Pow!

POW! 14

The motorcycles stay in tight formation, as if welded together with an invisible steel pipe. The bikers wear identical white helmets and uniforms, their waists cinched by wide belts from which hang black holsters. Two black sedans with red and blue flashing lights and blaring sirens are thirty yards or so behind the motorcycles, leading the way for three even blacker cars. Wise Monk, those are Audis, so the men inside them must be high-ranking cadre. The Wise Monk's eyes open a crack and send purple rays of light to the cars but just as quickly draw them back. Another pair of police cars brings up the rear; no sirens. I follow the passage of this overweening caravan with my eyes, so excited I feel like shouting. But the Wise Monk's statue-like calmness cools my ardour in a heartbeat. ‘It has to be a big shot,’ I say softly, ‘a very big shot.’ Wise Monk ignores my comment. What's a big shot like that doing on a day like this? I think to myself. Not a holiday, not a special day, just another day. Oh, of course! How could I forget? It's the first day of the Carnivore Festival, Wise Monk. It's a holiday created by the butchers in my village. Ten years ago, we—I, mainly—came up with this holiday, but it was quickly taken over by people in the township. One celebration later, it was quickly taken over by people in the city. Wise Monk, I got as far away from the village as possible after my mortar attack on Lao Lan, but I still get the news and hear all kinds of talk about me. If you take a trip to my hometown, Wise Monk, and ask the first person you meet on the street: ‘Does the name Luo Xiaotong mean anything to you?’, you'll get an earful of gossip and rumours. I'll be the first to admit that a lot of what you'll hear has been blown out of proportion, and things other people did have somehow got stuck to my name. But there's no denying that Luo Xiaotong—the Luo Xiaotong of ten years ago, not now—was special. There was, of course, someone else who had a similar reputation, and I don't mean Lao Lan. No, it was Lao Lan's third uncle, a man who had relations with forty-one different women in the space of a single day, a remarkable feat that made it into the Guinness Book of Records. Or so that bastard Lao Lan said, for what it's worth, and that's what I heard too. Wise Monk, there's nothing about my hometown I don't know. The Carnivore Festival goes on for three days with a virtually endless array of events dealing with meat. Producers of every imaginable butchering and meat-processing machine erect display booths in the city square; discussion groups meet in the hotels to talk about raising livestock, meat processing and the nutritional value of various meats. At the same time, restaurants, big and small, host lavish spreads to display their culinary genius. The phrase ‘mountains and forests of meat’ goes a long way towards describing these three days, a time for stuffing yourself as much and as often as you can. One of the highlights is the meat-eating competition in July Square, which attracts gourmands from all across the land. The winner receives three hundred and sixty meat coupons, each of which allows him to eat his fill at any of the city's restaurants. Or, if he prefers, he can trade them in for three thousand and six hundred jin of meat. I said the competition was one of the highlights of the Festival, but its true showstopper is the Meat Appreciation Parade. All festivals build up to a climax, and the Carnivore Festival is no exception. The twin cities linked by the highway form a metropolis, like a weightlifting dumb bell. The participants in the grand parade traverse this street. Those from East City walk to the west, those from West City head east, and at a point along the way they meet, passing shoulder to shoulder in opposite directions. I tell you, Wise Monk, I've had a premonition that today those two factions will meet at a spot right in front of this temple of ours, in the broad field across the highway, and I'm certain that our wall collapsed just so we could have an uninhibited view of that encounter. I know you have great powers, Wise Monk, so it must have been you who made this happen…I'm babbling on and on when I spot a silver-grey Cadillac speeding in our direction from West City under the protection of a pair of Volvos. No motorcycles or police cars leading the way, but the vehicles exhibit a casual nonchalance and indifferent dignity. When the cars reach a spot opposite the temple, they swerve onto the field and slam on the brakes with a bold self-assurance, especially the Cadillac, which sports a pair of golden cattle horns welded to the hood, creating the image of a charging animal coming to an abrupt stop. The car and its screeching halt affect me profoundly. ‘Take a look at that, Wise Monk,’ I say softly, barely above a whisper. ‘We've got a big shot in our midst, the real thing.’ Well, the Wise Monk just sits there, in a repose greater than the Horse Spirit behind him, and now I begin to worry that he might die in that position. If he does, who will listen to my story? But I can't bear to waste my viewing time on him—what's happening across the way is too good to miss. First to emerge—all from the silver-grey Volvos—are four husky men in black windbreakers and sunglasses. Their crewcuts stand up like a hedgehog's bristles, and to me they look like four lumps of charcoal in human form. Then the Cadillac passenger opens his door and steps out; he too is in a black wind-breaker—a fifth lump of charcoal. He hustles to the rear door; he opens it with one hand while he holds the other protectively over the door to allow a dark passenger to step out, his movements quick yet dignified. A head taller than his bodyguards, he has extraordinarily large ears that look as if they've been carved out of red crystal. He is all in black, except for the white silk scarf round his neck, and he is chewing on a cigar as thick as a link of Guangwei sausage. The scarf is as light as a feather. The merest of puffs—and I truly believe this—would send it floating into the air. I'm pretty sure the cigar is Cuban, though it could be a Philippine import. Bluish smoke emerges from his mouth and nose to form beautiful patterns in the sunlight. After a few minutes, three American Jeeps drive up from East City, covered with green camouflage netting, replete with leaves and branches. Four men in white suits jump out of the Jeeps and form a protective cordon round a woman in a white miniskirt. Actually, it's so short that the word skirt hardly applies. Every movement reveals the lacy edge of her underwear. Her long legs are like ivory columns, the skin slightly pink. White, high-heeled lambskin boots stop just above her knees; a small red silk scarf makes her neck seem ringed with dancing flames. Her small, lovely face is partially hidden behind a pair of oversized sunglasses. She has a slightly pointed chin, a tiny mole just to the left of her mouth and loose almost brunette hair that falls to her shoulders. She walks up confidently to within three feet of the big man. He is shielded from the back by the four men in white who stand at a distance of about five feet. She removes her sunglasses to reveal a pair of mournful eyes and with a sad smile begins to speak. ‘Lan Laoda, I am Shen Gongdao's daughter, Shen Yaoyao. I know that if my father came here today he would not return alive, so I laced his drink with a sleeping potion and came to die in his place. You can kill me, Elder Brother Lan, but I beg you to spare my father.’ The man stands there like a statue, and I can't tell what effect her words have on him because his eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses. But I guess she's put him in an awkward position. Shen Yaoyao stands calmly in front of him, chest thrown out to receive a bullet. Elder Brother Lan carelessly flings his cigar in the direction of the Jeeps, turns and heads back to his Cadillac. His driver steps up to open the door for him. The car backs up, the driver turns the wheel and the car skids back onto the road. Then the four men in black open their windbreakers, draw their weapons and shoot holes in the three Jeeps before climbing back into their Volvos and racing to catch up with the Cadillac, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake. In the temple, a choking miasma of gunpowder terrifies me and makes me cough. As if a scene from a film has played out in front of me. This is no dream. Three Jeeps leaking oil and sitting on flat tyres prove that. So do the four men in white who stand there dumbstruck. And finally, so does the self-possessed woman in white. I see two threads of tears running down her face but she puts on her sunglasses again and her eyes vanish from view. What happens next is the most exciting part—she begins to walk up to the temple entrance. It's a joy to watch her. Some beautiful women lose their appeal when they walk. Others walk elegantly but aren't particularly attractive. This one has a gorgeous figure, a lovely face and a graceful walk; she is, in other words, a woman of rare beauty. And that is why even Lan Laoda, as cold and brutal a man as there ever was, did not have the heart to shoot her. The way she's walking now gives no indication of the frightening scene that has played out across the way only moments before. Now that she's drawn closer, I can see she's wearing nylon stockings, and those nylon-encased thighs arouse me more than bare thighs ever could. Her knee-high lambskin boots are adorned with lambskin tassels. I can only see her from the waist down, because I don't have the nerve to gaze at the top half of her body. As she steps over the threshold, the subtle fragrance of her perfume lets loose a flood of sentiments in me. Never before has such an exalted feeling visited my humble mind. But it does now. My mouth hungers at the sight of her delectable knees. If I had the courage, I'd fall to my knees to lick hers. Me, Luo Xiaotong, once a local tough who feared neither Heaven nor earth. If the Emperor's wife's tits had been within reach, I'd have fondled them. But today? I'm as timid as a mouse. The woman lightly brushes the Wise Monk's head with her hand. My God! How strange, how bizarre, how lucky, the Wise Monk's head. She doesn't touch mine. And by the time I find the courage to lift my tear-streaked face in the hope that she will, all I see is her splendiferous back. Are you up to hearing more, Wise Monk?

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.’