Pow! (46 page)

Three months before Lao Lan's wife died, he and I dealt with two clandestine visits by reporters and were each proud to have managed so successfully.

The first came disguised as a peasant sheep-seller. With a scrawny old sheep in tow, he mixed in with the crowd of people who had brought animals to sell—cows and sheep on the hoof, pigs in handcarts, dogs on shoulder poles. Why shoulder poles? Try putting a halter on the dogs! The sellers dull the animals’ senses with liquor-laced buns, tie their rear legs together, slip their poles under the ropes and then hoist them onto their shoulders. Since it was market day, the sellers formed a large crowd. Once I'd planned the day's production schedule, I took a walk round the plant with Jiaojiao.

Our prestige soared in the wake of the contest. Nearly all of the workers we encountered looked at us with respect. As for my defeated combatants, Liu Shengli and Wan Xiaojiang, they nodded and bowed and greeted me as Young Master. Despite their sarcasm, their admiration was genuine. Though Feng Tiehan maintained the restraint he'd displayed during the competition, there was no hiding his admiration either. Father observed everything and then took me aside for a heart-to-heart talk, urging me to act humbly and to avoid any signs of arrogance: ‘People shun fame, pigs fear bulk,’ he said. ‘A dead pig doesn't fear boiling water,’ I countered with a giggle. ‘Xiaotong, my son,’ Father sighed, ‘you're too young to take my words seriously. It's in one ear and out the other. You won't know how hard a brick wall is till you smash your nose against it.’ ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘I know how hard a brick wall is. Not only that, I know that a pickaxe is even harder.’ ‘You must do as you see fit, son,’ he said resignedly. ‘This isn't how I wanted my children to turn out, but there's nothing I can do about that now. I've not been a good father, so I guess I'm to blame for how you've turned out.’ ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘I know what you wanted of us. You wanted us to go to school, to go to college. Then abroad, to complete our education. But Jiaojiao and I aren't student material, Dieh, any more than you're official material. But we have our unique talents, so why should we follow in everyone else's footsteps on the path to success? As they say, if you have something fresh to offer, you'll never go hungry. We can do things the way we want.’ Father hung his head. ‘What unique talents do any of us have?’ he wondered aloud, dispirited. ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘other people can look down on us, but we can't look down on ourselves. Of course we have unique talents. Yours is evaluating livestock, ours is eating meat.’ He sighed again: ‘Son, how can you call that a unique talent?’ ‘Dieh,’ I replied, ‘as you very well know, it's not everyone who can consume five pounds of meat at
one sitting without adverse effects. And it takes a unique talent to determine the gross weight of a cow just by looking at it. Don't you call those unique talents? If you don't, then the whole concept of unique talent is meaningless.’ He shook his head: ‘Son, the way I see it, your unique talent isn't eating meat, but twisting false logic until it seems true. You should be somewhere where you can show off your eloquence, somewhere like the United Nations. That's where you belong, a place where you can debate to your heart's content.’ ‘Would you look closely at that place where you think I belong, Dieh? The UN? What would I do in a place like that? Despite their Western suits and leather shoes, those people are all phonies. The one thing I can't stand is to be tied down. I need to be free. But even worse, there'd be no meat for me there and I won't go anywhere where there's no meat, not even Heaven.’ ‘I'm not going to argue with you,’ Father said, exasperated. ‘It's the same thing all over. Since you say you're no longer a child, then you have to answer to yourself for whatever happens. Don't come crying to me in the future if things don't work out.’ ‘Take it easy, Dieh,’ I said. ‘Future? What does that mean? Why waste time thinking about the future? There's a saying: “When the cart reaches the mountain, there'll be a road, and a boat can sail even upwind.” And another one that goes: “Favoured people are free of hustle and bustle, others blindly rush about.” Lao Lan says that Jiaojiao and I were sent down to earth to eat meat and that we'll go back after we've consumed our allotted amount. The future? Not for us, thank you!’ I could see he didn't know whether to laugh or cry, which delighted me. I now knew that I had put Father behind me as a result of the meat-eating contest. A man I'd once revered was no longer worthy of that feeling. Nor, for that matter, was Lao Lan. I was struck by the realization that while they seem complicated, the affairs of the world are in fact quite simple. There's only one issue that deserves worldwide attention—meat. The world's vast population can be divided into meat categories. In simplest terms, those who eat meat and those who don't, and those who are true meat-eaters and those who aren't. Then there are those who would eat meat if they had access to it and those who have access but don't eat it. Finally, there are those who thrive by eating meat and those who suffer over it. Amid those vast numbers of people, I am among the very few who desire meat, who have a capacity for meat and love it, who have constant access to meat and who thrive by eating it. That is the primary source of my
abundant self-confidence.
See how long-winded I get, Wise Monk, when the talk turns to meat? People find that annoying, I know, so I'll change the subject and talk about the reporter who dressed up like a peasant.

He was wearing a tattered blue jacket over grey cotton trousers. He had yellow rubber sandals on his feet and a bulging old khaki bag over his shoulder as he joined the crowd with his scrawny, tethered sheep. His jacket was too big for him and his trousers too long, which made him look sort of lost in his clothes. His hair was a mess, his face ghostly pale and his eyes constantly darted here and there. He didn't fool me for a minute, but I didn't take him for a reporter, at least not at first. When Jiaojiao and I approached him, he looked away. Something in his eyes bothered me, so I scrutinized him more closely. Refusing to look me in the eye, he covered up his discomfort by whistling, which made me even more suspicious. But I still didn't think he was a reporter in disguise. I thought he might be a delinquent from town who'd stolen a sheep and brought it here to sell. I nearly went up to tell him he didn't have to worry, since we never asked where our animals came from. None of the cows the West County peddlers brought came with a pedigree. I took a look at his sheep—a castrated old ram with curled horns. It had been recently sheared, but not professionally, evident from the unevenly scissored patches and a few spots where the skin had been nicked. A sad, scrawny old ram with a terrible haircut that might have been remotely presentable had it been favoured with a full coat. Attracted by the short fleece, Jiaojiao reached out to touch the animal and startled it into a leap. The unexpected movement caused the fellow to stumble and jerked the lead out of his hand, freeing the animal to meander up to the queue of sellers and their animals, the rope dragging on the ground behind it. The fellow ran after it, taking big strides and swinging his arms wildly as he tried to step on the moving rope, but missed every time. It almost looked as if he was putting on an act for the crowd. Every time he bent over to grab the rope, it slipped out of range. By now, his clumsy, comical performance had everyone in stitches. Including me.

‘Elder Brother,’ Jiaojiao said with a laugh, ‘who is that man?’

‘A fool, but a funny one,’ I said.

‘You think he's a fool?’ said an old fellow with four dogs on his pole. He seemed to know us, but we didn't know him. His jacket draped over his
shoulders, his arms crossed, he held a pipe between his teeth. ‘He's no fool,’ he said as he launched a mouthful of phlegm. ‘Look at those shifty eyes, how they take in everything. He's not an honest man,’ he continued under his breath, ‘not with those eyes.’

I knew what he was getting at. ‘We know,’ I said softly, ‘he's a thief.’

‘So call the police.’

I called the old fellow's attention to the queue of animals and their sellers. ‘We've got plenty on our hands already, Uncle.’

‘Thunder always rumbles after a temple festival. There are thieves everywhere you look these days,’ he said. ‘I was going to feed these four dogs another month before taking them out of their pens, but I couldn't take the chance. The thieves toss knockout drugs into dog pens—ones that are effective for days—then steal the dogs and sell them outside the area.’

‘What can you tell me about those drugs?’ I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Now that the days were turning cold, men in the city were looking for tonics to increase their vitality, which meant that dog meat pots were getting fired up. We supplied the city with dog meat, and had to attend to the issue of canine water-cleansing. The animals could inflict serious damage if they were spooked, and a knockout drug could solve that problem. Once the dogs were doped, we could hang them up and start the treatment. That done, it wouldn't matter if they came to, since they'd be more like pigs than dogs and no longer a threat. All that remained then was to drag them over to the killing room, not dead but barely alive.

‘I'm told it's a red powder bomb that makes a muffled noise when it hits the ground and releases a pink mist and a strange smell somewhere between fragrant and noxious. Even an attack dog will keel over after one whiff.’ In a tone that was equal parts anger and dread, he added, ‘Those thieves are no different than women who drug and kidnap children. They all belong to secret societies, and ordinary peasants have no way of laying hands on their formulas. It's probably some strange concoction we could never track down.’

My eyes travelled down to the old fellow's bleary-eyed dogs. ‘Did you get that bunch drunk?’

‘Two
jin
of liquor and four steamed buns,’ he replied. ‘Liquor these days has lost its punch.’

Jiaojiao was squatting in front of the dogs, prodding their oily lips with a reed stem, occasionally revealing a white fang. Their breath reeked of alcohol. From time to time one would roll its eyes and make dreamy sounds.

A man pushed a scale on squeaky wheels over to the dog pens from the warehouse, the hook swaying back and forth. For the sake of convenience, we'd built a pen exclusively for dogs near the one that held sheep and pigs. What made that necessary was an incident involving a worker who'd entered the pen holding all the animals together to pick out one of the pigs, and had been badly bitten by dogs turned half mad from being penned up too long. He was still in the hospital receiving daily shots of anti-rabies vaccine—vaccine that had already expired, according to someone from the hospital who spoke in confidence. Whether or not he'd begin to show symptoms was an open question. Naturally, the fact that a worker had been bitten wasn't the only reason we'd invested in the construction of a separate dog pen. Another was that dogs that had been plied with liquor were capable of wreaking havoc once they sobered up, attacking the sheep and pig penmates. Peace was rare in the pen, day or night. One day, after planning the production schedule, I took Jiaojiao over to see what was going on in the pen. Nothing, as it turned out, one of those rare peaceful moments. We saw dozens of dogs, some standing, others sprawled on the ground, forcibly occupying most of the space in the pen and forcing the pigs to huddle in one corner—some white, some black, some spotted—and sheep—along with a few billy goats and a couple of milch goats—in another. There was hardly any space between the pigs, who faced the railing, thus leaving their rumps vulnerable. The sheep too were clustered together, with some long-horned billy goats standing protectively. Almost none of the animals were injury-free, thanks, of course, to the dogs. Despite the peaceful moment—a rest for the dogs—the pigs and the sheep were preparing for the worst. Even when the dogs were relaxed, internal flare-ups were inevitable, including semi-serious fights between the males and the occasional cluster-fuck. At those times the pigs and sheep were so quiet that they hardly seemed to exist. But then a sort of gang fight broke out among several dozen dogs, which sent fur flying and blood spraying and resulted in some serious injuries, including a few broken legs. This was no longer a game. Jiaojiao and I wondered what the pigs and sheep must have been thinking as battles raged among the dogs. She said
they weren't thinking about anything, that they were taking advantage of the dogfights to catch up on lost sleep. I would have challenged her on that, but I looked into the pen and, just as she'd said, the animals were sprawled on the ground, their eyes shut as they dozed. But dogfights were a rarity. Most of the time, the dogs, sporting sinister grins, launched attacks on the sheep and pigs. At first, the larger boars and billy goats bravely fought them off. The goats reared up on their hind legs, heads high, and charged, but the dogs nimbly sidestepped the attacks. ‘I thought you said that meat dogs are stupid animals,’ some might ask. ‘Then how could they be as alert as wolves in a forest?’ Yes, they entered the pens as stupid animals but, after being starved for a week, their wild nature returned accompanied by a surge in intelligence. They reverted to being predators, and, not surprisingly, the sheep and pigs penned up with them became their prey. After the first assault failed, the billy goats prepared for a second, rearing up as before, raising their heads and aiming their horns at the prowling dogs. But their movements were stiff, their tactics predictable and once again they were easily sidestepped by the dogs. They then steeled themselves for a third attempt, but it was a weak one, so weak that the dogs barely had to move to get out of the way. By now, all the fight had left the goats. The dogs, grinning hideously, charged their ovine prey and sank their fangs into sheep tails, sheep ears and sheep throats. The victims bleated piteously while a few somewhat more fortunate ones stampeded like headless flies. Many of them rammed their heads into the pen railings and crumpled to the ground, unconscious. The dogs made short work of the dead sheep, eating everything but the feet—unappetizing—the horns and any skin with too much fleece attached. The pigs quaked as they watched the sheep being slaughtered, for they knew they were next. Some of the larger boars tried to ward off the attack by emitting low grunts and charging like black bombs. The dogs leapt out of the way and set their sights on the pigs’ rumps or ears, which they bit savagely. With yelps of pain, the boars tried to turn the tables but were immediately set upon by other opportunistic dogs that knocked them to the ground. Their screeches filled the air, but only for a few moments. Blood soaked the ground as their bellies were ripped open and their intestines torn out and dragged round the pen.