POW! 16
A large truck converted into a float is at the head of a line of marchers from East City. The front is decorated with an enormous cream-coloured laughing cow's head. Of course I know how absurd that is. All the animal images at the Carnivore Festival are emblematic of the bloody business of butchering. In my life I've seen more than my share of grievous looks on the faces of animals just before they're slaughtered, and have heard more than my share of plaintive cries. I know that people these days promote humane slaughter methods, bathing the animals with warm water, playing soft music, even giving them full-body massages to hypnotize them, all by way of a prelude to the knife. I once saw a TV show that promoted these humane methods, hailing them as a major advance for humanity. Human beings have extended the concept of benevolence to the animal world but continue to invent and manufacture powerful, cruel weapons for the excruciating death of humans. The more powerful, the more lethal the weapon, the greater the profits. I may not yet have taken my Buddhist vows but I'm aware that so much of what human beings say and do runs counter to the spirit of Buddhism. Isn't that right, Wise Monk? I note a smile on his face but can't tell if that's a sign that he's affirmed my enlightenment or that he's mocking my shallowness. A few dozen young people in baggy red pants, white jackets with buttons down the front, white cotton towels over their heads and red silk sashes round their waists stand in a circle on the bed of the cow-headed float. Their faces painted red, they passionately pound a drum with drumsticks as thick as laundry paddles. The beats of this very big drum go right to the hearts of all within hearing. Attached to the sides of the float are banners proclaiming in big, decorative, Song Dynasty-style characters: Kenta Hu Meat Group. They are followed by a chorus of ‘rice-sprout’ singers, all girls in the bloom of youth. Dressed in white pants and red jackets, cinched with green silk sashes, they dance to the beat of the drum, hips and buttocks moving in choreographed rhythm. Next in line is a rooster-headed float, sporting a rooster and a hen. Every few minutes the rooster thrusts out its neck and releases a bizarre crowing noise. And every few minutes the hen lays a larger-than-life egg, accompanied by a burst of clucks. A truly imaginative float, so true to life it should get the most votes and win first place in the float category at the Festival climax. Of course I know that the crowing and clucking come from humans inside the bellies of the birds. The truck is identified as belonging to Aunty Yang Poultry Corporation. Eighty men and women in four columns come next, all in cockscomb hats and feathered arms; they flap their ‘wings’ as they walk. ‘To keep sickness away,’ they intone, ‘eat an egg every day’ and ‘Keep a healthy supply of Aunty Yang's eggs.’ The parade from West City approaches behind a formation of camels. I don't realize they're real animals until they pass in front of me. A rough count reveals more than forty of them, all draped in colourful garb reminiscent of prize-winning model workers. A short acrobatic man in front performs a nifty tumbling manoeuvre every few steps. He carries a showy baton loaded with oversized copper coins that make a whirring sound when he thrusts it up and down. Under his direction, the camels begin to prance, making the brass bells round their necks ring out shrilly. A well-trained honour guard indeed. A pole rising above the hump of a white-faced camel in the formation bears a flag embroidered with large characters; I don't even have to read it to know that Lao Lan's contingent is approaching. On the basis of the United Meatpacking Plant, where I was employed ten years before, Lao Lan founded the Rare Animals Slaughterhouse Corporation. The camel joints and ostrich steaks they produced earned a reputation for supplying high nutritional value to the people's diet and generating considerable wealth for the company. Word has it that the son of a bitch sleeps on a waterbed, that his toilet is trimmed in gold, that his cigarettes are ginseng flavoured and that he dines daily on a whole camel hoof, a pair of ostrich feet and an ostrich egg. A two-column contingent of twenty-four ostriches follows the camels. Each is ridden by a youngster, boys on the left, girls on the right. The boys are wearing white sneakers, white knee-high socks topped by two red stripes, blue shorts, white shirts and red streamers round their necks. The girls are in white leather shoes over ankle-length white socks to which are tied red knitted pompoms; they are wearing sky-blue dresses with short skirts and golden bows on the tops. The boys’ closely cropped hair makes their heads look like little rubber balls. The girls' braids are tied at the ends by strips of red silk, making their heads resemble little embroidered balls. All the riders are sitting up, backs straight, chests thrown out proudly. The ostriches hold their triangular heads high—spirited, proud, arrogant marchers, despite the lacklustre grey of their feathers. Bright red silk bands round their necks offset their lack of colour. Seemingly incapable of slow movements, the ostriches take long, running strides that cover at least three feet; annoyingly hindered by the slow-moving camels ahead of them, all they can do is twist and turn their long, curved necks. The two contingents—East City and West City—have stopped, and a chorus of turbulent and chaotic drumbeats, gong clangs, music strains and marchers’ shouts fill the air. A dozen TV journalists jockey for position to film the scene. One of them, wanting to get a special shot, has come too close to a camel; it angrily bares its teeth, then roars and spits a gooey missile at the man, temporarily blinding both him and his camera. He screams as he jumps out of the way, drops his camera, bends over and wipes his eyes with his sleeve, as a man responsible for the arrangement of the parade participants raises his flag and shouts at everyone to take their places on the Festival grounds. The cow-headed and chicken-headed floats make slow turns onto the grassy field, followed by a seemingly unending body of parade contingents. The acrobat, with his martial bearing, steps nimbly and smiles broadly as he leads the East City camel unit onto the grass. The abused journalist standing by the side of the road assails his tormentor with loud curses but is totally ignored. The camels are more or less orderly as they move forward, but the twenty-four ostriches seem angry about something, and their formation breaks down as they run helter-skelter towards the temple grounds, drawing terrified shrieks from their riders, some of whom slide quickly out of the saddle, while others cling to the necks of their mounts, their young faces drenched with sweat. Once the ostriches reach our yard they huddle together, shuffling back and forth. That's when I discover that the birds’ feathers, which looked so dull from a distance, are actually quite beautiful in the sunlight. It's a simple beauty, like priceless Qin Dynasty brocade. Some employees of the Rare Animals Slaughterhouse Corporation frantically try to herd the ostriches back, but all they manage to do is scare them further. I look into the ostriches’ hate-filled little eyes, listen to their hoarse screeches and watch as one of them kicks a worker in the knee. Knocked to the ground, he grabs his injured knee and utters a cry of pain, his face waxen and his forehead beaded with sweat. The ostriches take off running, the hard knuckles of their feet pounding loudly on the ground. I know that those feet can kick as hard as a horse, and I've been told that a mature bird isn't afraid to take on a lion. An ostrich's toes are hardened from a lifetime of running across the savanna, so it's a foregone conclusion that the man sitting on the ground yelping in pain has a badly injured knee. When a couple of his friends lift him up by the arms, he immediately sits back down. By now, most of the children have slid off their mounts, all but one girl and one boy who hold on tenaciously. Rivulets of sweat smear the paint on their taut faces until they look like artists’ palettes. The boy is clutching the joint connecting the ostrich's wings to its body as he bounces up and down with every step the bird takes. He holds on to the wings even when his rear end is up in the air; but then the ostrich makes a mad dash and he slips sideways under the mouth-gaping, eye-popping stares of the people round him, none of whom makes a move to come to his rescue. A moment later, he's lying on the ground clutching two fists full of feathers, until someone walks over and picks him up. He bites his lip as the tear dam bursts. Meanwhile, the riderless ostrich has rejoined the herd and is breathing heavily and noisily through its open mouth. The girl still has her arms wrapped round the neck of her bird, though it is trying its best to dislodge her. But she's too much for it, thanks to a panic attack and, in the end, she gets it to slump to the ground, neck and head lying in the dirt, tail end pointing skyward, flinging mud behind it as it paws the ground in vain.
All that pork lay heavily in my stomach, churning and grinding like a litter of soon-to-be-born piglets. But of course I was no sow, so I couldn't possibly know what that felt like. The belly of the pregnant sow at Yao Qi's nearly scraped the ground when she grunted her way over to the snow-covered garbage heap in front of the newly opened Beauty Hair Salon, to root out edible titbits. Lazy, fat and carefree, she was, as anyone could see, a happy sow, in a different class from the two skinny-as-jackals, moody, human-hating little pigs we'd once raised. Yao Qi made sausage out of meat so fatty that even the dogs turned their noses up at it, filled with sweet potato starch and red-dyed bean-curd skin, to which he added chemical ingredients no one knew about. The end result was a product that looked good, smelt nice and sold well; the money rolled in. He raised pigs as a hobby, not as an investment, and definitely not for the fertilizer produced, the way people once did. So his pregnant sow came out early in the morning, every morning, not to scavenge food but to play in the snow, take leisurely strolls and get a little exercise. I sometimes saw Yao Qi on the steps of his house (which didn't look as good as ours but was actually as sturdy as a fortress), left arm tucked under his right armpit, a cigarette in his right hand, squinting dreamily at the meanderings of his pig. Rays of light from the red sun turned his angular face into a slice of barbecued pork.
I'd eaten so much pork that the mere memory of Yao Qi's pig made me ill. The hideous outline of the pregnant sow undulated in front of my eyes, the stench of garbage churned in my stomach. All you sordid representatives of humanity, how can you think of filling your bellies with pork? Pigs feast on garbage and shit. Therefore, so do you! The day I become supreme ruler, I'll cast all the world's pork eaters into sties and turn them into muck-swilling pigs. I'm tormented by regret, shamed by ignorance. How could I have coveted that pig's head that Mother cooked without condiments, the one covered by a layer of white fat? The filthiest, most shameful thing the world has ever seen, good only for feeding the wild cats that live out their lives in the sewers…Ah—ugh—I actually picked up chunks of that foul, wiggly stuff with my filthy claws and stuffed them into my mouth, transforming my stomach into a garbage sack…Ah—ugh—I'm going to stop being a ruminate…Ah—ugh—I vigorously deposited what I'd brought up on the ground. Disgusting, so disgusting! My stomach lurched spasmodically at the repugnant sight of my vomit, and sent whatever was left down there erupting into my throat and mouth. A dog waited patiently and quietly close by. Father walked up behind me, holding Jiaojiao's hand in one of his and thumping me on the back with the other to relieve my anguish.
My stomach had collapsed into itself, my throat was on fire and my guts were tied up in knots, but I felt better, less burdened, like the sow after she's delivered her litter. I repeat: I was no sow, so I couldn't possibly know what that felt like. I looked at Father with tears in my eyes. He dried my face with his hand.
‘It's good to get that out of your system,’ he said.
‘Dieh, I swear I'm never going to eat meat again!’
‘Don't make promises you can't keep,’ he said, with a look of fatherly concern. ‘Always remember, son, you mustn't make vows, no matter what. That's like kicking the ladder away after you've climbed the wall.’
It would not take long for his words to prove prophetic. A new desire to eat meat materialized only three days after throwing up all that pork, and it would not go away. I began to wonder if the boy who had expressed revulsion towards meat and had called it every rotten thing he could think of was actually someone else, someone without a heart.
We stood in the doorway of the Beauty Hair Salon, next to the spinning barber pole, studying the price list in the window. After polishing off one of the richest breakfasts in memory, we were carrying out Mother's instructions to have our hair cut.
By all appearances—her face glowed, her spirits were high—Mother was in a good mood. Tossing the greasy dishes into the sink, she said to Father, who stepped up to help: ‘Stay where you are and leave this to me. New Year's is just round the corner. What day is it today, Xiaotong, the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth?’
Did she really expect me to answer that? The meat I'd just eaten had already made its way up into my throat and was waiting for me to open my mouth to make its escape. Besides, I had no idea what day it was. During the dark days before Father's return, dates were the farthest thing from my mind. I hadn't enjoyed a minute's rest, not even during the major holidays. I'd been, for lack of a better term, a slave.
‘Take them out to get haircuts,’ Mother said, sounding like she was making a fuss, though the emotions written on her face when she looked at Father put the lie to that. ‘Go to the mirror and tell me if it's human beings that look back at you! You all look like you've crawled out of a doghouse. Maybe you don't care what people think but I do.’
I almost croaked when I heard the word haircut.
Father scratched his head. ‘Why waste the money? I'll buy some clippers and gnaw at their heads instead.’
‘Clippers? We've got those.’ Mother took some money out of her pocket and handed it to Father. ‘No, this time they need a real haircut. Fan Zhaoxia knows what she's doing, and she doesn't charge much.’
‘There are three heads here,’ said Father with a sweep of his arm. ‘How much do you think that will cost?’
‘For those three hard heads of yours, give her ten yuan.’
‘What?’ Father reacted with predictable alarm. ‘For ten yuan you can buy half a sack of rice.’
‘Three shaved heads are not going to make the difference between rich and poor,’ Mother said charitably. ‘Go on, take them over.’
‘Um…’ Father didn't know what to say. ‘Peasants’ heads aren't worth that kind of money.’
‘Ask Xiaotong what he thinks about letting me cut his hair,’ Mother said cleverly.
Holding my belly with my hands, I wobbled my way outside. ‘Dieh!’ I said in utter dejection, ‘I'd rather die than let her cut my hair!’
Portly Yao Qi walked up, stuck his head in and took a good look at Father, who was agonizing over the cost of professional haircuts. ‘Lao Luo!’ he bellowed as he smacked Father on the back of the neck.
‘What?’ Father turned and remarked calmly.
‘Is it really you?’
‘Who else would it be?’
‘Aren't you something—the prodigal son returns! What about Wild Mule?’
Father shook his head. ‘Don't ask.’ Then he opened the door and took us inside the salon.
‘I say, you really are something,’ Yao Qi's voice followed us in. ‘A wife, a mistress, a son and a daughter. Of all the men in Slaughterhouse Village, you're the best!’
Father shut the door in Yao Qi's face. Yao Qi pushed it back open and, one foot in, carried on: ‘I've missed seeing you about all these years.’
Father ignored him and, with a wry smile, pulled my sister and me over to a dusty bench strewn with dog-eared magazines that had been flipped through and pawed over more times than I could imagine. The bench was a replica of the one in the station's waiting room, so it was either made by the same carpenter or stolen by the salon owner. A swivelling barber-chair with a footrest and a leather seat—so cracked it looked like it had been slashed—awaited us. The mirror on the wall in front of the chair had rippled and faded, creating only blurred reflections. A narrow shelf under the mirror was crowded with shampoos, hair gels and mousse (that's right, it's called mousse). A pair of electric clippers hung from a rusty nail on the wall alongside a dozen coloured illustrations of fashionable hairstyles worn by young models—men and women; some still stuck fast to the wall while others had begun to peel away. The red brick floor had undergone a change in colour thanks to all the black, white and grey hair that had lain atop it, that and the mud tracked in by customers. A strange and pungent smell—not quite fragrant but far from offensive—in the air inside made me sneeze—three times in a row. It must have been contagious because Jiaojiao did the same thing, three times in a row. She looked funny yet adorable with her face scrunched up with every sneeze.
‘Who's thinking of me, Daddy?’ She blinked. ‘Is it my mother?’
‘Yes,’ Father said, ‘it must be.’
A sombre expression creased Yao Qi's face as he remained standing at the door, one foot in, one foot out, neither this nor that, a sort of androgynous stance.
‘Lao Luo,’ he said heavily, ‘I'm glad you're back. I'll come by to see you in a couple of days. There's something important I want to talk to you about.’
With that he was gone; the door slid shut, keeping the clean, snow-injected air outside and thickening the foul air inside. Our sneezing contest over, Jiaojiao and I were more or less acclimated to the smell of the shop. The barber wasn't there at the moment but I knew she'd just left, because the minute I walked in the door I spotted something in the corner that looked like one of those public telephone booths I'd seen in town. A woman in a purple coat was sitting under a semi-circular canopy, her neck stiff and her head covered with brightly coloured curlers. She looked a bit like an astronaut, a bit like a rice-sprout girl at a New Year's celebration and a bit like Pidou's niang. Actually, that's who she was. Pidou's dieh was the butcher Big Ear, which made Pidou's niang Big Ear's wife. There was just one thing that kept her from looking exactly like Pidou's niang: I hadn't seen her for a long time and now she was sort of puffy, as if she had a meatball tucked in each cheek. I remembered her as having full eyebrows that swept across her forehead, the Goddess of Bad Luck. But she'd plucked them bare and replaced them with thin pencilled lines of green and red like caterpillars that dine on sesame leaves. She sat there holding a picture book in her hands, held as far out as her arms could reach—she was obviously farsighted. She hadn't looked up once since we entered, in the affected manner of a noblewoman who ignores a beggar. Shit! What are you but a self-satisfied, stinking old hag! No matter what you do—you could pull out every hair on your head, you could peel the skin from your face and you could colour your lips redder than pig's blood—you'd still be Pidou's niang and a butcher's old lady! Go ahead, ignore us—we can do the same to you! I sneaked a look at Father, who sat there remote and indifferent, quite aloof, actually, as distant as the sky on a cloudless day, as unapproachable as the head monk in a Shaolin Temple, as detached as a red-capped crane in a flock of chickens, as standoffish as a camel in a herd of sheep…The barber-chair was unoccupied, a soiled white smock covered with fine hairs draped over its back. The sight of all that hair made the back of my neck itch; and, when it occurred to me that it might be from Pidou's niang, the itch grew downright painful.
I'd been obsessively protective of my head since childhood, something my father knew all too well. That was because every time I had a haircut I had hairs all over my body that itched worse than lice. I can count the haircuts I've submitted to in my life so far. After Father left, we had not only a pair of clippers in the house but also a pair of barber's shears and a Double Arrow straight razor. Admittedly, every item in this nearly complete set came from our scavenger days and, after Father left, Mother put these rusty instruments to use in the battle of the scalp—my scalp—to save money without having to rely upon favours from anyone. Fourth Brother Kui, a neighbour of ours, gave professional-quality haircuts but Mother was unwilling to seek his help. My screams usually proved which of us was losing the battle.
Wise Monk, let me tell you about my worst haircut experience—and I'm only slightly exaggerating. When no amount of threats or inducements had any effect on me, Mother tied me to a chair to give me a New Year's haircut. She'd added plenty of muscle since Father left, and acquired a powerful grip. I tried anchoring myself to the floor, I tried rolling round like a donkey and I tried burying my head between my legs, like a dog, but nothing worked, and in the end I was strapped to the chair. I think I probably bit her on the wrist during our struggle, since my mouth was filled with the taste of burnt rubber. I was right, as I found out once I was strapped in and she examined her left wrist—it bled from two punctures and a dozen little purple tooth marks. A look of weary sadness spread across her face. I began to feel a bit of regret plus a bit of apprehension, but most of all a sense of satisfaction about what I'd done to her. Little guttural moans were followed by two lines of discoloured tears running down her cheeks. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and pretending I knew nothing about her injured hand or the look of sadness on her face; I wasn't sure what would happen next, but deep down I knew there was no escape. Sure enough, the tears stopped and the sad look went away. ‘You bastard,’ she smirked, ‘now you've done it, you little bastard. How dare you bite your mother! Merciful heavens,’ she said as she looked skyward, ‘open your eyes and look at the sorry excuse for a son I've raised! Not a son—a wolf, a contemptuous wolf! I've slaved to raise him, putting up with every shitty mess he made, and for what? So he can sink his teeth into me? I've endured back-breaking work, sweat by the bucketful and every imaginable indignity. They say the goldthread plant is bitter. Well, it's not as bitter as my life. They say vinegar is sour. Well, it's downright sweet compared to my life. After all that, this is what I ended up with! You haven't got all your teeth yet and your wings aren't hard enough to fly away, and still you sink your fangs into me? In a few years, when your teeth are grown and your wings are strong, you'll be ready to chew me up and spit me out! Well, you little bastard, I'll kill you with my own hands before I let that happen!’ Mother was still cursing when she picked up a turnip as long as my arm, one she'd brought up from the cellar that morning, and broke it over my head. I felt as if my head had exploded and I saw half a turnip fly off somewhere just as the other half pounded my head, over and over and over. It hurt, but not unbearably. For a worthless child like me, that sort of pain is like the powerful Zhang Fei snacking on bean sprouts, easy as one, two, three. But I made it look like she'd knocked me senseless and let my head sag to the side. She grabbed my ear and pulled my head up straight. ‘If you think you can fool me into thinking I've killed you, you're very much mistaken. You can roll your eyes, you can foam at the mouth, you can have a fainting spell. You're very much alive, but even if you're not I'm going to shave that scabby head of yours! If I, Yang Yuzhen, can't do that, then I've got no business being your mother!’ She put a basin on top of the stool in front of me and pushed my head down into the hot water. It was really hot—hot enough to debristle a hog—and I could no longer hold back. Glug glug glug…‘Yang Yuzhen, you stinking old woman, Yang Yuzhen, I'm going to have my dieh finish you off with that donkey dick of his!’ That filthy, disgusting curse really hit home, for I heard her screech just before a hailstorm of fists descended on my head. I screamed for all I was worth—it was my only chance for a miracle. Hoping some demon or ghost or the gods of heaven and earth would hurry up and put an end to the torture, I'd have gladly banged my head in three—no, make that six, or nine—loud kowtows to anyone who came to my rescue. Hell, I'd have called him Daddy, Dear Daddy. But it was Mother—no, not Mother, Yang Yuzhen, that bloodthirsty old woman, the hag my dieh had abandoned, who walked up, a yellow plastic apron round her waist, sleeves rolled up, a straight razor in her hand, creases in her forehead. Shave my head? She was going to cut it off! ‘Help!’ I shouted. ‘Help…murder…Yang Yuzhen is going to murder me…’ I guess my shouts weren't as effective as I thought, because her rage was abruptly replaced by snorts of laughter. ‘You little swine, is that the best you can come up with?’ I turned to see a bunch of more fortunate children—those lucky fellows—at our gate craning their necks to see what was going on inside—Yao Qi's son Fengshou, Chen Gan's son Pingdu, Big Ears’ son Pidou, and Song Gujia's daughter Feng'e…I'd stopped hanging out with that crowd since my dieh ran off, not willingly, Dieh, but because I didn't have the time. Yang Yuzhen yanked me out of school and, at my young age, turned me into a coolie labourer, working me ten times harder than a poor cowherd in the old society. She got me wondering if she was really my mother. Tell me, Dieh, was I some cast-off baby born out of wedlock that you brought home from that run-down kiln where they made earthen crockpots? No real mother could bear to treat her child as mercilessly as she treats me. I guess I've lived long enough, so go ahead, Yang Yuzhen, kill me in front of those children. I felt the cold steel of her razor on my scalp. The moment of danger had arrived! I scrunched down my neck, like a threatened turtle. Emboldened by the sight, the children, like rats that had licked the cat's arse, moved in, through the gate and into our yard, drawing closer and closer to the house until they were standing just beyond the door, giggling and watching the comedy play out in front of them. ‘Aren't you ashamed to be crying like that? Especially in front of your friends. Fengshou, Pingdu, Pidou, do you cry when you're getting your heads shaved?’ ‘No,’ chorused Pingdu and Pidou. ‘Why should we? It feels good.’ ‘You hear that?’ She waved the clippers in front of me. ‘A tiger doesn't eat her young. What makes you think your mother would do anything to hurt you?’ While I was dredging up all those bad memories of the shaved-head incident, Fan Zhaoxia, owner of Beauty Hair Salon, walked in from one of the inner rooms, wearing a white smock, her hands in her pockets and looking like a woman's doctor. Tall and slim, she had a full head of black hair and fair skin but her face was marred by purple lumps and her breath carried the heated odour of horse feed. I knew that she and Lao Lan had a special relationship and that she was the one who kept his head neatly shaved. According to what I heard, she also trimmed his beard, a process that took upwards of an hour, while he slept. There was even talk that she shaved him while sitting in his lap. I wanted to tell Dieh all about Lao Lan and Fan Zhaoxia, but he kept his head down and refused to look at me.
‘About time, Zhaoxia?’ Pidou's niang put down her book and shot a gaze at the other woman's mottled face. Fan Zhaoxia tossed an indifferent glance at the golden-yellow watch on her wrist.
‘Another twenty minutes,’ she said.
Fan Zhaoxia painted the nails of her long, slender fingers a seductive red. As far as Mother was concerned, any woman who used lipstick or painted her nails was a flirt, and whenever she saw one she muttered curses through clenched teeth, as if venting pent-up loathing. My one-time disapproval of women who did things like that came from my mother, but then all that changed. I'm ashamed to admit it, but now when I see a woman with red lips and painted nails my heart races and I can't take my eyes off her. Fan Zhaoxia picked up the smock from the back of the chair, shook it open and snapped it in the air a couple of times.
‘Who's first?’ she asked, still in that indifferent tone.
‘You first, Xiaotong,’ Father said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘you first.’
‘Hurry up,’ fussed Fan Zhaoxia.
With a look my way, Father stood up, crossed his arms, walked up to the chair and cautiously sat down; the springs creaked beneath his weight.
Fan Zhaoxia first tucked in Father's collar and then tied the smock round his neck. I saw her face in the mirror. She was frowning, a mean look. His face was next to hers, twisted and ugly in the rippled mercury.
‘How do you want it?’ she asked, still frowning.
‘Shaved,’ he said in a muted voice.
‘Aiya!’ Pidou's niang blurted out in astonishment, apparently recognizing Father at that very moment. ‘Aren't you—’
Father grunted a response, neither answering her unfinished question nor turning his head.
Fan Zhaoxia took a pair of electric clippers from a peg on the wall and turned it on, producing a low hum. Pressing down Father's head, she pressed the clippers into his tangle of hair. A pale swath of skin opened up down the middle as clots of hair, dense as felt, rained down on the floor.
As I recall the scene of Father's cascading hair, what plays out in front of my eyes is actually something different: the handsome fellow named Lan—we'll call him Lao Lan's third uncle (that's because the image that follows matches exactly what Lao Lan said)—is marrying that lovely woman with the beauty spot at the corner of her mouth—that's right, Shen Yaoyao—in a Western-style ceremony in a towering church room that glitters like gold. He is wearing a dark Western suit, a white shirt and a black bow tie, with a purple boutonnière tucked into his breast pocket. His bride is in white, with a long train held off the floor by a pair of angelic little boys. She has a face like a peach blossom, eyes like twinkling stars; the milk of happiness flows down her face. Candles, music, fresh flowers and fine wine create a romantic aura. But no more than ten minutes have passed since a white-haired old man on his way to the church was shot in the chest in his sedan, and the smell of gunpowder has already invaded the church's vestibule. Is this another of your tricks, Wise Monk? Then I see the girl sprawled across her father's body, shattering the silence with her wails, mascara-laden tears coursing down her face, as the handsome young man stands silently and impassively to one side. The next image—in a fancy room—is of the young woman, cutting off her beautiful hair. I can see her bloodless face in the mirror on the wall, her wrinkled mouth turned down at the corners. I see her recollections as she shears through the strands of hair. At some hazy place that beautiful young woman and the handsome young man are making love in strange positions. Her passion-filled face rushes towards me, then crashes into the mirror and shatters into a million pieces. Then I see her in dark blue clothes, her head covered by a blue and white scarf as she kneels before an old Buddhist nun. Wise Monk, just the way I kneel in front of you. The old nun takes her in, Wise Monk, but you still haven't taken me in. I'd like to ask if that handsome young man hired someone to kill the beautiful young woman's father. I also want to ask what they wanted. I know you'll never answer my question, but now that I've shared my suspicions with you I can put them out of my mind. If I don't, they'll overload my brain and drive me crazy. There's something I want to tell you, Wise Monk. One summer day around noon, more than a decade ago, when everyone in Slaughterhouse Village was asleep, I walked the streets aimlessly like a bored dog, sniffing here and there. When I reached the Beauty Hair Salon entrance, I put my face up against the glass to see what was going on inside. What I saw was an electric fan hanging on the wall, turning from side to side, and the barber, Fan Zhaoxia, in her white smock, seated in Lao Lan's lap with a straight razor in her hand. For a moment I thought she was going to cut his throat, but then I could tell that they were doing you-know-what. She held the razor high over her head in order to keep it away from his face. Her legs were spread and hooked over the arms of the barber-chair. A look of rapture twisted her face out of shape. But she held on to that razor, as if to prove to anyone sneaking a look inside that they were working, not having sex. I wanted to tell someone about these strange goings-on but there was no one to tell, only a black dog sprawled beneath a plane tree, panting away, its tongue lolling to the side. I backed up several paces, picked up a brick and flung it with all my might, then turned to run as fast as I could. I heard the sound of shattering glass behind me. Wise Monk, I'm ashamed to reveal that I was capable of something so despicable, but I think that if I don't tell you it will be an act of disloyalty. I know people call me a Powboy, but that was then. Now, every word I tell you is the unvarnished truth.