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Authors: Yu Hua

Brothers (10 page)

BOOK: Brothers
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The two boys started howling like starved dogs and poured the entire bag onto the bed. Baldy Li stuffed three candies into his mouth at once, and Song Gong got in two at least. Laughing as they ate, they no longer licked or sucked but, rather, chewed with abandon, since there was plenty more. The wanted to stuff their mouths full of this exquisite sweetness and creaminess, which slid into their stomachs and spilled out through their nostrils.

The children swept through the bag like a tornado. Out of the original thirty-seven candies, there were now only four left. Song Gang suddenly got scared and burst into tears. Wiping his face, he asked what they were going to do when their parents came home and saw that they had eaten it all? Song Gang's question gave Baldy Li a start—then he proceeded to stuff the remaining four candies in his mouth without a second thought. Song Gang watched as Baldy Li ate the candy and wailed, "Why aren't you scared?"

After polishing off the candies, Baldy Li wiped his lips and said,
"Now
I'm scared!"

The two boys sat in a stupor. They looked at the thirty-seven candy wrappers scattered like fall leaves all over the bed. Song Gang could
not stop crying, worried that he and Baldy Li would be severely punished when Song Fanping and Li Lan discovered this. Song Fanping would beat them until they were black and blue, until they looked like he had on his wedding day. Song Gangs weeping scared Baldy Li, too. He shuddered repeatedly, then came up with an idea. He suggested that they find pebbles about the size of the candies and wrap them up with the candy wrappers. Song Gang stopped crying and smiled, then followed Baldy Li off the bed and out of the house. They looked under the tree, by the well, in the street, even in the corner where Song Fanping usually peed until they had amassed a pile of little pebbles. Cupping them in their hands, they brought them back to the bed and wrapped each in a candy wrapper, then put them back in the bag. Then they put this bag of thirty-seven oddly shaped fake milk candies back inside the pillowcase and placed the pillow back on the bed.

Once they had accomplished all this, Song Gang began to worry again. He resumed sobbing and sniffed, "They'll still find out."

Baldy Li didn't cry. He grinned, shook his head at Song Gang, and said to comfort him, "They don't know yet."

Even at this tender age Baldy Li was already a live-life-while-you-can kind of guy. Once he had finished all the White Rabbit candies, his interest in the bench returned. Amid the din of Song Gang's sobbing, he climbed up on the bench again and started wiggling. This time he knew exactly what he was doing. He put his weight on his weenie, wiggling directly there. He wiggled until he was once again breathing heavily and red in the face.

From this point on Baldy Li and Song Gang were inseparable. Baldy Li liked having this older brother, because only after acquiring a brother was he able to start living his life of free roaming. Before, when Li Lan left for work at the silk factory, she would lock him in the house and make him spend day after day there. Song Fanping, however, would tie a key around Song Gang's neck, allowing the boys to wind freely through the streets and alleys of Liu. Song Fanping and Li Lan had worried that the boys would end up fighting each other every day, never expecting that the two would end up becoming so close. They would always be covered in scrapes and bruises from accidents but never showed any trace of having been in a fight. Only once did they come back with swollen lips and bloody noses, but those were a result of fighting with some other family's kids.

After discovering the marvels of his body on the bench, Baldy Li
started rubbing his weenie like an addict. He and Song Gang would be strolling down the street, and he would suddenly stop in his tracks and announce, "I need to take a few rubs."

Then he would hump a big wooden electrical pole. Listening to the buzz of the electricity, he would rub his body up and down until he was beet red and panting heavily. After he finished, he would sigh with contentment and tell Song Gang, "That feels
so
good."

Song Gang was in awe of Baldy Li's expression but was also mystified. He often asked Baldy Li, "Why can't I feel good?"

Baldy Li was mystified too and would shake his head in confusion. "Yeah, why doesn't it feel good?"

A few times as the boys were crossing the bridge, Baldy Li would suddenly be struck with his cravings. He would lie right down on the bridge and start rubbing as if he were on the bench at home. Beneath him was the town creek, and tugboats would pass underneath, whistles blowing. When the whistles blew, Baldy Li would become even more excited. One time he felt so good he started squealing with delight.

Once three middle-school students happened to walk by—the same three who had fought Song Fanping on the day of his wedding. They stood next to the bridge watching Baldy Li curiously and asked, "Hey, kid, what'cha doing?"

Baldy Li flipped himself over and answered, panting, "When I rub like this, my weenie gets hard and it feels good."

The students were dumbfounded by his response. Baldy Li proceeded to coach them, explaining that you could also hug the wooden electrical pole, but you were more likely to get tired standing up, so it was better to do it lying down. He concluded, "When you go home, you could just rub yourself on a bench."

The students started howling in amazement, "This kid has hit puberty!"

At that point Baldy Li had an epiphany: He finally understood why his rubbing felt so good while Song Gang's didn't. After the middle-school students walked off, he said to himself,
So I've hit puberty.

Then he smugly told Song Gang, "Your father and me—we've hit puberty, but you haven't yet."

While Baldy Li and Song Gang were roaming the streets, they would often go to the west side of town, where things were busiest. The blacksmith, tailor, knife sharpener, and dentist's shops were all there,
and a popsicle vendor named Wang walked up and down the street, banging on his icebox and hawking his goods.

One day as usual, the boys first stood in front of the tailor s shop and watched as Liu Town s legendary Tailor Zhang took a leather tape measure and measured a woman's neck, chest, and hips. His hands were all over the woman, but instead of getting angry, she merely giggled.

After watching Tailor Zhang for a while, the boys went over to watch the Guan father and son in the knife sharpeners shop. Old Scissors Guan was then in his forties, and Little Scissors Guan was fifteen. The two of them sat on low stools around a wooden basin filled with water. There were two whetting stones in the basin, and as the two sharpened their knives they made a scraping sound like a heavy rain.

The boys then went over to check out the shop of the town s dentist, Tooth-Yanker Yu. Yanker Yu didn't actually have a shop—he sat on the street at a table under an oilcloth umbrella. On the left side of the table was a row of tooth extractors of different sizes, and on the right were a few dozen extracted teeth, used to attract customers. Behind the table was a stool, and beside it was a rattan recliner. When a customer came by, he would lie down on the recliner, and Yanker Yu would sit on the stool. When there were no customers, Yanker Yu would lie down on the rattan chair himself. Once, as Yanker Yu was just getting comfortable he saw Baldy Li out of the corner of his eye and reflexively leapt up and started aiming for Baldy Li's mouth with an extractor. Only when Baldy Li screamed in terror did Yanker Yu realize he had mistaken the boy for a customer. He grabbed Baldy Li and tossed him out. "Damn you, with your baby teeth. Scram!"

Blacksmith Tongs shop was the kids’ favorite destination. Blacksmith Tong had his own cart, which was hugely impressive—much more so than owning a truck nowadays. Every week Blacksmith Tong would go to the junkyard and bring back scrap metal. Baldy Li and Song Gang liked to watch him pound the metal, turning scrap copper into mirror frames and iron into scythes and hoes. The flying sparks made the kids squeal with excitement, and Song Gang asked Blacksmith Tong, "Are the stars in the sky also made out of metal?"

"Yup," answered Blacksmith Tong, "I pounded ‘em myself."

Song Gang held Blacksmith Tong in the highest regard. He marveled to his brother that all the stars in the sky turned out to have been forged in Blacksmith Tongs shop and then launched into the sky!
Baldy Li didn't believe this and said that Blacksmith Tong was bullshitting them, that all the sparks from Blacksmith Tongs pounding ended up as ashes right outside his door.

Even though Baldy Li knew that Blacksmith Tong was full of it, he still liked to watch him work. After learning from the middle-school students the scientific explanation for his love of rubbing, he felt justified in lying down on the bench in the blacksmiths shop. Previously, he would sit there alongside Song Gang and watch Blacksmith Tong, but now he took the bench for himself and made Song Gang stand to one side. Baldy Li spread his hands and shrugged. "Sorry, I need the space. I've hit puberty."

While watching the sparks fly off the anvil, Baldy Li wiggled and panted heavily, crying out along with Song Gang, "Stars, stars, so many stars …"

Back then Blacksmith Tong was still a young fellow in his twenties who hadn't yet married the woman with the fat buttocks. Thickset, with tongs in his left hand and a hammer in his right, he watched Baldy Li while pounding his metal. He knew what the boy was up to and marveled that such a little bastard would be getting off. He suddenly lost his concentration and almost smashed his own hand. Spooked, he threw away the tongs and cursed as he put down his hammer, asking Baldy Li, who was panting away on the bench, "Hey, how old are you?"

Baldy Li panted, "Almost eight."

"Damn," Blacksmith Tong swore. "You little bastard, you're not even eight and you already have a sex drive."

That was how Baldy Li learned what a sex drive was. He felt that Blacksmith Tong explained things better even than the three middle-schoolers. Blacksmith Tong was, after all, far older than they. Baldy Li no longer announced that he had hit puberty but, rather, used this new term. He smugly announced to Song Gang, "You don't have a sex drive yet, but your father does, and so do I."

Baldy Li refined his technique of rubbing the wooden electrical poles. Once he had rubbed himself until he was red in the face, he would start climbing up the pole. When he reached the top, he would then slide back down again. When he reached the bottom, he would sigh with contentment and say to Song Gang, "It feels
so
good!"

One time, just as he had climbed to the top of the pole he saw the three middle-school students walking toward him and hurriedly
slid down. This time he didn't bother telling Song Gang how good it felt, because he called out to the three students, correcting them, "You got it all wrong. Its not because I've hit puberty that my weenie gets all hard from the rubbing. It's that I feel my sex drive coming on."

CHAPTER 8

A
FTER THEIR
tempestuous honeymoon, Song Fanping and Li Lan s life became a slow stream of contentment. They left the house together to go to work, then came back together at the end of the day. The school where Song Fanping taught was close to home, so after work he would walk to the bridge and wait for three minutes until Li Lan arrived. Smiling, they would walk home shoulder to shoulder. They bought groceries together, cooked together, washed clothes together, slept together, and woke up together. There was hardly any time when they were apart.

After a year, Li Lan s migraines returned. The bliss of newlywed life had temporarily suppressed this old problem of hers, but now it was as if the pain had been accruing interest—when it struck again, it was more agonizing than before. Li Lan would no longer just whimper; instead, tears of pain would gush from her eyes. With a white cloth wound tightly around her head, she would rap her temples with her fingers all day like a monk striking his prayer counter. The knocking could be heard throughout the house.

Song Fanping became seriously sleep deprived. Often in the middle of the night he would be awakened by Li Lan s cries of pain. He would get up and bring a pail of water from the well, then soak a towel in the icy water, wring it, and place it on her forehead. This provided Li Lan with some relief. Song Fanping attended to her as though she were a patient running a high fever, getting up several times a night to bring her cool washcloths. However, he was convinced that she should enter a hospital and get treatment. He was completely dismissive of area doctors, so he sat at the dining table and wrote his elder sister in Shanghai. He would write a similar letter almost every week, urging her to help find a suitable hospital there. He peppered his letters with countless phrases like
extremely urgent
and
dire emergency,
and each time he would conclude with a string of exclamation points.

Two months later his sister finally wrote back, announcing that she had located a hospital but would need a referral from a local clinic. This news further increased Li Lan s awe of her husbands abilities.
Song Fanping requested a half days leave from school and accompanied Li Lan to the silk factory at the end of her lunch break. He wanted to talk to her factory director and ask his permission for Li Lan to go to Shanghai to treat her migraines. Li Lan was the sort who did not even dare ask for a single day off, and therefore, after leading Song Fanping to the directors office, she told her husband that she didn't dare go in and pleaded with him to go in alone. Smiling, Song Fanping nodded and, as he walked in, told her to wait outside for the good news.

Song Fanpings earth-shattering dunk had made him a legend in Liu Town. As he introduced himself the director interrupted, saying, "No need, no need, I know who you are. You're the dunker." Then the two began chatting like old pals. They talked for more than an hour—so long that it seemed as though Song Fanping had forgotten that his wife was waiting outside. Li Lan was entranced by this conversation, and even much later, whenever she thought of her husband, she would sigh and think,
He had such a gift for gab!

BOOK: Brothers
10.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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