Xiongshi's head was both unusually big and unusually round. He grew into quite a sturdy figure, his fluttering eyes as bright and beautiful as his mother Shuishui's. Just one of his sidelong glances dripped with feminine charm, reminding people of how Shuishui had been in her days as an actress. When people saw him, they couldn't help giving his bottom or his cheeks a pinch, vying with each other to squeeze his irresistible charms. He hated this kind of harassment, and unless offered something nice to eat would imperiously reject such advances, giving outsiders a steely once-over. With one roll of the eyes he could gauge whether you really had something to eat in your pocket, whether it was really worth trusting your smiling face, or whether he should act cool and calm for the time being and bide his time. He hated mushy talk from old people more than anything, it drove him mad, to curse then kick then spit-until, pushed to his limit, he would suddenly bite. His lion's jaws bit everything under the sun, starting with his mother's breast. No one who'd sat next to him at primary school, whether male or female, escaped his teeth. In the end, even the teacher's luck ran out.
He refused to produce a self-criticism in front of the headmaster for hacking at the table edge with his knife. "Self-criticize this, self-criticize that! I've had enough of doing things your way!"
As the head teacher dragged him by the ear to the teacher's room, he retaliated by biting the head teacher, then fled far, far away, holding up his pants and swearing his head off.
"I'll get you, you horrible brat!" raged the head teacher.
"You might beat me today, but just wait until you get old and come by my place with a stick, I'll push you into a great big pit!"
He was forecasting a victory many years in the future.
The head teacher followed him off into the distance, brandishing a carrying pole.
He couldn't catch up with him, of course, and soon the ball of flesh that was Xiongshi had rolled up to the house facing the mountains, and stood there, arms akimbo, keeping up the flow of abuse. "Hey, Li Xiaotang, you big old pig, your pubes are showing…"
He was using the headmaster's full name to curse him, although I don't know how he found it out.
Going back to school was, of course, now out of the question. Other people said that Zhihuang had brought up a complete menace through lack of discipline. Him, a student? You'd train a dog before you trained him!
Later, he would often come down to look at the school, viewing from a distance the students reading aloud in unison, doing gymnastics, or playing ball. If his former classmates saw him, he would make as if he was playing horse, "Whoah there, chaaaaaarge," galloping off into the distance, acting as if he were having a grand old time, as if he were taking absolutely no notice of what was going on in the school.
One day, playing in the sands with a few kids, he started to antagonize the others by grabbing hold of a battered overshoe which he was using to shovel sand. A few of them resolved to take revenge by shitting into the village well and framing Xiongshi for the deed. Saying he'd done it, they went with great fanfare to where the adults were working to report him. The adults were all furious at this news and Shuishui wanted to hide her face in shame; turning red, then white in anger, she yelled at Xiongshi: "Can't stand it if you don't get into trouble, can you?"
"I… didn't do it."
"Still talking back! All these people saw you-d'you think they're blind, got beans for eyes?"
"I didn't do it."
"There's no water to drink, so you'd better go fetch some! You fetch water for every single family, go fetch it from the river!"
"I didn't do it!"
"Still won't own up?" Shuishui gave him a resounding blow to the face. Xiongshi swayed back, swayed forward; the impact instantly produced a deep red imprint of her fingers on his face.
Seeing that Shuishui was prepared to go further, a few women standing around stepped forward to calm her down, telling her to let it be, kids don't understand anything, they're always like that, knock them around a bit, okay, but you don't want to beat them too hard… These mediations in fact only enraged Shuishui yet further, acting as a kind of pressure on her: if she didn't become more furious, more ferocious, she would have had no way of differentiating herself from everyone else. It wasn't worth anybody's while to try and calm her down-a bad end was already in sight. Under this kind of pressure, she had no option but to roll up her sleeves and plunge on. Pow, wham, two more slaps exploded; not with the sound made off a human face, more like the cracking of a wooden bucket.
Xiongshi bit his lip hard and stared fixedly at his mother. Tears gleamed unsteadily in his eyes; in the end they didn't fall, but paused then slowly retreated.
He didn't return home that evening, nor the next day, nor the day after that… still no Xiongshi. Zhihuang and Shuishui searched everywhere in the mountains, helped by the villagers. Just as everyone was pretty much despairing, an old herbalist from Zhangjia District found Xiongshi in a burrow in the mountains. Wild in appearance, he was asleep in a nest of thatch grass, and apart from the occasional flash of his eyes, all else was filth and grime, the clothes on his back ripped and torn into strips of tattered cloth. For a whole eleven days, he had survived on wild fruits, leaves, and tree bark; when he was taken back home and Shuishui boiled him two eggs, his face contorted into a terrible grimace after just one bite. He ate no more, and ran outside to sit under a tree, staring blankly at everyone, as he ripped up the grass around him in an automatic reflex and stuffed it into his mouth. The onlookers were all astounded: surely only animals prefer grass to boiled eggs?
Probably because of this history, Shuishui lost her mental grip after Xiongshi was obliterated in the huge explosion, and for some time refused to believe that her son was no more. She would run up to the mountains and shout herself hoarse calling her son's name-she still believed he was hiding in some hole in the mountains. This went on until people had no choice but to show her what they had all along held back: the finger, the half of the little foot and the two bowls containing splinters of bone and flesh. Her eyeballs bulged terrifyingly, then she fell into a dead faint.
When she came to, some of the women said to her, "You have to think of the bigger picture, in a situation like this all you can do is think of the bigger picture. Your Xiongshi left you early, but wasn't it a dear life? No worries about food, or clothes, messing about all day long, then when he'd messed about as much as he could, he left, no illness, no pain, he was lucky. Things could have only got worse for him."
"Dear life" refers to a man's life before the age of eighteen, or a woman's life before the age of sixteen. "Full life" refers to a man's life up to the age of thirty-six and to a woman's life up to the age of thirty-two. To live this long is to live fully, and anything after that is "cheap life," worthless. By this logic, an early death is of course better, of higher value.
Xiongshi's parents had no reason to grieve.
The village women gathered around Shuishui's bed, each producing a platitude more beautiful than the last. Ah, Shuishui, your Xiongshi never went hungry, isn't that much better? Much better that your Xiongshi never felt the cold. Much better your Xiongshi never saw his dad die, his mom die, didn't go after his brothers and sisters, never saw a cloud pass over him. If heaven brought him back to life, he'd have to find a wife, set up home on his own, fight with his brothers for a patch of land one day, fight with his sisters for a bite to eat the next, row with his mom and dad in between, where was the fun in that? You know what our life's like, harvesting in the boiling heat, sun baking overhead, water steaming up below, dark both ends of the working day, soon as day breaks, it's off to the fields, you can only feel with your hands whether it's rice or grass. You know what our life's like, fixing irrigation under a full moon, shoulders rubbed raw, tramping over ice in bare feet, so cold you wet yourself. What was so great about that, hey? Your Xiongshi left before trouble came knocking at his door, he was the cat that had all the cream, then went out with a bang. He's still got his dad to weep, his mom to wail, so
many uncles to give him a good send-off, it's really better this way- you've got to think of the bigger picture.
They also started to talk about an old laborer in the upper village, a destitute old man whose children had all died before him and who now lived like a dog, lame in one leg, unable even to fetch water for himself- he'd had all the trouble he was going to have. Think about it, sister, if your Xiongshi were destined to have a long life, a cheap life, wouldn't he be much worse off?
They were unified around the belief that people should die young; it was just that they were trapped, unable to die. Only Xiongshi could die good and early, only Xiongshi had this stroke of luck.
In the end, Shuishui decided to stop crying.
* Cheap
: When old people met each other, they would always ask "Still cheap?" meaning how were they feeling. This word was often used when inquiring about old people, for example "Yanzao's ma is still as cheap as anything, she eats two bowls of rice at a sitting." In Maqiao language, old age is cheap life, and the longer your life the cheaper it gets. Despite this, some people still hope to live longer, until their eyesight fails, their hearing goes, their teeth have fallen out, their spirit has left them, they're bedridden, can't recognize anybody-living is still living.
Probably thanks to the efforts of some well-intentioned types, the character for "cheap" (pronounced pan) is hardly ever used when this expression is seen written down. When recording dialect, "cheap"pan is usually changed to the homophonic character pan meaning healthy. "Are you healthy" has a much nicer ring to it and has passed into everyday usage, to alleviate the harsh pitch of human life.
By this linguistic reckoning, Maqiao's cheapest life was a destitute cripple, called Old Pa Zisheng. He himself had no idea how many years he had lived-in any case he'd outlived his sons, grandsons, greatgrandsons… Even though his grandsons had met a premature death, his life still limped on. His ability to stay alive was starting to make him rather anxious: when he made up his mind to hang himself, the rope broke; having made up his mind to throw himself into the pond, he jumped only to discover that the water was too shallow. One evening, as he called on the Zhihuang household to borrow a bowl, the door was opened by Shuishui. Raising the lamp in her hand, she first saw the face of the old man, then taking a closer look, discovered that behind the old man were two round, shining balls, like two lamps. Rather surprised by this, she raised the lamp even higher. Her whole body went weak: they weren't lamps! It turned out that a large, downy head was breathing raspily behind Pa Zisheng, its towering spine dimly swaying in the darkness.
Tiger! Those two lamps they're tiger's ayaaaaaaaes!
Shuishui couldn't remember whether or not she had in fact cried out; all she could remember was yanking the old man inside, then bolting the door tightly, sticking in a broom then two hoes for good measure.
When her breathing had once more returned to normal, she sneaked a look out of the window, but the field was completely empty except for a faint suspension of moonlight. The two lamps had already gone.
The tiger never reappeared; most probably, it had just come upon Maqiao by chance. Far from rejoicing at this event, Pa Zisheng was filled with sorrow. "You see how cheap I am? Even tigers reckon there's no meat on me, they follow me along but can't even be bothered to take a bite. Where's the good in someone like me staying alive, hey?"
*Dream-Woman
: Shuishui was from Pingjiang County but was married in faraway Maqiao, on this side of the Luo River. Her little sister, it was said, was a famous actress in Pingjiang, a good opera singer, whose dainty lotus-flower gait had won her quite a following. It was also said that in the past Shuishui had been even more beautiful and talented than her sister, it was just that once she'd given birth to Xiongshi, her back began to ache, and her voice cracked and broke; as soon as her mouth opened, it produced a sound of breath hissing through her bronchial tubes, and any words came out harsh and splintered. From then on, her clothes were always in disarray and her gown was never buttoned up right, neither at the top nor bottom. Her hair was wild, her face unwashed; her features were always ringed in black. She would often weave cloth, hunt out pig fodder, sift rice chaff with women much older than she was; listening to them coughing up phlegm, clearing their noses, she probably didn't have to worry about her own appearance, didn't need to mark in any special way the passing of those drab, gloomy days. Once females moved to their husband's house, particularly after they had had children, they became women, wives, and stopped taking any great care of themselves. However, it did seem that Shuishui's appearance was excessively unkempt, as if it was some kind of drive to abuse herself intentionally, a drive to hold herself hostage in obstinate retaliation against someone or other. There were plenty of times when she went out to look for pig food, hips swivelling to both sides, tramping along in a worn-out pair of men's shoes, yelling out raucously "heyaheyaheya" to chase the chickens out of the vegetable patch, the deep red menstruation stain in the crotch of her pants on full display to all she passed. It would be hard to say this was workaday carelessness.
After Xiongshi died, Shuishui became a dream-woman, what's known in Mandarin as a mentally ill person: her face often wore a flickering smile and she developed an absolute intolerance of potato plants- one look and she'd want to rip them out by the roots, as if she believed that her son was hiding under the ground and all she had to do was grab the potato plants, pull them up, then she could pull her son out of the earth. Usually, she was rather better in the mornings than in the afternoons, better on clear days than on rainy. At these times, her gaze was clear, and the way she behaved toward people and things and bustled around inside and out wasn't that different from ordinary people. She was, at best, someone of few words. Her worst, most agitated times came at dusk on rainy days. As the clouds drew in ever more gloomily, her breathing became rougher and heavier, and anything-the sound of the water drip-drip-dripping off the eaves, a withered leaf flying in the window, catching sight of the base of a wall or foot of the bed permeated with damp, the gradual blurring of neighbors' faces into darkness, or the melancholy cackle of ducks and chickens suddenly coming out of any part of the house-could send her into a state of trance. Moonlight was even worse: one glimpse of moonlight outside the window sent her body into a fit of uncontrollable trembling, she would put on a flowered head scarf, take it off, then put it back on, repeating this countless times.
If Zhihuang hadn't roped her hands together, she could have carried on like this all night. She would always say that the head scarf wasn't hers, and rip it off. She'd then say that her head was cold, she had to wear the head scarf, and put it back on.
In the end, Shuishui and Zhihuang got divorced and her parents took her back to Pingjiang. When I revisited Maqiao many years later, I asked about her. People were very surprised that I didn't know what had happened to Shuishui, almost as surprised as if I hadn't heard of Chairman Mao. Haven't you heard about her? You really haven't heard? They found my state of ill-informed ignorance insufferable and pitiful at the same time. Shuishui was really famous now, they said, her parent's home was always surrounded by cars, motorbikes, and bicycles; peddlers and traders all relied on her psychic powers to do business. People sought her out from miles and miles around to ask her to guess winning lottery numbers. At that time, tickets for the welfare lottery, the sports lottery, and so on were all selling like wildfire; the main street in town was in a depression, no one browsed around, and customers in teahouses and restaurants were few and far between-everyone was converting their money into lottery tickets. The rural cadres were all furiously agitating: if things went on like this, with no one even buying pesticide or fertilizer, then how would production continue? Would business still keep going?
Predicting the winning number became the most urgent topic of conversation. At this time, the mass focus of attention lay not on officials or big businessmen, even less on intellectuals, but on the insane. Suddenly people everywhere were asking for and searching out these l
unatics, bowing and scraping before them, willing to bribe them with bundles of money, begging them to indicate the winning lottery number so that when they came to buy tickets, money and victory would roll in with one stroke of the pen. Word spread that in these matters, children were more gifted than adults, women more gifted than men, illiterates more gifted than the educated, but even more important, the insane were more gifted than the sane.
Shuishui, it must be said, stood out particularly prominently amongst her fellow lunatics; her predictions were said to hit the mark repeatedly, none failed, and she had already made lots of lottery players rich overnight. Her fame, of course, spread far and wide.
In the county seat, I met an editor from a broadcasting station who, surprised to hear I knew Shuishui, said that he'd also gone to search her out. This man, who'd spent four years at college, went on and on about it, about how he'd dashed to Pingjiang by long-distance bus, had waited almost five hours before he'd met Shuishui. He hadn't gained any concrete indication from her-the dream-woman would never have so easily revealed Heaven's designs to anyone. Shuishui took one look at him, and simply pointed at a picture on the wall which showed the sun rising out of a mountain. The editor, of course, was an intelligent man, and readily took the hint; on returning, he immediately thought "the East is Red" (a famous revolutionary song of the Maoist era), took the numbers of the notation from the first line of the song The East is Red (5562) and filled in his lottery card accordingly. A few days later, when the result was publicly announced, he almost fainted in surprise: the winning number was 1162!
Shaogong, han - A Dictionary of Maqiao.html Page 11
