Pow! (4 page)

This woman's eyes are really big. There's a tadpole-shaped mole at the corner of her mouth, from which one dark red hair curls out. I'm captivated by the strange look in her eyes, a look of madness. She still has the coat in her hand, holding it up and shaking it out every now and then, making popping sounds. Rain slants in through the door and water continues to drip from her body, forming a muddy pool at her feet. Which, I suddenly realize, are bare. A pair of very large feet, probably a size forty, looking out of place on her body. Leaves have stuck to the tops of her feet, and her water-soaked toes have turned white. As I talk on, I think about her background. In such weather, on a day like this, why would a woman with high arching breasts show up in a little temple in the middle of nowhere? Especially one that enshrines five spirits with superhuman sexual prowess, one that generations of intellectuals have called an ‘obscenity’? Though I have many doubts, my mind begins to fill with warm images. I'm dying to walk up and throw my arms round her, but I don't dare, given the presence of the Wise Monk, especially since I‘ve come with the hope of signing on as a novice and am spewing out my life story for his benefit. The woman seems to understand what I'm feeling, for she keeps looking at me, and her lips, which were clamped shut when she entered, are parted enough for me to see her glinting teeth. They're slightly yellow and not particularly straight, but they seem to be hard and healthy. She has bushy brows that nearly meet above her eyes, which gives her a lively appearance, sort of foreign. I can't tell if the way she tugs at her pants, which tend to stick to her buttocks, is intentional, but every time she lets go they cling to her skin again. I'm sympathetic but have no idea how to help. If I were in charge of this little temple, I'd forget about religious taboos and commandments and ask her into the back room, where she could get out of those wet clothes. Let her put on one of the Wise Monk's cassocks and lay her clothes out at the head of his bed to dry. But would he approve? Without warning, she scrunches up her nose and lets fly a loud sneeze. ‘My lady, you do as you please,’ the Wise Monk says, his eyes still shut. She bows and flashes a smile in my direction, then walks past me, clothes in hand, over behind the Horse Spirit.

Early summer mornings found the people exhausted, since the nights were so short. They'd barely closed their eyes, it seemed, and the sun was up. Father and I ran out into the dust-blown street but could not escape Mother's shouts from the yard. We were still living in the three-room shack inherited from Grandfather, passing the days in chaotic exuberance. Our shack looked particularly shabby, tucked in among a bunch of newly built red-tiled houses, like a beggar kneeling in front of a clutch of landlords and rich merchants, in silks and satins, asking for alms. The wall round our yard came up barely to an adult's waist and was topped by weeds. It couldn't keep out a pregnant bitch, let alone a thief. In fact, the pregnant bitch from the home of Guo Six often jumped into our yard to feast on our discarded bones. I used to watch, fascinated, as she scaled the wall, her black teats scraping the top and then swaying as she landed. Father carried me on his shoulders so I could look down on Mother as she scraped and sliced and chopped with her cleaver, cursing us as we walked by. She had to scavenge sweet potato scraps from the garbage heap in front of the train station. Thanks to my lazy, gluttonous Father, we lived a life of extremes, with potfuls of meat on the stove during the good times and empty pots during the bad. In response to Mother's curses, he'd say: ‘Any day now, very soon, the second land-reform campaign will begin, and you'll thank me when it does. Don't for a minute envy Lao Lan, since he'll wind up like that landlord father of his, dragged off to the bridgehead by a mob of poor peasants to be shot.’ He'd aim an imaginary rifle at Mother's head and fire: Bang! She'd grab her head with both hands and pale with fright. But the second land-reform campaign didn't come and didn't come, and poor Mother was forced to bring home rotten sweet potatoes for the pigs, two little animals that never got enough to eat and that squealed hungrily most of the time. It was so annoying. ‘What the hell are you squealing for?’ Father shouted at them once, ‘Keep it up and I'll toss you two little
bastards in a pot and have you for dinner!’ Cleaver in hand, Mother glared at him. ‘Don't even think about it. Those are my pigs. I raised them, and no one's to harm a hair on them. Either the fish dies or the net breaks.’ ‘Take it easy,’ Father said, laughing gleefully. ‘I wouldn't touch those skin-and-bones animals for anything.’ I took a long look at the pigs—there really wasn't much meat on either of them, although those four fleshy ears would have made for good snacking. To me, the ears were the best part of a pig's head—no fat, not much grease and tiny little bones that crunch nicely. Best eaten with cucumbers, the thorny ones with flowers, some mashed garlic and sesame oil. ‘We can eat their ears!’ I said. Mother glared at me. ‘I'll cut off your ears and eat them first, you little bastard!’ Steaming, she came at me with her cleaver and I ran fearfully into Father's arms. She grabbed hold of my ear and jerked it hard while Father tried to pull me free—by the neck—and I screamed for all I was worth, afraid my ear would be ripped off. My screams sounded like the squeals of the pigs being slaughtered in the village. Finally, Father managed to yank me free. After examining my bruised ear, he looked up and said: ‘How can you be so mean? People say that even a tiger won't eat its young, so I guess that makes you worse than a tiger!’ Rage turned Mother's face waxen and her lips purple; she stood at the stove, shaking from head to toe. Emboldened by my father's protection, I cursed, spitting out her full name: ‘Yang Yuzhen, you stinking old lady, you're making my life a living hell!’ Stunned by my outburst, she just gaped at me, while Father chuckled as he picked me up and took off at a run. We were already out in the yard by the time we heard Mother's shrill wail: ‘I'm so mad I could die, you little bastard…’ Her two pigs wagged their curly tails and began rooting in the mud at the base of the wall, like convicts trying to burrow under a prison wall to freedom. Father rapped me on the head and said softly: ‘You little imp, how did you know your mother's name?’ I looked into his swarthy, sombre face: ‘I heard you say it!’ ‘When did I ever tell you her name was Yang Yuzhen?’ ‘You told it to Aunty Wild Mule. You said: “Yang Yuzhen, that stinking old lady, is making my life a living hell!”’ Father clamped his hand over my mouth. ‘Shut up, damn you,’ he said under his breath. ‘I've been a pretty good father so far, so don't go and ruin things for me now.’ His supple hand gave off a peppery tobacco smell; it was not the sort of man's hand you usually saw in a farming village. But he'd been a lazy good-for-nothing most of his life and never done any sort of work
with his hands. I snorted in dissatisfaction. Mother came out of the house, the cleaver still in her hand, and her hair standing up round her head like the magpie's nest in the village willow tree. ‘Luo Tong,’ she shouted, ‘Luo Xiaotong, you two sons of bitches, you scruffy bastards, I wouldn't care if I died today if I could take the two of you with me. Today will see the end of this family!’ The terrible look on her face was proof that this was no joke, that this time she meant it, that she was ready to kill us both. Ten men are no match for a woman on the warpath, they say. In a situation like this, meeting the charge meant certain death. The best option? Run for your life! My father may have led a dissipated life but he was no fool. The smart man avoids dangers ahead. He swept me up, tucked me under his arm, turned and ran towards the wall, not the gate, which would have been a mistake, since, though we owned nothing of value, Mother had inherited from her family the bad habit of securing the gate with a brass lock at night. Actually, if there was one thing we owned that could bring in enough to buy a pig's head, it was that lock. I'm sure that whenever my father's hunger for meat came upon him, he must have thought of selling it. But Mother loved that lock as much as she loved her own ears, since it was part of her dowry, the one gift that symbolized her parents’ feelings for her. If Father had carried me over to the gate, even if he'd broken it down, the time wasted would have allowed Mother to reach us with her cleaver and open up our heads like blossoming flowers. So he carried me to the wall instead, and all but somersaulted over it, putting my enraged Mother and a whole lot of trouble behind us. I harboured no doubts about her ability to scamper over the wall, like we'd done, but she chose not to. Once she'd driven us out of the yard, she stopped chasing us. She jumped about for a while at the foot of the wall, then went back inside to finish chopping the rotting sweet potatoes and fill the air with loud curses. It was a brilliant way to let off steam: no bloodletting and no mess, no falling foul with the law, yet I knew that those rotten potatoes were substitutes for the heads of her bitter enemies. But now, as I think back, the true bitter enemy in her mind was neither Father nor me—it was Aunty Wild Mule. She was convinced that the slut had seduced my father, and I simply can't say if that was or was not a fair assessment of the situation. Where Father and Aunty Wild Mule's relationship was concerned, the only ones who knew who seduced whom, who cast the first flirtatious glance, were the two of them.

When I reach this point in my tale, an unusual warm current floods my heart. The woman who has just hidden behind the statue of the Horse Spirit looks a lot like Aunty Wild Mule. Though she seems familiar I won't let my thoughts turn in that direction, because Aunty Wild Mule died ten years ago. Or perhaps she didn't. Or perhaps she did and has been reborn. Or perhaps someone else's soul came back to use her body. Waves of confusion ripple through my mind as the scene before me seems to float in the air.

My father was much smarter than Lao Lan. He'd never studied physics but he knew all about positive and negative electricity; he'd never studied biology but he was an expert in sperm and eggs; and he'd never studied chemistry but he was well aware that formaldehyde can kill bacteria, keep meat from spoiling and stabilize proteins, which is how he guessed that Lao Lan had injected formaldehyde into his meat. If getting rich had been on his agenda he'd have had no trouble becoming the wealthiest man in the village, of that I'm sure. He was a dragon among men, but dragons have no interest in accumulating property. People have seen critters like squirrels and rats dig holes to store up food, but who's seen a tiger, the king of the animals, do something like that? They spend most of their time sleeping in their lairs, coming out only when hunger sends them hunting for prey. Most of the time my father cared only about eating, drinking and having a good time, coming out only when hunger pangs sent him looking for money. Never for a moment was he like Lao Lan and people of that ilk, who accumulated blood money, putting a knife in white and taking it out red. Nor was he interested in going down to the train station to earn porter's wages by the sweat of his brow, like some of the coarser village men. Father made his living by his wits. In ancient times, there was a famous chef named Pao Ding who was an expert at carving up cows. In modern times, there was a man who was an expert at sizing them up—my father. In Pao Ding's eyes, cows were nothing but bones and edible flesh. That's what they were in my father's eyes too. Pao Ding's vision was as sharp as a knife, my father's was as sharp as a knife
and
as accurate as a scale. What I mean to say is: if you were to lead a live cow to my father, he'd take two turns round it, three at the most, occasionally sticking his hand under the animal's foreleg—just for show—and confidently report its gross weight and the quantity of meat on its bones, always within a kilo of the digital scale used in England's largest slaughterhouse. At first, people thought he was a
windbag but after testing him several times they turned into believers. In dealings between cattlemen and slaughterhouses, his presence took blind luck out of the equation and established a basis of fairness. Once his authority and status were in place, both the cattlemen and the butchers courted his favour, hoping to gain an edge. But as a man of vision, he'd never jeopardize his reputation for petty profits, since by doing so he'd smash his rice bowl. If a cattleman came to our house with wine and cigarettes, my father tossed them into the street, then climbed onto our garden wall and cursed loudly. If a butcher came with the gift of a pig's head, my father flung it into the street, then climbed onto our garden wall and cursed loudly. Both the cattlemen and the butchers said that Luo Tong was an idiot but also the fairest man they knew. Once his reputation for being upright and incorruptible was established, people trusted him implicitly. If a transaction reached a stalemate, the parties would look at him to acknowledge that they wanted things settled. ‘Let's quit arguing and hear what Luo Tong has to say!’ ‘All right. Luo Tong, you be the judge!’ With a cocky air, my father would walk round the animal twice, looking neither at the buyer nor at the seller, then glance up at the sky and announce the gross weight and amount of meat on the bone, followed by a price. He'd then walk off to smoke a cigarette. Buyer and seller would reach out and smack hands. ‘It's a deal!’ Once the transaction was completed, buyer and seller would come up to my father, each hand him a ten-yuan note and thank him for his labours. The old-style brokers were dark, gaunt, wretched old men, some with queues hanging down their backs. They were proficient in the art of haggling via finger-signs made from deep within their wide overlapping sleeves, thus lending the profession an air of mystery. My father's appearance took the confusion out of buying and selling cattle and brought an end to the darker aspects of the process. He effectively drove the shifty-eyed brokers off the stage of history. This remarkable advance in the buying and selling of cattle on the hoof could, with only a bit of exaggeration, be called revolutionary. Displays of my father's keen eye were not limited to cattle but worked with pigs and sheep as well. Like a master carpenter who can build a table but can also build a chair, and, if he's especially talented, a coffin, my father had no trouble sizing up even camels.