ASHES AND SMOKE
Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi; translated by Jeremy Tiang
Honford StarMay 2022Selected by Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
Zou Jingzhi lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution – first as a young revolutionary looking for secret capitalists after school and on weekends, and then as a “educated youth” in a rural labour camp. The stories in Ninth Building are told as a series of three- to four-page vignettes that build on each other to describe a youth filled with extremes. Alongside the violence described in the book, Zou also writes lovingly of music, friendship and childhood. In the excerpt, a grown man tries to convince the “little generals of the Revolution” that his dead stepmother, a landlord, should not be associated with him. – Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
Yes, come and see, this is the downfall of the landlord class. She was a landlady, my stepmother, she’s dead now, killed herself, slit her throat with scissors, slowly sliced it open, so blood splashed on the wall, you can see how it squirted all over, even in death she had to do the wrong thing, why would she want to die in this house, why did she have to bleed so much, enough to drown a family, enough to drown them dead? (Here, he burst into tears.)
When we’re dead we get cremated, but where should she go now, who’d be willing to drag this she-landlord, her entire body soaked in blood, all the way to the mortuary? No one, no comrade of the Revolution would do such a thing, I understand, I’m not willing either, but even Hell can only be reached through the crematorium chimney, am I right? Revolutionary comrades, help me open the gates of Hades, let cow demons and snake spirits swarm in, unleash the torments of fire and whipping and knives and water, no hope of liberation for all eternity.
Come! Little generals of the Revolution, go find a rickshaw, never mind if it has no engine, I’ll pull it, I’ll move it with these hands dripping with the fresh blood of landlords. I want to send her to hell, after all we can’t let the dark spirit of the landlord class linger here, can we? Rise up, overthrow landlords! She can’t hear me, but her blood is still flowing. Comrades, even a handcart would do, even the one from the morning trash collection. Please, I beg you, help me find one, I’ll pull it 20 li † if it gets her to the crematorium. No! First I’ll wrap her in white cloth so her filthy blood doesn’t soil our socialist roads.
Do something, little generals of the Revolution, let this landlord scum be blown away as ashes and smoke! Observe her wounds, not just one cut but many, how could she have brought herself to do it, slit her neck with her own hands, not like slaughtering chickens, not an accident, this was deliberate, the determination of the landlord class, she’d made up her mind to die. None of us realised last night as she drank her bowl of rice porridge, the slushy sound of congee ‡ slipping through the toothless crack – where’d she get the strength to cut herself to death?
Where’s the cart? Why haven’t the gates to Hell opened yet? I can’t wait any more, I can’t let the death of one demon affect the progress of the Revolution. Faster, little generals, faster!
She cut herself to death.
You there, please take care, don’t let Chen Zhe and Chen Yu barge in here. They were brought up by their granny, I don’t want them to see this, our lives completely changed, what are we going to do about this bloodstained wall, cover it, plaster it, but it’ll still be there, just that we can’t see it, it’s turning darker, reddish brown, not like blood any more, but still there, you see how forcefully the blood gushed out, look at this, look here, how it splashed, she was already more than 60 years old, but her blood still had such strength in it, yes it did!
Overthrow the landlord class! If the landlords won’t surrender, let them be exterminated! Good, well shouted. ◉
† A li is a traditional Chinese unit of measurement that equates to roughly one third of a mile. A li can be sub-divided into 1,500 chi, which translates literally as “Chinese feet”.
‡ Congee is a savoury rice-based dish eaten across Asia with a number of variations and styles. The English word Congee likely derives from the Tamil word kanji meaning boiling.