back at Genzhu for taking over the school, are you?’

Grandpa maintained his position at the gate and said nothing. A warm sun shone high in the sky. At this time of day, most of the residents had stripped out of their padded coats and jackets. Some wore sweatshirts or old woollen sweaters; one man was wearing only a cotton shirt with a jacket draped over his shoulders. The season was too chilly for a single layer, too warm for a padded coat, and too apt to change, so wearing layers was a good solution. Grandpa wore a yellow sweatshirt of indeterminate age that made his skin look sickly. Beads of perspiration stood out on his sallow forehead like water oozing from a yellow loess plain. He had wedged his body in between the school gates, one hand gripping each side, his feet rooted to the ground like wooden stakes. Staring at their faces, Grandpa addressed the crowd:

‘If anyone here can guarantee that after you die, your children won’t come here to learn to read and write, I’ll let Genbao walk off with these desks right now.’

No one answered.

‘Can you guarantee me that?’ Grandpa asked, raising his voice.

Everyone was silent, not moving a muscle. The atmosphere grew chill. As they were standing in the schoolyard, wondering what to do, Jia Genzhu appeared. His step was unhurried, but his face was dark with suppressed rage. The crowd parted to let him pass. When he was standing face to face with Grandpa, he said: ‘Professor, did you forget what we talked about three days ago?’ His voice was cold and menacing.

‘As long as I’m still the custodian of this school,’ Grandpa answered evenly, ‘no one is allowed to take those desks.’

‘And you’ve done a fine job as custodian,’ Jia Genzhu conceded. ‘But doesn’t this school belong to the village? Isn’t it called Ding Village Elementary?’

Grandpa couldn’t deny such an obvious fact. ‘Of course it is,’ he answered.

Jia Genzhu had the voice of reason – not to mention the official seal of the Ding Village party committee – on his side. Taking a piece of paper and the village seal from his pocket, Genzhu squatted down and spread the paper on his knees. Then he put the seal to his mouth, blew on it to moisten the ink, and placed a round, bright-red mark upon the paper. Handing the paper to Grandpa, he said: ‘Is that proof enough? Now will you let him through?’

Seeing that Grandpa was not about to budge from the gate, Jia Genzhu squatted down again and scrawled the following line in pencil on the paper: ‘After a thorough investigation into the matter, we hereby grant permission for Jia Genbao to remove twelve desks from the Ding Village Elementary School premises.’ After signing his name with a flourish over the official red seal, he stood up and waved the paper in Grandpa’s face. ‘Got anything else you want to say?’

Grandpa briefly glanced at the paper, taking in the pencilled words and the official-looking red seal, then squinted suspiciously at Jia Genzhu. It was the sort of look one might give a little boy prone to telling fibs, a look of mingled pity and disdain. Everyone in the crowd, including Jia Genzhu, picked up on it, but they seemed to feel that this time, it was Grandpa who was in the wrong. After all, it wasn’t the end of the world, just a few desks. And didn’t he have a signed and sealed document, with words like ‘after a thorough investigation’ and ‘we hereby grant permission’, saying it was okay to release school property? Besides, it didn’t seem right to treat Genbao so badly on the eve of his wedding.

Uncle squeezed through the crowd to plead the boy’s case. ‘Dad, it’s not like the desks belong to us. Why bother yourself?’

‘Shut your mouth,’ Grandpa snapped. ‘If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this mess.’

Uncle smiled and said nothing. Still smiling, he melted back into the crowd, adding: ‘All right, all right, I’ll stay out of it. I suppose it’s none of my business.’

Zhao Xiuqin was the next to step forward. ‘Professor Ding, you can’t be that short-sighted. I don’t see your name written on any of these desks.’

‘How would you know, Xiuqin?’ Grandpa retorted. ‘You wouldn’t even recognize your own name.’

Zhao Xiuqin’s mouth fell open, but no sound emerged. For once, she was speechless.

Now it was Ding Yuejin who elbowed his way through the crowd, pushing people aside. ‘Professor, I gave Genbao permission to take those desks. Get out of the way and let him through.’

‘Oh, just because you gave permission, that makes it okay?’ Grandpa pushed his face so close to Yuejin’s that it seemed he might swallow him up.

Yuejin, unafraid of Grandpa, stared right back at him. ‘Jia Genzhu and I both gave permission,’ he declared loudly. ‘We talked it over and decided to let his brother take the desks.’

Grandpa stiffened and stared up at the sky, ignoring Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin. Then, with a quick glance at the crowd of villagers, he raised his chin and said: ‘If you want to get past this gate, you’ll have to drive right over me.’

Grandpa yanked the metal gates on either side of him shut, so that his body was trapped in the middle. It was as if he were soldered to the gate, and no amount of pushing, pulling or punching on the part of Genzhu or Yuejin was going to separate him from it.

The situation had reached a deadlock. The atmosphere had turned to ice. No one in the crowd said a word. They looked from Jia Genzhu to Ding Yuejin to Grandpa, waiting to see how the three men would break the impasse. By now, everyone realized that Grandpa’s refusal to let the desks leave the school had nothing to do with desks, or with the affair between Uncle and Lingling. It was a struggle for control of the school … and everything in it.

And so, silently, they waited. A black mood prevailed over the three men. Despite the early spring sunshine, the atmosphere sent a chill through everyone in the schoolyard.