Mother was there already, right behind him. “Jintong, what are you doing?” she asked in a voice that crackled with age. “Mother,” he blurted out in agony, “I killed a rabbit… oh, the poor thing… what have I done? Why did I have to kill it?”
“Jintong,” Mother said in a stern voice she’d never used with him before, “you’re forty-two years old, and still you act like a little sissy! I haven’t said anything to you these past few days, but I can’t hold back any longer. You know I can’t be here with you forever. After I’m gone, you’ll have to shoulder the family responsibilities and get on with your life. You can’t go on like this.”
Looking down at his hands in disgust, Jintong wiped off the rabbit blood with dirt. His face was burning, stung by Mother’s criticism, and he wasn’t happy.
“You have to go out into the world and do something. It doesn’t have to be anything big.”
“What can I do, Mother?” he said dejectedly.
“Here’s what you can do. Be a man and take that rabbit down to the Black Water River. Skin it, gut it, and clean it, then take it home and cook it for your mother. I haven’t tasted meat in six months at least. Maybe you’ll have trouble skinning and gutting the rabbit, worrying about being cruel. But isn’t it just as cruel for a grown man to be sucking at a woman’s breast? Don’t ever forget that a woman’s milk is her lifeblood, and sucking it dry is ten times crueler than killing a rabbit. If you think like that, you’ll be able to do it, and it will give you a satisfying feeling. Killing an animal doesn’t bring a hunter remorse over taking a life, it brings him pleasure. And that’s because he knows that all the millions of beasts and birds in this world were put here by Jehovah to satisfy human needs. Humans are the pinnacle of existence, people represent the soul of this earth.”
Jintong nodded vigorously as he felt something hard settle slowly in his chest. His heart, which up till then had seemed to be floating on water, felt as if it were starting to sink.
“Do you know why Old Jin stopped coming?”
Jintong looked into Mother’s face. “Was it you…”
“Yes, it was me! I went to talk to her. I couldn’t stand by while she ruined my son.”
“You… how could you do that?”
She continued, ignoring his tone. “I told her that if she really loves my son, she can sleep with him, but I won’t allow you to suckle at her breast anymore.”
“Her milk saved my life!” Jintong shouted shrilly. “If not for her milk, I’d be dead now, rotting away, food for the worms!”
“I know that. Do you think I could ever forget that she saved your life?” She thumped the ground with her cane. “I’ve been a fool all these years, but I finally understand that it’s better to let a child die than let him turn into a worthless creature who can’t take his mouth away from a woman’s nipple!”
“What did she say?” he asked anxiously.
“She’s a good woman. She told me to go home and tell you that there will always be a pillow for you on Old Jin’s bed.”
“But she’s a married woman…” Jintong’s face had grown pale.
Mother threw down a challenge, her voice quaking with madness. “If you don’t show a little spunk, you’re no son of mine. Go see her. I don’t need a son who refuses to grow up. What I want is someone like Sima Ku or Birdman Han, a son who’s not afraid to cause me some trouble, if that’s what has to be done. I want a man who stands up to piss!”
3
With newfound valor, he crossed the Black Water River, as Mother had told him to, and went to see Old Jin. With Mother’s help, this was to be the start of his life as a real man. But as he set out on the road to the newly created city, his courage left him like a tire with a slow leak. The high-rises, with mosaic inlays on the sides, were impressive in the sunlight, while at a number of work sites, the yellow arms of cranes swung massive prefabricated forms into place. Insistent jackhammers thudded against his eardrums, arc welders on steel girders near the sandy ridge lit up the sky more brightly than the sun. White smoke curled around a tower, and his eyes began to wander. Mother had given him directions to Old Jin’s recycling station, which was near the bay where Sima Ku had been shot all those years ago. Some of the buildings alongside the wide asphalt street had been finished, others were in the process of going up. No sign remained of the Sima family compound. The Great China Pharmaceutical Company was gone. Several large excavators were digging deep trenches in the ground. Where the church had once stood, a bright yellow, seven-story high-rise towered over its surroundings like a golden-toothed member of the nouveau riche. Red characters, each the size of an adult sheep, proclaimed in glittering fashion the power and prestige of the Dalan Branch Office of the China Bank of Industry and Commerce.
Old Jin’s recycling station was spread out over a large area, behind a plaster board fence. The scrap was separated by type: empty bottles formed a great wall that dazzled the eyes, a mountainous prism of broken glass; old tires were stacked in heaps; a mound of old plastic rose higher than a rooftop; smack in the middle of discarded metal stood a howitzer minus its wheels. Dozens of workmen, towels covering the lower half of their faces, were scampering all over the place like ants. Some were lugging tires, others were doing the sorting, while still others were loading or unloading trucks. A black wolfhound was tied to the base of a wall with the chain from an old waterwheel, still wrapped in red plastic. It appeared far more ferocious than the mongrels at the labor reform camp; its fur looked as if waxed. Lying on the ground in front of the dog were a whole roasted chicken and a half eaten pig’s foot. The watchman had a mass of unruly hair, rheumy eyes, and a deeply wrinkled face; on closer examination, he looked like the militia leader of the original Dalan Commune. A large furnace stood in the yard for melting plastic. Strange-smelling black smoke was belching out of a squat sheet-metal chimney; dust skittered along the ground. A group of scrap vendors was gathered around a large scale, arguing with the old man in charge of the scale. Jintong recognized him as Luan Ping, a salesclerk at the old Dalan Co-op. A white-haired old man rode into the station on a three-wheeled cart; it was Liu Daguan, onetime head of the local branch of the Post and Telecommunications Bureau. Once known for the way he strutted around, he was now in charge of Old Jin’s workers’ dining hall. Feeling his nerve slipping away, Jintong stood in the yard looking helpless. But a window in the simple two-story building in front of him was pushed open, and there stood the capitalist, single-breasted Old Jin in a pink bathrobe, holding her hair in one hand and waving to him with the other. “Adoptive son,” he heard her shout brazenly, “come on up!”
It seemed to him as if everyone in the yard turned to watch him walk toward the building, head down, their stares making every step an awkward one. What about my arms? Should I cross them? Let them hang straight down? Stick them in my pockets, maybe, or clasp them behind my back? Finally, he decided to let them hang at his sides, shoulders hunched, and walk the way he’d been trained during his fifteen years at the camp, like a whipped dog, slinking along with its tail between its legs, head bowed but always looking from side to side, moving as rapidly as possible alongside a wall, like a thief. When Jintong reached the bottom of the stairs, Old Jin shouted from the second floor, “Liu Daguan, my adoptive son’s here. Put on a couple more dishes.” Out in the yard, someone – he didn’t know who – sang a nasty little ditty: “If a child wants to grow up strong, he needs twenty-four wanton adoptive mothers…”