And to the surprise of everyone present, Yu Yong began a story which no one could have interrupted, even if they’d wanted to.
I’m no thief; of course I’m not. I suppose you all know I’m not from here originally. I was born in Sichuan and grew up there with my mother. She’s a secondary school teacher and my father was serving with the Air Force as ground crew at the time, so he was rarely at home. I’m sure you’ll agree that a child who grows up in such a home isn’t likely to become a thief. The story I want to tell you, though, is about thieves. Keep quiet and I’ll pick out some typical anecdotes. Actually, I’ll just tell one story. I’ll tell the story of Tan Feng.
Tan Feng was my one and only friend in that Sichuanese town. He was the same age as me: about eight or nine. Tan Feng’s family lived next door to us. His father was a blacksmith and his mother was from the countryside. They had a lot of kids but the others were all girls, so you can imagine how the rest of the family spoiled their only boy. They really adored him, but they didn’t know what he got up to, as Tan Feng stole things. He didn’t dare steal from my house, but apart from that almost every household in town had lost something to his thieving ways. He would swagger into people’s homes, ask whether their kid was in, and that was all it took — while he was there he would swipe a can of peppers or a picture book from the table and slip it under his clothes. Sometimes I would watch him steal and my heart would thump like mad, but Tan Feng was always as cool as could be. He didn’t hide these things from me because he thought of me as his most loyal friend, and in fact I used to cover for him.
Once, when Tan Feng had stolen somebody’s wristwatch — remember that at the time a wristwatch was something really expensive — he was suspected of being the thief. The whole family came out and shouted for him outside his house, but Tan Feng blocked the door and wouldn’t let them in. Then the blacksmith and his wife came out. They didn’t believe that their son would have stolen a watch. Tan Feng swore like a sailor, so the blacksmith kept pinching his ears, but he wouldn’t be quiet; he just yelled loudly for me to come and testify for him. So I came, and said, ‘Tan Feng didn’t steal that watch, I can vouch for it.’ I remember Tan Feng’s pleased smile and his parents’ grateful, tear-filled glances at me. To the onlookers they said, ‘That’s the son of Mrs Yu the teacher. He’s taught good manners at home and he never lies.’ And because of my intervention the matter remained unresolved. After a few days the victims discovered the watch at home. They even went to Tan Feng’s home to tell them they had found it, apologized for having done him wrong and gave him a big bowl of sweet soup dumplings to boot. He carried it over to share with me and the two of us were very proud of ourselves — I was the one who’d told him to go to their house and secretly put the watch back.
My mother disliked Tan Feng and his whole family, but people were very progressive thinking in those days, and she said that being friendly with proletariat children was a kind of education, too. Of course, if she had known what I was getting up to with Tan Feng, she would have gone bananas. ‘Pilfer’ — my mother liked to use that word — and ‘pilfering’ was the sort of aberrant behaviour she hated most, but what she didn’t know was that this word and I were already inextricably linked.
If it hadn’t been for a certain toy train, I don’t know how far my alliance with Tan Feng might have gone. Tan Feng had a hoard of treasure, all of which was stored in the pigsty of old Mr Zhang, who lived on communal welfare. Tan Feng was clever to hide his spoils there as old Mr Zhang was no longer good on his feet and the pigsty had no pigs in it. Tan Feng just burrowed a hole in a pile of firewood, and put all the things he had stolen inside. If anybody saw him, he could say he was bringing Mr Zhang firewood, and in fact he really did bring wood. Half of it was for the old man, and the other half, of course, was to hide his treasure.
Now, let me tell you about this treasure, although the things it contained seem laughable now. There were a number of medicine bottles and capsules which might have been stuff women took as contraceptives; there was an enamel cup, some fly-swatters, bits of copper and iron wire, matches, thimbles, a red neckerchief, a clothes rack, a long-stemmed pipe, an aluminium spoon — in short, a random assortment of tat. When Tan Feng let me in to see his hoard, I couldn’t hide my contempt for it. Then, however, he delved into the pile of medicine bottles and brought out a little red train.
‘Look,’ he said. He carried it with extreme care, at the same time elbowing me away roughly so I couldn’t get close to it. ‘Look,’ he said, but while his mouth repeated the word, his elbow blocked me from getting any closer to the train; it was as if his elbow were saying, ‘Just stand there. You can look, but you can’t touch.’
Ah, that little red iron-plated train: a locomotive and four cars. On top of the engine was a stovepipe, and inside it was a miniature conductor. If children today saw a train like that, they wouldn’t think it was so amazing, but at the time in a little Sichuanese town, you can imagine what it meant to a boy. It was the most wonderful thing in the world. I remember my hand felt like a piece of iron being drawn to a magnet. Overcome by an irresistible impulse, I kept making grabs for it, but every time Tan Feng fended me off.
‘Where did you steal it from?’ I almost screamed. ‘Whose is it?’
‘The Chengdu girl’s from the commune hospital.’ Tan Feng gestured for me not to speak too loudly, then he stroked the train for a moment and laughed out loud. ‘I didn’t really steal it. The girl’s such a dumb-bell that she just left it by the window. So since she was practically asking me to take it, I took her up on it.’
I knew the Chengdu girl; she was short and fat, and it was true that she was stupid. If you asked her what one plus one made, she would say eleven. I suddenly remembered having seen her crying that day in front of the commune hospital. She had cried herself hoarse, and her father, Dr He, had carried her home over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. Now I was sure she had been crying for her toy train.
As I imagined the scene of Tan Feng taking the little train through the window my heart filled with a kind of envy, and I swear that this was the first time I’d felt such a thing for him. Strange to say, even though I was only eight or nine, I was able to disguise my emotion. Calmly, I asked him, ‘Can you make it go? If you can’t make it go, then it’s nothing special.’
Tan Feng flashed a little key at me, and I noted that he had taken it out of his pocket. It was the sort of simple key used to wind up a spring mechanism. A sweet, self-satisfied smile appeared on his face as he put the train on the ground and wound it up. Then he watched as it began moving around the pigsty. It could only go in a straight line, it couldn’t turn in circles or blow its steam whistle, but for me it was a wonder even so. I didn’t want to seem too excited, though, and simply said, ‘Well, of course you can make the train go. If you couldn’t make it go, then it wouldn’t be a train.’
My own terrible plan was hatched at that instant. It took shape vaguely, when I saw Tan Feng cover his treasure back up with firewood. He looked at me with anxious eyes and said, ‘You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?’ By now, my idea was rapidly taking hold and I said nothing. I followed him out of the pigsty. On the way back, he caught a butterfly and seemed to want to give it to me as some sort of bribe. I refused; I wasn’t interested in butterflies. It felt as if my idea was gathering momentum, weighing on my mind more heavily until it became hard for me to breathe. But still I didn’t have the strength to chase it from my brain.