by Han Shaogong
Mou lisheng knew all this perfectly well but he didn't take it in properly and sometimes things didn't quite click into place in his head when it came to the crunch. He was in the middle-school class of 1982, one year above me, and we were sent down to the countryside together. Once, when we were coming back from the banks of the Luo River carrying rice seedlings we'd bought, he said he wanted to get back extra early to wash his shoes and rushed on ahead alone, disappearing in the blink of an eye. We grumbled at how annoying he was: what did he want to wash his shoes for? When'd he ever washed his shoes before? The thing was, we were worried in case someone couldn't keep going on the way back; as he was the strongest, he'd have felt obliged to lend a hand. In any case, whether he helped out or not, he didn't have to scurry off so fast, like a thief-it tired a person out.
Mou had, indeed, never washed his shoes: whenever he discovered his foot slipping on something inside his shoe, he'd tie his shoes together by the laces, dangle them in the stream that flowed between fields, then pull them out a few days later, dry them in the sun and start wearing them again. He said this was the automatic shoe-washing method. Needless to say, shoes washed in this way still stank horribly and whenever a host gestured he should remove his shoes, anyone standing by would exit at top speed after just one sniff.
Our conjectures weren't proved wrong: as we suspected, he didn't go and wash his shoes. Not only that, when we got home his seedling basket was nowhere to be seen-in other words, he hadn't gotten back yet. As the afternoon wore on, even the stragglers returned and we managed to plant out several paddies of seedlings, without sight nor sound of him. When it'd got dark, we heard heavy footsteps on the road, sounds of breathing like the wheezing of a bellows, before finally, thank goodness, he collapsed to the ground as if there were a stone in his stomach. Covered in mud, barely half the rice seedlings in his load left hanging precariously off the pole, he tripped and stumbled over himself, unable to put one foot in front of another. He was not amused: "This damned turtle place with these damned turtle people! They talk crap! Sent me on a wild-goose chase over the mountains! I almost stepped in a trap! I'll stick all your grannies!" (see the entry "Stick[y]")
I didn't know who he was swearing at.
We asked him what'd happened, what he'd been playing around at all day. His face clouded with anger, he ignored everyone and walked to his room to hurl things around. It took us ages to discover that what he'd done was forget the locals' habit of reversing directions. He hadn't really got used to the local accent, either: he'd be all right as long as he didn't need to ask the way, but as soon as he asked he'd be bound to go wrong. So he'd hauled a heavy load of seedlings to Shuanglong Bow to the north of Maqiao, then carried them to Longjia Sands to the south of Maqiao, finally tramped all over the mountains till it was almost dark. A local he passed finally suspected he hadn't caught on, and reminded him about the direction rule. He'd almost keeled over with rage.
We all laughed-a lot.
After the peasants found out, they laughed even more. "As he's just a big lump of flesh that can't understand human speech," said Uncle Luo, "we should call him Master Black."
Since there were fewer and fewer wild pigs on the mountains, the term Master Black had long fallen into disuse, but Mou Jisheng enabled it to stage an unexpected comeback by changing its meaning. Normally, when Mou Jisheng went out to work he didn't wear a bamboo hat and bared his upper body to the sun's violent rays, burning his muscular back deep black; when he ran, his upper body rippled in dark waves, so the nickname Master Black seemed to suit his appearance.
He had a strong physique and liked wrestling with anyone on hand: he particularly enjoyed giving the local "turtle people" a good thrashing. While the turtle people carried two baskets of grain, he'd carry four, divided between two or three carrying poles; once this had produced open-mouthed shock from bystanders, he'd set them down and preen himself, panting with the effort. While the turtle people wore cotton jackets, he'd wear shorts in snowy weather so cold it turned your lips purple; once bystanders had expressed shocked admiration, he'd finally yield (with a teeth-gritted show of reluctance) to general persuasion and go inside. He liked playing basketball and on hot summer days he wouldn't rest at noon but instead would brave the violent sun on the drying terrace to knock a ball around, working up a full sweat even without a basket. The weather was so hot even the crickets, toads, and chickens were silent and only the thump of his ball reverberated throughout the village. The peasants clicked their tongues in awe.
"I was still drinking breast milk at thirteen! My mom was always away at work but the wet nurse would still make me drink!" He'd always be making announcements like this to explain the reasons for his incomparable physical strength and drop hints about how he came from a family of revolutionary cadres.
Human milk was a good thing, to be sure, and the peasants were entirely convinced by this explanation.
Zhongqi very early on expressed a particular interest toward him. When winter arrived, Zhongqi would produce a steaming-basket that he carried around with him everywhere when he got off work. The basket was so small it could only hold two or three burning pieces of charcoal at a time and could only be hugged by one person between the legs or against the chest, but still it was an ember that brought heat. Zhongqi had never let anyone else enjoy the use of his basket: even when women came to warm their hands, he might chortle generously but would still impose time limits and give them frequent warnings about their charcoal consumption and their massive expenditure of heat. Master Black was the lone exception to whom, with a clackety-clack of his shoes, he'd voluntarily pass the basket. Unfortunately, Master Black wasn't interested in this object, since his health was good and he'd never felt the cold; he took one look, then walked outside with a snort.
Zhongqi had weaseled out a lot of the village's secrets, none of which he'd make public just like that. At times, one sentence would be the furthest he'd go and as soon as anyone inquired any further, the smug taunts would immediately begin: "Take a guess, go on, take a guess." So no one ever got much sense out of him. Only with Master Black was he willing to share his secrets: a scrap today ("There was a pile of chicken feathers in Fucha's house yesterday"), another scrap tomorrow ("Uncle Luo tripped over on the mountain two days ago"), the day after that, in even more hushed tones, "Someone visited Shuishui's mom and brought two piglets."
Mou Jisheng had no interest in these secrets and only wanted to hear the low stuff. Zhongqi looked embarrassed, hemmed and hawed, reddened, then decided to make an offering. He mentioned the time when Fucha's mother, however many years ago it'd been, had woken up in a daze from a midday nap and discovered there was a man pressing down on her who turned out not to be Fucha's dad. But she'd been too tired and weak to resist, had lacked the will to figure out who this person was, so she shouted into the other room: "Quick, come here, third son, your granny's boiling hot! Come and tell me what this idiot's playing around at!" Her son was asleep in the other room and didn't wake. But her shout managed to frighten this hazy human form away. She turned over comfortably and continued her deep, heavy-breathing sleep.
"Is that it?" Deeply disappointed, Mou Jisheng didn't feel this secret was worth knowing either.
As I later discovered, relations between Zhongqi and Mou Jisheng gradually grew in intimacy. In the past, as soon as evening came on, Mou Jisheng would make a big fuss about turning off the lamp and going to sleep, but now, unexpectedly, he often went out alone and sometimes only returned to bed very late. When asked where he'd been, he'd go all mysterious and hedge our questions, a wrinkle of self-satisfaction between his eyebrows, then carelessly let out a burp smelling of dates or egg that would drive us wild with incredulous jealousy. He wasn't about to let us share his gourmet's luck: we'd have to beat him to death before he'd spit the truth out, this we knew full well. Our later investigations revealed that his burps were linked to Zhongqi: we discovered that Zhongqi had made glutinous rice cakes for him and that Zhongqi's wife had wa
shed his quilt and shoes for him. We couldn't make any sense of it: Zhongqi was normally such a stingy so-and-so, he wouldn't help out just any old Wang, Li, or Zhang, so why was he sucking up to that halfwit Master Black?
One night, some time after we'd all fallen asleep, we were startled awake by a violently angry shove at the door. Lighting the oil lamp, we discovered Master Black huffing and puffing on his bed, spitting with rage.
"What's up with you?"
"I'll do him in!"
"Who?"
Not a word.
"Are you talking about Mr Agreed?"
Still not a word.
"What's he done to you?"
"Go to sleep!" Master Black rolled around on the bed plank, producing a series of loud creaks that woke everyone else up-he was the first to start snoring, though.
On the afternoon of the following day, Zhongqi's shoes were heard approaching the door, a Mao button as big as an egg flashing and glinting on his chest. "Chairman Mao says debts should be repaid. Where does it say that debts can be left unpaid in socialism?" He coughed loudly, "I won't bother the national government with unimportant matters like this: if Mou Jisheng can't pay me back in cash, grain will do as well."
Mou Jisheng rushed out: "What money do I owe you? You old fool!"
"You know what I mean."
"It was always you who invited me. I didn't beg, I didn't ask for anything, everything I ate I've shat out, so go and look in the toilet hut!"
"Comrade, you must be truthful, you must keep studying. You intellectuals shouldn't try to run before you can walk, you're still being educated by us poor and lower-middle peasants, understand? Tell you the truth, I know everything about you, Master Black, it's just I don't tell anyone. I've been kind to you so far!" Zhongqi's words contained a veiled menace.
"Talk, then! Talk!"
"Me, talk? You really want me to talk?"
"I'd give my dragon to hear you talk!"
"Okay, then. When we were planting peanuts last year, there was a shortfall in the team's planting peanuts every day-d'you think I didn't see the peanuts in your shit? A few days ago, you said you were having a wash, but what were you actually doing?…"
His face flushed scarlet, Master Black dashed forward, dragged Zhongqi outside and clanged his head against the doorframe. "He's killing me! He's killing me!" Zhongqi whimpered.
Afraid things would turn murderous, we rushed over to stay Master Black's hand, trying desperately to pry the two of them apart. Availing himself of this opportunity, Zhongqi wormed his way out from under my armpit and headed for the drying terrace, his shoes clacking away as he went.
When the sound of his cursing had faded off into the distance, we asked Mou Jisheng what had really happened.
"What happened? He wanted me to do low stuff."
"What kind of low stuff?"
"Sleep with his wife!"
There was a moment of unutterably astonished silence, before we all started cackling with laughter. One female Educated Youth ran off screaming in fright and didn't dare show her face again.
It was only later that we badgered any sense of the matter out of him, that Zhongqi was sterile, and had earmarked Master Black to do the job for him. "It must be you're special, brother Mou." "You've got to stick for your supper" (see the entry Stick[y]). "You shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth." We were enjoying ourselves enormously, determined not to let Master Black stand up for himself, determined not to let him escape the Zhongqi family bed.
"These turtle people!" He pretended not to hear.
"Who're you swearing at now? Tell us the truth: did you sleep with her?"
"Would you sleep with her? Have you seen what his wife looks like? One look at her takes your appetite away! I'd rather sleep with a pig!"
"If you don't sleep with her, will you keep eating their chickens?"
"What chickens are you talking about? They take a month to eat a chicken, one ladle of soup at a time-the bowl's empty before you've tasted anything. Just drop the subject, just talking about it makes me mad."
That afternoon in the fields, the Master Black affair became the principal topic of conversation. What surprised me was that apart from Fucha, no one else in the village thought Zhongqi had done anything wrong. Poor old Zhongqi, so set on making friends with Master Black, d'ycm think it'd been easy to keep him fed and watered? He was a sick man, he'd just wanted to borrow a seed to produce a descendant-nothing unreasonable about that. He hadn't forced Master Black to get married or anything, he'd just wanted to borrow a tiny little thing he wasn't bothered about, what was so bad about that? It was the choice of someone who had no other choice. Zhaoqing also said that in any case, whether Master Black agreed or not, he'd eaten so much it would be mean not to repay him.
Needless to say, the Educated Youth didn't agree with this strange logic and spent the whole afternoon arguing till we were blue in the face, going on and on about how we were going to go and report to the commune, how there was no way we were going to let our revolutionary Educated Youth be seduced by that old codger Zhongqi.
Most of the villagers jabbered away without taking much notice. As Party Branch Secretary, Benyi didn't have anything sensible to say either. He summoned the Educated Youth to a meeting, where he first of all asked one of us to read a few pages of newspaper editorials. When the reading, and his nap, were both over, he yawned and asked Mou Jisheng: "Did you steal the team's peanuts last year?"
"I-I took a few handfuls."
"One planted peanut seed will grow into a lot of peanuts, d'you know that?"
"Uncle Benyi, we're meant to be discussing Zhongqi today, the peanuts are a completely separate matter,"
"What d'you mean, separate? It's in the small things that you show your attitude to the collective, show whether you have feeling for poor and lower-middle peasants. Wasn't it him (he used the distant, qu him, I remember) that hit Zhaoqing's kid and made him cry, last month when we were digging the pond?" Benyi glared at everyone.
No one said anything.
"When you look at a problem, you have to look at the whole thing, you have to look at it historically! Chairman Mao says that whatever happens, it's wrong to hit people."
"I just lost my temper…" Mou Jisheng defended himself weakly.
"You still can't hit people. What kind of behavior is that? Are you Educated Youth or street hooligans?"
"I… won't hit… anyone… again…"
"That's a bit more like it: when you're in the wrong you're in the wrong. You've got to be honest about things-why make a fuss when you're clearly in the wrong? We'll leave it at that: no self-criticism necessary, you'll just be docked thirty catties of grain."
Benyi had already moved off, hands tucked behind his back, looking wholly satisfied with his resolution of the problem. He wrinkled his nose as he went out the door, as if he'd caught a whiff of toad-and-green-pepper stir-fry from our kitchen. As for that business with Zhongqi, he'd sort it out, he said, he'd sort it out.
The matter was never raised again and was thus left unresolved.
When I call this incident to mind, I realize that logic is both useful and useless, can both clear and muddy the waters. Confronted with the unique logic of the Maqiao Party Branch and the general masses, our puzzlement and indignation were totally useless. Mou Jisheng continued to endure public censure: his refusal to repay Zhongqi (either in cash or in kind) and to pay the grain fine became ironclad proof of his lack of good faith. From this point on, he began to show signs of depression and deliberately performed bizarre and terrifying acts, such as swallowing shards of enamel or lifting a whole dirt cart on his shoulders, or working the oil press alone and telling all his companions to sleep; but by that point it was very difficult to provoke general astonishment and acclaim, or attract acolytes. His Miss Xia also left him-this female Educated Youth with her refined features can't have wanted to have her name linked with Zhongqi's wife; even if these links were entirely groundless, she couldn't escape the imaginings of other
people. In the end, Master Black suddenly appeared before us one day with his chest covered in Mao buttons.
"What're you wearing those for, Brother Mou?"
"I'm going to liberate Taiwan." He smiled at us.
I stared, with surprise, hard into his eyes and discovered his gaze had become that of a stranger.
Master Black was diagnosed as hysterical and his residence registration was moved back to the city. He was still physically strong, apparently, and could still play basketball. He could also watch films, smoke cigarettes, ride a bike on the street-he had a full life in the city. It was just that he wasn't very good at recognizing people, would babble and have random mood swings-probably the early stages of hysteria. When an old classmate met him on the street and slapped him on the shoulder, he blinked, briefly hesitated, then turned around and walked off.
*Curse-Grinding
: Maqiao people had a whole set of procedures for taking revenge on bad elements from barbarian parts: "curse-grinding." Take, for example, someone who shat indiscriminately on Maqiao's ancestral graves, or was rude to Maqiao women. Without changing their voices or facial expressions, Maqiao people would covertly circle three times around this foreign visitor. After this had been done, they'd quietly bide their time until the visitor had gone into the mountains or the forests. When this moment came, they'd mutter incantations under their breath, complex, tongue-twisting rhymes that broke all the mountain place-names up, then mixed them all together: this was called their mountain incantation. Usually, the words of the incantation were highly effective. Their evil-doing victims would turn this way and that, unable to tell east from west, walking and walking till they returned to where they'd started, aware of the ever-darkening sky over their heads and with no one to call to for help. In the mountains, they might be hungry and cold, might step on an iron trap, might stir up hornets or ants and get stung till their faces and bodies swelled up with blood. People even said that there'd once been an ox-rustler from barbarian parts who'd died on the mountain, who'd never re-emerged from the sparse fir grove on the north face of Tianzi Peak.
