Did you think I was going to take the toy truck back to the commune clinic and ask for Dr He? No. But if I had, then the rest of this story would probably never have happened. To be frank, it didn’t even cross my mind to return the train to its original owner. Instead, I was more concerned with the question of how to take it home without it being discovered by anyone. I finally thought up a plan and removed my T-shirt, broke off some heads of corn, and wrapped both train and corn in my T-shirt to make a bundle. Nervously, I set off for home. Usually I never went shirtless like the other boys in town, mainly because my mother didn’t allow it, so as I walked down the narrow street, it felt as if people were looking at me. I was very anxious to begin with, and then someone took note of my unusual appearance. I heard one woman say to another, ‘What a blistering day — even Mrs Yu’s kid’s taken his shirt off!’ But what the other woman noticed was my bundle, and she said, ‘What’s he carrying? Do you think he’s stolen something?’ This scared me, but fortunately my mother enjoyed a spotless reputation in the town and the gossiping woman was brusquely cut off by her partner who said, ‘Hold your silly tongue. As if Mrs Yu’s son would steal anything!’
My luck held; my mother wasn’t around so I was able to find a hiding place for the train. Besides the box under my bed where I stored things there were two other places for emergencies or temporary deployment: one of them was the padded overcoat my father had left at home, and the other was the pressure cooker in the kitchen, which we weren’t using. I hid the toy train there, and from that moment on I couldn’t rest. I realized I still had a problem: the key to wind up the spring. No doubt Tan Feng had it hidden about his body, and if I couldn’t get the key, I couldn’t make the train run. And for me, a train that didn’t run had lost the greater part of its value.
The trouble that came later was all because of that key. I hadn’t even thought about how to deal with Tan Feng once he got home. Every day I tried to make a key myself, and one day I was at home alone, grinding a padlock key on the whetstone, when the door was kicked open and who but Tan Feng should come in. He walked up to me and glared at me threateningly, then he said, ‘You’re a traitor, a foreign agent, a spy, a counter-revolutionary and a class enemy!’
His tirade caught me off-balance. I held the padlock key tightly in my fist, and listened to Tan Feng abuse me with all the coarse language he knew. I looked at that left hand of his, wrapped tightly in white cloth, and my guilt submerged any impulse I might have had to retaliate. I remained silent, reflecting that Tan Feng might not yet know that I had been to the kiln. I wondered whether he would be able to guess that it was I who had taken the train.
Tan Feng didn’t touch me — perhaps he knew that with only one hand he would come off worse — instead he just swore. But after swearing for a while he grew tired and asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ Still I said nothing, and he must have thought he had gone too far. He put out his left hand for me to see. ‘You have no idea how much gauze they used to wrap it up — a whole roll!’ I said nothing, so Tan Feng examined the gauze on his hand and, after looking at it for a while, suddenly he laughed proudly and said, ‘I fooled the old man. As if I would use my left hand! It was the right hand, of course.’ Then he asked me a question, ‘Do you think it pays to have your left hand burnt or your right?’
This time I replied, ‘It doesn’t pay either way. Far better to have neither burnt.’
He looked stunned for a moment, then waved at me contemptuously. ‘Stupid. What do you know? The right hand’s way more important than the left. You need your right hand to eat and work and everything, don’t you?’
After Tan Feng came home, we didn’t play together any more. My mother forbade it, and the blacksmith and his wife wouldn’t allow me to play with him, either — they were now both of the opinion that I was the devious kind. I didn’t care what they thought of me, but I did listen carefully to the goings-on in their house, since I was anxious to know whether Tan Feng had been to the kiln yet, and whether he suspected me of taking the little red train.
That day finally came. We had already gone back to school when Tan Feng blocked my way in front of the gates. He looked distracted, and the expression in his eyes as he studied me was almost pleading. ‘Did you take it or not?’
I had prepared myself mentally for such a challenge; you wouldn’t believe how calm and streetwise I sounded. ‘Take what?’
Tan Feng answered quietly, ‘The train.’
I said, ‘What train? The train you stole?’
And Tan Feng replied, ‘I can’t find it. But I hid it so well, why can’t I find it?’
I urged myself to stay calm and not to mention the word kiln. ‘Didn’t you hide it in Mr Zhang’s pigsty?’ Tan Fang rolled his eyes at me, and after that he didn’t ask me any more questions. He took a few steps back, towards the sports grounds, his eyes fixed on me in confusion. I looked steadily back into his eyes and started walking in the same direction. You would never believe the way I acted that day, that an eight-year-old child could put on such a mature and composed manner. It wasn’t in my nature; it was all because of the little red train.
From then on Tan Feng and I went our separate ways. We were neighbours, but after that whenever we ran into each other, we would turn the other way. On my part, it was because of my guilty secret; on his the result of a deep wound. Because I believe Tan Feng’s heart was hurt as badly as his hand, and I have to take responsibility for both. I remember very clearly how, a few months later, he was brushing his teeth outside his home. I heard him call out my name and I ran out. Though he was still calling to me, he didn’t even glance my way. Instead he seemed to be talking to himself, saying, ‘Yu Yong, Yu Yong, I know what you are.’ I turned a deep red. He had obviously fathomed my secret. What puzzled me about it though was that ever since Tan Feng had returned from hospital, I had kept the toy train hidden away in the pressure cooker. Even my mother had failed to discover it, so how could Tan Feng know? Had he perhaps also relied on inspiration to guide him?
It sounds ridiculous, but after I got my hands on that train I rarely had a chance to play with it, let alone experience the joy of making it go. Only occasionally, when I was sure it was completely safe, did I take the lid off the pressure cooker and sneak a little look at it — only a look. What are you laughing at? At a thief ‘s guilty conscience? I did have a guilty conscience — actually it was more painful and complicated than that — I even saw the train a few times in my dreams, and in the dream it was always blowing its steam whistle. Then Tan Feng and the kids from town would come running to hear it and I would wake up quickly from fright. I knew that the steam whistle in my dream actually came from the Baocheng railway two kilometres away, but still I woke up in a cold sweat. You ask why I didn’t give the train back to Tan Feng, but that would have made no sense. Reason dictated I should give it back to the Chengdu girl, the real owner. The idea had occurred to me, and one day I even went up to the commune clinic’s door. I saw the girl in the courtyard playing Chinese skipping, happy as anything. She had forgotten all about the train a long time ago. Well, I thought, if she’s forgotten about it, what’s the point of doing a good deed and giving it back to her? And in an epithet I had learnt from Tan Feng, I swore at her, ‘Porkhead.’