Pow! (7 page)

Now that the bull was dead, everyone felt it safe enough to climb down. Blackish red blood continued to flow from the wound, bubbling like a fountain, releasing a heated odour into the crisp morning air. The men stood about like deflated balloons, shrivelled and diminished somehow. There was
so much they wanted to say but no one said a word. Except my father, who tucked his head down low between his shoulders, opened his mouth to reveal a set of strong but yellow teeth, and said: ‘Old man in the sky, I was so scared!’ Everyone turned to look at Lao Lan, who wished he could crawl into a hole. He tried to cover his embarrassment by looking down at the bull, whose legs were stretched out straight, its fleshy thighs still twitching. One of its blue eyes remained open, as if to release the hatred still inside. ‘Damn you!’ Lao Lan said as he kicked the dead animal. ‘You spend your whole life hunting wild geese only to have your eye pecked out by a gosling.’ He then looked up at my father. ‘I owe you one, Luo Tong, but you and I aren't finished.’ ‘Finished with what?’ Father asked. ‘There's nothing between you and me.’ ‘Don't you touch her!’ hissed Lao Lan. ‘I never wanted to touch her—she asked me to,’ replied Father with a proud little laugh. ‘She called you a dog, and she'll never let you touch her again.’ I had no idea what that was all about, but later, of course, I realized out they were talking about Aunty Wild Mule, who owned a little wine shop. But when I asked him, ‘Dieh, what were you talking about?’ ‘Nothing a child needs to know,’ is what he answered. ‘Son,’ Lao Lan said, ‘didn't you say you wanted to be a member of the Lan clan? Then why did you call him Dieh just now?’ ‘You're nothing but a pile of stinking dog shit!’ I said. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘you go home and tell your mother that your father's found his way into Wild Mule's cave and can't get out.’ That made my father as angry as the bull, and he lowered his head and charged at Lao Lan. They were at each other's throat for no more than a moment before the others rushed over and separated them. But in that brief moment Lao Lan managed to break my father's little finger and my father to bite off half of Lao Lan's ear. Spitting it out angrily, Father said: ‘How dare you say things like that in front of my son, you dog bastard!’

Without a sound, the woman slips through the narrow space separating me from the Wise Monk, the wide hem of her jacket lightly brushing the tip of my nose, her chilled calf rubbing against my knee. Flustered, I can't go on with my tale for a moment. She carries the Wise Monk's ancient brass washbasin into the water-soaked courtyard, showing me the profile of her gaunt face, the hint of a smile hidden in her eyes. The mass of clouds above us parts to reveal patches of rosy sky, tinged by gold in the west as the fire clouds of sunset burn their way past. The bats that make their home in the temple wheel in the outside air and sparkle like gold beans. The woman's face lights up gloriously. Her oversized jacket, made of homespun cotton, has a row of brass buttons down the front. She bends over to lay down the laundry-filled basin; it wobbles in the shallow water. She then wades leisurely round the yard, the water covering her calves. The hem of her robe held up in her hands reveals tanned thighs and white buttocks. Imagine my surprise to note that she is wearing nothing underneath! That is to say, if she takes off her robe she'll be standing there naked. The large robe must be the Wise Monk's. I know the details of his personal belongings like the back of my hand but I've never seen that particular robe. Where did she find it? I think back to a moment before, when she passed by me, and recall a musty smell, one that now permeates the air in the courtyard. She strolls aimlessly for a moment before heading to a corner of the wall, urgently, where she makes loud splashing noises; that fish leaps out of the water again behind her, then falls back. She is holding the hem of her robe higher than ever, in order to keep it dry, exposing her buttocks. When she reaches the wall, she grips the hem of her robe even higher with her left hand, bends over and, with her right hand, digs out the twigs and grass that clog up the drain and flings them over the wall. Her buttocks, like brass cymbals, proudly greet the fire clouds in the western sky. Now that the drain is unclogged, she stands up and moves to the side to watch the water flow
towards her, carrying twigs and the little plastic horse. The laundry-filled brass basin moves a few feet before settling on the ground. The body of the fish slowly comes into view; for a moment it is able to keep swimming, but it is quickly laid out flat and all it can do is flap about in desperation, splashing water everywhere. I think I hear its shrill screams. The cobblestone path emerges first from the water, followed by the dirt round it. A toad jumps out of the mud, the loose skin under its mouth popping in and out. Frogs set up a din of croaks in the ditch beyond the wall. The woman opens the hand holding the hem of her robe, then smoothes the wrinkles with the other hand, the wet one. The fish flaps up next to her. Though she watches it for a moment and then looks over to where we sit, it is, of course, beyond my ability to decide what she should do about that unfortunate creature. She runs a few steps, muddying her feet and nearly falling in the process but presses that recalcitrant fish to the ground with both hands, then straightens up and looks our way again. She sighs and, in the redness of the sunset, reluctantly picks up the fish and flings it away, its tail snapping back and forth as it sails over the wall and out of sight. But the glittery golden arc it traces in the air imprints itself on my mind, where it will remain for a very long time. She walks over to where the brass basin lies, picks out a shirt and smoothes the collar, then shakes it hard, sending out waves of sound. The red shirt looks like a ball of fire in the sunset. The woman's resemblance to Aunty Wild Mule has led me to sense that there is a special and extraordinarily close relationship between us. Even though I am nearing the age of twenty, when I look at that woman I feel like a boy of seven or eight; and yet, the pounding of my heart and the stirrings of that thing between my legs declare to me that I am that child no longer. She lays the shirt on top of the cast-iron incense burner directly opposite the temple entrance, and spreads the remaining clothes on top of the still-wet wall. With rapt attention I watch how nimbly, how energetically, she jumps up to smooth out each item, over and over. Finished with her work, she walks to the temple entrance, as if it were the door to her home, throws her arms out to stretch her upper torso, then puts her hands on her hips to limber her midsection. Her buttocks shift as if rubbing against an invisible object. I don't know how I'll ever be able to take my eyes off that body, but the possibility of becoming a disciple to the Wise Monk is important enough to make me sacrifice such visual pleasures. For an instant I wonder: if she were to take my
hand and lead me to some faraway place, the way Aunty Wild Mule did with my father, would I be able to refuse?

Mother told me to secure the rear hatch of the walking tractor while she went to the wall to drag over a couple of baskets of cow and goat bones. Bending down, she picked up each basket and dumped its bones into the tractor bed. These were discarded bones we'd bought, not the remains of our meals. If we'd eaten the meat off this many bones, even 1 per cent of that many, I'd have had no complaints and no need to miss my father, I'd have stood firmly beside my mother as she denounced him and Aunty Wild Mule for their crimes and their sins. There had been times when I'd felt like cracking open a couple of fresh-looking bovine leg bones just to get at the marrow, but the hawkers always cleaned them out before selling. Once they were loaded, Mother told me to help her dump in some scrap metal. This so-called scrap metal actually included intact machine parts: diesel-engine flywheels, connecting joints for construction scaffolds, even some manhole covers from the city's sewer system; a little of everything. Once we found a Japanese mortar, brought to us on the back of a mule by an old man in his eighties and an old woman in her seventies. Back when we were just starting out, we bought everything as scrap and then sold it back as scrap—at a minuscule profit. We figured things out, though, and began sorting the scrap and selling it to appropriate companies in town. We sold construction materials to builders, manhole covers to sewer industries and machine parts to hardware stores. But since we couldn't find the right buyer for the mortar, we kept it at home as a collectible. I'd made up my mind not to sell it even if we did find a buyer. A typical boy—warlike—I was fascinated by weapons. Since my father had run off with another woman, I'd not been able to raise my head round other children, but now that I owned a mortar I could walk with my back straight, cockier than those who had fathers at home. I once overheard a couple of young village bullies quietly agree to stay clear of Luo Xiaotong because his family had a mortar and he'd use it against anyone who offended him, taking lethal aim at the offender's house.
POW!
the place would go up in smoke, burn to the ground! You can imagine how proud
that
made me. I was so happy I could burst. Selling scrap metal to speciality buyers did not bring in as much as the items were worth new but it did sell for more than ordinary scrap and that was how we were able to build a house with a tiled roof in five years.

After we'd loaded the scrap metal, Mother dragged over some cardboard boxes and laid them on the ground. Then she told me to draw water from the pump. This was one of my regular chores, and I knew that the handle was cold enough to peel the skin off my hands. So I put on stiff pigskin safety gloves we'd picked up on our rounds. Almost everything we owned, in fact, from foam pillows to a spatula, had come the same way. Some of our pickings had never even been used—my wool cap, for instance, which was brand-new army ration. It smelt like mothballs and had the date of manufacture—November 1968—stamped in red on the inside. My father was still a bed-wetting little boy back then, my mother a bed-wetting little girl, and me, well, I wasn't. With the gloves on, my hands were next to useless, but it was a bitterly cold day and the base of the pump was frozen solid. A leak at the edge puffed out air each time I pressed down on the handle but no water came out. ‘Hurry up!’ Mother shouted irritably. ‘Stop dawdling. “A poor child grows up fast” but you're ten years old and can't even draw water from a well. Raising you has been a waste of time and effort. All you're good at is eating—eat eat eat. If you devoted half your eating talent to getting your chores done, you'd be a model worker with a red sash.’ Mother grumbled, I seethed. Ever since you left us, Dieh, I've been eating pig and dog food and dressing like a beggar and working like a beast of burden. But nothing makes her happy. Dieh, when you left you were looking forward to a second land reform. Well, I'm looking forward to it more than you ever did. But it won't ever come. It's easier for people to get rich illegally. They're afraid of nothing. After Father left, Mother came to be known as the Queen of Trash. That should have made me the Queen of Trash's son, but in fact I was the Queen of Trash's slave. Her grumbling grew to cursing, and my self-pity shrank to despair. I took off the gloves and grabbed the pump handle with my bare hands. With a sucking sound they immediately stuck to the cold metal. Go ahead, pig iron handle, be cold, be frozen, peel the skin off my hands if you want to. It's hopeless anyway. Smash a broken jar—what difference does it make? I'll freeze to death, so what! She'll wind up with no son, and her big house with a tiled roof and her big truck will be meaningless. She's actually dreaming about my child marriage. Marriage to whom, you ask? To Lao Lan's stupid daughter, that's who. A year older, and a head taller, she doesn't even have a real name—only a nickname, Tiangua, Sweet Melon. A nose infection
all year round means she always has two lines of snot above her mouth. Mother would love to improve her social standing by linking up with the Lan clan, and all I think about is setting up my mortar and flattening the Lan house. Dream on, Mother! So what if my hands stick to the pump handle! They belonged to ‘her son’ before they belonged to me. I pushed down, there was a gurgle and water gushed into the bucket. I immediately buried my face in it and began to drink. Stop that, she shouted. She didn't want me drinking cold water. But I ignored her. Best to drink till my belly ached and I was rolling on the ground like a donkey that's stopped turning a millstone. After I carried the bucket over to her, she told me to fetch the ladle. I did. Then she told me to splash water on the paper—not too much and not too little, just enough to give it a coat of ice. That done, she spread another layer of paper over the ice and I splashed on more water. We'd done this so many times it had become routine; there was no need for words. What I spread over the paper was water; what we received in return was money. What the butchers in town injected into the meat was water; what they received in return was also money. After Father ran off, Mother would not allow herself to wallow in self-pity. So, deciding to become a butcher, she apprenticed herself to Sun Zhangsheng. I went along. Mother and Sun's wife were distant cousins. But the ‘white knife in, red knife out’ profession is not suited to women; and even though Mother had an abundance of patience and endurance, she never matched the ferocity of Madame Sun. She and I did all right when it came to slaughtering young pigs and sheep but adult cows were a different matter altogether. They made things almost impossible as we stood there clutching a glinting butcher knife. ‘This is no job for you, Aunty,’ Sun Zhangsheng said to Mother. ‘They're telling people in town to sell undoctored meat, so sooner or later what we're doing will be illegal. We butchers earn our living by injecting the meat with water. The day they put a stop to that is the day our profits dry up.’ He's the one who urged Mother to take up the scavenging business—it required no capital and was a guaranteed livelihood. He was right. In three years, everyone within thirty
li
knew us as the Queen and Prince of Trash.