The Real Story of Ah-Q by Lu Xun Read Free Book Online

righteousness, morality’ snaking their way across each page. As I studied them again, through one of my more implacably sleepless nights, I finally glimpsed what lay between every line, of every book: ‘Eat people!’
    All these words – written in books, spoken by the farmer – stare strangely, smirkingly at me.
    Are they planning to eat me, too?

IV
     
    I sat quietly a while, through the morning. Mr Chen brought me some food: a bowl of vegetables and a bowl of steamed fish – its eyes glassily white, its mouth gaping like the village cannibals. After a few slippery mouthfuls, I could no longer tell whether I was eating fish or human; up it all came again.
    ‘Tell my brother,’ I said to Chen, ‘that I feel stifled inside – that I want to take a walk in the garden.’ Chen left me without a word but shortly afterwards unlocked the door.
    I did not move; I wanted to see what they planned to do with me next; I knew they would not relax their grip so easily. And so it proved. My brother brought an old man in to see me. My visitor approached slowly, head bowed, afraid I would catch the savagery in his eyes, sneaking glances at me through his spectacles. ‘You seem well today,’ my brother said. ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Dr Ho here has come to examine you,’ my brother went on, ‘at my request.’ ‘Be my guest!’ I replied. My executioner, of course! Come to check how fat I was, while he pretended to take my pulse. Presumably his fee would be a slice of my flesh. Yet I felt no fear: my nerve remained steadier than those of the cannibals about me. I held out my wrists to see how he would go about it. Taking a seat, the old man closed his eyes, held my wrists for a considerable length of time, stared blankly a while longer, then opened those terrible eyes of his. ‘Avoid overexcitement,’ he pronounced. ‘A few days’ rest and you’ll be fine.’
    Avoid overexcitement! Rest! Of course: they want to fatten me up, so there will be more to go round. ‘You’ll be fine’? They were all after my flesh, but they couldn’t be open about it – they had to pursue their prey with secret plans and clever tricks; I could have died laughing. Indeed, I burst into uncontrollable roars of mirth – a laughter that rang with righteous courage. The old man and my brother blanched at the robustness of my morale.
    But my boldness succeeded only in sharpening their appetites – the braver the prey, the more glory for the hunter. ‘To be eaten immediately!’ the old man muttered as he left. My brother nodded.
Et tu!
And yet I should have foreseen it all: my own brother in league with people who wanted to eat me!
    My own brother was a cannibal!
    I was the brother of a cannibal!
    And destined to be eaten myself – this brother of a cannibal.

V
     
    These last few days, I have reconsidered a couple of my earlier suspicions: perhaps the old man was not my executioner, perhaps he really was a doctor. But he will still have eaten people. In his
Book of
… what is it?
Herbs
?… Li Shizhen openly observes that boiled human flesh is perfectly edible. 1 He must have tried it himself.
    Neither were my suspicions of my own brother unfounded. When he was teaching me history as a boy, he once told me people could ‘exchange sons to eat’ in times of scarcity; or then again, while discussing a notorious villain, he told me death alone was too good for him; that ‘his flesh should be devoured, his skin flayed into a rug’. 2 For hours afterwards, my heart pounded with fear. A few days ago, when the farmer from Wolf Cub Village told him about the business with the heart and liver, he merely nodded; nothing surprises him. At heart, he is ruthless; still perfectly ruthless. If sons are fodder for the dinner table, then anyone could be. I used to just let him preach at me – to let his sermons pass me by. Now, I know his lips were smeared with human grease, his thoughts only of eating people.

VI
     
    There is darkness all around me.