by Can Xue
I missed Woody. It was lonely without a child at home. He had no bed in the house but just slept anywhere. I used to think this was strange, but later I got used to it and felt he didn’t need a bed. He didn’t sleep much. He was always rushing about. He went out five or six times a night. I had no idea what he busied himself with. I only knew that the couple were very proud of this naughty boy. They frequently lay in bed and talked about their son’s future; they seemed to think he could save them from poverty. But they also feared this change. They said they’d leave if things changed. Woody frequently took items from the house and sold them. Once I saw him carrying on a transaction at the front door. When his mother was cooking and couldn’t find the scoop, Woody said that I had carried it off and lost it. “He just cares about having fun,” he told his mother. She stared at me, as if intending to hit me. But she didn’t. For the time being, she substituted a wooden club for the scoop. Although Woody had been mean to me, he was an interesting boy. I was crazy about him. Probably his parents felt much the same as I. This kid was adorable. I liked him. One moment, he’d be sitting at home, and the next moment he’d be on the neighbor’s roof. God knows how he got there.
Could the old man with the white beard have died? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that the master and mistress no longer cared about him. I didn’t know why, but I was saddened as I imagined the old man shut up in the trunk, as well as his face that had been cut by glass. When I remembered the earlier incident, I thought maybe he wasn’t the one who had made me faint and thrown me out on the street. Then who was it? Woody? Didn’t he want me to be close to the old man? Two days later, they really did hang a new frame on the wall. The frame, however, no longer held the old man, but a yellow chrysanthemum. This yellow chrysanthemum fell far short of the ones I remembered: it was a little washed-out and a little withered and its background was an overcast sky. After hanging the yellow chrysanthemum, the couple no longer conversed with the frame. They stood and gazed at the flower, but I didn’t know what they were thinking. I wondered if the flower was substituting for their father. I was displeased with them because at night when I planted my ear on the trunk, I still heard feeble moans. Now they paid no attention to their “dad.” They paid attention only to that flower. Finally, I realized that people’s feelings were changeable. People were so fickle! I thought, We probably aren’t the same. I—an orphan left to roast in a pottery bowl on the stove—I still remembered my parents and ancestors. And I remembered my hometown—that pasture and even the pool in the middle of the pasture. I remembered all of this really well and could call everything to mind without the slightest effort. But these two people: yesterday they had called out “Dad” as if they couldn’t leave him for even a second, and today they had completely forgotten him and were showing feeling only for the little flower. As for their father, they had put him into a shabby trunk from which he could never escape. I was too young back then and usually confused the real person with his portrait, so I was displeased and angry with the man and his wife. I made up my mind to leave their home.
I saw them pushing a pedicab out. I knew they were going to sell rice; that was what they did for a living. Generally they didn’t come back until evening. After they left, I went up to the stove and ate a huge meal, then jumped down and went outside. Their house was at the end of the row. I slid along the wall for a long time without running into anyone. The doors to the houses stood open. Where had everyone gone? All of a sudden, a child dashed out of one home. Shrill curses followed him. Sure enough, it was Woody. He went across the street and disappeared behind a strange house. I followed him and reached the front of that house. It did look like a house. It had eaves covered with grass. Looking more closely, though, I noticed it had no doors or windows. It didn’t even have walls. It was a solid thing, with two caves leading to the inside. I stood there, not daring to enter the caves. After a while, Woody walked out of one of them. He was a little bent over, to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling of the cave. He saw me and walked over. He took me in his hands and lifted me up in the air three times. Then he patted me on the head and set me down, saying, “Rat! Rat! Rat! I’ve missed you!” His clothes were filthy and full of holes. He stank. What kind of life was this little kid leading now? When he saw me staring at the dark cave, he began laughing. “This is a prison.” As he said prison, I remembered my ancestors’ cages—rows of them on the grasslands, each with a front door. If someone entered, the door automatically closed and locked. At first the buddies were excited when they went in. They collided and bumped around inside irritably, making the iron cages rock back and forth. At night, they calmed down. You can’t imagine the power of the clear, cold night air of the grasslands! But they had to stay there a long time before they would die: they knew this. When their parents walked past the cages, the children inside had already fallen into meditation. As I was thinking of this, Woody pushed me playfully and asked, “Do you want to go in? Do you?” I felt I hadn’t thought it through and so I kept retreating. Woody guffawed and told me this was a phony cave: you went in from the front and exited from the rear. “Look at me. Aren’t I all right?” Since I didn’t want to go in, he said we might as well forget it and just move around outside. We circled to the back of the house. I looked and looked again—I didn’t see any exits, that’s for sure. Woody told me, “You can’t see that kind of exit with your eyes.”
After running into Woody, I forgot why I had come out here; I was hell-bent on following him. I didn’t know why I had no willpower. Thinking of my ancestors, not one of them minded parting from mankind, as I did. My ancestors were warriors who dared to come and go on their own. Not one was afraid of dying. Woody walked and walked, and then stopped again and petted me. What did he mean by this? I grew nervous as I recalled that he had shattered the old man’s frame with a slingshot. He was actually really violent. I noticed some people standing on the roadside looking at us. Even after we walked far away, they were still watching. What was Woody plotting? We walked past row after row of houses. I never knew the slum was so big. I had only stood in the doorway of Woody’s home and had only seen places that were just a little farther away. Sometimes I saw a woman come out. When she caught a glimpse of me, it was as if she’d seen a ghost: she immediately ran back into the house to hide. So then I knew that the slum was large, but just how large I didn’t know. In my memory, the grasslands were the largest thing under the sky.
I didn’t know how long we had walked when I realized that I had once more reached the front of that solid house. Woody said, “Hey, Rat, we’re here.” It was dark, and the two caves looked at me threateningly. Saying he needed to rest, Woody entered the cave on the right. I stood there terrified, not knowing what to do. Under the streetlight ahead of me, that person appeared again. He squatted there and slaughtered a black cat. When the black cat screeched the first time, I thought I was going to lose my mind. And that’s when I entered the cave on the left side. After I entered the cave, I heard that startling screech again. I’d better hurry ahead. After five or six steps, I saw an exit and came out. I turned around and, sure enough, saw the back of that house. I wanted to return to the cave because I could still hear the cat’s screeching. Where was the cave? I recalled what Woody had told me and felt my way for a while along the wall, but to no avail. I couldn’t find the entrance. All I could do was rest for a while under the eaves. If I walked around aimlessly, there might be an accident. The cat was still screeching. It would probably die soon. I curled up and squatted in order to get warm. Two stars trembled above the wall in front of me. The night air grew colder, and the stars trembled more violently, as if they would fall. I remembered the stars in the sky above the grasslands: they were linked, motionless, in the night sky. They were stars of eternity. What in the world were these two stars? I was concerned about them. Sure enough, just as the cat screeched one last time and stopped breathing, one of the stars fell. It even skipped a couple of times in the sky and drew a “W” in white. “Hey, Rat, you mu
stn’t get lost in that kind of thing,” Woody said to me from the cave. He must be hiding in a warm place, and had left me out here in the cold. He didn’t approve of my stargazing. Okay then, I wouldn’t look. I’d close my eyes. But I opened them again right away. It was so scary: I saw—no, I couldn’t speak of the things I saw. Never. I didn’t dare shut my eyes again. My heart couldn’t stop thumping. I was still fearful. I’d better just look down. What was going on with Woody? He didn’t go home, and yet he didn’t go far away, either. He just wandered around the slum. What a strange child! Had he seen the stars in the grasslands? Probably not. If he had, he would have left here a long time ago. The city’s glass houses were nothing compared with the sky of the grasslands. One was like an elephant, the other like a centipede in the corner of a furnace. Hey! What was I thinking of just now? Was I looking down on the centipede in the corner of the furnace? Those glum things were awful. You couldn’t figure out what they were thinking. They also loved getting together, and when lots of them assembled, the scene was absolutely disgusting. Oh, the wind that I feared so much was rising again—gnawing my bones. Woody, Woody, you’re heartless. You should at least allow me shelter from the wind. I opened my mouth to scream, but I had lost my voice. Even though I tried very hard, I was the only one who could hear myself. I looked up. In the darkness above the wall, the stars had disappeared without a trace. My eyes were liberated; I could see whatever I wanted. I saw the man straddling the wall and holding the dead cat in his arms. The streetlight reflected his pale face. Every now and then, he put his nose close to the cat’s body as if sniffing it. There were some kinky people in this world. You thought he was killing cats for fun, but he looked desperately grief stricken.
It was probably almost midnight when Woody emerged from the cave. When I saw him, he was bending over in front of me. He stroked my nose, and I recoiled, for his hand was as cold as an ice cube. He said he had squatted in the icy cave most of the night. “I was frozen in there like a fish and unable to move. I have to go in there to freeze from time to time. I’d stink if I stayed outside too long.” That’s right. I recalled that Woody had never bathed at home. It hadn’t crossed my mind that it was so cold inside the cave that I would have found it utterly unbearable. Just now, I’d complained that he hadn’t let me enter. Woody said, “Nothing on your body can rot. You don’t need to freeze.” He asked me to go with him. We passed a few houses in the dark and came to a small thatched hut. Inside, an oil lamp was burning. On the floor a small copper basin was half-filled with water. Woody took a packet of powder out of his pocket and dumped it into the basin. It had a pungent aroma. After a while, a group of house mice showed up. There must have been at least ten or twenty of them. They climbed up the basin and slipped into it, and then flipped over on their ash-colored stomachs and floated up. They were in a hurry to get it over with. It didn’t take them long. I was secretly worried and kept saying to myself, “Damn, damn!” Woody bent down, dredged up the corpses, and put them in a cardboard box. Just then, the strong aroma grew so heavy that I became dizzy and nearly threw up. Woody’s voice seemed to float in the air: “Rat, oh Rat, hurry up and get in!” Something seemed to push me from behind, and I jumped and fell in. As I sank, my mind went black. I had only one thought: I’m done for.
I didn’t awaken until the next day. Maybe Woody had placed me on this rock so I could dry out in the sun. I was in unbearable pain. I opened my eyes and saw gashes all over my skin. I could see the blood inside. And Woody? Woody wasn’t there. Next to me, wheelbarrows passed one after the other. Sometimes it seemed they would crush me. I figured I’d certainly die if I continued lying there. I tried hard to roll to the side—and almost fainted from the pain. I rolled over to someone’s threshold. Outside the gate were puddles of urine. I was soaked in urine, and when it seeped into my wounds, it cut like a knife. Inside the house, a man and woman were talking. To my surprise, it was my master and his wife. The master said, “Do we have any of that spice left—the kind that Woody swiped?” His wife said, “There’s one packet left. He made off with two packets.” An aged voice spoke up in the house: “What you’re thinking of is suicidal!” Then all was quiet. I could hear the man and wife speaking softly and sighing. They must have seen me: Were they discussing what to do with me? I wished they would pick me up and carry me into the house. I longed for the days that I had spent in their home. After all, there was no place like home. There was nothing good about being covered with cuts and bruises and left at the roadside. But the master and his wife didn’t intend to take care of me. They were talking about Woody. I said to myself over and over, Woody, Woody, you little brat, what are you plotting with your parents? Just then, I heard the aged voice again, and the man and his wife ran out in a panic. They didn’t even see me. I was sure of that. “You’re the rat in their home,” that old man said from above. I exerted myself to turn and look up. I saw the old frame hanging over the door. It was vibrating slightly, and bits of glass were falling from it. This was the old man, but I couldn’t see his face. I could only see bits of glass stuck in that frame. Suddenly, a loud sound came from within, and the frame flew out and landed next to the road in front of the house. Then a wheelbarrow rolled over it. I tried several times to struggle up, but I failed. Two children ran out of this house. They bent down and took stock of me curiously for a long time. They called me Ricky. I had no idea why they gave me a person’s name. I was used to that family calling me Rat. “Ricky is going to live with us for a while. We should hide him just in case.” The taller one held me. I saw that he was one-eyed. No, he had two eyes, but they had grown together. His eyes didn’t see what was across from him, but looked at each other. How bizarre. How could two eyes look at each other? But this fact was right in front of me. Before I had time to get used to this, they shut me up in an inky-black place that had a lot of feathers. As soon as I lay down, the feathers leapt up. Although it was hard to breathe, I wasn’t in as much pain. I heard the two boys fighting, and then they said loudly in unison, “Let Great-grandfather decide! Let Great-grandfather decide!” Next I heard glass shattering. Don’t tell me there was another frame in this house.
When they opened the box where I was staying, I looked closely at the brothers: each one’s eyes had grown together. Neither looked out; each of them looked only at the other. They gave me a plate of red sauce. Its spiciness set my throat and tummy on fire. But I felt great: my pain had vanished.
I was going to stay in this home for a while. The slums were my home. It didn’t matter which house it was; I could live in any of them. How would the two children with eyes grown together treat me? Now my name was Ricky. I’d better get used to this name—Ricky. See: he has come in. Although he didn’t look at me, as soon as I saw his eyes looking at each other, I was uneasy. I wanted to hide in the pile of firewood there.
Part Four
One late autumn day, I climbed up to the thatched roof on this house. It was so relaxing there. Below, the two people were still fighting violently. They had smashed all the pottery bowls and pots to smithereens. For two months, I’d been living in fear and trepidation. Especially that older brother: whenever I saw his vicious brown eyes squeezed together in one spot, I thought I was going to die. Although these eyes threatened only each other and not me, I still felt that they concerned me. Day and night, I could hear knives being sharpened in some corner of the house. How could there be so many knives? I squatted on the rooftop, fearful that they’d find me. If I were down below, as soon as they finished fighting each other, they would vent themselves on me. Once the older brother almost cut off my ears. I surreptitiously considered whether I should leave. I’d been leading a miserable life with these brothers for several months. I often stayed hidden in a cardboard box under the bed. With nothing to do, I spent my time worrying about depressing things. Mainly I was concerned about the slums, and of those worries, I worried most about floods. I thought that if the city were inundated, the slums would become a vast body of water. I remembered
there’d been a flood more than a hundred years ago. Back then all the people in the slums escaped, leaving only the house mice. Later, in just one night, all the house mice were killed. Why hadn’t they escaped? They should have been the most alert to this kind of natural disaster. I really didn’t want the slums to turn into a vast body of water. After all, this was my home. Once I settled down in a certain home, I generally didn’t go out again, but I did take journeys around this region in my mind. I rearranged the houses here as I liked, then mixed them up, then rearranged them . . . Sometimes this was how I got through the endless, long lonely nights. In my mind, I cut the rowhouses apart into freestanding ones, each with its own cellar. A stonecutter from the city was chiseling in each cellar. I thought this kind of scene was lovely. Like the ancestor I remembered, I was an aesthetician. Because of talking with the sun, that ancestor had been burned alive by the toxic sun on the grasslands. Back then, his story was passed down throughout the pasture.
I mustn’t make any noise, because they knew I had disappeared. “Ricky! Ricky!” they shouted for me. Exasperated, they searched the entire house. Then they probably thought I had run away, and so they went out looking for me. With the house now empty, I slid down from the hole. I was exhausted and wanted to sleep. Shards of pottery were everywhere, and a lot of water had been splashed on the two beds. They had even dampened the cardboard box I slept in. Not caring whether it was wet or not, I burrowed in to sleep. Just as I was about to fall asleep, the brothers returned. The younger one screamed like a pig being slaughtered. I craned my neck and saw that his right foot had been punctured by a bamboo stick. His older brother was looking on, his two blood-red eyes staring at each other, his fists clenched. Damn, there was no way to go on sleeping. This younger brother whose face was frighteningly pale looked as if he would faint from the pain. But he was still shouting, “Ricky! Ricky! I can’t die like this!” Why was he shouting for me? Did I have something to do with his injury? Did I make him walk barefoot all the time? I slipped out of the cardboard box and over to the middle of the room. The younger brother was brandishing his hands like crazy, as if fighting with someone invisible. His wide-open eyes—like a dead fish—weren’t looking at anything. Could he be about to die? His older brother hung his head. From behind, he seemed a little sorrowful. I edged closer to him. Without looking, he kicked me—kicked me back under the bed. Huh? Didn’t either of them welcome me? But why did the younger brother shout my name? He shouted again, “Ricky, I’m going to take you along with me!” With that, he extended his hand as if to pull out the bamboo stick. Did he think I was the bamboo stick? Was he out of his mind? Oh, he really did pull it out! The bamboo stick was dripping with blood! He fell from the chair onto the floor, with his head pointed backward and his arms crossed in front of his chest. I didn’t know if he was dead or not. I quietly climbed out from under the bed and sniffed the bamboo stick on the floor. Oh, what was this? Under my very nose, the bamboo stick jumped twice and turned into a soft, succulent thing. The long sticky thing had a small eye in it. That was a shameless round eye, definitely from my race. No wonder the younger brother had called that thing “Ricky” just now. I looked again at his foot. The wound had disappeared. “You—eat that thing,” the older brother said to me. I looked at him—his eyes had turned into one! That oval eye was in the center of the space between his eyebrows. But it still had two pupils. My image was reflected in both pupils. I was really scared. I placed my head on the floor right away and waited to be hit. But the older brother didn’t attack me. He just put the thing in front of my nose and coaxed me, “Ricky, eat this. Nothing will happen if you do.” I tried to bite the thing from the end where the eye was, but that eyeball popped right out and slid down my throat. And so in my confusion, I did eat it. I didn’t have time to chew it. I sensed that it stopped in my stomach, and I tasted something salty. Was it the younger brother’s blood? I felt squeamish and just squatted in the corner gasping. I wanted to throw up. The older brother said, “Ricky, it’ll be okay after a while. Don’t worry.” Was it the eye that had given off the salty flavor? My God. In the pasture, if you looked closely you could see that kind of eye hidden under stalks of grass. That was an eye just like the ones my parents had. They were everywhere, everywhere—I was a little dizzy. I shut my eyes, wanting to fall asleep.
