Dream of Ding Village (26 page)

‘Wow, you got an elm!’

‘Well, we needed a beam for the roof, so we asked for an elm.’

‘Those pieces of wood look pretty short. What are you going to use them for?’

‘Can’t you tell? They’re the perfect size for shelves.’

Another conversation went like this: ‘Did you hear? Li Wang’s family got the big toon tree at the west end of the village.’

‘Li Wang? I can’t believe it.’

‘Would I lie? It’s because his daughter’s engaged to Ding Yuejin’s cousin, that’s why.’

And so it went. The speaker would whisper some mysterious bit of information, the listener would ‘ooh’ or ‘aah’ in understanding and the two would go their separate ways, eager to pass on the gossip to others
.

Grandpa walked the streets dejectedly, pausing before this tree and that, as if paying his last respects before they were all chopped down. He couldn’t help but be reminded of his dream
of Ding Village: flowers on the surface, and gold beneath the soil. He wandered the village in a daze, peering around him in confusion. When he reached the village centre, he was surprised to see that even the venerable old scholar tree – so large that it would take three or four people to encircle its trunk – was also marked for demolition. Zhao Xiuqin and her husband Wang Baoshan stood by as her brothers, two stout young men from another village, removed the heavy bell that hung from one of the branches. After they had taken it down and hung it from a smaller tree nearby, one of the brothers scaled a ladder and began sawing at the branches, while the other began digging up the roots
.

The last time Grandpa had passed the old scholar tree, it had been safe and sound. Now, in the short time it had taken him to make one circuit around the village, it was besieged by people hacking and sawing and trying to chop it down. Moving closer, Grandpa passed under an extension lead that stretched from a nearby house into the branches of the old tree. In the glow of a 200-watt light bulb, the area around the tree, once the site of village meetings, was as bright as day
.

‘Xiuqin, are they really letting you cut down this tree?’ Grandpa called out
.

Zhao Xiuqin, sitting in the circle of light beneath the scholar tree, raised her head and blushed uncomfortably. She seemed quite embarrassed that her family had been caught chopping down the oldest, largest and most venerable tree in the village
.

‘I never expected Chairman Jia and Chairman Ding to be so grateful,’ she answered with a nervous laugh. ‘I was just doing my job, cooking their favourite meals and making sure they had whatever food or liquor they wanted. But when I mentioned that all the big trees had already been cut down and that this was the only one left, they told me I could have it!’

Amidst the cacophony of trees being felled, Grandpa stood forlornly, remembering his dream of flowers on the plain and gold beneath the surface
.

It happened just like Zhao Dequan said it would.

The trees of Ding Village disappeared overnight.

All the mature trees were gone. At first, it seems, there had been some discussion about only felling trees of a certain size, those with trunks as broad as a bucket, say. But when morning came, the villagers woke to find that even the smaller trees in and around the village were gone. Anything that had a trunk the size of the circumference of a bowl had been chopped down for timber. Discarded notices from the village party committee littered the streets like fallen leaves after a windy evening. The spring sun shone warm as usual, but without foliage or the shade of trees, the village felt scorching and unpleasant.

All the mature elms, scholar trees, paulownia, chinaberries, toons, cottonwoods and persimmon trees had been felled, leaving only saplings with trunks barely as thick as a man’s arm. Even these were scarce, as rare as wheat seedlings in an abandoned field. From the moment the sun rose, it began beating down upon the village, scorching people’s flesh.

In the days to come, the villagers would wake from their beds, stand at their doors and gaze with blank surprise at the world outside. They would gaze at the barren landscape and wonder what had happened.

‘Good heavens, would you look at this place?’

‘How did it come to this?’

‘So it’s finally come to this …’

The trees were gone. So was Zhao Dequan.

He passed away at about noon, on the day after the big tree-felling. The evening before he died, Grandpa asked Uncle: ‘Do you think you could go to Lingling’s parents’ house and get her red silk jacket? I want to give it to Zhao Dequan.’

Uncle agreed to travel to Lingling’s hometown, a distance of six or seven miles from Ding Village. He could have made the round trip that same evening, but he decided to stay overnight, and didn’t return until the next day. When he got back to Ding Village at around noon, Zhao Dequan was still alive. As he watched Uncle hand his wife Lingling’s red silk bridal jacket, Zhao Dequan smiled, closed his eyes, and quietly passed from this life.

He was still smiling when they put him in the coffin.

Zhao Dequan was buried with his red silken-jacket smile.

Uncle and Lingling moved in together. They lived as husband and wife, brazenly, in plain sight of everyone in the village.

They were like water and sand, seed and soil, yin and yang; like positive and negative magnetic poles. They were water flowing, being absorbed by sand; seed scattered by the wind, taking root in soil; yin and yang coming together as one; two magnets clinging to each other, unable to deny their attraction.

After the incident at the school, Lingling got a beating from her husband, a cursing from her in-laws, and was sent packing back to her mother’s house. As soon as she was gone, Ding Xiaoming’s family set about finding him a replacement wife. Everyone felt that the beating was justified, and that Lingling had deserved it: not only had she brought the fever into her husband’s household, she had cheated on him with his own cousin. It was only fitting that Xiaoming, still in his mid-twenties and uninfected, should kick her out and start looking for a new wife. If he could find a suitable match, he could remarry after Lingling died, or ask her for a divorce and remarry even earlier. Lingling’s parents were sensible people; when they came to Ding Village to pick up their daughter, they apologized to Xiaoming’s parents: ‘We’re sorry we didn’t do a better job of raising our daughter. It’s probably best for everyone if Ding Xiaoming gets remarried. And if you need help paying for the dowry, we’ll give back Lingling’s wedding gifts.’

And so Xiaoming’s parents began trying to find a new match for their son.

Lingling’s parents, grumbling and cursing, brought their daughter home.

But spring had come early that year, and summer was right on its heels. The weather grew warm, then hot; padded winter coats were replaced by spring jackets, then by shirtsleeves. By the time it was warm enough for a single layer, Lingling returned to her husband’s home in Ding Village to fetch her summer clothes. As she was walking out of the door with her bundle of belongings, her mother-in-law eyed the bulging bundle and asked: ‘Are you sure you haven’t taken anything that doesn’t belong to you?’

‘I’m sure,’ Lingling answered.

‘It’s only a matter of time before Xiaoming finds a new wife,’ her mother-in-law continued. ‘If you’re still alive when he does, you must come back and give him a divorce.’

Lingling said nothing. Once she was through the door, she turned back to gaze at the house, with its gleaming white porcelain-tiled walls. The seams between the tiles were as straight and black as if they’d been painted on with ink. After a few moments, she left the house and began walking out of the village.

She came to the concrete road outside the village. A straight line cutting through the fields, it was raised about half a foot above the surrounding soil, with drainage ditches on either side. The rows of cottonwood trees that had once lined the ditches were gone, chopped down by the villagers. The ditches were now filled with weeds and wild grass that rustled in the wind. At this time of year, the wheat plants – having raised their heads and steeled their spines – stood tall, and the fields were filled with people irrigating their plots.

Walking down the treeless main road under the blazing midday sun was like passing through a corridor of fire. The spots on Lingling’s face started to itch in the heat, but she didn’t want to scratch them, for fear of breaking the skin. She stroked her face with the tips of her fingers, softly, as if she
were caressing the face of a newborn child. She walked along slowly, aimlessly, stroking her face, her eyes fixed on the pavement in front of her. Suddenly she heard her name being called: not loudly, not softly. The sound seemed to fall from up above.

‘Lingling …’ It was Uncle’s voice.

She stopped and raised her head. Uncle was standing by the side of the road, only a few steps away. He looked just the same as she remembered. Slightly paler, perhaps; a bit closer to death. For a moment, they just stared at each other. Then Lingling, remembering where she was, looked behind her nervously.

‘We’re alone,’ said Uncle. ‘But even if we weren’t, there’s nothing to be scared of.’

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

Uncle sat down at the side of the road. ‘I heard you were back, so I waited for you here.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Sit by me.’

Lingling seemed to hesitate.

‘Tingting left me and went back to her hometown,’ Uncle explained.

Lingling sat down beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

After an awkward silence, Uncle spoke. ‘So you came back for your summer clothes?’

‘Um-hum,’ Lingling murmured, jiggling the bundle in her arms.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘About the same.’

‘Me, too,’ said Uncle. ‘I made it through the winter and most of the spring, so I think I should be able to live through summer, maybe longer.’

Their conversation exhausted, the two were silent for a while. Then Uncle smiled and took Lingling’s hand in his. It was not long after Zhao Dequan’s death, not long after Uncle had visited Lingling at her parents’ house to pick up her red silk jacket, but they acted like two people who hadn’t met in
years: hand in hand, gazing into one another’s eyes, their silent thoughts unspoken. Uncle turned over Lingling’s hand, examined the dried scabs on her wrists and hands, and then lightly, tenderly, scratched them. Lingling shrank back. Her eyes filled with tears and she pulled her hand away.

‘Don’t leave,’ Uncle said. Linging looked up in surprise. ‘Tingting wants a divorce, and so does Xiaoming. That means we can be together.’

Lingling was silent.

‘Neither of us has much time left.’ Uncle’s eyes were moist. ‘Everyone says that after this winter, the fever’s going to explode. No matter what happens in this life, at least we can be together in death. They can bury us side by side, and we’ll keep each other company.’

Lingling raised her head again, teardrops glistening in her eyes like big bright pearls.

‘What is there to cry about?’ Uncle asked, wiping away her tears. ‘We’re going to die anyway, so who gives a damn what other people say? We should move in together. I’d like to see them try to stop us. Let’s move in together and show them all. Tingting, Xiaoming. The whole village … we’ll show the lot of them.’

Uncle smiled through his tears. ‘So Tingting and Xiaoming want to divorce us? Let’s move in together and sue
them
for divorce.

‘If you go back home, your parents and brother will feel sorry for you, but what about your sister-in-law? She knows you’ve got the fever, so you know she’s going to give you the cold shoulder.

‘You can move into my house. Or if you don’t want to be around Tingting’s stuff, we can live outside the village, in the building beside the threshing grounds. I’ll bring some pots and pans and cookware, and it’ll be just like home.’

And so Uncle and Lingling moved in together.

They lived together brazenly, like husband and wife. Like a pair of young lovers. Like a couple of fools.

*

Uncle and Lingling set about making the two-room building of mud brick and tile into a home. Uncle brought bowls, woks, sheets and blankets from his house so they could live in comfort. The fields around the village were divided into private plots, but the threshing grounds were communal, usually shared by about a dozen households. After the Communist government was established in 1949, the threshing grounds had been divided among ‘mutual-aid teams’. Later, when the People’s Communes were formed, they were shared by ‘production brigades’. Now that the communes had been disbanded and the villagers had returned to farming private plots, the threshing grounds were divided informally among groups of households. When the thatched hut next to this threshing ground had collapsed, the villagers had pitched in to build a two-room building of mud brick and tile. During the busy harvest season, when the villagers took turns threshing wheat, the building was used as a place to rest or nap. During the rest of the year, it was used for storing farm equipment.