Pow! (14 page)

There were only a few people waiting for trains, which made the waiting room seem bigger than it was. Father and his daughter were curled up on a slatted wooden bench near the central heater. Another dozen passengers sat here and there. Warm sunlight filtering in through the dirty windows lent a silvery sheen to Father's hair. He was smoking a cigarette; white wisps of smoke rose from both sides of his face and seemed to hang in the air round his head, as if they hadn't emerged from his mouth or nose but had oozed from his brain. His cigarette smelt terrible, like burnt rags or rotting leather. By then he'd fallen on such hard times that he was reduced to scrounging cigarette butts off the street, no better than a beggar. Worse, in fact. I knew of beggars who lived extravagant lives, who ate good food and drank good wine, who passed their days in the lap of luxury, smoking high-class cigarettes and drinking imported whisky. During the day they dressed in rags and walked the streets and used a number of tricks to get alms. At night they changed into Western suits and leather shoes and headed off to karaoke parlours to sing their hearts out, and then set off to find a girl. Yuan Seven in our village was one of those high-flying beggars. Traces of him could be found in every big city in the country. A man of the world, he'd seen it all and done it all; he could imitate a dozen or more domestic dialects, even a few phrases in Russian. The minute he opened his mouth you knew he was someone special, and even Lao Lan, the supreme authority in our village, treated him with a measure of respect and never dared to show him up. He had a good-looking wife at home and a son in middle school who always received good grades.
He proudly admitted that he had families in ten or more big cities, putting him in the enviable position of having a happy home to return to no matter where he was. Yuan Seven dined on sea cucumbers and abalone, drank Maotai and Wuliangye and smoked Yuxi and Da Zhonghua cigarettes from Yunnan. A beggar like that could turn down an offer to be county magistrate. If my father had been that kind of beggar, the Luo family would have been the envy of all. Unfortunately, he was in a sort of limbo between life and death, reduced to smoking cigarette butts off the street.

The waiting room was warm and toasty and seemed to possess a dreamy atmosphere. Most of the travellers dozed as they waited, making the place look a bit like a henhouse. Their belongings, in bundles big and small, lay at their feet, alongside fake snakeskin bags that threatened to burst at the seams. The only ‘hens’ who looked out of place were two men with no luggage except for well-worn faux-leather satchels resting against their legs. They were lying on a bench, face to face, the space between them covered by a sheet of newspaper on which lay a pile of sliced, red-speckled pigs’ ears. Not what you'd call fresh but still good enough to eat. I knew they were from animals that had died—not slaughtered but sick pigs treated to look palatable. Where I come from, it doesn't matter what kills an animal—swine fever, erysipelas or hoof-and-mouth disease. We have ways to make any kind of meat look appetizing. There's no crime in being greedy but there is in being wasteful—that particular reactionary comment was enunciated by our very own Village Head Lan, and the old son of a bitch could have been shot for it. The men were feasting and getting drunk on what people call white lightning, local stuff but sort of famous, produced by Master Liu's family. Who was Master Liu? you ask. I couldn't say. Though no Liu family I knew ever made spirits, unscrupulous individuals distilled them under that family name. The smell alone was enough to kill you. Perhaps it was distilled methanol? Methanol, formaldehyde—China's become a nation of chemical wizards. Formaldehyde and methanol are like money in the bank. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva and watched them hand the green bottle back and forth, sipping and smacking their lips, stopping only to pick up a pig's ear—no chopsticks required, hands only—and stuff it into their mouths. The one with the long, skinny face even tipped back his head and dropped one into his mouth just to make my mouth water, the no-good arsehole, the cunning prick. By the look of him, he could
have been a cigarette-peddler, even a cattle thief. He was no good, whatever line of work he was in, but he thought he was something special. So you're eating and drinking—big deal! If we wanted to eat at home, we'd do better than you. Our butchers can tell the difference between meat from a sick animal and meat from a slaughtered one, and they'd never be caught smacking their lips over meat from a sick pig. Sure, if there was no slaughtered pork they might eat a little from a sick pig. I once heard Lao Lan say that we Chinese are blessed with iron stomachs that can turn rotten stuff into nutrients. My mouth watered as I gaped at the pig's head in Mother's hand.

Father seemed to sense that someone was standing in front of him. He looked up, and his face turned purple from embarrassment. His lips parted to expose the yellow teeth. His daughter, my little half-sister Jiaojiao, who had been sleeping beside him, woke up. The sleepy eyed girl's pink face could not have been cuter. She snuck up close to Father and sneaked a look at us from under his arm.

Mother made a sound in her throat—a fake cough.

Father made a sound in his throat—a fake cough.

Jiaojiao had a coughing fit and her face turned red.

I could tell she'd caught a cold.

Father gently thumped her back to stop the coughing.

Jiaojiao coughed up a wad of phlegm, and began to cry.

Mother handed me the pig's head, reached down and tried to pick up the girl. Jiaojiao began to cry harder and burrowed into Father's protective arms, as if Mother had the thorny hands of a child-snatcher. People who bought and sold children or who bought and sold women often stopped here, because it was a rich village. The peddlers of human cargo did not arrive with stolen children or bound women in tow. They were too clever for that. They'd walk up and down the village streets pretending to sell wooden hairbrushes or bamboo head-shavers. The fellow who sold combs could talk with the best of them and had a terrific routine—a string of witty remarks and plenty of humour. To prove the quality of his head-shavers he'd even saw a shoe in half with one of them.

Mother straightened up, stepped back and wrung her hands, then took a quick look round as if hoping someone would come to her aid. Three seconds after she turned to look at me, her eyes clouded over and my heart ached
to see her so helpless. She was, after all, my mother. As she let her hands drop, she looked down at the floor, possibly to take in Father's boots, which, despite the mud, looked to be of pretty good leather. They were the only evidence of the respectable stature he'd once enjoyed.

‘This morning,’ she said so softly you'd have thought she was talking to herself, ‘my words were too strong…it was cold, I was tired, in a bad mood…I've come to apologize…’

Father fidgeted in his seat, as if being bitten by fleas. ‘Don't talk like that, please,’ he waved his hands and stammered. ‘You were right, I deserve everything you said. I should be apologizing to you…’

Mother took the pig's head from me and rolled her eyes at me. ‘Why are you standing there like a moron? Help your dieh with his things so we can go home.’

Then she glared at me once more and headed for the door, which creaked on rusty hinges. The pig's head flashed white for an instant before vanishing. ‘Damn door,’ I heard her grumble.

I hopped over, sparrow-like, to the bench where Father sat to take the bulging canvas satchel from him but he grabbed the strap, looked me in the eye and said: ‘Xiaotong, go home and take care of your mother. I'd be a burden to you both…’

‘No,’ I insisted, refusing to let go. ‘I want you to come with me, Dieh.’

‘Let go,’ he began sternly but then grew forlorn. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘A man needs dignity the way a tree needs bark. Your dieh has fallen on hard times but he's still a man, and what your mother said is true—a good horse doesn't graze the land behind it.’

‘But she apologized!’

‘Son!’ I could see his mood darkening. ‘A man's heart is easily bruised, like the roots of a tree.’ He yanked the satchel out of my hand and waved his hand towards the exit. ‘Go now, and do as your mother says.’

‘Dieh,’ I sobbed, tears gushing from my eyes, ‘don't you want us any more?’

His eyes were moist as he looked at me. ‘That's not it, my boy, that's not what this is about. You've got a good head on your shoulders, I don't have to explain things to you.’

‘Yes, you do!’

‘Go, now,’ he said decisively. ‘Go, and stop bothering me!’ He picked up his satchel, pulled Jiaojiao to her feet and took a quick look round, as if to find a better place to sit. Everyone was looking at us, agog with curiosity, but he didn't care. He picked up Jiaojiao and moved her to a rickety slat bench by the window. Before he sat down, he fixed his bulging eyes on me. ‘What are you hanging round for?’ he bellowed.

I backed up fearfully. He'd never spoken to me like that, at least not that I could recall. I turned and looked at the door behind me, wishing Mother could tell me what to do. But it was shut tight and not in the least welcoming. Only a few snowflakes blew in through the cracks.

A middle-aged woman in a blue uniform and a stiff hat walked into the waiting room with a red battery-powered bullhorn. ‘Tickets! Tickets! All passengers for Train 384 to the Northeast Provinces line up with your tickets.’

The passengers scrambled to their feet, tossed their bundles over their shoulders and lined up to have their tickets punched. The two men gulped down what remained in their bottles, gobbled up the last of the pigs’ ears, wiped their greasy mouths, then belched and staggered up to the gate. Father fell in behind them, carrying Jiaojiao.

I stood there staring at their backs, wishing he'd turn to see me one more time. I refused to believe that he could walk away from me so easily. But he didn't turn, and I stood there, unable to take my eyes off his overcoat, so dirty and greasy it shone, like a wall in a butcher's house. But Jiaojiao, whose little face poked up over his shoulder, sneaked a look at me. The ticket-collector was waiting, her arms crossed, next to the gate at the platform.

As the train rumbled up it sent a shudder through the floor. The next thing I heard was a long, shrill whistle, and an old steam engine suddenly loomed up behind the gate, belching thick black smoke as it clanked its way into the station.

As soon as the woman opened the gate to punch the tickets, the line surged forward, like under-chewed meat hurrying down your throat. Before I knew it, it was Father's turn—this was it. Once he went through the gate, he'd disappear from my life forever.

I was standing no more than fifteen feet from him. As he handed the crumpled ticket to the woman, I shouted at the top of my lungs: ‘Dieh—’

Father's shoulders jerked, as if he'd been shot. But still he refused to turn. Snowflakes blown in through the gate by a northern breeze stuck to him as if he were a dead tree.

The ticket-collector eyed Father suspiciously, then turned to me with a strange look. Then she squinted at the ticket he'd handed her, examining it front and back as if it were counterfeit.

Much later, no matter how hard I try, I can never recall exactly how Mother materialized in front of me. She still held the pig's head, white with a tinge of red, in her left hand, while she pointed assertively at Father's shiny back with her right. Somewhere along the line she'd undone the buttons of her blue corduroy overcoat; the red polyester turtleneck sweater peeked out from underneath. That image has stuck with me all these years and always gives way to mixed feelings. ‘Luo Tong,’ she began, pointing at his back, ‘you son of a bitch, what kind of a man walks out on his family like that?’

If a moment before my shout hit Father like a bullet in the back, then Mother's angry outburst was like the spray from a machine gun. I saw his shoulders begin to quake and Jiaojiao, who had been secretly watching me with her dark little eyes, tucked her head deeper in his arms.

With a dramatic gesture, the ticket-collector punched Father's ticket and then stuffed it into his hand. Out on the platform, passengers were disembarking from the train, like beetles rolling their precious dung, threading their way past lines of people impatient to board. With a barely concealed smirk, the ticket-collector looked at Mother, then at me and then finally at Father. Only she could see his face. The canvas bag, to which his enamel mug was attached, slipped off his shoulder, forcing him to reach out and grab the strap. Mother chose that moment to fire a lethal salvo: ‘Go, then, just go! What kind of man are you? If you had an ounce of pride, you'd walk off holding your head high and not slink away like a dog to that bitch of yours! You obviously don't have an ounce of pride, or you wouldn't have come back this time. And not just come back, but laden with excuses and apologies. A few unkind words and you crumple, is that it? Did you give a single thought over the past few years to how your wife and child were getting along? Do you even care that they've suffered things no human being should be put through? Luo Tong, you are a heartless bastard, and any woman who falls into your hands is fated to wind up just like me—’

‘That's enough!’ Father spun round. His face was the colour of clay tiles that never see the sun; his scraggly beard like frost on those tiles. But he'd no sooner spun round than his body, displaying some momentary vigour, shrank back in on itself, and he said again—‘That's enough’—but this time in a shaky voice that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his throat.