Eventually, in the heat of the afternoon of the third day, Grandma Mao Zhi emerged from the side room where she was sleeping. She was holding her crutch and leaning against the wall. Her face was ashen as a result of her having endured three days and three nights of misery. Her hair was gray and disheveled. Her blue shirt used to fit her just right, but now it looked like it was draped loosely over a clothes hanger. When she walked out of her room, the villagers paid her no attention, figuring she had nothing to report, since, like everyone else, she had spent the preceding three days sitting or lying down. But now, she opened her mouth and spoke, such that everyone had no choice but to listen, hanging carefully on her every word. She had not been in the main hall when the people outside splashed water and crumbled buns through the window, but she knew very well what they were doing. She stood there, holding her crutch in one hand and leaning against the wall with the other. She asked,
“They’re not splashing water or crumbling buns anymore?”
Everyone just stared at her.
She said,
“I know most of you still have money on you, and I also know exactly where you keep it. If you don’t believe me, then let’s have everyone take off their clothes and let someone look through them, or lift up the bricks beneath their bedroll and let someone look under them.”
She said,
“It won’t do for people to die of hunger and thirst. One hundred yuan for a bowl of water, two hundred for a bowl of noodles, and five hundred for a steamed bun — if you buy them, you’ll live, but if you don’t, you’ll die. So, will you buy them or not?”
She concluded,
“You don’t need to hide your cash. Every family can drink the water and eat the steamed buns they buy with their own funds. Trust me, those who don’t have any money will die of hunger or thirst before they use a cent of any one else’s.”
The entire hall fell into a deep silence. Then there was the sound of people looking around. Soon, they were all looking toward the corners of the room where they had hidden their money. It was as though they were all afraid that Grandma Mao Zhi had found their secret stashes of cash, as if she had revealed their secret weakness. Some of them hated her for this, some simply felt embarrassed, while others were grateful that she had finally torn down the artificial facade that had been erected inside the hall. However, they all remained where they had been sitting or lying, looking silently at one another. It was as if they each felt Grandma Mao Zhi was talking about someone else. It was as if they all felt as though if others took out their money to buy some water, they couldn’t possibly avoid sharing it with them, and that conversely, if they themselves took out their money to buy a bun, they would have no choice but to give some to the others. What made them particularly anxious and fearful was the thought that if they were the first to take out their money, everyone might jump on them and beat them, saying, Fuck your mother, you had all this money on you, and yet you made us endure three days of thirst and hunger, and then would proceed to steal their money and use it to buy water, noodles, and steamed buns for themselves.
So instead, they all remained where they were without moving or saying a word, as if the hall were completely empty.
The air became increasingly noxious.
It was fouled further by the stench from the latrine.
The main hall was so quiet that it seemed as though a leaf or feather would create an enormous pit if it fell to the ground, and would carve an enormous gash in one of the marble pillars if it happened to brush against one of them. It was as though the leaf or feather might shatter Lenin’s crystal coffin into countless shards of glass. Indeed, the hall was so quiet that you wouldn’t find a quieter place anywhere in the world. It was also so stuffy that you wouldn’t find a stuffier place anywhere in the world. As everyone gazed up at Grandma Mao Zhi, they gradually began to feel somewhat ill at ease, and they remained focused on some indeterminate spot in front of them.
In this way, the confused time inched past, as though it were counting individual strands of hair; perhaps it covered a hundred-long li, or perhaps it was the equivalent of several strands of hair. Eventually, Grandma Mao Zhi shifted her gaze to Polio Boy.
The boy was sitting in the corner closest to the hall’s main door. He was leaning against the door frame, and the water that had been thrown in through the window had reached his feet and splashed his face. Whenever the people outside threw water in, he wanted to go try to catch it with his mouth, but was afraid that afterward he might find himself stuck there and unable to move. Needless to say, his face had a deathly pallor from hunger and thirst and had become as swollen and shiny as a rotten apple or peach, while his lips were covered with dry, bloody ridges and were extraordinarily engorged. Grandma Mao Zhi looked at him, and he looked back at her. It was as if he were seeing someone who resembled his mother. He seemed to want to call out to her, but was afraid that he had misrecognized her. Therefore, he just stared at her silently, as though waiting for her to recognize him.
Grandma Mao Zhi watched him for a while, and then said,
“Boy!”
He grunted in response.
She asked, “Do you want to eat?”
He nodded, and said, “I’m very thirsty.”
Grandma Mao Zhi said, “Give me the money you have stitched inside your pants pocket, and I’ll go buy you something.”
The boy took off his pants in front of everyone, revealing his floral underwear. On the underwear there was a bulging white pocket with the opening stitched shut. The boy leaned down and ripped the pocket with his teeth, as Grandma Mao Zhi came over and took his money. After counting out six bills, she handed the rest back to him, and then went over to the memorial hall door and knocked a few times, saying, “I want a bowl of water, and a steamed bun!” Then she stuffed the money under the door.
In the blink of an eye, a bowl of water and a steamed bun were passed in through the window over the door. The boy stood behind the door to receive them, and began drinking and eating in front of everyone. He was just a boy, and initially no one paid him any mind, even as the sound of his drinking reverberated throughout the hall like a river, while that of his eating was like food frying during the village’s livening festival.
He ravenously devoured the steamed bun, heedless of everyone around him.
The aroma swept through the memorial hall like a tornado, followed by the sound of the boy chewing. His right leg was as shriveled as a stick and he was as skinny as a stalk of grain, and normally when he opened his mouth he couldn’t even stuff an egg inside. But now this small and skinny boy brought his mouth up to the edge of the bowl and, in two or three swallows, managed to gulp down two-thirds of the steamed bun, which was as big as a rabbit’s head.
Everyone’s eyes remained fixated on his steamed bun, and on the boy delightedly enjoying his food.
No one said a word. Everyone was consuming the sight of him swallowing the water and the sound of him eating the steamed bun. One-Legged Monkey was standing to the side licking his cracked lips. Deafman Ma for some reason was covering his mouth with his hand. Tonghua, Huaihua, Yuhua, and Mothlet were not watching the boy, and instead were just staring at their grandmother as if she, who was standing right next to them, might suddenly pull out a wad of cash and buy each of them a steamed bun and a bowl of water.
By this point it was already afternoon and it seemed as though the air in the room, and even time itself, was being chewed up by the boy.
Suddenly, Deafman Ma unbuttoned his pants, and muttered, “If we’re all about to die, then what the hell do I need money for?” He pulled twelve hundred yuan from his underwear, and shouted at the door,