The Four Books by Yan Lianke Page A

meeting between the Technician and the Child, when the district was still sound asleep, the two of them suddenly left together. When they returned a week later it was also early morning and everyone was still in bed. It was as if a set of rules had been suspended while the Child was away, and everyone became more relaxed. They would sleep soundly all night, and sometimes wouldn’t get out of bed until the sun was already high in the sky. When the Technician returned, some people were cuddled up in their blankets, while others were hidden under their covers secretly reading some forbidden book or writing letters or journal entries. The sunlight was already flowing in through the windows, while a sparrow would fly back and forth and periodically alight on the window ledge. In the dead of winter, the rows of buildings resembled rows of coffin vaults. It was at this point that hammerlike footsteps were heard coming from the entrance to the men’s dormitory. Then the Technician slammed the door open, appearing in the doorway. Everyone looked over in surprise and then quickly sat up in bed.
    The Technician stood there—his tall, thin body planted in the entranceway like a flagpole. But what surprised everyone the most was that he was holding a wooden board, on which was pasted a white sheet of paper with five pentagonal stars, each as large as a man’s fist. The stars were cut out of the same sort of glossy slick paper as the red blossoms above everyone’s bed. The Technician shouted,
    “I’m sorry, but I have to leave now. I’ve already become a new person!”
    A red light flickered over the Technician’s face, which was stained dark from smelting steel. When he held up the wooden board with the five large pentagonal stars, it happened to catch the sunlight streaming in through the windows, making the five stars appear as though they were burning bright. Everyone stared at the Technician and his wooden board, as though they had just opened one of the furnaces and been confronted with a burst of flames.
    They were shocked by the sudden appearance of these five stars. At the time, no one knew what had happened in the ninety-first. The Technician proudly walked over to the innermost bed and leaned his wooden board against it. He climbed onto the bed and used a piece of twine to tie up his bedding with a few efficient gestures, then hopped back down again. From beneath the bed he pulled out a wooden chest that had been stripped of its locks and latches, then placed the useful contents of the chest into a travel bag and tossed aside useless things like old shoes, tattered socks, and old notebooks. In the blink of an eye, he packed everything he wanted to take with him, but when he was at his desk collecting some books and pens, his hand suddenly paused. He saw that, in addition to the five stars—which were equivalent to a hundred and twenty-five small blossoms—on the wall above his desk there were still the original twenty-five small blossoms he had painstakingly earned.
    The Technician looked at those small blossoms, and laughed.
    Everyone in the room got out of bed and stood behind him. Even the men and women from the other three brigades heard the news and came over to our dormitory. As a result, the room became so crowded that there wasn’t enough space to stand, and many people had to wait outside, while others peered in through the windows, their necks stretched as thin as winter twigs. The Technician then peeled two of the blossoms off the wall and held them up as the Child had done. “Does anyone want these?” He looked at everyone and smiled. “These twenty-five blossoms, which I earned with my own sweat and blood, are extras. I’ll give them to anyone who can say something that pleases me.”
    They stared at him in surprise, just as they had done a week earlier, when he reported he had found a source of iron for smelting. Everyone had stared at him as though he were a mental patient just released from the