The Republic of Wine

publication, it’s flooded with manuscripts, most of which wind up at the bottom of towering stacks. So don’t be surprised that you’ve heard nothing about the two earlier stories. I wrote to a couple of renowned editors of Citizens’ Literature, Zhou Bao and Li Xiaobao, and asked them to check into it for me. The two ‘treasures’ [bao] are friends of mine, and I’m sure they’ll help out.

In your letter you mention writing about liquor -witticisms abound, serio.us yet humorous, inspirations from all sides, depth and breadth united – just what I’d expect from a doctor of liquor. You have my undying respect. I look forward to more discussions of liquor with you, since it’s a favorite topic of mine.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry over your claim that pissing in a liquor vat, as I wrote in Red Sorghum, is a technological marvel. I don’t know a thing about chemistry, and even less about the distiller’s craft. I wrote that episode as a practical joke, wanting to poke a little fun at all those esthetes, them with their eyes bloodshot from envy. Imagine my surprise when you proved, through scientific theory, the logic and lofty nature of this episode, and now, to my admiration for you I must add gratitude. This is what’s known as ‘The professional asks How? The amateur says Wow!’ or what we call ‘Plant a flower, and no blooms will show; drop a willow seed, and a shade tree will grow.’

Regarding Eighteen-Li Red, a serious lawsuit is in the works. After Red Sorghum won its prize at the Berlin Film Festival, the head of a distillery in my hometown came running over to the warehouse where I’d set up my study to tell me he wanted to make a batch of Eighteen-Li Red. Unfortunately, he couldn’t come up with the financial backing. A year later, on an inspection trip to our county, members of the provincial leadership asked to try some Eighteen-Li Red. It was an awkward moment, and after the dignitaries left, the county revenue office came up with the money for a task group responsible for a trial production of Eighteen-Li Red. By trial production, I thought that meant they were going to mix up a batch or two, design a new bottle, slap on a label, and that would be that. I don’t know if they added the piss of young boys or not. But when the distillery excitedly sent their new product to the county government office to report their success, Movies for the Masses published a notice about a press conference in Shenzhen, where the Eighteen-Li Red distillery in Henan’s Shangcai county announced to the film community that their brew was the bona fide Eighteen-Li Red from Red Sorghum. The cases of their liquor were stamped with the following (or words to this effect): The heroine of Red Sorghum, Dai Jiu’er, was originally from Shangcai county in Henan province, and only fled to Northeast Gaomi township in Shandong with her father during a famine. She had taken the recipe for Eighteen-Li Red from Shangcai county to Shandong’s Gaomi, which is why Shangcai county must be considered the real hometown of Eighteen-Li Red.

The head of the distillery in my hometown immediately attacked Henan’s Shangcai county for their deviousness, and sent someone with authentic Eighteen-Li Red to Beijing to ask me, as the author of the novel, to help him bring Eighteen-Li Red back to Gaomi township, where it belongs. But the clever people in Henan’s Shangcai county had already registered their Eighteen-Li Red with the trademark office, and since the law is dispassionate, our Eighteen-Li Red no longer had any legal standing. When the Gaomi people asked me to help them initiate a lawsuit, I said it was a suit without merit, that Dai Jiu’er is only a fictional character, not my real grandmother, and that it’s not illegal for the Shangcai county people to insist that she was originally from Henan. There was no way the Gaomi side could win. They’d just have to take their lumps this time. Later on, I heard that the Henan people rode their Eighteen-Li Red into the international market and earned quite a bit of foreign currency. I hope that’s true. For literature and liquor to be integrated like that is pretty terrific. And because of newly promulgated copyright laws, I’m going to go to Shangcai county with the film director Zhang Yimou to get a little of what I’ve got coming to me.

All the wonderful liquors you mentioned are renowned for their quality, but I don’t need any of them. What I do need – and badly – is material about liquor, and I hope youll send me some of the more important items. Naturally, I’ll pay the postage.

Please give my best to Liu Yan the next time you see her. Warmest regards,

Mo Yan

Chapter Four

I

Investigator Ding Gou’er opened his eyes. His eyeballs felt dull and heavy, he had a splitting headache, his breath was foul, and his gums, his tongue, the walls of his mouth, and his throat were coated with a sticky substance. In the murky yellow light of a chandelier he couldn’t tell if it was day or night, if it was dawn or dusk. His wristwatch was missing, his biological clock was out of whack, his stomach was growling, and his hemorrhoids were throbbing in rhythm with his heartbeats. Lightbulb filaments that shimmered as hot current passed through them set up a hum that was translated into a ringing in Ding Gou’er’s ears. He heard his heart beating against the background hum. When he struggled to get out of bed, his arms and legs refused to do his bidding. A long night of drinking drifted into his consciousness like a distant dream, when all of a sudden that golden-hued, perfumed little boy seated in a gilded platter smiled at him. A strange cry escaped from the investigator as his consciousness broke from its confinement, sending currents of ideas racing through his brain and burning their way into his bones and muscles. He flew out of bed like a carp leaping out of the water, forming a beautiful arc through the air and changing the room’s spatial makeup and magnetic field, shattering the light into its prismatic components as the investigator struck a pose not unlike that of a dog fighting over shit just before landing headfirst on the synthetic carpet.

Lying there stripped to the waist, he studied with amazement the four +s [tens] on the wall, as a chill ran down his spine. The vivid image of a scaly youngster and the willow-leaf knife he held in his mouth materialized out of the alcohol. He discovered that he was naked from the waist up; his ribs were nearly poking through his skin, his belly protruded slightly, a shock of tangled brown hair lay limply on his chest, and his belly button was filled with lint. After the investigator splashed cold water over his head and looked in the mirror – puffy face, lifeless eyes, and all – he couldn’t shake the feeling that he might as well commit suicide right there in the bathroom. He located his briefcase, took out his pistol, and cocked it. Holding it in his hand, he felt the cold but gentle heft of the handle, and as he stood at the mirror, he was struck by a thought that he was staring into the eyes of an enemy, someone he’d never seen before. He put the muzzle up to his nose, the tip boring its way in, highlighting two rows of parasitic- looking blackheads. He then moved the muzzle up to his temple, causing the skin to quiver joyously. Finally he shoved the muzzle into his mouth and clamped his lips tightly, hermetically, around the cold steel – a needle couldn’t have been wedged in – producing such a funny sight that even he felt like laughing. And when he did, so did the reflection in the mirror. The barrel, smelling and tasting of gunpowder, nearly gagged him. When had it been fired? Pow! The little boy’s head had splattered like a watermelon, sending colorful debris sailing in all directions, the fragrant brain matter staining everything in the area, and he had a picture of someone lapping up the gore like a greedy cat. Pangs of conscience rose in his heart, dark clouds of suspicion descended onto his head. Who could guarantee it wasn’t a hoax? That the arms weren’t actually made of fresh lotus root and melon? Or that the boy’s arms had been prepared in such a way as to look like sections of lotus root and melon?

A knock at the door. Ding Gou’er took the muzzle out of his mouth.

The Mine Director and Party Secretary walked in, all smiles.

Deputy Head Diamond Jin entered behind them, handsome and dignified.

‘Did you sleep well, Comrade Ding Gou’er?’

‘Did you sleep well, Comrade Ding Gou’er?’

‘Did you sleep well, Comrade Ding Gou’er?’

Feeling extremely awkward, Ding Gou’er threw a blanket around his shoulders and said, ‘Somebody stole my clothes.’

Instead of replying, Deputy Head Jin fixed his gaze on the four +s carved into the wall, a grave look frozen on