Explore Chapter 9 of '呐喊' with the original Chinese text, English translation, detailed Chinese vocabulary explanations, and audio of the Chinese original. Listen and improve your reading skills.
After the Zhaos were robbed, the people of Weizhuang took a kind of grim satisfaction in the event yet felt a vague dread. So too did Ah Q. Four days later, however, Ah Q was suddenly seized in the middle of the night and hauled off to the county town. It was pitch dark. A squad of regulars, a squad of militia, a squad of police, and five detectives made their way quietly to Weizhuang and, under cover of darkness, surrounded the Earth God Temple. They trained a machine gun directly on the entrance. Ah Q did not charge out. For a long time there was no movement. The Captain grew anxious. He offered a reward of twenty thousand cash. Only then did two militiamen volunteer to take the risk. They scaled the wall and got inside. Thus, coordinating their efforts from within and without, the whole posse rushed in and dragged Ah Q out. Not until he had been pulled clear of the temple, right up beside the machine gun, did he begin to regain his senses.
It was already noon by the time they reached town. Ah Q found himself hustled into a dilapidated yamen. After turning five or six corners, he was shoved into a small cell. He had just staggered inside when the door, a sturdy barrier made of whole tree trunks, slammed shut behind his heels. The other three sides were walls. Looking more closely, he saw there were already two other men in the cell.
Ah Q felt somewhat uneasy, but not overly distressed, for his bedroom in the Earth God Temple was no better appointed than this room. The other two seemed to be country folk as well, and they gradually struck up a conversation with him. One said the Provincial Graduate was after him for some back rent his grandfather had owed; the other wasn’t sure of the charge against himself. They asked Ah Q why he was there. He answered forthrightly, ‘Because I wanted to revolt.’
In the afternoon he was dragged out through the barrier door again. When he reached the main hall, he saw an old man with a completely shaven head presiding from the dais. Suspecting him to be a monk, Ah Q noticed a row of soldiers standing below and about a dozen men in long gowns flanking the sides. Some had shaven heads like the old man; others had their hair hanging down their backs a foot or so long, like the Bogus Foreign Devil. All wore scowls and glared at him ferociously. Realizing then that this man must be someone of consequence, Ah Q’s knees quite naturally buckled of their own accord, and he knelt down.
‘I… I wanted… to join…’ Ah Q mumbled incoherently for a moment before managing to utter the broken sentence.
‘They didn’t come to get me. They moved the stuff themselves.’ Ah Q grew indignant at the recollection.
Whereupon a man in a long gown brought forward a sheet of paper and a writing brush, and made as if to thrust the brush into Ah Q’s hand. Ah Q was now frightened nearly out of his wits, for this was the first time in his life his hand had ever held such an instrument. He was at a loss as to how to grip it. The man then pointed to a spot on the paper and told him to make his mark.
Ah Q tried to draw the circle, but the hand holding the brush merely trembled. The man then spread the paper on the ground for him. Ah Q bent over, summoning all his strength to draw the circle. Afraid of being laughed at, he was determined to make it perfectly round. But this accursed brush was not only heavy, it positively refused to obey. Just as it was trembling on the verge of closing the circle, it swerved outward, producing a shape like a melon seed.
This second time inside, he didn’t feel particularly upset. It seemed to him that in this life it was probably inevitable that a man was sometimes dragged in and out of places, and sometimes had to draw circles on paper. The only blot on his record was that the circle hadn’t been round. However, this soon ceased to trouble him, for he reasoned, ‘Only grandsons can draw perfect circles.’ And with that, he fell asleep.
That night, however, it was the Provincial Graduate who could not sleep, for he had quarreled with the Captain. The Graduate insisted that recovering the stolen property was the first priority, while the Captain insisted that making a public example came first. The Captain had of late held the Graduate in scant regard. Banging the table, he declared, ‘Punish one to awe a hundred! See here, I’ve been a revolutionary for less than twenty days, and there have been a dozen robberies, not one solved. What face have I left? Now we’ve cracked a case, you come along with your pedantic notions. It won’t do! This is under my jurisdiction!’ Flustered but adamant, the Graduate insisted that if the loot were not recovered, he would resign his post as Assistant for Civil Affairs immediately. ‘As you please!’ said the Captain. And so the Provincial Graduate passed a sleepless night, though fortunately, he did not carry out his threat to resign the next day.
The third time Ah Q was dragged out of the barrier door was on the morning after the Provincial Graduate’s sleepless night. He entered the main hall, where the usual bald old man sat on high as ever, and Ah Q knelt down as usual.
At this, a number of men, some in long gowns and some in short jackets, suddenly draped a white vest of foreign calico over him. It bore some black characters. Ah Q felt deeply aggrieved, for this was uncomfortably like mourning garb, and mourning was inauspicious. At the same moment, his hands were bound behind his back, and he was dragged straight out of the yamen.
Ah Q was lifted into an open cart. Several men in short jackets sat with him. The cart set off at once. Ahead marched a contingent of soldiers and militia shouldering foreign rifles. Flanking the sides was a crowd of spectators, their mouths agape. What lay behind, Ah Q could not see. But suddenly it dawned on him: wasn’t this the journey to the execution ground? In a panic, his vision darkened, a loud buzzing filled his ears, and he felt as if he were about to faint. Yet he did not lose consciousness entirely. At moments he felt acute anxiety, but at others a strange calm descended. It seemed to him that in this life, it was probably inevitable that a man was sometimes executed.
He still recognized the road and felt a flicker of surprise: why weren’t they heading towards the execution ground? He didn’t know this was a parade through the streets, a public display of the condemned. But even if he had known, it would have made no difference. He would simply have thought that in this life, it was probably inevitable that a man was sometimes paraded and put on public display.
He realized then that they were taking a roundabout route to the execution ground. This was surely the prelude to the fatal ‘thwack’ of the sword. Gazing blankly to either side, he saw a swarm of people like ants. By chance, his eye fell on Amah Wu among the crowd lining the roadside. It had been an age. She had evidently found work in town. Suddenly, Ah Q felt acutely ashamed of his own lack of spirit-he hadn’t even sung a few lines of opera. His thoughts spun like a whirlwind in his mind. *The Young Widow at Her Husband’s Grave* lacked grandeur; the ‘Had I but known…’ from *Dragon and Tiger Fight* was too feeble. Better to go with ‘Brandishing my steel mace I thrash you…’ Simultaneously, he thought to raise his arm in a dramatic gesture, only to remember that both hands were tied. So the line about the steel mace remained unsung.
‘In twenty years I'll be a man again…’ In his fluster, Ah Q uttered half of this stock phrase, as if the knowledge had come to him unbidden.
At that instant, his thoughts began to spin like a whirlwind once more. Four years ago, he had encountered a hungry wolf at the foot of a mountain. It had followed him, never drawing too near nor falling too far behind, intent on devouring his flesh. He had been scared nearly to death. Fortunately, he had been carrying a hatchet for cutting firewood, which gave him the courage to make it back to Weizhuang. Yet he had never forgotten those wolf’s eyes, fierce yet fearful, gleaming like two will-o’-the-wisps that seemed to pierce his flesh from afar. Now, once again, he saw eyes more terrible than any he had ever seen before-dull yet piercing eyes that seemed not only to have already devoured his words but were poised to consume something beyond his mere flesh, following him, never drawing too near nor falling too far behind.
As for the immediate repercussions, the greatest impact, ironically, was on the Provincial Graduate. Because the stolen goods were never recovered, his entire household set up a loud lament. Next came the Zhao household. Not only had Young Master Xiucai gone to town to report the crime and had his queue cut off by unsavoury revolutionaries, but the family had also forfeited twenty thousand cash in reward money. So they too raised a universal wail. And from that day forth, they gradually began to assume the mournful air of loyalists of a fallen dynasty.
As for public opinion in Weizhuang, naturally there was no dissenting voice: everyone agreed that Ah Q was a bad lot, and proof of his badness was that he had been shot. If he hadn’t been bad, why would he have been shot? In town, however, the verdict was less favourable. Most people felt dissatisfied, holding that execution by shooting lacked the spectacular quality of a beheading. And what a ridiculous condemned prisoner he had been, paraded all that way through the streets without singing a single line of opera. They had followed the procession for nothing.