Dream of Ding Village (6 page)

For this reason, the blood banks were forced to become mobile blood units: they set up camp in Ding Village one month, then moved on to Willow Hamlet, Yellow Creek or Two-Li Village the next.

After the business went mobile, selling blood in Ding Village became much less convenient. No longer could a villager show up at the local blood bank with a bowl of food and an extended arm, eat his meal as the blood dripped from his veins into a collection bottle slung from his belt, and walk out with
full belly and a fistful of cash. Nor could a villager stop at the blood bank on her way home from the fields and leave with a nice crisp 100-yuan note (emblazoned with the smiling face of Chairman Mao), which she held up to the sunlight to check that it wasn’t counterfeit.

Until, one day, my father made a trip to the city and returned home with a load of needles, syringes, plastic tubing, sterile cotton wipes and glass vials. He dumped his purchases on the bed, fetched a wooden plank from the pigsty and fashioned it into a hand-lettered sign that read: ‘Ding Family Blood Bank’. Then he walked out to the scholar tree in the centre of the village, clanged a rock against the metal bell and shouted loudly enough for the whole village to hear:

‘If you want to sell blood, come see Ding Hui at the Ding Family Blood Bank … the others only pay eighty per vial, but I’ll give you eighty-five!’

Sure enough, after my father had repeated this announcement several times, the villagers began to emerge from their homes. By noon, our family’s house was surrounded by people clamouring to sell their blood.

That was the day the Ding Family Blood Bank was born.

Within six months, Ding Village had given birth to a dozen more private blood banks. Because the owners were too inexperienced to know where to sell the blood they had collected, they sold it to my father instead. He then resold it at a considerable markup to the blood-collection trucks that loitered outside the village late at night. Once again, blood-selling took Ding Village and the surrounding villages by storm. Ten years later, when sickness descended on the plain and those who had sold their blood discovered they had the fever, death became commonplace. People died like moths to a flame.

They died like falling leaves
.

Their light extinguished, gone from this world
.

It is late autumn, the dawn of a new day. The sun rises above the East Henan plain. A blood-red ball turning the earth and sky a deep shade of crimson. As red unfurls, so follows morning. Another day begins.

Grandpa woke with the sunrise to begin his rounds, and was now spreading the news about Ma Xianglin’s performance at the school that evening.

‘Anyone home?’ he called, poking his head in the door of the first house. ‘There’s a
zhuizi
concert at the school tonight, to celebrate the new medicine. You should come along … it’s better than being shut up at home.’

‘There’s really new medicine?’ came a voice from inside.

‘I’ve been a teacher all my life,’ Grandpa laughed. ‘Have you ever known me to lie?’

At the next house, Grandpa pushed open the front door. ‘Hey … don’t stay inside all day worrying. Join us at the school tonight for a
zhuizi
performance.’

‘Who’s playing?’ asked the man inside. ‘Is it Ma Xianglin?’

‘Who else?’ answered Grandpa. ‘You must have noticed he’s been getting sicker. If we all show up for his concert tonight, it might cheer him up a bit, give him the strength to last until the new medicine gets here.’

‘There’s really new medicine?’

‘I’ve been a teacher all my life … have you ever known me to lie?’

And so it went, house after house.

When Grandpa reached New Street, he saw my parents and sister walking home. They had just returned from their field and my mother held several bundles of vegetables in her arms. When they caught sight of Grandpa, the whole family froze in their tracks, as if they’d run into someone they would rather not meet. Grandpa stood in the middle of the street, an awkward smile on his face.

‘Yingzi,’ he called to his granddaughter. ‘Come to the school tonight and listen to some songs and stories. It’ll be more fun than staying home and watching television.’

Before Yingzi could reply, my mother grabbed her by the elbow and hustled her into the house, brushing past Grandpa without a word.

After they had gone, my dad and Grandpa were left alone on the street, locked in a father-son stalemate. The sun overhead cast a harsh light on the walls and tiled rooftops of New Street. From the fields outside the village came the faintest autumn chill, mingled with the delicate fragrance of freshly turned soil. When Grandpa raised his head to find the source of this scent, he saw Zhao Xiuqin’s husband Wang Baoshan in the distance, working his private plot of land. Not long earlier, Wang Baoshan had decided to let the field go fallow. Since his wife had the fever, he’d said, what was the point in ploughing or planting? Pretty soon, he wouldn’t have any family left to feed. But now that he’d heard the news about the new medicine, he was back outside, working in his field.

Turning the soil helps to keep it moist
.

There’s still time to plant some winter cabbage
.

Even if we don’t plant this year, it makes sense to keep the soil in shape
.

There’s always next year
.

Grandpa watched Wang Baoshan at work, ploughing his field and turning the soil. He turned back to my father with a smile. ‘You should come to Ma Xianglin’s concert tonight, too.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because the whole village will be there. It’s a good opportunity. You can kneel on stage and kowtow, tell everyone you’re sorry and that will be the end of it. One little apology, and we can put this whole mess behind us.’

‘Dad, have you lost your mind?’ asked my father, staring in disbelief. ‘No one in this village tells me what to do, least of all you. And no one else is asking for an apology.’

Grandpa looked carefully at his son’s face. It was as thunderously angry as a poster of a household god, those fierce deities that the villagers plastered on their doors to ward off evil spirits.

‘Do you take me for a fool, Hui?’ he snorted. ‘You think I don’t know that when you drew blood, you used the same cotton swabs on three or four different people? God only knows how many times you reused those needles.’

The look he received in return was pure hatred. ‘Old man, if you weren’t my own father, I’d slap you across the face.’ With this, my father brushed past Grandpa and followed my mother into the house.

‘Hui!’ Grandpa shouted at his son’s retreating back, ‘All right, I won’t make you kowtow in front of the whole village. But can’t you at least say a few words of apology?’

My father didn’t even bother to turn around. He had heard enough.

‘You’re not even willing to apologize?’ Grandpa pleaded, chasing after him. ‘Is that what you’re telling me, son?’

As my father reached the courtyard gate, he paused. ‘Don’t waste your time hating me,’ he spoke loudly and clearly. ‘Because before the end of this year, I’m moving my family out of the village and you’ll never see any of us again.’

My father ducked into the courtyard and slammed the gate behind him, leaving Grandpa standing like an old wooden hitching post on a new and more fashionable street.

But Grandpa had the final say: ‘Mark my words, Hui … you’ll come to no good end. You just remember that!’

Later that day, after the sun had set and the moon had risen, the villagers gathered at the school for music, songs and storytelling.

Using electrical cables from the classrooms, Grandpa and some of the village men rigged up several 100-watt bulbs and hung them from the basketball hoop, flooding the schoolyard with incandescent light. They placed wooden doors on piles of bricks to construct a makeshift stage. To this, they added a high stool for Ma Xianglin to sit on as he performed, and a slightly lower stool with a teapot and mug, in case he got thirsty. Once everything was in order, the performance could begin.

Villagers crowded into the basketball court in front of the stage, both the sick and the healthy sitting cross-legged on the ground, eager to join in the fun and see what all the fuss was about.

Nearly 300 villagers had turned out to see the concert. They filled the basketball court and the schoolyard like a flock of crows in a field. The sick sat towards the front, near the stage. Those who were healthy, still untouched by the fever, sat at the back.

The season was nearly over, and a late autumn chill had crept into the still night air. In Two-Li Village, Willow Hamlet, Yellow Creek and other nearby villages, they felt it too. The late autumn chill had spread through the county, the province, and all across the plain.

Some of the villagers who had come to see Ma Xianglin perform wore padded cotton jackets or had them draped over their shoulders. For those with the fever, catching cold was of vital concern: already more than a few people in the village had caught a cold and died. Even the tiniest cold could be life-threatening for someone with a weakened immune system, and the sick villagers sat huddled in their padded coats as if it was the middle of winter. The schoolyard was a jumble of laughing, chattering people. They talked about the new
medicine and the fact that the fever could now be cured with a single injection. They talked about their good fortune and traded words of consolation, each as fragile as the wings of a cicada.

By now, the moon had risen over the schoolhouse. Ma Xianglin sat on the stage, perched on a stool clutching his fiddle. His face had a greenish tinge, the colour of death. The villagers realized that Ma Xianglin’s illness had reached a critical stage, and that he didn’t have much longer to live. If the new medicines didn’t get there soon, he would probably be dead within a couple of weeks.

And yet if he could spend each day like this, playing his fiddle and singing his cares away, maybe he could alter his fate. Maybe the difference between life and death really was that simple. Maybe he would manage to hang on for a few more weeks, or even a few more months. As long as he was willing to sing, and the villagers were willing to listen.

Grandpa emerged from his rooms with a thermos of hot water and two empty bowls. ‘Anyone thirsty?’ he called to the people gathered in front of the stage. He even bent down to ask several of the elderly villagers if they wanted anything to drink. When everyone had assured him that they were fine and not at all thirsty, Grandpa placed the thermos and bowls in a corner of the stage and turned to the ailing Ma Xianglin.

‘Shall we get started?’ Grandpa asked loudly. ‘The moon’s already risen.’

‘Let’s begin,’ answered Ma Xianglin in his sing-song voice.

With these words, Ma Xianglin was miraculously transformed. He began tuning his fiddle and confidently testing the strings (the instrument was already in perfect tune, and he knew it). Everyone knew that his white hair, scabby skin and purplish lips and gums were bad omens, signs that death was near. But as Ma Xianglin started to play, his face regained some colour, a glow that seemed to come from deep within. He smiled at the villagers and then, composing his expression, drew the bow across the strings of his fiddle. He looked as cheerful as a rosy-cheeked young man preparing for his
wedding. Even the sores on his face glowed red beneath the stage-lights, like tiny spots of brightness.

The blood seemed to have returned to Ma Xianglin’s darkened lips, turning them red again. Eyes half-closed, he bobbed his head in time with the music, playing only for himself, as if the audience didn’t even exist. The fingers of his left hand moved up and down the neck of his instrument; now slowly, now more quickly. With his right hand, he drew his bow back and forth between the strings; now quickly, now slowly again. The sound that emerged was like water flowing across parched desert sands. Clear and cool, but with an undercurrent of stifling heat; hot and prickly, but with a promise of something fresh and clean. After nodding a few times, Ma Xianglin announced that he would open with ‘Words on Leaving Home’, a ballad known to all the villagers. He cleared his throat and began to sing:

A son left home to journey far away
His mother saw him to the village gates
Her words fell light upon his ears
But proved worth their weight in gold

Oh son, she said, my son
The world out there is not like home
Remember to dress warmly
When the weather’s cold
And keep your pantry stocked
So that you never starve

When you meet an old gent
Respect him as you would your father
When you meet an old woman
Address her as you would your mother

Call the older ladies ‘Auntie’
And the younger ladies ‘Ma’am’
Treat young women as your sisters
And young men like brothers of your clan
…

When Ma Xianglin had finished singing the song, he launched into another about Mu Guiying, the famous female general of the Song dynasty. He sang about Cheng Yaojin, a salt merchant who had led a peasant uprising during the Sui dynasty. He recounted the adventures of the ‘Three Knights-Errant and the Five Sworn Brothers’ and other well-known heroes from Chinese history.

As Ma Xianglin basked in the glory of being on stage, the villagers became conscious of small details they had forgotten about him. For one thing, Ma Xianglin had never had a talent for remembering lyrics. As a young man, he’d failed to master the big book of lyrics and librettos that all students of Hunan folk opera were required to memorize. Although he had been an enthusiastic student, his inability to memorize lyrics and his tendency to play and sing off-key had led his operatic master to dismiss him from the theatre troupe. Thus deprived of a professional career, Ma Xianglin had spent a lifetime singing and playing his three-stringed fiddle in the confines of his family’s courtyard. This night, before an audience of 300 people, was no different: Ma Xianglin had still not mastered that big book of lyrics and librettos. Unable to remember all the words, he simply sang the passages he could remember. Fortunately, those he remembered were the best ones.