The Real Story of Ah-Q (20 page)

‘So, Q, my friend, have you…’Mr Zhao faltered, ‘have you done well out of this business?’

‘Of course. I take what I want…’

‘Ah-… I mean, Q, my friend, I shouldn’t waste your time on people like us,’ Zhao Baiyan nervously ventured. ‘People like us – we haven’t a bean, you know.’

‘Haven’t a bean? You’ve always been richer than me,’ Ah-Q said, carrying on his way.

A despondent silence fell over the group. Father and son went back inside, and the two of them talked the whole business over until it was time to light the evening lamps. Zhao Baiyan went home and gave his wife the purse from his belt to hide at the bottom of a chest.

By the time Ah-Q had floated complacently back to the Temple of Earth and Grain, the effect of the wine had worn off. The temple’s old caretaker was abnormally polite to him that evening, inviting him in for a cup of tea. Taking the opportunity to cadge two pancakes off him, Ah-Q ate them and asked for a candlestick and a four-ounce candle, which he lit, then lay down alone in his own small room. As he wallowed in the joyous novelty of it all, the flame flashing and leaping as euphorically as the lights at New Year, his thoughts took flight.

‘Rebellion… Count me in!… When the Revolutionary Party comes by the temple, dressed in white, carrying broadswords, maces, bombs, guns, double-edged knives and hooked spears, calling me along, I’ll go with them like a shot.

‘That’ll be a sight, when they’re all kneeling before me, twittering with fear. “Have mercy, Ah-Q, have mercy!” No mercy for them, ha! D and Mr Zhao’ll get it first, then his son, then the Fake Foreign Devil… Should I spare any of them? I used to think hairy Wang was all right, but not any more…

‘What should I take… I’ll need to see what they’ve got in their chests – silver, gold, dollars, calico shirts… I’ll move the Ningbo bed that the village genius’s wife sleeps on into the temple, then I’ll go back for the Qians’ table and chairs – or maybe the Zhaos’. I won’t be doing the moving myself, of course, I’ll get D to do it. He’ll get a slap around the face if he doesn’t look sharp about it. Zhao Sichen’s sister is ugly as sin. Mrs Zou’s daughter might be all right in a few years’ time. Hmm: the Fake Foreign Devil’s wife… any woman willing to sleep with a man without a queue must be a slut! The village genius’s wife’s got a birthmark on her eyelid… What’s happened to Mrs Wu, I haven’t seen her in ages… shame her feet are so big.’

Before all his plans were properly laid, Ah-Q was snoring, the four-ounce candle barely burned down a half-inch, his cavernously open mouth bathed in its fiery red light.

‘Hmm? Hmm?’ he suddenly cried out, looking bewilderedly about him, then lying back down to sleep once he’d set eyes on the candle.

The next day, he got up very late. Out on the street, everything looked much as it always did. After fruitlessly pondering for some while a solution to his hunger, an idea finally presented itself, and he slowly turned his steps – almost without conscious thought – towards the Convent of Quiet Cultivation.

The convent was as peaceful as it had been back in the spring, its walls still white, its gate still black. He hesitated briefly, then knocked. Hearing a dog bark inside, he anxiously gathered up a few broken pieces of brick, then knocked again – harder. Eventually, after rapping out a series of dents in the black lacquer, he heard someone approach.

Tightening his grip on the pieces of brick, Ah-Q adopted a martial posture, ready to do battle with the black dog. But the gate opened only a crack, unleashing no beast from within. He could see no one inside but the old nun.

‘What d’you want this time?’ she asked, startled by his reappearance.

‘Have you heard? There’s a revolution…’ Ah-Q observed, rather vaguely.

‘They’ve already been,’ the old nun retorted, her eyes red. ‘Now what d’you want?’

‘What?’

‘They’ve been and gone!’

‘Who?’ Ah-Q’s astonishment was growing at every revelation.

‘The Zhao son and the Foreign Devil!’

Ah-Q froze, stupefied by the unexpectedness of it all. Seeing the wind had been taken out of his sails, the elderly nun shut the gate as quick as she could. When Ah-Q recovered himself enough to give it a shove, it refused to budge; when he tried knocking again, there was no answer.

It had all happened that morning. The moment the village genius heard, through his own channels of communication, that the Revolutionary Party had taken the town during the night, he coiled his queue on to his head and, at first light, called on the Qian family’s Fake Foreign Devil. Although he’d never had anything to do with him in the past, this was a time for pooling talents and energies in the cause of Progress and Reform. A full and frank discussion ended in them declaring themselves comrades unto death and pledging to join the Revolution. After giving the matter some further thought, they remembered there was a tablet in the Convent of Quiet Cultivation wishing the emperor ‘Ten thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand years of life.’ Deciding, quite naturally, that this should be the first thing to go, off they rushed to revolutionize the convent. Because the old nun had tried to stop them, again quite naturally they identified her as representative of the discredited and deposed Manchu dynasty and gave her a reasonably substantial beating around the head with sticks and knuckles. After they’d gone, the nun came to, to discover the tablet in pieces on the ground, and a valuable Ming incense-burner, originally set in front of the statue of the goddess Guanyin, vanished.

All this Ah-Q found out only some time after the fact. Kicking himself for having slept through it all, he also bitterly resented their not coming to fetch him first.

‘Don’t they know I’ve surrendered to the Revolutionary Party, too?’ he wondered to himself.

With each passing day, the people of Weizhuang grew easier in their hearts. Although the rumours flying about told them that the Revolutionary Party had taken the town, nothing else much had changed. The county magistrate hadn’t changed, even though his official title had. Mr Provincial Examination had hung on to an official post, too – though no one in Weizhuang knew exactly what it was – and the captain of militia was, well, still the captain of militia. The only source of disquiet in Weizhuang’s smooth, untroubled waters was the habit of certain, bad elements among the revolutionaries of cutting queues off – a troubling development that had begun the day after the Revolution came to town. They’d got their hands on Seven-Pounds, the boatman from a neighbouring village, who’d come out of it looking a perfect sight. Yet calm was, for the most part, preserved, because the residents of Weizhuang rarely, if ever, ventured into town; and even if they had been planning a trip, they swiftly changed their minds. Ah-Q had had an idea of going in, to look for an old friend of his, but abandoned it as soon as this piece of news reached him.

But still it wouldn’t be fair to say there were absolutely no new developments in Weizhuang. Within a few days, increasing numbers of queues were coiled up on heads – the first belonging, as previously mentioned, to the village genius, swiftly followed by those of Zhao Sichen, Zhao Baiyan and finally Ah-Q. If it had been summer, such a coiffure would have been standard practice, and no one would have paid much attention. But shifting a summer convention into late autumn demonstrated considerable heroism on the part of the trend-setters – surely a sign that times were changing in Weizhuang.

‘Look at the revolutionary!’ exclaimed everyone who saw Zhao Sichen approach, the nape of his neck naked as the day he was born.

Ah-Q raged with envy. Although the village genius’s decision to wind his queue round the top of his head was old news, it hadn’t occurred to him that he could copy him. Now, seeing Zhao Sichen doing the same, he realized that he, too, could follow suit, and resolved to do so. After tucking it up and securing it with a bamboo chopstick, and a further period of hesitation, he boldly set forth into the public domain.

As he walked along, he attracted a few looks, but no comment. Soon, a feeling of niggling displeasure had evolved into a sense of serious grievance against the world at large. Lately, he had been suffering more and more from dyspepsia of the brain. His life at present was no more difficult than it had been before the Revolution: people were still tolerably civil to him, and shopkeepers never asked him to pay in cash. But Ah-Q was nagged by a sense of frustration: that things should be different, now there had been a revolution.

It was his sighting, one day, of the ignoble D that brought his bad mood to boiling point. This D had not only coiled his queue on the top of his head, he had also – believe it if you will – had the nerve to secure it with a bamboo chopstick. Never, not even in his wildest imaginings, had Ah-Q dreamt that such effrontery – from such a wretch – was possible. No: he would not allow it! He felt a desperate urge to grab hold of it, snap the chopstick, let the queue hang back down and give him a few good slaps around the face. That would teach him to forget his place in the cosmic order of things, to call himself a revolutionary. In the end, however, he decided to let him off with an Angry Glare and a gob of spit.

The only inhabitant of Weizhuang to chance going into town in recent days was the Fake Foreign Devil. On the pretext of the trunks he was giving house-room to, the Zhao family’s young gentleman of letters had thought of calling on Mr Provincial Examination, but desisted on account of the mortal risk to his queue. Instead, he penned an obsequiously ornate formal letter, and charged the Fake Foreign Devil first with delivering it to its intended recipient, and second with securing an introduction to the revolutionary Freedom Party. When this deputy returned, he collected four silver dollars from the village genius, in exchange for which the latter was presented with a silver peach, which he pinned to the lapel of his gown. This, it was put about with gasps of admiration, was the insignia of the Persimmon Oil Party.
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Their local scholar was now equal in rank to a member of the imperial academy! Mr Zhao’s stock rose dramatically, higher even than when his son passed the county-level civil service examination. Ah-Q now existed on a plane far below Mr Zhao’s arrogant notice.

Ah-Q’s general sense of grievance, therefore, was compounded by his feeling of being left out of everything. As soon as he heard rumours about the silver peach, he guessed the reason for his cold-shouldering: it wasn’t enough to surrender to the revolutionaries, or even to coil your queue up on to your head. The key was to make contact with the Revolutionary Party itself. But he’d only ever encountered two revolutionaries: the first – the star of the execution he had witnessed – had long since been relieved of his head; which left only the Fake Foreign Devil. So there was nothing for it but to go and talk terms with the latter.

The main gate to the Qian mansion happened to be standing open, and so Ah-Q timidly slunk in. Once inside, he was immediately startled by the sight of the Fake Foreign Devil – dressed in black, probably foreign clothes, another silver peach pinned to his chest – holding forth in the middle of the courtyard. He had unbraided his regrown, foot-long queue, allowing it to flow theatrically over his shoulders. His fingers were curled around the stick from which Ah-Q had in the past received such salutary instruction. Opposite, standing to rapt attention, were Zhao Baiyan and three other loafers.

Approaching softly, Ah-Q took up position behind Zhao Baiyan, trying to think of the best way to get the great man’s attention. Fake Foreign Devil didn’t quite sound right any more; but neither did he think Foreigner or Revolutionary would do. Mr Foreigner, perhaps?

Mr Foreigner was too busy with his own impassioned speech, however, to have eyes for Ah-Q.

‘I’m an impatient man, and I was always saying to my dear friend Hong’ – by whom, his listeners may or may not have been aware, he meant Li Yuanhong, one of the leaders of the Revolution – ‘ “Let’s strike now!” But he’d always say’ – here he broke into English – ‘ “
No!
”… (That’s a foreign word – you won’t understand.) If he’d listened to me, we’d have pulled it off years ago. But he’s the cautious type. He’s on at me to go to Hubei for him, but I haven’t decided yet. Such a backwater…’

‘Errrr… Is… this…’ Ah-Q plucked up courage to croak, during a brief détente. For some reason, at the last moment he decided against Mr Foreigner.

The four startled members of the audience looked round.

‘What is it?’ Mr Foreigner at last located the source of the interruption.

‘I – ’

‘Get out!’

‘But I want to join – ’

‘Get lost!’ Mr Foreigner began waving his stick about.

‘Are you deaf or something?’ Zhao Baiyan and the others roared at him. ‘He told you to get lost!’

Ah-Q fled out of the gate, covering his head with his hands, but Mr Foreigner did not come after him. After sprinting sixty paces, he slowed to a walk. A sense of the tragedy of it all welled up in him: if Mr Foreigner was set on keeping him out of the Revolution, he had no other path open to him. The men in white would never come for him; all his ambitions, aspirations, hopes for the future written off at a single stroke. Then there was the fear that those loafers at the Qians’ might tell everyone else in the village, making him a laughing stock in front of the pathetic D and hairy Wang; though that was of secondary concern.

He felt frustrated as never before. His coiled queue now struck him as meaningless, contemptible; out of a desire for revenge, he wanted nothing more than to let it down again. In the end, though, he let it alone. After wandering through the night, he bought two bowls of wine on credit. Once he’d gulped them down, his spirits began slowly to improve, and fragments of white helmets and armour drifted back into his thoughts.