You can probably guess what I did. I went to the commune hospital and sought out Dr He, telling him that Tan Feng had stolen his daughter’s train. So that he wouldn’t recognize my face, I wore a big surgical mask, and after I rushed through what I had to say, I ran off. On my way home, I happened to meet Tan Feng, who was playing football on the school sports grounds with some other children. He called out for me to join in, but I said I had to go home for dinner and vanished like a puff of smoke. You know how the aftermath of tale-telling is the worst thing? That evening I hid at home and pricked up my ears so I could hear what might be going on in Tan Feng’s home, and before long Dr He and his daughter paid a call to the Tan family home.
I heard his mother shout Tan Feng’s name at the top of her voice; then the hammer in his father’s hand ceased its monotonous banging. They couldn’t find Tan Feng. All his sisters went around the town calling out his name, but they couldn’t find him either. Seething with anger, his father came to our home and asked me where his son had gone. I didn’t answer, and then the blacksmith asked another question, ‘Did Tan Feng steal Dr He’s daughter’s toy train?’ Even then I stayed silent; I lacked the courage to say yes. That day, Tan the blacksmith’s dry, haggard face spluttered with rage like a soldering iron — I thought he might kill someone. As I heard Tan Feng’s name resounding through the town in the shrill, crazed voices of his family, I regretted what I had done.
But it was too late for regret; soon my mother returned from school and stopped for a long while outside Tan Feng’s home. When she came in and pulled me out from underneath the mosquito nets, I knew that I had got myself in a fix. The blacksmith and his wife were right behind her and my mother said to me, ‘No lying. Now, did Tan Feng take that toy train or not?’ I don’t have the words to describe the severe and indomitable expression in my mother’s eyes then and my last line of defence suddenly collapsed. My mother said, ‘If he took it, nod. If he didn’t, shake your head.’ I nodded. I saw how Tan the blacksmith jumped with rage like a firecracker, and how Tan Feng’s mother sank down on our threshold, sobbing and blowing a string of snot from her nose as she cried and tried to communicate something. I didn’t pay close attention to what she was saying, but the general idea was that Tan Feng had been led astray by someone and now he had gone and ruined his parents’ good name. My mother was livid at this insinuation, but she was too well-bred to quarrel with her. Instead, she took out her anger on me and gave me a smack with her exercise book.
They found Tan Feng in the water. He had wanted to escape to the other side of the little river outside town, but the only stroke he knew was doggy paddle, and once he reached the deep water he just thrashed around wildly. He hadn’t even called for help. The blacksmith reached the riverbank, fished his son out and pulled him back on shore, then he dragged Tan Feng, who was soaked to the bone, all the way home. People from the town followed the pair of them as they headed back. Tan Feng was rolled over and over on the ground like a log, but with great effort, he lifted his head to see curious faces on both sides of him. He began spitting and swearing at these people who’d come to see the public spectacle: ‘What the f*** are you looking at? What the f*** are you looking at?’
Just as I had expected, Tan Feng refused to confess. He did not deny that he had stolen the little red train, but he refused to reveal where he had hidden it. I heard the blacksmith’s oaths and Tan Feng’s cries, each louder than the last; the blacksmith had always raised him using a judicious mixture of spoiling and savage beatings. I heard the blacksmith give a last ear-splitting howl, ‘Which hand did you steal it with? Left or right?’ Before the sound had died away, Tan Feng’s mother and sister began to wail in concert. It was an atmosphere of pure terror. I knew something terrible was going to happen, and I didn’t want to miss my opportunity to witness it, so while my mother was busy washing vegetables, I rushed out.
I was just in time to see the blacksmith maim his own son by pressing Tan Feng’s left hand onto a red-hot soldering iron. I recall that at that same moment, Tan Feng shot me a glance so full of shock and despair that it was like a red-hot iron itself, so searing that my whole body seemed to steam with shame.
I am not exaggerating when I say that a hole was burnt into my heart at that moment. I didn’t hear Tan Feng’s scream, which resounded high above the town, I just turned around and fled, as if afraid that Tan Feng, who was in the process of losing the fingers of his left hand, might yet chase after me. With dread and guilt in my heart, I ran away, and before I knew it I was at Mr Zhang’s pigsty. Despite all that had happened I still hadn’t forgotten the little red train, even in this dark hour. I sat for a moment on the stack of firewood and made up my mind to excavate Tan Feng’s treasure, taking advantage of the last rays of the setting sun to make my careful search. I was surprised to find, however, that the little red train wasn’t there. I took the stack of firewood apart, and still I didn’t find it.
So Tan Feng was not as foolish as I had thought; he had moved the train. I reasoned that he had done so after the theft had been exposed. Perhaps while his family had been calling for him he had moved it to an even more secret location. I stood in Mr Zhang’s pigsty and realized with a jolt that Tan Feng had taken that precaution against me. Perhaps he had suspected me long ago, thinking that I would tattle one day; perhaps he had another secret hoard. I pondered this and a nameless sense of loss and sorrow welled up in me.
You can imagine the chaos in the Tan household once the deed was done. Tan Feng fainted and the blacksmith wept, hugging his son to him and wandering through the town to find a tractor driver. Then he and his wife got on the tractor and took Tan Feng to the district hospital fifteen kilometres away.
I knew that Tan Feng would spend the next few days in extreme pain, and that time was very hard for me to endure too. There was also the punishment my mother inflicted on me. In her eyes I bore half the guilt for the whole affair, so I was confined to the house. Beside this she required me, like one of her students, to write a piece of self-criticism. Remember that I was only eight or nine at the time. As if I was going to be able to write a substantial piece of self-criticism! I wrote and doodled in an exercise book, and without realizing what I was doing I drew several little trains on the paper; so I threw it out. But afterwards I was still thinking about that little red train. There was nothing I could do — no way I could resist the spell that train had cast over me. I leaned over the desk, and heard in my ears a dim, metallic sound: the sound of the train’s wheels rolling over the ground. The four cars, the sixteen wheels, were constantly appearing in my mind’s eye; not to mention the stovepipe on top, and the conductor with the neckerchief tied around his miniature neck.
What made me disobey my mother’s orders was burning desire: I urgently needed to find that missing train. My mother had locked the door from the outside, but I jumped out through the window and walked down the streets of town positively thirsting for it. I had no destination in mind and just blindly looked for somewhere to go. It was a sweltering day in August, and the town’s children were gathered by the riverside, either splashing around in the water or playing stupid cops-and-robbers games on the bank. I didn’t want to splash around, and I didn’t want to play cops and robbers, all I could think about was that little red train. I walked until the only surfaced road in the town ended and I saw the abandoned brick kiln in the cornfields beyond. This must be what people mean when they talk about a moment of inspiration. I’d suddenly remembered that Tan Feng had once hidden several of old Mr Ye’s chicks in that kiln. Could it be his second hiding place for the treasure? The thought made me jittery with nerves. I moved aside the stone blocking the kiln’s door and ducked in. There! I saw the freshly piled cornstalks and kicked them apart. Have you guessed? You have. It was that simple. Don’t people often say ‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’? I heard a clear, melodious ring, and my heart nearly stopped beating. Heaven helps those who help themselves — it’s as simple as that. I’d found the Chengdu girl’s little red train in the brick kiln.