Pow! (18 page)

I went back inside and flopped down on the bed, hesitating a moment before stripping naked and slipping under the covers. Jiaojiao jerked away when my cold feet touched her warm skin, so I quickly pulled them back.

‘Go to sleep,’ I heard Mother say. ‘There'll be meat on the table when you wake up in the morning.’

I could tell by the tone of voice that she was in a good mood again. The lamplight was fading, leaving only the flickering light from the fire in the stove to see by. The door was open a crack to let the firelight filter in and land on the dresser. A question swirled dimly through the fog in my brain: Where are Mother and Father sleeping? They aren't going to stay up all night
watching the pig's head cook, are they? The question kept me awake, and I couldn't help but hear them talk. I even covered my head with the comforter to keep out the conversation but every word made its way into my ears.

‘A heavy snowfall will guarantee a good harvest next year,’ said Father.

‘You ought to let some new thoughts into your head,’ Mother said coolly. ‘Farmers are different these days. They used to live off what they planted in the ground. It all depended on how the old master in the sky felt about things. Good winds and plenty of rain meant a bumper crop—buns in the pot and meat in their bowls. Bad winds and no rain meant soup in the pot and husks in their bowls. But things have changed. No one's fool enough to work the fields. Drenching ten acres of land with your sweat can't bring in as much as selling one pigskin…but why am I telling you this?’

‘Someone has to work the farms…’ Father mumbled under his breath. ‘That's what a farmer does.’

‘I do believe the sun is rising in the west,’ Mother said, mocking him. ‘You hardly ever went out into the field when you were home. Are you planning to become a farmer now that you're back?’

‘Farming's all I know,’ said Father, clearly embarrassed. ‘There's no more need for someone to rate cattle. Or I can go out collecting rubbish with you.’

‘I won't let you do that,’ she said. ‘You're not cut out for that kind of work. Rubbish collecting is for people with no sense of shame, no face at all. It's halfway between robbing and stealing.’

‘After the life I've led, how much face can I have left? If you can do it, so can I.’

‘I'm not a brainless woman,’ she said. ‘You're back and we've got a house, so Xiaotong and I won't go out any more. If you want to leave I won't stop you. It doesn't make sense to keep someone around who doesn't want to be there. It's better for someone like that to just leave…’

‘I said what I wanted to say earlier today, in front of the children,’ Father said. ‘I didn't do well. A poor man is short on ambition. A skinny horse has long hair. I came looking for you with a dogskin round my head, and I'm grateful you took me back. We are, after all, husband and wife. Like a bone and a tendon—if you break the bone, it's still connected to the tendon.’

‘You've accomplished something. If nothing else,’ said Mother, ‘since you've been away you've learnt how to sweet-talk a person…’

‘Yuzhen.’ Father's voice softened. ‘I owe you. From now on, I'll pay you back if I have to be your slave.’

‘We'll see who's the slave,’ Mother said. ‘How do I know you won't run off with another Wild Mule one of these days?’

‘Why must you hit me where it hurts?’

‘You think you know pain?’ Mother's anger boiled over. ‘I don't mean as much to you as one of her toes…’ She was crying now. ‘Do you know how many times I threw a rope over the rafters? If it hadn't been for Xiaotong—even if there'd been ten Yuzhens, they'd all be dead now.’

‘I know…’ The words were spoken with difficulty. ‘There's nothing worse than what I did to you. I don't deserve to live.’

He probably reached out and touched her then, because I heard her growl: ‘Don't you lay a hand on me…’ But from what she said next, I knew he didn't move his hand: ‘Go grope her. What good does it do you to grope an old hag like me?’

The strong odour of cooking meat flooded into my room through the slightly open door.

A large truck converted into a float is at the head of a line of marchers from East City. The front is decorated with an enormous cream-coloured laughing cow's head. Of course I know how absurd that is. All the animal images at the Carnivore Festival are emblematic of the bloody business of butchering. In my life I've seen more than my share of grievous looks on the faces of animals just before they're slaughtered, and have heard more than my share of plaintive cries. I know that people these days promote humane slaughter methods, bathing the animals with warm water, playing soft music, even giving them full-body massages to hypnotize them, all by way of a prelude to the knife. I once saw a TV show that promoted these humane methods, hailing them as a major advance for humanity. Human beings have extended the concept of benevolence to the animal world but continue to invent and manufacture powerful, cruel weapons for the excruciating death of humans. The more powerful, the more lethal the weapon, the greater the profits. I may not yet have taken my Buddhist vows but I'm aware that so much of what human beings say and do runs counter to the spirit of Buddhism. Isn't that right, Wise Monk? I note a smile on his face but can't tell if that's a sign that he's affirmed my enlightenment or that he's mocking my shallowness. A few dozen young people in baggy red pants, white jackets with buttons down the front, white cotton towels over their heads and red silk sashes round their waists stand in a circle on the bed of the cow-headed float. Their faces painted red, they passionately pound a drum with drumsticks as thick as laundry paddles. The beats of this very big drum go right to the hearts of all within hearing. Attached to the sides of the float are banners proclaiming in big, decorative, Song Dynasty-style characters: Kenta Hu Meat Group. They are followed by a chorus of ‘rice-sprout’ singers, all girls in the bloom of youth. Dressed in white pants and red jackets, cinched with green silk sashes, they dance to the beat of the drum, hips and buttocks moving in choreographed rhythm. Next in line is a rooster-headed
float, sporting a rooster and a hen. Every few minutes the rooster thrusts out its neck and releases a bizarre crowing noise. And every few minutes the hen lays a larger-than-life egg, accompanied by a burst of clucks. A truly imaginative float, so true to life it should get the most votes and win first place in the float category at the Festival climax. Of course I know that the crowing and clucking come from humans inside the bellies of the birds. The truck is identified as belonging to Aunty Yang Poultry Corporation. Eighty men and women in four columns come next, all in cockscomb hats and feathered arms; they flap their ‘wings’ as they walk. ‘To keep sickness away,’ they intone, ‘eat an egg every day’ and ‘Keep a healthy supply of Aunty Yang's eggs.’ The parade from West City approaches behind a formation of camels. I don't realize they're real animals until they pass in front of me. A rough count reveals more than forty of them, all draped in colourful garb reminiscent of prize-winning model workers. A short acrobatic man in front performs a nifty tumbling manoeuvre every few steps. He carries a showy baton loaded with oversized copper coins that make a whirring sound when he thrusts it up and down. Under his direction, the camels begin to prance, making the brass bells round their necks ring out shrilly. A well-trained honour guard indeed. A pole rising above the hump of a white-faced camel in the formation bears a flag embroidered with large characters; I don't even have to read it to know that Lao Lan's contingent is approaching. On the basis of the United Meatpacking Plant, where I was employed ten years before, Lao Lan founded the Rare Animals Slaughterhouse Corporation. The camel joints and ostrich steaks they produced earned a reputation for supplying high nutritional value to the people's diet and generating considerable wealth for the company. Word has it that the son of a bitch sleeps on a waterbed, that his toilet is trimmed in gold, that his cigarettes are ginseng flavoured and that he dines daily on a whole camel hoof, a pair of ostrich feet and an ostrich egg. A two-column contingent of twenty-four ostriches follows the camels. Each is ridden by a youngster, boys on the left, girls on the right. The boys are wearing white sneakers, white knee-high socks topped by two red stripes, blue shorts, white shirts and red streamers round their necks. The girls are in white leather shoes over ankle-length white socks to which are tied red knitted pompoms; they are wearing sky-blue dresses with short skirts and golden bows on the tops. The boys’ closely cropped hair makes their heads look like little rubber balls. The girls'
braids are tied at the ends by strips of red silk, making their heads resemble little embroidered balls. All the riders are sitting up, backs straight, chests thrown out proudly. The ostriches hold their triangular heads high—spirited, proud, arrogant marchers, despite the lacklustre grey of their feathers. Bright red silk bands round their necks offset their lack of colour. Seemingly incapable of slow movements, the ostriches take long, running strides that cover at least three feet; annoyingly hindered by the slow-moving camels ahead of them, all they can do is twist and turn their long, curved necks. The two contingents—East City and West City—have stopped, and a chorus of turbulent and chaotic drumbeats, gong clangs, music strains and marchers’ shouts fill the air. A dozen TV journalists jockey for position to film the scene. One of them, wanting to get a special shot, has come too close to a camel; it angrily bares its teeth, then roars and spits a gooey missile at the man, temporarily blinding both him and his camera. He screams as he jumps out of the way, drops his camera, bends over and wipes his eyes with his sleeve, as a man responsible for the arrangement of the parade participants raises his flag and shouts at everyone to take their places on the Festival grounds. The cow-headed and chicken-headed floats make slow turns onto the grassy field, followed by a seemingly unending body of parade contingents. The acrobat, with his martial bearing, steps nimbly and smiles broadly as he leads the East City camel unit onto the grass. The abused journalist standing by the side of the road assails his tormentor with loud curses but is totally ignored. The camels are more or less orderly as they move forward, but the twenty-four ostriches seem angry about something, and their formation breaks down as they run helter-skelter towards the temple grounds, drawing terrified shrieks from their riders, some of whom slide quickly out of the saddle, while others cling to the necks of their mounts, their young faces drenched with sweat. Once the ostriches reach our yard they huddle together, shuffling back and forth. That's when I discover that the birds’ feathers, which looked so dull from a distance, are actually quite beautiful in the sunlight. It's a simple beauty, like priceless Qin Dynasty brocade. Some employees of the Rare Animals Slaughterhouse Corporation frantically try to herd the ostriches back, but all they manage to do is scare them further. I look into the ostriches’ hate-filled little eyes, listen to their hoarse screeches and watch as one of them kicks a worker in the knee. Knocked to the ground, he grabs his injured knee and utters
a cry of pain, his face waxen and his forehead beaded with sweat. The ostriches take off running, the hard knuckles of their feet pounding loudly on the ground. I know that those feet can kick as hard as a horse, and I've been told that a mature bird isn't afraid to take on a lion. An ostrich's toes are hardened from a lifetime of running across the savanna, so it's a foregone conclusion that the man sitting on the ground yelping in pain has a badly injured knee. When a couple of his friends lift him up by the arms, he immediately sits back down. By now, most of the children have slid off their mounts, all but one girl and one boy who hold on tenaciously. Rivulets of sweat smear the paint on their taut faces until they look like artists’ palettes. The boy is clutching the joint connecting the ostrich's wings to its body as he bounces up and down with every step the bird takes. He holds on to the wings even when his rear end is up in the air; but then the ostrich makes a mad dash and he slips sideways under the mouth-gaping, eye-popping stares of the people round him, none of whom makes a move to come to his rescue. A moment later, he's lying on the ground clutching two fists full of feathers, until someone walks over and picks him up. He bites his lip as the tear dam bursts. Meanwhile, the riderless ostrich has rejoined the herd and is breathing heavily and noisily through its open mouth. The girl still has her arms wrapped round the neck of her bird, though it is trying its best to dislodge her. But she's too much for it, thanks to a panic attack and, in the end, she gets it to slump to the ground, neck and head lying in the dirt, tail end pointing skyward, flinging mud behind it as it paws the ground in vain.

All that pork lay heavily in my stomach, churning and grinding like a litter of soon-to-be-born piglets. But of course I was no sow, so I couldn't possibly know what that felt like. The belly of the pregnant sow at Yao Qi's nearly scraped the ground when she grunted her way over to the snow-covered garbage heap in front of the newly opened Beauty Hair Salon, to root out edible titbits. Lazy, fat and carefree, she was, as anyone could see, a happy sow, in a different class from the two skinny-as-jackals, moody, human-hating little pigs we'd once raised. Yao Qi made sausage out of meat so fatty that even the dogs turned their noses up at it, filled with sweet potato starch and red-dyed bean-curd skin, to which he added chemical ingredients no one knew about. The end result was a product that looked good, smelt nice and sold well; the money rolled in. He raised pigs as a hobby, not as an investment,
and definitely not for the fertilizer produced, the way people once did. So his pregnant sow came out early in the morning, every morning, not to scavenge food but to play in the snow, take leisurely strolls and get a little exercise. I sometimes saw Yao Qi on the steps of his house (which didn't look as good as ours but was actually as sturdy as a fortress), left arm tucked under his right armpit, a cigarette in his right hand, squinting dreamily at the meanderings of his pig. Rays of light from the red sun turned his angular face into a slice of barbecued pork.