Would you do it today? I asked him.
Do what? He glared at me.
Remove an IUD.
To hear you say it, I have no memory. I’m a new man after those years in the reform-through-labour brigade. These days I walk the straight and narrow, earning a legitimate income. I wouldn’t think of doing anything illegal, not even if you put a gun to my head.
We’re a law-abiding, public-minded, municipally recognised and outstanding enterprise that pays all its taxes, my cousin said.
Little Lion had her hand on the clay doll throughout the meal.
That damned Qin He, Yuan said, is a bona fide genius. As soon as he started making the dolls, Hao Dashou was out of business.
Xiao Bi, who had sat by quietly with a smile, joined the conversation: All of Master Qin’s creations are crystallisations of his emotions.
Are emotions really important in crafting clay dolls? Yuan Sai asked her.
Of course they are, she replied. Every artistic creation is the artist’s child.
Then that big bullfrog must be your child. Yuan Sai pointed to the sculpture.
Not another word from the red-faced girl.
Your wife must really be fond of clay dolls, my cousin said to me.
It’s not clay dolls she’s fond of, Yuan Sai said. It’s real babies.
Let’s team up, Jin Xiu said excitedly. My cousin can join us.
You want us to be part of your bullfrog farm? I asked. Just looking at those things gives me goose bumps.
We don’t farm bullfrogs exclusively. We also…
Don’t frighten him away, Yuan Sai interrupted. Drink up. Remember how Chairman Mao educated the youngsters back then? Rural villages are the wide-open spaces, he said, where you can do what you want!
3
Wang Gan’s comment that love is a sickness was a lesson he’d learned from personal experience. I found it almost incomprehensible that he could go on living after Little Lion married me, given his obsession over her and the bizarre direction it had taken over so many years. With that premise, Qin He’s infatuation with Gugu must also be seen as a sickness. When she married Hao Dashou, Qin neither drowned himself in the river nor hanged himself; what he did was transfer his pain onto art, and a true popular artist was born, like a newborn infant emerging from clay.
Wang Gan went beyond not trying to avoid us by bringing up the subject of his obsession over Little Lion, talking lightly about it as if it had happened to someone else. I found his attitude comforting. A sense of guilt that had been concealed in my heart for years began to fade away, and that led to a rekindling of friendship, not to mention the birth of respect.
You might not believe me, he said, but when Little Lion walked barefoot along the riverbank, I followed her footprints on my hands and knees, like a dog, inhaling the smell of her feet as tears drenched my face.
You’re just making that up, she said. She was blushing.
It’s the absolute truth, Wang Gan insisted. If one word of that is a lie, may boils grow on the tips of my hair!
Did you hear that? Little Lion said. Instead of boils on the tips of his hair he should wish that his shadow would catch cold.
That’s terrific, I said. Now I’ll have to write you into my play.
Thanks, he said. You can include every idiotic thing the moron Wang Gan did. I’m a reservoir of material.
If you dare write me in, Little Lion said, I’ll burn the manuscript.
You can burn the paper it’s written on, but you can’t burn the poetry in my heart.
Ah, here comes the bookish sentimentality again, Little Lion said. Wang Gan, I’m beginning to think I should have married you instead of him. At least you’ve gone down on your hands and knees to cry in my footprints.
No more of your world-famous jokes, please, Wang Gan said. You and Xiaopao are an ultimate match.
We must be, Little Lion said, since not even a glimpse of a child has appeared. If that’s not an ultimate match, what is it?
All right, that’s enough about us. How about you? Haven’t you found anyone after all these years?
After I got over my sickness I discovered I really don’t like women.
Have you turned gay? Little Lion joked.
I’m neither gay nor straight, Wang Gan said. I’m in love with myself. I love my arms, my legs, my hands, my head, my features, my internal organs, even my shadow. I often have a conversation with my shadow.
You must have contracted another sickness, Little Lion said.
Loving someone else exacts a price, but loving yourself doesn’t. I can love myself any way I want to. I can be my own master…
Wang Gan took us to the house he shared with Qin He. A wooden plaque hung at the gate. The Master’s Workshop, it said.
It was the building where livestock had been held during the commune era and one of my favourite places to play as a child. Back then the smell of horse and mule dung hung in the air day and night; there was a large vat alongside the well in the centre of the yard, and each morning, the livestock handler, a man named Fang, brought the animals out one at a time to drink, while his fellow tender, Du, poured water from the well into the vat. It was a large, well-lit space with a row of twenty feed troughs. The two larger troughs at the head were where the horses and mules were fed, while the shallow troughs inside were reserved for cattle.
As soon as I passed through the gate I was face to face with dozens of tethering posts; slogans on the walls were still visible, and the smell of the animals lingered.
They were going to tear the place down, Wang Gan said, but we heard that after an inspection, the authorities decided to leave traces of the commune for tourists, and so here it is.
Don’t they need to raise livestock here? Little Lion asked.
I doubt it, Wang Gan said, then turned and shouted: Mr Qin, we’ve got guests!
There was no response as we followed Wang Gan inside; the feeding troughs were still there, so too were holes in the walls created by the animals’ hooves, and dried cattle and horse dung. The oven where feed had been cooked and a kang just big enough for the six sons in the Fang family was there as well. I’d slept on it many winter nights when water froze before it hit the ground. Old Fang was too poor to own bedding for his children, so he stuffed dry grass into the opening beneath the kang to keep a fire burning; the bed got hot enough to fry an egg. His children slept like babies since they were used to the brick bed, but I tossed and turned all night long. Now a pair of quilts covered the kang, while the walls were pasted with New Year’s posters of unicorns delivering babies and strolling ancient scholars. A thick wooden plank laid across two feeding troughs was a bench on which mounds of clay and clay-working tools sat; our old acquaintance Qin He sat on a bench behind the plank. He was wearing a blue smock whose sleeves and front were daubed with many colours. His white hair was parted in the middle, as before; his face was drawn like a horse, with a pair of large, deep melancholy eyes. When we approached him, he looked up and his lips moved, apparently a mumbled greeting. He then went back to studying the wall, his chin resting on his hands, as if deep in thought.
We held our breath, not daring to speak loudly and walking on tiptoes to keep the noise down so as not to interrupt the master’s train of thought.
Wang Gan gave us a show of the master’s handiwork. Unfinished dolls were drying in the cattle troughs. Dried dolls waiting to be painted were laid out on long boards against the northern wall. The children, in all their varieties, were waving to us from the cattle troughs, already lifelike, even before colours were added.