Dream of Ding Village (37 page)

Ding Yuejin turned around. ‘If you don’t believe me, go and ask him yourself!’

He continued on his way, leaving Grandpa standing in the middle of the road beneath the blazing sunshine, like a small clay figure of a man that someone had left to dry in the sun. Like an old wooden hitching post bleached by the sunshine, a piece of rotting wood that no one wanted any more.

Although Grandpa kept meaning to go into the city and visit my parents and sister, he never did. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to make the trip. Then again, maybe he just didn’t want to face my dad.

Instead, he spent his days in the elementary school. The school was deserted now, and the classrooms were bare.

The desks, chairs and blackboards were gone. The tables and wooden planks that had served as beds were also missing, carted off by the former residents. Every tree in the schoolyard, from the biggest to the smallest, had been chopped down. The villagers had even taken the windowpanes.

Not a day went by without someone showing up with a letter authorizing them to remove certain items from the school. The letters always bore the official village seal and the signatures of Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin. When everything had been taken, Grandpa found himself the caretaker of an empty schoolhouse, a deserted schoolyard and his own two small rooms. With nothing to watch over and nothing left to do, Grandpa got bored. He talked about visiting my dad in the city, but somehow, he never did. The days were as empty as his heart, which seemed to have left his body, in the same way that his youngest son had left this life. It felt like everything he’d ever loved had died. Although my dad was still alive and well and living comfortably in the big city, it made no difference to Grandpa. In his mind, his eldest son was already dead.

He felt the same way about Ding Village.

For him, the village had ceased to exist.

With no desire to see any of the villagers, Grandpa spent his days in the elementary school. The school was as empty and silent as it had been a year ago. All the people were gone. There were no teachers or students or sick residents. The two-acre campus held but one living soul. Now that Grandpa was alone, he could go to bed as early as he liked and sleep as late as he wanted. He could eat when he was hungry, drink when he was thirsty, empty his bowl or leave leftovers, to stretch one meal into two. And if he didn’t bother to wash the pot he’d cooked in, who cared? No one would ever know. What did it matter if his face was unwashed? No one would ever see it.

The idleness began to weigh on him. Grandpa felt as if he were living on the fringes of the world, rather than inside it. Every so often, cries and wailing from the village informed
him that someone else had died, but he never bothered to find out who it might be. What concern was it of his, if another person vanished from this world?

When he saw a funeral procession leaving the village or passing by the school, he would stand and watch for a few moments before returning to whatever he’d been doing.

Not that there was anything to do but weed and water his garden, or stand and watch it grow. When he had rid his tiny plot of weeds and pests, the only thing left was to wait for more to appear.

Although drought had reduced the plain to ashes, turning the soil a feathery grey, here was a small oasis of green. Grandpa guarded his vegetable patch as carefully as he would his own life. Uncle and Lingling were dead. Tingting and Little Jun had left. My dad had moved to the city, taking his wife and daughter with him. Grandpa had no family left in Ding Village. But when he thought about his broken family, he didn’t feel particularly sad. He felt cleaner somehow, lighter, as if a burden he’d borne for decades had been lifted from his shoulders.

The days went by, each one much the same. As summer reached its peak and the trees shed their remaining leaves, Jia Genzhu showed up at the school gate. He stood silently, watching Grandpa catch insects in his garden, and then said, in a small voice: ‘Hello, Uncle.’

Grandpa wheeled around, startled. What he saw was even more startling. It had been more than a fortnight since Grandpa had gone into the village, and a little more than three weeks since the sick villagers had moved out of the school. That was the last time he had seen Jia Genzhu, on the day he and the others had left. But the man squatting by Grandpa’s garden was not the Jia Genzhu he had known. This person was so emaciated he hardly seemed human. His face was sickly, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His eyes were so shrunken you could place an egg, or maybe a fist, in each socket. Crouched in the shade of the schoolyard wall, not far from my grave, he looked like a phantom, a spirit risen
from the ground. His skin was desiccated, like he’d been left out in the sun and wind too long.

Genzhu, who had never called my grandpa ‘uncle’ in his life, seemed embarrassed by the endearment. His face cracked into an awkward smile.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Grandpa asked.

‘I’m dying.’ Genzhu’s smile grew as thick as tree bark. It seemed too heavy for his face, like it might peel away at any moment. ‘I doubt I’ll live more than a few days. Since I’ve got no future anyway, I thought I might as well come and have a talk with you.’

Grandpa left his vegetable patch and sat down at the foot of my grave. When he was settled on the ground, six feet above where I lay, he turned to Genzhu with a serious let’s-have-that-talk expression. It was just before sunset, and the heat was rolling off the plain. The evening humidity was seeping in. Sitting in the shade of the schoolyard wall, with a slight breeze cooling their skin, Grandpa and Genzhu felt almost comfortable.

A concert of cicadas buzzing in the distance made Grandpa think of Ma Xianglin playing on his fiddle. It had been almost a year since the musician had died, a year since his performance the previous autumn.

‘I’m going to die soon.’ Genzhu pushed his face close to Grandpa’s. ‘You can see it in my face, can’t you?’

Up close, Genzhu’s face looked even more ghastly.

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Grandpa assured him. ‘As soon as you get through this hot spell, you’ll be fine.’

‘You don’t have to lie to me, Uncle. But there’s something I need to tell you before I die. If I didn’t, I’d never rest in peace.’

‘So tell me.’

‘I will.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’m going to.’

Grandpa smiled. ‘Just spit it out, son.’

‘Uncle, I can’t stop thinking about killing Ding Hui. All day long, I think about ways to kill him. At night, I dream about watching him die.’

Genzhu peered intently at Grandpa, trying to gauge his reaction. It was like he was a thief, trying to steal something in plain sight, and wondering whether or not anyone would stop him. He kept his eyes fixed on Grandpa’s face.

Grandpa stared back in shock. Genzhu’s words had hit him like a rock to the side of the head, leaving him dazed and speechless. He felt like the young man had asked to touch his cheek, then slapped him across the face. Grandpa’s face was as pale as a late-December moon, his mind as empty as the schoolyard, as barren as the plain. He looked at Genzhu searchingly, wondering whether his words were true or false, or if he’d just blurted out the first thing that came into his head. Although Genzhu talked of killing, his expression seemed kinder, his eyes gentler than they’d been on the day he left the school. It was as if he was simply asking Grandpa to borrow one of his things, or asking him to help search for something he’d lost.

The sun was burning towards the west now. A sharp blade of sunlight flashed around the corner of the schoolyard wall, leaving a neat rectangle of light on the ground.

‘Did you rob Liang’s tomb?’ Grandpa asked.

‘You really think I’d do that?’

‘Well, someone broke into the tomb and stole those coffins. Someone will have to answer for that.’

Genzhu thought for a moment. ‘I agree. Someone has to answer for that. But do you know what’s been happening in the village? Over the last two weeks, they’ve been digging up the bodies of girls who died of the fever, and marrying them off to dead boys in other villages. They’re selling our girls, digging up their bones and giving them to outsiders. My cousin Hongli was supposed to be married to Zhao Xiuqin’s niece Jade after he died, but yesterday we heard she’d been promised to some family from Willow Hamlet, the Ma family. When they came to dig up her body yesterday, they told us it was Ding Hui who arranged the match, and that he’s making money on both ends. He charged both families a fee of one hundred yuan, and Jade’s family got 3,000 for the dowry.’

Genzhu’s voice hardened. ‘I’m not the only one who wants to kill Ding Hui. There are a lot of people around here who’d be glad to see him dead. That’s why you need to tell him to stay away from Ding Village, or I might not be able to stop myself from bashing his head in. You’re a good man, Uncle. That’s why I’m telling you this. If you weren’t, I’d have let Ding Hui come back here and get beaten to death.

‘You know, I was only sixteen when I started selling my blood. One day, I ran into Ding Hui on my way home from school, and he tried to buy a pint of my blood. When I asked if it hurt, he said it was no worse than an ant bite. When I asked if it was dangerous, he said: “Don’t you want to get married someday, kid? If you’re not even willing to sell a pint of blood, how do you expect to afford a wife?”

‘That was how I got started selling blood. So you see, uncle, I’m not being unfair. I’ve got my reasons for wanting him dead, and so do a lot of other people. So you tell your son that if he doesn’t want his brains bashed in, he’d better stay away. If he shows up here, there’s no telling what we might do.’

At this point, Jia Genzhu stood up as if to leave. Grandpa assumed this meant the conversation was over, and that Genzhu had no other agenda. Apparently, he had come all this way to tell Grandpa he wanted to kill his son, and to pass on a warning to Ding Hui not to return to the village. The sun had set while they were talking, turning the plain into a great thick lake of blood. Genzhu was just about to leave, to walk into the sticky red sunset, when he stopped.

‘Oh, uncle?’ His words came out quickly. ‘I have just one more thing to ask, a favour. I don’t have long to live, so I swear this will be the last favour I ever ask you. You know your nephew and I are local cadres, so we share the village seal. He’s in pretty bad shape these days, just like me, and I doubt either of us will make it through the month. Anyway, the day before yesterday, he and I had a talk about which one of us should be buried with the seal. It turned into an argument because, of course, we both wanted it. So we finally decided to draw lots. He won the draw, which means he gets
to be buried with the seal. But since then, I haven’t been able to get any sleep. I keep tossing and turning, thinking about how much I want that seal in my casket when I die. I know I’ve done some unfair things to you and your family in the past, but I’m a dying man, and I’m begging you to go to Ding Yuejin and reason with him. You and he are family, and I know how much he’s always respected you. If you ask him to give up the seal, I know he’ll listen.’

Genzhu stood between the vegetable patch and the school gate, gazing at Grandpa imploringly. The setting sun behind him was like a lake of blood, soaking into his clothes.

Grandpa, still sitting in the shade of the schoolyard wall, stood up. The upper half of his body emerged into the fading sunlight, while the lower half stayed in shadow.

‘Is it that important to be buried with the seal?’ Grandpa asked, squinting into the sunshine.

‘Maybe not, but I’ve got my heart set on it.’

‘Why not just carve a new seal?’

‘Then the new one would be fake. Let Ding Yuejin have the new seal, and I’ll take the old one. If you can convince him to give up the seal, I promise to stop thinking about ways to kill Ding Hui.’

Genzhu gazed at Grandpa for a few moments, then mumbled something under his breath, turned and walked away. Although there wasn’t much wind that day, Genzhu moved slowly and unsteadily, like he was afraid that a sudden gust might blow him over.

As Grandpa watched him stagger away, a thin reed being carried on the wind, he decided to stay out of this business about the seal. But as long as Jia Genzhu was still alive and able to walk, he decided he had better go into the city and tell my dad to stay away from the village, at least for a while.

Or maybe he’d tell him to stay away from the village for ever.

Either way, he decided to go to bed early, so he could get an early start the next morning.

Grandpa finally caught up with his son, but it wasn’t easy
.

After a long and difficult journey, he tracked him down to a village called Cottonwood. It was the same model blood-selling village that the people of Ding Village had toured ten years earlier. This time, my dad was in Cottonwood gathering statistics on how many people had died of the fever, and how many among those were single. He made a list of all the dead unmarried men, women, boys and girls of Cottonwood, and then started taking applications from their families for his matchmaking service. The families had to provide a photo, or at least a physical description, of their dead relative. A team of helpers, university students that my dad had brought from the city, took notes on each person’s age, height, weight, face shape, skin tone and appearance. They set up a row of tables in the village centre and sat sifting through statistics and photos, and sorting the dead into categories. My dad paced back and forth along the row of tables, sometimes stopping to sit down and ask a question, or to give the students instructions
.

My dad was a city person now, but he went out into the countryside every day, the same way that people in the countryside went out to their fields each morning. Knowing this, Grandpa went from village to village searching for my dad, until he caught up with him in Cottonwood. Ten years before, during the blood boom, Cottonwood had been a prosperous village. The tall buildings and white porcelain-tiled
houses were still there, but they had become dilapidated. Grandpa stood sadly at the entrance to the village, staring at the ruin it had become. Big chunks of white tiles were missing from the walls of buildings, and what tiles remained were yellowed and weathered. The once-smooth tiles were as rough as sandpaper. Weeds sprouted between the cracks of tiled roofs and brick archways. Because of the drought, the weeds were as pale and withered as the grass that grew along the old Yellow River path
.