Pow! (16 page)

At noon, when Father showed up for the second time in our yard with my sister in his arms, Mother appeared perfectly calm, as if he was only returning from visiting the neighbours with his daughter. His behaviour surprised me too. Calm, his movements natural, nothing like a down-and-out man coming home after having endured the storms of inner struggle. He was just an ordinary home-loving husband who'd taken his daughter to the market.

Mother shrugged off her overcoat and put on a pair of canvas over-sleeves she'd picked out of the trash so she could scrub the pot, fill it with water and gather fuel for the stove. To my surprise, instead of the usual scrap rubber, she fed it with the finest pine, wood left over after building the house. She'd squirrelled that away after chopping it up for kindling, waiting, I supposed, to burn it on some special occasion. As the room filled with the scent of burning pine, the firelight filled my heart with warmth. Mother sat in front of the stove, looking a bit like a woman who's sold a wagonload of fake scrap without getting caught by the inspectors from the local-products office.

‘Xiaotong, go to Old Zhou's and buy three
jin
of sausage.’ She stiffened her leg, took three ten-yuan notes from her purse and handed them to me. ‘Make sure it's freshly steamed,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And on the way home, buy three
jin
of dried noodles at the corner store.’

By the time I made it back, red, oily sausage and dried noodles in hand, Father had changed out of his overcoat and Jiaojiao had taken off her down coat. The lined jacket he now wore was shiny with grime and missing a few buttons but he looked more respectable than in his overcoat. Jiaojiao too was wearing a lined jacket—white with a red floral pattern, with sleeves not long enough to cover her rail-thin arms—over lined red-checked pants. She was a lovely, docile creature, like a little white-fleeced lamb, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of affection towards her. Both she and Father were sitting at a red, stumpy-legged catalpa-wood table we brought out only over New Year's; the rest of the year, Mother lovingly wrapped it in plastic and hung it from the rafters, out of the way. Now she placed on it two bowls of steaming hot water and then brought out a jar enclosed in plastic. As soon as she opened the wrapping and unscrewed the cap to reveal its sparkling white
contents, my eyes and sensitive nose told me that it contained sugar crystals. Now, there couldn't have been many children with a greedier mouth than mine and, no matter how cleverly Mother hid them, I always managed to ferret out my favourite foods. All but this jar of sugar. I had no idea when she'd bought it or found it. Obviously, she was craftier than I thought, certainly craftier than me, which got me thinking: How much more good food has she hidden away?

Far from being guilty about hiding the sugar from me, she seemed proud of it. She scooped out a spoonful and dumped it into Jiaojiao's bowl, a display of generosity I never thought I'd see till the sun rose in the west or a chicken laid a duck's egg or a pig gave birth to an elephant.

Jiaojiao looked up at Mother, her bright eyes full of apprehension, and then at Father, whose eyes shone. He reached over and plucked the knit cap off her head. Next, Mother held a spoonful of sugar over Father's bowl but stopped before pouring it in, and I noticed a little-girl pout form on her lips as a pink blush spread across her cheeks. I simply couldn't figure that woman out! She placed the jar on the table in front of him—hard—and said, softly: ‘Put it in yourself. That way you won't have anything to say about me!’

Father gazed into her face with obvious puzzlement but she quickly turned away so she wouldn't have to endure the look in his eyes. He took the spoon out of the jar and put it into Jiaojiao's bowl, then screwed the cap back on. ‘What right does someone like me have to eat sugar?’ Stirring the mixture in his daughter's bowl, he said: ‘Jiaojiao, thank your aunty.’

She obeyed, timidly, but failed to please Mother. ‘Drink it,’ she said. ‘There's no need to thank anyone.’

Father dipped the spoon into the sugar water, blew on it, then carried it up to her mouth. But then he abruptly poured it back into her bowl and, flustered, picked up his bowl and drank its contents in one gulp. The water was so hot his lips pulled back to expose clenched teeth and perspiration dotted his forehead. Then he picked up Jiaojiao's and poured half the sugar water into his now-empty bowl. When he laid the two bowls together, I guess to see if the contents were even, I wondered what he had in mind. It soon became clear. He pushed his bowl across the table to me and said, apologetically: ‘Xiaotong, this bowl's for you.’

That really touched me. The gluttonous desire gnawing at my belly had been swept away by a noble spirit. ‘I'm too big for that stuff, Dieh,’ I said. ‘Let her drink it.’

Another wheeze rumbled in Mother's throat. Turned away from us, she dried her eyes with that black towel. ‘It's for all of you!’ she said angrily. ‘I may not have much but I've always got water!’ She kicked a stool up to the table and, without looking at me, said: ‘Why are you still standing there? If Dieh tells you to drink, then drink!’

Father set the stool straight for me and I sat down.

Mother untied the braided grass string round the cuts of sausage and placed them on the table in front of us. I think she gave Jiaojiao the thickest piece. ‘Eat it while it's hot,’ she said. ‘The noodles will be ready in a minute.’

The sound of music out on the street, from both the east and the west, is deafening. The Carnivore Festival parade is drawing near. Thirty or more panicky jackrabbits dash out of the planted fields on both sides of the highway and come together in front of the temple entrance, where they engage in whispered conversations. One of them, with a droopy left ear that looks like a wilted vegetable leaf, and white whiskers, appears to be the leader and lets out a shockingly shrill cry. Now I know rabbits, and I can assure you that that is not the sort of noise commonly made by them. But all animals produce distinctive sounds in an emergency, to alert members of their species to danger. As I expected, the rest of the rabbits react to the command by shouting all at once and then bounding into the temple. The beauty of their leaps across the threshold is indescribable. They run straight to a spot behind the Wutong Spirit, where a breathless discussion breaks out. All of a sudden it occurs to me that there's a fox family back there—the entry of the rabbits is the equivalent of a meal delivered to their door. But there's nothing anyone can do about that, not now. It's best left to nature, since the foxes will be angry if I alert the rabbits. Ear-splitting musical notes erupt from a pair of loudspeakers on the stage across the way. It is jubilant music with a foot-tapping beat and a great melody, an open invitation to start dancing. During the decade that I roamed the country, Wise Monk, I worked for a while at a dance hall called Garden of Eden. They had me dress in a white uniform and told me to keep smiling as I attended to well-fed and liquored-up or just plain horny, red-faced customers who visited the men's room. I turned on the taps for them and, when they were finished washing their paws, handed them folded hot towels. Some accepted the towels and then, when their hands were dry, thanked me as they handed them back, often tossing a coin into the dish placed there for tips. Every once in a while, a particularly generous customer would leave a ten-yuan note, and, on more than one occasion, a hundred-yuan one. Anyone that free with his money must have been well heeled and lucky in love. For people like that, life was
good. Then there were those who ignored my ministrations and used the electric hand-dryer on the wall. One glance at their impassive expressions told me that life was not so good to them. Chances are that they were expected to cough up the money for a bunch of drunken sots, most likely corrupt individuals who held some sort of power over them. No matter how much they hated them, they had to grin and bear it. Losers like that get no sympathy from me. Good people don't spend their money in degenerate places like that and, as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't have minded getting Lao Lan's third uncle to mow them all down with his machine gun. But the cheapskates who didn't even drop a coin into my dish were the worst; just a look at their glum faces made me angry; even Lao Lan's third uncle's machine gun would not have erased the loathing I held for them. I think back to when I, Luo Xiaotong, was a real operator and lament that I'm now a phoenix that has fallen to the earth, no better than a chicken. No man of substance tries to relive past glories. You have to lower your head if you stand beneath an eave. Wise Monk, whoever made up the saying ‘Success at a young age brings bad luck to a family’ must have had me in mind. Smiling on the outside and seething on the inside, I waited on those bastards who came in to relieve themselves, all the while recalling my glorious past and my sad memories. Every time I saw one of them out the door, I cursed inwardly: You lousy bastard, I hope you slip and break your neck while walking, drown while drinking, choke to death while eating or croak while sleeping. I listened to the goings-on outside when the stalls and urinals were empty—hot, passionate music one minute and slow, romantic melodies the next. Sometimes I felt driven to do something worthwhile with my life, but there were other times when I fantasized being out in the muted dance-hall light, holding close a girl with bare shoulders and perfumed hair, dancing dreamily. If the fantasy played on, my legs began to move to the beat. But those dreamy moments were shattered by the next stream of arseholes with their dicks in their hands. Do you have any idea how much humiliation I've suffered, Wise Monk? One day I actually set a fire in the men's room. I quickly put it out with a fire extinguisher, but the dance-hall boss, Fatty Hong, dragged me over to the police station and accused me of arson. I convinced the interrogating officer that one of the drunken patrons had set the fire. Since I'd saved the day by putting it out, the owner ought to reward me. In fact, he'd agreed to that, but then had second thoughts. He was a cruel, bloodsucking
slave driver, happy to chew up his employees and swallow them whole. By taking me to the authorities, he figured he could save the reward money and withhold the three months’ pay he owed me. ‘Mr Policeman,’ I said, ‘you're a wise arbiter who won't be fooled by the likes of Fatty Hong. You may not know it, but he likes to hide in the men's room and call you all sorts of names. He'll be taking a leak and saying terrible things about the police…’ Well, it worked. The police let me go. They said I'd committed no crime. Of course I hadn't. That damned Lao Lan, on the other hand, definitely had. But he was a member of the Municipal Standing Committee and no stranger to TV shows, where he made high-sounding pronouncements and never missed an opportunity to mention his third uncle. Third Uncle, he claimed, was a patriotic overseas Chinese who had brought glory to the descendants of the Yellow Emperor with his thick, powerful penis. Third uncle was returning to China to fund the building of a Wutong Temple in order to enhance the virility of local men. Lao Lan, the creep, managed to win over his audience with a line of bullshit. Ah, yes, I forgot, that man with the enormous ears we saw a short while ago—I wouldn't be surprised if Lao Lan's third uncle looked just like that as a young man—often showed up at the Garden of Eden dance hall, and once even flipped a green note into my dish. I later learnt that it was a US hundred-dollar note
!
It was brand new; the edges so sharp I got a paper cut while I examined it. That bled for a long time. When he wore a white suit with a red tie, he was tall and imposing, like a mighty poplar. When he wore a dark green suit with a yellow tie, he was tall and imposing, like a mighty black pine. When he wore a burgundy suit with a white tie, he was tall and imposing, like a mighty red fir. I never did see what he looked like when he was out there dancing, but I could envision him holding the prettiest girl in the dance hall, she in a white or dark green or purple strapless gown, shoulders and arms looking as if they'd been carved out of white jade, draped in fine jewellery, with big limpid eyes and a beauty spot near her mouth, the two of them gliding across the dance floor under the gaze of the other patrons. Applause, fresh flowers, fine liquor, women, all his for the taking. I dreamt of becoming someone like that one day—a lavish tipper and a big spender, surrounded by beautiful women as I swaggered down the street like a spotted leopard, secretive yet extravagant, giving bystanders the impression that a mysterious, unfathomable spectre had just passed by. Are you still listening, Wise Monk?

Round nightfall, the snowfall intensified, and before long our compound lay beneath a blanket of white. Mother picked up her broom and had barely begun to sweep the snow away when Father took it from her. His movements were strong and firm, and I was reminded of what people in the village said about him: Luo Tong is good at what he does. Too bad ‘you can't make a thoroughbred till a field’. As darkness fell, he seemed to grow larger, especially in the light reflected off the snow. A clear path opened up behind him in hardly any time. Mother walked down path and shut the gate, the metal latch making a resounding clang that shook the snowy dusk. Darkness took over, the only light a misty reflection of the snow on the ground and in the air. Mother and Father stomped their shoes beneath the eaves and shook their clothes free of snow; I think they even dusted it off each other with a towel. I was sitting in the corner no more than half a step from the pig's head, and I could smell its cold, raw aroma, but I was more interested in trying to penetrate the darkness and see their expressions. Unfortunately, I wasn't very successful, and all I could make out were their swaying shadows. I heard my sister's laboured breathing in front of me, like a little wild beast hiding in the dark. I'd gorged myself at noon; by nightfall, undigested pieces of sausage and noodles rose up my throat, only to be chewed once more and sent back down. I've heard people say that's a disgusting thing to do, but I wasn't about to throw out any food. Now that Father was home, my diet was likely to change, but exactly how and to what extent remained a puzzle. He looked so dejected, so docile and submissive, that I had an uncomfortable feeling that my hopes—of his return resulting in more meat on the table—were doomed to be dashed. But be that as it may, the event had created an opportunity to stuff myself with the sausage, which, admittedly, was long on starch filler and short on meat, although the thin casing did come from an animal. And I mustn't forget that, when the sausage was gone, I'd enjoyed two bowls of noodles. Then there was the pig's head, which rested on the chopping board, so close I could reach out and touch it. When would it find its way into my digestive system? Mother wasn't planning on selling it, I hoped.