Frog (8 page)

Wang Gan was standing under the eaves, not making a sound.

Wang Dan was sitting on the front door threshold, gazing at her small face in a tiny hand mirror.

Come out here, Wang Jiao! Yuan Lian shouted. The first time was a request, this time it’s a demand. Commune Security Chief Ning is here. You might get away today, but there’s always tomorrow. Be a man and do this on your own.

The Women’s League chairwoman turned to Wang Jiao’s wife. Stop crying, Fang Lianhua, and tell your man to get out here.

Not a sound from inside the house. Yuan Lian glanced at Security Officer Ning, who waved the four militiamen into the house, ropes in hand.

From where he stood under the eaves, Wang Gan pointed his chin at the pigpen for Ning’s benefit.

Even though one of Ning’s legs was longer than the other, he was fast on his feet. He hightailed it to the pigpen, unholstered his pistol, and shouted at the top of his lungs, Come out of there, Wang Jiao!

Wang Jiao crawled out of the pigpen, sporting cobwebs on his head, and was immediately surrounded by the four militiamen. He wiped his sweaty face. Cripple Ning, he fumed, what are you shouting at? Who do you think you’re scaring with that rusty piece of steel?

I’m not trying to scare you, Ning said. Come quietly and there’ll be no problem.

And what if I don’t? You going to shoot me? He pointed to his crotch. If you’ve got the balls go ahead and shoot me in mine. I’d rather lose my balls to a bullet than to a bunch of old biddies with scalpels.

Wang Jiao, the Women’s League chairwoman said, Don’t be so stubborn. All they do is tie off that little tube . . .

They ought to sew up that thing of yours, Wang Jiao retorted crudely, pointing at her crotch.

As he waved his pistol, Ning gave the command: Tie him up!

I’d like to see you try, Wang Jiao threatened as he reached behind for a shovel, then held it out in front of him, eyes blazing. I’ll lop off the head of anyone who comes close!

The diminutive Wang Dan chose this moment to stand up, still holding her mirror. She was thirteen at the time, but stood only two and a half feet tall. Though extraordinarily small, she wasn’t misshapen, and was like a lovely Lilliputian. She shone rays of blinding sunlight into Wang Jiao’s face with her mirror and giggled with girlish naivety at the sight.

The militiamen took advantage of Wang’s temporary blindness to rush him, wrench the shovel away, and yank his arms around behind him.

As they started to wrap their ropes around him, he burst into loud wails. There was such agony in his howls that rubberneckers sprawled atop his wall or gawking at his gate were pained by what they heard. The four men stood there helpless, ropes hanging from their hands.

Are you a man, Wang Jiao, Yuan Lian asked, or aren’t you? How can a little procedure like this put such a fear in you? I already did it, and it hasn’t affected me at all. If you don’t believe me, have your wife ask my wife.

That’s enough, Wang Jiao sobbed. I’ll go with you.

That bastard Xiao Shangchun set a bad example at the commune, Gugu said. His rationale for opposing the vasectomy campaign was his trifling service as a stretcher-bearer for an Eighth Route Army underground hospital. But when research determined that he was to be removed from his public office and sent back to his village to work the land, he rode his rickety bicycle up to the health centre and insisted that I personally perform the procedure. A notorious lecher, he was a filthy-mouthed hooligan. As he climbed onto the operating table he said to Little Lion: Here’s what puzzles me. There’s a saying – ‘When the essence reaches fullness, it will flow on its own.’ But if you tie off my tube, where will my essence flow to? Will my belly swell to bursting?

She looked at me, red-faced from embarrassment. Prepare him for surgery.

I hadn’t expected him to have an erection while she was prepping him. She’d never seen anything like that before; she dropped the scalpel and cowered in a corner. Clean up your thoughts! I demanded. My thoughts are perfectly clean, he said shamelessly. It got stiff on its own, and there’s nothing I can do about that. All right, then, Gugu said as she picked up a rubber mallet and, with a nonchalant tap, put an end to his erection.

I swear to the heavens, Gugu said, I took scrupulous care in carrying out the procedure on both Wang Jiao and Xiao Shangchun, with total success, but afterward, Wang Jiao walked around bent at the waist, complaining that I’d cut a nerve, and Xiao made a pest of himself at the centre, complaining to county officials that I’d made him impotent. Of those two, Wang Jiao was probably emotionally unstable, while Xiao was nothing but a troublemaker. During the Cultural Revolution, as head of a Red Guard faction, he raped more women than you can count. If we hadn’t performed a vasectomy on him, he might have retained some scruples out of a fear that he’d impregnate someone and suffer serious consequences. But tying off his tubes freed him from all that.

Winter, 1967

So many people turned out for the rally to denounce Party Secretary Yang Lin that the revolutionary committee head, Xiao Shangchun, came up with the ingenious idea of moving the site to the retarding basin on the northern bank of the Jiao River. It was the dead of winter. As people looked out over the ice-covered river, they were treated to a vista of glazed beauty. I was the first villager to learn that the rally was to be held there. One day I was ice fishing beneath a floodgate bridge over the basin when I heard loud voices above me. One of them was Xiao Shangchun. I could have picked his voice out of ten thousand. Damn, he said, what a great setting. We’ll hold the rally here. We can put the stage here on the bridge.

A floodgate had been built above the Jiao River Dam to protect the lower reaches. Every year, when summer turned to autumn, the Jiao River crested and the floodgate was opened, transforming marshland into a lake. Northeast Township residents were unhappy with what was done, since marshland was still land, and the only crop that could be planted in the marsh was sorghum. But who were we to take issue with the needs of the nation? This was one of my favourite hangouts when I skipped school, a place where I could sit and watch water rushing through twelve sluice holes. After the water was let out, the former marshland became a lake some ten square li in size, where fish and shrimp were plentiful enough to bring hordes of fishermen and, increasingly, fishmongers. They tried setting up their stalls on the bridge, and when that didn’t work, they moved to the eastern bank, under a row of willows. During the busy season, a line of stalls would stretch at least two li. Once they formed a market, the local marketplace moved from the commune to the eastern bank of the river. The vegetable peddlers came, the egg sellers came, the oil cruller peddlers came, and with them came other marketplace denizens: thieves, hooligans and beggars. Members of the commune’s armed militia turned out several times to clear the area, and their arrival sent undesirables scurrying; the militiamen’s departure witnessed a probing return of the same people. A combination of legal and illegal commerce thus came into being. I loved looking at fish: carp, silver carp, crucian carp, catfish, snakehead fish, eel, and, while I was at it, crabs, loaches and clams. The biggest fish I ever saw there weighed a hundred jin and had a white belly; it looked a little like a pregnant woman. The old fishmonger stood cowering behind the fish, as if he were in possession of a deity. By then I was palling around with those sharp-eyed, keen-eared fishmongers. Why sharp-eyed and keen-eared? Because agents from the tax bureau often came to confiscate their fish, not to mention the idlers in the commune who pretended to be from the tax bureau to trick them out of their wares. That huge fish was nearly taken away by two men in blue uniforms, cigarettes dangling from their lips, and black satchels in their hands. If the fishmonger’s daughter hadn’t come running up crying and making a fuss, and if Qin He hadn’t exposed the two men’s real identities, they’d have carried that fish off with them.

Qin He wore his hair with a side part and dressed in a blue gabardine student’s uniform, with a Doctoral brand fountain pen and a New China two-colour ballpoint pen clipped to his breast pocket; he looked like a college student reduced to begging during the May Fourth period. His face was deathly pale, his expression gloomy, his eyes moist, as if he were forever on the verge of tears. Yet he was an eloquent speaker of standard Mandarin, his every utterance stage-play quality. He exerted considerable influence on my later decision to try my hand at being a playwright. He was never without his enamel mug, emblazoned with a five-pointed red star and the word ‘Prize’. Standing in front of the fishmongers, he’d say emotionally: Comrades, I’m a man who’s lost the ability to work. And you might say: You’re too young to be a man who’s lost the ability to work. Well, I tell you, comrades, what you cannot see is that I have a serious heart condition, caused by a stabbing. Any physical exertion could cause my damaged heart to rupture, and I’d bleed to death. Won’t you give me one of those fish, comrades? It doesn’t have to be a big one, a small one, even a tiny one will do . . .

He was always successful, and then he’d rush down to the riverbank, clean his bounty with a penknife, find a spot protected from the wind, gather some kindling, and stack a couple of bricks; then, after placing his water-filled enamel mug on top, he’d make a fire and start to slow cook. I often stood behind him to watch him cook his fish and breathe in the aromatic steam emerging from his mug, which soon had me drooling. Oh, how I envied him and his lifestyle . . .

Qin He, who’d been one of the most talented students at the Number One High School, was the younger brother of Qin Shan, the commune’s Party secretary. According to some, the reason Qin He was like he was stemmed from his insane infatuation with my aunt, which became so serious that he tried, but failed, to kill himself with his brother’s pistol. The injury left him in that state. At first people laughed at him, but after he helped the old man hold on to that giant fish, the fishmongers’ view of him changed. To me he was like a magnet. I tried very hard to understand him. The look in his moist eyes cried out for sympathy.

Late one afternoon, after the fishmongers had left for home, I saw him walking into the sunset, trailing a long shadow; so I fell in behind him, hoping to discover his secret. When he realised he was being followed, he stopped, turned, and greeted me with a deep bow. Please don’t do this, dear friend, he said. In an imitation of his voice, I said, I’m not doing anything, dear friend. What I mean, he said in a forlorn voice, is please don’t follow me. You’re walking, I replied, so am I. I’m not following you. He shook his head and murmured, Please, my friend, show some pity for a man of misfortune. He turned and continued walking. I fell in behind him again. He started loping, taking long, high-stepping strides, his body nearly floating as he rocked from side to side, sort of like a paper cutout. I kept up with him at about half-speed, until he stopped to catch his breath, his face the colour of gold foil. Friend . . . his face was tear-streaked . . . I beg you, let me go. I’m terribly disabled, a severely wounded man . . .

Moved by his plea, I stopped and let him continue alone, my eyes filled with the image of his back, my ears to the sound of his sobs. I hadn’t meant to bother him; I’d just wanted to know a bit about how he lived, like, for instance, where he slept at night.

As a teenager I had exceptionally long legs and big feet – size 40 shoes – which caused my mother no end of worries. Our gym teacher, Mr Chen, was a one-time track and field star athlete, and a rightist. Like a buyer of livestock, he squeezed my legs and feet and pronounced me to have the wherewithal to be a star, with the right training, of course. He taught me how to run, to breathe correctly, and to use my strength to best advantage. I proudly took third place in the three-thousand-metre race in the youth category at the all-county elementary and middle school track meet. My skipping school to run to the fish market to see what was happening became an open secret.

That incident initiated a friendship between Qin He and me. He always greeted me with a friendly nod. It was a pan-generational friendship, since he was more than ten years older than me. In addition to Qin, two other beggars camped out in the fish market: Gao Men was a broad-shouldered man with big hands, someone you’d peg as a man of considerable strength. Lu Huahua, who had suffered from jaundice, for some reason had been given a girl’s name. One day Gao and Lu, one with a willow club, the other with a worn-out shoe, ganged up on Qin He and gave him a severe beating. Qin did not raise a hand to defend himself. Beat me to death, he said, and I’ll be eternally grateful. But don’t eat any frogs. Frogs are our friends, and you mustn’t eat them. They have parasites that will make you stupid if you ingest them . . .

I saw green smoke spiralling into the air from a bonfire under a willow tree, and deep in the fire some half-cooked frogs; next to the fire burnt frog skins and bones gave off a foul, nauseating stench. That’s when I realised that Qin He had been beaten for trying to keep them from cooking and eating frogs. The sight of him being beaten brought tears to my eyes. Everyone ate frogs during the famine, though my family vehemently opposed the practice. We’d have rather starved than eat a frog. From that angle, Qin He was our ally. I picked a piece of burnt wood out of the bonfire and used it to poke Gao Men in the butt and Lu Huahua in the neck. Then I took off running down the riverbank with the two beggars hot on my heels. I kept them at a comfortable distance to have some fun, and each time they stopped chasing me, I shouted insults or threw objects at them.

That was the day commune members from forty-eight villages streamed down roads or across the frozen river, waving red flags and beating gongs and drums and pots and pans, as they dragged village miscreants to the retarding basin, where a rally was to be held to subject Yang Lin, the county’s number one capitalist roader, and bad people from all commune departments to public denouncements. We made our way across the river ice, some on homemade skateboards. Gym teacher Chen, who had been such a generous tutor, was wearing a paper dunce cap and a pair of straw sandals, a goofy smile on his face, as he followed the scowling school principal, who also wore a dunce cap. Xiao Shangchun’s son, Xiachun, was driving them along with a javelin. His father was the head of the commune revolutionary committee, while Xiachun himself was the leader of our school’s Red Guard brigade. He was wearing the white Warrior brand sneakers he’d taken off Teacher Chen’s feet. A double-bang starting pistol I’d have loved to get my hands on, and which was supposed to have been public property, now hung from Xiao Xiachun’s belt. From time to time he drew the pistol, added gunpowder, and fired it into the air:
Pow pow!
White smoke followed the explosions, saturating the air with the pleasant odour of nitrate.

I’d wanted to join the Red Guards when the revolution began, but Xiao Xiachun wouldn’t let me. He called me a black model promoted by Teacher Chen the Rightist. He called my great-uncle a traitor, a false martyr, and said that my aunt was a Nationalist secret agent, a turncoat’s fiancé and a capitalist roader’s paramour. To get even, I picked up a dog turd, wrapped it in a large leaf, and hid it in my hand. I walked up to him and said: Xiao Xiachun, how come your tongue is black? He opened his mouth, just as I’d planned. I crammed in the dog turd and took off running. He hadn’t a chance of catching me, since the only person in the school who could outrun me was Teacher Chen.

Watching him strut smugly along in Teacher Chen’s shoes, javelin in hand, starter pistol on his hip, gave rise to hateful jealousy – he needed fixing in the worst way. I knew he was deathly afraid of snakes, but there’d be no snakes in late autumn, so I scrounged up a length of rotting rope under a mulberry tree by the river, coiled it and held it behind my back. As soon as I was right behind him, I collared him with the rope and screamed: A venomous snake!

With a blood-curdling scream, he threw down the javelin and tore the thing off of his neck. When he saw it was only a piece of rope, he slowly gathered his wits, picked up the javelin and said through gnashing teeth: Xiaopao Wan is a counter-revolutionary!

Death! He pointed the javelin at me and charged.

I ran.

He chased me.

On the frozen river I lost my speed advantage, and sensed that a blast of cold air was catching up to me. I was terrified that I’d be run through by his javelin. I knew the guy had honed the tip on a grinding wheel, I also knew that he was mean enough to stick me with it. He’d already shown that by stabbing tree trunks and scarecrows, and had even killed a pig mating with a sow. I kept looking back as I ran. His hair was standing straight up, his eyes were open as far as they’d go, and if he caught me I was a goner.

I ran around people, I threaded my way through people, and when I slipped on the ice, I rolled and crawled to get away from his javelin thrust. He missed and struck the ice, sending chips flying. Then he slipped and fell. I scrambled to my feet and started running again. He got to his feet and was chasing me once more, banging into people right and left – men, women . . . Who the hell do you think you are! Hey – help! Murder —

I crashed into a line of people banging gongs and drums, sending them stumbling in all directions and causing dunce caps to fly off the heads of the miscreants. I bumped past Chen Bi’s father Chen E and his mother Ailian – I bumped into Yuan Sai’s father, Yuan Lian (he’d been labelled a capitalist roader), and crashed into Wang Jiao on my way past. I saw the look on Mother’s face and heard her horror-struck scream – I saw my good friend Wang Gan – I heard a thudding sound behind me, followed by a screech – Xiao Xiachun’s voice. I later learned that Wang Gan had stuck out his foot and tripped Xiao Xiachun, who’d cut his lip when his face hit the ice, and was lucky he hadn’t lost a tooth. When he got to his feet, he turned on Wang Gan, but was kept from getting even by Wang’s father. Xiao Xiachun, you little bastard, Wang Jiao growled, if you so much as touch my son I’ll gouge out your eyes! Three generations of our family have been tenant farmers, he said. Other people might be afraid of you, but you’re looking at one man who isn’t!

The meeting site was a sea of people, all gathered in front of an impressive stage made of wood and reed mats. At the time, the commune boasted a group of skilled workers who specialised in building stages and bulletin board kiosks. Dozens of horizontal red flags adorned the stage along with red banners with white lettering. When we arrived, four loudspeakers mounted on a pair of corner posts were blaring ‘A Song of Quotations’: Marxist thought has thousands of threads that come together in a single remark: To rebel is justified! To rebel is justified!

The place was in an uproar. I attempted to muscle my way up front, my eye on a spot at the foot of the stage. People I shouldered out of the way responded churlishly with feet and fists and elbows. But after all that hard work – my clothes were soaked and my body was black and blue – I not only didn’t make it to the front, I was actually manhandled to the edge of the crowd, where I heard the sound of cracking ice, and had a bad feeling in my bones. Just then a man whose voice sounded like a duck’s quack, burst from the loudspeakers: The public denouncement session is about to begin. All you poor and lower-middle-class peasants, please quiet down . . . in the front rows, please sit down, sit down . . .