Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke Page A

again needed to hoe and turn the soil, and as he was using his ox to plow the field a second time, he complained vehemently that people had destroyed his field. But even as he was complaining vociferously, he continued smiling broadly.
    Once, someone noticed that after the harvest every year, the one-armed landlord would invariably go and plow his field beforehand. The person said, “Uncle, the livening festival has not even taken place yet. What’s the point of plowing the field now, if it will only be trampled flat again?” After looking around to make sure no one else was listening, he laughed softly and said, “Nephew, don’t you know, when I plow this field and then allow it to be trampled, all of the dust from everyone’s shoes and the filth from their bodies will go directly back into the soil, making it unnecessary to add any additional fertilizer for the rest of the year.”
    This year, the one-armed man once again plowed the slope. He originally assumed that, on account of the summer blizzard, there wouldn’t be a livening festival this year, but now it turned out that there would be one after all and that the county chief would host it himself. The one-armed man, therefore, was the first to arrive at the field, and the other villagers soon followed. They brought chairs, benches, and mats, and some of them notified their relatives in neighboring villages, urging them to come take part in the excitement. They also brought seats for their relatives, in order to reserve a spot for them. By the time the sun had risen three pole-lengths in the sky, when everyone would normally be working, the field was already full. There were bundles of beams bound together with wire resting on some piles of wood, on top of which there were some door planks covered with reed mats, which functioned as a makeshift stage. This stage had been erected by the one-legged Lame Carpenter, with the assistance of several young men. They brought saws, hammers, axes, and other tools, and in no time at all they completed their work.
    The benches in front of the stage were arranged in neat rows.
    Men and women from neighboring villages were invited to come sing Balou tunes.
    In the past, the musical troupes would come to Liven several days prior to the festival to discuss their proposed compensation, but since this year the festival was being hosted by Chief Liu, the percussion and musical troupes didn’t know how to organize, or whom to approach. The news that the county chief would personally host the livening festival spread quickly through the villages, like the aroma of food at mealtimes. When the sun came up that morning, the entire mountain pass was filled with visitors from neighboring villages who had come to observe the excitement. By the time the sun reached the head of the village, a huge crowd had gathered in the field, and the slope along the dam was completely full of people. The fifty-three-year-old one-armed man walked around shouting, “You’re all trampling my field! . . . You’re all trampling my field! I just plowed this field, but if I had known you were going to trample it like this, I wouldn’t have bothered.” Even as he was complaining, he continued smiling broadly. When he saw relatives and acquaintances from other villages who didn’t have anywhere to stand, he said to them, “Why don’t you go sit over there in my field. I can always plow it over again later.”
    As a result, there were more and more people sitting in his field.
    The crippled woman who worked as the village pharmacist took a portable coal burner to the field, and used it to prepare a pot of dark tea-eggs, the fragrance of which quickly spread everwhere.
    A deaf man was roasting peanuts by the side of the field.
    Someone selling sunflower seeds set up a stand right next to his.
    A woman from the neighboring village cooked tofu strips on the slope. The tofu strips were dipped in hot oil, then strung up on a skewer and dunked in a pot of