The Explosion Chronicles (10 page)

By the time the sound reached Kong Mingliang, it was a dull roar.

He had taken out a sheet of draft paper and looked at the county and town mayors. He saw that the county mayor was being interviewed by a reporter, so Mingliang had gone up to the town mayor and whispered, “You must tell the police to come maintain order!” To his surprise, the mayor had whispered back, “Read it now. Otherwise you’ll miss your chance.” Then Mingliang had cleared his throat and had begun reading his speech out loud. His dream, he explained, was for the drawers of every family to remain full of cash year-round. Within a few years he wanted Explosion to become a town, and a few years afterward he hoped it would become a city. After reading his speech, amid the sound of fighting from the ground, he slipped away like a cloud and returned to his seat next to the town mayor, and just as he was about to complain, the mayor did so first, saying,

“Your speech was too long.”

He glared back in consternation.

Looking at Mayor Hu’s face, Mingliang noticed that his eyes never once left Zhu Ying, who was sitting beside him. He wanted to curse the mayor, calling him a pig and a whoremonger. Suddenly, however, Mingliang felt the ground beneath his feet begin to tremble, to the point that he couldn’t even keep his balance. He discovered that Zhu Ying’s attractiveness and appeal were all concentrated in the area around her eyes. Her red sweater, straight-legged pants, low-heeled leather shoes, and flesh-colored socks, together with the scarf she kept either wrapped around her neck or draped over her chest and shoulders, were very tasteful and attractive. Although these were from the city, and although she had acquired her fashion sense there, that seductive expression and that glow around her eyes, which produced a laser beam that could stop men in their tracks—these were something that even city women didn’t possess. The town mayor stared at that milky-white and bright red area between her eyebrows, as though looking at a virgin’s bare genitals. At that moment, Mingliang had a sensation that almost knocked him off his feet. A shudder ran down through his heels. He abruptly sat down and heard someone announce that it was Zhu Ying’s turn to go onstage and read her nomination speech. He saw her walk past the town mayor like a breeze. She gazed at the mayor and he looked back at her. For an instant their eyes met, whereupon she walked to the front of the stage, as though floating through the air.

At that point, Kong Mingliang’s only thought was,
This is it—I lie in defeat between the gazes of this whore and the mayor.
In order to forestall the defeat that had not yet come to pass, he forced himself to calm down and see whether or not the audience would be louder during Zhu Ying’s speech than it had been during his. Even now, his palms were still sweaty from hearing the audience’s roar as he was trying to read his speech. He stared at Zhu Ying as he waited for her to begin, as though waiting for a thunderstorm to arrive. However,
she simply stood there without opening her mouth. There was a long pause, and then another, until finally Zhu Ying used silence to quiet the audience. After waiting until everyone’s gaze was fixed on her to begin speaking, she suddenly pulled a thick wad of bills out of her pocket and tossed them down to the audience. Those bills fluttered through the air like so many flowers or snowflakes, and before the audience had a chance to recover, Zhu Ying made a promise:

“If I’m elected village chief … I will make sure that every family has more money than it can spend—so much that it will be able to toss money out the door, like this… .”

And that was it.

Her entire speech—from her initial act of tossing the money into the air until her final word—lasted less than twenty seconds. As she was waiting for the audience to rush forward to retrieve the money, she returned to her seat. Before Kong Mingliang was able to recover his senses, everyone onstage and in the audience erupted into thunderous applause, which seemed to last for a full day and night. Eventually, the loudspeaker announced that it was time for all citizens, under the direction of their village organization chief, to come up onstage to cast their ballots.

This election was like a theatrical performance. Everything Kong Mingliang had done dissipated like smoke under the gaze of the county mayor, the town mayor, and the police. Mingliang got up from his seat in the middle of the stage and sat down in a corner, then watched as Zhu Ying, the town mayor, and the county mayor chatted and laughed as they proceeded to a table beneath a tree in back of the stage. Zhu Ying was acting as though she had already been elected and was accompanying them as though accompanying familiar guests.

A whore and her pimps! Mingliang cursed them to himself, as a feeling of lonely hatred rose up from his heart. He truly wanted to
knock over the ballot boxes and the table. Eventually, however, he saw his father and eldest brother, as well as his fourth brother, who had returned from his high school in the county seat for the express purpose of voting for him, and Mingliang decided that things were not yet over and that the villagers would not necessarily elect Zhu Ying.

She was, after all, a whore.

And who didn’t know what kind of business she had engaged in while in the city?

It was decided that during the period between when the ballots were cast and when they were counted, the local leaders and the candidates would leave the ballot box area and wait at the tea table behind the stage. It turned out, however, that Kong Mingliang was not willing to leave, and he didn’t want to wait with the others. As Zhu Ying led the men away as if she were an enormous golden butterfly, Mingliang thought he should hate her with the sort of disgust one feels when one sees a swarm of flies circling around a pile of dung. But for some reason, even as Mingliang was calling Zhu Ying a whore, he couldn’t find it in his heart to hate her. He simply couldn’t forget that entrancing expression in her brows. He therefore smoked a cigarette—having taken up smoking when he began preparing for the election—and watched from a distance as everyone came up onstage in an orderly fashion to vote, including the people … villagers … citizens. He saw a magpie that looked as though it was about to alight on a tree next to him, but just as it was about to land, it flew away. In the end, it landed on a tree next to Zhu Ying, then sang happily for a while before flying away again. The county and town mayors pointed at the magpie and spoke with Zhu Ying for a long time, as the sound of their laughter came over in waves, piercing Kong Mingliang’s heart. He wondered whether they had slept together or had visited Zhu Ying’s brothel. Did they have the girls at the brothel bathe them, wash their backs, massage their feet,
and then sleep with them? Kong Mingliang was certain they had. He thought that only this could explain why they were so friendly toward her and cold toward him. Otherwise, how could they all be over there chatting and laughing without thinking of inviting him (the other candidate) to join them?

After voting, many people headed back toward the village. The sun was high in the sky and it was already lunchtime, so the citizens needed to return home to prepare meals. Watching as the villagers departed, Kong Mingliang stood under the tree, as a patchwork of light fell on his face and body. He felt alternately hot and cold. The question of whether Zhu Ying had slept with the county and town mayors kept pricking his mind, making it impossible for him to settle down. In theory this should not have been any of his business, since after all Zhu Yu was neither his wife nor his girlfriend, but at that moment it occurred to him that if Zhu Ying and the mayors had indeed slept together, it would mean that the election for village chief would be forfeit. And if the election were forfeited, then the building he had been constructing in his dreams would collapse. His life would come to an end, like bubbles by the riverside that suddenly get popped. Life would lose all meaning and would no longer give him any pleasure. He didn’t know if he could continue living. He had come back to Explosion in order to transform it from a village into a town, and then from a town into a city. When he was stealing goods from passing trains, there were several times he had almost fallen to his death. Explosion had become rich because of him. By this point, everyone else in the village lived in a new tile-roofed house, and only the Kong family still lived in their original thatched-roof house.

Even if everything he had done had merely been a performance, he had nevertheless done it all for the sake of Explosion and in order to become village chief. But now, that slut … just because she was attractive and dissolute—combined with the fact that after
the trains sped up, he could no longer take the villagers to unload goods—thought she could waltz in with her cash-covered clothing and contest him for the position of village chief.

Fuck! Kicking the tree trunk, Kong Mingliang saw that as the last citizens—villagers—were leaving the riverbank and heading back to their homes, Zhu Ying was also leading the county and town mayors back to the village.

They were going to have lunch.

At that point, Kong Mingliang also walked toward the village, alone.

III.

Before going home, Kong Mingliang first went to the village board.

The village board building was completely deserted, and apart from himself and his secretary, Cheng Qing, the only thing present was that particular kind of sunlight that you see only in the fourth lunar month, together with a flock of sparrows that had returned for the spring. Mingliang sat in his large, empty office, where the exceptionally high ceiling made the couch and the plants feel unusually small. Cheng Qing was wearing a red sweater, straight-legged pants, and low-heeled leather shoes and appeared incredibly pure and beautiful, but Kong Mingliang felt that her face was not quite as seductive as Zhu Ying’s. He didn’t return home for lunch, but Cheng Qing brought him from somewhere a bowl of noodles, which he ate at his desk. As he was about to begin eating, he suddenly stared at Cheng Qing and asked,

“If I were to ask you to marry me, would you be pleased?”

Cheng Qing replied, “The county and town mayors each had a meal in every house in the village; they said that this was a good way for them to get to know the common people.”

Mingliang asked again, “Tell me the truth, do you think that the county mayor and the town mayor have slept with Zhu Ying?”

“The vote counters went to the stage on the riverbank,” she said. “After lunch, the votes will all be counted, and when the villagers return to the assembly area they will announce which candidate—you or Zhu Ying—received the most votes.”

Kong Mingliang suddenly froze, with the bowl of noodles held up to his mouth. Without saying a word, he stared out into the empty, silent room. Cheng Qing was standing in front of him, her face registering an expression of concern and disappointment over his having lost the election. She looked at him as though she had done something wrong. “Run over to the riverbank to assess the situation, then report back to me.” After Mingliang placed his bowl on the table, he gave Cheng Qing this order, and she nodded and hurried off.

The first time Cheng Qing returned from the riverbank, she said, “Chief Kong, you and Zhu Ying are virtually tied, but you are leading by a few votes.”

The second time she returned, she said, “Zhu Ying’s count is increasing, and now she is leading by fifty votes.”

The third time she returned, she said, “Half of the ballots have now been counted, and you have 201 votes, while she has 409.”

The fourth time Cheng Qing returned, she was soaked in sweat. Her face was pale and her hair was matted on her forehead. She stood in front of Kong Mingliang and was about to speak, but he waved her away, indicating that she should remain quiet. There was a silence as he chewed his lip, almost making it bleed. Then he sent Cheng Qing next door to bring Zhu Ying to the village board. In inviting her over, it was as though he were making a monumental decision, after which he seemed exhausted. He sat back, his body so limp it seemed as though he were about to slide out of his chair. But after Cheng Qing left, she immediately reappeared and reported, “Zhu
Ying says for you to go to her house. She says that if you want to ask her something, you should do so in person.” Kong Mingliang sat there in a daze. After a long pause, he finally sighed and slowly got up. He rubbed Cheng Qing’s head, releasing an intoxicating scent of hair and shampoo, then kissed her forehead and walked limply toward the door. He turned around and gazed nostalgically at his three-room office, like an emperor who is being forced out of the imperial palace but cannot bear to leave. An aura of loss enveloped his face, and the room itself.

He left the village board building, each step bringing him anguish.

“What about me?” Cheng Qing asked, as she followed him into the courtyard. “After Zhu Ying becomes village chief, will she still want me to be her secretary?”

Kong Mingliang paused and considered for a moment, then he said softly, “How can I not serve as village chief? What do you mean, you crow’s mouth? How could I possibly not be reelected as village chief?” Then he turned away and headed toward Zhu Ying’s house. Their buildings were several dozen steps from each other, but he proceeded extremely slowly. At times, he was tempted to stop and turn around, but in the end he didn’t and instead permitted the history of Explosion to continue moving forward.

The sunlight poured down on his head like a gush of water, and sweat from his head ran down his neck. Cheng Qing followed behind, watching him carefully. She suddenly regretted that, several times when he had grabbed at her in the village board building, she had slipped away, unwilling to give herself to him. But, seeing him about to step down from his position as village chief, and seeing him hobbling along like a seventy- or eighty-year-old man, she rejoiced that she had not done so. Yet on the other hand, she also felt she should have given herself to him, since after all it would not have
been a big deal, given that it would have merely been a physical encounter. If she were to give herself to him now that he was about to step down, she wouldn’t in fact be giving herself to the village chief. She stood there and reflected, until he turned into that courtyard, but Cheng Qing still couldn’t decide whether she should give herself to him or not.