The Four Books (15 page)

“You have some gall, don’t you?”

The Theologian looked surprised.

“You said you had handed everything over, but it appears that you hid a small book inside a larger one, and read it every day. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

The Theologian immediately knelt down, trembling uncontrollably. He seemed to want to say something, but no words came out.

“Go get your book, and turn it in.” After saying this, the Child returned to his hut.

When he reached the hut, he stretched and sat in a chair. In the blink of an eye, the Theologian returned. He stopped a step before reaching the Child, his body still trembling uncontrollably, looking as though he was prepared to kneel down again at any moment. The Child accepted the Theologian’s volume, which was as thick as a brick and had a hard cover and a red and black spine. On the cover appeared the title
Capital
, together with the author’s full name. The text itself was most persuasive, and virtually demanded to be read. The Child knew this volume as intimately as he did his own rice bowl, so he did not actually read it—just as he would never eat his own rice bowl. Instead, he merely leafed through it, and after several dozen pages he confirmed that someone had in fact carved out a hole in the volume. The cavity was three inches wide, three inches long, and one inch deep, and was just big enough to hold a small Bible. The Bible had no cover and instead consisted merely of paper printed with characters as tiny as fly droppings or grains of black sand. After closing the book, the Child peered disdainfully at the Theologian and the Theologian quickly kneeled back down. Outside, there were people walking around, and one of them shouted, “Number Two Furnace needs more firewood!” Then everything lapsed back into silence. Apart from the sound of the fire and of the river in the distance, everything was completely silent.

“You have committed two religious crimes,” the Child said. “First, is that you have been secretly reading this Bible. This is a serious transgression. Second, is that you carved a hole in this
real
bible. This is an even more serious transgression. We will send you to the headquarters, where your punishment will be more severe than that which was meted out to the Scholar and the Musician for their adulterous affair. In fact, you will be executed.” At this point, the Child paused, and looked as though he were lost in thought. Then he leafed through the large volume again, and as he did, the smaller volume closed. He said, “I like you, and since I consider you to be an honest person, I won’t send you to the higher-ups for punishment. But how will you atone for your crimes?”

“Anything you decide is fine.” The Theologian accepted the pardon and nodded repeatedly. “I’ll do anything you want.”

The Child removed the small book from the larger one, and ordered, “Get up!” The Theologian stood up. The Child thrust the small volume at him, saying, “I want you to piss on this book. If you do this one thing, that will be the end of this matter.”

The Theologian stood motionless, his face as white as a sheet. “Kill me if you want, but I beg you to treat this book with respect. This is the last copy in the entire country. After the nation’s founding, all of the others were confiscated and burned. I used my family fortune and personal connections to obtain it from the national library’s rare books collection. If this volume is destroyed, there will be none left in the entire country.” As he was saying this, the Theologian’s lips began to tremble like leaves in the wind. It was a cold night, but his face was covered in sweat. The Child looked at him, then snorted. “If you won’t piss on it, then take it, but bring me all of your red blossoms. I believe you have about fifty? And one more thing. If you won’t piss on the book, then you will have to hand over your blossoms, and tomorrow you must pull a cart loaded with steel all by yourself, and accompany me to the headquarters.”

The Child gave the Theologian a choice of punishments—he could either urinate on the Bible, or hand over all of his red blossoms and, like a mule, pull a cart loaded with steel. He would have to pull the cart three hundred
li
to town. If they proceeded without stopping it would take them three days to merely cover the distance, even without pulling two or three lumps of steel weighing five or six hundred
jin
each.

The Theologian chose the latter option.

6.
Heaven’s Child
, pp. 209–214

The Child brought five people to help deliver the steel ingot smelted from black sand. In all, there were three carts. Four comrades pulled two of the carts, but because the Theologian had committed a crime he had to pull a cart on his own. When he reached a hill or a ravine, however, the Child would help him push the cart across. They headed out on the first day, and several days later they would reach the town. The ninety-ninth had to hand over the steel to the headquarters, which would hand it over to the county seat, which would hand it over to the district seat, which in turn would hand it over to the provincial seat—on and on until it finally reached the capital.

The steel needed to be taken to the capital to be exhibited.

So it came to pass. Everything was even greater and more spectacular than they had imagined. The Child’s idea of smelting steel from black sand was not only a pioneering development in its own right, but also constituted a powerful challenge to all of the reactionary countries in the world. From this point on, as long as a nation had the technology to smelt steel from black sand, they wouldn’t need to import steel from outside.

The Child went into town and didn’t return until five days later, during which time some scattered news drifted over in the breeze. The first news item was that the ingot of steel smelted from black sand was deemed by the higher-ups to be a virtual atomic bomb to be sent out to the world, which astonished the criminals of the ninety-ninth. The second item was that when the Child returned with his prizes, he would not only have large red blossoms, but also a cart full of grain and meat. The third item was that as long as the newly smelted steel could be sent to Beijing then a cohort of criminals from the ninety-ninth would be free to return home, like the Technician. When everyone heard this, they started madly collecting sand and cutting down trees in order to smelt enormous amounts of steel. Without even needing others to supervise and exhort them, they worked like crazy on their own accord. In the winter, they woke up before sunrise and looked around for a puddle in which to wash their face. After assigning someone to stay behind and watch each furnace, everyone else would go out and scour the embankments for black sand.

The Child was in town, a hundred and fifty
li
from the river. It was a small community with only a few hundred people, one main street, and a handful of shops. The Re-Ed headquarters was located here, at the end of the main street. The headquarters was in a large courtyard, surrounded on all four sides by red tile buildings. The building adorned with various wooden placards was the headquarters.

In the courtyard, there was a large pile of iron objects—including long ones, square ones, oval ones, green ones, gray ones, and dark greenish gray ones. Someone was weighing them and recording how much each district had contributed. There was a truck, and there were people in the process of loading the cast iron onto the truck.
Bing, bang, boom—bing, bang, boom
. . . . the sound reverberated through the streets of the town.

It reverberated through the entire world.

Someone asked, “Where are they taking all this iron?”

A person who was loading it onto the truck replied, “To the steel mill.”

“What for?”

“Fuck. . . . how can you be so blind? . . . Don’t you know that the steel mill will smelt this iron into steel pipes and steel bars?”

Now, the Child had spent two days hauling the first batch of steel from the banks of the Yellow River back to the headquarters. The higher-up stroked the newly smelted steel, then patted the head of the Child, who blushed happily. He awarded the Child a red blossom, and furthermore read aloud the writing on the certificate:
Certificate of Merit
. He intoned these initial words extremely slowly, but read the remaining text more quickly:
Awarded to the Child, for your work on national development, in recognition of the enormous contribution and the effort you have made for the steel industry, you are hereby awarded this certificate, to encourage you to make further efforts.

The higher-up then read the headquarters’ name and the time.

As applause rang out, the Child went to receive the certificate. The higher-up also awarded him a large red blossom.

In this way, the Child became a celebrity in Re-Ed. In the evening, the higher-up invited him to a banquet, where he was served rice, steamed buns, meat and vegetables, stewed chicken, as well as wine. The Child asked, “Can the people who came with me to deliver the steel also join us?” So, they added another table, and the additional guests ate rice, buns, and meat and vegetables, though not the stewed chicken or the wine.

At the banquet, the higher-up asked the Child, “You haven’t yet gone to the provincial seat?”

The Child shook his head.

The higher-up reflected silently, then said, “Today you used three carts to haul a ton of steel. As long as you are able to smelt another hundred tons of steel in a year, we promise that not only will we organize a model ceremony for you, we will also arrange for you to attend a model ceremony in the provincial seat and even the nation’s capital.”

So it came to pass. The Child blushed deeply, and said, “For each ton, you may give me a certificate, a sack of flour, and two large blossoms. For a hundred tons, I’ll go to the provincial seat to attend a model ceremony.”

The Child had never been to the provincial seat, though he had long yearned to go. In the town there was only one street, in the county seat there were two or three, and in the district seat there were at least thirty streets and alleys. So, how many streets might there be in the provincial seat?

The Child was familiar with the town, the county, and the district seats, but he didn’t know what the provincial seat was like.

He had long dreamed of visiting it.

The Child decided that after he succeeded in smelting a hundred tons of steel—thereby earning a hundred certificates and another two hundred large red blossoms—he should spend a year at the provincial seat.

When the Child left town to return to the riverbank, the Theologian was pulling the cart and the Child was riding on top. The Child stared into the sky and reflected for a long time before saying,

“Help me calculate something: If a hundred and fifty
jin
of black sand will yield a hundred
jin
of steel, then how much black sand will be needed to smelt a hundred tons of steel? We have twenty furnaces, both large and small, and if on average we smelt a furnace-worth of steel once every five days, then how many days will it take to smelt a hundred tons of steel?”

The Theologian stopped the cart next to an empty field and, using a stick to write on the ground, muttered—For a hundred
jin
of steel, you would need a hundred and fifty
jin
of black sand. For a thousand
jin
of steel, you would need fifteen hundred
jin
of black sand. And for a ton of steel, you would need three thousand
jin
of black sand. If you have twenty furnaces, each of which on average can smelt three hundred
jin
of steel, then together they will be able to smelt six thousand kilos of steel. Therefore, each furnace must smelt thirty-five furnaces-worth of steel in order for you to end up with one hundred and five tons. If it takes five days and five nights to smelt one furnace-worth, then it will take approximately a hundred and seventy-five days, which is to say half a year, in order to smelt thirty-five furnaces-worth of steel, which is to say a hundred tons.

When he finished, the Theologian stood up. The ground next to where he was standing was filled with complicated equations, and looked as if it had been the scene of a crab fight. The great earth was supporting the Child’s face, which had a blank and disappointed expression.

“If we need two or three days to smelt a single furnace-worth of steel, and each furnace on average can handle five to eight hundred kilos of steel, then if we build two more furnaces, won’t we be able to smelt a hundred tons of steel by the end of the year?”

The Child’s face was illuminated by a red glow.

The ground was also illuminated by a red glow.

In this way, everything came to pass. The sun rose, and up ahead another cart paused to wait for them. They proceeded onward. The Child was sitting on the cart, as the Theologian hauled it forward. The Child smiled and said, “I didn’t burn your copy of the Bible, and instead I just fined you five red blossoms. I didn’t even ask you again to piss on the book.” The Child added, “At the end of the year, I plan to go to the provincial seat. You should return to the ninety-ninth and tell everyone that as long as they can smelt a hundred tons of steel, then thirty to fifty of them will be permitted to return home.”