POW! 12
A loud noise overhead sends down a mixture of broken tiles, rotting grass and mud from the sky; it smashes a bowl and drives a bamboo chopstick into the mildewed wall like an arrow. The woman who has sated me with her full breasts, the woman who is as warm as a sweet potato fresh from the oven, shoves me away. As she extracts her nipple from my mouth, stabbing pains attack my heart, I feel light-headed and fall to the floor on all fours. I try to scream but hardly any sound emerges, as if hands are choking me. Her eyes are glassy as her gaze sweeps the area as if seeking something. She wipes the wet nipples with her fingers and glowers at me. I jump to my feet, rush over and throw my arms round her. Bending, I begin to kiss her neck. She reaches down and pinches my belly, hard, then pushes me away and spits in my face. Then she turns and walks out of the room, buttocks swaying. I follow her, driven to distraction, and watch as she walks up to the Horse Spirit and mounts it from behind. The human-headed statue, with her on its back, flies out of the temple, filling the air with the sound of clattering hooves. I hear birds welcome the dawn with their chirps and, farther away, bovine mothers calling to their calves. I know that this is the hour they feed their young, and in my mind's eye I can see the calves hungrily bumping the teats with their heads as the happy yet agonizing mothers hunker down; but the breast that had been suckling me has vanished, so I sit on the cold, damp ground and cry shamelessly. After I have run out of tears, I look up and spot a hole the size of a basket in the roof, through which early morning sunlight enters like a tide. I smack my lips, as if I'd just awakened from a dream. But if this has been a dream, why does the taste of milk linger in my mouth? The injection of this mysterious liquid into my body carries me back to my youth, and even my adult body begins to shrink. If it hasn't been a dream, then where did the Aunty Wild Mule who isn't my Aunty Wild Mule go? I sit there staring woodenly at the Wise Monk, whom I'd forgotten, as he slowly returns to wakefulness, like a python emerging from hibernation. Folding up his body in that room, suffused with the golden glow of dawn, he begins his qigong breathing exercises. The Wise Monk is dressed in ordinary clothing—yes, it is the threadbare robe the woman who suckled me had worn. He has a unique way of exercising. Folding up his body, he takes his penis in his mouth and rolls round on his wide bed like a wind-up toy with a taut spring. Steam rises from his shaved head in seven distinct colours. At first, I didn't think much of his trifling exercise regimen, but when I tried it I realized that rolling round on the bed is no big deal, nor is folding up my body that way, but taking my penis in my mouth—now that's a challenge.
Once he's finished, the Wise Monk stands on his bed to limber up, like a horse that's been rolling in soft sand. A horse will shake its body to send loose sand flying; the Wise Monk shakes his body to create a rainfall of sweat. Some of the drops hit me in the face, and one flies into my mouth. I am astounded to discover that his sweat has the fragrance of osmanthus, which now spreads throughout the room. He is a big man with large, whirlpool-shaped scars on his left breast and belly. Though I've never seen bullet wounds, I know that is what they are. Most people shot in those vital areas go straight down to the underworld, and to be not just alive but hale and hearty can only mean that he enjoys great good fortune and an enviable karma, a man born under a lucky star. As he stands on the bed, his head nearly brushes against the rafters, and it seems to me that if he stretched himself as tall as he could, then he might be able to stick his head out through the hole in the roof. Wouldn't that be a fright—his head, with its incense scars, sticking up through the roof tiles at the rear of the temple? Just think how stunningly strange that would look to the hawks wheeling low in the sky. As the Wise Monk limbers up, his body is exposed. It's a young man's body, in contrast to his old man's head. If not for a slight paunch, it could be mistaken for the body of a thirty-year-old man; but once he puts on his threadbare robe and sits cross-legged in front of the Wutong Spirit, no one who saw only his face and bearing would doubt that he was a man just shy of a hundred. Now that he's shaken the sweat off his body, and is good and limber, he climbs off the bed. What I observed has vanished under a robe that seems about to disintegrate. This has all the qualities of a hallucination. I rub my eyes and, like the heroes in wildwood tales who ponder their reactions to strange encounters, I bite my finger to see if I am dreaming. A pain shoots through my finger, proof that I am in the flesh and that what I observed was real. The Wise Monk—at this moment he is a faltering Wise Monk—seems to have at that moment discovered me as I crawl up to him; he reaches out, pulls me to my feet, and, in a voice dripping with compassion, says: ‘Young patron, is there something this aged monk can do for you?’ ‘Wise Monk,’ I say, a myriad feelings welling up inside me, ‘Wise Monk, I haven't finished my story from yesterday.’ The Wise Monk sighs, as if recalling events of the day before. ‘Do you want to continue?’ he asks compassionately. ‘If I keep it inside, Wise Monk, and don't let it all out, it will become an open sore, a toxic boil! He shakes his head ambiguously. ‘Come with me, young patron,’ he says. I follow him into the temple's main hall, where we stop in front of the Horse Spirit, one of the five. In this just and honourable place, we kneel on the rush mat, which looks so much more tattered than it did yesterday, dotted, as it is, with grey rain-produced mushrooms. The flies that seemed to have crawled round in his ears the day before now swarm back and cover them completely; two hang in the air for a moment before landing on his exceptionally long, twisting eyebrows which shake like branches supporting squawking birds. I kneel beside the Wise Monk, my buttocks resting on the heels of my feet, to continue my story. But I am beginning to wonder if I am still firm in my goal to become a monk. It seems to me that, in the space of one night, my relationship with the Wise Monk has undergone a significant change. The image of his young, robust body, which radiates sexual passion, keeps appearing in front of my eyes and his threadbare monk's robe turns transparent, throwing my heart into turmoil. But I still feel like talking. As my father taught me: anything with a beginning deserves to have an ending. I continue—
Regaining her composure, Mother grabbed me by the arm and led me in the direction of the station, taking long strides.
My right arm grasped in her left hand and the white, pink-tinged pig's head in her right, we walked faster and faster and then finally broke into a run.
I tried to twist free of her iron grip but she held on. I was angry at her. Father came home this morning, Yang Yuzhen, and your attitude stinks! He's a good man who's down on his luck. The fact that he swallowed his pride and bowed to you may not qualify as earth-shattering but it was enough to draw tears. What more do you want, Yang Yuzhen? Why provoke him with such vile language? He gave you a way out, but instead of climbing off your high horse you cried and wailed and bawled and spewed a stream of ugly curses at a man who made a small mistake. How do you expect a respectable man to take that? Then, to make things worse, you dragged my little sister into it. Your slap sent her cap flying and exposed a white cotton knot, and then you made her cry, breaking the heart of someone who has the same father but a different mother—me. Yang Yuzhen, why can't you understand Father's feelings? Yang Yuzhen, a bystander—me—saw things more clearly than the actor—you—and you should know that you ruined everything with that slap. It destroyed any conjugal feelings he might have retained, it froze his heart. And mine. You're such a heartless mother that you've made me, Luo Xiaotong, wary of you. I was hoping he'd come back to live with us but now I think that leaving was the best thing he did. If it'd been me, I'd have left, and so would anyone with a shred of dignity. In fact, I should have gone with him, Yang Yuzhen, and left you to enjoy the good life in a five-room, tiled-roof house all by yourself!
My mind was racing, my thoughts all over the place, as I stumbled along behind Yang Yuzhen, my mother. My struggling to get away and the weight of the pig's head slowed us down. People stared at us—some curious, others obviously puzzled. On that extraordinary morning, the sight of my mother dragging me down the road leading from the village to the train station must have struck passers-by as a scene from a strange yet lively little drama. And it wasn't just people: even the dogs first looked, then barked, at us; one even nipped at our heels.
Though she was reeling from an emotional blow, she refused to let go of the pig's head. Instead of dropping it, the way a film actress might do, she held it tightly, like a beaten soldier who refuses to let go of his weapon. Holding on to me with one hand and clutching the unheard-of purchase of a pig's head, meant to patch up things with my dieh, with the other, she ran as fast as she could, though it was difficult. Water glistened on her gaunt cheeks. Sweat or tears? I couldn't tell. She was breathing hard, yet she continued to gasp out a stream of curses. Should she have been sent down to the Hell of Severed Tongues for that, Wise Monk?
A motorbike passed us, a line of white geese hanging from the rear crossbar, necks twisting as they writhed like snakes. Dirty water dripped from their beaks, like a bull urinating as it walks; the hard, dry road was lined with water stains. The geese honked pitifully and their little black eyes were forlorn. I knew their stomachs had been filled with dirty water, for anything that emerged from Slaughterhouse Village, dead or alive, did so full of water: cows, goats, pigs, sometimes even hen's eggs. A Slaughterhouse Village riddle runs: In the village of butchers, what is the only thing you can't inject with water? After two years, no one but I knew the answer. How about you, Wise Monk, do you know the answer? It's water! In a village of butchers, the only thing you can't inject with water is water itself!
The man on the motorbike turned to look at us. What's so damned interesting about us? I may have hated Mother, but not as much as I hated people who stared. She'd told me that people who laugh at widows and orphans suffer the wrath of Heaven. Which is what happened: he was so busy staring at us that he ran into a poplar tree. As he flew backward, his heels struck the goose-covered rear crossbar and all those soft, pliable necks got tangled up in his legs and he tumbled into a ditch. He was wearing a leather overcoat that shone like a suit of armour and a fashionable knit cap. Large-framed sunglasses perched on his nose. In a word, he was dressed like a film tough. There'd been rumours of bandits on the road for a while, so even Mother had begun to dress that way in an effort to keep up her courage; she even learnt how to smoke, though she refused to spend money on decent cigarettes. Wise Monk, if you could have seen Mother in her black leather overcoat and cap and sunglasses, a cigarette dangling from her lips, sitting proudly on our tractor, you wouldn't have believed she was a woman. I didn't get a good look at the man's face when he passed us, nor when he turned back to look. But when he somersaulted into the ice-covered ditch, his cap and sunglasses flying through the air, I had a perfect view—he was the township government's head cook and purchasing agent, a frequent visitor to our village. For years, he'd bought everything that contained animal fat or protein and then served it up on the tables of the Party and government officials. A man with political credentials impeccable enough to guarantee the safety, the very lives, of our township leaders, he'd been one of Father's drinking buddies. His name was Han, Han shifu. Father told me to call him Uncle Han.
Back when Father used to go to town to share a meaty meal with Uncle Han, he'd usually let me tag along. Once, when he left me home, I ran the ten li into town and found them at a restaurant called Wenxiang Lai, where they appeared to be having a serious discussion. A steaming pot of dog meat on the table saturated the area round them with its fragrance. I burst out crying the minute I saw them—no, better to say I burst out crying the minute I smelt the dog meat. I was terribly upset with Father. Unconditionally loyal, firmly in his camp in all his disputes with Mother, I even went so far as to keep secret his relationship with Aunty Wild Mule. And he went off for a meal of good meat leaving me at home! No wonder I burst out crying. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked coldly when he saw me. ‘Why didn't you bring me along if you knew there was going to be meat? Am I your son or aren't I?’ Embarrassed, he turned to Uncle Han: ‘Lao Han, have you ever seen anyone with a greedier mouth than this son of mine?’ ‘You came here to enjoy some meat and left me home with Yang Yuzhen to eat turnips and salted greens, and you call me greedy? What kind of dieh are you?’ Just talking like that upset me even more. With the fragrance of the dog meat filling my nostrils, tears gushed from my eyes and ran down my cheeks until my face was wet. Uncle Han laughed. ‘That son of yours, Lao Luo, he's quite a boy. He sure knows how to talk. Come here, young man,’ he said. ‘Sit down and eat to your heart's content. I hear you're a boy who lives to eat meat. Youngsters like you are the smart ones. Come see me anytime. I guarantee you won't go hungry. Boss lady, bring this boy a bowl and chopsticks.’
That was a wonderful meal. I ate and I ate, keeping the ‘boss lady’ busy adding dog meat and soup to the pot. I ate with single-minded concentration, not even stopping to answer Uncle Han's questions. ‘He can eat half a dog at one sitting,’ Father said to the owner. ‘What's wrong with you, Lao Luo?’ Uncle Han asked, ‘How could you neglect your son like this? You have to let him eat. Meat makes the man. Know why we Chinese are no good at sports? It's because we don't eat enough meat. Why not give Xiaotong to me, let me raise him as my son? He'd have meat at every meal.’
I swallowed the piece of dog meat I was chewing and, moved to tears, stared at Uncle Han with an unprecedented depth of emotion. ‘What do you say, Xiaotong, want to be my son?’ He patted me on the head. ‘You have my word you'll never go hungry.’ I nodded enthusiastically…
Poor Uncle Han now lay in the roadside ditch, anxiously watching as we ran past his motorbike, which lay at the foot of the poplar tree, engine running, wheels twisted out of shape by the tree trunk yet still turning—barely—the rims rubbing against the fenders.
‘Are you going into town, Yang Yuzhen?’ he called out from behind us. ‘Tell them to come to my rescue…’
I doubt Mother understood what he was shouting, for she was full of annoyance and anger, perhaps even of remorse and hope. I could only guess. Even she may not have known for certain. I recalled with gratitude the meal that Uncle Han had treated me to, and I wouldn't have minded helping him out of the ditch, if only I could have pulled my arm free of Mother's grip. But no luck.
A fellow on a bicycle shot past, like he was afraid of us. It was Shen Gang, who owed us two thousand yuan. Actually, it was a lot more than that, since he'd borrowed the money two years earlier, at 20 per cent interest per month. Interest upon interest, which meant—I heard Mother say—it was now over three thousand. We'd gone more than once to collect. At first he acknowledged the debt and said he'd pay us back soon. Later, he tried the dead-dog trick. Staring at Mother, he'd say: ‘Yang Yuzhen, I'm like a butchered pig that has no fear of boiling water. I've got no money and my life's not worth a thing to you. My business failed, and if you see anything worth taking then please do so. Either that or turn me over to the police—I don't mind a place that provides food and lodging.’ We looked round in his house, and all we could see were a pot loaded with pig bristles and a rickety old bicycle. His wife lay on the sleeping platform, moaning like she was desperately ill. He'd come to us two years before, on the eve of the lunar New Year, wanting to borrow money to import a batch of cheap Cantonese sausage and then sell it over the holidays at a profit. Won over by his alluring scheme, Mother agreed to lend him the money. She pulled out the greasy notes from an inside pocket, then wet her fingers and counted them, again and again.
Before handing them over, she said: ‘Shen Gang, don't forget how hard it's been for a single mother, with her poor child, to save up this money.’
‘If you don't think you can trust me, Big Sister,’ Shen Gang replied, ‘then don't lend it to me. There are people out there, lots of them, who can't wait to lend me the money. I just feel sorry for the two of you, and want you to have the opportunity to make a packet…’
Well, he did bring in a truckload of sausage, which he unloaded, crate after crate, and stacked it in his yard in piles that rose higher than his fence. Everyone in the village said: ‘Shen Gang, this time you've really struck it rich!’ With a piece of sausage dangling from his lips, like a big cigar, he announced smugly: ‘The money will roll in so fast I won't be able to stop it.’ But Lao Lan dampened the mood when he walked by: ‘Don't let it go to your head, young man, unless you've arranged for some cold storage. Otherwise, one breath of warm air will have you lying in the yard and crying your eyes out.’ Those were particularly cold days, so cold that the dogs tucked their tails between their legs when they walked. Shen Gang bit down on the frozen sausage and said indifferently: ‘Lao Lan, you prick of a village head, you should be happy to see one of your villagers get rich. Don't worry, you'll get your tribute.’ ‘Shen Gang,’ replied Lao Lan, ‘don't take a good man's heart for a donkey's guts, and don't be in too big a hurry to congratulate yourself. The day will come when you'll beg me to help. The man who runs the township's cold storage is my sworn brother.’ ‘Thanks,’ said Shen Gang, still cocky, ‘many thanks. But I'll let my sausage turn to dog shit before I come begging at your door.’ Lao Lan's eyes narrowed into a smile. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you've got spine, and if there's one thing we Lans admire, it's that. Back during our wealthier days, we always placed a pair of vats outside our gate over lunar New Year's. One was filled with white flour, the other with millet, and any family too poor to celebrate the holiday was encouraged to take what they needed. There was only one man, a beggar, Luo Tong's grandfather, who stood in the gateway and cursed my grandfather: “Lan Rong, can you hear me, Lan Rong? I'll die of hunger before I take a kernel of your rice!” My grandfather summoned all my uncles and said: “Hear that? The man out there shouting insults at us has balls! You can offend other people but not him. If you meet up with him, bow your heads and bend low!”’ ‘That's enough,’ Shen Gang interrupted. ‘You can stop boasting about your glorious past.’ ‘Sorry about that,’ Lao Lan said. ‘Worthless descendants simply can't forget their predecessors’ glories. Good luck with your get-rich scheme.’
Unfortunately for Shen, what happened next proved the wisdom of Lao Lan's words. During the holidays, a freak warm southeast wind rose up and turned the willow trees green. The cold-storage building in town was full, and there was no room for Shen Gang's meat. Moving his sausage crates out onto the street, he bellowed through a battery-powered bullhorn: ‘Village elders, fellow citizens, help me, please. Take a crate of sausage home to your tables. Pay me only if can. If you can't, consider it a respectful gift.’ But no one came to claim any of the gloomy, rapidly spoiling sausages. Except for the dogs, for whom spoilt meat was still meat. They tore open the crates and ran off with lengths of sausage, turning the village into a big banquet table and adding a new unpleasant odour to air already heavy with the fetid smell of slaughter. It was a year to remember for the wild dogs. The day the meat began to spoil, Mother paid him her first visit. But the loan remained unpaid until…
Father's second departure was perhaps more important to Mother than Shen Gang's delinquent loan, because all she did was greet him with a wordless glower. A grease-covered tin on the rear rack of Shen's bicycle gave off a mouth-watering smell. I knew what it was—red steamed pig's head and cooked entrails. My mind was flooded with the captivating image of braised pig's feet and twisted lengths of braised pig's guts, and I swallowed hungrily. The momentous family occurrence of that morning had not eradicated—in fact, it had increased—my yearning for meat. The sky is high, the earth is vast, but neither is the equal of Lao Lan's mouth; Father is close, Mother is dear, but neither matches the appeal of meat! Meat, ah, meat, the loveliest thing on earth, that which makes my soul take flight. Today was supposed to be a day when I could satisfy my yearning for meat but Father's second departure shattered that fanciful dream, or at least put it off for a while. I hoped it was only a slight delay.
The pig's head hung from Mother's hand; I could eat some of it if Father came home with us. But if he remained unshakeable in his refusal to return, whether Mother, in a fit of anger, would cook it and let me at it or sell it and make me go hungry was anyone's guess. Wise Monk, I was a truly unworthy child. Only moments before I'd been in agony over my Father's second departure, but then the smell of meat drove out every other thought from my mind. I knew I'd never amount to much. If I'd been born during a time of revolution and was unfortunate enough to be an officer in the enemy camp, all the revolutionary forces would have had to do was offer me a plateful of meat and I'd have surrendered my troops unconditionally. But then, if the tables were turned, and the enemy had offered me two bowls, I'd have brought my forces back and surrendered to them. Those were the kinds of despicable thoughts that filled my head. Later on, great changes occurred in my family, and once I could satisfy my desire whenever I felt like it, I finally realized that there were many things in this world more precious than meat.
Another bicycle went past.
‘Hey, Yang Yuzhen, where are you off to? Going to sell that pig's head?’
I knew this one too. He was someone else who cooked braised pork; he too carried a tin on his bicycle and it too gave off a meaty aroma. He was Lao Lan's brother-in-law. He'd been called Su Zhou as a child; I forget his formal name. Perhaps that was because his nickname was so special—the name of that city down south. Su Zhou, Suzhou, what were his parents thinking when they gave him a name like that? He was one of the few men in our village who was not a butcher. Some people said he was a Buddhist, that he was opposed to killing, but he braised and sold the entrails of slaughtered animals. Grease on his lips and cheeks all day long, he reeked of meat from head to toe—you'd be hard pressed to consider him a Buddhist. I also knew that he added food colouring and formaldehyde to the meat, so his products were just like Shen Gang's—bright colour, strange smell. Doctored meat was supposed to be bad for your health, but I'd rather eat unhealthy meat than healthy turnips or cabbages. I still thought of him as a good man. As Lao Lan's brother-in-law, as his virtual lackey, he should have got on well with the older man. Surprisingly, he did not. Most people tried to get on the good side of our local despot but usually came away disappointed; this made Su Zhou an odd man in their eyes. Su Zhou said, ‘There are consequences to everything, good and evil.’ He said it to adults, he said it to children and when he was alone he probably said it to himself.
Su Zhou looked back as he rode past. ‘Yang Yuzhen,’ he shouted, ‘if you're selling that pig's head, you don't need to go to town. Take it over to my place and I'll give you the same price. “There are consequences to everything, good and evil.”’
Mother ignored him and ran on, dragging me behind her. Su Zhou was pedalling hard, trying to move against a headwind that had suddenly begun to blow. It bent the bare branches of the roadside poplars and set up a loud rustle, and the sky turned dark; the sun, at a height double that of the trees, trickled down thin red rays. Every once in a while we saw dried-up cow patties on the whitened, windswept road. The farming life of our village was dead and buried; the fields lay fallow and no one raised cows any longer. So those droppings had been left by the furtive cattle merchants from West County. The sight of those patties took me back to the glorious days when I'd accompanied Father as he priced cattle and reminded me of the enchanting fragrance of cooked meat. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva and looked up at Mother's face. Rivulets of sweat—possibly mixed with tears—dampened the collar of her sweater. Yang Yuzhen, I hate you and I pity you! My thoughts then turned inescapably to the pink oval face of Aunty Wild Mule. Dark eyebrows that met in the middle, above a pair of eyes with a little white showing, atop a long and lovely pointed nose that rose above a wide mouth. The look on her face always reminded me of an animal although I didn't know which one. Later, a man came to our village selling a fine breed of foxes. When I looked into their rabbit-hutch cages and saw the secretive looks on their faces, then I knew.
Every time I went with Father to Aunty Wild Mule's house, she greeted me with a smile and handed me a steaming piece of beef or pork. ‘Eat,’ she'd say, ‘eat as much as you want. There's more where that came from.’ Her smile seemed to me tinged with something slightly devious, slightly evil, as if she were trying to lure me into doing something wrong simply because it would amuse her. I liked her anyway. She never actually got me to do anything wrong. Even if she had, I'd have gone along with it. Then I saw her and Father in each other's arms—and I tell you the truth, Wise Monk—I was moved to tears by the sight. I didn't know then about what went on between men and women, and I couldn't understand why Father pressed his lips against hers, or why they made all those slurping sounds, like they were trying to suck something out of each other's mouth (and they actually did suck out something sweet and delicious). Now I know that's called smooching, or, more refined, kissing. I, of course, had no idea what it felt like but the expressions on their faces and the way they moved struck me as something quite passionate; it may have also been agonizing because I saw tears in Aunty Wild Mule's eyes.
Mother was almost worn out; by the time Su Zhou rode past, her pace had slowed considerably, as had mine. It was not because she was having second thoughts, no, not that. She still wanted to get to the train station and bring Father home. Take my word for it. She was my mother, and I understood her; I could tell what she was thinking just by looking at her face and listening to her breathe. The main reason she was slowing down was exhaustion. She'd risen before dawn, lit a fire, cooked breakfast, loaded the tractor; then, taking advantage of the freezing temperature, poured water on the paper to make it heavier. Then had followed the dramatic reunion with Father, and she'd run off to buy a pig's head, and, I suspect, a bath at the sulphur springs that had just opened in our village (I could smell the sulphur when I saw her at the door). Her face glowed, her spirits soared and her hair was wet, all evidence of a bath. She'd come home filled with hope and happiness only to have Father's second departure hit her like a bolt of lightning or a bucket of icy water, chilling her from head to toe. Any other woman suffering a blow like that would have gone mad or cried her eyes out; my mother stood there glass-eyed and slack-jawed, but only for a moment. She knew that falling to the ground and pretending to die was not in her best interest, nor, especially, was another round of tears. What she needed to do was get to the train station as fast as possible and, before the train left, stop that homeless man—who had somehow retained his integrity—from leaving. For a while after Father left the first time, Mother had been fond of a saying she'd picked up somewhere: ‘Moscow doesn't believe in tears!’ It became her mantra. That and Comrade Su Zhou's ‘There are consequences to everything, good and evil’ were a pair of couplets that spread through the village. Mother's fondness for this saying revealed her grasp of reality. Crying does not help in a crisis. Moscow didn't believe in tears, nor did Slaughterhouse Village. The only way to deal with a crisis was to take action.
We stood at the door of the station's waiting room, trying to catch our breath. Ours was a tiny station on a feeder line, and only a few local freight trains that also carried passengers stopped there. A wall with posters, fragments of slogans still stuck to them, stood in the windswept plaza. Underground enemies had scrawled counterrevolutionary slogans in chalk, mostly insults hurled at leaders of the local Party and government organizations. A woman selling roasted peanuts had set up shop in front of the wall—she wore a dark red scarf and a white surgical mask that showed only her eyes and their furtive look. A man stood beside her, arms crossed, a cigarette dangling from his lips, bored stiff. An iron basin sat on the rear rack of the bicycle in front of him, and the smell of cooked meat wafted across from beneath a strip of gauze. It wasn't Shen Gang, and it wasn't Su Zhou. Where had they gone? Had all their beautiful, ambrosia-scented meat already wound up in someone else's stomach? How would I know? One sniff told me that the meat in that man's basin was beef and cow entrails, and that it had been injected with a large amount of food colouring and formaldehyde, which made it look fresh from the slaughterhouse and smell quite wonderful. My gaze sidled over to it, like a fishhook, aiming to snatch a piece. But my body was in the grip of my mother and being reluctantly dragged to the waiting-room door.
It was one of those spring doors that had been out of fashion for more than a decade. You had to fight to get it open, which it did at last and with a loud clang. When you let go, it sprang shut and then bounced right back—if you hadn't moved away, it would slam into your backside and make you stumble if you were lucky and knock you to the floor if you weren't. I pulled the door open for Mother, then leapt in behind her; by the time the door slammed shut I was safely inside, ruining the crafty door's plan to send me flying.
I immediately spotted Father and the pretty girl he and Aunty Wild Mule had created—my little sister. Thank God they hadn't left yet.
Someone—I don't know who—flings a bloody, foul-smelling army uniform through the door, and it lands between the Wise Monk and me. I stare at the ominous object, startled, and wonder what's going on. There's a coin-sized hole in the uniform, right where the rank smell is the strongest. I also detect the faint odour of gunpowder and cosmetics. Something white is tucked into one of the pockets. A silk scarf? Filled with curiosity, I reach out to touch it but just then a pile of mud and rotting reeds, loosened by shards of roof tile, falls from the sky and covers the bloody clothes, and there, between the Wise Monk and me, a tiny grave is created. I look into the rafters, where a sun-drenched skylight has broken through the blackness. I'm terrified that this temple, forgotten by the world, is about to come crashing down, and I begin to fidget. But the Wise Monk doesn't budge, having regulated his breathing so as to appear absolutely still. The haze outside has cleared and bright sunlight covers the ground, turning the dampness in the yard into steam. The leaves on the gingko tree have an oily sheen, radiating life. A tall man in an orange leather jacket, drab olive wool pants and bright red calfskin knee-length boots, his hair parted in the middle, wearing a pair of small, round sunglasses and gripping a cigar between his teeth, materializes in the courtyard.