At this moment, One-Legged Monkey saw clearly that there was a row of Chinese characters on the lid of the second crystal coffin. The characters were bright yellow, and while they didn’t shine they nevertheless were very bright. Every character was as big as a bowl, and they began from the head of the coffin, with a space as wide as several fingers between characters. These characters were written in an ancient chancery script, and were each as thick as a piece of tree bark.
The characters were inscribed directly on the lid of the coffin, and there were nine of them in all. One-Legged Monkey read them carefully from beginning to end:
May Comrade Liu Yingque Be Eternally Remembered by Posterity
One-Legged Monkey felt somewhat at a loss. He immediately realized that Chief Liu had prepared this second crystal coffin for himself, but what he couldn’t understand was why Chief Liu would want to prepare his own coffin while he was still alive, why it had to be a crystal coffin, or why it had to be positioned in Lenin’s Memorial Hall, next to Lenin’s coffin. One-Legged Monkey stared into the pit at those nine characters inscribed on the lid of the coffin, but waited until later to ponder their significance. The golden color of those nine embossed li script characters attracted him. They didn’t produce light in themelves, but rather emitted a yellow glow into this underground pit — like a row of nine suns hidden behind the clouds. He stared intently at the nine characters, focusing in particular on their color and wondering what they were made of. Of course, if the characters had been made of brass, they would have oxidized quickly in the humid pit. Instead, however, they remained bright yellow. What, then, could they possibly be made of?
One-Legged Monkey thought of gold.
When it occurred to him that the characters might be made of gold, the chill in his legs immediately disappeared, and he felt instead a surge of warm blood rush from his feet up to his head. Without wasting a second, he slid monkeylike into the pit, leaned over, and stroked the characters. Then, as if crazed, he grabbed at the characters on the lid of the coffin. But it appeared as though every single stroke was firmly nailed down; and this, combined with the fact that his hands were sweaty, meant that he wasn’t able to pry off a single one.
The sounds in the main hall resonated loudly down inside the pit, as though there were an underground river close by. One-Legged Monkey stood up, bumping his head against the bottom of Lenin’s crystal coffin. There was a thud, which startled him so much he became covered in sweat. He had a sudden urge to pee, just like six months earlier when he’d first performed on the Shuanghuai stage.
He managed to control himself, however, and didn’t permit the urine to leave his body. Instead, he began tugging at the gold characters, eventually managing to break off a single stroke from one of them. This piece was the size of a fingernail and the shape of the tip of his index finger, and was as thick as a piece of tree bark. He held this tiny piece in his hand, and tried to estimate how much it weighed. It felt as though this little piece pressing down on the palm of his hand was as heavy as an iron hammer.
It turned out that those characters were indeed made of gold.
The nine gold characters on the lid of Chief Liu’s crystal coffin read:
May Comrade Liu Yingque Be Eternally Remembered by Posterity
Upon realizing that the embossed characters were made of actual gold, One-Legged Monkey sat there stupefied, then tried to pry off another piece. After he failed to loosen even half a stroke, he could no longer think about anything other than urinating and proceeded to climb out of the pit. He immediately went over to the two marble slabs and began pressing down on the opening between them. He didn’t know what button he pressed, but it pricked his hand like the end of a tree branch. He pressed against this branchlike stub, moving it back and forth until eventually the open pit was covered up again.
At that point, One-Legged Monkey realized he really had peed in his pants, and the damp area was rubbing against his thighs like a clump of wet sand.
Seeing the deathly quiet memorial hall, he quickly hobbled over to the bathroom, but succeeded in secreting only a few more drops.
Given that over the previous three days he had drunk only half a bowl of water, he’d had the urge to urinate without actually having had anything in his bladder. Moreover, he had already pissed out all of the excess liquid inside him when he’d wet his pants down in the pit.
After peeing out those few drops, One-Legged Monkey felt as carefree and livened as though he had finally relieved himself of the urine that he had been holding back for the past three days. He stood erect in the latrine, without tying up his pants, his shoulders thrust back and his arms in the air. At this point, he heard someone at the window above the main door of the memorial hall shout inside:
“Hey, come on out. People of Liven, come out. My elder bro here wants to organize a meeting for you — there’s something he wants to tell you.”
After some of the villagers emerged, the person at the window repeated,
“Someone get Grandma Mao Zhi. My bro wants to organize a meeting for you, and after you’ve listened to what he has to say, he’ll let you go.”
One-Legged Monkey heard the sound of many footsteps. He emerged from the bathroom and saw that the villagers were coming out of the side rooms, walking behind Grandma Mao Zhi. They proceeded to the center of the hall, where they stood in a group. Not a single one of them, not even Old Crutches, glanced over at the crystal coffin. At the window the faces of those four wholers reappeared. One of them still had the condescending smile that he’d had earlier, while another had turned pale. The truck driver, whom the others called “Elder Bro,” looked utterly calm. He was standing at the center window, gazing into the hall, and let his gaze come to rest of Grandma Mao Zhi. He said,
“Hey, people of Liven, Grandma Mao Zhi, listen to me. I’m going to level with you. We’ve grown impatient waiting for you. It’s hot and we all want to go home, and I’m sure you’re even more eager to return home than we are — to return to your carefree days of livening. We all want to return home, so let’s be honest with each other. You are all disabled, so you don’t really need any money to enjoy a carefree life. Even if you were to cook and eat like crazy, you couldn’t possibly spend very much money every month. On top of it, I can’t bear to see you locked up in this hall with nothing to eat or drink. Some of you are missing an arm or a leg, or are unable to see, hear, or speak — life for you must not be easy.”
He said, “We wholers have been thinking about you. We’ve been watching you, and we know where each of you has hidden your money. We’ve calculated that, for every performance, each of you has earned half a seat, on average. We don’t know precisely how much you have earned over the past six months, but the thieves could not have stolen more than a third or half of it. The remainder must still be hidden on your persons. You need to hand over that money, every cent of it.”
He said, “After you have done so, we will issue each of you three thousand yuan. You’ve been traveling and performing for the past six months, so it’s only fair that we give you three thousand yuan, which amounts to your having earned five hundred yuan a month. Five hundred yuan a month — that would be a good salary even for someone in the city. Three-quarters of the residents of Shuanghuai are workers who don’t earn a salary at all, but I propose to give each of you five hundred yuan for each month you have worked, over and above what we’ve have already given you in food, clothing, and housing, none of which you’ve had to pay for. If you add everything up, it amounts to our having given you the equivalent of between nine hundred and a thousand yuan a month.”