“Wu Yunyu, stand up for me,” she said calmly. “It wasn’t me!” he bellowed. She just smiled and said, “Why are you so edgy? Why shout?” “Well, it wasn’t me,” he muttered, tapping the top of his desk with his fingernails. “Wu Yunyu,” she said, “any person of worth takes responsibility for his actions.” He abruptly stopped tapping the desk and slowly raised his head, his expression turning mean. He threw his book to the floor, wrapped his slate board and slate pencil in a piece of blue cloth, tucked it under his arm, and said with a sneer, “So what if I kicked that desk over? I’m not going to stick around this shitty school! I never wanted to be here in the first place, but you talked me into it.” He walked arrogantly toward the door. He was tall and big-boned, the perfect image of a coarse, unreasonable individual. Ji Qiong-zhi stood in the doorway, blocking his way. “Get out of the way!” he said. “What do you think you’re doing?” Ji smiled sweetly and said, “I’m going to show a thieving punk like you” – she struck him in the knee with a flying kick with her right foot – “that if you do something evil” – Wu Yunyu groaned in pain and crumpled to the floor – “that you’ll be punished!” Wu took the wrapped slate board from under his arm and flung it at Ji Qiongzhi. It hit her in the chest. Protecting her injured breast with her arms, she moaned. Wu Yunyu stood up and said in a blustery voice that belied his fear, “You don’t scare me. I’m a third-generation tenant farmer. Every member of my family – aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews – is a poor peasant. I was born by the side of the road where my mother was begging for food!” Rubbing her sore breast, Ji Qiongzhi said, “I hate dirtying my hands on a mangy dog like you.” She laced the fingers of her hands and bent them back. Crack! Crack! Her knuckles popped. “I don’t care if you’re a third-generation tenant farmer or a thirtieth-generation tenant farmer, I’m still going to teach you a lesson!” With a blur, her fist landed on Wu’s cheek. He yelped and staggered from the blow. The next blow landed in his ribs, followed by another kick in the ankle. He lay spreadeagled on the floor, crying like a baby. Ji then grabbed him by the neck and lifted him to his feet, smiling as she looked into his ugly face. As she backed him to the door, she drove her knee into his belly and gave him a shove. Wu Yunyu lay face-up on a pile of bricks. “You,” Ji Qiongzhi announced, “are hereby expelled from this school.”
5
They stopped me on the path between the school and the village, each holding a springy mulberry switch, the bright sunlight casting a waxy sheen onto their faces. The gentle warmth of the sun’s rays brought special luster to Wu Yunyu’s snakeskin cap and swollen cheek, Guo Qiusheng’s sinister eyes, Ding Jingou’s funguslike ears, and the black teeth of Wei Yangjiao, who had a reputation in the village of being particularly crafty. I planned to get past them by hugging the side of the path, but Wei Yangjiao blocked my way with his mulberry switch. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked timidly. “What are we doing, you little bastard?” The whites of his crossed eyes leaped in their sockets like moths. “We’re teaching a lesson to the bastard son of a redheaded foreign devil!” “I didn’t do anything to you,” I complained. Wu Yunyu’s switch landed on my backside, creating hot currents of pain. Then the others joined in: four mulberry switches landed on my neck, my back, my backside, my legs. By then I was howling, so Wei Yangjiao took out a bone-handled knife and waved it under my nose. “Shut up!” he demanded. “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll cut out your tongue, gouge out your eyes, and slice off your nose!” Sunlight glinted coldly off the blade; properly terrified, I shut my mouth.
I was pinned down under their knees while they attacked the backs of my legs with their switches, like wolves ganging up on a sheep and driving it into the wildwoods. Water flowed silently down the ditches on either side of the path, bubbles bursting on the surface and releasing a stink that grew stronger as dusk settled in. I kept turning back to plead, “Let me go, big brothers,” but that only made them hit me harder, and whenever I cried out, Wei Yangjiao was there to shut me up. I had no choice but to quietly take the beating, go where they wanted to take me.
After crossing a footbridge made of dried stalks, they stopped me in a field of castor flowers. By then my backside was wet – blood or urine, hard to tell. Red rays of sunset were draped across their bodies as they stood in a line. The tips of their mulberry switches were torn and ragged, and so green they looked black. The plump fanlike leaves of the castor plants were home to big-bellied katydids that chirped bleakly, and the strong odor of castor flowers brought tears to my eyes. Wei Yangjiao turned to Wu Yunyu and asked fawningly, “What are we going to do with him, big brother?” As he rubbed his swollen cheek, he muttered, “I say we kill him!” “No,” Guo Qiusheng said, “we can’t do that. His brother-in-law is deputy county head, and his sister’s also an official. If we kill him, our lives are as good as over.” “We can kill him,” Wei Yangjiao said, “and dump the body into the Black Water River. Within days, he’ll be food for ocean turtles, and nobody will be the wiser.” “You can count me out if you plan to kill him,” Ding Jingou said. “His brother-in-law, Sima Ku, who’s killed lots of people, might show up, and he’d capable of wiping out our whole families.”
I listened to them discuss my fate and future like a disinterested observer. I wasn’t afraid, and never entertained the thought of running away. I was in a state of suspended animation. I even had time to look far off in the distance, where I saw the blood-red meadows and golden Reclining Ox Mountain off to the southeast, and the boundless expanse of dark green crops due south. The banks of the Black Water River, as it snaked its way east, were hidden behind tall grain and reappeared behind the shorter stalks; flocks of white birds formed what looked like sheets of paper as they flew over waters I couldn’t see. Incidents from the past flashed into my head, one after another, and I suddenly felt as if I’d been living on this earth for a hundred years already. “Go on, kill me,” I said. “You can kill me. I’ve lived long enough!”
Looks of astonishment flashed in their eyes. After exchanging glances among themselves, they all turned back to me, as if they hadn’t heard me right.
“Go on, kill me!” I said resolutely, before starting to cry. Sticky tears ran down my face and into my mouth, salty, like fish blood. My plea had put them in an awkward position. Again they exchanged glances, letting their eyes talk for them. So I upped the ante: “I beg you, gentlemen, finish me off now. I don’t care how you do it, just make it fast, so I won’t suffer much.”
“You think we don’t have the guts to kill you, is that it?” Wu Yunyu said, cupping my chin in his rough fingers and staring me in the eye.
“No,” I said, “I’m sure you do. All I’m asking is that you make it quick.”
“Men,” Wu Yunyu said, “he’s put us in a sticky situation, and killing him is about the only way out. We can’t back down now, no matter what happens. It’s time to finish him off.”
“You do it, then,” Guo Qiusheng said. “I’m not going to.”
“Is that mutinous talk I hear?” Wu said as he grabbed Guo by the shoulders and shook him. “We’re four locusts on a string, so nobody better think about taking off. If you even try, I’ll make sure people know what you did to that goofy girl in the Wang family.”