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Chapter Ten

I

Dear Elder Brother Yidou

I’ve asked someone to buy me a ticket on the September 27th train to Liquorland. According to the timetable, I arrive at 2:30 on the morning of the 29th. I know it’s a terrible hour, but it’s the only train I can take, and I’ll just have to trouble you to meet me then.

I’ve read ‘Ape Liquor,’ and have many thoughts about it. We can talk when I get there.

Best wishes,

Mo Yan

II

As he lay in the relative comfort of a hard-sleeper cot – relative to a hard-seater, that is – the puffy, balding, beady-eyed, twisted-mouthed, middle-aged writer Mo Yan wasn’t sleepy at all. The overhead lights went out as the train carried him into the night, leaving only the dim yellow glare of the floor lights to see by. I know there are many similarities between me and this Mo Yan, but many contradictions as well. I’m a hermit crab, and Mo Yan is the shell I’m occupying. Mo Yan is the raingear that protects me from storms, a dog hide to ward off the chilled winds, a mask I wear to seduce girls from good families. There are times when I feel that this Mo Yan is a heavy burden, but I can’t seem to cast it off, just as a hermit crab cannot rid itself of its shell. I can be free of it in the darkness, at least for a while. I see it softly filling up the narrow middle berth, its large head tossing and turning on the tiny pillow; long years as a writer have formed bone spurs on its vertebrae, turning the neck stiff and cold, sore and tingly, until just moving it is a real chore. This Mo Yan disgusts me, that’s the truth. At this moment its brain is aswarm with bizarre events: apes distilling liquor and dragging down the moon; the investigator wrestling with a dwarf; golden-threaded swallows making nests from saliva; the dwarf dancing on the naked belly of a beautiful woman; a doctor of liquor studies fornicating with his own mother-in-law; a female reporter taking pictures of a braised infant; royalties; trips abroad; cursing people out… What pleasure can he get from the jumble of thoughts filling his mind, I wonder?

‘Liquorland, next stop, Liquorland,’ a skinny little conductress announces as she sways down the corridor, slapping her ticket pouch as she passes. ‘Next stop, Liquorland. Reclaim your tickets, please.’

Quickly Mo Yan and I merge into one. He sits up in his middle berth, which means that I sit up as well. My belly feels bloated, my neck stiff; I’m having trouble breathing and I have a terrible taste in my mouth. This Mo Yan is so filthy he’s hard to swallow. I watch him take a metal tag out of a gray jacket he’s worn for years and reclaim his ticket, then he jumps clumsily out of the middle berth and searches out his smelly shoes with smelly feet that resemble a pair of hermit crabs looking for new shells. He coughs twice, then wraps his filthy water mug in the filthy rag he uses to wash his face and feet, stuffs it into a gray travel bag and sits spellbound for a few minutes, staring at the hair of the pharmaceutical saleswoman sleeping noisily on the lower berth across from him. Finally he gets up and staggers in the direction of the door.

When I step down off the train, my attention is caught by the contrast of white raindrops dancing in the murky yellow lamplight. The station platform is deserted except for two shuffling men in blue overcoats. Conductors huddle silently in the car doors like chickens in a henhouse that have somehow made it through another long night. The train is still, seemingly abandoned. The roar of water from behind the train indicates that the tanks are being refilled. Up front, the headlight blazes. A uniformed man beside the train pounds the wheels with a mallet, like a woodpecker going through the motions. The cars, all soaking wet, are panting, and the tracks, reaching out to distant stations in the bright headlight, are also soaking wet; by all appearances, it has been raining for quite a while, though I wasn’t aware of it on the train. Back when I was leaving Beijing my bus passed through Tiananmen Square, where bright sunlight brought the golden chrysanthemums and fiery red flowers to life. Sun Yat-sen, who stood in the square, and Mao Zedong, who hangs from the wall of the Forbidden City, were exchanging silent messages past the five-star flag hanging from a brand-new flagpole. I read in the paper that the pole is over forty meters high, and while it doesn’t appear to be that high, it surely must be, since no one would dare cut corners in erecting this sacred column. I’ve cooled my heels in Beijing for nearly ten years, wrapped in the skin of the writer Mo Yan, so I have a good feel for the place. Geologically, it’s in good shape, with no faults running beneath it. Now here I am, in Liquorland, and it’s raining. When going from one place to another, you sure can’t count on the weather. I never considered the possibility that the Liquorland train station would be so peaceful, so very peaceful, amid a gentle rainfall, the bright, warm and golden lamplight, shiny railroad tracks, chilled but refreshingly clean night air, and a darkened tunnel running beneath the tracks. The little train station has the feel of a detective novel, and I like it… When Ding Gou’er was walking down the passage beneath the tracks, the agreeable odor of the braised infant boy was still in his nostrils. Dark red, shiny grease ran down the face of the tiny, golden-bodied fellow, a smile of impenetrable mystery hanging in the corners of his mouth… I watch as the train roars to life and chugs out of the station. Not until the red caboose lantern disappears around the bend, not until the rumble comes from far into the dark night, like a disembodied illusion, do I pick up my bag and start walking on the bumpy floor of the underground tunnel, which is dimly lit by a few low-wattage bulbs. Since my bag has wheels, I set it down to drag behind me. But the noise from the wheels throws my heart and mind into an uproar, so I pick it up and carry it over my back. My footsteps are greatly magnified in the tunnel, making me feel empty inside… Ding Gou’er’s experiences in Liquorland had to have been closely linked to this underground tunnel There ought to be a secret marketplace for buying and selling meat children here somewhere; there ought to be a bunch of drunks, hookers, beggars, and half-crazed dogs hanging around, for this is where he was given some important clues… Unique descriptions of scene play a significant role in the success of fiction, and any first-rate novelist knows enough to keep changing the scenes in which his characters carry out the action, since that not only conceals the novelist’s shortcomings, but also heightens the reader’s enthusiasm in the reading process. Caught up in his thoughts, Mo Yan turns a corner and spots an old man curled up in a corner, a tattered blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Alongside him lies a green liquor bottle. It comforts me to know that in Liquorland even the beggars have access to drink. Given all the short stories the Doctor of Liquor Studies, Li Yidou, has written, each revolving around liquor, why hasn’t he written one about beggars? An alcoholic beggar wants neither money nor food; all he asks for is alcohol, and once he’s drunk, he can dance and sing, living the free and easy life of an immortal. Li Yidou, this curious fellow, I wonder what he’s like. I have to admit that the stories he sent me have transformed my own novel. I’d planned for Ding Gou’er to be a special agent with almost supernatural abilities, a man of brilliance and extraordinary talent; what he wound up being was a good-for-nothing drunk. I cannot continue the story of Ding Gou’er, and that is why I’ve come to Liquorland: for inspiration, to devise a better ending for my special investigator than drowning him in an open-air privy.

Mo Yan spotted Li Yidou, Doctor of Liquor Studies and amateur short-story writer, as he approached the exit, a conclusion he reached instinctively when he saw a tall, skinny man with a triangular face. He headed straight for the slightly menacing eyes.