A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Persimmons

APRIL COMES AND APRIL GOES, AND MAY, AND June, all passing by without shedding a drop of rain. The sky has been a blue desert since spring. The sun rises every morning, a bright white disc growing larger and hotter each day. Cicadas drawl halfheartedly in the trees. The reservoir outside the village has shrunken into a bathtub for the boys, peeing at one another in the waist-deep water. Two girls, four or five, stand by the main road, their bare arms waving like desperate wings of baby birds as they chant to the motionless air, “Come the east wind. Come the west wind. Come the east-west-north-south wind and cool my armpits.”

Now that July has only to move its hind foot out the door in a matter of days, we have started to wish, instead of rain, that no rain will fall and the drought will last till the end of the harvest season. Peasants as we are, and worrying about the grainless autumn as we are, the drought has, to our surprise, brought a languid satisfaction to our lives. Every day, from morning till evening, we sit under the old pagoda tree, smoking our pipes and moving our bodies only when the tree’s shade threatens to leave us to the full spotlight of the sunshine. Our women are scratching their heads to come up with decent meals for us at home. The rice from last year will be running out soon, and before that, our women’s hair will be thinning from too much scratching until they will all go bald, but this, like all the minor tragedies in the world, has stopped bothering us. We sit and smoke until our daily bags of tobacco leaves run out. We stuff grass roots and half-dead leaves into the bags, and when they run out, we smoke dust.

“Heaven’s punishment, this drought.” Someone, one of us, finally speaks after a long period of silent smoking.

“Yes, too many deaths.”

“In that case, Heaven will never be happy again. People always die.”

“And we’ll never get a drop of rain.”

“Suits me well. I’m tired of farming anyway.”

“Yeah, right. Heaven comes to spank you, and you hurry up to bare your butts and say, Come and scratch me, I’ve got an itch here.”

“It’s called optimism, better than crying and begging for pardon.”

“A soft persimmon is what you are. I would just grab His pants and spank Him back.”

“Whoa, a hero we’ve got here.”

“Why not?”

“Because we were born soft persimmons. See any hero coming out of a persimmon?”

“Lao Da.”

“Lao Da? They popped his brain like a watermelon.” Lao Da was one of us. He should have been sitting here with us, smoking and waiting for his turn to speak out a line or two, to agree, or to contradict. When night falls, he would, like all of us, walk home and dote on his son, dripping drops of rice wine from his chopsticks to the boy’s mouth. Lao Da would have never bragged about being a hero, a man like him, who knew his place between the sky and the earth. But the thing is, Lao Da was executed before this drought began. On New Year’s Eve, he went into the county seat and shot seventeen people, fourteen men and three women, in seventeen different houses, sixteen of them dead on the spot, and the seventeenth lived only to see half a day of the new year.

“If you were born a soft persimmon, you’d better stay one”—someone says the comforting old wisdom.

“Persimmons are not born soft.”

“But they are valued for their softness.”

“Their ripeness.”

“What then if we stay soft and ripened?”

“Heaven will squeeze us until He gets tired of squeezing.”

“He may even start to like us because we are so much fun for Him.”

“We’ll just have our skins left by then.”

“Better than having no skins.”

“Better than having a bullet pop your brain.”

“Better than having no son to inherit your name.” Silent for a moment, we all relish the fact that we are alive, with boys to carry on our family names. Last year at this time, Lao Da’s son was one of the boys, five years old, running behind older boys like all small kids do, picking up the cicadas that the older boys shot down with their sling guns, adding dry twigs and dead leaves to the fire that was lit up to roast the bodies, waiting for his share of a burned cicada or two.

“Lao Da’s son died a bad one.”

“As if there is a good way to die!”

“Those seventeen, weren’t theirs good? Fast and painless.”

“But in the city, they said those seventeen all died badly.”

“Mercilessly murdered — wasn’t that how they put it in the newspapers?”

“But that’s true. They were murdered.”

“True, but in the city, they wouldn’t say the boy died badly. They didn’t even mention Lao Da’s son.”

“Of course they wouldn’t. Who would want to hear about a murderer’s son? A dead son, not to mention.”

“Even if they had written about him, what could they have said?”

“Drowned in a swimming accident, that’s what was written in his death certificate.”

“An accident happens every day, they would say.”

“The boy’s death wasn’t worth a story.”

The seventeen men and women’s stories, however, were read aloud to us at Lao Da’s trial, their enlarged pictures looking down at us from the top of the stage of a theater, a makeshift courthouse to contain the audience. We no longer remember their names, but some of the faces, a woman in heavy makeup who looked like a girl we were all obsessed with when we were young, a man with a sinister mole just below his left eye, another man with a pair of caterpillarlike eyebrows, these faces have stuck with us ever since. So have a few of the stories. A man who had been ice-swimming for twenty years and had never been ill for one day of his adult life. A mother of a teenage girl who had died earlier that year from leukemia. An official and his young secretary, who, as we heard from rumors, had been having an affair, but in the read-aloud stories, they were both the dear husband and wife to their spouses. The stories went on, and after a while we dozed off. What was the point of telling these dead people’s stories to us? Lao Da had no chance of getting away. He turned himself in to the police, knowing he would get a death sentence. Why not spare those relatives the embarrassment of wailing in the court? Besides, no story was read aloud about Lao Da. He was an atrocious criminal was all that was said about him.

“Think about it: Lao Da was the only one who died a good death.”

“A worthy one.”

“Got enough companions for the trip to the next world.”

“Got us into trouble, too.”

“It wasn’t his mistake. Heaven would’ve found another reason to squeeze us.”

“True. Lao Da was just an excuse.”

“Maybe — I have been thinking — maybe Heaven is angry not because of Lao Da, but for him?”

“How?”

“I heard from my grandpa, who heard from his grandpa, that there was this woman who was beheaded as a murderer, and for three years after her execution, not a drop of rain fell on the area.”

“I heard that from my grandpa, too. Heaven was avenging the woman.”

“But she was wronged. She did not kill her husband.”

“True.”

Lao Da was not wronged. You killed seventeen people and you had to pay with your life. Even Lao Da nodded in agreement when the judge read the sentence. He bowed to the judge and then to the guards when he was escorted off the stage. “I’m leaving one step earlier,” he said. “Will be waiting for you on the other side.” The guards, the judge, and the officials on and off the stage, they all tried to turn their eyes away from Lao Da, but he was persistent in his farewell. “Come over soon. Don’t let me wait for too long,” he said. We never expected Lao Da to have such a sense of humor. We grinned at him and he grinned back, but for a short moment only, as the judge waved for two more guards to push him to the backstage before he had time to give out too many invitations.

“Lao Da was a man.”

“Spanked Heaven.”

“But who’s got the upper hand now?”

“It means nothing to Lao Da now. He had his moment.”

“But it matters to us. We are punished for those who were wronged by death.”

“Who?”

“Those seventeen.”

“Not the wife of the cuckold, I hope.”

“Certainly not. She deserved it.”

“That woman was smaller than a toenail of Lao Da’s wife.”

“That woman was cheaper than a fart of Lao Da’s wife.”

“True.”

“Good woman Lao Da had as a wife.”

“Worthy of his life.”

We nod, and all think about Lao Da’s wife, secretly comparing her with our own women. Lao Da’s wife worked like a man in the field and behaved like a woman at home. She was plump, and healthy, and never made a sound when Lao Da beat her for good or bad reasons, or for no reason at all. Our wives are not as perfect. If they are not too thin they are too fat. If they are diligent, they do not leave us alone, nagging us for our laziness. They scream when beaten; even worse, sometimes they fight back.

“That good woman deserved better luck.”

“She deserved another son.”

“But her tubes were tied.”

“The poor woman would’ve lived if not for the Birth Control Office.”

“A group of pests they are, aren’t they?”

The Birth Control Office had been after Lao Da and his wife when they had not reported to the office after their firstborn. One child per family, they brushed in big red words on Lao Da’s house. Only pigs and dogs give birth to more than one child, they wrote. But Lao Da and his woman never gave up. They played hide-and-seek with the Birth Control Office, hiding in different relatives’ places when the woman’s belly was growing big. After three daughters and a big debt for the fines, they finally had a son. The day the boy turned a hundred days old, Lao Da killed a goat and two suckling pigs for a banquet; afterward, the wife was sent to the clinic to have her tubes triumphantly tied.

“What’s the point of living if she could not bear another son for Lao Da? What’s the use of a hen if it doesn’t lay eggs?”

“True.”

“But that woman, she was something.”

“Wasn’t she?”

We exchange looks of awe, all knowing that our own women would never have had the courage to do what Lao Da’s wife did. Our women would have screamed and begged when we faced no other choices but divorcing them for a fertile belly, but Lao Da’s wife, she never acted like an ordinary woman. When we, along with Lao Da, dived into the reservoir to look for the body of Lao Da’s son, she drank all the pesticide she could lay her hands on, six bottles in a row, and lay down in bed. Six bottles of pesticide with that strength could cut her into pieces, but she did not make a single sound, her jaws clenched, waiting for death.

“An extraordinary woman.”

“Maybe Heaven is angry on her behalf.”

“She was not wronged by anybody.”

“But her soul was let down.”

“By whom?”

“Lao Da.”

“Lao Da avenged her, and their son.”

“Was it what she wanted?”

“What did she want?”

“Listen, she was making room for a new wife, so Lao Da could have more sons. She didn’t poison herself just to make Lao Da lose his mind and carry out some stupid plan to shoot seventeen people. Think about it. Lao Da got everything wrong.”

“Her death could have borne more fruits.”

“That’s true. Now she died for nothing.”

“And Lao Da, too.”

“And those seventeen.”

“And the three daughters, orphaned for nothing.”

We shake our heads, thinking about the three girls, their screaming and crying piercing our eardrums when the county officials grabbed their arms and pushed them into the jeep. They were sent to different orphanages in three counties, bad seeds of a cold-blooded killer. Lao Da should have listened to us and drowned them right after they were born, sparing them their troubles of living in pain.

“Lao Da could have done better.”

“Reckless man.”

We could have made a wiser choice than Lao Da. We would have let the dead be buried and gone on living, finding a new wife to bear a new son, working, our backs bent, to feed the wife and the children. There would be the pain, naturally, of waking up to the humiliation of being a soft persimmon, but humiliation does not kill a man. Nothing beats clinging to this life. Death ferries us nowhere.

“One man’s mistake can capsize a whole ship of people.”

“True.”

“Death of a son is far from the biggest tragedy.”

“Death of anybody shouldn’t be an excuse to lose one’s mind.”

“But Lao Da had the right to seek justice for his boy.”

“Justice? What kind of justice is there for us?”

“If one kills, one has to pay with his life. Nothing’s wrong with the old rule. The man who killed Lao Da’s son should have been punished.”

“He was punished all right. The first one Lao Da shot that night, wasn’t he?”

“Two shots in the brain. Two shots in the heart.”

“In front of his woman.”

“Well done it was.”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“When I heard the news, I felt I had just downed a full pot of sorghum wine.”

“It beats the best wine out there.”

“See, that’s what justice is.”

“True. One can never run away from justice’s palm.”

“You just have to wait for the time.”

“Heaven sees, doesn’t He?”

“But if He does see, why are we punished? What kind of justice is this?”

“I’ve told you: there is no justice for us persimmons.”

“If you kill one person, you are a murderer. If you kill a lot, you are a hero.”

“Lao Da killed seventeen.”

“Not quite enough.”

“If you’ve made a point, you are a hero. If you’ve failed to make a point, you are nothing.”

“What’s the point to make?”

“There should be an order for everyone to follow.”

“A dreamer is what you are, asking for the impossible.”

“We all asked for that at the riot, but it didn’t get us anywhere.”

“That was because we gave up.”

“Bullshit. What’s the point fighting for a dead boy?”

“True.”

“What’s the point risking our lives for a nonexistent order?”

“True.”

We all nod, eager to shoo away the tiny doubt that circles us like a persistent fly. Of course, we did what we could— after the boy was found in the water, we marched together with his little body to the county seat, asking for justice. Hoes and spades and axes and our fists and throats we all brought with us, but when the government sent the troop of armed police in our direction, we decided to go back home. Violence will not solve your problem, we said to Lao Da. Go to the court and sue the man; follow what the law says, we told Lao Da.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have put the seed in Lao Da’s mind to sue the man.”

“Had I been him, I would have done the same.”

“The same what? Going around the city and asking justice for his son’s death? His son was drowned in a swimming accident — black words on a white page in his death certificate.”

“The other boys told a different story.”

“Why would the court want to listen to the story?”

We sit and smoke and wait for someone to answer the question. A group of boys are returning to the village from the reservoir, all dripping wet. Lao Da’s boy would never have been drowned if there had been a drought last year. We don’t worry about our sons this year, even the youngest ones, who cannot swim well. But last year was a different story. Last year’s reservoir was deep enough to kill Lao Da’s son.

“But don’t you think the officials made some mistakes too? What if they gave Lao Da some money to shut him up?”

“What if they put that man in jail, even for a month or two?”

“Isn’t that a smart idea? Or pretend to put the man in jail?”

“Yes, just tell Lao Da the man got his punishment.”

“At least treat Lao Da a little better.”

“Would have saved themselves.”

“But how could they have known? They thought Lao Da was a soft persimmon.”

“Squeezed him enough for fun.”

“Squeezed a murderer out of it.”

“Lao Da was the last one you would think to snap like that.”

“Amazing how much one could take and then all of a sudden he broke.”

“True.”

“But back to my point, what’s the good losing one’s mind over a dead son and a dead wife?”

“Easier said than done.”

“True. How many times did we tell him to stop pursuing the case?”

“Sometimes a man sets his mind on an idea, and he becomes a hunting dog, only seeing one thing.”

“And now we are punished for his stupidity.”

We shake our heads, sorry for Lao Da, more so for ourselves. Lao Da should have listened to us. Instead, he was writing down the names and addresses of those officials who had treated him like a dog. How long he had been preparing for the killing we do not know. He had the patience to wait for half a year until New Year’s Eve, the best time to carry out a massive murder, when all the people were staying home for the year-end banquet.

“At least we have to give Lao Da the credit for carrying out his plan thoroughly.”

“He had a brain when it came to revenge.”

“And those seventeen dead souls. Think about how shocked they were when they saw Lao Da that night.”

“I hope they had time to regret what they had done to Lao Da.”

“I hope their families begged Lao Da for them as Lao Da had begged them for his boy.”

“You’d never know what could come from a soft persimmon.”

“I hope they were taught a lesson.”

“They’re dead.”

“Then someone else was taught the lesson.”

“Quiet! Be careful in case someone from the county hears you.”

“So hot they won’t be here.”

“The reservoir is not deep enough for them now.”

“The reservoir is really the cause of all these bad things. Think about the labors we put into the reservoir.”

We nod and sigh. A few years ago, we put all our free time into building the reservoir, hoping to end our days of relying on Heaven’s mood for the rain. The reservoir soon became an entertaining site for the county officials. On summer afternoons, they came in jeeps, swimming in our water, fishing our fish. The man was one of the judges — but what indeed was his line of work we never got to know, as we call everybody working in the county court “judge.” That judge and his companions came, all drunk before they went into the water. Something Lao Da’s son said, a joke maybe, or just a nickname he gave to the judge, made him angry. He picked up Lao Da’s son and threw him into the deeper water of the reservoir. A big splash the other boys remembered. They cried, begged, but the judges all said it would teach the little bastard a lesson. The boys sent the fastest one among them to run for help. Lao Da’s son was found later that night, his eyelids, lips, fingers, toes, and penis all eaten into bad shapes by the feasting fish.

“Remember, Lao Da was one of those who really pushed for the reservoir.”

“He worked his back bent for it.”

“The poor man didn’t know what he was sweating for.”

“None of us knows.”

“At least we don’t have to sweat this summer.”

“Of course, you don’t sweat waiting for death.”

“Death? No, not that bad.”

“Not that bad? Let me ask you — what will we feed our women and kids in the winter?”

“Whatever is left from the autumn.”

“Nothing will be left.”

“Then feed them our cows and horses.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll all go to the county and become beggars.”

“It’s illegal to beg.”

“I don’t care.”

“If you want to do something illegal, why be a beggar and be spat at by everybody? I would go to the county and request to be fed.”

“How?”

“With my fist and my axe.”

“Don’t talk big. We were there once with our fists and our axes.”

“But that was for the dead boy. This time it’ll be for our own sons.”

“Do you think it’ll work?”

“You have to try.”

“Nonsense. If it works, it would have worked last time. Lao Da wouldn’t have had to kill and we wouldn’t have to be punished.”

Nobody talks. The sun has slowly hauled itself to the southwest sky. The cicadas stop their chanting, but before we have time to enjoy the silence, they pick up the old tune again. Some of us draw and puff imaginary smokes from our pipes that are no longer lit; others pick up dry twigs from the ground, sketching in the dust fat clouds, heavy with rain.