Pow! (59 page)

I began to wonder if the destructive power of the shells had deteriorated because of their age. So I left the mortar and walked over to the ammunition cases to examine the contents. The boy was conscientiously cleaning the grease off each shell, which then sparkled like fine jewels. Anything that looked that good had to be powerful. So the fault lay not in the shells but in Lao Lan's cunning. ‘How am I doing, Big Brother?’ the boy asked. I was moved
by his slightly fawning attitude and struck by how much he resembled my sister, even though one was a boy, the other a girl. I patted him on the head. ‘You're doing a terrific job. You're my number three artilleryman.’

‘Do you think I could fire one?’ he asked me shyly, after he'd finished cleaning the shells. ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Maybe you'll be the one to blow Lao Lan to bits. I led him over to the mortar, handed him a shell and said, ‘The twenty-eighth shell. The target—Lao Lan. Distance—eight hundred. Ready—fire!’ ‘I hit him, I hit him!’ the boy shouted, clapping joyfully. Lao Lan had in fact been knocked to the ground. But he jumped to his feet, panther-quick, and took cover in the packaging workshop. Tasting blood, the boy asked if he could fire another. I agreed.

I left him on his own for the twenty-ninth shell, which veered off course and landed in a pile of coal at the little train station's abandoned freight yard. Coal dust and gunpowder smoke blotted out great swaths of moonlight.

Embarrassed by this mistake, he scratched his head and went back to his cleaning station.

This gave Lao Lan time to change into blue work clothes, then stand on a pile of cardboard boxes and shout: ‘Give it up, Luo Xiaotong. Save the remaining shells for hunting rabbits.’ That really pissed me off, so I took aim at his head and fired the thirtieth shell. He sprinted into the workshop and shut the door behind him, thereby saving himself from injury once again.

The thirty-first shell tore a hole in the workshop roof and landed in a pile of cardboard boxes, shredding at least a dozen of them and turning camel steaks into a meaty pulp, then searing it in the superheated air. The smell of burnt flesh merged with that of gunpowder.

Lao Lan's arrogance made me lose my bearings, and I forgot to conserve my ammunition. In rapid succession I fired off shells thirty-two, thirty-three and thirty-four to form a tight triangular pattern, as taught in artillery courses. They did not succeed in killing Lao Lan, but they did blow up the packaging workshop just as an earlier shell had blown up the kill room.

The old man, like a child, asked to fire off a few rounds. I wanted to say no but he was my elder and the one who had supplied the mortar shells; I had no excuse to refuse his request. He took a position alongside the tube, raised his thumb and shut his eye to gauge the distance. This thirty-fifth shell
would take out the guardhouse beside the main gate.
POW!
No more guardhouse. With shell thirty-six, the newly erected water tower.
POW!
An enormous hole opened up halfway down the tower, releasing a powerful jet of water. The world-renowned Huachang United Meatpacking Ltd lay in ruins. But then I realized that six of the cases now stood empty, leaving only the last one with its five shells.

Night-shift workers were running pell-mell amid the ruins, stepping in bloodied water. Some of the workers may even have been trapped in the rubble. A red fire truck, siren blaring, was on its way from the county seat, followed by a white ambulance and a yellow motor crane. Orange tongues of flame licked the air here and there, probably from torn electric wires. Amid the chaos, Lao Lan climbed up the rebirth platform in the northeast corner of the yard. Once the highest structure in the compound, now that the workshop and water tower had been levelled, it looked taller and more impressive than ever, seemingly able to reach the stars and touch the moon. You're encroaching on my father's domain, Lao Lan. What are you doing up there? Without a second thought, I fired shell thirty-seven at the platform, some eight hundred and fifty yards away.

The shell passed through the gaps in the trees and struck an enclosing wall made of bricks taken from gravesites. A fireball blew a hole in the wall. I'd once heard a story about something that had occurred during a tomb-opening campaign; I had not been born and was thus denied the opportunity to witness the madness. A crowd had gathered in front of an old tomb with statues of men and horses—Lao Lan's ancestral tombs—holding handkerchiefs over their noses as they watched men carry out a rusted piece of artillery. A specialist from the urban Institute for Archaeological Studies commented that he'd never seen anyone buried with a cannon. Which posed the question: Why here? No credible explanation had been offered so far. When Lao Lan mentioned the desecration of his family tombs, he was both aggrieved and bitter. ‘You bastards have destroyed the Lan family feng shui and made impossible the birth of a future president of the country!’

Lao Lan was supporting himself by a wooden post at the top of the platform as he gazed off to the northeast. That was where my father used to gaze too. I knew why—it was where he and Aunty Wild Mule had spent days of
sadness and moments of joy. What right have you to copy him, Lan Lan? I set my sights on his back.
POW!
Shell thirty-eight took the top off the spire. He remained unmoved.

The unhappy boy did such a sloppy job in cleaning the thirty-ninth shell that, as he was handing it to the old man, slipped out of his hands and hit the ground. I yelled, taking cover behind the mortar. The shell spun round and round on the rooftop, then we heard a clank. The old man, the old woman and the young boy stood there transfixed, mouths agape. Damn! If the thing explodes here and sets off a chain reaction with the last two shells, all four of us are dead. ‘Hit the ground!’ I shouted but got no reaction from the frozen figures. The shell careened up to my feet as if it wanted to have a heart-to-heart talk. I grabbed it round the neck and flung it as far as I could.
POW!
It blew up down the lane, wasted. What a shame.

The old man handed me the fortieth shell as if it were a precious object. I did not need a reminder that, after this one left the tube, the end game of the battle against Lao Lan was upon us. I took the shell with care, as though I were carrying the sole infant heir of a hereditary line. My heart was pounding. Briefly reflecting on the first thirty-nine firings, I had to admit that failing to kill Lao Lan was mandated by the heavens; it had nothing to do with a lack of skill on my part. Apparently, even the King of Hell wanted none of Lao Lan. I double-checked the sight, recalculated the distance and reviewed the procedures. Everything was as it should be. Unless a force-three gale erupted while the missile was in flight or it was struck by falling debris from a dying satellite, unless something beyond my ability to predict occurred, this shell ought to land on Lao Lan's head. It would kill him even if it failed to explode. Just before letting the shell slide down the tube, I whispered: ‘Don't fail me, mortar shell!’ It flew into the air. No wind and no satellite debris. It landed on the tip of the platform and—nothing happened.

The old woman threw away what remained of her turnip, took shell forty-one from the old man and shouldered me out of the way. ‘Idiot!’ she muttered. Standing beside the mortar and huffing loudly, she dropped it in the tube. Shell forty-one fluttered out like a kite cut loose from its string. It flew and it flew, a lazy, distracted arc, on and on aimlessly, this way and that, like a young goat running amok. In the end it fell reluctantly to the ground
about twenty yards from the rebirth platform. One second and counting, two seconds, three—and nothing. Damn! ‘Another dud.’ The words were barely out of my mouth, when
POW!
The air shuddered, like ripped cotton. A single piece of shrapnel, a little bigger than the palm of my hand, whistled through the air and sliced Lao Lan in half…

An immature crowing floats on the air from a distant village, the sound of one of this year's young roosters learning how to announce the dawn. I've welcomed the dawn with a narrative replete with artillery fire that has crisscrossed the earth with scars. During the course of my tale, most of the Wutong Temple has crumbled, leaving only a single column perilously holding up part of the dilapidated tile roof, now more like a mat screen against the morning dew. Dear Wise Monk, it no longer matters whether or not I renounce the world. What I want to know is
:
Has my tale moved you
?
What I hope you can tell me is
:
Is what Lao Lan said about his third uncle true or is it all a lie
?
Can you tell me, or not
?
The Wise Monk sighs, raises his hand and points to the road in front of the temple. I am surprised to see two processions. The one from the west comprises beef cattle in fancy dress, each with a big character written on its raiments, together spelling out slogans that oppose the construction of the Meat God Temple. There are exactly forty-one heads of cattle. They trot down the road and form a circle at our temple, with the Wise Monk and me in the middle. Daggers have been tied to their horns. Lowering their heads, they seem ready to charge, slobber snorting from their noses, flames of anger shooting from their eyes. The one from the east comprises naked women with big characters written on their bodies, together spelling out slogans that support the rebuilding of the Wutong Temple. There are exactly forty-one naked women. They run down the road, then mount the forty-one bulls like equestriennes and surround the Wise Monk and me. Scared witless, I take refuge behind the Wise Monk but even that is no guarantee of safety. Niang, help me
…

Here she comes, followed by Dieh, carrying my sister on his shoulders. She's waving to me. Behind her come the lame and blind Lao Lan and his wife, Fan Zhaoxia, carrying the pretty little Jiaojiao in her arms. Then come the kindly Huang Biao and valiant Huang Bao. Huang Biao's pretty young wife is behind them, smiling enigmatically. They are followed by the swarthy Yao Qi,
the corpulent Shen Gang and the hateful Su Zhou. My three meat-eating competitors
—
Liu Shengli
(
Victory Liu
),
Feng Tiehan
(
Ironman Feng
)
and Wan Xiaojiang
(
Water Rat Wan
)—
are next, followed by Lao Han, director of the United Meat Inspection Station, and his assistant Xiao Han. They are followed by the now toothless Cheng Tianle and Ma Kui, almost too old to walk. Behind them come the four skilled artisans from Sculpture Village and, in their wake, the old-school paper craftsman and his apprentice, who are right in front of the silver-lipped, golden-haired new-school paper craftswoman and her assistant. The foreman, Big Four, wearing a suit with the trouser legs rolled up, and his assistants follow them and are in turn followed by the old, nearly toothless master musician and members of his troupe. They come just ahead of the old monk from Tianqi Temple, with his wooden fish and his flock of semi-authentic little acolytes. They are followed by Teacher Cai of the Hanlin School and a group of her students. Behind them come medical-school students Tiangua and her sissy boyfriend. They are followed by the boy who polished my mortar shells and the chivalrous old husband and wife, then the crowds who showed up in the Meat God compound, on the highway and at the open square. Next come the photographer, Skinny Horse, and the video-cameraman, Pan Sun, and his assistant. They climb a tree with their equipment to record everything below. But there is also a large contingent of women, led by Miss Shen Yaoyao, followed by Miss Huang Feiyun and the singer Tian Mimi
—
I can't make out the rest, but in their finery they are like a gorgeous sunset. The entire scene is a painting fixed in time, as a woman who looks like she has just emerged from her bath, exuding feminine charms, her appearance five parts Aunty Wild Mule and five parts a woman I've never seen, splits the people and the bulls and walks towards me
…

A good many people will, consciously or unconsciously, often wish they never had to grow up. This sort of evocative literary theme was explored in a work by German novelist Günter Grass decades ago. But here's the problem. When you read something someone else has written and try to make it your own, yours becomes derivative, a form of copying. Oskar, the protagonist of Grass’
The Tin Drum
(1959), who had witnessed so much ugliness in the world, falls into a wine cellar at the age of three and stops growing. Only his physical growth is stunted; mentally he keeps maturing, but in almost evil ways, outgrowing everyone in this regard, gaining a greater complexity. Nothing like that is likely to happen in real life, and for that very reason its appearance in fiction is not only deeply meaningful but also thought-provoking.

With
POW
! my only option was to do things in opposite fashion. When my protagonist, Luo Xiaotong, is in the Wutong Temple narrating his childhood to Wise Monk Lan, he has matured physically but not mentally—he is now an adult but his mental growth stopped when he was a boy. Someone like that would usually be considered an idiot. But Luo Xiaotong is no idiot. If he were, there would be no need for this novel to exist.

The desire to stop growing is rooted in a fear of the adult world, of growing old and feeble, of dying and of the passage of time. Luo Xiaotong tries to recapture his youth by prattling away with his tale; writing this novel was my attempt to stop the wheel of time from turning. Like a drowning man grasping at straws, I was desperate to keep from sinking. While I knew that my attempt must end in failure, it had a comforting effect.