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.
The man stuck his long, bony hand over the railing and said, If I’m not mistaken, you must be Mo Yan.’
Mo Yan took the icy-cold hand in his and said, ‘Sorry to put you to all this trouble, Li Yidou!’
The duty ticket-taker pressed Mo Yan to show her his ticket. ‘Show his what?’ Li Yidou all but shouted. ‘Do you know who this is? He’s Mo Yan, the man who wrote the movie
Momentarily taken aback, she stared wordlessly at Mo Yan, which he found embarrassing. He quickly produced his ticket, but Li Yidou dragged him past the railing. ‘Don’t mind her,’ he said.
Li Yidou took Mo Yan’s bag and threw it over his own shoulder. He must have been at least five-feet-ten, a head taller than Mo Yan, who took some comfort in noting that Li Yidou was at least fifty pounds lighter than he.
‘Sir,’ Li Yidou said spiritedly, ‘as soon as I received your letter, I passed the good news to Municipal Party Committee Secretary Hu, who said, “Welcome, welcome, a hearty welcome.” I was here once already – last night – with a car.’
‘But I made it clear in my letter that I’d arrive in the early morning of the 29th.’
‘I was afraid that if you arrived ahead of schedule,’ Li Yidou replied, ‘you’d be all alone in a strange city. I preferred making an extra trip to having you wait for me all that time.’
‘I really have put you to a lot of trouble,’ Mo Yan said with a smile.
‘At first the municipal authorities wanted Deputy Head Diamond Jin to meet you, but I said I’m Mo Yan’s close friend, and since he and I don’t have to stand on ceremony, I’m the best person for the job.’
We walked toward a fancy sedan parked in a square illuminated by a ring of streetlights. The rain made the sedan look even fancier than it was. ‘General Manager Yu is waiting in the car,’ Li Yidou said. ‘The car belongs to his tavern.’
‘Which General Manager Yu would that be?’
‘Yu Yichi, of course!’
Mo Yan tensed, as a host of depictions of Yu Yichi slogged through his mind. If things had reached the point where the dwarf, who was unrelated to the investigator, could still wind up dead of a bullet in the investigator’s dream, then ghosts and goblins were running the show. I might as well use my
‘General Manager Yu Yichi insisted on coming,’ Li Yidou commented. ‘He wanted the pleasure of being first on the
The words still hung in the air when the car door opened and out jumped a pocket-sized man less than three feet tall (‘twelve inch’ [Yichi] was an exaggeration of his smallness). Small but sturdy, he was neatly dressed, looking very much like a well-bred member of the gentry.
‘Mo Yan, you little scamp, so you finally made it!’ he shouted with an infectious hoarseness as soon as he was out of the car. He ran up to Mo Yan, grabbed his hand, and shook it hard, as if they were old friends who hadn’t seen each other for years.
As Mo Yan grasped the tense, nervous hand, he couldn’t suppress feelings of remorse over thoughts of how Ding Gou’er had killed this man. Why had
