Brothers (16 page)

Yanker Yu was stunned into silence. Then he burst out laughing. "You little bastard."

After Baldy Li spent half an hour at Yanker Yu's, Yu was amused but Baldy Li was still bored, so he got up and went back to Blacksmith Tongs shop. Baldy Li sat on Tongs long bench with his back against the wall and his head half cocked, watching Blacksmith Tong energetically hammering out a red-tasseled spear. The blacksmith held the spear with his tongs in his left hand and wielded his iron hammer with his right as sparks flew all over the shop. The red revolutionary armband on Blacksmith Tongs left arm kept slipping down, and he would raise his tongs-wielding left hand to slide the armband back up, waving the spearhead in his tongs through the air. As he hammered away Blacksmith Tong looked over at Baldy Li, remembering how the little fellow used to climb onto the long bench and rub back and forth but now would just lean against it dejectedly like a diseased chicken squatting in a corner. Blacksmith Tong couldn't help but ask him, "Hey you're not going to have sexual relations with the bench?"

"Sexual relations?"
Baldy Li cackled a few times, thinking that it was a funny phrase. But he shook his head and laughed bitterly. "I've lost my sex drive."

Now it was Blacksmith Tongs turn to cackle. He said, "This little bastard is impotent."

Baldy Li laughed along. He asked Blacksmith Tong, "What does
impotent
mean?"

Tong laid down his hammer and wiped his face with the towel draped around his neck. "Loosen your pants and look at your weenie," he said.

Baldy Li loosened his pants and took a look. Blacksmith Tong asked, "So is it soft?"

Baldy Li nodded. "Its as soft as dough."

"That's called impotence." Blacksmith Tong hung the towel back around his neck and, squinting, explained: "When your weenie is hard like a little cannon about to fire, that means you have a sex drive. But when it's soft as dough, then you're impotent."

Baldy Li let out an "oh." As if discovering a new continent, he exclaimed, "So I'm impotent."

By this time Baldy Li was already notorious. In Liu, there were quite a few loafers loitering in the streets who would sometimes raise their fists, shout a few slogans, and follow behind some parading troupe, or sometimes they would lean idly against the wutong trees, yawning nonstop. These loafers were all acquainted with Baldy Li, and whenever they saw him, they would get excited and start chuckling, calling out to one another, "That pole-humping fellow is here."

But Baldy Li was no longer his old self. Song Fanping had been locked in the warehouse, and Song Gang, who had lost his voice, was no longer speaking to him. Alone and constantly hungry, Baldy Li walked dejectedly along the main streets, having lost all interest in the wooden poles lining the streets. The loafers, however, remained very interested in him. Keeping an eye on the parade making its way down the street, they blocked his path and pointed at the wooden poles along the street, whispering, "Hey, kid, haven't seen you hump the poles for a while."

Baldy Li shook his head and answered in a ringing voice, "I no longer have sexual relations with them."

These loafers shook with laughter and surrounded Baldy Li to
prevent him from getting away. They waited until the crowds had passed, then asked him again, "So why don't you have sexual relations anymore?"

With a practiced air Baldy Li unfastened his pants and instructed them to look at his penis. He said, "See that? See my weenie?"

Knocking their heads together, they looked down Baldy Li's pants, and when they nodded, their heads knocked together again. Holding their heads, they answered that they'd seen it, and Baldy Li continued, "So is it as hard as a little cannon? Or is it as soft as dough?"

These people didn't know what Baldy Li was getting at, so they nodded, "Soft, definitely soft, like dough."

"So that's why I no longer engage in sexual relations," explained Baldy Li.

Then he waved his hands like a famous knight errant bidding farewell to his fighting days, and parted the crowd. After a few steps he turned back. Sounding as if he had seen the sorrow of the ages, he said with a sigh, "I'm impotent."

Buoyed by the crowd's laughter, Baldy Li regained his spirit. He raised his head and strutted off. And when he walked past a wooden electrical pole, he gave it a kick, as if proclaiming that he had fully ended his relationship with all such poles.

CHAPTER 13

B
ALDY LI
didn't have a cent to his name as he roamed the streets. When he was thirsty, he drank from the river. When he was hungry, he could only swallow his saliva and head home. By that point his home was like a shattered vase. The armoire had been pushed over, but he and Song Gang didn't have the strength to lift it back up; the floor was strewn with clothes, but the children were too lazy to pick them up. Since Song Fanping had been taken away and locked up in that warehouse, crowds came to search their house twice more. Each time Baldy Li immediately ducked out, leaving Song Gang to deal with them on his own. He was sure that when Song Gang rasped to them, they would lose their tempers and smack him on the head.

During those days, Song Gang never left the house and instead started cooking like a chef. Song Fanping had once taught the boys how to cook, and while Baldy Li had completely forgotten everything, Song Gang remembered his lessons. When Baldy Li returned home dejected, his stomach growling, he'd find that Song Gang had prepared dinner, had set out their rice bowls and those two pairs of chopsticks of the ancients, and was sitting at the table waiting for him. When he saw Baldy Li walk in swallowing his saliva, Song Gang would start his rasping. Baldy Li knew that he was saying, "You're finally home." The moment Baldy Li stepped inside, he would grab his rice bowl and gulp everything down.

Baldy Li had no idea how Song Gang passed his days—how every day he would stand at the stove and light a match in order to ignite the strip of cotton, and how each day he'd have to pull the cotton out a little farther as it burned shorter and shorter. He worked himself up into a huge sweat, his hands coated in charcoal and his fingernails black, only to serve Baldy Li a pot of half-cooked rice. Baldy Li ate the rice as if he were chewing on kernels, crunching and gnawing until his stomach hurt. The vegetables that Song Gang stir-fried tasted extraordinarily foul. When Song Fanping made them, they were glistening and green, but Song Gang's always came out yellow and wilted, like pickled cabbage. Moreover, the greens would be speckled with black,
charcoal-like specks and would always be either too salty or too bland. Baldy Li had stopped speaking to Song Gang, but he would lose his temper at mealtimes, complaining bitterly, "The rice is still raw, and the greens are wilted. You are a landlords son."

Song Gang would turn beet red and rasp a string of unintelligible words. Baldy Li said, "Stop rasping, you sound like a mosquito farting or a dung beetle crapping."

By the time Song Gang regained his voice, he had learned how to cook the rice evenly. The children had long finished the last of the greens that Song Fanping had left behind for them and had almost emptied the rice barrel. Song Gang put the well-cooked rice in a bowl and placed a bottle of soy sauce next to it. When he saw Baldy Li come in, he exclaimed with surprise, "This time its fully cooked!"

Song Gang had indeed succeeded in cooking the rice so that each grain was round and glistening. This was the best bowl of rice Baldy Li could remember ever having eaten, and though later in life he would have many far better bowls of rice, he always felt that they could not equal the one Song Gang made on this occasion. Baldy Li thought this was a case of blind luck on Song Gangs part, sheer accident that he had produced such a perfect pot of rice. After several days of half-cooked rice, they finally sat down to enjoy the real thing. They didn't have any greens, but they did have soy sauce. The boys poured the soy sauce on top of the steaming hot rice and stirred it in. The rice glistened as if lacquered with red and black paint, and the fragrance of soy sauce mingled with the steaming hot rice, filling the entire room.

By this point it was dark. The children ate their fill of this delicious, oily concoction. Moonlight shone through the window, and a breeze slid past the rooftop. Song Gang started speaking in his raspy voice, his mouth full of soy-sauce rice: "When do you think Papa will come home?"

Tears began to stream down his face even before he finished speaking. He put down his bowl and bent over, sobbing, as he continued swallowing bites of rice. Then he wiped his eyes and began wailing, his raspy voice sounding like a weak siren, a long wail followed by a short one, until his entire body shook.

Baldy Li also lowered his head, feeling terrible. He wanted to say something to Song Gang, but in the end he kept silent, merely telling himself,
He is a landlord's son.

After fixing such an extraordinary pot of rice, the next day Song
Gang once again prepared a half-cooked one. The moment Baldy Li saw the dull specks of grain in the bowl, he knew it was over, that they had to eat raw rice again. Song Gang had been seated at the table, engaged in a science experiment. He had carefully sprinkled some salt in one bowl of rice, then carefully poured a bit of soy sauce in the other. He had then tasted each bowl, one after the other. By the time Baldy Li got home, Song Gang had obtained his results. He happily announced to Baldy Li that rice sprinkled with salt was much tastier than the raw rice mixed with soy sauce, and that the salt should be sprinkled on after each bite. By the time the salt dissolved into the rice, it would have lost some of its flavor.

Baldy Li shouted furiously at Song Gang, "I want cooked rice, I don't want raw rice."

Song Gang looked up and told him the bad news: "We're out of charcoal. The fire went out halfway through."

Baldy Li's anger faded as he had no choice but to sit down and eat the half-raw rice. No charcoal meant no fire. Baldy Li thought to himself that it would be great if only Song Gang could piss out some coal or fart out some flames. Song Gang instructed Baldy Li to sprinkle some salt on the rice and then immediately gulp it down. Baldy Li tried this, and his eyes lit up. Chewing the salt crystals and the rice kernels together produced a nice, crisp taste, and each time Baldy Li bit down on a salt crystal, a burst of flavor would fill his mouth. Baldy Li understood why Song Gang told him to eat the raw rice before the salt melted; it was like rubbing sticks together to make a fire, as the saltiness burst forth at the instant of crunching. Once the salt dissolved, the savoriness disappeared and only a stale taste of salt remained. For the first time Baldy Li found that half-raw rice wasn't half bad. But then Song Gang told him the other bad news: "Now we're out of rice, too."

Come evening, the two boys were still eating the half-cooked rice sprinkled with salt left over from lunch. The next morning they got up after the sun woke them shining on their bare bottoms. After getting out of bed, they ran to a corner outside and took a piss, then fetched a pail of well water and washed their faces. Only then did they remember that they didn't even have a fart left to eat. Baldy Li sat on the front step for a while. He wanted to see how Song Gang was going to figure out how to get something to eat. Song Gang rummaged first through the toppled armoire and then through the clothes on the floor, but he
couldn't come up with a single thing to eat. Song Gang could only swallow his saliva and consider it breakfast.

There wasn't much for Baldy Li to do but to swallow his own saliva and continue roaming the streets and alleyways like a stray dog. At first he still had some spring in his step, but by noon he was like a deflated balloon. Eventually the hungry eight-year-old Baldy Li was transformed into a decrepit eighty-year-old. Even if he ignored his faintness and dizziness or the weakness of his limbs, there were the endless hiccups coming from his completely empty stomach. Baldy Li sat under a wutong tree beside the street for a very long time, tilting his head and watching the people walk past. He saw someone walk by him eating a meat bun, saw the meat juice on that person's lips, and even saw with his own eyes that person licking away the juice with his tongue. Then there was the woman who walked by eating watermelon seeds and spitting the shells right into his hair. But what infuriated Baldy Li the most was a stray dog, since even it was carrying a bone in its mouth.

Baldy Li had no idea how he made it home that evening. He only knew that he was starving. He didn't expect to find any food at home and only wanted to lie down in bed. But when he reached the front door, he suddenly spotted Song Gang sitting at the table, eating. At that moment Baldy Li was ecstatic, and though he was faint with hunger he propelled himself forward.

It was in vain. When he approached, Baldy Li realized that Song Gang had in front of him only a bowl of clear water; putting a bit of salt on his tongue, he let it slowly melt, then chased it with a sip of water, followed by a sip of soy sauce. He puffed his cheeks as if he were savoring this, and only after the taste of soy sauce had fully marinated his tongue did he take another sip of water.

Song Gang used his last bit of energy to eat his salt and soy sauce and drink his water. He was so hungry he had no desire to say anything to Baldy Li, merely pointed at the other bowl of water on the table. Baldy Li knew that this bowl had been prepared for him, and he sat down at the table. Though he was greatly disappointed, he followed Song Gang's lead. A dab of salt and soy sauce and a sip of water was better than nothing at all. Though in truth this lunch consisted of nothing, it made Baldy Li feel that at least he had eaten something. He felt a little better and lay down on the bed, muttering to himself that he wanted to see what there was to eat in his dreams. With a lick of his lips he fell asleep.

Sure enough, the moment he started dreaming he dove headfirst into a giant steamer. Hot steam poured from its sides, and several cooks dressed in white grunted "Hey-ho, hey-ho" as they labored to lift off the giant steamers lid. Baldy Li could see that there were as many steamed meat buns inside as there were people at the struggle sessions in the schoolyard, and each of the buns was oozing meat juices. The cooks put the steamer lid back on, saying that the buns weren't done yet. Baldy Li argued that they were definitely done, the juices were already oozing out of the buns, but the cooks ignored him. He could only stand to one side and wait and wait, until the meat juices were already seeping out of the steamer, whereupon the cooks finally exclaimed, "They're done!" With another series of "Hey-ho, hey-hos" they lifted the lid and said, "Have one!" Baldy Li felt like a diver as he thrust his head into the steamer and scooped up a whole armful of meat buns. And just as he was about to bite into a juice-seeping bun, he woke up.