water. In the eyes of the investigator, her labors seemed somehow artificial, as if she were acting on stage, not performing her task on a boat. Her boat glided past, followed by another, and another and another and another. All the passengers were love-struck young men and women, and all the women on the sterns performed their tasks with the same artificial air. The investigator felt sure that the passengers and the women sculling them along must have undergone some sort of rigorous training in a technical school. Unawares, he fell in behind the river-going contingent, following along on a road paved with octagonal cement blocks. On that late-autumn day, most of the leaves on the riverside willows had fallen to the ground; the few that clung to their branches seemed cut out of gold foil; beautiful and precious. As he followed the progress of the boats, Ding Gou’er felt more and more at peace, all mortal concerns disappearing from his consciousness. Some people walk toward the morning sun; he was walking toward the setting sun.
At a bend in the river a broader expanse of water appeared in front of him. Lamps were already showing in the windows of ancient buildings. One after another, the boats tied up at the shore. The love-struck young men and women went ashore and were quickly swallowed up by the city’s bustling streets. The investigator had no sooner entered the city than he sensed that he was in an historical artifice. The pedestrians glided along like ghosts. Their aimless floating made him feel light as a feather; his feet didn’t touch the ground, it seemed.
Eventually he followed people into a Temple of the Immortal Matron, where he saw a clutch of beautiful women on their knees kowtowing to the golden statue of a large-headed, fleshy-eared Matron. They were sitting on their heels. Infatuated, he admired their high-heeled shoes for the longest time, imagining the holes they poked in the ground. A little bald-pated monk hiding behind a column, slingshot in hand, was shooting the upraised hindquarters of the women with muddy spit wads. He never missed, to which the yelps emerging from beneath the Matron’s knee paid witness. And after each yelp, he clasped his hands, closed his eyes, and recited a Buddhist incantation. Wondering what the little monk was thinking, Ding Gou’er walked up and flicked the top of his head with his middle finger. That too produced a yelp – in a
Afterwards, as he was crossing an arched bridge, he saw sparkles on the surface of the water; they came from flickering lanterns. Large boats were sailing past, songs were being played and sung aboard the boats, and the whole scene seemed like a night procession of genies and fairies.
After that he entered a tavern and spotted a dozen or more men in wide-brimmed hats sitting around a table feasting on liquor and fish. The fragrance of both assailed his nostrils and had him salivating in no time. Stopped from going up to beg something to eat and drink only by his sense of shame, his ravenous hunger soon got the upper hand; spotting an opening, he rushed the table like a hungry tiger pouncing on its prey. Then, grabbing a bottle of liquor in one hand and a whole fish in the other, he turned and ran out the door. A commotion erupted behind him.
A while later, he hid in the shade of a wall to drink his liquor and eat his fish. Little but bones remained of the fish, so that’s what he chewed up and swallowed. He drank every last drop of liquor in the bottle.
Later still, he wandered the area, gazing at the reflections of stars in the river and at the big, red moon, which looked like a golden-fleeced baby boy leaping out of the water. Sounds of aquatic delights were louder than ever; when he looked to see where they were coming from, he spotted a hulking pleasure-boat sailing slowly toward him from upriver. Backlit by a profusion of cabin lights, young women in old-style clothing were singing and dancing on the deck, pounding drums and blowing panpipes. In the cabin, a dozen or so neatly dressed men and women were sitting at a table playing finger-guessing games as they drank the fine liquor and feasted on the exotic foods arrayed in front of them. They were gobbling up the food – men and women alike. Different times, different styles. A woman with blood-red lips was gorging herself like an old sow, not coming up for air. Just watching her eat made Ding Gou’er dizzy. As the pleasure-boat neared, he could make out the passengers’ features and smell their fetid breath. He saw familiar faces. There was Diamond Jin, the lady trucker, Yu Yichi, Section Chief Wang, Party Secretary Li… even someone who looked remarkably like Ding himself. All his good friends and kinfolk, his lovers and his enemies, appeared to be participants at this cannibalistic feast. Why a cannibalistic feast? Because the
‘Come here, my dear Ding Gou’er, come over here…’ He detected a mischievous yet undeniably fetching undertone to the lady trucker’s voice as she called out tenderly, and he saw her wave enticingly with a lily-white hand. Behind her, the stalwart Diamond Jin was bending down whispering to the diminutive Yu Yichi, the condescending smile on his lips answered by Yu Yichi’s knowing sneer.
I protest -‘ Ding Gou’er screamed as, with a final burst of energy, he dashed toward the pleasure-boat. But before he got there, he stumbled into an open-air privy filled with a soupy, fermenting goop of food and drink regurgitated by Liquorland residents, plus the drink and food excreted from the other end, atop which floated such imaginably filthy refuse as bloated, used condoms. It was fertile ground for all sorts of disease-carrying bacteria and micro-organisms, a paradise for flies, Heaven on earth for maggots. Feeling that this was not the place where he should wind up, the investigator announced loudly, just before his mouth slid beneath the warm, vile porridge, ‘I protest, I pro -’ The pitiless muck sealed his mouth as the irresistible force of gravity drew him under. Within seconds, the sacred panoply of ideals, justice, respect, honor, and love accompanied a long-suffering special investigator to the very bottom of the privy…
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
