“Sweetheart, over an hour and you’ve only written one line?”
After eating an early dinner at his parents’ place and coming home, Liu Xiaoli had said she wanted to write a letter to her parents and family in Harbin to share the good news. But after spinning her pen at the desk for a full hour, she’d managed to squeeze out exactly one line. Chen Fusheng couldn’t bear to watch anymore.
“Maybe you shouldn’t write it, sweetheart. Just give them a call tomorrow.”
“No. Long-distance calls are too expensive, and I don’t know how to tell my parents I’m pregnant over the phone. They’ll definitely cry, especially my mom. And when she cries, I’ll cry too. So a letter is better.” Liu Xiaoli had already wrestled with this decision before choosing to write.
“In that case, how about writing it tomorrow? You might have some ideas by then.” Chen Fusheng tried a different angle.
Liu Xiaoli had been thinking the same thing, but after glancing at Chen Fusheng, she suddenly changed her mind.
“Brother Sheng, how about you write it for me? You’re better with words.”
“No way, no way. If you don’t know how to write it, I’m even worse.” Chen Fusheng waved his hands frantically, absolutely refusing to touch this hot potato.
Seeing this, Liu Xiaoli didn’t force him. She pouted and said, “Fine. Let me think about it first. I’ll write it tomorrow.”
With that, Liu Xiaoli went to the bathroom. When she came back, she found Chen Fusheng sitting in her seat, his pen scratching rapidly across the paper. She thought he was writing the letter for her and leaned over curiously.
“I thought you said you couldn’t write?”
“I’m not writing a letter.”
“Then what are you writing?”
“I’m creating.”
“Creating? Did you get another translation gig?”
Liu Xiaoli knew that Chen Fusheng had taken on a few private translation jobs before, earning around a hundred yuan in total. She assumed this was another one.
“This isn’t translation. It’s creation. Don’t you know what creation means?”
Liu Xiaoli couldn’t be bothered with his nonsense and picked up his notebook to read.
“Cowherd?”
“Is this… prose? No, with your writing style… it reads like a novel?”
Liu Xiaoli looked at Chen Fusheng in shock. “You’re writing a novel?”
“Mm, yes.” Chen Fusheng nodded.
“Why? I’ve never heard you mention this before. How come you suddenly started writing a novel today?” Liu Xiaoli looked at her husband curiously.
“Well, now that we have a baby on the way, I need to earn some formula money.” Chen Fusheng said.
In truth, he’d had the idea of writing a novel for a while now. He just lacked motivation.
Today, learning that he’d be a father in nine months, motivation had come barreling at him in full force, the kind he couldn’t shake off even if he tried.
Originally, he’d wanted to be a literary plagiarist. But the novels he’d read were things like Battle Through the Heavens, A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality, The CEO Falls in Love with Me, Tomb of God, The School Beauty’s Personal Bodyguard, The Lost Tomb, Ghost Blows Out the Light and the like. Setting aside the fact that they were far too long for him to remember…
Even if he could replicate them, he wouldn’t be able to get them published in this era.
And something like The Lost Tomb or Ghost Blows Out the Light? If he actually mailed those out, he might end up getting himself thrown in jail.
So it wasn’t that Chen Fusheng didn’t want to be a literary plagiarist. He simply couldn’t pull it off.
Fortunately, in his past life, he’d watched countless films and shows.
If he couldn’t plagiarize novels, he’d plagiarize movies.
But Chen Fusheng didn’t choose to adapt screenplays directly. He knew all too well that with no name and no connections, submitting a script would be met with dead silence every single time.
If you think 1979 is different from the later years?
Ha, that’s far too naive.
In this era, film production quotas were set by the state. Only a few dozen to a hundred films per year, distributed among film studios across the country. Some studios might get a dozen, others just a handful.
Without exaggeration, that thin slice of the pie wasn’t even enough for them to divide among themselves. Why would any of it fall to an outsider like him?
But novels were different. Write well enough, and you’d have no shortage of magazines willing to publish you.
What’s more, writers held high status in this era. They were respected wherever they went.
Chen Fusheng didn’t care about those empty honors. His main goal was to earn some formula money for his unborn child.
After all, with the combined monthly salaries of him and his wife adding up to no more than sixty yuan, they could barely sustain themselves as a couple.
Yes, his salary wasn’t high either. Only around thirty yuan, because before “teaching assistant” in his university title, there was still a “probationary” prefix.
Add one more person to the household, a tiny money pit, and they’d either need to earn more or spend less. Otherwise, their quality of life would plummet.
The problem was: it’s easy to get used to the good life, but hard to give it up.
As for the novel Cowherd that Chen Fusheng was “creating” this time, it was adapted from the 2009 film of the same name, directed by Guan Hu and starring Huang Bo. Reportedly, the film had drawn from Zhao Dongling’s 2002 novel Eighth Route Army Cow. But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that it didn’t exist yet.
The film mainly told the story of the farmer Niu Er during the Anti-Japanese War, who found himself in a comical yet tense life-or-death struggle with Japanese soldiers, refugees, and bandits over a dairy cow left behind by the Eighth Route Army.
Chen Fusheng’s novel would preserve the main plot while reworking certain details and even adding subplots.
Meanwhile, Liu Xiaoli read over the opening he had written.
The earthen walls of the ruined temple had been gnawed ragged by the years, sifting a few thin threads of light down to where dust motes drifted in the corner.
Niu Er huddled in the hay, his rough fingers combing through the thick coat of the Dutch dairy cow beside him, again and again. His movements were slow, deliberate, carrying an almost devout focus. The cow’s broad back was warm and steady, its coat no longer the glossy sheen of years past, now streaked with grey as though dusted with grime that could never be washed clean.
A low rumble rose from its throat. Its massive head rested meekly in Niu Er’s lap, warm breath puffing against the cracked fabric of his trousers.
Niu Er’s clouded eyes stared at some fixed point in the void. Ten years. It had been ten years.
The feel of fur beneath his fingers never failed to dredge up that single day: the cloying sweetness of osmanthus blossoms in the air, suddenly torn to shreds by harrowing screams and gunfire that cracked like popping beans.
“Run! Niu Er! RUN!”
Though the opening wasn’t long, Liu Xiaoli was hooked from the first line.
Then… there was nothing more.
“What about the rest?” she asked.
“I haven’t written it yet.”
“Then write it!”
Liu Xiaoli hastily handed the notebook back to Chen Fusheng and stood beside him, intending to read each word as he wrote it.
Chen Fusheng didn’t pick up the pen. Instead, he turned to look at his wife. “Sweetheart, having you stand over me is a lot of pressure. How about you go rest for a bit? I’ll bring it to you before bed, or you can read it tomorrow.”
“When you were translating before and I stood next to you, you never said you felt pressure.”
“That’s different. Translation is translation. This is creation. I need inspiration.”
Though she was reluctant, Liu Xiaoli didn’t make a fuss. She walked to the sofa, picked up the newspaper Chen Fusheng had bought on his way home that afternoon, and began to read.
It was a copy of People’s Daily, featuring coverage of the 4th National Congress of Literary and Art Workers recently held in Beijing.
Ten-odd minutes later, Liu Xiaoli set the newspaper down and glanced toward Chen Fusheng. Seeing him writing furiously, she resisted her curiosity about Cowherd and went to the kitchen instead. A while later, she came out carrying a plate of sliced fruit.
“Brother Sheng, have some fruit.”
“Thanks!”
Seeing that Chen Fusheng only ate one piece before diving back into his writing, Liu Xiaoli returned to the sofa and picked up a book this time.
But she barely managed two minutes before putting it down. She couldn’t focus.
Perhaps out of boredom, she began whispering to the baby in her belly.
“Little one, look at your dad, so focused on writing his novel. He doesn’t even have time for us.”
Outside the window, stars began to appear. The moon crept quietly up the treetops. The lights in the Riverside Community were growing few and far between.
Liu Xiaoli yawned. Seeing that her husband was still writing, she went over to say good night, then headed into the washroom.
“Don’t be afraid, comrade. We’re the people’s army. We don’t take so much as a needle or thread from the masses. We just need to register a few details. What’s the cow’s name? So we can put it on record.”
The ruined temple was eerily quiet, save for the mournful whistle of wind through holes in the walls. The soldiers held their breath.
Suddenly, Niu Er’s withered, twig-like hand stilled. Slowly, impossibly slowly, he raised his head. From deep-set sockets, those clouded eyes fixed on the cadre crouching before him.
That gaze seemed to pierce through ten years of cutting frost and heavy silence, carrying a concentration so intense it had frozen solid. His line of sight passed over the cadre and projected into the void. His lips twitched almost imperceptibly, as though he wanted to speak but was blocked by some invisible force.
The cadre held his crouch, waiting in silence.
A few seconds of stillness, stretching long as a century.
At last, the hand that had been stroking the dairy cow reached, with impossible tenderness and inexpressible attachment, to the brass ring on the cow’s ear. The ring had been rubbed to a brilliant shine, its edges worn smooth. His touch was as gentle as if he were reaching for a fragile dream.
Then he turned his head. His clouded gaze fell back on the cadre’s face, unfocused yet seeming to pierce straight through the man before him to somewhere far, far away.
An impossibly hoarse, gossamer-thin yet startlingly clear voice, like the faint sound of a dead leaf touching the ground in late autumn, drifted from his cracked lips.
“Jiu’er.”
“I actually finished Cowherd in one sitting!”
Even Chen Fusheng was surprised. His first novel, and the words had flowed this smoothly.
Could I actually be the legendary novel-writing prodigy?
But once the mental high wore off, only physical exhaustion remained.
Chen Fusheng glanced at the watch on his wrist and found the hour hand past five in the morning.
He startled himself.
The desk faced the window. Chen Fusheng looked up to see the first pale light of dawn on the horizon.
“So I really did write through the entire night!”
