by Mo Yan
“I’m not interested in what you’re doing,” I said. “My only interest is Chunmiao.”
“I take it that means you’re not giving up,” he said. “Do you really want to marry the girl?”
I nodded forcefully.
“Well, it’s not going to happen, no way!” He stood up and paced the floor of his spacious office before walking up and thumping me in the chest. “Break this off at once,” he said unambiguously. “Anything else you want to do, just leave it to me. After a while you’ll realize that women are what they are, and nothing more.”
“You’ll excuse me,” I said, “but that’s disgusting. You have no right to interfere in my life, and I certainly don’t need you to help me arrange it.”
I turned to leave, but he grabbed my arm and said in a milder tone:
“Okay, maybe there is such a thing as love, damn it. So what do you say we work out a compromise? Get your emotions under control and knock off this talk about divorce. Stop seeing Ghunmiao for a while, and I’ll arrange a transfer to another county, maybe even farther, one of the metropolitan areas or a provincial capital, at the same level you are now. You put in a little time, and I’ll see that you get a promotion. Then if you still want to divorce Hezuo, leave everything to me. All it’ll take is money, three hundred thousand, half a million, a million, whatever it takes. There isn’t a goddamn woman alive who’d pass up money like that. Then you send for Pang Ghunmiao, and the two of you live like a couple of lovebirds. Truth is,”—he paused—“this isn’t the way we wanted to do it, since it’s a lot of trouble. But I am your brother, and she is her sister.”
“Thank you,” I said, “for your wise counsel. But I don’t need it, I really don’t.” I walked to the door, took a few steps back toward him, and said, “Like you say, you are my brother, and they are sisters, so I advise you not to let your appetites grow too big. The gods have long arms. I, Lan Jiefang, am having an affair, but, after all, that’s a problem of morality. But one day, if you two aren’t careful . . .”
“Who are you to be lecturing me?” He sneered. “Don’t blame me for what happens! Now get the hell out of here!”
“What have you done with Ghunmiao?” I asked him dispassionately.
“Get out!” His angry shout was absorbed by the leather padding on the door.
I was back on Ximen Village streets, this time with tears in my eyes.
I didn’t even turn my head when I walked past the Ximen family home. I knew I was an unfilial son, that both my parents would be gone before long, but I didn’t flinch.
Hong Taiyue stopped me at the bridgehead. He was drunk. He grabbed my lapel and said loudly:
“Lan Jiefang, you son of a bitch, you locked me up, an old revolutionary! One of Chairman Mao’s loyal warriors! A fighter against corruption! Well, you can lock me up, but you can’t lock up the truth! A true materialist fears nothing! And I’m sure not afraid of you people!”
Some men came out of the public house from which Hong had been ejected to pull him away from me. The tears in my eyes kept me from seeing who they were.
I crossed the bridge. The bright, golden sunlight made the river look like a great highway. Hong Taiyue’s shouts followed me:
“Give me back my ox bone, you son of a bitch!”
49
Hezuo Cleans a Toilet In a Rainstorm
Jiefang Makes a Decision After a Beating
A category-nine typhoon brought an almost unprecedented rainfall at night. I was always listless during spells of wet weather, wanting nothing more than to lie down and sleep. But that night, sleep was the furthest thing from my mind; both my hearing and smell were at their peak of sensitivity; my eyesight, owing to the constant streaks of powerful blue-white light, was dimmed, though not enough to affect my ability to discern each blade of grass and drop of water in every corner of the yard. Nor did it affect my ability to spot the cowering cicadas among the leaves of the parasol tree.
The rain fell nonstop from seven until nine o’clock that night. Streaks of lightning made it possible for me to see rain flying down from the eaves of the main building like a wide cataract. The rain came out of the plastic tubing on the side rooms like watery pillars that arced downward onto the cement ground. The ditch beside the path was stopped up by all sorts of things, forcing the water up over the sides, where it swamped the path and the steps in front of the gate. A family of hedgehogs living in a woodpile by the wall was driven out by the rising water; their lives were clearly in danger.
I was about to sound a warning to your wife, but before the bark emerged, a lantern was lit beneath the eaves, lighting up the entire yard. Out she stepped, shielded from the rain by a conical straw hat and a plastic rain cape. Her thin calves were exposed below her shorts; she was wearing plastic sandals with broken straps. Water cascading off the eaves knocked her rain hat to one side, where the wind blew it off her head altogether. Her hair was drenched in seconds. She ran to the west-side room, picked up a shovel from the pile of coal behind me, and ran back into the rain. Pooling rainwater swallowed up her calves as she ran; a bolt of lightning smothered the light from the lamp and turned her face, to which strands of wet hair clung, ghostly white. It was a frightening sight.
She carried the shovel into the alley through the south gate. Crashing sounds came from inside almost at once. It was the dirtiest and messiest part of the yard, with decaying leaves, plastic bags blown in on the wind, and cat droppings. The sound of splashing water emerged; the level of standing water in the yard was lowering, and the drainage ditches were spiriting water away. But your wife remained inside, where the sounds of a shovel on bricks and tiles, as well as on the surface of water, came on the air. Her smell permeated the area; she was a hardworking, resilient woman.
Finally, she came out through the drainage ditch. The plastic rain cape was still tied around her neck, but she was soaked to the skin. Streaks of lightning made her face show up whiter than ever, her calves thinner. She was dragging the shovel behind her and walking hunched over, looking a bit like the way female demons are described in stories. She wore a contented look. She picked up her straw hat and shook it several times, but instead of putting it on her head, she hung it from a nail on the side room wall. Then she propped up a Chinese rosebush, apparently pricking her finger in the process. She stuck her finger in her mouth, and as the rain lessened a bit, she looked up into the sky and let the rain hit her squarely in the face. Harder, harder, come down harder! She untied the rain cape to expose her rail-thin body to the rain and stumbled toward the toilet in the southeast corner of the yard, where she removed a cement cover.
Your son came running out with an umbrella and held it over her head.
“Come inside, Mama, you’re wet from head to toe.” He was crying.
“What are you so worried about? You should be happy it’s raining hard.” She pushed the umbrella over your son’s head. “We haven’t had rain like this for a long time, not once since we moved into town. It’s wonderful. Our yard has never been this clean. And not just ours, but every family’s. If not for this rain, the town would stink.”
I barked twice to approve her attitude.
“Hear that?” she said. “I’m not the only one who’s happy with this rain. So is he.”
But eventually she did go inside, where, my nose told me, she dried her hair and body. Then I heard her open her wardrobe, and I got a strong whiff of dry, mothballed clothes. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Crawl into bed, Mistress. Get a good night’s sleep.”
Not long after the clock struck midnight, a familiar smell came on the air from Limin Avenue, followed by the smell of a Jeep that was losing oil, accompanied by the roar of the engine. Both the smell and the sound were coming my way. It pulled to a stop in front of your gate. My gate, too, of course.
I started barking ferociously before whoever it was even knocked at the gate, and raced over there, my paws barely touching the ground, sending the dozen or so bats living in the gateway arch flying int
o the blackness of night. Yours was the only one of the several odors I knew. The pounding at the gate created hollow, scary sounds.
The light beneath the eaves came on, and your wife, a coat over her shoulders, walked out into the yard. “Who is it?” she shouted. The response was more pounding. Resting my front paws on the gate, I stood up and barked at the people on the other side. Your smell was strong, but what made me bark anxiously were the evil smells that surrounded you, like a pack of wolves with a captive sheep. Your wife buttoned up her coat and stepped into the gateway, where she switched on the electric light. A bunch of fat geckos were resting on the gateway wall; bats that hadn’t flown away were hanging from the overhead. “Who is it?” she asked a second time. “Open the door,” came a muffled voice from the other side. “You’ll know who it is when you open up.” “How am I supposed to know who comes knocking at my door in the middle of the night?” Speaking softly, the person on the other side said, “Deputy County Chief has been beaten up. We’ve brought him home.” After a moment’s hesitation, your wife unlocked the gate and opened it a crack. Your face, hideously disfigured, and matted hair appeared in front of her. With a scream, your wife opened the gate wide. Two men flung you like a dead pig into the yard, where you knocked her to the ground and wound up crushing her beneath you. They jumped down off the steps, and I ran, lightning quick, after one of them. I dug my claws into his back. All three men were wearing black rubber raincoats and dark glasses. The two made for a waiting Jeep, where the third man was sitting in the driver’s seat. Since he’d left it idling, the smells of gasoline and oil came crashing at me through the rain. The raincoat was so slick the man slipped out of my grasp as he jumped into the middle of the street and ran up to the Jeep, leaving me in the rain, a predator without his prey. The water, which was up to my belly, slowed me down, but I pushed myself to go after the other man, who was climbing into the car. Since his raincoat protected his rear end, I sank my teeth into his calf. He screeched as he shut the door, catching the hem of his raincoat; my nose banged into the shut door. Meanwhile, the first man jumped in on the other side and the Jeep lurched forward, spraying water behind it. I took out after it, but was stopped by all the filthy water splashing in my face.
When I made it back through the dirty water, I saw your wife with her head under your left armpit, your left arm draped loosely over her chest like an old gourd. Her right arm was around your waist, and your head was leaning against hers. She struggled to move you forward. You were wobbly, but you could still move, which not only told her you were alive but that your mind was relatively clear.
After helping her close the gate I walked around the yard to get my emotions under control. Your son came running outside dressed only in his underwear. “Papa!” he shouted, starting to sob. He ran up to your other side to help your mother support you, and the three of you walked the remaining thirty or so paces from the yard to your wife’s bed. The tortuous trek seemed to take an eternity.
I forgot that I was a mud-streaked dog and felt that my fate was tied up with yours. I followed behind you, whining sadly, all the way up to your wife’s bed. You were covered with mud and blood and your clothes were ripped; you looked like a man who’d been whipped. The smell of urine in your pants was strong; obviously you’d peed your pants when they were beating you. Even though your wife valued cleanliness above almost everything, she didn’t hesitate to lay you down on her bed, a sign of affection.
Not only didn’t she care how dirty you were when she laid you down on the bed, she even let me, dirty as I was, stay in the room with you. Your son knelt by the bed, crying.
“What happened, Papa? Who did this to you?”
You opened your eyes, reached out, and rubbed his head. There were tears in your eyes.
Your wife brought in a basin of hot water and laid it on the bedside table. My nose told me she’d added some salt. After tossing a towel into the water, she began taking off your clothes. You fought to sit up. “No,” you sputtered, but she pushed your arms back, knelt beside the bed, and unbuttoned your shirt. It was obvious you didn’t want your wife’s help, but you were too weak to resist. Your son helped her take off your shirt, and so you lay there, naked from the waist up, on your wife’s bed as she wiped your body down with the salty water, some of her tears, also salty, dripping onto your chest. Your son’s eyes were wet, and so were yours, tears slipping out and down the sides of your face.
Your wife didn’t ask a single question during all this time, and you didn’t say a word to her. But every few minutes, your son asked you:
“Who did this to you, Papa? I’ll go avenge you!” You did not answer, and your wife said nothing, as if by secret agreement. Seeing no alternative, your son turned to me.
“Who beat my father, Little Four? Take me to find them so I can avenge him!”
I barked softly, apologetically, since the typhoon winds had scattered the smells.
With the help of your son, your wife managed to get you into dry clothes, a pair of white silk pajamas, very loose and very comfortable; but the contrast made your face appear darker, the birthmark bluer. After tossing your dirty clothes into the basin and mopping the floor dry, she said to your son:
“Go to bed, Kaifang, it’ll soon be light outside. You have school tomorrow.”
She picked up the basin, took your son’s hand, and left the room. I followed.
After washing the dirty clothes, she went over to the east-side room, where she turned on the light and sat on the stool, her back to the chopping board; with her hands on her knees, she rested her head on her hands and stared straight ahead, apparently absorbed in her thoughts.
She was in the light, I was in the dark, so I saw her face clearly, her purple lips and glassy eyes. What was she thinking? No way I could know. But she sat there until dawn broke.
It was time to cook breakfast. It looked to me like she was making noodles. Yes, that’s what she was doing. The smell of flour overwhelmed all the putrid smells around me. I heard snores coming from the bedroom. Well, you’d finally managed to get some sleep. Your son woke up, his eyes heavy with sleep, and ran to the toilet; as I listened to the sound of him relieving himself, the smell of Pang Ghunmiao penetrated all the sticky, murky odors in the air and rapidly drew near, straight to our gate, without a moment’s hesitation. I barked once and then lowered my head, overcome by weighty emotions, a mixture of sadness and dejection, as if a giant hand were clamped around my throat.
Ghunmiao rapped at the gate, a loud, determined, almost angry sound. Your wife ran out to open the gate, and the two women stood there staring at each other. You’d have thought there was no end to what they wanted to say, but not a word was uttered. Chunmiao stepped — dashed is more like it — into the yard. Your wife limped behind her and reached out as if to grab her from behind. Your son dashed out onto the walkway and ran around in circles, his face taut, looking like a boy who simply didn’t know what to do. In the end, he ran over and shut the gate.
By looking through the window I was able to watch Chunmiao rush down the hallway and into your wife’s bedroom. Loud wails emerged almost at once. Your wife was next into the room, where her wails supplanted Chunmiao’s with their intensity. Your son was crouching alongside the well, crying and splashing water on his face.
Once the women’s crying stopped, difficult negotiations began. I couldn’t make out everything that was said, owing to the sobs and sniveling, but picked up most of it.
“How could you be so cruel as to beat him that badly?” Chunmiao said that.
“Chunmiao, there’s no reason for you and me to be enemies. With all the eligible bachelors out there, why are you dead set on destroying this family?”
“I know how unfair this is to you, and I wish I could leave him, but I can’t. Like it or not, this is my fate. . . .”
“You choose, Jiefang,” your wife said.
After a moment of silence, I heard you say:
“I’m sorry, Hezuo, but I want to be wi
th her.”
I saw Chunmiao help you to your feet and watched as you two walked down the hall, out the door, and into the yard, where your son was holding a basin of water. He emptied it on the ground at your feet, fell to his knees, and said tearfully:
“Don’t leave my mother, Papa . . . Aunty Chunmiao, you can stay . . . your grandmothers were both married to my grandfather, weren’t they?”
“That was the old society, son,” you said sorrowfully. “Take good care of your mother, Kaifang. She’s done nothing wrong, it’s my doing, and though I’m leaving, I’ll do everything in my power to see you’re both taken care of.”
“Lan Jiefang, you can leave if you want,” your wife said from the doorway. “But don’t you forget that the only way you’ll get a divorce is over my dead body.” There was a sneer on her face, but tears in her eyes. She fell as she tried to walk down the steps, but she scrambled to her feet, made a wide sweep around you two, and pulled your son to his feet. “Get up!” she growled. “No boy gets down on his knees, not even if there’s gold at his feet!” Then she and the boy stood on the rain-washed concrete beside the walkway to make way for you to leave.
In much the same way that your wife had helped you walk from the gateway to her bedroom, Chunmiao tucked her left arm under yours, which hung loosely in front of her chest, and put her right arm around your waist, so the two of you could hobble out the gate. Given her slight figure, she seemed in constant danger of being knocked off balance by the sheer weight of your body. But she held herself straight and exerted strength that even I, a dog, found remarkable.
A strange, inexplicable emotion led me up to the gate after you’d left. I stood on the steps and watched you go. You stepped in one mud puddle after another on Tianhua Avenue, and your white silk pajamas were mud-spattered in no time; so were Chunmiao’s clothes, a red skirt that was especially eye-catching in the haze. A light rain fell at a slant; some of the people out on the street were wearing raincoats, others were holding umbrellas, and all of them cast curious glances as you passed.
