Pow! (11 page)

Then, out of the blue, I was reminded of our mortar. ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘we have nothing to fear, no one will ever pick on us again, because we've got a big gun.’

I ran to the side room, ripped away the carton paper, picked up the heavy base, and, straining mightily, stumbled out into the yard with it in my arms. I set it down carefully in front of the door.

Father walked out, followed by his daughter.

‘Xiaotong, what's this?’

Without stopping to answer, I ran back into the side room, picked up the heavy tripod, carried it into the yard and laid it beside the base. On my third trip, I carried out the sleek tube, then assembled the whole thing,
quickly and expertly, like a trained artilleryman. Then I stepped back and proudly declared: ‘Dieh, you're looking at a powerful Japanese 82 mm mortar!’

He walked up cautiously to the mortar, bent down and examined it carefully.

When we'd first accepted the heavy weapon, it had been so rusted it had looked like three hunks of scrap metal. I'd attacked the rust with bricks, knocking off the biggest chunks, then switched to sandpaper and removed it from every inch of the metal, even inside the tube. Finally, I rubbed on several coats of grease, until it recaptured its youth, regained its metallic sheen; now it squatted open-mouthed on the ground, like a lion, ready to roar.

‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘look inside the tube.’

Father turned his attention to the tube as a glare lit up his face. When he looked up, there was a sparkle in his eyes. I could see how excited he was. ‘This is something,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Really something. Where'd you get it?’

I shoved my hands into my pockets and pawed the ground as nonchalantly as possible.

‘From an old guy and his wife, who brought it on the back of an old mule.’

‘Have you fired it?’ he asked as he turned his attention back to the tube. ‘I'm sure it'll fire, this is the real thing!’

‘I was planning on going to South Mountain Village in the spring to look up that old man and his wife. They must have shells. I'll buy every one they've got, and the next person who picks on me will see what this thing can do to his house!’ I looked up at Father and, with an ingratiating look, said, ‘We can begin by blasting Lao Lan's house!’

With a bitter smile, Father shook his head but said nothing.

The girl had finished her baked bun. ‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘I'm still hungry.’

Father went back inside and came out with the charred buns.

The girl was shaking. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want a biscuit.’

Father looked at me, obviously embarrassed. I ran inside, picked up the packet of biscuits Mother had tossed down by the stove and held them out to her. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘eat.’

She reached out to take them but Father swept her up in his arms like a hawk taking a chicken.

She burst out crying.

‘Be a good girl, Jiaojiao,’ he said, wanting her to stop crying. ‘We don't eat other people's food.’

That unexpected comment chilled my heart.

He shifted the girl, who would not stop crying, onto his back and patted me on the head with his free hand. ‘Xiaotong,’ he said, ‘you're a big boy now, and you'll do better than your dieh ever did. Now you've got this mortar, and I know I won't have to worry about you.’

With his daughter settled on his back, he turned and walked to the gate. I struggled to hold back my tears as I ran after him.

‘Do you have to go, Dieh?’

He cocked his head to look at me. ‘Be careful with that mortar. Use it only when you have to, and don't use it on Lao Lan's house.’

The hem of his overcoat slipped through my fingers. After bending forward to make it easier for his daughter to hold on, he walked down the frozen road in the direction of the train station. He'd taken only a dozen steps or so when I shouted. ‘Dieh—’

Though he didn't turn back to look, she did. A radiant smile spread across her tear-streaked face, like an orchid in spring or a chrysanthemum in autumn. She waved, sending sharp pains through that ten-year-old heart of mine. I sat down on my haunches and watched as, in about the time it takes to smoke a pipeful, the figures of my father and the little girl disappeared round a bend in the road. Then, after about twice as long, but from the opposite direction, Mother came rushing down the road with the head of a pig, white with red showing through. ‘Where's your dieh?’ she asked, alarmed, when she reached me.

Full of revulsion over the pig's head, I pointed towards the station.

Somewhere far off a rooster crows, weak but clear, and I know we've reached that moment when total darkness precedes the dawn. The sun will be up soon, and the Wise Monk still hasn't moved. Somewhere in the room a mosquito drones wearily. The candle has burnt down, the cool wax in the
candleholder is shaped like a chrysanthemum. The woman lights a cigarette and squints as the smoke drifts into her eyes. Then, with a burst of energy, she stands and shrugs her shoulders, sending her robe sliding to the floor, like dry tofu crust, gathering pathetically round her ankles. She steps on it with both feet before sitting back in her chair, where she spreads her legs and first rubs, then pinches, her nipples, spewing white streams of milk. I am both aroused and mesmerized. As I sit, I watch as the slough of my body maintains its shape, like a cicada, on the stool, while another me, this one stripped naked, walks towards the streams of milk. They spray onto his forehead and into his eyes, leaving drops on his face, like pearly tears. The milk spews into his mouth; the strong taste of human milk fills mine. He kneels in front of the woman and rests his head, with its chaotic mop of hair, on her belly, keeping it there for a long time. Finally, he looks up and asks, as if talking in his sleep: ‘Are you Aunty Wild Mule?’ She shakes her head, then nods, then sighs and says: ‘You foolish little boy.’ She cups her right breast and stuffs the nipple into his mouth…

A loud noise overhead sends down a mixture of broken tiles, rotting grass and mud from the sky; it smashes a bowl and drives a bamboo chopstick into the mildewed wall like an arrow. The woman who has sated me with her full breasts, the woman who is as warm as a sweet potato fresh from the oven, shoves me away. As she extracts her nipple from my mouth, stabbing pains attack my heart, I feel light-headed and fall to the floor on all fours. I try to scream but hardly any sound emerges, as if hands are choking me. Her eyes are glassy as her gaze sweeps the area as if seeking something. She wipes the wet nipples with her fingers and glowers at me. I jump to my feet, rush over and throw my arms round her. Bending, I begin to kiss her neck. She reaches down and pinches my belly, hard, then pushes me away and spits in my face. Then she turns and walks out of the room, buttocks swaying. I follow her, driven to distraction, and watch as she walks up to the Horse Spirit and mounts it from behind. The human-headed statue, with her on its back, flies out of the temple, filling the air with the sound of clattering hooves. I hear birds welcome the dawn with their chirps and, farther away, bovine mothers calling to their calves. I know that this is the hour they feed their young, and in my mind's eye I can see the calves hungrily bumping the teats with their heads as the happy yet agonizing mothers hunker down; but the breast that had been suckling me has vanished, so I sit on the cold, damp ground and cry shamelessly. After I have run out of tears, I look up and spot a hole the size of a basket in the roof, through which early morning sunlight enters like a tide. I smack my lips, as if I'd just awakened from a dream. But if this has been a dream, why does the taste of milk linger in my mouth? The injection of this mysterious liquid into my body carries me back to my youth, and even my adult body begins to shrink. If it hasn't been a dream, then where did the Aunty Wild Mule who isn't my Aunty Wild Mule go? I sit there staring woodenly at the Wise Monk, whom I'd forgotten, as he slowly returns to wakefulness, like
a python emerging from hibernation. Folding up his body in that room, suffused with the golden glow of dawn, he begins his qigong breathing exercises. The Wise Monk is dressed in ordinary clothing—yes, it is the threadbare robe the woman who suckled me had worn. He has a unique way of exercising. Folding up his body, he takes his penis in his mouth and rolls round on his wide bed like a wind-up toy with a taut spring. Steam rises from his shaved head in seven distinct colours. At first, I didn't think much of his trifling exercise regimen, but when I tried it I realized that rolling round on the bed is no big deal, nor is folding up my body that way, but taking my penis in my mouth—now that's a challenge.

Once he's finished, the Wise Monk stands on his bed to limber up, like a horse that's been rolling in soft sand. A horse will shake its body to send loose sand flying; the Wise Monk shakes his body to create a rainfall of sweat. Some of the drops hit me in the face, and one flies into my mouth. I am astounded to discover that his sweat has the fragrance of osmanthus, which now spreads throughout the room. He is a big man with large, whirlpool-shaped scars on his left breast and belly. Though I've never seen bullet wounds, I know that is what they are. Most people shot in those vital areas go straight down to the underworld, and to be not just alive but hale and hearty can only mean that he enjoys great good fortune and an enviable karma, a man born under a lucky star. As he stands on the bed, his head nearly brushes against the rafters, and it seems to me that if he stretched himself as tall as he could, then he might be able to stick his head out through the hole in the roof. Wouldn't that be a fright—his head, with its incense scars, sticking up through the roof tiles at the rear of the temple? Just think how stunningly strange that would look to the hawks wheeling low in the sky. As the Wise Monk limbers up, his body is exposed. It's a young man's body, in contrast to his old man's head. If not for a slight paunch, it could be mistaken for the body of a thirty-year-old man; but once he puts on his threadbare robe and sits cross-legged in front of the Wutong Spirit, no one who saw only his face and bearing would doubt that he was a man just shy of a hundred. Now that he's shaken the sweat off his body, and is good and limber, he climbs off the bed. What I observed has vanished under a robe that seems about to disintegrate. This has all the qualities of a hallucination. I rub my eyes and, like the heroes in wildwood tales who ponder their reactions to strange encounters, I bite my finger to see if I am dreaming.
A pain shoots through my finger, proof that I am in the flesh and that what I observed was real. The Wise Monk—at this moment he is a faltering Wise Monk—seems to have at that moment discovered me as I crawl up to him; he reaches out, pulls me to my feet, and, in a voice dripping with compassion, says: ‘Young patron, is there something this aged monk can do for you?’ ‘Wise Monk,’ I say, a myriad feelings welling up inside me, ‘Wise Monk, I haven't finished my story from yesterday.’ The Wise Monk sighs, as if recalling events of the day before. ‘Do you want to continue?’ he asks compassionately. ‘If I keep it inside, Wise Monk, and don't let it all out, it will become an open sore, a toxic boil! He shakes his head ambiguously. ‘Come with me, young patron,’ he says. I follow him into the temple's main hall, where we stop in front of the Horse Spirit, one of the five. In this just and honourable place, we kneel on the rush mat, which looks so much more tattered than it did yesterday, dotted, as it is, with grey rain-produced mushrooms. The flies that seemed to have crawled round in his ears the day before now swarm back and cover them completely; two hang in the air for a moment before landing on his exceptionally long, twisting eyebrows which shake like branches supporting squawking birds. I kneel beside the Wise Monk, my buttocks resting on the heels of my feet, to continue my story. But I am beginning to wonder if I am still firm in my goal to become a monk. It seems to me that, in the space of one night, my relationship with the Wise Monk has undergone a significant change. The image of his young, robust body, which radiates sexual passion, keeps appearing in front of my eyes and his threadbare monk's robe turns transparent, throwing my heart into turmoil. But I still feel like talking. As my father taught me: anything with a beginning deserves to have an ending. I continue
—

Regaining her composure, Mother grabbed me by the arm and led me in the direction of the station, taking long strides.

My right arm grasped in her left hand and the white, pink-tinged pig's head in her right, we walked faster and faster and then finally broke into a run.

I tried to twist free of her iron grip but she held on. I was angry at her. Father came home this morning, Yang Yuzhen, and your attitude stinks! He's a good man who's down on his luck. The fact that he swallowed his pride and bowed to you may not qualify as earth-shattering but it was enough to draw
tears. What more do you want, Yang Yuzhen? Why provoke him with such vile language? He gave you a way out, but instead of climbing off your high horse you cried and wailed and bawled and spewed a stream of ugly curses at a man who made a small mistake. How do you expect a respectable man to take that? Then, to make things worse, you dragged my little sister into it. Your slap sent her cap flying and exposed a white cotton knot, and then you made her cry, breaking the heart of someone who has the same father but a different mother—me. Yang Yuzhen, why can't you understand Father's feelings? Yang Yuzhen, a bystander—me—saw things more clearly than the actor—you—and you should know that you ruined everything with that slap. It destroyed any conjugal feelings he might have retained, it froze his heart. And mine. You're such a heartless mother that you've made me, Luo Xiaotong, wary of you. I was hoping he'd come back to live with us but now I think that leaving was the best thing he did. If it'd been me, I'd have left, and so would anyone with a shred of dignity. In fact, I should have gone with him, Yang Yuzhen, and left you to enjoy the good life in a five-room, tiled-roof house all by yourself!