The Four Books Read Online Free Page A

pierced the sky. Most people, however, dawdled in their houses. They didn’t carry their tools out to the field. Each brigade had two seed drills, but they remained stored under the eaves of the buildings. The rope used for pulling the drills was lying on the ground. The wheat seed distributed by the higher-ups was still sitting in bags in the doorway of each brigade.
    The people washing clothes continued washing their clothes.
    The people writing letters continued writing their letters.
    Those with nothing to do just squatted there in the sun.
    They all went to look for the Child, saying that no one was going to the fields, and asking who had the ability to produce six hundred jin of grain from a single mu of land?
    The Child looked at the Theologian, the Scholar, and the Musician—they had just come out of their rooms, and then had gone back inside—and he softly uttered three simple words:
    “Call a meeting.”
    So they called a meeting.
    Everyone crowded in front of the Child, sitting with their respective brigades. The Child silently took out a document, then asked one of the young people from Re-Ed to read it. The Child said, “Whoever reads this document will be exempt from work tomorrow, and instead will go to town to mail this letter and bring back whatever packages and other mail are waiting there.” As a result, two young people began jockeying to read the letter, and the Child picked one of them. There was not much in the document—it merely announced which books were permitted in Re-Ed. After the document was read, the Child was silent for a moment, then asked loudly, “Did you all hear? These are the books you may read. If a book wasn’t mentioned, then reading it will be considered a crime.”
    “Now, I know what books you are reading, and where you are hiding them,” the Child said as he paced back and forth. “There are some people who read reactionary books while in the bathroom, and others who wake up in the middle of the night to read them, sobbing.” The Child suddenly stopped pacing and pointed to the two youngsters who both had wanted to read the document. “Not only will you have the day off tomorrow to go into town to deliver and pick up the mail; next year each of you will have three days to go visit your families.” The Child added, “But you must do as I say. Go to the second brigade, where the Scholar has hidden a reactionary book under his pillow.”
    So they went to look, and found a reactionary book titled The Seven Sages of Wei and Jin .
    The Child said, “Go look at the comforter belonging to the Theologian from the third brigade. The comforter cover has a zipper. Unzip it and see what’s inside.”
    So they went to look, and at the head of the Theologian’s bed they found his neatly folded comforter. Inside, there was a copy of the Old Testament. The book had a black cover, and every page had been read over and over again, and had marks from fingers moistened with saliva.
    The Child said, “Go check under the bed of the Author in the fourth brigade, where he has hidden three wooden boxes. The boxes are all full of books.”
    So they went to look, and found the three wooden boxes. They pulled out the boxes, threw the clothes to the ground, then dumped the books. There were copies of Wild Grass and Laws of the Tang and Song , as well as foreign works such as Le Père Goriot , Don Quixote , Mallarmé’s collected poetry, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , Dickens’s David Copperfield , and so forth, together with Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther . The books were old and tattered, and were written in traditional Chinese characters. The curious thing is that while the Author’s own novels were all about China, the books he secretly read turned out to be from abroad.
    They removed dozens of works from the three boxes and piled them on the ground, making a small mound.
    The Child’s gaze came to rest on the Musician. Her face was as white as a sheet of paper, as white