Secretary Niu continued smiling, his bright yellow face resembling a baked bun enveloped in a cloud of steam. Without saying a word, he took the glass from Chief Liu and refilled it. After Chief Liu drank the water, Secretary Niu urged him to quickly proceed to the provincial capital, saying that the road from Jiudu to the capital was under repair and traffic would probably be backed up, and therefore he needed to set off as quickly as possible.
Chief Liu proceeded to make his way back to the provincial capital in the dark. On the way there, his driver said that the foot he was using for the accelerator was tired and swollen, and that the car’s tires were crowding the moonlight on the side of the road and frightening away the sparrows perched in the roadside trees. Finally, at dawn, they reached the provincial capital, where buildings were as abundant as trees in a forest.
When he had set out for the county seat the previous evening, the only thing Chief Liu had been able think about was that he should kowtow to himself, burn some incense, and perhaps shed a few tears. After all, for better or for worse, he was the county chief, and there were eight hundred and ten thousand people who, when they saw him, would want to kneel down. After arriving at the provincial capital that morning, he hadn’t dared to even eat a bowl of jellied tofu, so afraid was he that he would lose time. Instead, he rushed to the government building on an empty stomach. After explaining why he was there and signing in, he entered that brown marble courtyard. When he arrived at the ten-plus-story building, he took out his county chief ID card and had the gatekeeper get in touch with the governor’s secretary. The governor said he should wait downstairs “for a while.”
This “while,” however, became a virtual eternity, to the point that he ended up spending more than ten times as long waiting than it had taken him to get there from Shuanghuai in the first place. Finally, when it was almost noon, a message came from upstairs instructing him to proceed to the sixth floor. To his surprise, the governor spoke to him only for the length of time that it takes a drop of water to fall from the roof of a building.
The governor said, “Have a seat.”
He said, “I don’t have anything to say. I summoned you here just to see what kind of person you are. I couldn’t believe that there was an official below me who would dare to raise money to go to Russia to purchase Lenin’s corpse.”
He said, “You won’t sit down? If you won’t have a seat, then you may go now. I already know how great you are. Go out and find a place better than the Kremlin to stay at. I’ve already sent someone to Beijing to retrieve the delegation you assigned to go to Russia, and when they arrive here in two or three days I want to see them as well. No matter how busy I may be, I will definitely want to have a chance to meet Shuanghuai’s glorious leaders.”
He said, “After I have met Shuanghuai’s leaders, you can escort them back to the county seat, and prepare to hand over the county’s work to your next-in-commmand.”
After having traveled through the night to reach the capital, Chief Liu discovered that this was all the governor wanted to say to him. The governor did not speak very loudly, sounding instead like a breeze passing under a door that has been closed tightly to keep out the winter chill. But when Chief Liu heard him, he felt his mind go blank, and all that was left was some black mist and white clouds. He had already missed three meals in a row, not having consumed anything at all since the two glasses of water that he had had at Secretary Niu’s house. Now, he suddenly felt so hungry that he was about to collapse on the governor’s desk, his legs as weak as a willow branch in the spring, or as the noodles that the people of Shuanghuai rolled just for him.
Needless to say, he couldn’t very well collapse in the governor’s office. He was after all a county chief, and was responsible for looking after eight hundred and ten thousand people, all of whom would kowtow when they saw him, and therefore he naturally couldn’t just collapse in the governor’s office. Outside, the sun was shining brightly on the roof of the building, and its rays were beaming in through the governor’s window. As his eyesight started to blur and he began to feel faint, Chief Liu gazed at the governor — the same way that, two years earlier when he visited the Shuanghuai county jail, those criminals had stared at him. Chief Liu wanted to sit down. There was a sofa behind him, but given that he hadn’t sat down when the governor originally invited him to, he naturally couldn’t very well do so now that the governor had already asked him to leave. He was also dying of thirst, and was desperate to find some water to wet his parched throat. Behind the governor there was some mineral water that someone had brought from the mountains. Chief Liu looked at the jug of water, and although the governor saw him staring, not only did he not offer Chief Liu any water to quench his burning throat, but he even took a black leather attaché case from the desk and tucked it under his arm.
The governor gestured for him to leave, the way one might brush away a fly.
Chief Liu had no choice but to depart.
Before departing, Chief Liu took one final glance at the governor’s office. This was the first time he had ever stepped foot inside and it would probably be the last. He told himself he must make an effort to examine it carefully. The office was not as big as he had imagined, nor as stately. All told, there were three rooms, with a desk, a leather chair, and a row of bookcases, together with more than a dozen flowerpots and the sofa behind him. In addition, there were three or four telephones on the desk.
Later, Chief Liu was not entirely certain what else had been there. Of course, he saw and remembered the governor’s expression and appearance, just as he remembered the precise size of the crystal coffin in Lenin’s Memorial Hall. The governor’s face had a layer of deep red beneath its surface swarthiness, as shiny as if it had been soaking in ginseng soup for many years. The governor had a round face, narrow forehead, and white hair. His face resembled a well-aged apple, which had developed many wrinkles over time but which, because it was originally of high quality, still retained a delicious apple fragrance. The governor was wearing a light yellow sweater, under a well-made gray jacket and a tan wool coat. He was wearing a pair of black round-toe leather shoes, and his pants were made from a dark blue fabric. Actually, there was nothing particularly extraordinary about his outfit, it being no different from that of any older man of a certain class whom you might encounter in the street.
The only difference was his tone of voice, which was very calm and measured, but carried a trace of icy coldness. He was the governor, and could discuss a cataclysm the way other people would discuss a light breeze and drizzle. Things that would leave other people petrified, he could discuss as though they were icy hot — when, in fact, those embers contained a piece of ice that would never melt.
The governor mentioned this cataclysmic event as though it were a willow catkin floating to the ground, or a sesame seed that had gotten wedged in an ox’s hoofs. At this point, Chief Liu did not realize that the governor’s speech was deeper than the sea, and instead he was merely thinking that he had traveled all night and then waited all day only to find that the governor merely intended to say a few words to him. Chief Liu desperately wanted to offer a remark, even if this remark was as short as a bean sprout or as fleeting as a flame, but the governor took his leather attaché case and prepared to walk out, leaving Chief Liu with no choice but to depart as well.
With those few words — which lasted no longer than the length of a chopstick, or the amount of time it takes a drop of water to fall from the roof of a house — and before Chief Liu even had a chance to come to his senses, he was ushered, weak-kneed, out of the governor’s office. It was only then that he suddenly awoke to the fact that the governor had actually seen him — and he had seen the governor — and that the governor had said everything he wanted to say, and in the process had thrown away everything Chief Liu had worked for his entire life. Chief Liu felt as though he had been hurled from a hot summer into a bitterly cold winter, that his life’s work had been tossed to the wind. In the blink of an eye, everything was blown away to who knows where. However, even though Chief Liu and the governor had just seen each other, as Chief Liu was leaving the office it occurred to him that he had not had a chance to utter even a single word.