A YI

THE YOUNGER COUSIN

translated by Ana Padilla Fornieles

Hongyi Town was built on an open field in the middle of a large mountain. According to urban planning regulations, the town’s original layout had consisted of two rows of stores lining the road, which in turn was to be laid with asphalt. In the end, the road was never paved, and only one row of stores was built. Xiao Tan’s shop merely occupied a single space in this row. He was an orphan with no land of his own. Because he had no land, people wanted to help, and eventually introduced him to the town’s work unit to find a job. Sometimes it would be tending fires, sometimes sweeping streets, sometimes serving as a community watchman. Eventually, the mailman Ke Hengchang asked him to take care of the store. One day, Ke Hengchang and his best friend, Wang the Deputy Secretary, were playing chess in front of the store. Just as Xiao Tan was coming over to pour them wine from the jug, he heard Ke Hengchang speak with a capacious wave of the hand:

“It’s yours.”

“What?” Xiao Tan asked.

“This store. It’s yours now, Xiao Tan.” Deputy Secretary Wang replied.

“Huh?” Xiao Tan found it unthinkable.

This time it was Deputy Secretary Wang asking Ke Hengchang: “For real?”

Ke Hengchang hesitated for a good minute, and then slapped the table: “For real.”

Ke Hengchang really did keep his word, not only because Deputy Secretary Wang had egged him on, but also because the shop itself wasn’t all that big. At less than ten square metres, the space was roughly divided in two by a curtain—shop in the front, living quarters in the back. In the front, cigarettes, lighters, and composition notebooks were displayed on a rack fitted in glass, and atop the counter settled a telephone and a scale. A shelf in front of the curtain stored beverages, baijiu, soy sauce, eight-treasure congee, laundry detergent, toothpaste, toothbrushes, etc. Other goods were placed on an additional shelf nailed to the wall—the mosquito-repelling incense coil, once lit, was set upon it as well. The store’s door was made of fourteen boards of camphorwood, each of them individually ascribed with notations: East One, East Two, East Three, East Four, East Five, East Six, East Seven, West One, West Two, West Three, West Four, West Five, West Six, West Seven. Every day at closing time, one had to grab the boards, align the upper and lower grooves, and push them in the proper order. Only then could the bolt be fastened from the inside. In the living space rested a wooden bed, and by it a simple zippered wardrobe. The limestone walls were already cracked at points. On its surface, faint tracks of Ke Hengchang’s handwriting remained: altar tangerine, bottom bin orange, eat old sugarcane, tired old spinster. Nailed to another wall was a plastic-mounted cabinet mirror. The back door was hinged and wooden, painted in a light blue shade. It led to a yard, which had a well with a water pump, and a laundry bin next to it. By the bin were scattered a stove and a gas tank. Xiao Tan used them occasionally for cooking, although more often than not he would just make do with instant noodles, or whatever food that was left unsold. The yard also had a garden, where greens and cabbages grew. The whole thing was enclosed by piled up red bricks, at the top of which were embedded shards of glass. One year when it snowed, half of the wall actually collapsed, and it still has yet to be rebuilt. At night, Xiao Tan would do his business in the pisspot, in the morning emptying it in the vegetable garden. If he wanted to have a dump, he had to head to the nearby public toilets.  

Xiao Tan was skin and bones, a sparse goatee hanging off his chin. All year round he wore a too-big teal suit paired on the inside with a woolen waistcoat. On his feet were black leather shoes with wrinkled insoles, and a bunch of keys hung from his waistband. He didn’t talk much. He didn’t venture into the county to shop either. He just handed some money and a slip of paper to the minibus driver, who in turn would park at the county parking lot, and hand the stuff over to the Sijichun wholesale market. The staff delivered the requested goods to the parking lot, and even helped tie them to the vehicle roof. That’s how good old Ke Hengchang had done it in the past. That’s how Xiao Tan did it, too.

It’s said that on a certain day, as daytime was about to dissipate into night, the whole valley was caged in smoke. Work units and stores in Hongyi closed one after another, and Xiao Tan, chewing an expired bun, was about to do so as well, when a young girl came skipping over on the road leading through town. Xiao Tan was pushing the door slats into their grooves, surmising that the figure approaching in the mist was a pair of swaying, fleshy steaks. That’s how fat she was. Tall and fat. Arms bigger than electricity poles. Thighs thick as the buckets used to fetch well water. So thick that the seams of her golden-green trousers were already bursting open. Her face was like a bottom-heavy padlock. She struggled to climb up the steps of the shop, first raising her right leg, then lifting her left. Only once both legs were steadied did she raise her right leg again. In front of the store, she grabbed the lower hem of her shirt with both hands and fanned her belly. Sweat drenched her forehead and neck, welling up in her creases and forming thin, shiny threads. Her scarce and yellowing hair was soaked as well, glued to her scalp. Xiao Tan still had four panels left to insert in the grooves, so the young woman squeezed in huffily. She originally attempted to squeeze in facing forward, but when this failed she tried from the side. She was only halfway in when Xiao Tan had to grab her arm and pulled her the rest of the way. She was just that thick.

Just before, when she was standing at the entrance, she said: “Are you cousin Minglei?”

“Who are—” Xiao Tan began to ask.

“I’m Xiongjiashan’s Yunxia.”

“Yunxia?”

“Basically, I should be your cousin.”

As far as Xiao Tan himself could recall, he did not know whether it was some aunt on his great-grandfather’s side, or some aunt on his grandfather’s side, but there was talk of one such female in the Tan family who married into Xiongjiashan. Even left some descendants. However, it was the first time he had ever heard of this Yunxia. Who would’ve ever told him that he had a cousin named Yunxia? Nobody even came to pay respects for the New Year. Actually, before Yunxia came to Hongyi, her relatives had also discussed it for a long while, and it was only when they asked around that they found out there was an older male cousin named Tan Minglei.

“My family said that if I got tired from walking, I could stay the night here.” Yunxia said.

“That’s fine.” Xiao Tan replied.

Xiao Tan stuffed the remaining boards in, hearing the sounds of running children outside as he bolted the door, running and laughing. No doubt they’d discovered a woman taking advantage of the twilight to enter the shop. “I’ll screw your ma’s cheap tired hole!” Xiao Tan shouted outward. The children guffawed even louder. Xiao Tan grabbed a new towel from the shelves, unwrapped a bar of Safeguard soap (his own was worn to a thin slice, and he would be able to keep using hers afterwards), put it with his own shampoo in the washbowl he kept by the laundry bin, and handed it to her. Thinking that she might not be able to fetch water from the well, he hauled up half a bucket. Maybe women like warm water, so he boiled some and mixed it with the cold water. All done, Xiao Tan pulled the curtain closed, and stood in front of the counter to settle accounts. He carefully and clearly pressed the numbers into the calculator, properly figuring the math, but his head was not in it. He commanded himself to focus, and restarted the arithmetic. The two partitions in the store were lit by the same bulb. Some firefly moths gathered around it, albeit nowhere near as many as before. Yunxia from Xiongjiashan stood by the lamp that lit the yard, wringing the soaked towel dry by the laundry bin, lifting up her clothes, wiping up the sweat from her armpits and under her breasts. Unable to reach her back, she hollered: “Cousin!” She went on yelling over ten times, and from the gradually growing, yet simultaneously minute voice, Xiao Tan figured out that she was calling him. “You calling me?” The response came: “Yes!” So Xiao Tan went across the curtain and the bed, heading to the backyard. Yunxia said: “I can’t reach here, help me get at it.” She lifted her top and turned her back to Xiao Tan, holding on with both hands on the edge of the laundry bin. At nearly the exact moment she lifted her clothes, Xiao Tan caught sight of the layers of circular flesh peeking out. Due to the earth’s gravitational force, each roll of meat sank down, taking on flat and droopy shapes. Xiao Tan flipped through the rolls, finding ropes of dirt caked in each fold, and carefully scrubbed them away. Some were so large that Xiao Tan could roll them between his hands. He spotted a red mark on her waist, which he took to be a scrape from when she’d forced her way through the front door. When Yunxia pulled her shirt back down with a “Thanks, cuz,” Xiao Tan retreated, pulled the curtains closed, and went back to the counter. He gradually heard the sounds of water being scooped up—washing hair, face, feet, and eventually being poured on the ground. Afterwards, Yunxia bolted the back door, walked to the bed, and put on some make-up and perfume at the mirror. Although her routine didn’t comprise of so many steps, it seemed endless in execution. By the time Xiao Tan went back in, it was already well into the night.

Xiao Tan noticed that her hair looked puffy; she’d probably wiped it dry with the feet towel he left airing outside. She’d also drawn two thick lines over her eyebrows. Rouge was painted onto the corners of her eyes and her cheeks. When she sat on one side of the bed, the other side flipped into the air. Xiao Tan had no choice but to use his weight to press it back down. Like this, they started chatting. When Xiao Tan spoke, Yunxia raised her head, looking at the pitch-dark dusk outside the window, lowering it too sometimes. She had the same answer for each sentence he finished: “Oh, really?” Sometimes she turned her head, looking at her cousin with a pair of feline eyes. Xiao Tan quickly spat out a pile of words and sat there quietly, waiting for new words to well up in his head like water in a tank. He suspected that it mattered that his words should have some significance. Later, he realised that there was a dead moth on the back of Yunxia’s left hand, resting at the edge of the bed. He bent down to blow it away, simultaneously using his right hand to cover her left. After that, he squeezed, or rather, gripped her hand. She did not pull it away, and betrayed no change while continuing to listen. Xiao Tan, still talking in earnest, squeezed so tight that sweat almost dripped out. Ah, even though he mustered up the courage to lean over, holding her close enough to kiss, he still had to finish what he was saying. She closed her eyes, lay back on the bed, and a groan erupted from the bedframe. The frame was more than sufficient for Xiao Tan, but now, holding two people, it resembled a diving board propped up between an irrigation canal and a ditch. Unaccepting of such a weight, it bent, becoming a quivering, wobbling thing. With Yunxia’s assistance, Xiao Tan peeled off her underwear. Her two breasts were the size of washbasins, the nipples swelling like pieces of dried persimmon, darkened by mold, filled with little bumps. She had barely any pubic hair, just a few sparse yellowish strands, flinging up here and there at odd angles. At first she held her hands there, not letting him look at her powder puff mound. Later on she moved her hand away, but at the very same time, she turned off the light.

Xiao Tan felt as though he had thrown himself on a bed on top of the bed, a quilt on top of a quilt. He had dived into a bottomless pit of cotton or sponge, a swamp. He drifted within it until a certain force blocked him. Every time he pressed down, his body automatically bounced back some. Beneath him, she groaned decrepitly. After a while, likely out of exhaustion from her journey, she fell asleep. Shortly afterwards she woke up again, held Xiao Tan close, and lightly scratched his back with her fingertips, over and over again. As they copulated, Xiao Tan was unable to control the stream of promises and praises coming out of his own mouth. Like, “What I’m sayin is, you grew up so well, there must be somethin (behind it). Such white skin, there must be somethin. Somethin in the water in Xiongjiashan. Must be you n I’s blood.” Like: “If you n I got married, it’s blood mixin blood. If we get a kid, it’s gonna be for sure beautiful and cute.” Like: “I’ll keep you forever, we got all the time in the world. You be the old lady and I’ll work,” or: “I never liked nobody like this, look at my two arms up on the bed here, I’m shakin.” Making promises bigger than the sky for just a little bit of sex, that’s just how he was. Yunxia sometimes replied: “You really mean all this?” Xiao Tan would raise his hand and say: “Swear by the cow that saved my life it’s true. If even half a word I’m sayin is false, thunder strike me dead.” Xiao Tan lasted for about seven or eight minutes, about what he deemed enough to meet a man’s standards, until he came. Right after, a sense of loss, emptiness, and self-hatred arose in his heart. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back bent, combing his fingers through his hair. The sound of her wiping her belly and lower body with toilet paper came through. She tore a piece from the roll, rolled it into a ball after having rubbed herself clean, sniffed it, and tossed it under the bed—tossed about a few dozen. She grabbed his hand, letting it touch her belly. He groped it symbolically several times, then withdrew his hand to his side. “Let’s go to sleep,” he said.

Yunxia fell asleep quickly, a cheerful snoring coming from under her nose. Xiao Tan, however, was tormented to restlessness as he lay on a mat by the bed. Getting up to grab the hand laying on her belly, he pulled it to the edge of the bed. She smacked her lips and slept peacefully for a while, but went back to thunderous snoring in no time. Xiao Tan was in such pain that he’d have rather died, and started banging his forehead against the bedframe. He muttered to himself: “Crazy bitch, crazy bitch, she’s just like a pig.” Perhaps hearing the bangs of Xiao Tan’s suicidal motions, she stretched out her hand to dredge him up. Just as they touched, he tore away his arm. Xiao Tan felt a silent cry in his heart: how is it possible that there exists a woman who snores like this? Xiao Tan thought he would remain awake the whole night, but he eventually managed to fall asleep. In his dream, he wore shorts and a vest and crawled around in a space overflowing with fleshy bodies. Boiling mucus was everywhere. Each body was crawling upwards, their slippery mortal flesh serving as footholds for one another. They jostled to and fro, climbing with great difficulty; as soon as one body below or to the side wiggled, a gap appeared for another to mercilessly fall again. At times the whole space seemed motionless, possessing a strange tranquility. However, all it took was one close look to notice the small feet protruding like buds from each body, scrabbling around. Xiao Tan felt as though his own clothes were disintegrating and decaying, his hair and limbs melting. His nostrils and throat inhaled a mouthful of thick, dense liquid. To escape sinking, he tried his best to swim upward. Finally, the crow of a cock awakened him.

Yunxia was gone; the back door was open. Traces of her presence were scattered everywhere. The blanket that had originally covered her belly had fallen to the ground, and there was a human-shaped stain on the patterned sheets. Some of the sweat had yet to dry, sticking to the surface, while the dried sweat had turned into glistening salt grains. A foul odour came off of the pillow, undoubtedly because she had drooled all over it. At the counter, Xiao Tan found bags of food torn open and tossed all over the floor. She had gobbled up everything that was edible in the store. Her phlegm was even smeared on the counter’s glass. Xiao Tan went out to the backyard, where the cool breeze that follows the rain blew upon his body, making him realize that a season was ruthlessly approaching its end. Some vegetables and wild chrysanthemums that had been standing were either snapped off or were trailing on the ground, and the imprint left on the ground was as if a roller had run through it. There was a heap of excrement as high as a burial mound on the edge of the vegetable field. Xiao Tan looked into the distance and saw Yunxia lying on her side on the open country road. She raised both knees to her belly, then straightened her legs. Borrowing from this momentum, she managed to wriggle forward a little. To have travelled a dozen metres from here to there, she’d wriggled for two or three hours. During this arduous journey, Yunxia turned her head back once to look at Xiao Tan. There was a bit of shame in those eyes, and a little longing too. Later, all Xiao Tan saw was a maggot engrossed in the process of forging ahead. No eyes, no head, no limbs—only bulging flesh.  

Xiao Tan felt sick. This kind of nausea, it was worse than filling one’s stomach with mud. All he could do was go back to the shop, where he could not stop thinking about how right there, on that bed, had once sat a species akin to a mountain or a warehouse. The lamplight passed through this crowded substance, leaving a huge shadow in the room. Later, the shop became bankrupt, filled with cobwebs, and nobody came to take on the lease. People reasoned that there was probably a silkworm or some fruit worm across the way, but how could there be silkworms in such a season? Besides, worms grew with and inside the fruit, right from the beginning as larvae. Eventually, everyone decided that it must have been a maggot—Xiao Tan had slept with a visiting maggot.