Big Breasts and Wide Hips (59 page)

Ji knelt down and turned him face-up. She frowned and scrunched up her lips to block her nostrils. Fang Shuzhai stank to high heaven. She reached down and put her finger under his nose and then savagely pinched the ridge between his nose and mouth. Just then, Fang Shuzhai reached up and grabbed her hand. Still frowning, she got to her feet and kicked Fang Shuzhai. “Stand up!”

“Who kicked that desk over?” There was anger in her look and in her voice as she stood facing the class. “I couldn't see.” “I couldn't see.” “I couldn't see.” “Well, then, who did see? Or which of you kicked it over? How about showing some guts for once.” We held our heads way down low. Fang Shuzhai was sobbing. “Shut up!” she said, smacking the table. “If you're really that eager to die, there's nothing to it. I'll teach you some surefire ways a little later. I don't believe that none of you saw who kicked the desk over. Shangguan Jintong, you're an honest boy, you tell me.” I let my head droop even lower. “Raise your head and look at me,” she said. “I know you're scared, but you have my word there's nothing to be scared of.” I looked up and gazed into that revolutionary face, with those beautiful eyes, and I was immersed in a feeling like an autumn wind. “I believe you have the courage to expose bad people and evil deeds,” she said crisply, “a necessary quality for the youth of new China.” I tilted my head slightly to the left, only to be confronted by an intimidating glare from Wu Yunyu. My head fell back down onto my chest.

“Wu Yunyu, stand up for me,” she said calmly. “It wasn't me!” he bellowed. She just smiled and said, “Why are you so edgy? Why shout?” “Well, it wasn't me,” he muttered, tapping the top of his desk with his fingernails. “Wu Yunyu,” she said, “any person of worth takes responsibility for his actions.” He abruptly stopped tapping the desk and slowly raised his head, his expression turning mean. He threw his book to the floor, wrapped his slate board and slate pencil in a piece of blue cloth, tucked it under his arm, and said with a sneer, “So what if I kicked that desk over? I'm not going to stick around this shitty school! I never wanted to be here in the first place, but you talked me into it.” He walked arrogantly toward the door. He was tall and big-boned, the perfect image of a coarse, unreasonable individual. Ji Qiong-zhi stood in the doorway, blocking his way. “Get out of the way!” he said. “What do you think you're doing?” Ji smiled sweetly and said, “I'm going to show a thieving punk like you” — she struck him in the knee with a flying kick with her right foot — “that if you do something evil” — Wu Yunyu groaned in pain and crumpled to the floor — “that you'll be punished!” Wu took the wrapped slate board from under his arm and flung it at Ji Qiongzhi. It hit her in the chest. Protecting her injured breast with her arms, she moaned. Wu Yunyu stood up and said in a blustery voice that belied his fear, “You don't scare me. I'm a third-generation tenant farmer. Every member of my family — aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews — is a poor peasant. I was born by the side of the road where my mother was begging for food!” Rubbing her sore breast, Ji Qiongzhi said, “I hate dirtying my hands on a mangy dog like you.” She laced the fingers of her hands and bent them back.
Crack! Crack!
Her knuckles popped. “I don't care if you're a third-generation tenant farmer or a thirtieth-generation tenant farmer, I'm still going to teach you a lesson!” With a blur, her fist landed on Wu's cheek. He yelped and staggered from the blow. The next blow landed in his ribs, followed by another kick in the ankle. He lay spreadeagled on the floor, crying like a baby. Ji then grabbed him by the neck and lifted him to his feet, smiling as she looked into his ugly face. As she backed him to the door, she drove her knee into his belly and gave him a shove. Wu Yunyu lay face-up on a pile of bricks. “You,” Ji Qiongzhi announced, “are hereby expelled from this school.”

They stopped me on the path between the school and the village, each holding a springy mulberry switch, the bright sunlight casting a waxy sheen onto their faces. The gentle warmth of the sun's rays brought special luster to Wu Yunyu's snakeskin cap and swollen cheek, Guo Qiusheng's sinister eyes, Ding Jingou's funguslike ears, and the black teeth of Wei Yangjiao, who had a reputation in the village of being particularly crafty. I planned to get past them by hugging the side of the path, but Wei Yangjiao blocked my way with his mulberry switch. “What do you think you're doing?” I asked timidly. “What are we doing, you little bastard?” The whites of his crossed eyes leaped in their sockets like moths. “We're teaching a lesson to the bastard son of a redheaded foreign devil!” “I didn't do anything to you,” I complained. Wu Yunyu's switch landed on my backside, creating hot currents of pain. Then the others joined in: four mulberry switches landed on my neck, my back, my backside, my legs. By then I was howling, so Wei Yangjiao took out a bone-handled knife and waved it under my nose. “Shut up!” he demanded. “If you don't stop crying, I'll cut out your tongue, gouge out your eyes, and slice off your nose!” Sunlight glinted coldly off the blade; properly terrified, I shut my mouth.

I was pinned down under their knees while they attacked the backs of my legs with their switches, like wolves ganging up on a sheep and driving it into the wildwoods. Water flowed silently down the ditches on either side of the path, bubbles bursting on the surface and releasing a stink that grew stronger as dusk settled in. I kept turning back to plead, “Let me go, big brothers,” but that only made them hit me harder, and whenever I cried out, Wei Yangjiao was there to shut me up. I had no choice but to quietly take the beating, go where they wanted to take me.

After crossing a footbridge made of dried stalks, they stopped me in a field of castor flowers. By then my backside was wet — blood or urine, hard to tell. Red rays of sunset were draped across their bodies as they stood in a line. The tips of their mulberry switches were torn and ragged, and so green they looked black. The plump fanlike leaves of the castor plants were home to big-bellied katydids that chirped bleakly, and the strong odor of castor flowers brought tears to my eyes. Wei Yangjiao turned to Wu Yunyu and asked fawningly, “What are we going to do with him, big brother?” As he rubbed his swollen cheek, he muttered, “I say we kill him!” “No,” Guo Qiusheng said, “we can't do that. His brother-in-law is deputy county head, and his sister's also an official. If we kill him, our lives are as good as over.” “We can kill him,” Wei Yangjiao said, “and dump the body into the Black Water River. Within days, he'll be food for ocean turtles, and nobody will be the wiser.” “You can count me out if you plan to kill him,” Ding Jingou said. “His brother-in-law, Sima Ku, who's killed lots of people, might show up, and he'd capable of wiping out our whole families.”

I listened to them discuss my fate and future like a disinterested observer. I wasn't afraid, and never entertained the thought of running away. I was in a state of suspended animation. I even had time to look far off in the distance, where I saw the blood-red meadows and golden Reclining Ox Mountain off to the southeast, and the boundless expanse of dark green crops due south. The banks of the Black Water River, as it snaked its way east, were hidden behind tall grain and reappeared behind the shorter stalks; flocks of white birds formed what looked like sheets of paper as they flew over waters I couldn't see. Incidents from the past flashed into my head, one after another, and I suddenly felt as if I'd been living on this earth for a hundred years already. “Go on, kill me,” I said. “You can kill me. I've lived long enough!”

Looks of astonishment flashed in their eyes. After exchanging glances among themselves, they all turned back to me, as if they hadn't heard me right.

“Go on, kill me!” I said resolutely, before starting to cry. Sticky tears ran down my face and into my mouth, salty, like fish blood. My plea had put them in an awkward position. Again they exchanged glances, letting their eyes talk for them. So I upped the ante: “I beg you, gentlemen, finish me off now. I don't care how you do it, just make it fast, so I won't suffer much.”

“You think we don't have the guts to kill you, is that it?” Wu Yunyu said, cupping my chin in his rough fingers and staring me in the eye.

“No,” I said, “I'm sure you do. All I'm asking is that you make it quick.”

“Men,” Wu Yunyu said, “he's put us in a sticky situation, and killing him is about the only way out. We can't back down now, no matter what happens. It's time to finish him off.”

“You do it, then,” Guo Qiusheng said. “I'm not going to.”

“Is that mutinous talk I hear?” Wu said as he grabbed Guo by the shoulders and shook him. “We're four locusts on a string, so nobody better think about taking off. If you even try, I'll make sure people know what you did to that goofy girl in the Wang family.”

“Hold on,” Wei Yangjiao said. “Quit arguing. All we're talking about is killing him. If you want to know the truth, I'm the one who killed that old woman in Stone Bridge Village. No reason, I just wanted to try out this knife of mine. I used to think that killing someone would be hard to do, but now I know how easy it is. I jammed the knife into her rib cage, and it was like burying it in a cake of bean curd.
Slurp.
Even the handle went in. She was dead by the time I pulled the knife out. She didn't make a sound.” He rubbed the blade of his knife against his pants and said, “Watch me.” Taking aim at my belly, he thrust the knife. I shut my eyes happily, and it seemed to me that I could actually see green blood gush from my belly right into their faces. They ran over to the ditch, where they scooped up water to wash off the blood. But the water was like nearly translucent red syrup, and instead of washing their faces clean, it actually made them dirtier than ever. As the blood gushed, my guts slithered out, slipping along the path over to the ditch, where they were caught up in the flow. With a cry of alarm, Mother jumped into the ditch to scoop up my guts, coiling them around her arm, one loop after another, all the way back to where I was standing. Weighted down by my guts, she was breathing hard and looking at me with sorrow in her eyes. “What happened to you, child?” “They killed me, Mother.” Her tears fell on my face as she knelt down and stuffed my guts back into my belly. But they were so slippery that she no sooner got one section in than it slithered right back out, and she wept in frustration and anger. Eventually, she managed to stuff them all back in; she then took a needle and thread from her hair, and sewed me up like a torn overcoat. I felt a strange shooting pain in my belly and felt my eyes snap open. Everything I'd seen up till that moment was an illusion. The real situation was: They'd kicked me to the ground, taken out their impressive peckers, and were pissing in my face. The wet ground was spinning, and I felt as if I were flailing in a pool of water.

“Uncle — Little Uncle —!”

“Uncle — Little Uncle —!”

Shouts from Sima Liang and Sha Zaohua — one low, the other high — rose from behind the patch of castor plants. I opened my mouth to answer them, only to have it fill up with piss. My assailants hurriedly put away their hoses, pulled up their pants, and vanished into the castor patch.

Sima Liang and Sha Zaohua stood by the footbridge, calling out blindly, like Yunii often did. Their shouts hung above the field for a long time, filling my heart with sadness and stopping up my throat. I struggled to my feet, but before I'd managed to straighten up, I fell on my face. I heard Zaohua call out excitedly, “There he is!”

Together they lifted me up by my arms; I was as unsteady as one of those knock-over dolls. When Zaohua got a good look at my face, her mouth cracked open and —
wah
— she began to bawl. Sima Liang reached down to feel my backside — I yelped in pain. He looked at his hand, red with blood and green from the mulberry switches. His teeth chattered. “Little Uncle, who did this to you?” “They did …” “Who are they?” “Wu Yunyu, Wei Yangjiao, Ding Jingou, and Guo Qiusheng.” “Let's go home, Little Uncle,” he said. “Grandma's worried half to death. You out there, Wu Wei Ding Guo, you four bastards, I want you to listen and listen good. You may be able to hide today, but not tomorrow; you might get past the first of the month, but not the fifteenth. You touch another hair of my little uncle, and they'll be hoisting a flagpole at your house!”

Sima Liang's shouts still hung in the air when Wu, Wei, Ding, and Guo jumped out of the field of castor plants, laughing loudly. “Well, I'll be damned. Where did this runt with all the big talk come from? Isn't he afraid of losing his tongue?” They picked up their mulberry switches and, like a pack of dogs, charged us. “Zaohua, you take care of Little Uncle,” Sima Liang shouted as he pushed me away and rushed to meet the charge of the attackers, all bigger than him. They were shocked by this fearless, almost suicidal charge, and before they could raise the switches, Sima Liang drove his head into the belly of cruel, foul-mouthed Wei Yangjiao, who bent over double and fell to the ground, where he curled up into a ball, like an injured hedgehog. The other three attackers brought their switches down on Sima Liang, who protected his head with his arms and took off running, with them hot on his heels. Compared to the weakling Shangguan Jintong, the little wolf Sima Liang was a more interesting specimen. They shouted excitedly — the chase was on, the battle was launched on the lethargic grassland. If Sima Liang was a little wolf, Wu, Guo, and Ding were massive and savage but very clumsy mongrels. Wei Yangjiao was a hybrid — half wolf and half mongrel — so he had been Sima Liang's first target. Knocking him out of commission removed the leader of the pack. Sima ran fast for a while, then slowed down, using a tactic designed to deal with zombies, changing directions often to keep them from catching up to him. Several times they lost their footing when they had to change direction. The knee-high grass parted and closed back up as they passed through it, scaring tiny wild rabbits out of their burrows; one couldn't get out of the way fast enough, and was squashed under Wu Yunyu's heavy foot. Sima Liang did more than merely run; every once in a while he turned and charged his pursuers. By zigging and zagging, he'd open up enough distance between them that he could turn and make a lightning attack on one. He picked up a dirt clod and flung it in Ding Jingou's face; he took a bite out of Wu Yunyu's neck; and he employed the Cross-eyed Beauty tactic against Guo Qiusheng, grabbing the object hanging between his legs and pulling it hard. All three bullies were wounded, but Sima Liang had received plenty of blows to the head in the process. They were slowing down. Sima Liang retreated to the footbridge. His pursuers formed up ranks; they were gasping for breath, spittle flying like an old bellows, as they cautiously took out after him as a group again — by then, Wei Yangjiao had caught his breath and rejoined his pals. He was like a cat on the prowl. Bending down low, he began to crawl, feeling his way with his hands, his bone-handled knife lying coldly on the ground. “You motherfucker! Bastard son of a restitution corps landlord! I'll kill you or know the reason why!” He cursed softly as he groped along; the white moths of his crossed eyeballs hopping around like hatching eggs. Seeing her chance, Sha Zaohua bounded over like a leaping deer, picked the knife up off the ground, and held it out to me in both hands. Wei Yangjiao stood up and reached out his hand. “Hand it over, you seed of a traitor!” he growled threateningly. Saying nothing, Zaohua backed into me as she shrank from Wei Yangjiao, never taking her eyes off his callused paws. Several times he lunged forward, but quickly backed off at knifepoint. By then, Sima Liang had retreated all the way to the footbridge. “Wei Yangjiao, you fucking asshole!” Wu Yunyu swore loudly. “Come over here and kill this bastard son of a restitution corps landlord! Get your ass over here!” Wei Yangjiao hissed at Zaohua, “I'll be back to take care of you!” He tried to pull up a castor plant to use as a weapon, but it was too thick, so he just broke off one of its branches and, waving it in the air, charged the footbridge.