Pow! (12 page)

My mind was racing, my thoughts all over the place, as I stumbled along behind Yang Yuzhen, my mother. My struggling to get away and the weight of the pig's head slowed us down. People stared at us—some curious, others obviously puzzled. On that extraordinary morning, the sight of my mother dragging me down the road leading from the village to the train station must have struck passers-by as a scene from a strange yet lively little drama. And it wasn't just people: even the dogs first looked, then barked, at us; one even nipped at our heels.

Though she was reeling from an emotional blow, she refused to let go of the pig's head. Instead of dropping it, the way a film actress might do, she held it tightly, like a beaten soldier who refuses to let go of his weapon. Holding on to me with one hand and clutching the unheard-of purchase of a pig's head, meant to patch up things with my dieh, with the other, she ran as fast as she could, though it was difficult. Water glistened on her gaunt cheeks. Sweat or tears? I couldn't tell. She was breathing hard, yet she continued to gasp out a stream of curses.
Should she have been sent down to the Hell of Severed Tongues for that, Wise Monk?

A motorbike passed us, a line of white geese hanging from the rear crossbar, necks twisting as they writhed like snakes. Dirty water dripped from their beaks, like a bull urinating as it walks; the hard, dry road was lined with water stains. The geese honked pitifully and their little black eyes were forlorn. I knew their stomachs had been filled with dirty water, for anything that emerged from Slaughterhouse Village, dead or alive, did so full of water: cows, goats, pigs, sometimes even hen's eggs. A Slaughterhouse Village riddle runs: In the village of butchers, what is the only thing you can't inject with water? After two years, no one but I knew the answer.
How about you, Wise Monk, do you know the answer?
It's water! In a village of butchers, the only thing you can't inject with water is water itself!

The man on the motorbike turned to look at us. What's so damned interesting about us? I may have hated Mother, but not as much as I hated people who stared. She'd told me that people who laugh at widows and orphans suffer the wrath of Heaven. Which is what happened: he was so busy staring at us that he ran into a poplar tree. As he flew backward, his heels struck the goose-covered rear crossbar and all those soft, pliable necks got tangled up in his legs and he tumbled into a ditch. He was wearing a leather overcoat that shone like a suit of armour and a fashionable knit cap. Large-framed sunglasses perched on his nose. In a word, he was dressed like a film tough. There'd been rumours of bandits on the road for a while, so even Mother had begun to dress that way in an effort to keep up her courage; she even learnt how to smoke, though she refused to spend money on decent cigarettes.
Wise Monk, if you could have seen Mother in her black leather overcoat and cap and sunglasses, a cigarette dangling from her lips, sitting proudly on our tractor, you wouldn't have believed she was a woman.
I didn't get a good look at the man's face when he passed us, nor when he turned back to look. But when he somersaulted into the ice-covered ditch, his cap and sunglasses flying through the air, I had a perfect view—he was the township government's head cook and purchasing agent, a frequent visitor to our village. For years, he'd bought everything that contained animal fat or protein and then served it up on the tables of the Party and government officials. A man with political credentials impeccable enough to guarantee the safety, the very lives, of our township leaders, he'd been one of Father's drinking buddies. His name was Han, Han
shifu.
Father told me to call him Uncle Han.

Back when Father used to go to town to share a meaty meal with Uncle Han, he'd usually let me tag along. Once, when he left me home, I ran the ten
li
into town and found them at a restaurant called Wenxiang Lai, where they appeared to be having a serious discussion. A steaming pot of dog meat on the table saturated the area round them with its fragrance. I burst out crying the minute I saw them—no, better to say I burst out crying the minute I smelt the dog meat. I was terribly upset with Father. Unconditionally loyal, firmly in his camp in all his disputes with Mother, I even went so far as to keep secret his relationship with Aunty Wild Mule. And he went off for a meal of good meat leaving me at home! No wonder I burst out crying. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked coldly when he saw me. ‘Why didn't you bring me along if you knew there was going to be meat? Am I your son or aren't I?’ Embarrassed, he turned to Uncle Han: ‘Lao Han, have you ever seen anyone with a greedier mouth than this son of mine?’ ‘You came here to enjoy some meat and left me home with Yang Yuzhen to eat turnips and salted greens, and you call
me
greedy? What kind of dieh are you?’ Just talking like that upset me even more. With the fragrance of the dog meat filling my nostrils, tears gushed from my eyes and ran down my cheeks until my face was wet. Uncle Han laughed. ‘That son of yours, Lao Luo, he's quite a boy. He sure knows how to talk. Come here, young man,’ he said. ‘Sit down and eat to your heart's content. I hear you're a boy who lives to eat meat. Youngsters like you are the smart ones. Come see me anytime. I guarantee you won't go hungry. Boss lady, bring this boy a bowl and chopsticks.’

That was a wonderful meal. I ate and I ate, keeping the ‘boss lady’ busy adding dog meat and soup to the pot. I ate with single-minded concentration, not even stopping to answer Uncle Han's questions. ‘He can eat half a dog at one sitting,’ Father said to the owner. ‘What's wrong with you, Lao Luo?’ Uncle Han asked, ‘How could you neglect your son like this? You have to let him eat. Meat makes the man. Know why we Chinese are no good at sports? It's because we don't eat enough meat. Why not give Xiaotong to me, let me raise him as my son? He'd have meat at every meal.’

I swallowed the piece of dog meat I was chewing and, moved to tears, stared at Uncle Han with an unprecedented depth of emotion. ‘What do you say, Xiaotong, want to be my son?’ He patted me on the head. ‘You have my word you'll never go hungry.’ I nodded enthusiastically…

Poor Uncle Han now lay in the roadside ditch, anxiously watching as we ran past his motorbike, which lay at the foot of the poplar tree, engine running, wheels twisted out of shape by the tree trunk yet still turning—barely—the rims rubbing against the fenders.

‘Are you going into town, Yang Yuzhen?’ he called out from behind us. ‘Tell them to come to my rescue…’

I doubt Mother understood what he was shouting, for she was full of annoyance and anger, perhaps even of remorse and hope. I could only guess. Even she may not have known for certain. I recalled with gratitude the meal that Uncle Han had treated me to, and I wouldn't have minded helping him out of the ditch, if only I could have pulled my arm free of Mother's grip. But no luck.

A fellow on a bicycle shot past, like he was afraid of us. It was Shen Gang, who owed us two thousand yuan. Actually, it was a lot more than that, since he'd borrowed the money two years earlier, at 20 per cent interest per month. Interest upon interest, which meant—I heard Mother say—it was now over three thousand. We'd gone more than once to collect. At first he acknowledged the debt and said he'd pay us back soon. Later, he tried the dead-dog trick. Staring at Mother, he'd say: ‘Yang Yuzhen, I'm like a butchered pig that has no fear of boiling water. I've got no money and my life's not worth a thing to you. My business failed, and if you see anything worth taking then please do so. Either that or turn me over to the police—I don't mind a place that provides food and lodging.’ We looked round in his house, and all we could see were a pot loaded with pig bristles and a rickety old bicycle. His wife lay on the sleeping platform, moaning like she was desperately ill. He'd come to us two years before, on the eve of the lunar New Year, wanting to borrow money to import a batch of cheap Cantonese sausage and then sell it over the holidays at a profit. Won over by his alluring scheme, Mother agreed to lend him the money. She pulled out the greasy notes from an inside pocket, then wet her fingers and counted them, again and again.

Before handing them over, she said: ‘Shen Gang, don't forget how hard it's been for a single mother, with her poor child, to save up this money.’

‘If you don't think you can trust me, Big Sister,’ Shen Gang replied, ‘then don't lend it to me. There are people out there, lots of them, who can't
wait to lend me the money. I just feel sorry for the two of you, and want you to have the opportunity to make a packet…’

Well, he did bring in a truckload of sausage, which he unloaded, crate after crate, and stacked it in his yard in piles that rose higher than his fence. Everyone in the village said: ‘Shen Gang, this time you've really struck it rich!’ With a piece of sausage dangling from his lips, like a big cigar, he announced smugly: ‘The money will roll in so fast I won't be able to stop it.’ But Lao Lan dampened the mood when he walked by: ‘Don't let it go to your head, young man, unless you've arranged for some cold storage. Otherwise, one breath of warm air will have you lying in the yard and crying your eyes out.’ Those were particularly cold days, so cold that the dogs tucked their tails between their legs when they walked. Shen Gang bit down on the frozen sausage and said indifferently: ‘Lao Lan, you prick of a village head, you should be happy to see one of your villagers get rich. Don't worry, you'll get your tribute.’ ‘Shen Gang,’ replied Lao Lan, ‘don't take a good man's heart for a donkey's guts, and don't be in too big a hurry to congratulate yourself. The day will come when you'll beg me to help. The man who runs the township's cold storage is my sworn brother.’ ‘Thanks,’ said Shen Gang, still cocky, ‘many thanks. But I'll let my sausage turn to dog shit before I come begging at your door.’ Lao Lan's eyes narrowed into a smile. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you've got spine, and if there's one thing we Lans admire, it's that. Back during our wealthier days, we always placed a pair of vats outside our gate over lunar New Year's. One was filled with white flour, the other with millet, and any family too poor to celebrate the holiday was encouraged to take what they needed. There was only one man, a beggar, Luo Tong's grandfather, who stood in the gateway and cursed my grandfather: “Lan Rong, can you hear me, Lan Rong? I'll die of hunger before I take a kernel of your rice!” My grandfather summoned all my uncles and said: “Hear that? The man out there shouting insults at us has balls! You can offend other people but not him. If you meet up with him, bow your heads and bend low!”’ ‘That's enough,’ Shen Gang interrupted. ‘You can stop boasting about your glorious past.’ ‘Sorry about that,’ Lao Lan said. ‘Worthless descendants simply can't forget their predecessors’ glories. Good luck with your get-rich scheme.’

Unfortunately for Shen, what happened next proved the wisdom of Lao Lan's words. During the holidays, a freak warm southeast wind rose up and
turned the willow trees green. The cold-storage building in town was full, and there was no room for Shen Gang's meat. Moving his sausage crates out onto the street, he bellowed through a battery-powered bullhorn: ‘Village elders, fellow citizens, help me, please. Take a crate of sausage home to your tables. Pay me only if can. If you can't, consider it a respectful gift.’ But no one came to claim any of the gloomy, rapidly spoiling sausages. Except for the dogs, for whom spoilt meat was still meat. They tore open the crates and ran off with lengths of sausage, turning the village into a big banquet table and adding a new unpleasant odour to air already heavy with the fetid smell of slaughter. It was a year to remember for the wild dogs. The day the meat began to spoil, Mother paid him her first visit. But the loan remained unpaid until…

Father's second departure was perhaps more important to Mother than Shen Gang's delinquent loan, because all she did was greet him with a wordless glower. A grease-covered tin on the rear rack of Shen's bicycle gave off a mouth-watering smell. I knew what it was—red steamed pig's head and cooked entrails. My mind was flooded with the captivating image of braised pig's feet and twisted lengths of braised pig's guts, and I swallowed hungrily. The momentous family occurrence of that morning had not eradicated—in fact, it had increased—my yearning for meat. The sky is high, the earth is vast, but neither is the equal of Lao Lan's mouth; Father is close, Mother is dear, but neither matches the appeal of meat! Meat, ah, meat, the loveliest thing on earth, that which makes my soul take flight. Today was supposed to be a day when I could satisfy my yearning for meat but Father's second departure shattered that fanciful dream, or at least put it off for a while. I hoped it was only a slight delay.

The pig's head hung from Mother's hand; I could eat some of it if Father came home with us. But if he remained unshakeable in his refusal to return, whether Mother, in a fit of anger, would cook it and let me at it or sell it and make me go hungry was anyone's guess. Wise Monk, I was a truly unworthy child. Only moments before I'd been in agony over my Father's second departure, but then the smell of meat drove out every other thought from my mind. I knew I'd never amount to much. If I'd been born during a time of revolution and was unfortunate enough to be an officer in the enemy camp, all the revolutionary forces would have had to do was offer me a plateful of
meat and I'd have surrendered my troops unconditionally. But then, if the tables were turned, and the enemy had offered me two bowls, I'd have brought my forces back and surrendered to them. Those were the kinds of despicable thoughts that filled my head. Later on, great changes occurred in my family, and once I could satisfy my desire whenever I felt like it, I finally realized that there were many things in this world more precious than meat.

Another bicycle went past.