People from all over Fragrant Cedar Street converge on number 18. To Shu Nong, the mob on the run looks like a pack of skittish rats bearing down on his home with loud screeches. He assumes that the building is about to be engulfed in flames, so what possesses them to enter it? He pokes his head over the edge to see what is going on down there. Black smoke pours out of the windows but no flames that he can see. How come? His thoughts are interrupted by a shout from below. "Shu Nong, it's Shu Nong, he's on the roof!" It's Shu Gong down below, brandishing his fists at Shu Nong. He's in his shorts-no sign of flames. Shu Nong wonders why Shu Gong hasn't been burned. Maybe he was pretending to be asleep. Shu Nong sees someone bring up a long ladder and lean it against the building. It's Old Shu. Shu Nong is getting lightheaded. Things aren't working out as planned. Everything is going wrong. He tries to push the ladder away but can't budge it. Old Shu, his face blackened with soot, is climbing toward him. Shu Nong clings to the top of the ladder. "Don't come up here!" he screams. "Don't come up here!" Old Shu keeps coming, silently, menacingly. Again Shu Nong tries to push the ladder away, but still he can't budge it. He watches his father's smoke-blackened face draw nearer and feels something cold drip from his heart. "Don't come up here!" Shu Nong screams hysterically. "I'll jump if you take another step!" A curtain of silence falls upon the crowd below. Everyone is looking up at Shu Nong. Old Shu stops his advance and joins the others in gazing at Shu Nong for about three seconds before continuing up the ladder. When his cramped fingers touch the roof, he sees Shu Nong leap high into the air like a cat and sail over his head.
With their own eyes, the residents of Fragrant Cedar Street see Shu Nong plunge into the river. Amid shrieks of horror, Shu Nong's voice is the shrillest and loudest of all. It sounds like a cat or, in the final analysis, just like Shu Nong's own voice.
It was an autumn day in 1974 on Fragrant Cedar Street. I think it was some southern holiday but can't recall which one. At dusk, two young northerners were walking from one end of the street to the other. They had stopped off on their way from Shanghai to Nanjing. As they headed down Fragrant Cedar Street, they saw a white ambulance tearing down the narrow street and a crowd of people running toward a dark building. They joined the surging crowd. The building and the area around it were packed with men, women, and children, all seemingly talking at the same time, not a word of which the two northerners could understand. But they detected the subtle odor of gasoline coming from inside the building. "Children playing with fire!" a woman said in Mandarin.
Afterward, the northerners were on the bridge, looking down at the river, its green-tinged black water flowing silently beneath them. When debris from upriver floated under the bridge, it bumped against the stone pilings. They spotted a little white sheath floating past and smiled at each other. One kept silent, but the other said, "Well, fuck me." They were still watching the river when they spotted a charred little animal float by, lying heavily in the water as darkness settled in, making it disappear from time to time. One of the northerners pointed to it and said, "What was that?" "It looked like a cat," the other one said.
Translated By Howard Goldblatt
Wang Meng – A String of Choices
It all began with that toothache of mine. In the beginning, it was just a little nagging pain. At the time, I still believed in medicine as a science, in science leading the way on the path to freedom and happiness, that knowledge is power, and all the rest.
Believing is acting. Never doubting science, I had bestirred myself and sallied forth the night before to stand in line at the you-know-where. Umbrella over my head, galoshes on my feet, and raincoat wrapped around my shoulders, I stood in the line. I don't remember whether it was a starry night or a drizzling night or if it was pouring bucketfuls. The stronger shock to the nerves always drowns out the weaker. (You'll know what I mean if you keep on reading.) That particular dental clinic was famed far and wide for constructing removable root canals under your cavities. It had been written up in the papers for "exemplary performance," and since then the long lines outside its gates had grown even longer. A mountain-climber friend whom I had always admired offered me his tent and suggested that I install myself outside the registry office, right under its little window slot. He also made me a present of compressed biscuits fortified with vitamins and iron.
A formidable lady doctor, despite the fact that she did not seem to weigh over one hundred pounds, took custody of me and jabbed a needleful of Novocain into my upper jaw without wasting time on preliminaries. She vanished before I had time to make out if her eyes were double lidded. Following on her heels, a creature whom I deduced to be an intern shoved a coldly glistening pair of pliers into my mouth. From the viewpoint of patients, I would propound the view that interns are the fountainhead of all our woes. On this assumption, I deduced with dead certainty that that particular ultra-efficient muscle-rippling athlete was none other than a blasted intern. "Do you feel anything?" he asked.
I nodded. Would it be toothache if I didn't? Wasn't it on account of this particular feeling that I had undertaken to quarter myself in front of the registry office? Would anyone be spiritual enough to do it just for the sake of the experience? All living creatures are in possession of the senses, so who among the living would own to being so bereft? And anyway, when a formidable medical personage puts such an awesome question to you, what can you do but nod? One of the golden precepts of life is that nodding your head is always better than shaking it. To be more precise, taking into account all aspects of the problem, I might add that if the question hanging in the balance is whether or not to chop off a head, then shake your head by all means, and let the other head stay on. But as a general principle, I'd say that nodding is always better than shaking.
And thus he proceeded to pull out my tooth. He pulled at my chin, he pulled at my neck, he pulled at my head, he crashed through my cavities. And why not? It is not for nothing that dentistry here is formally categorized as surgery. It refuses to be designated as tooth extraction but must puff itself up as surgery. Under such a heading, it is transformed into something profound, refined, erudite. The pliers of surgery pulled my soul out of its internal sockets into the external light of day. I broke into a cold sweat, I saw sparks, I fainted.
What a sissy!
As I was gasping for breath, I thought to myself that I should bring in a piece of self-criticism within three days at the latest. Being a sissy was no laughing matter. It was a serious lapse. The proletariat are all offspring of the legendary Guan Yu, otherwise known as Yun Chang, who had his flesh cut open and his bones scraped of a poisonous infection while he played chess.
It was only on the bus on my way back that I felt the area where the pliers had attacked suddenly turn to wood. Praise be to anesthetics, fruit of science. The workers and businessmen who have brought you into the world have not stinted on the ingredients of the recipe, after all. After the dissemination of extreme pain, I then experienced the transcendence of numbness. God help my jaw!
Now you understand why I, a professor living in the twentieth century, squarely facing the problems of modernization, would cringe at the thought of tooth extraction. You now see why I look on the various branches of dentistry as the torture chambers of the Japanese military police, why I look on all dental clinics as versions of purgatory. Teeth, for the last dozen years, have been my supreme concern. To protect my teeth, to protect my wife, to protect my honor-the three-protect principle reaches tragic dimensions, tugging at my heartstrings. In compliance with this principle, I brush my teeth five times a day, once in the morning, once in the evening, and once after each of my three daily meals. I have tried countless brands of toothpaste. My monthly expenditure on toothpaste far exceeds my spending on cigarettes and wine put together. I have become a collector of toothbrushes: long handles, short handles, long bristles, short bristles, stiff bristles, soft bristles, a bristling little tuft. I never touch cold or underdone food; I gave up sweet-and-sour; I avoid hot soup and sticky porridge and everything hard on the teeth. I not only quit cracking melon seeds, I even keep away from roasted peanuts!