Pow! (56 page)

I vomited, my stomach feeling like a filthy toilet and the putrid smell of rotting food filling in my mouth. It was the meat, hurling filthy curses at me. Chunks of meat thrown up from my stomach began to crawl like toads…I was disgusted and filled with loathing.
At that moment, Wise Monk, I vowed to never eat meat.
I'd rather eat dirt from the road than a single bite of meat,
I'd rather eat horse manure in a stable than a single bit of meat, I'd rather starve to death than a single bite of meat…

It took me several days to clear my stomach of meat. I crawled down to the river and drank mouthfuls of clean water with bits of ice in it; I ate a sweet potato someone had thrown onto the riverbank. Slowly my strength returned.

One day child came running up to me. ‘Luo Xiaotong. You're Luo Xiaotong, aren't you?’

‘Yes, but how did you know?’

‘I just know,’ he said. ‘Come with me. Someone is looking for you.’

I followed him into a two-room hut in a peach grove, where I saw the old couple who had sold us the beat-up mortar years earlier. The mule, now aged a great deal, was there too, standing alone beneath a peach tree eating dry leaves.

‘Grandpa, Grandma…’ I threw myself into the old woman's arms as if she really were my grandmother and wet her clothes with my tears. ‘I've lost everything,’ I sobbed. ‘I've got nothing. Mother's dead, Father's arrested, my sister's dead and I can't bear to eat meat any more…’

The old man pulled me out of her arms and smiled. ‘Look over there, son.’

There in the corner of the hut stood seven wooden cases. On them were printed words that were as unfamiliar to me as I was to them.

The old man opened one of the cases with a crowbar and peeled back a sheet of oiled paper to reveal six long, tenpin-shaped objects with wing-like fins. My god—mortar shells—I'd dreamt of possessing them—mortar shells!

He carefully removed one. ‘Each case holds six of these, except this last one, which is missing a shell. A total of forty-one. I tested one before you arrived. I tied a rope to one of the wings and threw it over a cliff. It blew up just the way it was supposed to. The explosion echoed through the mountains, frightening the wolves out of their dens.’

I gazed down at the shells and at their strange lustre in the moonlight. Then I looked into the old man's eyes, glowing like burning coal. I felt my weakness vanish and the rise of a magnificent heroic spirit.

‘Lao Lan,’ I said, clenching my jaw, ‘your day of reckoning has arrived!’

The production of the opera
From Meat Boy to Meat God
nears its finale. The dutiful meat boy is kneeling on the stage, slicing flesh from his arm to brew for his ailing mother. She recovers but, owing to a prolonged state of exhaustion, starvation and loss of blood, he dies. In the last scene, a surreal dreamlike sequence, the mother reveals through her tears how she misses her son and grieves over his death. Then the meat boy, splendidly attired and wearing a golden headdress, appears, as if descended from a cloud of mist. His mother holds her head and sobs when they meet, but the meat boy consoles her with the news that the Celestial Ruler, moved by his dutiful act, has anointed him a Meat God whose domain is the world of meat-eaters. The opera appears to have ended happily but it has done nothing to dispel my feelings of desolation. The mother, still weeping, sings an aria
: ‘
Better to feed my son weak tea and simple food on earth than see him as a Meat God in a heavenly berth
…’
The mist fades and the opera is over. The performers return for their curtain call
(
there is, of course, no curtain
),
and are greeted by sporadic applause. Troupe Leader Jiang rushes onstage to announce
: ‘
Ladies and Gentlemen, tomorrow's performance will be
Slaying the Wutong Spirit.
Don't miss it
.’
The crowd chatters noisily as it disperses. Now the food-vendors make their final attempts at a sale
. ‘
My daughter
,’
Lao Lan says to Tiangua
, ‘
you can spend the night with us. Your aunt and I have made up the best room for you
.’
An uncomfortable Fan Zhaoxia says
: ‘
Yes, come home
.’
Tiangua looks at Fan with loathing but says nothing. She walks up to a lamb-vendor
. ‘
Give me ten kebabs and add plenty of cumin
.’
Happy to oblige, the vendor takes out a handful of kebabs from a filthy plastic bag and lays them atop a charcoal brazier. He squints to keep the smoke from his eyes and makes a puffing sound with his mouth, as if to clear it of dust. Now that the crowd and the actors have dispersed, Lan Daguan mounts the stage, followed by a foreigner in gold-rimmed glasses. He strips naked to show off his erect penis
. ‘
Tell me if I was boasting
!’
he says
angrily to the foreigner
. ‘
Take a good look and tell me
.’
The foreigner claps his hands and six blonde, blue-eyed naked women go up on the stage and lie in a row. Lan Daguan takes them one at a time, drawing yelps of pleasure all the way down the line. Six more women go up on stage. Then six more. And six more. And six more. And six more. And five more. Forty-one women in all. I keep my eyes on the tireless Lan Daguan as the combat rages on and watch as he, as if on cue, transforms into a horse. He whinnies loudly, showing off his powerful muscles and his strong limbs. Truly a noble stallion radiating vitality. A magnificent head, its perfect, pointed ears like cut bamboo. Bright, shining eyes. A small mouth below a large snout. A graceful neck lifted high between broad shoulders. A smooth rump, a tail raised captivatingly. A rounded torso encasing resilient ribs. Four slender, graceful legs with bright hooves that shine with a light-blue glow. He gives a rousing performance on the stage, moving from a trot to a gallop, dancing one moment and leaping the next, displaying every dazzling movement possible, demanding acclaim as the acme of perfection. Then comes the finale: Lan Daguan rises from atop the forty-first woman, seemingly coated with a layer of greasepaint, points at the foreigner with a single finger and says
: ‘
You lose
.’
The man draws a fancy revolver and aims it at the horse's genitals
. ‘
I don't
,’
he says and pulls the trigger. Lan Daguan thuds to the ground, like a toppled wall. At that same moment, I hear a loud crash and look to see the Horse Spirit crumble to the floor, now a mere pile of clay. And then the lights go out. It's the middle of the night and I can't see a soul. I remove my dark glasses and am treated to a resplendent night sky, with strange white figures a-dance on the stage. Bats fly in and out, birds in the trees flap their wings, the temple grounds are alive with the chirp of insects. Let me hurry and finish my tale, Wise Monk
—

The moon was out in all its glory that night, the air was fresh and clean and the peach trees sparkled as if varnished. Even the mule's hide seemed to glow. We fixed an old wooden frame to its back, tied three cases of mortar shells to each side and then set the seventh case on top. The old couple took care of the cases as if they had been doing this every day. The mule bore its burden stoically, its fate tied to the couple, almost as if it were their son.

We left the peach grove and headed down the road towards the village. Winter had begun to settle in, and though there was no wind the moonlight
brought a chill to the air; a layer of frost painted the roadside plants a pale white. Off in the distance, someone was burning dead grass, creating an arc of fire like a red flood engulfing a sandy beach. The boy they'd sent to fetch me, who looked to be seven or eight years old, walked in front of us and led the mule along. He had on a tattered coat that nearly covered his knees, secured at the waist by a white electric wire. Barelegged and barefoot, his head a mass of wild hair, he had the spirit of a raging prairie fire. What was I compared to him? A corrupt youngster, a shameful degenerate. Time to pull myself together. This was too good an opportunity to let pass. I had to fire these forty-one mortar shells on this lovely moonlit night, rock the air with a series of explosions and cement my status as a hero of my age.

The old couple walked beside the mule, one on each side to steady the cases. He was wearing a shearling coat and a dog-skin cap, with a pipe behind his neck, a quintessential old-style peasant. She'd once had bound feet—now freed—and each raspy breath that broke through the surrounding silence let us know how painful every step was for her. I walked behind the mule, vowing to model myself on the boy up front, the old man and the woman and the me of my childhood. On this night, walking amid the icy moonbeams, I would fire my forty-one mortar shells, explosions that would shake heaven and earth and bring life to a village as dead as a stagnant pool. And I would keep the memory of this night alive. One day Luo Xiaotong would become a mythical figure, his tale passed down through the ages.

And so we walked through the wilderness, followed by a variety of inquisitive wild creatures. They shadowed us warily, their bright eyes like little green lanterns, as curious as a pack of children.

The pleasant, melodic tattoo of the mule's hooves told us that we'd entered the village on its concrete roadway. There were a few gleams of light. The village was quiet, the streets deserted. A village dog cozied up to the strange animals following us but was sent yelping into a nearby lane with a bite. Moonlight made the streetlights superfluous. An iron bell on the tall scholar tree at the village entrance, a relic from the commune days, looked dark green in the light. Once upon a time its every peal had been a command.

Our entry into the village went unnoticed but we would not have been deterred even if it hadn't. No one would have imagined that our mule carried
forty-one mortar shells; if we'd tried to explain, they'd just have been even more convinced that Luo Xiaotong was a ‘powboy’. In my village ‘pow’ also meant to brag and to lie. Children who boasted and who shot off their mouths were called powboys. That nickname didn't cause me any shame, though. It actually made me proud. Our revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen bore the resounding nickname of Big Pow Sun, though he'd himself never fired a gun. Luo Xiaotong was about to surpass Sun Yat-sen in that regard. The weapon was ready for action, carefully hidden at home where I'd babied it by restoring every part to its original condition. The shells seemed to have dropped from the skies, each smeared with grease, awaiting only a careful cleaning to shine. The mortar tube called out for the shells; the shells longed for the tube, just as the Wutong Spirit called out for beautiful women, who in turn longed for it. Once I'd fired my forty-one shells, I'd be a powboy of legend, a part of history.

An unlocked gate allowed us entry into our yard, where we were welcomed by dancing weasels. I knew that my yard was a weasel playground now, a place where they fell in love, married and multiplied in numbers sufficient to keep out scavengers. Weasels have a charm that women find irresistible; they make them take leave of their senses and provoke them into singing and dancing and, in some cases, even running naked down the street. But they didn't scare us. ‘Thanks, guys,’ I said to them, for guarding the mortar for me. ‘You're welcome,’ they replied. Some wore red vests, like runners on the stock-exchange floor. Others had on white shorts, like children at a public swimming pool.

First we took apart the mortar in the side room and carried the parts into the yard. Then, after leaning a ladder against the eaves of the westside room, I climbed onto the roof. The roof tiles on the neighbourhood houses glinted in the moonlight. I could see the river flowing behind the village, the open fields in front and the fires burning in the wild. I couldn't have asked for a more opportune moment. Why wait? I asked my companions to tie each part with a rope, and tie it well, so that I could then haul it up onto the roof. I removed a pair of white gloves from the tube, put them on and then swiftly reassembled the weapon; before long, my very own mortar crouched on the roof, gleaming in the moonlight, like a bride emerged from her bath and
waiting for her new husband. Pointed into the sky at a forty-five-degree angle, the tube seemed to suck up the moonbeams. Several playful weasels climbed up beside me, scurried across to the mortar and began to scratch at it. They were so cute that I didn't stop them. Had it been anyone else I'd have thrown them off without a second thought. Then the boy led the mule up to the foot of the ladder and the old couple unloaded the cases, moving with precision and confidence. Even one shell dropped to the floor would have meant disaster. Each case was tied with rope; I hauled them up, one at a time, and then laid them out on the roof. That done, the old couple and the little boy climbed up to join me. The woman was gasping for breath by then. She suffered from an inflamed windpipe, and I knew she needed to eat a turnip to feel better. If only we had one. ‘We'll take care of that,’ one of the weasels said. Before long, eight little creatures scrambled up the ladder, chanting a rhythmic hi-ho, carrying a turnip two feet long and with a high water content. The old man rushed up to lift it from the weasels’ shoulders and hand it to his wife. Then he thanked them profusely, a manifestation of the common man's simple manners. The old woman broke the turnip in half over her knee, laid the bottom half beside her, took a crisp bite out of the top and then began to chew, suffusing the moonbeams with the smell of turnip.

‘Fire a round!’ she said. ‘Eating a turnip dipped in gunpowder smoke will cure me. Sixty years ago, when my son was born, five Japanese soldiers shot a mortar in our yard, sending gunpowder smoke in through the window and into my throat, damaging my windpipe. I've had asthma ever since, and my son was so badly shaken by the explosions and choked by the smoke that it weakened his constitution and killed him.’