The Explosion Chronicles (28 page)

“Did you think that I was only promoting you to the position of platoon leader?”

The general gazed at Mingyao and asked, “What about if I make you deputy company commander?”

After a while, he added, “Forget it; how about we simply make you company commander?”

Eventually, he asked very earnestly, “Could it be that you want to be promoted directly to battalion commander? If so, then I can indeed make you battalion commander.”

But Kong Mingyao kept repeating the same thing. “I want to withdraw from the army and return home. I’ve discovered that with money, you can accomplish anything.”

Even in the face of thousands of entreaties that he stay, Mingyao insisted that he wanted to withdraw from the army. The day he left the barracks, all of the commanders and soldiers, as well as local civilians from the town, came to see him off—forming a line on both sides of the street that stretched for more than ten
li.
They were all holding plastic flowers and colorful flags, which the army had issued them or which they had made themselves. Their shouting and drumming was so loud that it sounded as if a national leader or a foreign head of state had come to visit. After he was jostled onto the train, Mingyao gazed out the window at that cheering crowd and the sea of colorful flowers. Not until the whistle sounded, signaling that the train was about to depart, did he finally sit down and relax, thinking,
Spending a little money has had enormous results. Just think what I’d be able to accomplish if I were willing to spend millions and millions of yuan.

3. THE GENERAL’S TEARS

The day Mingyao returned to Explosion, after the celebration of his return had subsided, something occurred that made him realize
his decision to withdraw from the army had been a huge mistake. Explosion and Mayor Kong gave Mingyao a welcome that was far more magnificent than the army’s ceremony had been. Although Explosion’s welcome did not feature as many fresh flowers and colorful flags, or as much applause, as the departure ceremony hosted by the army, the county’s newspapers, television, and other media nevertheless all trumpeted the news that he had returned. The local television station even made a live broadcast from the moment he got off the train to when his escorts led him home and he embraced his mother. The mayor’s underlings knew that his younger brother had returned from the army, and they arranged to invite him to come eat and work in their bureau or department. Every bureau and department chief declared,
You can have your pick of jobs, even being appointed deputy bureau (or department) chief. If you just give the word, then even if you want to be appointed bureau (or department) chief, I’d be happy to step down and give you my position.
On behalf of the county mayor, the mayor’s secretary gave Mingyao a dinner invitation from every county unit, with the list of invitations running fifteen pages. Even if Mingyao had eaten all three of his meals out every day, and each meal had fulfilled one of his dinner invitations, he would still have needed a year and five days to work his way through the entire list of invitations.

It was already dusk by the time Mingyao returned home. As soon as he arrived, Mingliang immediately called him to welcome him back but said that he was too busy with county business and couldn’t return to see Mingyao until later that night. Mingliang’s wife, Zhu Ying, also sent a message to say that she was currently in the middle of her prescribed postpartum month of rest and couldn’t leave the house, but invited Mingyao to come visit her at home. On the pretext of going to visit Zhu Ying, Mingyao went out into the street. Carrying a bag full of badges to use as presents, he proceeded
to where Fragrance had told him she worked, but when he arrived he discovered that this was not a cultural organization, as Fragrance had claimed, but rather an enormous construction site with a forest of steel scaffolding reaching into the sky. He asked someone where the cultural company had relocated, but the people at the construction site said that there had never been a cultural organization; rather there had just been a handful of hair salons and foot-massage stalls, together with scores of call girls and streetwalkers. Mingyao wanted to show someone the sweat-soaked photograph of Fragrance he was always carrying in his pocket, but since she was naked in the photograph he couldn’t simply take it out, and instead continued gripping it tightly as though it were a bubble that was about to float away. He asked some people doing business along the street whether or not they had heard of someone named Fragrance, describing what she looked like and what kinds of clothing she liked to wear. However, they said they had not seen or heard of this person, and asked if perhaps she was a prostitute from the former entertainment district. They noted that the girls there were particularly fond of giving themselves names like Fragrance, Sweetness, and Little Rouge.

Everyone stared at Mingyao in surprise, as though he were a john who had been caught in the act.

Confused, he proceeded from Explosion’s main street to one of its back alleys. He simply couldn’t accept the possibility that he might not find Fragrance. However, the words
streetwalker
and
call girl
echoed ominously in his ears, and he felt as though a fish bone had gotten caught in his throat. As he walked to where he and Fragrance first met, he brought his hand to his face, and only then did he notice that he had crumbled the photograph into a ball, and his sweat had made it dissolve into a pool of muck. When he extended his hand, the ink-colored water dripped through his fingers, and all that remained were stains on his palm.

At that moment, he vaguely realized he had done something wrong—that he had treated a dream as though it were reality. The girl called Fragrance had made him fall into a reverie, but he had mistaken that reverie for reality. He returned home and, for dinner, his mother prepared him the sort of meal he normally couldn’t eat while working away from home—including salted vegetables with meat and chicken stew with mushrooms, as well as winter leeks and scrambled eggs with tossed cucumber. As the entire family sat around the dining table watching television, he was confronted with another completely unexpected event. It was as though a noxious object had flown in from somewhere and struck him in the face. The object’s stench immediately entered his mouth, stomach, and lungs. The television, meanwhile, suddenly cut away from its regular programming, and instead there appeared an anchor dressed in black with a white flower on her chest, announcing in a sorrowful voice that early that morning the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia had been attacked by an American B-2 stealth bomber, and four laser-guided bombs had entered the building through the roof—of which three had detonated while the fourth had not. There were three Chinese fatalities and more than twenty wounded. The announcer reported that the reason US forces did this was that China had been supporting Yugoslavia’s resistance to American and NATO forces. The anchor’s voice was low and hoarse, full of indignation and sorrow. When Kong Mingyao heard her report that the embassy had been bombed, his chopsticks froze over his rice bowl, and when he heard that there had been three fatalities and over twenty wounded, he spat out the food in his mouth. Finally, when the anchor observed that this was utterly unbearable, Kong Mingyao stood up from the table and announced to his mother and his brothers,

“War has broken out. I have to return to the barracks!”

Mingguang looked at him, then turned back to the television. Pointing to the television screen, he said, “Quick, look! … Quick, look! These are students from our school dancing.”

Minghui turned toward the television and now saw an ox plowing a field. Because it was so hot, the ox’s tongue was hanging out and mucus was dripping from its mouth. Meanwhile, the gray-haired cowherd grasped the plow handle while wiping away his sweat, his sunburned skin flaking off like cicada wings. “He doesn’t even let the ox stop to drink some water,” Minghui thought indignantly as he looked away. Then he reflected, “I should tell Second Brother that they should issue that peasant a tractor.” Then, he and Mingguang saw that Mingyao was hurriedly packing his bags, taking off his civilian clothes, and putting on his military uniform. Mingyao moved very quickly, and in a few seconds he had put on his uniform, shoes, and cap. When his mother entered with the food, she said, “Mingyao, it’s dinnertime. Where are you going?”

“I have to go fight,” Mingyao replied, “after having been a soldier for so many years. This is the day I’ve been waiting for.”

His family stared at him. They watched as he put on his munitions belt, then kicked aside his gray civilian clothes and his dusty leather shoes. Just as he was about to walk out the door, however, the telephone suddenly started ringing. The rings sounded like gunshots, and he immediately dropped his luggage and ran forward to answer it. He listened for a second, then screamed into the receiver, “What kind of fucking commander do you think you are? The nation has reached this crisis point and must go to battle, yet you’re still talking about wanting to go eat and drink?” Then he listened as the person on the other line said something, whereupon Mingyao lowered his voice and said fiercely, “I have no interest in listening to your explanations. As long as I’m not dead, if I don’t try to overthrow your hedonistic ass after the war is over, then not only do I not deserve to be called
a Kong, I will even shoot myself in the middle of the public square.” With this, he slammed down the phone, picked up his bags, and rushed out into the courtyard.

His mother followed him, shouting, “Mingyao, you just got home. Where are you going now?”

Mingguang ran up to him and grabbed both his arm and his luggage. He blocked Mingyao’s way and shouted, “You’ve already changed careers, don’t you realize that?”

He then reminded Mingyao, “Don’t you realize that your uniform doesn’t even have any medals or badges?” As he was saying this, he grabbed Mingyao’s hand and placed it on his empty collar.

Mingyao’s hand froze on his collar, as he stood there in the courtyard. At this point, it finally occurred to him that he might have made a huge mistake. He bit his lip as though biting the finger of that girl named Fragrance. Some rays from the setting sun wafted over from the west, as if long dyed hair were waving in front of him like a gauze curtain. The old hen was preparing to go back to her nest with her chicks, and, clucking away, they walked over, half-stumbling and half-dancing. Just as they were about to pass in front of him, he leaned down and grabbed one of them, then hurled it to the ground. He stood there and watched as the chick convulsed a few times, then died without a sound. Meanwhile, the old hen continued leading her remaining chicks to the nest, as Mingyao suddenly squatted down and began wailing,

“The nation is in crisis—how could I possibly have picked this precise moment to withdraw from the army?

“… How could I have picked this moment of national crisis to withdraw from the army?”

As he tried to cover his face, tears poured from between his fingers like a mountain spring gushing out of a crevice in the rocks. Soon, it seemed as though his tears had drenched an area of the
ground half as large as a tatami mat and his leather army boots were completely soaked. That night, the entire family was watching television, with everyone watching his or her own program. When Mingyao saw the US military and that asshole president named Bill Clinton claim that the bombing of the Chinese embassy was a result of faulty GPS data and that mistakes are inevitable in wartime, he stopped thinking about that girl called Fragrance. Instead, he got out of bed, got dressed, put on his shoes, and proceeded from the old streets of Explosion to the new square that had been constructed in the county seat. He saw the new skyline to the north, while the streets of Explosion were full of peasants from the mountains. In the middle of the night, these peasants were using oxcarts, horse carts, and even wheelbarrows to haul away bricks, stones, and other construction materials, which they took to countless other construction sites. When an ox or a horse defecated in the middle of the road, however, these same peasants would stop and collect the excrement into a bag they had brought for that purpose, so as to maintain the square’s cleanliness and sanctity.

Mingyao stood in a corner of the square watching the peasants with their oxcarts, horse carts, and motorcycles. After a while, he went up to a peasant who was using a horse cart to haul bricks into the city and was in the process of cleaning up horse feces with his bare hands. Mingyao stood in front of the peasant for a while and saw that the peasant was actually a young man about the same age as himself. He was wearing a tattered, filthy black padded jacket and a cotton cap. Mingyao asked him, “Where are you taking these bricks?”

The man looked up at him and gave him a mysterious smile. “I figure that if this county becomes a city, then all of the clay in the entire mountain range won’t be enough for the bricks they’ll need.”

Mingyao said, “If we go to war, will you join the army?”

The man said, “Life is much better now than before, and my family has recently built a tile-roofed house.”

Standing under the streetlamp, Mingyao gazed at that mountain of bricks sitting in the horse cart, and at the horse breathing heavily; then he looked down at that man with his oddly pleased expression and said,

“Did you know that the United States just bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia?”

“Hauling away a cartful of bricks is equivalent to sowing a field for a month,” the man said with a smile. “The country has become rich and is not at all like the country it once was.”

“If they were to recruit you to join the army, would you do so?”

“I haven’t even graduated from elementary school. This sort of menial labor is the only thing I’m able to do.”

Mingyao let the man leave with his cart. After the man disappeared into the distance, Mingyao once again went into the middle of the street and stopped a tractor full of lumber. In the middle of the night, the tractor was producing not smoke but rather bright flames. Mingyao stood in the middle of the road with both arms raised, and after he made a military salute the tractor came to a stop right in front of him. The driver stuck his head out of the cab and cursed,