The only resident of Fragrant Cedar Street ever thrown into prison was Old Shi from the sweetshop. They dragged him to the local school in chains to be publicly villifled. We sat beneath the stage, gazing up at Old Shi's gray head and the look of dejection on his face. Hanzhen was sitting up front, where everyone could gawk at her, though she was oblivious to their looks. She stared blankly at Old Shi, trussed up and on display above her.
Her mortal enemy, Shu Nong, walked up and slyly felt her pocket. When he returned, he said, "She hasn't stopped eating those dried plums. She's still got some in her pocket!" He said Lin Hanzhen was trash, just like her whole family; none of the other neighborhood boys gave him an argument on that score since they had written her off as a worn-out shoe-damaged goods. Under their breath, they called her "a little worn-out shoe." Someone even made up a stinging nursery rhyme for Hanzhen, whose mother, Qiu Yumei, accused Shu Nong of authorship.
If you walked down Fragrant Cedar Street, the one thing you could not escape was the smell of the river that flowed beneath our windows. As I indicated early on, it was like a piece of rusty metal eroding the life of Fragrant Cedar Street. You could not overlook the river's influence, for the street's time was also the river's time.
The residents of Fragrant Cedar Street were tired of putting up with their river. It had taken on the color of its pollutants, and boats from the countryside no longer plied it. One day, an old-timer hooked a rotting sack with his bamboo pole and dragged it up onto the bank. Inside he found a dead infant curled up like a shrimp, a newborn baby boy with a wrinkled face that made him look like a sleeping old man.
The residents of Fragrant Cedar Street had arrived at a point where they didn't know how to deal with their river. It could drown them, but they couldn't do anything to it in return.
One day, Shu Nong had a brilliant idea: he spread a layer of flour over a spot beneath the bridge, then dropped in his fishing line. The minutes lingered until there was a violent tug on his line.
He jerked it out of the water. On the end was a worn-out leather shoe-dainty, T-shaped, made for a woman. An onlooker recognized it as one of the shoes Hanli was wearing when she jumped into the river. He threw it back in and murmured, "What cursed luck."
Why Shu Nong got into trouble isn't all that clear. Let's say it's an ordinary winter morning and Shu Nong is searching for his schoolbag after breakfast. He can rarely find his schoolbag before departing for school. So when he spots it under Shu Gong's cot, he gets down on his hands and knees to get it. But a sleepy Shu Gong presses down on him. "Quit goofing off." "Who's goofing off? I'm getting my schoolbag." Shu Gong pins him to the floor and says, "Put a bowl of porridge on the stove for me before you go." A simple request. "That's not my job," Shu Nong replies. "Do it yourself." Shu Gong narrows his eyes. "You're really not going to do it?" he asks.
"No," Shu Nong says. "Get out of bed, and do it yourself." Shu Gong snaps into a sitting position and throws off the covers. "OK, I'm up." He gets out of bed, grumbling, and takes the bowl of porridge over to the stove; then he gives Shu Nong a long look out of the corner of his eye. He jumps up and down to keep warm, bouncing straight into Shu Nong's little room. "You're a lucky bastard I don't feel like pounding you right now," he says as he pulls back the covers on Shu Nong's bed to feel the sheet. It is dry. With a grin, he undoes his pants and relieves himself on Shu Nong's sheet. When he is finished, he snaps his fingers. "Father will come in pretty soon and see you've wet your bed again. I'll let him pound you for me."
Shu Nong stands there stunned, hugging his schoolbag to his chest, his face turning red; instinctively, he runs over to the water vat, scoops out a ladleful of water, and dumps it on Shu Gong's bed. Shu Gong doesn't move a finger. He dresses and says, "Go ahead, sprinkle away. No one will believe I wet my bed, and you'll still be the one to get pounded."
Shu Nong leaves for school after soaking his brother's bed. By lunchtime, he has forgotten the morning's incident-until he sees that Mother has hung out the sheets to dry. Old Shu glares darkly at him.
"I didn't wet the bed, Shu Gong did it."
Old Shu roars, "Liar! You're not only a bed wetter, you're a liar!"
Shu Nong defends himself: "Shu Gong pissed on my bed."
Old Shu jumps up angrily. "Stop lying! Shu Gong was never a bed wetter. Why would he want to piss on your bed?"
"Ask him yourself," Shu Nong says as he sits down at the table and picks up his rice bowl.
Old Shu rushes up and grabs the bowl out of his hand, then picks him up and flings him out the door. "Fuck you, you little bastard!" he bellows. "Nothing to eat or drink for you. Then we'll see if you still wet the bed. And if you still feel like lying!"
Shu Nong sits on the ground in front of the door, looking up at his father and tracing words in the dirt with his finger-fuck is one of them. Old Shu slams the door shut, and Shu Nong thumps it a time or two as he climbs to his feet and brushes off the seat of his pants. The cat chooses this moment to spring out through the window. It mews at Shu Nong. It seems to be chewing on a piece of cooked fish.
"Meeow," Shu Nong mews like the cat, then follows it down the street, heading east, all the way to the auto-repair shop, where he loses track of the cat. Shu Nong enters the repair shop, where some greasy mechanics are working on cars, their heads hidden under the hoods. Shu Nong squats nearby and watches them work. "What are you doing here?" one of them asks. "Get out right now."
Shu Nong says, "I'm only watching, what's wrong with that?"
A can of gasoline sits on the floor in front of some beat-up cars. Shu Nong is squatting next to it. He sniffs the air to breathe in the gasoline smell. "I know that's gasoline," he says, "and that a single match will light it off."
"You're right," the mechanic says, "so don't play with it. If it goes up, that's the end of you."
Shu Nong hangs around watching them for a long time, and vvhen they realize he is gone, they also discover the missing gas can. They don't associate the one with the other.
Shu Nong walks home with the gas can. People see him, but the problem is no one knows what he plans to do with the stuff. He walks up to the dark building at number 18 and, after hiding the can behind the door, tiptoes inside, where he notes that both his father and Shu Gong are asleep. He softly closes his father's door and jams a toothbrush into the eye of the latch hook. Then he approaches his brother's bed. Shu Gong, whose head is under the covers, is snoring away. Shu Nong curses the covers under his breath: "Watch me even the score, you bastard." He fetches the gas can. The cat has returned home, he discovers, and is perched atop the can, staring with its lustrous-green cat's eyes. Shu Nong makes a face at the cat and shoves it off the can, which he carries over to Shu Gong's bed. He pours gasoline on the floor under the bed, smelling its aromatic scent as it spreads silently throughout the room and hearing the dry floorboards soak it up. He walks, and he pours, and he watches the clear liquid seep under the door into Father's room. That should do it, he tells himself. Confident that the gasoline will ignite, he puts the can down and takes a look around; everything is napping, the old, wormy furniture included-all except for the cat, which is watching him with its shiny green eyes. Cat, Shu Nong muses, watch me even the score now. He takes a box of matches from Shu Gong's pocket. His hand shakes; he attributes that to mild fear. So he grits his teeth, lights a match, and drops it to the floor, releasing a brief red flame. The fire takes hold under Shu Gong's bed and begins to spread. He hears the cat screech in agony and watches it streak ahead of the flames.
Shu Nong rushes desperately upstairs, without knowing why. The Lins' door is closed. Qiu Yumei and Hanzhen poke their heads out the kitchen door. "What's gotten into him?" Qiu Yumei asks.
"He's going crazy," Hanzhen says.
Shu Nong ignores them in his race to the rooftop. The first chaotic sounds rise to greet him as he crawls to the roof's edge. He believes he can hear Shu Gong scream as if his soul had left his body and Father trying with all his might to yank open the toothbrush-jammed door. He can even hear bumping sounds as Hanzhen tumbles down the stairs. By then, Qiu Yumei has thrown open a window and is shouting at the top of her lungs: "Fire fire fire fire fire fire…"
Shu Nong sees no sign of fire and wonders why. From his vantage point on the roof, he notices a red glow in one of the roof vents, then sees the cat emerge amid a ball of flames. The cat screeches as it burns, giving off a strange charred smell. Its eyes turn from green to purple; it seems poised to pounce on Shu Nong, who contemplates going over to pick it up. But he has second thoughts because of the flames licking its body. How could the cat have caught fire? How could it have followed me onto the roof? Shu Nong watches the cat slink forward a few steps, then crouch down and stop moving. The flames on its body die out, leaving a ball of cinders behind. Shu Nong realizes that his cat is dead-incinerated. He reaches out to feel the corpse-it is hot to the touch. He rubs the cat's eyes. They are still alive-deep purple and shiny bright.