by Su Tong
Tan Feng was my one and only friend in that Sichuanese town. He was the same age as me: about eight or nine. Tan Feng’s family lived next door to us. His father was a blacksmith and his mother was from the countryside. They had a lot of kids but the others were all girls, so you can imagine how the rest of the family spoiled their only boy. They really adored him, but they didn’t know what he got up to, as Tan Feng stole things. He didn’t dare steal from my house, but apart from that almost every household in town had lost something to his thieving ways. He would swagger into people’s homes, ask whether their kid was in, and that was all it took – while he was there he would swipe a can of peppers or a picture book from the table and slip it under his clothes. Sometimes I would watch him steal and my heart would thump like mad, but Tan Feng was always as cool as could be. He didn’t hide these things from me because he thought of me as his most loyal friend, and in fact I used to cover for him.
Once, when Tan Feng had stolen somebody’s wristwatch – remember that at the time a wristwatch was something really expensive – he was suspected of being the thief. The whole family came out and shouted for him outside his house, but Tan Feng blocked the door and wouldn’t let them in. Then the blacksmith and his wife came out. They didn’t believe that their son would have stolen a watch. Tan Feng swore like a sailor, so the blacksmith kept pinching his ears, but he wouldn’t be quiet; he just yelled loudly for me to come and testify for him. So I came, and said, ‘Tan Feng didn’t steal that watch, I can vouch for it.’ I remember Tan Feng’s pleased smile and his parents’ grateful, tear-filled glances at me. To the onlookers they said, ‘That’s the son of Mrs Yu the teacher. He’s taught good manners at home and he never lies.’ And because of my intervention the matter remained unresolved. After a few days the victims discovered the watch at home. They even went to Tan Feng’s home to tell them they had found it, apologized for having done him wrong and gave him a big bowl of sweet soup dumplings to boot. He carried it over to share with me and the two of us were very proud of ourselves – I was the one who’d told him to go to their house and secretly put the watch back.
My mother disliked Tan Feng and his whole family, but people were very progressive thinking in those days, and she said that being friendly with proletariat children was a kind of education, too. Of course, if she had known what I was getting up to with Tan Feng, she would have gone bananas. ‘Pilfer’ – my mother liked to use that word – and ‘pilfering’ was the sort of aberrant behaviour she hated most, but what she didn’t know was that this word and I were already inextricably linked.
If it hadn’t been for a certain toy train, I don’t know how far my alliance with Tan Feng might have gone. Tan Feng had a hoard of treasure, all of which was stored in the pigsty of old Mr Zhang, who lived on communal welfare. Tan Feng was clever to hide his spoils there as old Mr Zhang was no longer good on his feet and the pigsty had no pigs in it. Tan Feng just burrowed a hole in a pile of firewood, and put all the things he had stolen inside. If anybody saw him, he could say he was bringing Mr Zhang firewood, and in fact he really did bring wood. Half of it was for the old man, and the other half, of course, was to hide his treasure.
Now, let me tell you about this treasure, although the things it contained seem laughable now. There were a number of medicine bottles and capsules which might have been stuff women took as contraceptives; there was an enamel cup, some fly-swatters, bits of copper and iron wire, matches, thimbles, a red neckerchief, a clothes rack, a long-stemmed pipe, an aluminium spoon – in short, a random assortment of tat. When Tan Feng let me in to see his hoard, I couldn’t hide my contempt for it. Then, however, he delved into the pile of medicine bottles and brought out a little red train.
‘Look,’ he said. He carried it with extreme care, at the same time elbowing me away roughly so I couldn’t get close to it. ‘Look,’ he said, but while his mouth repeated the word, his elbow blocked me from getting any closer to the train; it was as if his elbow were saying, ‘Just stand there. You can look, but you can’t touch.’
Ah, that little red iron-plated train: a locomotive and four cars. On top of the engine was a stovepipe, and inside it was a miniature conductor. If children today saw a train like that, they wouldn’t think it was so amazing, but at the time in a little Sichuanese town, you can imagine what it meant to a boy. It was the most wonderful thing in the world. I remember my hand felt like a piece of iron being drawn to a magnet. Overcome by an irresistible impulse, I kept making grabs for it, but every time Tan Feng fended me off.
‘Where did you steal it from?’ I almost screamed. ‘Whose is it?’
‘The Chengdu girl’s from the commune hospital.’ Tan Feng gestured for me not to speak too loudly, then he stroked the train for a moment and laughed out loud. ‘I didn’t really steal it. The girl’s such a dumb-bell that she just left it by the window. So since she was practically asking me to take it, I took her up on it.’
I knew the Chengdu girl; she was short and fat, and it was true that she was stupid. If you asked her what one plus one made, she would say eleven. I suddenly remembered having seen her crying that day in front of the commune hospital. She had cried herself hoarse, and her father, Dr He, had carried her home over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. Now I was sure she had been crying for her toy train.
As I imagined the scene of Tan Feng taking the little train through the window my heart filled with a kind of envy, and I swear that this was the first time I’d felt such a thing for him. Strange to say, even though I was only eight or nine, I was able to disguise my emotion. Calmly, I asked him, ‘Can you make it go? If you can’t make it go, then it’s nothing special.’
Tan Feng flashed a little key at me, and I noted that he had taken it out of his pocket. It was the sort of simple key used to wind up a spring mechanism. A sweet, self-satisfied smile appeared on his face as he put the train on the ground and wound it up. Then he watched as it began moving around the pigsty. It could only go in a straight line, it couldn’t turn in circles or blow its steam whistle, but for me it was a wonder even so. I didn’t want to seem too excited, though, and simply said, ‘Well, of course you can make the train go. If you couldn’t make it go, then it wouldn’t be a train.’
My own terrible plan was hatched at that instant. It took shape vaguely, when I saw Tan Feng cover his treasure back up with firewood. He looked at me with anxious eyes and said, ‘You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?’ By now, my idea was rapidly taking hold and I said nothing. I followed him out of the pigsty. On the way back, he caught a butterfly and seemed to want to give it to me as some sort of bribe. I refused; I wasn’t interested in butterflies. It felt as if my idea was gathering momentum, weighing on my mind more heavily until it became hard for me to breathe. But still I didn’t have the strength to chase it from my brain.
You can probably guess what I did. I went to the commune hospital and sought out Dr He, telling him that Tan Feng had stolen his daughter’s train. So that he wouldn’t recognize my face, I wore a big surgical mask, and after I rushed through what I had to say, I ran off. On my way home, I happened to meet Tan Feng, who was playing football on the school sports grounds with some other children. He called out for me to join in, but I said I had to go home for dinner and vanished like a puff of smoke. You know how the aftermath of tale-telling is the worst thing? That evening I hid at home and pricked up my ears so I could hear what might be going on in Tan Feng’s home, and before long Dr He and his daughter paid a call to the Tan family home.
I heard his mother shout Tan Feng’s name at the top of her voice; then the hammer in his father’s hand ceased its monotonous banging. They couldn’t find Tan Feng. All his sisters went around the town calling out his name, but they couldn’t find him either. Seething with anger, his father came to our home and asked me where his son had gone. I didn’t answer, and then the blacksmith asked another question, ‘Did Tan Feng steal Dr He’s daughter’s toy train?’ Even then I stayed silent; I lacked the courage t
o say yes. That day, Tan the blacksmith’s dry, haggard face spluttered with rage like a soldering iron – I thought he might kill someone. As I heard Tan Feng’s name resounding through the town in the shrill, crazed voices of his family, I regretted what I had done.
But it was too late for regret; soon my mother returned from school and stopped for a long while outside Tan Feng’s home. When she came in and pulled me out from underneath the mosquito nets, I knew that I had got myself in a fix. The blacksmith and his wife were right behind her and my mother said to me, ‘No lying. Now, did Tan Feng take that toy train or not?’ I don’t have the words to describe the severe and indomitable expression in my mother’s eyes then and my last line of defence suddenly collapsed. My mother said, ‘If he took it, nod. If he didn’t, shake your head.’ I nodded. I saw how Tan the blacksmith jumped with rage like a firecracker, and how Tan Feng’s mother sank down on our threshold, sobbing and blowing a string of snot from her nose as she cried and tried to communicate something. I didn’t pay close attention to what she was saying, but the general idea was that Tan Feng had been led astray by someone and now he had gone and ruined his parents’ good name. My mother was livid at this insinuation, but she was too well-bred to quarrel with her. Instead, she took out her anger on me and gave me a smack with her exercise book.
They found Tan Feng in the water. He had wanted to escape to the other side of the little river outside town, but the only stroke he knew was doggy paddle, and once he reached the deep water he just thrashed around wildly. He hadn’t even called for help. The blacksmith reached the riverbank, fished his son out and pulled him back on shore, then he dragged Tan Feng, who was soaked to the bone, all the way home. People from the town followed the pair of them as they headed back. Tan Feng was rolled over and over on the ground like a log, but with great effort, he lifted his head to see curious faces on both sides of him. He began spitting and swearing at these people who’d come to see the public spectacle: ‘What the f*** are you looking at? What the f*** are you looking at?’
Just as I had expected, Tan Feng refused to confess. He did not deny that he had stolen the little red train, but he refused to reveal where he had hidden it. I heard the blacksmith’s oaths and Tan Feng’s cries, each louder than the last; the blacksmith had always raised him using a judicious mixture of spoiling and savage beatings. I heard the blacksmith give a last ear-splitting howl, ‘Which hand did you steal it with? Left or right?’ Before the sound had died away, Tan Feng’s mother and sister began to wail in concert. It was an atmosphere of pure terror. I knew something terrible was going to happen, and I didn’t want to miss my opportunity to witness it, so while my mother was busy washing vegetables, I rushed out.
I was just in time to see the blacksmith maim his own son by pressing Tan Feng’s left hand onto a red-hot soldering iron. I recall that at that same moment, Tan Feng shot me a glance so full of shock and despair that it was like a red-hot iron itself, so searing that my whole body seemed to steam with shame.
I am not exaggerating when I say that a hole was burnt into my heart at that moment. I didn’t hear Tan Feng’s scream, which resounded high above the town, I just turned around and fled, as if afraid that Tan Feng, who was in the process of losing the fingers of his left hand, might yet chase after me. With dread and guilt in my heart, I ran away, and before I knew it I was at Mr Zhang’s pigsty. Despite all that had happened I still hadn’t forgotten the little red train, even in this dark hour. I sat for a moment on the stack of firewood and made up my mind to excavate Tan Feng’s treasure, taking advantage of the last rays of the setting sun to make my careful search. I was surprised to find, however, that the little red train wasn’t there. I took the stack of firewood apart, and still I didn’t find it.
So Tan Feng was not as foolish as I had thought; he had moved the train. I reasoned that he had done so after the theft had been exposed. Perhaps while his family had been calling for him he had moved it to an even more secret location. I stood in Mr Zhang’s pigsty and realized with a jolt that Tan Feng had taken that precaution against me. Perhaps he had suspected me long ago, thinking that I would tattle one day; perhaps he had another secret hoard. I pondered this and a nameless sense of loss and sorrow welled up in me.
You can imagine the chaos in the Tan household once the deed was done. Tan Feng fainted and the blacksmith wept, hugging his son to him and wandering through the town to find a tractor driver. Then he and his wife got on the tractor and took Tan Feng to the district hospital fifteen kilometres away.
I knew that Tan Feng would spend the next few days in extreme pain, and that time was very hard for me to endure too. There was also the punishment my mother inflicted on me. In her eyes I bore half the guilt for the whole affair, so I was confined to the house. Beside this she required me, like one of her students, to write a piece of self-criticism. Remember that I was only eight or nine at the time. As if I was going to be able to write a substantial piece of self-criticism! I wrote and doodled in an exercise book, and without realizing what I was doing I drew several little trains on the paper; so I threw it out. But afterwards I was still thinking about that little red train. There was nothing I could do – no way I could resist the spell that train had cast over me. I leaned over the desk, and heard in my ears a dim, metallic sound: the sound of the train’s wheels rolling over the ground. The four cars, the sixteen wheels, were constantly appearing in my mind’s eye; not to mention the stovepipe on top, and the conductor with the neckerchief tied around his miniature neck.
What made me disobey my mother’s orders was burning desire: I urgently needed to find that missing train. My mother had locked the door from the outside, but I jumped out through the window and walked down the streets of town positively thirsting for it. I had no destination in mind and just blindly looked for somewhere to go. It was a sweltering day in August, and the town’s children were gathered by the riverside, either splashing around in the water or playing stupid cops-and-robbers games on the bank. I didn’t want to splash around, and I didn’t want to play cops and robbers, all I could think about was that little red train. I walked until the only surfaced road in the town ended and I saw the abandoned brick kiln in the cornfields beyond. This must be what people mean when they talk about a moment of inspiration. I’d suddenly remembered that Tan Feng had once hidden several of old Mr Ye’s chicks in that kiln. Could it be his second hiding place for the treasure? The thought made me jittery with nerves. I moved aside the stone blocking the kiln’s door and ducked in. There! I saw the freshly piled cornstalks and kicked them apart. Have you guessed? You have. It was that simple. Don’t people often say ‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’? I heard a clear, melodious ring, and my heart nearly stopped beating. Heaven helps those who help themselves – it’s as simple as that. I’d found the Chengdu girl’s little red train in the brick kiln.
Did you think I was going to take the toy truck back to the commune clinic and ask for Dr He? No. But if I had, then the rest of this story would probably never have happened. To be frank, it didn’t even cross my mind to return the train to its original owner. Instead, I was more concerned with the question of how to take it home without it being discovered by anyone. I finally thought up a plan and removed my T-shirt, broke off some heads of corn, and wrapped both train and corn in my T-shirt to make a bundle. Nervously, I set off for home. Usually I never went shirtless like the other boys in town, mainly because my mother didn’t allow it, so as I walked down the narrow street, it felt as if people were looking at me. I was very anxious to begin with, and then someone took note of my unusual appearance. I heard one woman say to another, ‘What a blistering day – even Mrs Yu’s kid’s taken his shirt off!’ But what the other woman noticed was my bundle, and she said, ‘What’s he carrying? Do you think he’s stolen something?’ This scared me, but fortunately my mother enjoyed a spotless reputation in the town and the gossiping woman was brusquely cut off by her partner who said, ‘Hold your silly tongue. As if Mrs Yu’s
son would steal anything!’
My luck held; my mother wasn’t around so I was able to find a hiding place for the train. Besides the box under my bed where I stored things there were two other places for emergencies or temporary deployment: one of them was the padded overcoat my father had left at home, and the other was the pressure cooker in the kitchen, which we weren’t using. I hid the toy train there, and from that moment on I couldn’t rest. I realized I still had a problem: the key to wind up the spring. No doubt Tan Feng had it hidden about his body, and if I couldn’t get the key, I couldn’t make the train run. And for me, a train that didn’t run had lost the greater part of its value.
The trouble that came later was all because of that key. I hadn’t even thought about how to deal with Tan Feng once he got home. Every day I tried to make a key myself, and one day I was at home alone, grinding a padlock key on the whetstone, when the door was kicked open and who but Tan Feng should come in. He walked up to me and glared at me threateningly, then he said, ‘You’re a traitor, a foreign agent, a spy, a counter-revolutionary and a class enemy!’
His tirade caught me off-balance. I held the padlock key tightly in my fist, and listened to Tan Feng abuse me with all the coarse language he knew. I looked at that left hand of his, wrapped tightly in white cloth, and my guilt submerged any impulse I might have had to retaliate. I remained silent, reflecting that Tan Feng might not yet know that I had been to the kiln. I wondered whether he would be able to guess that it was I who had taken the train.
Tan Feng didn’t touch me – perhaps he knew that with only one hand he would come off worse – instead he just swore. But after swearing for a while he grew tired and asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ Still I said nothing, and he must have thought he had gone too far. He put out his left hand for me to see. ‘You have no idea how much gauze they used to wrap it up – a whole roll!’ I said nothing, so Tan Feng examined the gauze on his hand and, after looking at it for a while, suddenly he laughed proudly and said, ‘I fooled the old man. As if I would use my left hand! It was the right hand, of course.’ Then he asked me a question, ‘Do you think it pays to have your left hand burnt or your right?’
