Frog

~ ~ ~

Dear Sugitani sensei,

I find it hard to believe it’s already been three years since we retired and moved back to Gaomi. Though the period has not been without its hardships, they have been more than offset by one very pleasant surprise. With fear and trepidation I read the high praise over the material on Gugu in the letter I sent. You said that a bit of reorganisation could turn it into a publishable novel, but I’m not so sure. First, publishers may not welcome a novel on this theme or topic. Second, if it is published, it could seriously upset Gugu. Though I have taken pains to show my respect, many painful episodes are still there for all to see. As for me, I am using this epistolary narrative form as a way to atone for my sins and find a way to lessen their impact. Your comforting remarks and reasoning have eased my mind considerably. Since writing can serve as an apology or an appeal for forgiveness, I will keep at it. And since writing must be sincere to make that appeal, that will be my goal.

Over a decade ago I said that writing must touch the most painful spots in one’s heart as it records mankind’s most unbearable memories. Now I believe that one must write things about which people feel most discomfited, about people’s most uncomfortable conditions. The writer must put himself on the dissection table and under the microscope.

Twenty-odd years ago I boasted shamelessly: I write for myself. Writing for absolution is writing for myself, but only to a point; I think I ought to write for the people I hurt, and for the people who hurt me. I am grateful to them, because each time they hurt me I cannot avoid thinking about the people I hurt.

Sensei, I am sending you a packet of what I’ve been writing off and on over the past year. I think I’ll stop writing Gugu’s story and concentrate on a play with her as the central character.

Every time I see her she asks after you. She really and truly hopes you will visit again. She even wondered if you might have trouble affording a plane ticket, and she said I must tell you that she will buy one for you. Gugu added that there are many things she wants to say, but cannot bring herself to say to anyone. If you were to come, however, she’d tell you everything. She said she knows one of your father’s deepest secrets, something she’s never revealed to anyone. If it were to become known, it would shock you to your core. Sensei, I have a good idea what that secret is, but I’ll wait till you return, so you can hear it directly from her.

Finally, while it has already appeared in the material I’m sending, I want to tell you anyway: though I am not that far from the age of sixty, I have recently become the father of a newborn infant! It makes no difference how this came about, Sensei, nor how much trouble will follow this child through life. I ask the blessing of a man of such noble standing, and hope that you would honour us by conferring a name on him.

Tadpole

October 2008, Gaomi

1

Gugu always impressed me as a woman of incredible audacity. There did not seem to be a person alive who frightened her, and there was nothing she was afraid to do. But Little Lion and I personally witnessed her frightened to the point of foaming at the mouth and passing out — over a frog.

It happened one April morning when Little Lion and I were to be guests of Yuan Sai and my cousin Jin Xiu, who had opened a bullfrog breeding farm. In the space of only a few years, Northeast Gaomi Township, a one-time backwater, had undergone a major transformation. Impressive white stone levees had been built on both sides of the river, and the green belts along the riverbanks had been beautified by the addition of rare flowers and exotic plants. Over a dozen residential developments, some with towers, and European-style villas, had sprouted on both banks. The area developed until it began to merge with the county capital, and was only a forty-minute car ride to the Qingdao airport. Korean and Japanese investors were building factories there, and most of our village had been given over to the Metropolitan Golf Course. Although the area’s name had been changed to Chaoyang District, we still called it Northeast Township.

The distance from our community to the bullfrog farm was about five li; my cousin wanted to send a car, but we declined, preferring to take the riverside pedestrian path, where we passed young housewives pushing baby strollers. Their faces radiated health, their eyes shone, and the elegant aroma of expensive perfumes wafted from their bodies. The babies were sucking on pacifiers or sleeping soundly or looking around, eyes darting in lively fashion; they all emitted a sweet smell. Little Lion never missed asking these young mothers to stop so she could bend down and stroke the little babies’ pudgy hands and tender, fair faces. Her expression proved her love of the little ones. As she stood in front of one blond, blue-eyed foreigner’s stroller with a pair of twin babies in seersucker caps, she reached down, touched one and then the other, and said something under her breath as tears came to her eyes. I watched the mother smile politely as she grabbed hold of Little Lion’s clothing: Don’t dribble on their faces.

Little Lion sighed.

Why did I never notice how cute babies are before?

That just shows that we’re getting old.

That’s only part of it, she said. The quality of people’s lives has improved now, and so has the quality of their offspring. That’s what makes them so adorable.

We met some people we knew on the way, stopping to shake hands and chat, emotionally commenting on how old we’ve gotten and wondering where the decades had gone.

We saw a fancy cruise boat sailing slowly down the river; it looked like a floating old-style tower. Joyful sounds came across the water from women dressed in ancient costume, like characters in paintings, playing music and singing in the ship’s cabins. A speedboat throwing up rooster tails of spray raced past and scared away all the gulls.

We were holding hands, a loving couple, though we were each thinking our own thoughts. She was probably thinking about children, all those lovely children; but what flashed through my mind were images of that frightful chase on this very river so many years before.

We crossed on the pedestrian walk of the recently completed cable bridge, on which BMW and Mercedes sedans were common sights. It was an elegant, gull-winged bridge that ended with the golf course to the right and the renowned Temple of the Fertility Goddess to the left.

A temple fair was in progress on that eighth day of the fourth lunar month. The temple grounds were packed with automobiles whose licence plates showed them to be from outlying counties, even a few from other provinces.

The spot had once been known as Fertility Goddess Village, its reputation gained from the temple that had stood there. As a child I’d gone there with my mother to burn incense; the image had stuck with me, though the temple had been torn down at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

The new Fertility Goddess Temple had a towering main hall with red walls and yellow tiles. On both sides of the crowded paved path peddlers of candles, incense sticks, and clay dolls hawked their wares to tourists.

Buy a doll here, buy a doll.

One of the peddlers, dressed in a yellow Chinese gown, head shaved, looked like a monk. He rapped a stick against his Buddhist temple block, known as a wooden fish, and sang out rhythmically:

Buy a doll and take it home, a happy family you will soon be.

Take one this year, raise one the next, soon Mum and Dad, you will see.

No finer dolls you’ll ever find, all crafted from the finest clay.

Lovely faces have all my dolls, eyes, noses, mouths of beauty.

My dolls are most potent, sold to villages in eight counties.

Buy one, you’ll have a dragon; buy two, a dragon and a phoenix.

Buy three for happiness, wealth, and a long life; buy four for two pairs of officials.

Buy five for five distinguished scholars; buy six, no, I can’t give you six or the wife will surely pout.

The voice sounded familiar, so I walked up to see. Just as I thought — it was Wang Gan.

He was trying to sell dolls to a gaggle of Japanese or Korean women. I thought about taking Little Lion’s hand and walking off to spare him the pain of what could only be an uncomfortable meeting for everyone. But she pulled her hand back and walked straight up to him.

No, I realised, she was going up to his stand of dolls. He was not overselling his dolls, which were indeed special. Those at other stalls were uniformly painted, boys and girls, all bright and all the same. Wang Gan’s dolls were more understated; each was unique with individual expressions that ran the gamut from lively to peaceful, mischievous to naive, angry to joyful. One look told me they must have been made by Northeast Gaomi Township’s master doll maker, Hao Dashou — Hao married my aunt in 1999 — who had for decades employed a unique sales approach for his dolls. What had led him to hand them over to Wang Gan? Wang pointed with puckered lips to the dolls and stalls to either side, then said in a soft voice to the women: Their wares are cheap, machine-produced, but mine are handmade by Northeast Gaomi Township’s master craftsman, Qin He, who fashions them with his eyes closed. Perfectly lifelike and exquisitely fragile. Wang Gan picked up a doll with a petulant pout. Alongside Master Qin He’s creations, Madame Tussaud’s wax figures are mere figurines, he said. All creatures are born of clay, understand? The goddess Nüwa created humans out of clay, you see? Clay is invested with intelligence. Our Master Qin He uses clay dug from two metres deep in the Jiao riverbed, silt that is more than three thousand years old, cultural silt, historical silt. The silt is put out to dry in the sun and aired in the moonlight, soaking up the essence of the sun and the moon. After being broken down by a roller it is reconstituted with river water taken at daybreak and well water drawn as the moon starts its climb, to become clay, which he kneads for a while and pounds for a spell to form a nice round, doughy ball; only then does the creative process begin. I must tell you ladies that after each doll is made, Master Qin He pokes a tiny hole in the top of its head with a pointed bamboo strip, then pricks his middle finger and releases a drop of his blood into the hole. He seals the hole and places the doll in a cool, shady place for forty-nine days before applying paint, beginning with the eyes. These dolls are themselves spirits — don’t let what I’m about to reveal frighten you, but at every full moon they dance to the music of flutes, twirling and clapping and laughing, the sound like speech emerging from a cell phone, soft yet clear. If you don’t believe me, buy a few and take them home. If they don’t come to life, bring them back and smash them here in front of my stall. But I doubt you will do that, for that releases its blood and you will hear it cry. After listening to Wang Gan’s sales patter, the women bought two dolls each, which he packed in special gift boxes. His customers walked off happily. And then Wang Gan turned to greet us.

I think he knew we were there all along. He might not have recognised me, but there was no way he missed Little Lion, whom he had pursued with single-minded devotion for more than a decade. But he reacted with surprise, as if he’d just spotted us.

Aiya! It’s you two.

How are you, my friend? I said. Haven’t seen you in years.

Little Lion smiled and said something too soft for me to hear.

We exchanged a hearty handshake and cigarettes; I smoked the Eight Joys he handed me, he smoked the General I handed him.

Little Lion was busy admiring the dolls.

I heard you were back, he said. You can travel the world, but there’s no place like home, it seems.

That’s right, I said. A fox dies in the den where it was born, a leaf falls to the ground right below. But we’re fortunate to be living in a new age. I hate to even think about how it was all those years ago.

We lived in cages back then, he said, either that or we were led around with leashes. Now we know what freedom is. You can do anything you want if you’ve got the money and it isn’t illegal.

You’re right. You’ve got quite a sales pitch, I said. I pointed to the dolls. Are they really as spirited as you say?

Do you think I’m just blowing smoke? He was dead serious. Every word is the sacred truth, with just a hint of acceptable exaggeration. Even the national media is allowed that.

I’m no match for you, I said. Did Qin He really make those?

Would I say he did if he didn’t? That bit about flutes and dancing on a full moon, that was an exaggeration, but it’s true that Qin He made them with his eyes shut. If you don’t believe me, name the day and I’ll take you to see for yourself.

So Qin He settled down here too, did he?

Who talks about settling these days? You live where it suits you. Wherever your aunt is, that’s where you’ll find Qin He. His kind of diehard loyalty is rare, no matter where you look.

Little Lion held up a lovely little doll with big eyes and a high nose, like a girl with mixed Chinese and European blood. I want this little girl, she said.

I began to sense something as I looked at the doll. Of course, I’d seen that face somewhere. But where? Who was it? Oh, my, it was Wang Dan’s daughter, Chen Mei, the girl Gugu and Little Lion took care of for nearly six months, but then had to turn over to her father, Chen Bi.

I still recall the evening Chen came to our house to retrieve his daughter — it was on the night we sent the Kitchen God off to report on the family, not long before New Year’s, with firecracker explosions and the smell of gunpowder in the air. Little Lion had filled out the paperwork to accompany me and had left her position with the commune health centre. I’d soon be taking her and Yanyan with me to Beijing. A two-room unit in a Beijing compound would be our new home. Father would not go with us, and was unwilling to move in to my older brother’s home in the county capital. He wanted to stay where he was. Fortunately, my second brother had a job in the township, close enough to take care of him.

After Wang Dan’s death, Chen Bi began to drown himself in liquor. He walked the streets, alternating between weeping and singing. People sympathised with him at first, but with the passage of time that turned to annoyance. Back when the pursuit of Wang Dan was on, Chen Bi’s savings had been used to pay the villagers’ wages. But after her death, most gave the money back to him. Additionally, the commune did not ask him to repay the money spent on him during his confinement. A conservative estimate put his savings at thirty thousand yuan, enough for him to spend on drink for several years. To all appearances, he had put out of his mind the child Gugu and Little Lion had taken to the health centre to fight for her life. In basic terms, his goal in subjecting Wang Dan to the dangers of a second pregnancy had been to produce a boy to carry on the family line, and when all the suffering and hardships in reaching that goal ended with the birth of another girl, he pounded himself in the head. The heavens have abandoned me! he wept bitterly.

Gugu named the child. Since she had a fresh, pretty face and a sister named Chen Er (Ear), she settled on Chen Mei (Eyebrow). Little Lion pronounced it to be a beautiful name.

Gugu and Little Lion thought seriously about raising the child on their own, but with the residence issue and the difficult procedures involved in adoption, when Chen Bi came and lifted her from Little Lion’s arms, she still had no resident status. In accordance with the laws of the People’s Republic of China, she did not exist, what is known as a ‘bootleg kid’. How many of those there were at the time no one could say, but the number had to be astonishingly high. The bootleg kid residence issue was finally resolved in 1990 during the Fourth Census. The income derived from fining the masses for illegal births reached astronomical heights, but how much of that money actually made it into the national coffers is too tangled an affair for anyone to sort out. And the number of bootleg kids the masses have produced over the past decade or so is certainly another astronomical figure. The fine for such births is now ten times greater than twenty years ago, and when the next census rolls around, we’ll see if the bootleg-kid parents can afford to pay the fines…

Back then, Little Lion’s motherly instincts were in full bloom. She held Chen Mei, showering her with kisses, hardly ever taking her eyes off her, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d tried to nurse her, since her nipples looked funny — whether or not she could actually produce milk was hard to say, but such ‘miracles’ were said to have occurred. As a youngster I saw a play about a family in which the parents died tragically, leaving behind an eighteen-year-old daughter and her baby brother. Given no choice, she offered her virgin breasts to him, and in only a few days, milk oozed from her nipples. In the real world, such things are likely impossible these days. An eighteen-year-old girl with a nursing brother? Mother said it was common in old times for a woman and her mother-in-law to have children at the same time. Now? It could still happen. A girl in my daughter’s college class has a newborn baby sister. Her father, a coalmine owner who hires migrant workers under slave-like conditions, was immeasurably wealthy. People like that live in luxurious villas in Beijing, Shanghai, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Melbourne and Toronto with their mistresses, who produce babies for them.

I pulled my thoughts back from where they were headed, like reining in a spooked horse. I thought back to the evening we were sending the Kitchen God off. I had just dumped a bamboo steamer full of dumplings into a pot of boiling water to the accompaniment of my daughter Yanyan, who clapped and sang a children’s song about dumplings — ‘Geese flying from the south splash into the river’ — as Little Lion cooed to Chen Mei in her arms, when Chen Bi, in his worn-shiny leather jacket and cap with earflaps, sort of staggered into our yard. Chen Er was behind him, holding on to his shirt tail. She was wearing a little padded coat whose sleeves ended above her wrists, exposing hands red from the cold. Her hair looked like a bird’s nest, and she was sniffling, probably from a cold.

You’re just in time to eat, I said as I stirred the dumplings in the pot. Have a seat.

He sat on the threshold, his face illuminated by flames from the stove. His large nose looked like a turnip carved out of ice. Chen Er stood beside him, resting her hand on his shoulder, the light of fear in her large eyes that kept darting around curiously: from the dumplings roiling in the pot to Little Lion and the baby in her arms; then they alit on Yanyan, who held out a piece of chocolate. She cocked her head to look at her father, then looked up at us.

Take it, I said. She wants you to have it.

She reached out timidly.

Chen Er! Chen Bi snapped.

The girl jerked her hand back.

What’s that for? I said. She’s just a child.

Chen Er burst into tears.

I picked up a handful of chocolate and stuffed it into Chen Er’s coat pocket.

Chen Bi stood up and said to Little Lion, Give me back my child.

She just stared at him. I thought you didn’t want her.

Who said so? he growled. She’s my flesh and blood, why wouldn’t I want her?

You don’t deserve her! Little Lion shot back. She looked like a sick kitten when she was born, and I’m the one who kept her alive.

Wang Dan went into labour so early because you were hounding her! If you hadn’t she’d be alive today. You owe me a life!

Bullshit! Little Lion said. She should never have been pregnant in the first place. All you cared about was carrying on your line. You didn’t give a damn if Wang Dan lived or died. Her death is on your hands!

How dare you say that! Chen Bi screamed. If you say it again I’ll make sure your family has a terrible New Year’s!

Chen picked a garlic press up off the counter and aimed it at the pot on the stove.

Have you lost your mind, Chen Bi? We’ve been friends since we were kids.

What good are friends in times like these? He sneered. Were you the one who reported that Wang Dan was hiding in your father-in-law’s house?

That had nothing to do with him, Little Lion said. It was Xiao Shangchun.

I don’t care who it was. All I know is, you have to give me back my child.

In your dreams! Little Lion said. I’m not going to let this child die at your hand. You have no right to call yourself a father.

You stinking hermaphrodites can’t have kids of your own, so you won’t let other people have theirs. When they do, you take them for your own!

Shut your stinking mouth, Chen Bi, I fumed. What’s the big idea of coming to my house while we’re sending off the Kitchen God and making a scene? Go ahead, throw it if you think you have the guts.

You think I won’t?

Go ahead.

If you people don’t give me back my child, nothing will stop me, not murder or anything, from getting what I want.

Father, who had been in his room, not saying a word, walked out. Good nephew, he said, for the sake of this bearded old man, who was your father’s friend for so many years, put that garlic press down.

Then tell her to give me my child.

No one’s going to take your child from you, but you need to talk this out with her, Father said. When all is said and done, if not for them, the child would have followed her mother.

Chen Bi threw the press to the floor and sat back down on the threshold, where he began to sob.

Chen Er patted his shoulder. Dad, she said through her tears, don’t cry…

The scene was affecting me as well. I guess, I said to Little Lion, you should give her to him.

Don’t even think that! she said. This child is a foundling, and I found her.

You shouldn’t treat people like this, Chen sobbed. That’s not how things are supposed to be…

Go call your aunt, Father said.

No need for that, Gugu said from just beyond the doorway, I’m right here.

I felt as if our saviour had arrived.

Stand up, Chen Bi, Gugu said. I was waiting for you to throw the garlic press into the pot.

Chen Bi obediently got to his feet.

Chen Bi, do realise you committed a crime?

What crime did I commit?

Child abandonment, Gugu said. We brought Chen Mei back with us, and kept her alive by feeding her millet porridge and powdered milk. For more than six months you didn’t so much as come to see her. You’re her biological father, that’s true, but how have you met your responsibilities as a parent?

She’s still mine, he muttered.

Yours? Little Lion asked fiercely. Call her and see if she responds. If she does, you can take her with you.

You’re being unreasonable, and I won’t argue with you. I was wrong, Gugu, I admit it. Now, give me my daughter.

We’ll give her to you, after you go to the commune, pay your fine, and arrange her residency.

How much is the fine?

Fifty-eight hundred, Gugu said.

That much? I don’t have that much.

You haven’t got it? Gugu said. Then don’t even think about taking the child.

Fifty-eight hundred! Fifty-eight hundred! That’s more than my life’s worth.

You can keep your life, Gugu said. And you can keep your money to buy liquor and food and even visit your whorehouses.

I don’t do that! Chen protested angrily out of embarrassment. I’m going to sue you people. If I lose at the commune level, I’ll go to the county, and from there to the province and even the Central Government if necessary!

And what if you lose at that level? Gugu asked contemptuously. Will you take your case to the United Nations?

The United Nations? Why not!

You’re the man of the hour! Gugu said. You can get out of my sight now and come back for the child when you win your case. But I’m telling you, even if you do somehow win your case, you’ll have to promise me in writing that you will bring her up well and you’ll owe Little Lion and me five thousand yuan each as ‘burden fees’ for everything we did.

Chen Bi did not take Chen Mei with him when he left that evening, but once New Year’s passed, on the sixteenth day of the new lunar year, the day after the Lantern Festival, he showed up with a receipt for the fine and left with Chen Mei. The ‘burden fees’ were just something Gugu said in anger, and there was no need for him to pay them anything. Little Lion cried so hard she shook, as if her own baby had been taken from her. What are you crying about? Gugu scolded. If you want a baby that bad, have one!

But that only intensified her sorrow. Gugu rubbed her shoulders and said in a tone sadder than I’d ever heard, My life has already been settled, but your best days are ahead of you. Go on, forget about work for now, have a child and bring it back to show me.

After moving to Beijing, we tried hard to have a child, but Chen Bi’s curse seemed to be working. Little Lion could not get pregnant. She was a good mother to my daughter, but I knew that Chen Mei was the one she pined for. And that was why she was holding a doll that was the spitting image of Chen Mei.

I want this one, she said to Wang Gan, but more to me than to him.

How much? I asked him.

What does that mean, Xiaopao? he asked, obviously miffed. Are you trying to offend me?

You’ve got me all wrong. You can’t buy a doll without good faith, and how can you have that unless you pay for it?

You can’t have good faith if you do pay for it, Wang Gan said softly. When you pay for one, what you’ve bought is a lump of clay. You can’t pay for a child.

All right, I said. We’re at the Binhe community project, number 902 in Building Nine. Come see us.

I will, he said. And I hope you have a son soon.

I shook my head and forced a smile. After saying goodbye to Wang Gan, I took Little Lion’s hand and entered the temple’s central hall, walking against the crowd of temple-goers on their way out.

Fragrant smoke curled out of the iron incense burners alongside an array of flickering red candles coated with wax drippings. Many women, some old and grizzled, others hibiscus fresh, some in tatters, others heavily bejewelled, an endless variety, each unique to herself, and all wearing expressions of devotion, were burning incense, lighting candles, and cradling clay dolls.

Forty-nine white marble steps led to the entrance to the towering central hall. I gazed up at the inscribed board beneath the swallow eaves over the entrance; it read: ‘Moral Education for Children’ etched in gold. Bronze bells hanging from the eaves rang out with each gust of wind.

Virtually every person who trod the marble steps was a woman with a doll, and I felt like a spectator as I mixed with the feminine crowd. Reproduction is so solemn yet so commonplace, so serious yet so absurd. I was reminded of that time in my childhood when with my own eyes I watched the ‘Down with the Four Olds’ struggle corps of the Number One County High School Red Guard faction come to tear down temples and destroy idols. They — boys and girls — picked up the Goddess idol and flung it into the river, accompanied by shouts of: Family planning is the only good path, the Goddess goes in the river to take a bath! Grey-haired old women lining the banks fell to their knees, and I wondered if their mutterings were prayers that the Goddess would come down in spirit to punish those unruly youngsters. Or were they asking the Goddess to forgive them for the sinful actions? No way to tell. ‘Rivers flow east for thirty years, and west for the next thirty.’ This is what proved the wisdom of that saying: a new temple had been built where the old one had once stood, and a golden idol now stood in the central hall. Not only did it carry on the cultural heritage, but it created a new convention; not only did it fulfill the people’s spiritual needs, but it also was a great draw for tourists. The service industry was flourishing with visible economic growth, so better to construct a temple than to build a factory. My fellow townspeople and old friends all lived for and through the temple.

I gazed up at the idol: a face as round as the moon, hair like black clouds; thin brows that arched to her temples, eyes filled with compassion. She was cloaked in white, with jewels draped around her neck. A long-handled round fan in her right hand rested against her shoulder; her left hand lay atop the head of a child riding a fish. A dozen children in a variety of poses were arrayed around her. With lively expressions, filled with childish delight, the children were universally adorable, and all I could think was, the only people in Northeast Gaomi Township capable of crafting such figures were Hao Dashou and Qin He. If Wang Gan had been telling the truth, then the figures had to be Qin He’s handiwork, which led me to thoughts of comparing the white-clad goddess with a youthful Gugu. The nine mats in front of the goddess were filled by kneeling women who were in no hurry to give up their spots; they kowtowed and they clasped their hands in prayer as they gazed up at the goddess’s face. Women also filled the space on the marble floor behind the prayer mats, all with clay dolls laid out in front of them, as they faced the goddess. Little Lion knelt on the floor and banged her head loudly to demonstrate her devotion. Tear-filled eyes were proof of her abiding longing for a child. I knew, however, that she could never realise her dream of having one. Born in 1950, she was now fifty-five years old and already post-menopausal, despite the fullness of her breasts. I knelt alongside her and faced the goddess. People looking at us would have assumed that the old couple on the floor was praying for a child for their son or daughter.

Their prayers finished, the women stuffed money into the red wooden box at the feet of the goddess. Those who gave little did so in a hurry; those who gave more made a show of it. The offering completed, a nun standing alongside the donation box handed each woman a red thread to tie around her doll’s neck. Two grey-cassocked nuns, one on each side, eyes lowered, beat the temple blocks in their hands and chanted prayers. One might think they saw nothing, but whenever someone dropped a hundred yuan or more into the box, the wooden fish sang out loudly, maybe to get the goddess’s attention.

Since this was not a planned visit to the temple, we hadn’t brought any money, throwing Little Lion into a bit of a panic, so she slipped the gold ring off her finger and dropped it into the box. The three loud beats on the wooden fish sounded like the starter’s pistol I’d heard at a race I’d run in years before.

Minor goddesses stood in secondary halls to the rear: the Immortal Goddess, the Vision Goddess, the Goddess of Sons and Grandsons, the Typhus Goddess, the Mother’s Milk Goddess, the Goddess of Dreams, Peigu Goddess, the Goddess of Early Birth, and the Goddess of Delivery. Women were on their knees praying in front of each of them, with nuns standing by to pound their temple blocks. When I checked the time by the sun, I told Little Lion we could come back tomorrow; she nodded reluctantly, and while we were on the temple path, nuns chanting in a little side building saw us off:

Benefactress, don’t forget a longevity lock

for your child!

Benefactress, don’t forget to buy a rainbow

shawl for your doll!

Benefactress, don’t forget to buy cloud slippers

for your doll!

Since we had no money, we could only offer our apologies and flee.

The sun was high in the sky when we left the temple. My cousin called on my cell phone to get us moving. The grounds were like an anthill, with people scurrying back and forth; a little bit of everything was for sale for the hordes of shoppers. With no time to dawdle, we elbowed our way through the crowd to get to my cousin, who had parked his car just east of the temple grounds, at the entrance to the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital, whose grand opening was that afternoon.

We were too late for the ceremony, evidence of which — the shattered shells of firecrackers — was strewn across the ground. Baskets of flowers had been arranged at the gate, spread out like the wings of a phoenix. A pair of enormous balloons floated about the grounds, tied to an advertising banner. The building, a blue and white crescent-shaped structure, was intended to resemble a pair of embracing arms outstretched in silent elegance, a far cry from the flashy, ornamental Fertility Goddess Temple to the west.

We spotted Gugu at the same time as we caught sight of my cousin, in his suit and shiny leather shoes. People were picking flowers from the baskets and floral wreaths. Gugu was in the midst of that crowd, her hands filled with the stems of white, red, and yellow roses on the verge of blooming. We recognised her from the back. We’d have known her if she’d been in a crowd of thousands, all wearing identical clothing.

We saw a teenage boy hand her a package wrapped in white paper. As soon as she took it, he turned and ran off. When she peeled away the paper wrapping, she jumped in disbelief and cried out in fear. She reeled back and forth a time or two, then fell backward.

It was a big, black frog, which hopped away from her.

2

A phoney-looking security guard at the gate to the bullfrog farm gave my cousin a half-assed salute as the electric gate slid slowly open to allow his Passat entrance. Yuan Sai, the one-time fortune-teller and quack doctor, now CEO of the bullfrog farm, was waiting for us in front of a big, black sculpture.

It was supposed to be a bullfrog.

From a distance it looked like an armoured military transport truck.

The following words were carved into the marble plaque at the base: Bullfrog (Rana Catesbeiana), Amphibian, Order Anura, Family Ranidae, Genus Rana, Derives its name from its bull-like croak.

A picture, take a picture, Yuan Sai greeted us. After that you can take a tour and then eat.

I studied the enormous bullfrog and was properly in awe. A jet-black back, jade-green mouth and golden eye sockets, it had algae-like wrinkled skin covered with warts; the gloomy gaze from its bulging eyes seemed to carry a message from the ancient past.

Xiao Bi, my cousin shouted, bring a camera! A willowy girl with red glasses wearing a long, striped skirt came running up with a heavy camera.

Xiao Bi, formerly an honours student from Qidong University’s Art Department, is our office manager, my cousin informed us.

She’s more than just beautiful, Yuan Sai said, she’s exceptional in many ways. She can sing and dance and is a photographer and sculptor, among other talents. And, I might add, she can drink along with the best.

Mr Yuan likes to flatter people, Xiao Bi said as she blushed.

This classmate of mine is also a very special person, Yuan Sai introduced me to Xiao Bi. He was quite a runner in his youth, and we assumed he’d grow up to be a champion athlete, never expecting him to become a playwright. His name is Wan Zu, but everyone calls him Xiaopao. Now he goes by Tadpole.

Tadpole’s my pen-name, I explained.

And this is Tadpole’s wife, Little Lion. A specialist in obstetrics.

Little Lion, cradling her doll, nodded absent-mindedly.

I’ve often heard Yuan and Jin speak of you, Xiao Bi said.

The world’s number one frog! Yuan Sai said.

It’s Xiao Bi’s creation, my cousin added.

I breathed an exaggerated sigh of admiration.

I’d be honoured if the respected Tadpole would tell me what he thinks of it.

We walked around the sculpture, and no matter where I stood I could feel its eyes on me.

After the pictures were taken, Yuan Sai, my cousin, and Xiao Bi accompanied us on a tour of the breeding pond, the tadpole pond, the metamorphose pond, the young frog pond, the feed preparation station, and the frog products workshop.

From that day forward, the image of the bullfrog-breeding pond has often invaded my dreams. Mate-seeking bull-like bellows from the inflated white throats of male bullfrogs spout from the murky surface of the pond, which is some four hundred square feet in size and three feet or so deep, drawing females slowly to them, their extended limbs afloat. Coupled frogs can be seen all over, moving across the surface, males on the females’ backs, front legs holding on, rear legs constantly thumping her on the sides. The females eject transparent eggs to be fertilised by sperm ejaculated by the males. Frog fertilisation occurs outside the body — someone, either my cousin or Yuan Sai, said — with as many as ten thousand eggs laid by each female — they’re so much more advanced than humans — and croaks fill the air above the pond, which is warmed by the April sun and gives off a nauseating stench. An arena for mating, it is also an arena for producing the next generation — we add stuff to the feed to increase the production of eggs — wa wa wa — frog croaks — wah wah wah — babies’ cries…

With the croaking of frogs ringing in our ears, and visions of bullfrogs crammed into our heads, we were taken into a luxurious restaurant.

A pair of girls clad in pink would serve us.

Everything on today’s menu comes from frogs, Yuan Sai said.

I picked up the menu and read the list of entrees: salt and pepper frogs’ legs, fried frog skin, frog meat with green peppers, sliced frog with bamboo shoots, tadpoles in vinegar sauce, tapioca and frog’s egg soup…

I’m sorry, I said, but I don’t eat frogs.

Me either, Little Lion said.

Why? A surprised Yuan Sai asked. They’re delicious. Why don’t you eat them?

I tried to put the sight of those bulging eyes, sticky skin, and the cold, putrid smell out of my mind, but couldn’t. I shook my head as I suffered.

Not long ago a Korean researcher succeeded in extracting a valuable peptide from the skin of frogs that is an effective antioxidant that eliminates free radicals, a natural anti-ageing compound, my cousin, Jin Xiu, said with a meaningful look. Naturally, it has a number of other fascinating effects, including drastically raising the odds of a woman giving birth to twins and more.

How about a small taste? Yuan Sai offered. Don’t be a coward. You have no trouble with scorpions, leeches, worms or venomous snakes, so why not a bullfrog?

You haven’t forgotten that my pen-name is Tadpole, have you?

Oh, that’s right, Yuan Sai said to the serving girls. Clear the table and tell the chef to cook up a new meal — no frogs!

The new meal was served, the three rounds of toasts were completed.

How did someone like you come up with the idea of raising bullfrogs? I asked Yuan Sai.

The only way to make big money is to come up with new ideas, he said proudly as he blew a smoke ring.

How talented you are, I said, imitating the tone of a sitcom actor, with a sarcastic edge. You’ve been different ever since you were a child. Raising bullfrogs is fine, but doesn’t it bother you to have to give up your arcane skills of removing nails from cows’ stomachs and telling fortunes in the marketplace?

Tadpole, you stinker. Don’t hit a man in the face in a fight and don’t expose his shortcomings during a reprimand.

Not to mention using steel tongs to remove women’s IUDs, Little Lion chimed in coldly.

Aiya, dear Sister-in-law, why bring that up? My awareness was at an all-time low then, and I was too soft-hearted, no match for women who caught me in their crazed demand to have children. A third reason? I was broke.

Would you do it today? I asked him.

Do what? He glared at me.

Remove an IUD.

To hear you say it, I have no memory. I’m a new man after those years in the reform-through-labour brigade. These days I walk the straight and narrow, earning a legitimate income. I wouldn’t think of doing anything illegal, not even if you put a gun to my head.

We’re a law-abiding, public-minded, municipally recognised and outstanding enterprise that pays all its taxes, my cousin said.

Little Lion had her hand on the clay doll throughout the meal.

That damned Qin He, Yuan said, is a bona fide genius. As soon as he started making the dolls, Hao Dashou was out of business.

Xiao Bi, who had sat by quietly with a smile, joined the conversation: All of Master Qin’s creations are crystallisations of his emotions.

Are emotions really important in crafting clay dolls? Yuan Sai asked her.

Of course they are, she replied. Every artistic creation is the artist’s child.

Then that big bullfrog must be your child. Yuan Sai pointed to the sculpture.

Not another word from the red-faced girl.

Your wife must really be fond of clay dolls, my cousin said to me.

It’s not clay dolls she’s fond of, Yuan Sai said. It’s real babies.

Let’s team up, Jin Xiu said excitedly. My cousin can join us.

You want us to be part of your bullfrog farm? I asked. Just looking at those things gives me goose bumps.

We don’t farm bullfrogs exclusively. We also…

Don’t frighten him away, Yuan Sai interrupted. Drink up. Remember how Chairman Mao educated the youngsters back then? Rural villages are the wide-open spaces, he said, where you can do what you want!

3

Wang Gan’s comment that love is a sickness was a lesson he’d learned from personal experience. I found it almost incomprehensible that he could go on living after Little Lion married me, given his obsession over her and the bizarre direction it had taken over so many years. With that premise, Qin He’s infatuation with Gugu must also be seen as a sickness. When she married Hao Dashou, Qin neither drowned himself in the river nor hanged himself; what he did was transfer his pain onto art, and a true popular artist was born, like a newborn infant emerging from clay.

Wang Gan went beyond not trying to avoid us by bringing up the subject of his obsession over Little Lion, talking lightly about it as if it had happened to someone else. I found his attitude comforting. A sense of guilt that had been concealed in my heart for years began to fade away, and that led to a rekindling of friendship, not to mention the birth of respect.

You might not believe me, he said, but when Little Lion walked barefoot along the riverbank, I followed her footprints on my hands and knees, like a dog, inhaling the smell of her feet as tears drenched my face.

You’re just making that up, she said. She was blushing.

It’s the absolute truth, Wang Gan insisted. If one word of that is a lie, may boils grow on the tips of my hair!

Did you hear that? Little Lion said. Instead of boils on the tips of his hair he should wish that his shadow would catch cold.

That’s terrific, I said. Now I’ll have to write you into my play.

Thanks, he said. You can include every idiotic thing the moron Wang Gan did. I’m a reservoir of material.

If you dare write me in, Little Lion said, I’ll burn the manuscript.

You can burn the paper it’s written on, but you can’t burn the poetry in my heart.

Ah, here comes the bookish sentimentality again, Little Lion said. Wang Gan, I’m beginning to think I should have married you instead of him. At least you’ve gone down on your hands and knees to cry in my footprints.

No more of your world-famous jokes, please, Wang Gan said. You and Xiaopao are an ultimate match.

We must be, Little Lion said, since not even a glimpse of a child has appeared. If that’s not an ultimate match, what is it?

All right, that’s enough about us. How about you? Haven’t you found anyone after all these years?

After I got over my sickness I discovered I really don’t like women.

Have you turned gay? Little Lion joked.

I’m neither gay nor straight, Wang Gan said. I’m in love with myself. I love my arms, my legs, my hands, my head, my features, my internal organs, even my shadow. I often have a conversation with my shadow.

You must have contracted another sickness, Little Lion said.

Loving someone else exacts a price, but loving yourself doesn’t. I can love myself any way I want to. I can be my own master…

Wang Gan took us to the house he shared with Qin He. A wooden plaque hung at the gate. The Master’s Workshop, it said.

It was the building where livestock had been held during the commune era and one of my favourite places to play as a child. Back then the smell of horse and mule dung hung in the air day and night; there was a large vat alongside the well in the centre of the yard, and each morning, the livestock handler, a man named Fang, brought the animals out one at a time to drink, while his fellow tender, Du, poured water from the well into the vat. It was a large, well-lit space with a row of twenty feed troughs. The two larger troughs at the head were where the horses and mules were fed, while the shallow troughs inside were reserved for cattle.

As soon as I passed through the gate I was face to face with dozens of tethering posts; slogans on the walls were still visible, and the smell of the animals lingered.

They were going to tear the place down, Wang Gan said, but we heard that after an inspection, the authorities decided to leave traces of the commune for tourists, and so here it is.

Don’t they need to raise livestock here? Little Lion asked.

I doubt it, Wang Gan said, then turned and shouted: Mr Qin, we’ve got guests!

There was no response as we followed Wang Gan inside; the feeding troughs were still there, so too were holes in the walls created by the animals’ hooves, and dried cattle and horse dung. The oven where feed had been cooked and a kang just big enough for the six sons in the Fang family was there as well. I’d slept on it many winter nights when water froze before it hit the ground. Old Fang was too poor to own bedding for his children, so he stuffed dry grass into the opening beneath the kang to keep a fire burning; the bed got hot enough to fry an egg. His children slept like babies since they were used to the brick bed, but I tossed and turned all night long. Now a pair of quilts covered the kang, while the walls were pasted with New Year’s posters of unicorns delivering babies and strolling ancient scholars. A thick wooden plank laid across two feeding troughs was a bench on which mounds of clay and clay-working tools sat; our old acquaintance Qin He sat on a bench behind the plank. He was wearing a blue smock whose sleeves and front were daubed with many colours. His white hair was parted in the middle, as before; his face was drawn like a horse, with a pair of large, deep melancholy eyes. When we approached him, he looked up and his lips moved, apparently a mumbled greeting. He then went back to studying the wall, his chin resting on his hands, as if deep in thought.

We held our breath, not daring to speak loudly and walking on tiptoes to keep the noise down so as not to interrupt the master’s train of thought.

Wang Gan gave us a show of the master’s handiwork. Unfinished dolls were drying in the cattle troughs. Dried dolls waiting to be painted were laid out on long boards against the northern wall. The children, in all their varieties, were waving to us from the cattle troughs, already lifelike, even before colours were added.

Under his breath Wang Gan said that the master sat trancelike like that every day, and sometimes didn’t climb onto the kang to sleep at night. Yet, like a machine, he kneaded the clay at regular intervals, making sure it never stopped being soft and well formed. Sometimes he’d sit all day long without making a single child; but when he began, he worked remarkably fast. I sell the master’s products and am responsible for his day-to-day living, Wang Gan said. At last I’ve found my calling, just as he’s found his.

The master’s needs are minimal. He eats what I place in front of him. Of course, I make sure it’s the most nutritious food I can provide. He’s the pride of the whole county, not just Northeast Gaomi Township.

I woke up late one night, Wang Gan said, and discovered that the master was not in bed. I immediately lit a lantern but didn’t find him at his workbench or in the yard. Where could he be? I broke out in a cold sweat, thinking that something had happened to him, and what a loss that would have been for Northeast Township. The county chief has brought the heads of the cultural and tourism bureaus here on three separate occasions. You know who the county chief is, don’t you? None other than the son of Yang Lin, the one-time county Party secretary who suffered so badly here and who had a tangled relationship with Gugu. Yang Xiong is a talented young man with penetrating eyes and neat white teeth, and who carries the smell of expensive cigarettes around on him. Word has it he studied in Germany. On his first visit he declared that the livestock-feeding building would not be torn down; the second time he invited the master to a banquet in town, but the master wrapped his arms around one of the tethering posts and held on like a man refusing to go in for a vasectomy; on the third visit, the county chief brought the master a plaque and a certificate proclaiming him to be a folk artist. Wang Gan reached into the cattle trough and brought out a gold-plated plaque and a certificate in a blue fleece cover to show us. Sure, he said, Hao Dashou has one of these plaques and a certificate, and the county chief also invited him to a banquet in town. He didn’t accept the invitation either. He wouldn’t have been Hao Dashou if he had. Well, these reactions had the county chief viewing the two Northeast Gaomi Township individuals in a new light. Wang Gan reached into his pocket for a stack of business cards, and selected three for us. See here, he said, he gives me one of these every time he visits. Lao Wang, he said to me, Northeast Gaomi Township has hidden talent just waiting to be discovered, and you’re part of that. I’m a down-and-outer, I said, with a notorious record. Outside of an infamous romantic escapade, I’ve been a complete cipher. These days I get by hawking somebody else’s clay dolls. Guess what he said to that? Anyone who can devote half a lifetime’s energy to the pursuit of a romantic vision is a legendary figure in his own right. Your township has produced its share of unusual and eccentric people, and you’re one of them. I tell you, the fellow’s part of a new breed of officials, nothing like the ones we used to know. I’ll bring you over to meet him the next time he comes to visit. He gave me the job of taking care of the master, responsible for safeguarding his welfare. So when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t find him anywhere, I panicked. What would I say to the county chief if something happened to the master? I sat in a sort of trance in front of the stove until moonlight flowed into the room. A pair of chirping crickets behind the stove invested the room with a sense of foreboding. Then I heard some chilled laughter emerge from one of the horse troughs. I jumped to my feet and looked down into the trough, where the master was lying on his back staring into the sky. The trough was too short for him, so he had to curl his legs yoga-fashion, while his hands were folded on his chest. He wore a peaceful look and a broad smile. I could tell he was fast asleep; the laugh was part of his dream. I’m sure you know that these geniuses, the pride of the township, all suffer from debilitating insomnia, and though I’m only half a genius, I too suffer from insomnia. How about you two? Any sleep problems?

Little Lion and I exchanged a glance and shook our heads. No problems for us. We’re snoring away as soon as our heads touch the pillow. I guess that proves we’re not in the genius category.

Not everyone who suffers from insomnia is a genius, Wang Gan said, but all geniuses are insomniacs. Gugu’s insomnia is known to everyone. In the deep of the night, when silence is king, you can sometimes hear the husky sound of someone singing out in the fields. That’s Gugu. While she’s out walking at night, Hao Dashou is home making clay dolls. Their insomnia is cyclical; it follows the waxing and waning of the moon. The brighter the moon, the worse their insomnia. They manage to sleep when the moon is on the wane. That’s why our talented county chief named Hao Dashou’s creations ‘Moonlight Dolls’. He sent people from the county TV station to document the making of Hao Dashou’s moonlight dolls with the moon shining overhead. You probably haven’t seen that documentary, and there’s no reason to beat yourselves up if you haven’t. It was part of a series called Uncanny Individuals of Northeast Gaomi Township. Hao Dashou’s moonlight dolls kicked off the series. Next came ‘The Master in a Horse Trough’, the third was ‘An Uncanny Poet’, and the fourth ‘Singing amid a Chorus of Croaking Frogs’. If you want to see them, I’ll have the station send over a DVD — the unedited version. I’ll also suggest that they do an episode on you. I’ve already got a title: ‘The Prodigal Son’.

Another glance passed between Little Lion and me. We both smiled. We knew that he’d drifted into an artistic mindset, and we saw no reason to call his attention to that. Why should we? Better to let him talk on.

After suffering from insomnia all those years, Wang Gan said, the master used the horse trough as his bed, where he slept the untroubled slumber of a baby, just like that infant that floated down the river in a wooden trough all those years before. My eyes filled with tears of emotion. Only an insomniac knows the agony of sleepless nights, and only an insomniac knows the joy of a good night’s sleep. I maintained a silent watch over the trough, keeping my breathing shallow so as not to startle the master out of his sleep. Gradually my tear-filled eyes grew bleary, and a road seemed to open up before me, passing through lush countryside where flowers bloomed in profusion, with a riot of colours and a mist of uncommon bouquets, where butterflies flitted and bees buzzed. A sound up ahead was calling to me, a woman’s nasal voice, somewhat muffled, but pleasantly intimate. The sound led me along. I could see her lower body only: a nicely rounded bottom, long, shapely legs, bright red heels, which left shallow footprints in the soft, wet mud, so clear they provided perfect imprints of her soles. I followed behind her, on and on, as if the narrow road would never end. Little by little I sensed that I was walking side by side with the master, though I knew not when or from where he had joined me. We followed the red footprints until we reached a distant marsh, where the smell of mud and decay came to us on the wind from somewhere deep inside. We stepped on clusters of nut sedge and saw in the distance reedy marshes and patches of sweet flag, plus many kinds of strange, nameless plants and flowers. The sound of children’s laughter and shouts came from deep in the marsh. The woman with only her lower body visible shouted towards the marsh in an alluring voice: Daguai, Xiaoguai, Jinpao, Yudai, repay kindness with kindness, clear away debts owing and owed — Before she could finish what she was saying, a jumble of little children, naked but for red stomachers, came shouting out of the marsh; some had single braids pointing to the sky, others had shaved heads, and the hair of still others was formed into three tufts. The children seemed to be on the heavy side, the marsh looked to be covered by a springy membrane on which they ran, springing up with every step, like kangaroos. The boys and, of course, girls surrounded the master and me, some holding on to our legs, some jumping up onto our shoulders, some tugging on our ears, some grabbing our hair, some blowing air on our necks, some spitting in our eyes. We were wrestled to the ground by the boys and, of course, girls. The boys and, of course, girls rubbed mud all over us, and, of course, the boys did likewise to themselves… afterward, just how long after I can’t say, the boys and, of course, girls abruptly quieted down and sat down and formed a semicircle, lying, sitting, and kneeling in front of us, some propping their heads with their hands, some chewing their nails, and some with their mouths hanging open… all in all, a lively bunch in every imaginable pose. My god, they were posing as models for the master. I saw that he’d already started working. With his eyes fixed on one child, he picked up a handful of mud and began working it until the child came to life in his hands. Finishing one, he turned to another and repeated the process, over and over…

A rooster cry startled me out of my sleep. I discovered I’d fallen asleep next to the horse trough and had dribbled slobber on the master’s clothing. Only by recalling a dream is an insomniac sure he’s slept. The dream I just told you about was still right before my eyes, and that was proof that I’d slept. Wang Gan, who had suffered from insomnia for years had actually fallen asleep, which was worth celebrating with firecrackers. Even happier was knowing that the master had slept. The master sneezed and slowly opened his eyes. Then, as if something important had suddenly occurred to him, he hopped out of the trough. Dawn had just broken, and rays of colourful sunrise glided in through the window. He rushed to his workbench, uncovered the clay, tore off a chunk, and began kneading, kneading and twisting, twisting and kneading, until an impish little boy with a stomacher and a braid pointing to the sky materialised on the table in front of him. I was deeply moved, as the alluring voice of the woman resounded in my ears. Who was she? Who else could she have been? It was the merciful Fertility Goddess!

At this point in his account, Wang Gan’s eyes glistened with tears, and I saw a strange lustre in Little Lion’s eyes. She’d fallen under his spell.

Wang Gan continued with his story. I tiptoed out to get a camera and returned to take a picture of the master — no flash — as he worked in a sort of trance. Truth is, I could have fired a gun next to him and not snapped him out of it. The expression on his face kept changing — sombre one moment, playful the next, mischievous for a while, then bleak and lonely. It didn’t take me long to discover similarities between the look on his face and that of the face of the child he was moulding. What I mean to say is, the master became the child he was fashioning in his hands. They had a flesh-and-blood bond.

The number of children on the master’s workbench grew and grew. The boys and, of course, girls formed a semicircle facing the master, the exact formation I’d seen in my dream! I was astounded and ecstatic. And overwhelmed emotionally. Two people capable of sharing a single dream — ‘kindred spirits through and through’ is how the ancients described a man and a woman in love, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with using it to describe the master and me. We weren’t lovers, but, as fellow sufferers, we enjoyed deep mutual empathy. After hearing me this far, you two ought to understand why all the dolls the master makes are unique, that no two are alike. Not only does he take real children as his models, he even takes them from his dreams. I don’t have his talent, but I have a rich imagination and eyes that work like a camera. I can turn a child into ten children, a hundred, a thousand, and I can also shrink a thousand, a hundred, ten children down to a single child. I telepathically pass the dream images of children I’ve amassed in my head to the master, who then turns them into his artistic creations. That’s how I’m able to say that the master and I are natural partners and that the finished products are joint creations. I don’t say that to detract from his achievements. In the wake of my romantic episode, I was able to see through the ways of the world; wealth and position are like floating clouds to me. My reason for telling you this is to reveal the miraculous relationship between dreams and art and to help you understand that lost love is a wonderful asset, especially for creative artists. No one who hasn’t experienced the bitter taste of lost love can ever lay claim to the highest levels of creative art.

All during Wang Gan’s monologue, the master maintained a pose of resting his head in his hands, with no observable movement. It was as if he himself had become a sculpted figurine.

4

Wang Gan sent over a boy with a DVD of the TV series Unique Individuals of Northeast Gaomi Township. He was in bib shorts from which emerged long, skinny, Pinocchio-like legs and high-top boots that looked much too heavy for him. His hair was the colour of flax, his brows and eyelashes nearly white, his eyes blue-grey; one look, and you knew he had foreign blood. Little Lion ran in to scare up some treats for him. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and announced in a thick Northeast Gaomi accent: He said you’ll give me at least ten yuan.

We gave him twenty. He bowed and, with a whistle, ran downstairs. So we went to the window, where we sprawled against the sill and watched him clomp like a cartoon character on his way to the playground opposite our housing compound, where the funicular railcar hove in and out of view on its way up the mountain.

A few days later we ran into the boy while we were strolling by the riverbank. He was in the company of a tall Caucasian woman pushing a stroller and a little girl, obviously his kid sister. They were moving gingerly along on rollerskates, protected by a colourful plastic helmet and knee- and elbow-pads. A handsome middle-aged man walking behind them was talking on his mobile phone, speaking in a lilting South China Putonghua. Bringing up the rear was a big, fat dog with golden fur. I recognised the man right off as a renowned Peking University professor and celebrated TV personality. When Little Lion bent over and all but buried her pudgy face in the blue-eyed baby, the woman smiled, a sign of good upbringing; the professor, on the other hand, reacted with a look of disdain. I reached down, grabbed Little Lion by the arm, and pulled her away from the stroller. She’d been so focused on the baby that the look on the professor’s face had escaped her entirely. I nodded by way of apology, and he accepted my gesture with a slight nod in return. I had to remind her not to pounce on pretty babies as if she were Granny Wolf. These days children are like little treasures, I told her. All you ever look at are the babies, never at their parents’ faces. Stung by the criticism, she first launched into a tirade against rich people, who have as many kids as they want, and Chinese men and women who marry foreigners, then have one baby after another. But self-pity and remorse set in for helping Gugu carry out the cruel, one-child family-planning policy, a harsh course of action that had led to a mass of aborted foetuses and, as a sort of heavenly retribution, made her sterile, unable to bear children. She told me to go marry one of those foreign girls and raise a brood of half-breed kids. I won’t be jealous, Xiaopao, she said, not at all. Go find yourself a foreign girl, and have as many kids as you want, the more the merrier. I’ll even help you raise them. By this time her eyes were glistening with tears and her breathing was rapid. Her breast heaved, filled with motherly love with no one to bathe in it. I had no doubt that if she were handed a child, her breasts would swell with milk.

That was how things were when I put Wang Gan’s disk into the DVD player.

With the nasal strains of Shandong operatic speech — grating to the ears of outsiders, but capable of bringing tears to the eyes of locals — swirling in the air, the lives of my aunt and the sculptor Hao Dashou unfolded in front of our eyes.

I have to admit that, though I did not make it public, I had been personally opposed to Gugu’s marriage. My father, my brothers, and their wives had shared my feelings. It simply wasn’t a good match in our view. Ever since we were small we’d looked forward to seeing Gugu find a husband. Her relationship with Wang Xiaoti had brought immense glory to the family, only to end ingloriously. Yang Lin was next, and while not nearly the ideal match that Wang would have provided, he was, after all, a high-ranking official, which made him a passable candidate for marriage. Hell, she could have married Qin He, who was obsessed with her, and would have been better off than with Hao Dashou… we were by then assuming she’d wind up an old maid, and had made appropriate plans. We’d even discussed who would be her caregiver when she reached old age. But then, with no prior indication, she’d married Hao Dashou. Little Lion and I were living in Beijing then, and when we heard the news, we could hardly believe our ears. Once the preposterous reality set in, we were overcome by sadness.

This episode of the TV series, entitled ‘Moon Child’, was supposed to be about the sculptor Hao Dashou, though the camera was always on her, talking and gesturing as she welcomed journalists into Hao’s yard and gave them a guided tour of his workshop and the storeroom where he kept his clay figurines, while he sat quietly at his workbench, eyes glazed over and a blank look on his face, like a dreamy old horse. Did all master artists turn into dreamy old horses once they reached the pinnacle of their artistry? I wondered. The name Hao Dashou was familiar to me, though I’d only met him a few times. After seeing him late on the night my nephew Xiangqun hosted a dinner to celebrate his acceptance as an air force pilot, years passed before I saw him again, and this time it was on TV. His hair and beard had turned white, but his complexion was as ruddy as ever; composed and serene, he was a nearly transcendent figure. It was during that program that we accidentally learned why Gugu had married him.

Gugu lit a cigarette, took a drag, and began to speak, sadness creeping into her voice. Marriages, she said, are made in Heaven. By this, I’m not promoting the cause of idealism for you youngsters, for there was a time when I was an ardent materialist, but where marriage is concerned, you must believe in fate. Just ask him, she said, pointing to Hao Dashou, who sat there like one of his sculptures. Do you think he ever dreamed of one day getting me as his wife?

In 1997, when I was sixty, she said, my superiors asked me to retire, whether I wanted to or not. I was already five years past the retirement age, and nothing I said would have made any difference. You know the hospital director, that ungrateful bastard Huang Jun, the son of Huang Pi from Hexi Village. Just who do you think dragged that little shit — they called him Melon Huang — out of his mother’s belly? Well, he spent a couple of days in a medical school, and he came out almost as stupid as the day he went in — he couldn’t locate a heart with a stethoscope, couldn’t find a vein with a syringe, and had never heard the terms inch, bar and cubit when checking a patient’s pulse. So who better to appoint as hospital director! He was admitted into the school thanks to my personal recommendation to Director Shen of the Bureau of Health. Only to be ignored by him when he was the man in charge. The wretched creature has two talents, and only two: playing the host, giving gifts, and kissing arse; and seducing, even raping, women.

At this point, Gugu thumped her breast and stomped her foot. What a fool I was, she said angrily, letting the wolf in the door. I made it easy for him to have his way with all the girls in the hospital. Wang Xiaomei, a seventeen-year-old girl from Wang Village, had nice, thick braids, a pretty oval face, and skin like ivory. Her lashes danced like butterfly wings, her eyes could talk, and anyone who saw her would believe that if film director Zhang Yimou discovered her, she’d be a hotter commodity than Gong Li or Zhang Ziyi ever were. Sadly, Melon Huang, the sex fiend, discovered her first. He rushed off to Wang Village, where, with a glib tongue that could bring back the dead, he talked Xiaomei’s parents into sending her to his hospital to learn from me how to treat women’s problems. He said she’d be my student, but she never spent a single day with me. Instead, the lecher kept her to himself as his daily companion and nightly lover. If that weren’t bad enough, he even took her in the daytime; people had seen them. Then once he’d had enough fun with her, he went off to the county seat, where he hosted banquets for high officials with public funds, in the hope of being transferred to the big city. Maybe you haven’t seen what he looks like: a long, donkey face with dark lips, bloody gums, and breath so bad it could fell a horse. Even with a face like that, he figured he had a chance of becoming assistant director at the Bureau of Health! So he dragged Wang Xiaomei along to drink and eat and entertain the officials, probably even offering her up as a gift for their pleasure. Evil! That’s what he was, pure evil!

One day the wretch called me to his office. Other women who worked in the hospital were afraid to be in his office. But not me. I kept a little dagger handy, and wouldn’t have hesitated to use it on the bastard. Well, he poured tea, smiled, and laid it on thick. What did you want to see me about, Director Huang? Let’s get to the point.

Heh-heh. He grinned. Great Gugu — damned if he didn’t call me Great Gugu — you delivered me the day I was born, and you’ve watched me grow into adulthood. Why, I could be your own son. Heh-heh…

I don’t deserve such an honour, I said. You’re the director of a big hospital, while I’m just an ordinary obstetrician. If you were my son I’d die from the honour. So, please, tell me what you have in mind. More heh-heh-hehing, before he got around to revealing the shameless reason he’d summoned me. I’ve made the mistake all leading cadres make sooner or later — through my own carelessness Wang Xiaomei got pregnant. Congratulations! I said. Now that Xiaomei is carrying your dragon seed, the hospital is guaranteed leadership continuity. Don’t mock me, Great Gugu, I’ve been so upset the past few days I can’t eat or sleep. Can you believe the bastard actually said he had trouble eating and sleeping? She’s demanding that I divorce my wife, and if I won’t she’s threatened to report me to the County Discipline Commission. Really? I said. I thought having second wives was popular among you officials these days. Buy a villa, install her in it, and you’ve got it made. I asked you not to make fun of me, Great Gugu, he said. I couldn’t go public with a second or a third wife. Besides, where would I get the money to buy a villa? Then go ahead and get a divorce, I said. He pulled that donkey face longer than ever and said, Great Gugu, you know full well that my father-in-law and those pig-butcher brothers-in-law of mine are violent thugs. They wouldn’t hesitate to butcher me if they found out about this. But you’re the Director, an official! All right, that’s enough, Great Gugu. In your old eyes the director of a hospital in a piddling, out-of-the-way town is about as important as a loud fart, so instead of mocking me, why don’t you help me come up with something! What in the world could I come up with? Wang Xiaomei admires you, he said. She’s told me that many, many times. You’re the only person she’ll listen to. What do you want me to do? Talk her into having an abortion. Melon Huang, I protested through clenched teeth, I’ll never again soil my hands with that atrocious act! Over the course of my life I’ve been responsible for more than two thousand aborted births, and I’ll never do it again. Just wait until you’re a father. Xiaomei is such a pretty girl, she’s bound to present you with a lovely boy or girl, and that should make you happy. You go tell her that when the time comes, I’ll be there to deliver the child.

With that, I turned on my heel and walked out of the office pleased with myself. But that feeling lasted only till I was back in my own office and had drunk a glass of water. My mood turned dark. No one as bad as Melon Huang deserved to have an heir, and what a shame it was that Wang Xiaomei was carrying his child. I’d learned enough from delivering all those children to know that a person’s core — good or bad — is determined more by nature than nurture. You can criticise hereditary laws all you want, but this is knowledge based on experience. You could place a son of that evil Melon Huang in a Buddhist temple, and he’d grow up to be a lascivious monk. No matter how sorry I felt for Wang Xiaomei, I would not put ideas in her head; I simply couldn’t let that fiend find an easy way out of his predicament. If the world had another lascivious monk, so be it. But in the end I helped her abort the baby she was carrying.

Xiaomei herself came to me, wrapped her arms around my legs, and dirtied my trousers with her tears and snot. Gugu, she sobbed, dear Gugu, he tricked me, he lied to me. I wouldn’t marry that bastard if he sent an eight-man sedan chair for me. Help me do it, Gugu, I don’t want that evil seed in me.

So that’s how it was. Gugu lit another cigarette and puffed on it savagely, until I couldn’t see her face for all the smoke. I helped rid her of the foetus. Once a rose about to bloom, Wang Xiaomei was now ruined, a fallen woman. Gugu reached up and dried her tears. I vowed to never do that procedure again, I couldn’t take it any longer, not for anyone, not even if the woman was carrying the offspring of a chimpanzee. The slurping sound as it was sucked into the vacuum bottle was like a monstrous hand squeezing my heart, harder and harder, until I broke out in a cold sweat and began to see stars. The moment I finished I crumpled to the floor.

You’re right, I do digress when I’m talking — I’m old. After all that chatter, I still haven’t told you why I married Hao Dashou. Well, I announced my retirement on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, but that bastard Melon Huang wanted to keep me around and urged me to formally retire but remain on the payroll at eight hundred yuan a month. I spat in his face. I’ve slaved enough for you, you bastard. You have me to thank for eight out of every ten yuan this hospital has earned all these years. When women and girls come to the hospital from all around, it’s me they’ve come to see. If money was what I was after, I could have made at least a thousand a day on my own. Do you really think you can buy my labour for eight hundred a month, Melon Huang? A migrant worker is worth more than that. I’ve slaved away half my life, and now it’s time for me to rest, to go back home to Northeast Gaomi Township. He was upset with me and has spent much of the past two years trying to make me suffer. Me, suffer? I’m a woman who’s seen it all. As a little girl I wasn’t scared of the Jap devils, so what made him think I was scared of a little bastard like him now that I was in my seventies? Right, right, back to what I was saying.

If you want to know why I married Hao Dashou, I have to start with the frogs. Some old friends hosted a restaurant banquet on the night I announced my retirement, and I wound up drunk — I hadn’t drunk much, but it was cheap liquor. Xie Xiaoque, the son of the restaurant owner, Xie Baizhua, one of those sweet-potato kids of the ’63 famine, took out a bottle of ultra-strong Wuliangye — to honour me, he said — but it was counterfeit, and my head was reeling. Everyone at the table was wobbly, barely able to stand, and Xie himself foamed at the mouth till his eyes rolled up into his head.

Gugu said she staggered out of the restaurant, headed for the hospital dormitory, but wound up in a marshy area on a narrow, winding path bordered on both sides by head-high reeds. Reflected moonlight shimmered like glass on the water. The croaks of toads and frogs sounded first on one side and then on the other, back and forth, like an antiphonal chorus. Then the croaks came at her from all sides at the same time, waves and waves of them merging to fill the sky. Suddenly, there was total silence, broken only by the chirping of insects. Gugu said that in all her years as a medical provider, travelling up and down remote paths late at night, she’d never once felt afraid. But that night she was terror-stricken. The croaking of frogs is often described in terms of drumbeats. But that night it sounded to her like human cries, almost as if thousands of newborn infants were crying. That had always been one of her favourite sounds, she said. For an obstetrician, no sound in the world approaches the soul-stirring music of a newborn baby’s cries. But the cries that night were infused with a sense of resentment and of grievance, as if the souls of countless murdered infants were hurling accusations. The liquor she’d drunk, she said, left her body as cold sweat. Don’t assume I was drunk and hallucinating, because as soon as the liquor oozed out through my pores, leaving me with a slight headache, my mind was clear. As she walked down the muddy path, all she wanted was to escape that croaking. But how? No matter how hard she tried to get away, the chilling croak — croak — croak sounds of aggrieved crying ensnared her from all sides. She tried to run, but couldn’t; the gummy surface of the path stuck to the soles of her shoes, and it was a chore even to lift a foot, snapping the silvery threads that held her shoes to the surface of the path. But as soon as she put her foot down, more threads were formed. So she took off her shoes to walk in her bare feet, but that actually increased the grip of the mud, as if the silvery threads created suckers that attached themselves to the bottoms of her feet, so powerful they could rip the skin right off. Gugu said she got down on her hands and knees, like an enormous frog, and began to crawl. Now the mud stuck to her knees and calves and hands, but she didn’t care, she just kept crawling. It was at that moment, she said, when an incalculable number of frogs hopped out of the dense curtain of reeds and from lily pads that shimmered in the moonlight. Some were jade green, others were golden yellow; some were as big as an electric iron, others as small as date pits. The eyes of some were like nuggets of gold, those of others, red beans. They came upon her like ocean waves, enshrouding her with their angry croaks, and it felt as if all those mouths were pecking at her skin, that they had grown nails to scrape it. When they hopped onto her back, her neck and her head, their weight sent her sprawling onto the muddy path. Her greatest fear, she said, came not from the constant pecking and scratching, but from the disgusting, unbearable sensation of their cold, slimy skin brushing against hers. They drenched me in urine, or maybe it was semen. She said she was suddenly reminded of a legend her grandmother had told her about a seducing frog: A maiden cooling herself on a riverbank one night fell asleep and dreamed of a liaison with a young man dressed in green. When she awoke she was pregnant and eventually gave birth to a nest of frogs. Given an explosion of energy by that terrifying image, she jumped to her feet and shed the frogs on her body like mud clods. But not all — some clung to her clothes and to her hair; two even hung by their mouths from the lobes of her ears, a pair of horrific earrings. As she took off running, Gugu sensed that somehow the mud was losing its sucking power, and as she ran she shook her body and tore at her clothes and skin with both hands. She shrieked each time she caught one of the frogs, which she flung away. The two attached to her ears like suckling infants nearly took some of the skin with them when she pulled them off.

Gugu screamed and ran, but could not break free of the amphibian horde. And when she turned to look, the sight nearly drove the soul out of her body. Thousands, tens of thousands of frogs had formed a mighty army behind her, croaking, hopping, colliding, crowding together, like a murky torrent rushing madly towards her. As she ran, roadside frogs hopped into the path, forming barriers to block her progress, while others leaped out of the reedy curtain in individual assaults. She told us that the loose-fitting black silk skirt she was wearing that night was being shredded by the sneak attack. Frogs that swallowed the strips of silk were thrown into a frenzy of cheek-scraping from choking before they rolled on the ground and exposed their white underbellies.

She ran all the way to a riverbank, where she spotted a little stone bridge washed by silvery moonlight. By then hardly anything remained of her skirt, and when she reached the bridge, nearly naked, she ran into Hao Dashou.

Thoughts of modesty did not enter my mind at that moment, nor was I aware that I’d been stripped naked. I spotted a man in a palm-bark rain cape and a bamboo coned hat sitting in the middle of the bridge kneading something that shimmered in his hands. I later learned he was kneading a lump of clay. A moon child can only be made from clay bathed in moonlight. I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t care. Whoever he was, he was bound to be my saviour. She rushed into the man’s arms and crawled under his rain cape, and when her breasts came into contact with the warmth of his chest, in contrast to the damp, foul-smelling chill of the frogs on her back, she cried out, Help, Big Brother, save me! She promptly passed out.

Gugu’s extended narration called up images of frog hordes in our minds and sent chills up and down our spines. The camera cut to Hao Dashou, who still sat like a statue; the next scenes were close-ups of clay figures and of the little stone bridge, before returning to Gugu’s face, focusing on her mouth as she continued her story.

I awoke to find myself on Hao Dashou’s brick bed, dressed in men’s clothes. He handed me a bowl of mung bean soup, the simple fragrance of which cleared my head. I was sweating after a single bowlful, and was suddenly aware that I felt painfully hot all over. That cold, slimy feeling that had made me scream was fading. I had itchy, painful blisters all over my body, I spiked a fever, and was delirious. But I’d passed an ordeal by drinking Hao Dashou’s mung bean soup; I’d shed a layer of skin, and my bones ached dully. I’d heard a legend about rebirth, and I knew I’d become a new person. When I regained my health, I said to him: Big Brother, let’s get married.

When she reached this point, Gugu’s face was awash with tears.

The program continued with an account of how Gugu and Hao Dashou together produced clay dolls. With her eyes closed, she said to Hao, whose eyes were also closed and who was holding a lump of clay in his hands: This child’s name is Guan Xiaoxiong. His father is five feet, ten inches tall, has a rectangular face with a broad chin, single-fold eyelids, big ears, a fleshy nose tip, and a low bridge. His mother is five feet ten, has a long neck, a pointed chin, high cheekbones, double-fold lids, big eyes, a pointed nose tip, and a high bridge. The child is three parts father and seven parts mother… In the midst of Gugu’s verbal portrait, Guan Xiaoxiong was born in Hao Dashou’s hands. The camera zoomed in for a close-up. His features were crisp and clear, but he wore a hard-to-describe doleful expression that brought me to tears.

5

I accompanied Little Lion on a visit to the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital. She had wanted to work there, but had no one to open the door.

My first impression as we stepped into the lobby was that it looked more like an elite private club than a hospital. Cool breezes from the air-conditioning system took the bite out of a midsummer day. The background music was pleasant and relaxing, the fragrance of fresh flowers surrounded us. Inlaid in the wall facing us was the hospital’s logo in light blue and eight oversized words in pink:

Say Yes to Life, Embrace Trust and Hope.

Two lovely young women in nurse’s outfits with little white caps welcomed guests with broad smiles, bows and soft voices.

A middle-aged woman in a nurse’s outfit, wearing a pair of white-framed glasses, walked up to us. May I help you, sir, madam? she asked cordially.

No, thank you, we’re just here to look around.

She invited us into a waiting room to the right of the lobby. The room was furnished with a large wicker table and chairs, a simple bookshelf filled with glossy obstetrics-related magazines, and a tea table on which fancy brochures introducing the hospital were laid out.

After filling two glasses from a water fountain for us, she smiled and left us alone.

As I thumbed through the material, I came across the image of a middle-aged female doctor with a bright forehead, long curving eyebrows, friendly eyes, frameless glasses, white, even teeth and a beatific smile. A photo ID was pinned to her breast. Text above her left shoulder read: The Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital is the modern obstetrics hospital of your dreams. The cold atmosphere of other hospitals is absent here, replaced by warmth, harmony, sincerity, and a sense of family. You will experience true royal treatment… text above her right shoulder read: We abide strictly to the international medical standards set forth in the Geneva Convention of 1948, practising medicine with scruples and dignity. Our patients’ health takes precedence over everything else, and we take pains to maintain patient confidentiality. We strive to protect the lofty reputation and noble traditions of the medical field…

I sneaked a look at Little Lion, who seemed to be frowning as she skimmed a hospital brochure.

I turned the page. An obstetrician whose look inspired confidence was measuring the mounded, shiny abdomen of a pregnant woman. She had long lashes, a high nose bridge, lovely lips, and a ruddy face; absent was the gaunt, weary look of most pregnant women. A line of text across the doctor’s arm and atop the woman’s abdomen read: We maintain the deepest respect for life beginning at the moment of conception.

A man of medium build and thinning hair, dressed in brand-name casual wear, stepped briskly into the lobby. His self-assured airs and slight paunch told me that he was a person of position, if not a high official, then a man of wealth. Of course, he could have been both. He had his arm around a tall, slim young woman whose goose egg yellow silk skirt swished back and forth as she walked. My heart skipped a beat. It was Xiao Bi, the office manager at the bullfrog farm run by Yuan Sai and my cousin, the multi-talented Xiao Bi. I quickly lowered my head and held the brochure up to cover most of my face.

I turned to the next page, where, in the white space to the right and below a beautiful swollen abdomen, five naked infants sat in a row. Their heads were all turned to the left, a hint that someone off the page was playing with them. Round heads and puffy cheeks formed an adorable arc. Though their expressions were hidden, the arc itself formed an innocent smile. The hair on three of the heads was thin, the other two thick and full, black on two, golden yellow on one, and light yellow on the other two. All had large, fleshy ears, a sign of good fortune. Having their photographs in the brochure was a blissful sign of being favoured. They looked to be about five months old, barely able to sit up, their waists still sort of twisted. They were fat and round as little piglets, their protruding belly buttons visible under the folds of their arms. Their bottoms were flattened out, the two cheeks squeezed together, separated by a cute little crack. A dozen lines of text appeared to their left:

Our family-centred obstetrics services are tailored to communication between the pregnant woman, including those in labour, and our high quality medical team, with an emphasis on medical education.

The middle-aged man and Xiao Bi walked up to the front desk, where they spoke briefly to the receptionist before being led by an elegant woman to seats in a VIP area to the left of the lobby. They sat in brick red high-backed chairs behind a table with a vase of mauve roses. The man sneezed, and nearly made me jump out of my chair. It was a strange and distinctive sneeze, loud as an exploding detonator that triggered a memory. Could that be him?

Our doctors initiate detailed conversations with the pregnant woman and their family regarding the state of the woman’s health, the state of the foetus, the mother’s nutritional and exercise routines, and other concerns.

I desperately wanted to share my discovery with Little Lion, but she was too focused on the brochures, muttering as she read. How can they call this a hospital? Who can afford to stay in a place like this… With her back to Xiao Bi, she hadn’t noticed their arrival.

Apparently concerned that they were too conspicuous, the man stood up, took Xiao Bi by the hand, and walked over to the coffee shop at the rear of the entry hall, separated by large pots of tortoise-shell bamboo, with their jade green leaves, and a potted banyan tree whose leafy branches nearly touched the ceiling. The wall behind a fireplace was papered in a red brick design. The coffee shop was equipped with a bar with a rack filled with brand name liquor. A young man in a black bowtie was brewing gourmet coffee whose fragrance blended with the floral perfume to produce a sense of nurturing.

The hospital is also equipped with a rehearsal room for women late in their pregnancy. Delivery options are discussed with doctors and nurses, based upon the pregnant woman’s particular situation, and a mother-to-be classroom, all structured to enhance communications between hospital staff and patients, who are given unlimited opportunities to make their needs, concerns, and questions known.

He sat there with a cup of coffee, talking intimately with Xiao Bi. Yes, indeed, that’s who it was. A person can change the way he talks, but not the way he sneezes. A person can turn single-fold eyelids into double folds, but the greatest plastic surgeon alive cannot change the look in a man’s eyes. He was talking easily and laughing no more than twenty metres from me, totally unaware that a childhood friend was watching him. And as I watched, the wicked and merciless Xiao Xiachun, no longer with single-fold eyelids, separated himself from the body of the distinguished man.

It’s hopeless! Little Lion said dejectedly as she tossed the brochure onto the table and leaned back. US-trained doctors, French-trained graduates, medical college professors… top medical group in the country… the only way they’d let me in here would be to clean the toilets…

We were from the same hometown, we lived in Beijing at the same time, and yet I hadn’t seen him even once. I recalled how his father had paraded up and down the streets shouting, My son has been given a job at the State Council! after graduating from college. He spent several years in an office there before being taken on as the secretary to a bureau chief, and from there he took a post as deputy Party secretary somewhere. Then he left public office and became a real estate mogul worth billions…

The elegant woman who had greeted us located the two of them and led them out back somewhere. I shut the brochure I was reading. The back cover showed the hands of a doctor and a pregnant woman, all resting on her swollen belly. The text at the top read: Mothers-to-be and their children are family to us. We provide the best treatment found anywhere. You will be able to soak up our atmosphere of sweetness and experience the blessing of total care and attention.

In a complete funk as we left the hospital, Little Lion used every hackneyed political expression she could think of to excoriate these modern developments. I was too occupied with my own thoughts to pay attention to her. But her monotonous chatter started to bother me. All right, madam, enough sour grapes!

Rather than get angry with me, she just coughed up a bitter laugh and said, All a rustic doctor like me is good for is raising bullfrogs at Yuan Sai’s farm.

We came back here to live in retirement, I said, not look for work.

I have to find something to do, she said. Maybe I can work as a live-in wet nurse.

Enough, I said. Say, guess who I just saw?

Who?

Xiao Xiachun. He changed his appearance, but I recognised him.

Impossible, she said. What would a rich man like him be doing back here? You must have mistaken somebody else for him.

If it had been my eyes, possibly, but not my ears. No one on earth sneezes like him. Then there were the look in his eyes and that laugh. He couldn’t change those.

Maybe he’s come back for another big investment, Little Lion said. I hear we’re going to fall under Qingdao administration before long. When that happens, the price of land and houses will shoot up.

Now, guess who he was with?

How am I supposed to guess that, Little Lion replied.

Xiao Bi.

Who?

Xiao Bi, the girl at the bullfrog farm.

I see, she said. I knew she was a slut the minute I laid eyes on her. There’s something unclean about her relationship with your cousin and Yuan Sai.

6

Little Lion found the bullfrog farm repugnant, and had little good to say about Yuan Sai and my cousin. But the day after we visited the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital, out of the blue she said: Xiaopao, I’m going to work at the bullfrog farm.

That was a shock. Her large face beamed with a smile.

Really. I’m not joking, she said soberly, the smile gone.

Those critters, I’ve been trying to drive the stubborn image of bullfrogs out of my head — after watching Gugu’s TV documentary I think I developed a phobia of all frogs — and now you say you want to raise those critters?

There’s no reason to be afraid of frogs, you know, since we have the same ancestors. Tadpoles and human sperm look about the same, and there isn’t much difference between frog and human eggs. And there’s more — have you seen human foetus specimens in the first three months, how they have a long tail? They’re just like frogs in their metamorphic stage.

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

Why does the word for frogs — wa — sound exactly like the word for babies — wa? This was a prepared speech. Why is the first sound a newborn baby makes an almost exact replica of a frog’s croak? How come so many of the clay dolls made in Northeast Gaomi Township are holding frogs in their arms? And why is the ancestor of humans called Nü wa? Like the ‘wa’ for frog. Doesn’t that prove that our earliest ancestor was a frog, and that we have evolved from her? The theory that men evolved from apes is wrong…

As she went on and on I began to detect a conversational style used by Yuan Sai and my cousin, and I knew that she’d fallen under the spell of those two smooth talkers.

Okay, I said, if you’re bored at home with nothing to do, you can give it a try. But, I added, trying to sound prophetic, I’m betting you’ll pack it in within a week.

7

Sensei, even though I said I opposed Little Lion’s plan to work at the bullfrog farm, deep down I was pleased. I am by nature someone who treasures his time alone; I like to go for solitary walks, when I can reflect on the past. And if there’s nothing in the past that captures my fancy, I let my thoughts go where they will. Taking walks with Little Lion is something I need to do, and no matter how unpleasant it is to carry out such responsibilities, it’s important to pretend I’m happy and excited to be doing them. Now things have taken a positive turn, since she leaves the house early in the morning to work at the bullfrog farm, getting there on a motorised bicycle she said my cousin had bought for her. I watch through the window as she primly motors down the riverside road, silently and effortlessly on the new ride. Once her figure disappears, I hurry down the stairs

Over a period of several months, I visited several communities north of the river. Traces of my travel could be found in woods, flower gardens, supermarkets big and small, a massage parlour run by the blind, a public fitness park, beauty salons, pharmacies, lottery stalls, malls, furniture stores, and the riverside farm products outlet. I took pictures everywhere I went with my digital camera, like a dog lifting its leg to leave its mark from place to place. I walked through fields and stopped at construction sites. Work on the impressive main buildings at some of the sites was finished, whereas work at other sites had not progressed beyond the foundation preparation, with no hint as to what was coming.

After taking in the sights on the northern bank, I turned my attention south. I could cross the high-arching suspension bridge, or I could let the flow of the river take me on a bamboo raft a dozen li or so all the way to Ai Family Pier. I usually walked; rafting seemed too risky for me. But when an accident snarled traffic on the bridge one day, I decided to take a raft and relive my experience of many years before.

My rafter was a young man in a Chinese-style jacket with cloth buttons. Just about everything out of his mouth was a buzzword in a heavy rural accent. His vessel was constructed out of twenty lengths of thick bamboo, with an upturned bow on which sat a painted dragon’s head. A pair of red plastic stools was fixed to the deck in the centre of the raft. He handed me plastic bags to tie around my ankles to keep my shoes and socks dry. City folk, he said with a laugh, like to take off their shoes and socks. The women’s little feet are as pale as whitebait fish, and they make a funny squishing sound when they dip in the water. I took off my shoes and socks and handed them to him. He put them into a metal box and said, half jokingly, That’ll be a one yuan storage fee. Whatever you say, I replied. He tossed me a red life vest. You have to put that on, old uncle, or the boss will fine me.

When he poled us out into the river, rafters crouching on the riverbank cried out, Have a good trip, Flathead. Don’t fall into the river and drown!

He skillfully poled us out into the river. No way, he said. If I drowned, your little sister would be a widow, wouldn’t she?

We picked up speed out in the middle of the river, where I took out my camera and snapped shots of bridges and riverbank scenes.

Where are you from, old uncle?

Where do you think? I replied in my hometown accent.

You from around these parts?

Could be. Your father and I might have been schoolmates! His long, flattened head reminded me of a classmate from Tan Family Village. Flathead was what we’d called him.

That’s possible, but I don’t know you. May I ask what village you’re from?

Just keep poling, I said. It’s okay if you don’t know me. But I know your parents.

The young fellow plied his bamboo pole expertly, turning to look at me from time to time, obviously trying to place me. I took out a cigarette and lit it. He sniffed the air. Unless I’m mistaken, old uncle, that’s a China brand you’re smoking.

He wasn’t mistaken. Little Lion had given me a soft pack of China cigarettes, from Yuan Sai, she’d said. He’d told her they were a gift to him from some big shot. Yuan smoked Eight Joys only.

I took out a cigarette, leaned forward, and handed it to him. He leaned forward to take it, turned sideways to stay out of the wind, and lit it. He obviously loved the taste, as his face twisted into a slightly screwy expression I found sort of handsome. It’s not everyone who can afford to smoke cigarettes like this, old uncle.

A friend gave them to me.

They had to be given to you. No one who smokes these ever buys them, he said with a grin. You must belong to the ‘four basicallys’.

And what are those?

Your cigarettes are basically gifts. Your salary basically stays the same. You basically don’t need a wife… I forget the fourth.

Your nights are basically filled with nightmares, I said.

That’s not it, he said, but I really can’t remember what the fourth one is.

Then don’t worry about it.

It’ll come back to me. Come take another ride tomorrow. I know who you are now, old uncle.

You do?

You must be Uncle Xiao Xiachun. Another of those strange laughs. My father said you were the most talented student in his class. You’re the pride not only of that class, but the pride of our Northeast Gaomi County.

The man you’re talking about really is the most talented. And that’s not me.

You’re just being modest, old uncle. I knew you were somebody special as soon as you stepped onto my raft.

Is that the truth? I asked with a smile.

Of course it is. Your forehead shines and there’s a halo over your head. You’re a very rich man!

Have you studied physiognomy with Yuan Sai?

You know old Uncle Yuan? He smacked himself on the forehead. How could I be so stupid? Of course you do, you were classmates. Uncle Yuan’s talented too, but he’s no match for you.

Don’t forget your father, I said. I recall he can make a complete circle around the basketball court on his hands.

How hard can that be? he said with a note of contempt. All brawn and no brains. But you and Uncle Yuan know how to use your head. ‘A thinking man rules others, a working man is ruled by others.’

You’ve got the gift of gab, just like Wang Gan, I said with a laugh.

Uncle Wang is gifted, but he walks a different path than you, he said. His triangular eyes narrowed. Uncle Wang pretends to be a fool as he rakes in the money.

How much can he rake in selling clay dolls?

Uncle Wang doesn’t sell clay dolls, he sells art. There’s a price for gold, old uncle, but art is priceless. Of course, next to you, Uncle Xiao, the little money Uncle Wang Gan makes is like comparing a pond and the ocean. Uncle Yuan Sai has a quicker mind than Uncle Wang, but he can only make so much from a bullfrog-breeding farm.

If his money doesn’t come from the farm, where does it come from?

Don’t you really know, old uncle, or are you teasing me?

I really don’t know.

Old uncle, you’re making fun of me. I thought anyone who reached your station in life knew every trick in the trade. Even a lowly commoner like me hears things, so how could you not know?

I’ve only been back a few days.

Okay, let’s say you don’t know. Since you’re from around here, there’s no harm in a foolish nephew like me prattling on to keep you from getting bored.

Go on.

The bullfrog farm is just a front for Uncle Yuan, he said. His real business is helping people make the other kind of ‘wa’ — babies.

That shocked me, but I tried not to show it.

To put it nicely, it’s a surrogate-mother centre. Not so nicely, he hires women to have babies for other women who can’t have them.

People actually engage in that kind of business? I asked him. Doesn’t that make a mockery of family planning?

Oh, old uncle, what times are you living in, bringing up something like family planning? These days the rich fine their way to big families — like the Trash King, Lao He, whose fourth child cost him 600 000. The day after the fine notice arrived, he carried 600 000 to the Family Planning Commission in a plastic knit bag. The poor have to cheat their way to big families. Back in the days of the People’s communes, the peasants were tightly regimented. They had to ask for days off to go to market and needed written authorisation to leave the area. Now, you go where you want, no questions asked. They go out of town to repair umbrellas, resole shoes, peddle vegetables, rent basement rooms or set up tents at bridgeheads, and they can have as many babies as they want. Officials impregnate their mistresses — that needs no explanation. It’s only public servants with little money and even less courage who toe the line.

If what you say is true, then the policy of family planning exists in name only.

No, he said. The policy is in place. Because that’s the only way they can legally collect fines.

Well, then, let the people have their babies. Why go to Yuan Sai’s surrogate-mothers centre?

You must be so caught up in your career, old uncle, you don’t know what’s going on around you. He smiled. The rich are supposed to have lots of money, but there aren’t many like the King of Trash, who’s so free with his money. For most people, the more they have the stingier they get. They want a son to inherit their riches, but not at the cost of a steep fine. So they hire a surrogate mother to get out of paying a fine. And most rich folks, the upper crust, are around your age, so when the man decides to try, he has to look somewhere other than his wife.

So take a mistress.

Of course, a lot of them do, sometimes more than one, but more common are men who are henpecked and hate being inconvenienced. They are Uncle Yuan’s clients.

The sight of the little pink building that housed the offices of the bullfrog farm and of the golden halls of the Fertility Goddess Temple across the river gave me a bad feeling. I thought back to that recent morning after returning from a toilet visit at the health centre to an extraordinary bedtime drama with Little Lion.

You don’t have a son, do you, Old Uncle? Flathead’s son asked me.

I didn’t answer.

It’s not right for a special man like you not to have a son. You know that, don’t you? It’s actually a sort of sin. As Mengzi said: Of the three forms of unfilialness, not having an heir is the worst.

… After holding it in all night, I feel much better after relieving myself. I could use some more sleep, but Little Lion is getting frisky, and that hasn’t happened in a long time…

You must have a son, old uncle. This isn’t just about you, but for all of Northeast Township. Uncle Yuan has suggested many ways you could manage this, but a sexual surrogate is the best. The surrogate women are all beautiful, healthy, unmarried college graduates with terrific genes. You can stay with one until she’s pregnant with your child. It’s not cheap, at least two hundred thousand yuan. Of course, if you want the very best for your son, you can give her the most nutritious food and, if you’re so inclined, a personal bonus. The greatest danger is that an extended period of living together could produce an emotional attachment, and what was only pretend could turn into something real, which in turn would affect your marriage. That’s why I think your wife won’t let you get away with this.

… She seems to be in the grip of passion, but her body is cold, and she’s acting totally out of character. She wants to do it differently this time. What is it you want? I can see that her eyes are flashing in the morning light. She gives me a mischievous smile. I feel like abusing you. First, she puts a blindfold on me. What are you doing? Don’t take it off — after years of bad treatment, today I want to get my revenge. Are you going to give me a vasectomy? She giggles — I couldn’t bear to do that. I want you to enjoy this…

A woman caused a scene not long ago, young Flathead said. She wrecked Uncle Yuan’s car. You see, her old man got romantically involved with his surrogate, and as soon as his son was born, he dumped her. That’s why I’m sure your wife won’t let you do it.

… She’s really doing it to me, has got me hot and half crazed. She’s putting something over it. What are you doing? Is this really necessary? No answer…

If all you want is a son, and you’re not interested in tasting the forbidden fruit, I’ll give you a money-saving hint. It’s a well-kept secret that Uncle Yuan employs several inexpensive surrogates. They’re scary-ugly, but they weren’t born that way. They were beautiful once, by which I mean they have great genes. I’m sure you heard about that disastrous fire at the Dongli Stuffed Animal Factory, old uncle. Five girls from Northeast Township died in that fire. Three others survived the fire, but were terribly disfigured. Their lives ever since have been sheer agony. Uncle Yuan took them in out of the goodness of his heart, seeing that they had plenty to eat as well as a way to make a living and save up for old age. Naturally, they do their job without sexual contact. Your sperm is inserted into their uterus, and you take the child after it’s born. They don’t charge much — fifty thousand for a boy, thirty for a girl…

… She’s made me howl. I feel like I’ve fallen into an abyss. She gently covers me and leaves…

Old Uncle, I recommend…

Are you pimping for Yuan Sai?

How could you even think of using an old term like that, old uncle? He laughed. I’m one of Uncle Yuan’s professional associates, and I’m grateful to you, Uncle Xiao, for giving me the chance to make a little money. I’ll give Uncle Yuan a call now. He steadied the raft and took out his cell phone. Sorry, I said, but I’m not your Uncle Xiao, and I don’t need what you’re selling.

8

Sensei, Little Lion and I had a fight a couple of days ago and, in the heat of the moment, I wound up with a bloody nose. Blood even stained the paper I was writing the letter on, which I decided to continue, even with a headache. When I’m writing my play I need to choose every word and craft every sentence with care, but a letter is a different matter. Anyone who knows a few hundred characters and has something to say can write a letter. Back when my first wife, Wang Renmei, wrote to me, she used drawings when she didn’t know how to write something. Xiaopao, she’d say apologetically, I’m not an educated woman, and drawing is about all I can do. You are, too, I’d respond. Using drawings to ‘say’ what you mean is the same as creating new characters. Why don’t I create a son for you, Xiaopao? she said. We’ll create a son.

Sensei, after my conversation with the young Flathead on his raft, I nervously came to a conclusion that has troubled me a great deal: Little Lion, this woman who harbours an insane desire for a child, relieved me of my sperm and inserted it into the body of one of those deformed women. The image of countless little tadpoles encircling an egg floats into my mind, reminding me of my childhood, when we’d watch tadpoles in the shallows of the dried pond behind the village nibbling a water-soaked bun. The surrogate mother is none other than the daughter of my schoolmate Chen Bi, Chen Mei, in whose womb my child is growing.

I rushed over to the bullfrog farm, meeting a number of people on the way, some of whom waved to me, though I couldn’t tell you the name of a single one. Through a crack in the automatic gate I caught my second glimpse of the frog sculpture and shivered from a clammy, menacing feeling, though maybe it was only a trick of memory. Six girls in colourful outfits were dancing in the square in front of the squat building, waving floral wreaths to the accompaniment of a man sitting off to the side playing a squeezebox. More than likely rehearsing for some sort of performance. Days of peace, sunlight and breezes, and nothing happened, so maybe it was something I had imagined. I needed to find a place to sit down and think hard about my play.

‘Timid as a mouse when nothing is wrong, bold as a tiger when events are strong’, and ‘When your luck is good, it can’t be bad; when your luck is bad, you’ve been had’. Those were lessons my father taught me. Old folks are usually a storehouse of warnings. Thoughts of my father reminded me that I was hungry. I was fifty-five, and though I mustn’t refer to myself as old in front of my father, I was already more than halfway home and on a downward slide. There is nothing a man in the sunset of his life, someone who has retired early to return to live in his childhood hometown, needs to fear. That thought made me even hungrier.

I went into the Don Quixote, a little café next to the Fertility Goddess Temple square, a favourite haunt of mine since Little Lion went to work at the bullfrog farm. I took a seat by the window. Business was slow. This is like a reserved seat. The short, overweight waiter greeted me. Sensei, each time I sit at that table and gaze at the empty chair across from me, I dream that one day you’ll be sitting in it and talking with me about the play I’m having so much trouble writing. There was a broad smile on the waiter’s oily face, but a strange expression lay behind it. Maybe it was the look on the face of Don Quixote’s retainer, Sancho Panza, that of a prankster, slightly unscrupulous, someone who likes to taunt people and is himself taunted. Hard to tell if he’s lovable or hateful. The table is made of unvarnished Chinese linden, the grain marred by cigarette burns. It’s where I’ve done much of my writing. Someday, maybe, when the play is a success, the table will become an object of literary lore. Then, anyone who sits at it to enjoy a drink will have to pay extra. If you could sit across from me, well, that would be super! Sorry, but literary figures tend to rely upon boastful fantasies as a stimulus for writing.

Sensei, the waiter gave the impression of bowing without actually doing so. Welcome, he said. The great knight Don Quixote’s loyal retainer, Sancho Panza, here to serve you. He handed me a bill of fare in ten languages.

Thank you, I said. The usual. A margarita salad, a can of Little Widow Antonia stewed beef, and an Uncle Malik dark ale.

He waddled off like a duck. While I waited for my food I scrutinised the interior decorations. The walls are hung with a rusted helmet, a lance, and tattered gloves worn during a duel with a romantic rival, all symbols of celebrated battle skills, and certificates and medals for colossal achievements. Also on the wall are a remarkably lifelike deer’s head, a pair of brightly feathered pheasants and some yellowed photos. Even though the decorations are imitations of a classical European style, the layout is not without its appeal. The bronze, life-size statue of a woman stands to the right of the entrance, her breasts rubbed shiny by human hands. I’ve kept my eye on it, Sensei, and every diner, male or female, brushes one of those breasts upon entering — The Fertility Goddess Temple square is always a hub of activity, and Wang Gan’s hawking shouts are the loudest and liveliest. A new program has gotten underway recently, called Unicorns Deliver the Babies, ostensibly to return to traditions, whereas in fact it is the creation of a couple of workers at the municipal cultural centre. Though it’s a patchwork scheme, neither domestic nor foreign, it has resolved the employment problem for dozens of people, which makes it worthwhile. Beyond that, Sensei, just as you have said, tradition starts out as artistic innovation. I’ve seen any number of similar programs on TV, hodgepodges of tradition, the modern, travel and culture, bustling with activity, bright and glitzy, radiantly joyful, friendliness that brings wealth. And, in line with your worries, the flames of war leave bodies strewn across the land in some place, while singing and dancing take place in others, along with debauchery. This is the world you and I live in. If there really were a giant who was as much larger than the earth as we are to a soccer ball, I wonder what he would be thinking as he circled the planet, where peace is followed by war, overabundance by starvation, droughts by floods… Sorry, Sensei, I’ve let myself get sidetracked.

The phoney Sancho brought me a glass of ice water and a plate of bread with a pat of butter, plus a little dish of virgin olive oil with garlic-infused soy sauce. Their bread is beautifully baked; everyone says it is. Dipping it in the sauce is a treat in itself, but that is followed by delicious entrees and soups — Sensei, you must come have a meal here; I guarantee you’ll like everything about it — and the restaurant has a tradition, actually, more a ‘custom’ than a tradition: just before closing each night, the day’s leftover bread — in a variety of shapes, colours and thickness — is placed in a willow basket at the entrance, free for anyone. Nowhere does it say that they should take only one loaf, but that’s what everyone does instinctively. They stroll the grounds of the temple grounds with fresh loaves tucked under their arms or hugged to their chests — long or square, soft or fragrantly blackened, inhaling the fragrance of wheat, flax, almonds and yeast — their own bread. Sensei, this has always moved me deeply. I know, of course, that this may be an immoderate feeling, because I am painfully aware that the world is filled with people who lack clothes to wear and food to eat, plus some for whom survival is a constant struggle.

The margarita salad is a fresh, tasty dish with lettuce, tomato and endive. Who came up with such a romantic European name for a salad? One of my classmates, of course, and my first teacher’s son — Li Shou. As I wrote to you in another letter, he was the most talented student in our group, and he should have been the one with a literary career, but that turned out to be me. He became a skilled doctor and had a brilliant future ahead of him until he gave it up and came back home to open this restaurant, which is a cross between Chinese and Western, or better described, one that is both Chinese and Western. The influence of literature on this old classmate of ours is evident in the name of his restaurant and the dishes he serves. Opening a café called Don Quixote in a place that has traces of both local and foreign influence was in itself quixotic. He carries his success around his middle. Short to begin with, all that weight makes him seem even smaller. He sits in the far corner to watch me across the floor, and neither of us so much as waves to the other. I sometimes sprawl across the table to scribble some impressions, and he sits in a strange, leisurely pose, with his left arm over the back of the chair, resting his chin in his right, for the longest time.

The waiter brought my order — Little Widow Antonia beef and Uncle Malik dark ale — to the table. I took a drink, ate a bite, and slowly savoured both as I gazed out the window at a sombre re-enactment of a fairytale playing out in broad daylight: loud drumbeats and music leading the way, followed by flags and banners, umbrellas and fans and ostentatious outfits on extraordinary characters: a woman sitting atop the unicorn, her face like a silver plate, eyes like bright stars, holding a chubby pink infant. The Fertility Goddess always reminds me of Gugu, though in reality, Gugu dresses in a baggy black robe, her hair is like a bird’s nest, and she has a laugh like an owl’s hoot, a glassy look, and incoherent speech; that effectively kills the illusion.

After being carried around the square, the goddess’s flags lined up in formation in the centre. The musicians put down their instruments to allow an official in a high hat and crimson robe, holding a tablet in front of his chest — his stature starkly reminiscent of a eunuch in an imperial drama — to read from a yellow scroll: Great Heaven and Sovereign Earth produce the world’s five grains; the sun, the moon and the stars nourish the multitudes. In the name of the Jade Emperor, the Fertility Goddess brings a sweet baby down to Gaomi. I hereby call the pious couple, Wang Liang and his wife, to come forward for their baby — but before the couple playing the husband and wife received their son, a clay doll, it was snatched away by a woman eager to have one of her own.

Sensei, though I console myself with many rationalisations, I am at heart a coward, a little man who worries about nearly everything. Since coming to grips with the reality that the girl Chen Mei is carrying my child, a powerful sense of transgression has weighed me down. Gugu and Little Lion took Chen Mei in as a baby, I even helped out by preparing formula for her. She is younger than my own daughter. One day, when Chen Bi, Li Shou and Wang Gan, all childhood classmates, learn the facts of what occurred, I will no longer be able to look any of them in the eye, even if I were to cover my head with a dog’s pelt.

I thought back to my two encounters with Chen Bi since my return.

The first was on a snowy evening last year. Little Lion hadn’t yet started work at the bullfrog farm, and we were strolling through the snow, watching snowflakes dance in the glare of golden yellow lights around the square. Firecrackers popped somewhere in the distance; it was getting to feel very much like New Year’s. We were talking to our daughter, who was off in Spain. She said she and her husband were strolling the streets of Cervantes’ hometown. I told her that by chance Little Lion and I were walking into the Don Quixote café, which evoked crisp laughter on the other end of the cell phone.

It’s a small world, Papa.

Culture is everywhere, Sensei.

At the time we didn’t know that Li Shou was the owner, but we sensed that whoever it was, he was no ordinary man. We liked the place as soon as we walked in. The simple, unadorned tables and chairs particularly impressed me. Covering the tables with clean, white, neatly starched tablecloths would have made it very European. But I agreed with Li Shou, whose later research showed that rural Spanish restaurants in Don Quixote’s day did not use tablecloths. He added the gossipy comment that women back then did not wear bras either.

Sensei, I confess that when I saw that sculpture of the naked woman whose breasts were shiny from being rubbed, I reached out in spite of myself, which shows how sordid and yet open and candid I am. Little Lion shushed to stop me. What’s that for? I asked. This is art. That’s what all cultural degenerates say, she replied. The fake Sancho walked up with a smile, gave the impression of bowing without actually doing so, and said, Welcome, sir, madam.

He took our coats, scarves, and hats, and then led us to a table in the centre on which white candles floated in a dish filled with water. We said we preferred another table by the window, where we could enjoy the sight of fluttering snow outside and observe the restaurant’s décor at the same time. There at a table in the corner — the one that would later become my favourite spot — sat a man smoking. I knew who he was by the missing ring finger on his right hand. That and the big red nose. It was the once handsome Chen Bi, now bald on top, with hair hanging around his neck at the back, the way Cervantes had worn his. His face was gaunt, the cheeks sunken, probably a sign of missing molars. That seemed to magnify the size of his nose. He held the butt end of a lit cigarette to his lips with the thumb and two fingers of his right hand. The air filled with the strange odour of a burned cigarette filter. Two streams of smoke emerged from his wide nostrils. He had a glazed look, the typical sign of dejection. I wanted not to look at him, but couldn’t help myself. My thoughts went to the sculpture of Cervantes on the Peking University campus, and I knew why Chen Bi was here. He was strangely dressed: a nondescript long coat and a white knitted, seersucker-like scarf around his neck; the only thing missing was a sword on his hip. Then I spotted one leaning against the wall, which led my eyes to chain-mail gloves, a shield, and a spear standing in the corner. I expected to see a dirty, scrawny dog at his feet, and there was one — dirty, but not scrawny. Cervantes was believed to be missing the ring finger of his right hand, but he did not go around carrying a spear and a shield — that would be Don Quixote — and yet the man had Cervantes’ face. But then, none of us had ever actually seen Cervantes or, obviously, the fictional Don Quixote, so whether Chen Bi was made up to look like Cervantes or his fictional creation was an open question. My old friend’s current situation saddened me. I’d heard of the tragedy that had befallen his two beautiful daughters, Chen Er and Chen Mei, once Northeast Gaomi Township’s loveliest sisters. Chen Bi’s ancestral background was a mystery, but it definitely included foreign blood, and they were thus spared the flat features of most Chinese. The classical description of beauty did not fit those two, who were camels in a herd of sheep, cranes in a flock of chickens. Had they been born into a rich family or in a more prosperous land, or even if they had been born into a poor family in some distant place, but had been fortunate enough to encounter a rich man, they might well have taken the world by storm. They left home and went south together, perhaps to seek such an encounter. I heard they both took jobs at the Dongli Stuffed Animal Factory, where the manager was a foreigner — whether or not he was a real foreigner was hard to say. If two beautiful, intelligent girls in an environment of luxury and dissipation had wanted to make a great deal of money and enjoy life, their bodies could have made that happen. Instead, they toiled in a factory workshop, enduring the life of common labourers, a life of brutal exploitation, and in the end, a fire that shocked the nation turned one of them to ashes and horribly disfigured the other. The younger girl survived only through the sacrifice of her sister. How sad, how tragic, how pitiful. This proved that they had not fallen into degeneracy, but had remained as pure as jade and as unspoiled as ice, a pair of good girls — I’m sorry, Sensei, I got carried away again.

Chen Bi’s life had been one of incomparable sorrow. It seemed to me that by coming to the Don Quixote café to play the part of a famous dead man or a bizarre fictional character, his situation was much the same as that of the dwarf doorman at Beijing’s Paradise Dancehall or the giant doorman at Guangzhou’s Water Curtain Cave Bathhouse. They all sold whatever their body had to offer. The dwarf sold his pygmy stature, the giant sold his jumbo height; Chen Bi sold his nose. They were all in the same tragic circumstance.

Sensei, I recognised Chen Bi right off that night, though I hadn’t seen him in nearly twenty years. I’d have recognised him if it had been a hundred years and in a foreign country. Naturally, I think, when we recognised him, he also recognised us. You don’t need eyes to pick out a childhood friend; you can manage that with your ears — a sigh or a sneeze will do it.

Should I go up and say hello? Invite him to join us for dinner? Little Lion and I couldn’t make up our minds. And I could tell from his look of indifference and the way he was staring at the buck’s head on the wall, not even glancing out of the corner of his eye, that he couldn’t decide if he should come over to our table. The memory of him coming to our house that year on the night we sent off the Kitchen God — Chen Er with him, wanting to take back Chen Mei — floated into my mind. A large man back then, he was wearing a stiff pigskin jacket. He’d threatened to toss our garlic press into the pot on the stove. He was breathing heavily and seemed ready to explode from frustration, like a raging bear. That was the last time we’d seen one another till this day. I’m sure we weren’t alone in thinking about the past, that he was too. Truth be told, we never hated him; in fact, he had our deepest sympathies over his misfortunes. The main reason we did not go up and say hello to him was we couldn’t decide how. Why? Because we were making it, as the locals said, and he wasn’t. How does someone who’s making it deal with a friend who isn’t? We simply didn’t know.

Sensei, I’m a smoker. It’s a bad habit that encounters strict constraints in Europe, North America, even there in Japan, and makes us feel vulgar and ill bred. But not here, not yet. I took out a cigarette and lit it with a match. I love that brief burst of sulphur smell when striking a wooden match. Sensei, I was smoking Golden Pavilions then, a very expensive local brand. Two hundred yuan a pack, I’m told, which is ten yuan a smoke, while a jin of wheat sells for eighty fen. In other words, you’d have to sell twelve and a half jin of wheat to buy a single Golden Pavilion cigarette. Twelve and a half jin of wheat produce fifteen jin of baked bread, enough to meet a person’s needs for ten days or more. But a single cigarette’s life lasts no more than a few puffs. The resplendent cigarette packet reminded me of the Ginkakuji in your esteemed city of Kyoto, and I had to wonder if the Golden Pavilion had in fact been the model for the packet design. I knew how much my father detested the idea that I smoked this brand, but he limited his comment to: It’s degenerate! I nervously tried to explain: I didn’t buy these, they were a gift. His chilly response? That makes it obscene! I regretted telling him how much they cost, but that just shows how shallow and vain I was. How was I any different from the nouveau riche who parade their purchases of brand name products and crow about their new, young wives? But I couldn’t throw away such expensive cigarettes over a single critical comment by my father. If I did, wouldn’t that be even more degenerate? Golden Pavilions are enhanced with a special fragrance that produces intoxicating smoke. I could see that Chen Bi was getting fidgety. After sneezing loudly, over and over, he let his moody gaze move slowly from the stag’s head — hesitantly, timidly, and tremulously at first, then eagerly, greedily, even a little menacingly — to us.

The man stood up at last, Sensei, and hobbled our way, dragging his sword as if it were a crutch. The light inside the café was muted, but bright enough to see his face. The complex expression created by the totality of his features and facial muscles is hard to describe. I couldn’t be sure if he was looking at me or at the smoke coming from my mouth. I stood up so quickly the legs of my chair scraped the floor noisily. Little Lion stood up.

He stood in front of us. I stuck out my hand and pretended to be surprised to see him. He accepted neither my greeting nor my extended hand, keeping a respectable distance as he bowed deeply, then rested both hands on the handle of the rusty sword and said: Honourable Lady, Honourable Sir, I, the Spanish Don Quixote, knight of La Mancha, extend my deepest respect and humbly offer my unswerving desire to serve you.

Quit fooling around, Chen Bi, I said. Who are you pretending to be? I’m Wan Zu and this is Little Lion.

Honourable Sir, Respected Lady, for a loyal knight, no enterprise is more sacred than preserving peace and upholding justice, sword in hand.

Okay, pal, knock off the play-acting.

The world is a stage, one on which the same drama is played out every day. Sir, madam, if you could see fit to reward me with a cigarette, I will demonstrate my duelling skills.

I hastily handed him a cigarette and helpfully lit it for him. He took a deep drag, turning the end a bright red. He squinted and his face grew pinched, but then slowly smoothed out as smoke streamed from his wide nostrils. Seeing how relaxed and contented a cigarette made him both shocked and moved me. Though I’d been smoking for years, I wasn’t a heavy smoker, which was why I could not relate to the effect of that cigarette on him. He took another drag, burning up most of the remaining tobacco. Those pricey cigarettes had an exceptionally long filter, which left little room for tobacco, a ploy to appease the wealthy users who were afraid of dying from smoking but found it impossibly hard to quit. Three puffs burned the cigarette down to the filter. I handed him the whole pack. He timorously looked to the right and left before snatching it out of my hand and stuffing it up his sleeve. His promise to demonstrate his duelling skills forgotten, he limped to the door as fast as he could manage, dragging his sword and one leg behind him, but before he got there, he reached into the willow basket and snatched up a baguette.

Don Quixote! You’ve panhandled another customer! the fat fake Sancho Panza shouted while he brought us two mugs of foamy dark ale. We looked out the window at the poor man dragging his rusty sword behind him, his gimpy leg leaving a long, flickering shadow, as he crossed the square and disappeared in the darkness. The apparently robust dog followed closely behind him. A pathetic-looking man with a dog that seemed to strut.

Damn him, the fake Sancho Panza said for our benefit, not quite apologetically and sort of showy. He’s always embarrassing us by doing things behind our back, he said, and I want to apologise on behalf of my boss, sir, and you, madam. But I imagine you can’t be overly upset about a knight cadging a few cigarettes or some small coins.

What do you… what kind of talk is that? I didn’t like the way the fat man talked. Why talk like you’re acting in a movie or stage play? You people hired him, didn’t you?

I’ll tell you the truth, sir, the waiter said. When we opened, the boss took pity on him and had him dress up like that so he and I could stand in the doorway to greet the customers. But he had too many failings. He was addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and when he needed a fix, he was incapable of doing anything else. Then there’s that loathsome dog that never leaves his side. And sanitation means nothing to him. I take two showers a day, and while I might not be a feast for the eyes, my body odour can make people happy and relaxed. That is the standard an elite waiter should maintain. But the only time that guy got a wash was in a rainstorm. Customers turned up their noses when they smelled him. And there’s more: he ignored the boss’s orders to stop panhandling customers. I’d have canned a no-account bum like him, but my soft-hearted boss has given him chance after chance. He’s incapable of changing, like a dog that eats shit. The boss gave him some money, hoping he’d stay away, but he was back as soon as it was gone. I’d have called the cops on him by now, but the boss is too kind to do that, so he gets away with things that hurt business. He lowered his voice. I later learned that he and the boss were in school together, but even a classmate shouldn’t have to put up with that. Eventually, someone complained about Don Quixote’s terrible body odour and the mangy dog’s fleas. So the boss hired somebody to take him to a public bath and make sure he and his dog got a thorough cleaning. That became a policy: he was forced to take a bath once a month. Was he grateful? No, he cursed up a storm in the water. Li Shou, you son of a bitch, he’d shout, you’ve ruined this knight’s reputation!

Sensei, after that night’s dinner, Little Lion and I walked along the riverbank to our new house, feeling gloomy. It had been an emotional encounter with Chen Bi. The past was full of sad memories. Vast changes had taken place over the decades; things we’d never dared dream of had come to pass, and those we’d treated with inordinate seriousness had become laughable. We hadn’t had a real conversation, but he and I were probably thinking the same thing.

Sensei, the next time I ran into him was in the district hospital. We’d gone there with Li Shou and Wang Gan. Chen had been hit by a police car, whose driver said witnesses would swear he was driving normally when Chen Bi ran out into the street — he was suicidal — followed by his dog. Chen was thrown into some roadside shrubs, his dog was run over. Chen had compound fractures of both legs and injuries to his arm and hip, none of them life-threatening. The dog, which had died for its master, was splattered all over the pavement.

The news of Chen Bi’s accident came from Li Shou. The policeman was cleared of blame, but Li went to see someone in power and managed to get Chen a settlement from the station of ten thousand yuan. For injuries as serious as his, that was a pittance. I knew that Li’s motive in having us classmates visit Chen in the hospital was to get help in paying Chen’s hospital bills.

He was in Bed 9, next to the window of a twelve-bed ward. Lily magnolias blooming outside the window on that early May day sent a rich perfume into the ward. Even with the crowding, the ward was clean and neat; despite conditions that paled alongside Beijing and Shanghai hospitals, the improvements over the twenty years since the commune period had been substantial. Sensei, I had spent a week with my mother in the commune hospital, where the beds were home to hosts of fleas, the walls were blood-specked, and the air swarmed with flies. The thought alone makes me shudder. Both of Chen’s legs were wrapped in plaster casts, as was his right arm. He lay in bed able to move only his left arm.

He turned his face to the wall when he saw us walk in.

Wang Gan relieved the awkwardness with his brand of comic chiding: How did this happen, eminent knight? Tilting at windmills again? Or duelling with a romantic rival?

You should have told me you were tired of living, Li Shou said. You didn’t have to go looking for a police car.

He’s faking it, Little Lion said, that’s why he’s not talking to us. It’s all your fault, Li Shou, for turning him into a deranged individual.

He’s not deranged, Li defended himself. He’s a master at pretending.

Suddenly Chen burst into tears and lowered his head as far as it would go. His shoulders heaved; he scraped the wall with his good hand.

A nurse rushed into the room and gave us an icy stare. Stop that, Number 9, she demanded as she smacked the steel headboard.

He abruptly stopped crying and turned his head so we could see his face. He looked at us with a murky gaze.

The nurse pointed to a bouquet of flowers we’d laid on the nightstand and made a face as she sniffed the air. No flowers in the wards, she said sternly. Hospital policy.

Policy? Little Lion said. Not even Beijing hospitals have such a policy.

The nurse showed no interest in debating the issue. She turned to Chen Bi. Get your family over here to settle up, she said. Today’s your last day.

What kind of attitude is that? I asked unhappily.

With pinched lips, she said, A workday attitude.

Is a humanistic spirit alien to you people? Wang Gan said.

I only work here. If you people are flush with humanistic spirit, then pay his medical bills. I think our director would reward each of you with a plaque that says: Model Humanist.

There was more Wang Gan wanted to say, but Li Shou stopped him.

The nurse stormed out of the ward.

We exchanged glances, wondering what we should do. The treatment costs for injuries as serious as Chen Bi’s were sure to be astronomical.

Why did you have them bring me here? Chen Bi asked accusingly. What the hell business is it of yours if I want to die? I’d have done so if you hadn’t interfered, and I wouldn’t be lying here suffering.

It wasn’t us, Wang Gan said. The cop who hit you called for an ambulance.

If it wasn’t you, he said with a total lack of warmth, then what are you doing here? Come to pity me? Give me sympathy? I don’t need it. You can all leave, and take those toxic flowers with you — they give me a headache. Were you thinking of paying my hospital expenses? I don’t need that either. I’m a formidable knight. The King is my good friend, so is the Queen. The paltry expenses for this hospital stay will come out of the national treasury. But even if the royal couple prefers not to settle up, I don’t need your charity. Both my daughters are more beautiful than goddesses, their good fortune as vast as the Eastern Sea. If they do not sit on the Queen’s throne, they will serve as the King’s consort. They could buy this hospital with money that falls through their fingers.

Sensei, of course we understood what this crazy talk from Chen Bi was all about. He definitely was faking. In his mind he was clear as the surface of a mirror. Faking things can become a habit, and if you do it long enough, you can start sliding over the edge. We were on tenterhooks when we came to the hospital with Li Shou. We had no problem with taking along some flowers, some encouraging words, and a few hundred yuan, but to be responsible for a huge hospital bill, that would be… after all, we weren’t blood relatives, and the way he was… now if he’d been a normal person… In the end, Sensei, though we were all principled, sympathetic individuals, we were just ordinary men, and nowhere near noble enough to bail a misfit out of a jam. So Chen Bi’s crazy talk was intended to give us a face-saving way out. We all looked at Li Shou. He scratched his head and said, You just worry about getting better, Don. Since you were hit by a police car, they should be responsible for your hospital bill. If not, we’ll think of something.

Get out, Chen Bi said. If I could use my arms, your stupid heads would taste my spear.

There was no better time to leave. We scooped up the flowers, which were spewing a low-grade fragrance, and were on our way out when the nurse walked in with a man in a white smock. She introduced him to us as the assistant director for finances, and us to him as Bed 9’s visitors. He presented us with a bill totalling more than twenty thousand yuan, including emergency room treatment. He stressed the fact that this was their base cost; the normal computation would be much, much higher. Chen Bi was in full foul throat while this was going on: Get out of here, you profiteer, you and your exorbitant fees, you bunch of corpse-eating maggots. You mean nothing to me. He swung his good arm, banging it into the wall, and then felt around on the nightstand for a bottle, which he picked up and flung over to the bed opposite, hitting a critically old man who was getting an IV. Get out. This hospital is my daughter’s and you’re her hired help. One word from me and your rice bowl will be shattered.

Just as things were getting out of hand, Sensei, a woman in a black dress and veil walked into the ward. You’d know who it was without my telling you. That’s right, it was Chen Bi’s second daughter, the one who’d survived the fire at the toy factory, but was horribly disfigured.

Chen Mei drifted in like a spectre, the black dress and veil introducing mystery and a hellish gloom into the ward. The uproar came to an abrupt stop, like pulling the plug on a noisy machine. Even the stuffy heat turned to chill. A bird on the lily magnolia tree called out softly.

We couldn’t see her face, or an inch of skin anywhere. Only her figure was visible, the long limbs of a fashion model. But we knew it was Chen Mei. Little Lion and I instinctively thought back to the infant in swaddling clothes of more than twenty years before. She nodded to us, then said to the assistant director: I am his daughter. I will pay what he owes you.

Sensei, I have a friend in Beijing, a burn specialist at the Number 304 Hospital, a man with the stature of an academician, who told me that the mental anguish burn victims experience may be worse than the physical pain. The intense shock and unspeakable agony of seeing their ruined faces in the mirror for the first time is nearly impossible to endure. Such people need incomparable courage to go on living.

Sensei, people are products of their environment. Under certain circumstances, a coward can be transformed into a warrior, a bandit can perform kind deeds, and someone too stingy to spend the smallest coin might part with a large sum. Her appearance on the scene and the courage it took shamed us, and that shame manifested itself in a willingness to spend our money on a good cause. Li Shou was first, and then us. We all said, Good niece Chen Mei, we’ll take care of your father’s expenses.

Thank you for your generous offer, she said unemotionally, but we have been in so many people’s debt we’ll never be able to clear the accounts.

Get out! Chen Bi bellowed. You black-veiled devil. How dare you palm yourself off as my daughter! One of my daughters is a student in Spain, romantically involved with a Prince, and will soon be married. The other is in Italy, where she has bought Europe’s oldest winery, from where a ten-thousand-ton ship with the finest wine is sailing to China.

9

Sensei, I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t even started to write the play you’ve been patiently waiting for. There’s just so much material I feel a bit like the dog that wants to bite Mount Tai, but doesn’t know where to start. When I’m thinking about the play, something related to the theme and rich with possibilities will crop up in my life and interrupt my train of thought. But what has made it especially hard is my inadvertent involvement in a very troublesome matter. I don’t know how to extricate myself, or, more precisely, how to play the role expected of me.

Sensei, I think you’ve already guessed what that is. What I revealed to you earlier was not fantasy, but actual fact: Little Lion has admitted that she stole my tadpole-like sperm and implanted them in the body of Chen Mei, who is now carrying my child. That made my blood boil, and I slapped her hard out of uncontrollable rage. I know that was wrong, especially since someone who claims to be a playwright ought not to be guilty of such savage behaviour. But, I tell you, Sensei, I was out of my mind with anger.

After returning from my raft ride with Young Flathead, I did some investigating of my own. Each time I went to the bullfrog farm I was turned away by their security guards, so I tried phoning Yuan Sai and my cousin, but they both had new cell phone numbers. I demanded an answer from Little Lion, who just mocked me and called me crazy. I printed out the surrogate mother details from the bullfrog company’s website and took them to the municipal family-planning committee. They took my report, but nothing came of it. I next went to the police, where I was told this was not in their jurisdiction. I tried the mayor’s hotline, and was told that my report would be on the mayor’s desk. That’s how it went for the next few months, Sensei, and by the time I finally got the truth out of Little Lion, the foetus in Chen Mei’s belly was six months along. And so a fifty-five-year-old man was muddling along on the path to becoming another infant’s father. Unless the dangerous and cruel ingestion of a drug ended the pregnancy, my fatherhood was a done deal. That is how, as a young man, I’d caused the death of my first wife, Renmei, the most painful thing I’d ever done, a sinful act for which I may never achieve atonement. Now, even if I harden my heart, Sensei, it won’t make any difference, because I’ve been refused entry into the farm, and even if I managed to get inside, they wouldn’t let me see Chen Mei. I’ll bet there’s a labyrinth of secret passages there, an underground maze, not to mention the probability, according to Little Lion and my own suspicions, that Yuan Sai and my cousin are underworld figures. If you push them, there’s nothing they’re incapable of — family or strangers, it wouldn’t make any difference.

My slap sent Little Lion stumbling backward. She sat down hard and her nose bled. Not a sound from her for a long moment; instead of crying, she gave me a cold sneer. That was a good one, Xiaopao, she said, you thug! If that’s what you’re capable of, then a dog has eaten your conscience. I did this for you, she said. You have a daughter, but no son, and you should have an heir. I’ve long regretted not being able to give you a son, and having someone else bear your child is the only way I can make that up to you. A son will carry on your bloodline, extend your family for future generations. But instead of thanking me, you hit me. I’m crushed.

Then she cried, her tears merging with the blood from her nose, a sight that broke my heart. I was the one with the broken heart, but the anger rose in me again — for something this important, she should have told me.

I know you’re unhappy over the sixty thousand yuan I spent, she said between sobs. You needn’t worry, I’ll pay that out of my retirement money. And you won’t have to care for the baby, I’ll do that. All in all, this has nothing to do with you. I read in the paper that they give a hundred yuan each time to sperm donors. I’ll give you three hundred for being a donor, and you can return to Beijing. Divorce me if you want, or not. Either way, this has nothing to do with you. But, she wiped her face and said in the tone of a martyred warrior, if you’re thinking of stopping the birth of this child, I’ll kill myself in front of you.

Sensei, you have seen in my letters what kind of woman Little Lion is. When she was travelling all around with Gugu, encountering all sorts of people, she developed a disposition I’d have to call half heroic — half thuggish. The woman is capable of just about anything when she’s provoked. It was up to me to find the best way to deal with this thorny problem, but with affection and reason.

The thought of inducing labour did cross my mind, but that gave me a cold, ominous feeling; and yet, it seemed to be the ideal solution. It was clear to me that money was the only reason Chen Mei would carry someone else’s baby, so why not use money to solve the problem? That struck me as perfectly logical. The hard part was finding a way to see Chen Mei.

I hadn’t seen her since that meeting in Chen Bi’s hospital room. Her figure covered by a black dress, her face hidden behind a black veil, and her mysterious comings and goings convinced me that a world of mystery existed right here in Northeast Gaomi Township, a world populated by errant knights, psychics, and some who conceal their faces.

I thought back to a short time before, when I’d given Li Shou five thousand yuan to help pay Chen’s hospital bill, and asked him to pass it on to Chen Mei. A few days later, Li returned the money to me, money Chen Mei refused to take. Maybe, I thought, she is carrying other people’s babies to earn what she needs to pay her father’s bill herself. Now my thoughts were going every which way — this is nothing but… damn you, Little Lion! All I could do was go see Li Shou, since he had the best mind among all us classmates.

We met in a corner of the Don Quixote café yesterday morning, when the square was crawling with people gathered to watch the performance of Unicorns Deliver the Babies. The fake Sancho Panza brought us two glasses of beer and wisely made himself scarce, his ambiguous smile a sign that he guessed what we were talking about. When I stammered my problem to him, Li Shou had a good laugh.

You’re making fun of my bad luck, I said, showing my displeasure.

He held out his glass and clinked it against mine, then took a big drink. You call yours bad luck? he exclaimed. It’s wonderful news. Congratulations! A son in old age, life’s great joy!

Don’t mock me, I said anxiously. I may have retired, but I’m still a public servant, and how am I supposed to deal with the organisation if I have another child?

Why talk about the organisation, or your job assignment, old friend? You’re tying yourself up with your own rope. What you’re looking at is, your sperm and an egg have come together to create a new life that will come crying into the world. The greatest joy in life is watching the birth of a child who carries your genes, because that is an extension of your own life —

The problem is, I cut him off, where will I go to get this new life registered?

How can you let a little matter like that bother you? That’s all in the past. These days, there’s nothing money won’t buy. Besides, even if you can’t get him registered, he’ll still be a living human being, with all the rights every human being enjoys.

Enough, my friend, I came here for help and all I get is empty talk. Since I’ve been back I’ve discovered that all you people, educated or not, talk like stage actors. Where’d you learn that?

He laughed. We live in a civilised society, and in a civilised society everyone is an actor — film, TV, drama, crosstalk, sketch — we’re all acting. Don’t they say that all the world’s a stage?

Please, no more crazy talk, I said. Come up with something. You don’t want me calling Chen Bi father-in-law, do you?

What would happen if you did? Would the sun stop shining? Would the world stop spinning? Let me tell you something: Don’t think the rest of the world is concerned about you or that everybody has their eyes on you. People have their own problems, and they couldn’t care less about yours. Having a son with Chen Bi’s daughter or a daughter with some other woman is your business. Nosey people spreading gossip is as transient as floating clouds. The primary issue here is, the child will be your flesh and blood and you’re the big winner.

But me and Chen Bi… there’s something incestuous about it!

Bullshit! There’s no common blood, so where’s the incest? And as far as age goes, that’s even less to worry about. When an eighty-year-old man marries an eighteen-year-old, it’s talked about like a fairytale. You’ve never even seen Chen Mei’s body. She’s a tool you’re renting for a while, and that’s all. In the end, my friend, don’t worry so much, give yourself a break. Go get yourself in shape, so you can start raising your son.

You’re wasting your breath, I said as I pointed to the fever blisters covering my lips. See that? I’m begging you, for the sake of an old classmate, take a message to Chen Mei to terminate the pregnancy. She’ll still get the fee for carrying the baby, plus an additional ten thousand to make up for what it costs her physically. If she thinks that’s not enough, I’ll double the bonus.

What for? Since you’re willing to spend that much money, wait till the child is born, then use it to get the child registered, and go be a proper father.

I won’t be able to deal with the organisation.

You have too high an opinion of yourself, Li chided. I tell you, my friend, the organisation doesn’t have time to worry about your piddling affairs. Just who do you think you are? Aren’t you just someone who’s written a couple of lousy plays no one has ever seen? Do you see yourself as a member of some royal family whose son’s birth should be celebrated nationally?

A group of backpacking tourists popped their heads in at the entrance, and were immediately greeted by a smiling fake Sancho Panza. I lowered my voice. I’ll never ask you for anything else as long as I live.

He folded his arms and shook his head to show there was nothing he could do.

Shit, damn you. You’ll just stand by and watch me get buried alive, is that it?

You’re asking me to commit murder, he said softly. At six months a foetus is ready to shout Papa through its mother’s belly.

Will you help me or won’t you?

What makes you think I can get in to see Chen Mei?

You can see Chen Bi at least. You can ask him to pass the word to her.

Seeing Chen Bi is no problem, Li said. He’s out begging in front of the Fertility Goddess Temple every day. When the sun sets, he brings what he made here to buy liquor and pick up a loaf of bread. You can wait for him here or you can go looking for him there. But I hope you won’t need to tell him, because you’ll just be wasting your breath. And if you’ve got a bit of compassion in you, you won’t add to his anguish with something like this. My experience over the past few years has concluded that the best way to solve a thorny problem is to quietly observe how it evolves and let nature take its course.

All right, then, I said, I’ll let nature take its course.

When the child’s a month old, I’ll throw a party to celebrate.

10

I felt better after leaving the café. Why make such a fuss over something as common as the birth of a child? The sun was still shining, bird calls still filled the air, flowers bloomed, grass was still green, and breezes blew. In the square the Fertility Goddess ceremony was well underway, as women flocked to the temple amid the clamour of drumbeats and music, hoping to snatch a precious child out of the Goddess’s hand. Everyone was passionately singing the praises of childbirth, looking forward to celebrating the birth of a child, while I agonised, worried and brooded over someone carrying my child. What that proves is: society didn’t create my problem; I was the problem.

Sensei, I spotted Chen Bi and his dog behind a large column to the right of the temple entrance. Unlike the local mutt that wound up under the wheels of the police car, this was an obviously noble foreign breed with black spots all over its body. Why in the world would a dog with that pedigree choose to partner up with a vagrant? While it seemed to be a mystery, on second thought it wasn’t so surprising. Here in developing Northeast Gaomi Township, it was common for the foreign and the domestic to come together, for good and bad to coexist, for beauty and ugliness to be indistinguishable, and for truth and falseness to look the same. Many faddish members of the nouveau riche could not wait to raise a tiger as a pet when the money was rolling in, and were anxious to sell their wives to pay off their debts when the money petered out. So many of the stray dogs on the street were once the costly playthings of the rich. In the previous century, when the Russian Revolution erupted, hordes of rich White Russian women were stranded in the city of Harbin, where they were forced to sell their bodies for bread or marry coolie labourers. They produced a generation of mixed children, one of whom could have been Chen Bi, with his high nose and sunken eyes. The spotted abandoned dog and Chen Bi appeared to belong to similar species. My thoughts were running wild. At a distance of a dozen metres or so, I watched the two of them. A pair of crutches rested beside him, a red cloth spread out in front. On the cloth, predictably, was a written plea for charity for a disabled man. From time to time, a bejewelled woman would bend down and place money — paper or a few coins — in the metal bowl. Every time that happened the dog looked up and rewarded the woman with three gentle, emotional barks. Three barks, no more, no fewer. The charitable woman would be moved, some to the extent of digging in her purse a second time. I’d given up my idea of paying him to talk Chen Mei into terminating the pregnancy and approached him now more out of curiosity than anything, wanting to see what was written on the red cloth — the bad habit of a writer. Here’s what it said: I am Iron-Crutch Li, come to the human world with a heavenly jade dog. My aunt the Fertility Goddess has sent me here to beg for alms. Your charity will reward you with a son, who will ride the streets as scholar number one.

I assumed that the lines had come from Wang Gan, and that the calligraphy was Li Shou’s, each using his unique talent to help an old classmate. He had rolled up the baggy cuffs of his pants to expose legs like rotten eggplants, and I was reminded of a story Mother had told me:

After Iron-Crutch Li became an immortal, one day there was no kindling at home for cooking, so his wife asked him: What shall we use for a fire? My leg, he said. With that he stuck one of his legs into the belly of the stove and lit it. The fire roared, water in the pot boiled, and the rice was cooked as his sister-in-law walked in and was startled by what she saw. Oh, my! she said, take care, brother-in-law, that you don’t become a cripple. Well, he did.

After Mother finished her story, she warned us to be silent when confronted by miraculous sights and, under no circumstances, to show alarm.

Chen Bi was wearing a brick red down jacket that was grease-spotted and shiny as a suit of armour. The fourth lunar month, a time of warm southerly breezes and millet ripening in the far-off fields, was mating season for amphibians in distant ponds and, nearby, in the bullfrog breeding farm, where loud croaks were carried on the air. Girls and young women had changed into light satin dresses that showed off their curves, but our old friend was still wearing winter garments. I felt hot just looking at him, while he was curled up, shivering. His face was the colour of bronze, the bald spot on his head shone as if sandpapered. Why, I wondered, was he wearing a dirty surgical mask? To hide his nose from curious stares? My gaze recoiled as it met his, emanating from a pair of sunken eyes, and I turned to his dog, which was staring indifferently my way. Part of its left front claw was missing, as if sliced off by a sharp object, and that was when I knew that man and dog were united by common suffering. I also knew there wasn’t a thing I could say to him, that all I could do was put some money in his bowl and leave. All I had on me was a hundred-yuan bill, meal money for lunch and dinner. But with no hesitation, I placed it in the bowl. He did not react, but his dog released three routine barks.

I sighed as I left them, walking a dozen steps before turning back for one last look. Subconsciously, I guess, I was wondering what he was going to do with the large bill I’d left, since the rest of the money in the bowl was small bills or change, crumpled paper and dirty coins. My pink bill was a real eye-catcher. I figured no one else would leave as much as I had, and thought he’d be moved by my act of generosity. Sensei, it really was a case of ‘measuring the heart of a gentleman through the eyes of a petty man.’ What I saw enraged me: a dark-skinned, fat boy in his teens ran out from behind the column, bent down in front of the full bowl, snatched up my hundred-yuan bill, and took off running. He was so fast that before I could react, he’d already run ten or fifteen metres down the alley alongside the temple, heading straight for the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital. There was something familiar about the lazy-eyed boy. I knew I’d seen him somewhere, and then it hit me: it was the boy who’d handed Gugu a wrapped bullfrog at the opening of the hospital the year we returned, nearly scaring her to death.

Not even this unexpected turn of events got a reaction from Chen Bi. His dog growled a time or two, looked up at his master, and stopped. He lay his head down on his paws and quiet returned.

I couldn’t help feeling the injustice of what just happened, not only to Chen Bi and his dog, but to me too. It was my money. I wanted to complain to the people around me, but they had other things on their mind, and the incident they’d witnessed was already forgotten, like a flash of lightning that leaves no trace. What that boy had done was unforgivable, undermining the township’s reputation for honesty. What sort of breeding produced a boy like that, someone who would bully women, steal from the disabled, and other unconscionable acts? Even worse, I could tell by how expertly he’d managed his evil act that this wasn’t the first time he’d stolen money from Chen Bi’s beggar’s bowl. So I took off running after him.

He was fifty metres or so ahead of me and had stopped running. He jumped up and broke a low hanging, leaf-filled branch off a roadside weeping willow and used it as a club on all sorts of things. He didn’t so much as turn to look, knowing that the cripple and his lame dog would not come after him. Just you wait, you punk, I’m coming after you.

He turned into a riverside farmer’s market, where a canopy of plastic turned everything inside a shade of green. The people were moving like fish in water.

A rich array of goods was available on a row of stalls in the shape of a winding arcade. Strange fruits and vegetables in a variety of colours and unusual shapes that even I, a peasant by birth, could not name, were displayed on many of the stalls. As I thought back to the times of scarcity, thirty years before, I could only heave an emotional sigh. Like a cart that knows the way, he headed straight to one of the fish stalls. I ran faster, while my eyes were drawn to the seafood stalls on both sides. The shiny salmon as big as piglets were Russian imports. The hairy crabs, like oversized spiders, came from Hokkaido. There were South American lobsters and Australian abalone, but the bulk of the seafood was local — black carp, butterfish, croaker and Mandarin fish. Orange salmon meat was laid out on a bed of ice, while the fragrance of roasting fish wafted from one of the stalls. The punk was standing in front of a roasted squid stall; he bought a skewer with the stolen bill and received a wad of change. He raised his head, placed the tip of the skewer to his lips, looking like the sword swallower who performed in the temple square, and just as he was taking a tentacled strip, dripping with a dark red sauce, into his mouth, I rushed up, grabbed him by the neck, and shouted:

Where do you think you’re going, you little thief?

He hunkered down and slipped out of my fingers, so I grabbed him by the wrist as he swung the metal skewer of dripping squid at me. I let go, and he slipped away like a river loach. But not before I had him by the shoulders. He struggled, ripping his T-shirt in the process and revealing skin as dark as black mackerel. Then he started crying — no tears, just wolfish howls — and tried to stab me in the belly with the skewer. I jumped out of the way, but the skewer got me in the arm. It didn’t hurt at first, nothing more than a stinging sensation. But the sharp pain wasn’t long in coming, along with dark blood. I clamped my other hand over the wound and shouted:

He’s a thief! He stole money from a crippled beggar!

With a roar, he rushed me like a crazed boar, murder in his eyes. Sensei, I was terrified and frantically backed up, still shouting. And he kept trying to stab me.

You owe me for a shirt! he yelled. Pay me for the shirt you ruined!

I can’t bring myself to write all the words that came out of his mouth, and I tell you, Sensei, I am mortified that Northeast Gaomi Township has produced this sort of youngster. I picked up the first thing I could see, a signboard on which the origins and prices of fish for sale were written and held it as a shield to ward off the thief’s attacks, each one more vicious than the last; he had murder on his mind. The board took the brunt of his skewer attacks, but I didn’t pull my right hand away quickly enough to avoid being stabbed. The blood flowed. Sensei, my mind was in turmoil, I simply didn’t know what to do except retreat in the name of survival. I stumbled backward, and was nearly tripped up by baskets of fish and signboards more than once. If I’d fallen, Sensei, I wouldn’t be writing you this letter. That savage punk would have pounced on me, resulting in either my death or serious injury and a life-or-death race to the hospital. Sensei, I don’t mind admitting that I was scared to death, that my inherent cowardice rose to the surface at that moment. My eyes darted from side to side, hoping that the fish sellers would come to my rescue. But they just stood around, arms folded, watching — some indifferently, others with shouts of encouragement. Sensei, I’m worthless, clinging to life. Instead of raising a hand in defence, I let myself be victimised by a teenager. I heard a series of sobbing cries for help escape from my lips, like the pathetic yelps of a whipped dog:

Help me… help me…

The boy had stopped howling by then — he hadn’t ever really cried — and was glaring, his eyes round as saucers, with hardly any white showing, the irises like a pair of fat tadpoles. Biting down on his lip, he glowered, paused briefly, then pounced again. Help me! I screamed as I raised the signboard, and was stabbed in the hand a second time… more blood… and another attack, and another. I kept screaming and backing up in a single-minded cowardly retreat, all the way out into the bright sunlight.

I threw down the signboard and took off running, still screaming for help. Sensei, I’m embarrassed to tell you about my pathetic exhibition, but I don’t know who else I can divulge my sad tale to. I ran and ran, wherever my feet took me, my ears throbbing with shouts on both sides. I ran into the narrow street where light snacks were sold. A silver sedan was parked in front of a café. A black shop sign hanging in front of it was inscribed with two strange words: Pheasant Hen. Two women sat in the doorway, one big and fat, the other small and slim. They jumped to their feet, and I ran to them as if I’d seen my saviour, tripping and falling before I got there and ending up with a split lip and bleeding gums. What tripped me was a metal chain strung between two metal posts, one of which I’d knocked over. The women ran over, picked me up, and held me between them as they slapped and spat on me. But I was happy to see that the little punk had stopped chasing me. Then misfortune arrived, as the two women at Pheasant Hen stopped me from going anywhere. They said that when I knocked down their metal post, it fell onto their car and dented it. Sensei, there was a white ding on the car’s boot, but one not caused by the falling post. Refusing to let me go, they called me terrible names, drawing a crowd. Sensei, the little one was the worst. She wasn’t much different from the punk who was trying to kill me. She kept jabbing at me, damn near putting my eye out each time. Every word I uttered in my defence was drowned out by curses. Sensei, I wrapped my arms around my head and crouched down out of feelings of despair. The reason Little Lion and I had decided to return home was that we’d experienced something similar near the Huguo Temple in Beijing. It was at a restaurant called Wild Pheasant on a street near the People’s Playhouse. As we walked up to read a poster in front of the playhouse we tripped over a metal chain connected to a red and white post, which fell to the ground, not even close to the rear of a white car parked there. But a young woman with hair dyed a golden yellow, a pinched face, and lips as thin as knife blades, who was sitting in front of Wild Pheasant, ran over to the car, spotted a white ding on it and accused us of causing it. With wild gestures, she tore into us verbally, using all sorts of Beijing gutter talk. She said she’d lived her whole life in that lane and had seen every kind of person there was. But what do you out-of-town turtles climb out of your burrows and come to the capital to do? Embarrass the Chinese people? Fat, and reeking of haemorrhoid cream, she charged me, fists swinging, and bloodied my nose. Young men with shaved heads and bare-chested old men stood by shouting encouragement and showing off as old-time Beijingers, insisting that we apologise and make restitution. Sensei, weak as always, I gave her the money and said I was sorry. When we got home, Sensei, we wept first and then decided to move back to Northeast Gaomi Township. Since this was our hometown, I didn’t think I’d have to worry about being bullied here. But these two women were every bit as vicious as the woman on Snack Street in Beijing. What I don’t understand, Sensei, is why people have to be so horrible.

But there was an even greater danger, Sensei: the predatory punk was coming at me. By now the squid was gone, making the skewer even more deadly, and that’s when I realised that he was the son of the smaller of the two women, while her fat companion had to be his aunt. The survival instinct had me scrambling to my feet, and I knew it was time to put my asset — running — to work. After years of living in affluence, I’d forgotten what a fast runner I’d once been. It all came back to me now, when my life was threatened. The women tried to keep me from getting away, the punk was thundering his displeasure, and I began to howl like a cornered dog. With my face bloody, I bared my teeth to give them a momentary fright, since I’d seen a dazed look in the women’s eyes with my first howls; I’d always been deeply sympathetic to women who had that look in their eyes. I took advantage of the moment to slip between two parked cars and ran off.

Run, Wan Zu, Wan Xiaopao the runner — fifty-five-year-old Wan Xiaopao was running as fast as he ever had. I ran like a madman down the street, passing the smells of frying chicken, raw fish, lamb kebobs, and some I couldn’t name. My legs felt as light as grass, and every step bounced up as if the ground were a spring, which invested greater power in the next steps. I was a deer, a gazelle, a superman light as a swallow after landing on the moon. I felt like a horse, a fine Turkmenistan horse, a horse that steps on a flying swallow, powerful, unconstrained, no worries, no cares.

But in fact this powerful and unconstrained feeling was a short-lived illusion. The real situation was altogether different. I was gasping for breath, my throat was on fire, my heart was pounding like a drum, my chest had swelled up, my head felt as big as a bushel basket, my eyes pulsed black, and my veins seemed about to burst. The survival instinct was in control of my exhausted body; this was a true case of a last-ditch fight to live. Shouts of ‘beat him’ rose all around me. At first a bearded young man in a black tunic rushed me from the front, his green eyes flashing like fireflies on a mountain road late at night. At the moment his ghostly white hands reached out to grab me, my lips parted and I spewed a mouthful of dirty blood into his ghostly face, which immediately changed colour. He yelped in agony and his hands flew to his face as he crouched down. Sensei, I was filled with remorse, since I knew that he was justified in trying to block my way, that his action proved that he was highly moral and righteous, and spewing dirty blood was like a black Betta fish spewing its guts to ward off danger; I felt terrible about soiling his face and ruining his eyes. Had I been a more noble man, I’d have stopped, apologised, and asked for his forgiveness even with the tip of a knife in my back. But I didn’t. Sensei, I have dishonoured your guidance. After that, several sanctimonious gentlemen stood by the side of the road also shouting ‘beat him’, but did not step forward, surely in fear of my unique blood-spewing skill. They threw half-finished Coke bottles at me, the symbolic colour of American culture, with its golden foam, but I knocked them out of my way.

Sensei, there had to be a conclusion to this. No matter how positive or negative an affair, it must reach a conclusion at some point. This chase and escape, in which right and wrong were totally jumbled, reached its end when my strength was exhausted and I collapsed in front of the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital. A shiny sapphire-blue BMW drove out of the tree-lined compound, where the fragrance of flowers hung in the air. My fallen state must have presented an awful sight to the occupants of the car — I was covered in blood, like a dead dog that’s fallen from the sky. Startled at first, they were then struck by inauspicious notions. I knew that rich people tend to be highly superstitious. The degree of superstitious beliefs parallels the degree of wealth. I knew that their fatalistic beliefs outstripped those of poor people, and that their love of life was far greater. Nothing unnatural about that. The poor treat life as worth no more than a broken vessel; the rich treat it as a priceless porcelain bowl. My crumpled appearance in the path of their BMW was no less jarring than a stallion rearing up, eyes blazing and releasing a spine-tingling whinny. I felt just terrible. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was racked by spasms as I tried to crawl out of the way, but, like an insect whose tail is pinned with a thumbtack, I couldn’t move. This reminded me of a prank I’d played as a youngster, even as an adult: I’d pin green insects to the ground or onto a wall by their tails to watch them try to get away, observing the struggle between their instinct to flee and bodies that would not do their bidding. I had been pitiless, actually enjoyed the spectacle. I’d been so much bigger and stronger than any insect, too big and too strong even for an insect to grasp my full appearance. To them I was a mysterious force that created disaster. They probably had no conception of the hand that had brought such evil down on them; their inkling did not extend beyond the thumbtack or the thorn. Now I’d tasted the suffering I’d inflicted on those insects. Little insects, I’m sorry, I am so sorry.

The driver honked his horn gently. A cultured, patient, decent man, obviously. Not a representative of the nouveau riche. If he had been, he’d have made it sound like an air-raid siren. If he’d been one of those, he’d have stuck his head out the window and bombarded me with filthy curses. Because he was a decent man, I tried even harder to crawl out of his way, but my body failed me again.

Seeing he had no choice, he got out of his car. He was wearing a soft yellow leisure suit with orange checks on the collar and sleeves. I vaguely recalled my time in Beijing when a friend who was an expert on famous brand products told me what this particular brand was called in Chinese translation, but I’d forgotten. I never could remember famous brands, which was probably a mental block, a complex psychological expression of loathing and jealousy by people towards their betters. That is much like the way I undervalue bread when compared to steamed buns, or fermented bean sauce over cheese. Rather than curse or kick me, the man shouted to the guard at the hospital entrance: Come here and carry him out of the middle of the road.

His order given, he squinted and looked into the sky to search for the sun and sneezed. The past came flooding into my head. Once again, the sneeze told me who it was: Xiao Xiachun, my one-time classmate, who had cast aside his official position to gain fabulous riches. Word had it that he’d caught a wave into coal for his first bonanza, then tapped into his carefully cultivated connections in officialdom to strike out in all directions and let the money roll in, until he was worth billions. I’d read an interview he’d given in which he actually spoke of eating coal as a child. He’d never eaten coal, I remember that clearly. As he’d watched us eating some, he’d studied the piece in his hand… Sensei, look at me, here I was, in dire straits, and I couldn’t stop being trivial. I am beyond redemption.

One guard alone could not move me, so a second one came up, and each of them took an arm and, not too roughly, carried and dragged me over to a spot beneath the gigantic signboard just east of the hospital entrance. There they sat me upright with my back against a wall, where I watched classmate Xiao climb back into his car, proceed slowly across the speed bump, then turn and drive off. Here I should say I might have seen, but probably imagined, the lovely Xiao Bi, her long hair spilling over her shoulders, in the back seat of the car, a pink infant in her arms.

The crowd that was chasing me drew up. The two women, the little punk, and the young man whose face I covered with dark blood, plus all the ones who had thrown Coke bottles at me, craned their necks to observe me. Several dozen faces formed a hazy mosaic around me. The little punk still wanted to stab me, but was stopped from doing so by the woman who seemed to be the younger of the two. A professorial-looking man stuck two slender fingers under my nose to see if I was still breathing. I held my breath for the sake of self-protection. As a boy I once heard an old man who had returned to the village from Guangdong say that if you encountered a tiger or a black bear in the mountain forests, your best bet was to lie down, hold your breath, and pretend to be dead. Large predators share heroic qualities with humans: a valiant human will not attack a foe that has surrendered, a wild beast will only kill and eat living prey. Well, it worked, for the professor stood there speechless for a moment before turning and walking off. His action served as an announcement to the crowd: This man is dead! Even though, in their eyes, I was a criminal, the law did not give law-abiding citizens the right to beat a thief to death. So they got out of there as quickly as they could — better safe than sorry. The two women dragged the boy away from the scene. I exhaled, greatly relieved, and was suddenly aware of the dignity and honour the dead possess.

It must have been the guards who called the police, since they were the only ones who came to report what had happened when the police cars drove up, sirens blaring. Three policemen walked up and asked me how I was doing. They were all young, and their yellow teeth showed they were all from Northeast Gaomi Township. I got tearful, and before long was sobbing my story like a boy who’s been victimised by a bully when he sees his father arrive. Only the cop with a growth between his eyebrows seemed to be listening to what I was saying. The other two were more intent on studying the signboard above me. When I finished, the first cop said: How do we know that what you’ve said is the truth? Go ask Chen Bi, I told him. The tallest cop said, without taking his eyes off the signboard, How do you feel? Want us to take you to the hospital?

I tried moving my legs. They were still working. Then I looked at the wounds on my arms and hands. They’d stopped bleeding. If you don’t mind the bother, the cop with the growth on his brow said, you can come to the station with us and make a report. If it’s too much bother, you can go home and rest up. That’s it? I said. No who’s right and who’s wrong? There’s right and there’s wrong, he said, but we need proof, witnesses. Can you get that Chen Bi and those fishmongers to be witnesses? Can you be sure those two women and the boy would not turn around and accuse you? That kid, the grandson of the scoundrel Zhang Quan of Dongfeng Village, is a bad one, all right, but he is a child, and what do you think you can do to him? All right, I said, I’ll just drop it, I lose — wisdom grows out of experience, and at my age a man should stay home and out of trouble, playing with his grandchildren and enjoying family life — thank you all, sorry to waste the nation’s gasoline and wear down the nation’s tyres, and cause you trouble. Are you mocking us, old sir? No, of course not, I wouldn’t dare. I’m being truthful, absolutely sincere.

The two cops — one with the growth, the other very tall — turned to leave, but the third man — who had a wide mouth on a square face — kept staring at the signboard and had no interest in leaving. Let’s go, Wang, Eyebrow Growth said. Has the sight of the babies paralysed you? Wide Mouth responded with a note of approval, Cute, really cute! Eyebrow Growth teased, Then go home and give your seed to your wife. Can’t, Wide Mouth said, she’s barren. I can do the planting, but there’ll be no sprouts. The tall cop joined the conversation: Don’t put all the blame on her, he said. Go get checked. Maybe your seeds have all been fried. No way, Wide mouth said…

The banter continued as they climbed into their car and left me there under the signboard, depressed but resigned to my fate. What would I have gained by going to the station with them and making a report? Since the women were Zhang Quan’s daughters — he had a third — Gugu was their enemy, and now I knew why the boy had scared her with that frog. He’d probably been coached by his mother or aunt as a means of avenging their mother, even though Gugu had not been responsible for her death. You can’t be reasonable with people like that. To hell with it, I lose. No, God is testing me. So grin and bear it. I’m a strong-willed man, a playwright, and all these encounters and experiences constitute superb material. Important people become important by enduring the suffering and humiliation that defeats ordinary people. Examples like General Han Xin, who drank the cup of humiliation; or like Confucius, who endured hunger from Chen to Cai; or Sun Bin, who ate his own faeces… how can the little bit of suffering and humiliation I endured be mentioned in the same breath as that of those sages and ancient wise men? With that thought in mind, Sensei, I gained a sense of tolerance as my breathing returned to normal, my eyes lit up, and I felt my strength slowly return. Stand up, Tadpole, the heavens have bestowed great responsibilities on you. You must bravely accept suffering without complaint and with hatred towards no one.

I stood up, and though my wounds hurt, I was famished, my legs were rubbery, and I saw stars, I would not allow myself to fall back down. I thought there’d be people watching me, but there were none. Even the guards at the hospital entrance ignored me. This confirmed what Li Shou had told me. Thoughts of Li Shou reminded me of Chen Mei, in whose belly my child was growing.I felt different about that now than I had in the morning. I’d been hell-bent on forcing the death of the child, but no longer. I turned to look at the hospital signboard and the thought running through my head could not have been clearer: I want that child! I desperately need that child. He is a treasure sent down to me from the heavens, and is worth all my suffering.

Sensei, I want you to know that the signboard was etched with the enlarged photographs of hundreds of children, some laughing, others crying; some with their eyes shut, others open in a squint; some had both eyes wide open, others had one eye open and one eye shut; some were looking up, others were looking straight ahead; some were holding out both arms, as if reaching for something; the hands of some were balled into fists, as if they were unhappy; some were sucking on a fist, others had their hands over their ears; some were laughing with their eyes open, some with their eyes shut; some were crying with their eyes open, some with their eyes shut; some had no hair on their heads, others had a headful of black hair; some had soft, golden fuzz, others had sleek, shiny, velvet-like, flaxen hair; some had wrinkly faces, like little old men, some had fat faces with big ears, like little piglets; some had skin as white as glutinous dumplings, others were as dark as coal; some had puckered lips, as if angry, others looked like they were shouting; some were making sucking motions, looking to nurse, other pressed their lips together, cocking their heads, refusing to nurse; some were sticking out bright red tongues, others were sticking out pink ones; some had two dimpled cheeks, some had only one; some had double-fold eyelids, some had single-fold eyelids; the heads of some were round as balls, those of others long as gourds; the brows of some were thoughtfully furrowed, others had raised their eyes… in other words, their appearances and expressions varied widely, and each one was cute as could be. The promotional text informed me that these were pictures of every child born in the hospital in the two years it had been open, a bumper crop. This was truly a great undertaking, a noble one, and a sweet one… Sensei, I was deeply moved. As tears filled my eyes, I heard the call of a sacred noise, and experienced the most solemn feeling a human can know — the love of life; all other love, by comparison, is vulgar, low-class. Sensei, it was as if my soul had received a solemn baptism, and that I’d been given the chance to have all the sins of my past forgiven. Whatever the cause or the effect, I wanted to spread my arms to enfold this innocent new life sent to me by the heavens!

11

Sensei, my soul received a solemn baptism that day as I sat beneath the signboard etched with those hundreds of children’s photographs. All my doubts, wavering, torment, beatings, humiliation, and being pursued were necessary steps in the process. Like the Tang monk Tripitaka, who encountered eighty-one trials on his trip to India for the Buddhist scriptures. A tortuous path leads to Nirvana; tribulations are essential for an understanding of life.

Back home I cleaned my wounds with alcohol and cotton swabs and drank some Yunnan powder steeped in liquor, which is particularly effective for bruises. The physical pain did not go away immediately, but my spirits were high. When Little Lion walked in the door I threw my arms around her and brushed her cheek with mine. Wife of mine, I said, thank you for creating my child. He has been nurtured not in your womb but in your heart. He is our very own child.

She wept.

Sensei, as I sit at my desk writing this letter to you I am pondering how I will raise this child. We are both nearly sixty, our bodies have begun their decline, and we should be looking for a nanny, someone experienced in the raising of a child, or a wet nurse, so that our child will taste mother’s milk. My mother once said that a child raised on cow’s or goat’s milk lacks the smell of mother’s milk. A child that grows and develops on cow’s milk will be vulnerable to many dangers, and I wonder if the unprincipled merchants will actually stop their ‘chemistry’ experiments in the wake of the ‘empty formula’ and ‘melamine formula’ affairs. After the ‘big-headed babies’ and ‘stone babies,’ who knows what kind of babies will come next? Those people are now fleeing with their tails between their legs, like beaten dogs, trying to look as pitiful as possible. But before too many years have passed, their tails will be up in the air again, and they’ll be concocting even worse formulas that will wreak damage on people. I know that mother’s milk is the most precious liquid the world has to offer. The first lactated milk, known as colostrum, contains mysterious elements that, when distilled, are in essence a mother’s love. I have heard of cases where parents have paid large sums of money to their surrogate mothers to purchase colostrum, and some have gone so far as to pay the surrogate to nurse the infant for its first month before taking it home with them. This is expensive, of course. Little Lion told me that the surrogate mothers company would not permit that. According to them, when a woman nurses an infant for a month, she develops an attachment to the child that creates serious problems.

Little Lion’s eyes lit up as she said to me:

I’m his mother, and I’ll produce milk for him!

Mother had told me stories about such things, but they seemed too far-fetched to believe. Maybe, I thought, a young woman who had previously borne and nursed a child might begin lactating again with the stimulation of a child’s mouth and a heart filled with love, but no such miracle would visit Little Lion, a woman nearly sixty who had never been pregnant. If it did, it would be on a level beyond ‘miracle’.

Sensei, I feel no sense of shame in writing about such things to you, a father who took a child the hospital told you had no chance of surviving and raised him. During that process you experienced many similar miracles. So I’m sure you know what I was feeling and have an appreciation for my wife’s abnormal behaviour. Lately she’s wanted to make love every night. She has gone from being a dried-up turnip to a honey peach, and this in itself is almost a miracle. I couldn’t be happier. She reminds me each time: Tadpole, be gentle, take it easy, you don’t want to injure our son. After we finish, she takes my hand and rests it on her belly. Can you feel it? He’s kicking me. She washes her breasts every morning with warm water and gently tugs on her sunken nipples.

When we told my father that she was pregnant, ancient tears rolled down his ninety-year-old cheeks and his beard quivered.

Heaven has eyes, he said emotionally. Our ancestors have revealed themselves. The good shall be rewarded, Amita Buddha!

Sensei, we’ve made all the preparations for the baby, the best that money can buy. A Japanese stroller, a Korean crib, Shanghai disposable nappies, a Russian rubber infant’s bathtub… Little Lion will not allow nursing bottles in the house. What if you don’t have enough milk? I asked her. We should have one just in case. So we bought French bottles and some milk formula imported from New Zealand. But we weren’t convinced that New Zealand formula was safe enough, so I suggested that we buy a milk goat and pasture it at my father’s place. We could move into Father’s house and feed our precious infant freshly squeezed milk every day. Cupping her breasts in her hands, Little Lion said unhappily:

I firmly believe that these could produce fountains of milk!

Our daughter phoned us from Spain and asked what we were doing to keep so busy. Yanyan, I said, I’m really sorry, but I have wonderful news. Your mother is pregnant. You’re going to have a baby brother very soon. That was greeted with a moment of silence. Is that true, Papa? she asked. Of course it is, I said. But how old is Mama? she asked. Go online and you’ll see that a sixty-two-year-old Danish woman just gave birth to a healthy pair of twins. My daughter was thrilled. That’s wonderful! she said. Papa, congratulations to you both, hearty congratulations! Tell me what you need and I’ll send it right away. We don’t need anything, I said. We have everything we need. I don’t care, my daughter said, I’m going to send you something, a gift from the heart of a big sister. Congratulations, Papa. A thousand-year-old sago palm has flowered, a ten-thousand-year-old dead branch has sprouted. You have created a miracle!

Sensei, I’ve always thought I owed a debt to my daughter, since I played a role in the death of her mother. Renmei died way before her time because of my concern over my so-called future, and the child she was carrying died with her. He’d be in his twenties now. No matter how I look at it, another son on the way is a comfort to me. In reality, this son will be that one. He’ll just come twenty-odd years late. But he is coming.

I’m ashamed to tell you, Sensei, that my play won’t be written till later. A bawling baby is much more important than a play. Maybe this is a good thing, because my thoughts up till now have been dark, have carried the stench of blood, are all about death and destruction, not life, despair not hope, and a play like that could only poison the viewers’ souls, and that would make my offence even greater. Don’t lose faith in me, Sensei. I will write that play. After my child is born, I’ll pick up my pen and offer praise to the new life. I won’t disappoint you, Sensei.

I went with Little Lion to see Gugu. It was a beautiful, sunlit day. Flowers were blooming on the scholar trees in her yard, while some had already fallen to the ground. Gugu was sitting beneath one of the trees, her eyes shut. She was muttering something. Flowers covered her thick, messy grey hair, around which bees were circling. Hao Dashou was seated on a stool in front of a limestone bench beneath the window. Given the title of county folk artist, he was moulding a lump of clay. He had a distant look in his eyes, almost trancelike.

This child’s father has a round face, Gugu was saying, long, narrow eyes, a flat nose, thick lips and fat ears; his mother has a thin, oval face, almond-pit eyes with double folds, a small mouth, high nose bridge, and thin ears with no lobes. The child would take after his mother, but with a larger mouth, slightly thicker lips, bigger ears, and a nose bridge slightly lower…

As Gugu muttered her description, a clay doll took shape in Uncle’s hands. After forming eyebrows with a pointed bamboo strip, he pulled back to take a look, made a few changes, then placed it on a plank in front of her.

Gugu picked it up, studied it, and said:

Make the eyes a little larger and thicken the lips.

He took it from her, made the changes and handed it back. His eyes lit up like lightning beneath his bushy grey brows.

With the doll in her hands Gugu held her arms out for a distant look, then brought them in close; a look of kindness spread across her face. Yes, that’s it, she said, that’s him. But then her tone changed as she spoke directly to the doll: This is you, you little sprite, you little debtor. Gugu destroyed two thousand eight hundred foetuses, and you’re the last. With you, we have them all.

I laid a bottle of Wuliangye on the windowsill, Little Lion laid a box of sweets next to Gugu. Gugu, we said together, we’ve come to see you.

Like someone who has been caught making contraband, she was startled and jittery. She tried covering the doll with her sleeve, but couldn’t manage. Then she stopped trying. I can’t hide anything from you, she said.

Gugu, I said, we’ve watched the documentary Wang Gan sent us, and now we understand you and know what’s in your heart.

I’m glad, she said as she stood up and carried the newest clay doll over to the eastern side rooms. Without turning around, she said, Follow me. Her large, shapeless figure in black created a mysterious tension in us. Father had said she hadn’t been acting quite normal, so we’d seldom been to see her since our return. It was heartbreaking to see what a sad figure she’d become after the renown and influence she’d enjoyed as a younger woman.

A dank chill assailed our noses in the dim light of the building. Gugu pulled the chain on a hundred-watt bulb near the wall, bringing the room into sharp focus. Every window in the three rooms was bricked up. Latticed wooden racks fronted the eastern, southern, and northern walls, each little square occupied by a clay doll.

Gugu placed the doll in her hands into the last square on the wall, then stepped back, lit three sticks of incense on an altar in the centre of the room, fell to her knees, brought her palms together, and muttered prayerfully.

We hastily joined her on our knees, though I didn’t know what I should be praying for. The lively images of the children on the signboard in front of the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital scrolled through my mind like a peepshow. I was feeling immense gratitude, shame and remorse, and fine threads of terror. I knew that by employing her husband’s talents, Gugu was bringing to life all the children she’d stopped from being born. I guessed that was her way to assuage deep-seated feelings of guilt, and there was nothing wrong with that. If she hadn’t done it, someone else would have. The men and women who defied the policy against multiple pregnancies could not escape a share of the responsibility for what happened. And if no one had done what she did, it is truly hard to say what China might be like today.

Her devotion completed, Gugu stood up and said, with a broad smile, Xiaopao, Little Lion, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve fulfilled my desire. Take a good look around you. Every one of these children has a name. I’ve brought them all together here where they can accept my offerings. Once they have reached spiritual attainment they can leave for wherever they are fated to be reborn. Gugu led us past each of the squares and told us where the boys and girls went or were to go.

This girl, she said, pointing to a doll with almond-shaped eyes, and lips in a little pout, should have been born to Tan Xiaoliu and Dong Yue’e of Tan Family Village in August 1974, but I destroyed her. Now everything is fine. Her father is a wealthy farmer, her mother a resourceful woman, and together they invented a process of irrigating celery with cow’s milk to produce a fresh vegetable that sells for sixty yuan a jin.

This boy, Gugu said as she pointed to a laughing doll with eyes reduced to a squint, should have been born to Wu Junbao and Zhou Aihua of Wu Family Bridge in February 1983, but I destroyed him. Now everything is fine. The little imp is flooded with good luck, reborn into the family of an official in Qingzhou Prefecture. Both parents are Party cadres, and his grandfather is high-ranking provincial official who is regularly seen on TV. Gugu has done well by you, you little imp.

These two sisters, Gugu said as she pointed to a pair of dolls in one of the squares, should have been born in 1990. Both parents had leprosy, and even though the disease had been stopped, they had claws for hands and demonic faces. Being born into a family like that was the same as being thrown into the bitter seas, and destroying them was their salvation. Now everything is fine. On the first night of 2000 they were born at the People’s Hospital in Jiaozhou and became millennial babies. Their father is a renowned actor of Maoqiang opera, their mother owns a women’s boutique. On New Year’s day last year, the sisters appeared on a television program to sing the famous Maoqiang aria ‘Zhao Meirong Observes Lanterns’: Eggplant lantern, purple and neat/leek lantern, a messy treat/cucumber lantern, thorns all over/radish lantern, watery sweet/and then the crab lantern with buggy eyes/the hen lantern clucks as an egg lands at her feet… Their mother and father phoned to remind me to watch them on the Jiaozhou channel. I meant something to them. Pearly tears rolled down my cheeks.

Don’t forget this one, Gugu said as she pointed to a cross-eyed doll. He should have been born into the Dongfeng Village home of Zhang Quan, but I destroyed him. It wasn’t all my fault, but I bear some of the responsibility. In July 1995, the little imp was born to the second daughter of Zhang Quan, Zhang Laidi, in Dongfeng Village. Laidi came to see me. She already had two daughters, and another pregnancy would be illegal. Though her father had once cracked open my head, and there was a history of unpleasantness between us, I went ahead and returned to her the child that should have been born to her mother. He would have been her kid brother, and now he was her son. This is a secret that only I, and now you two know. You mustn’t tell anyone. He is not a good boy. Knowing that Gugu is afraid of frogs, he once handed me one wrapped in paper and nearly scared me to death. But I don’t hate him. In this mortal world, not a single person can be left out, not the good and not the bad…

The last square Gugu pointed to was the one in which she’d placed the doll after we walked in. Know who that is? she asked us.

There were tears in my eyes. Don’t say anything, Gugu, I know who he is.

Gugu, Little Lion said, that child will be born soon. His father is a playwright, his mother a retired nurse… thank you, Gugu, I’m pregnant…

When you read this, Sensei, you will think I’m either crazy or dreaming. I admit there are issues with Gugu’s mental state, and my wife had been yearning for a child for so long that she wasn’t quite herself emotionally, so I ask for your compassion and understanding where they are concerned. Anyone burdened with feelings of guilt must find ways to comfort herself, as Xiang Lin Sao did in the Lu Xun story ‘Benediction’, a character who, as you know so well, offered a threshold for people to walk on to atone for what she considered her crimes. Clear-headed people were wrong to have laid bare her illusions, and should have given her hope, let her gain release, have no more nightmares, and live a life free of guilt. I have complied with their wishes, I even strive to believe in whatever they believe in. That seems like the proper thing to do. I know that people with scientific minds will laugh at me and that the moralists will criticise my decision, and that some of the more enlightened might even go public with their accusations, but none of that will change me. For the sake of the child and for the sake of Gugu and Little Lion, who had once been saddled with special work, I’m perfectly willing to muddle along the way I’ve been going.

Gugu had Little Lion lie down and expose her abdomen so she could listen with a stethoscope. When she was finished checking her, she placed her hands — hands that Mother had praised many times — on Little Lion’s abdomen and said, Five months, I’d say. It sounds good, clear, and well positioned.

Past six months, Little Lion said with notable embarrassment.

Get up, Gugu said as she gently patted Little Lion’s belly. Age could be an issue, she said, but I recommend natural birth. I don’t favour caesarian sections. A woman whose child has not passed through the birth canal misses out on much of what a mother should feel.

I’m a little scared…

I’m here, so what’s there to be scared about? She held up both hands. You need to place your trust in a pair of hands that have delivered ten thousand babies.

Little Lion grabbed hold of Gugu’s hands and held them to her face, like a pampered little girl.

I trust you, Gugu, I do.

12

Great news, Sensei!

My son was born early yesterday morning.

Because my wife, Little Lion, was well past the prime age for a first pregnancy, even the doctors at the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital, reputedly holders of PhDs from British and American medical universities, refused to be in attendance during her labour. Naturally, we thought of Gugu. Old ginger is still the spiciest. My wife trusted no one more than Gugu, whom she had assisted in countless births and who had witnessed Gugu’s composure during many crises.

Little Lion went into labour when she was working the night shift at the bullfrog-breeding farm. By rights, she should have been at home resting at that stage in her pregnancy, but she stubbornly refused to take that advice. When she walked through the marketplace, preceded by an enormous belly, she was the recipient of idle talk and of envy. People who knew her greeted her with: Dear Sister-in-law, why aren’t you home in bed? Brother Tadpole is a cruel man! What’s the big deal? she’d reply. When the fruit is ripe it drops on its own. Farming wives routinely have their babies in cotton fields or in groves of trees. It’s the pampered women who have all the problems. Old-time practitioners of Chinese medicine share her views. People within earshot mostly nod their heads in agreement. Hardly anyone voices a different opinion to her face.

When the news reached me I rushed over to the breeding farm, where Yuan Sai had already sent my cousin to fetch Gugu, who arrived in a white surgical gown and mask, her messy hair tucked into a white cap. The look of intense excitement in her eyes reminded me of an old packhorse. A woman in white led Gugu to a secret delivery room, while I drank tea in Yuan Sai’s office.

A black leather, high-backed chair rose up behind a burgundy-coloured desk the size of a ping-pong table in the centre of the office. A stack of books on the desk was, surprisingly, topped by a little red Chinese flag. Even a bandit can be a patriot, my friend, he said sombrely, anticipating my question.

He poured tea into the special service and said proudly, This is Da Hong Pao, a fine tea from Mount Wuyi, and while it may not be the gold standard, it is of such high quality that I won’t serve it even for the county chief. But I’m serving it to you to prove I have style.

Noticing that I wasn’t paying attention, he said, There’s nothing to worry about when I’m in charge. Nothing can go wrong. We don’t normally ask your aunt to come over. She is Northeast Gaomi Township’s patron saint. When she’s on the scene, the results can be stated in eight words: Mother and son doing fine, everyone is happy.

After a while I fell asleep on the leather sofa and dreamed of Mother and of Renmei. Mother was dressed in shimmering satin clothes and was leaning on a dragon-headed cane; Renmei had on a bright red padded jacket and green trousers, absolutely countrified yet still lovely. A red cloth bag was slung over her left shoulder, a yellow knit sweater peeking out from the opening. They were pacing the hallway, Mother’s cane making an unhurried clack on the wooden floor that filled me with anxiety. Won’t you sit down and take it easy, Mother? I said. Pacing back and forth, you two, is putting everyone on edge. She sat on a sofa, but only for a moment before taking to the floor, where she sat in the lotus position. Sitting on a sofa, she said, makes it hard to breathe. Renmei, looking timorous, hid behind Mother like a shy little girl. Every time I looked her way, she avoided my eyes. She took the sweater out of her bag and opened it up; it was no bigger than the palm of my hand. That’s just about the right size for a doll, I said. I measured the baby in me to make it the right size, she said as she blushed. That drew my attention to her belly, which was noticeably swollen. The slightly mottled skin on her face proved she was pregnant. The child in there can’t be that small, can it? I asked. Her eyes reddened. Xiaopao, she said, ask Gugu to let me have this baby. Have it right now, Mother said as she banged her cane on the floor. I’m here to protect you. An old woman’s cane hits a debauched monarch on high and traitorous officials below. An ugly death awaits anyone who tries to stop me. She tapped a button on the wall, and a hidden door slowly opened. The room inside was bright as a sunlit day, revealing an operating table covered by a white sheet, on either side of which stood two people in surgical gowns and masks; Gugu was at the head of the table, also in white and wearing rubber surgical gloves. When Renmei entered and saw what awaited her, she turned to run, but Gugu reached out and stopped her. She cried like a helpless little girl. Xiaopao, she called out to me, in the name of our long marriage, help me… As sadness penetrated my heart, tears fell from my eyes. With a sign from Gugu, the four women — nurses apparently — picked Renmei up, placed her on the operating table and, working together, removed her clothes. I looked down and saw a tiny red hand between her legs. The little thumb was touching the tips of the last two fingers, leaving the first two fingers to form the international ‘V’ sign: Gugu and the others burst out laughing. When she’d gotten that out of her system, Gugu said, That’s enough horseplay. You can come out now. A little baby began slipping out, looking around as it emerged, like a sneaky little critter. Taking aim, Gugu grabbed it by the ear, wrapped her arm around its head, then pulled with all her might. I want you out of there! There was a loud pop and an infant, covered with blood and a sticky substance lay in Gugu’s hands…

I woke up with a start, feeling cold all over. My cousin walked in with Little Lion, who was holding swaddling clothes, from which husky cries emerged. My heartiest congratulations, my cousin said softly, you have a son.

My cousin drove us to my father’s village, which had already been incorporated into a metropolitan district. As I wrote in a previous letter, it is a village that retains its cultural characteristics on orders from our county chief — now promoted to mayor — with the early Cultural Revolution style of buildings, slogans painted on the walls, revolutionary signs at the head of the village, loudspeakers mounted on poles, an open spot for bringing the production brigade together… dawn had broken, but there was no one on the streets, only some early morning buses speeding along with a few ghost-like passengers, and some street sweepers, with everything but their eyes covered, raising clouds of dust with their brooms on the pedestrian paths. I desperately wanted to see the baby’s face, but the look on Little Lion’s face — more sombre than a pregnant woman, weary, and overjoyed — nipped that thought in the bud. A red bandana was wrapped around her head, her lips were chapped as she held the baby close to her and kept burying her face in the blankets, either to look at her baby or to inhale his smell.

We had already moved everything the baby would need to Father’s place, mainly because it was so difficult to find a milk goat, and Father had arranged to buy milk from a villager named Du. They were raising a pair of milk cows that together produced a hundred jin of milk every day. Father made it clear that they were not to add anything to the milk they sold us. Grandpa, the villager said, if you don’t trust us, you can come milk them yourself.

My cousin pulled up and parked outside my father’s gate. He was waiting for us. With him were my second sister-in-law and some young women, probably nephews’ wives. Second Sister-in-law grabbed the baby as the young women carried Little Lion out of the car and into the yard, and from there into the room we’d prepared for her convalescence.

Second Sister-in-law opened the bundle to let Father set eyes on this late arriving grandson. Wonderful, he said over and over, tears in his eyes. And when I saw the dark-haired, ruddy-faced infant, my heart filled with emotions, my eyes with tears.

Sensei, this child helped me recapture my youth and my inspiration. While the gestation and birth might have been more difficult, more torturous than most, and while issues concerning his status might create some thorny problems, as my aunt said, Once it’s seen the light of day, it’s a life and will become a legal citizen of the country, entitled to all the rights and benefits of the country. If there is trouble, that is for those of us who permitted him to come into the world to deal with. What we have to give to him is love, nothing more.

Sensei, tomorrow I will spread out some writing paper and complete the laboured birth of this play. My next letter will include a play that might never see the stage:

Frog.