The matter preoccupied the doctor for the entire afternoon, and at about four o’clock he heard a terrible thunderclap from the horizon, so sharp and resounding that both he and the few women in the room had to cover their ears. For some reason the doctor thought immediately of the woman. He supposed she must still be on her way up the mountain, hurrying on amidst the lightning flashes and rumbling thunder. An invention of his mind’s eye disquieted him: the dim image of a blue bolt of lightning hitting the woman’s straw hat, the paper medicine packets in her hand torn and the black herbs within leaking into the mire of the mountain trail.
It was rare for the people from around Wangbao to come down from their mountain village. They grew corn, sweet potatoes and apples to bring to market, while they themselves ate only the simplest fare. As a result, they enjoyed sturdier health than the relatively affluent townspeople below, and rarely went down the mountain for medical attention. For a long time the doctor took pleasure in discussing the woman from Wangbao with his patients, but nobody knew who she was; nor did anyone recall a woman with a straw hat. No one was very interested in his story, so when the doctor began to speak again about the vengeful, child-hungry woman, they all repeated the same sentence: ‘She must be crazy!’
Then, in the spring, when the cooperative’s itinerant wagon was sent up to Wangbao, it returned with sensational news: a virgin birth had occurred there. And there was more: the girl’s labour had lasted three days and three nights and the newborn was enormous. According to their account, he weighed 9 kilograms and looked like a little boy of three, with swarthy skin and a powerful voice, but only four fingers on his right hand. The most baffling part of his anatomy was his willy, which the people from the cooperative said was like a ‘top-notch carrot’. One of the clerks who had seen him said, her eyes popping with astonishment, ‘Cross my heart, I swear there’s even a ring of hair around it!’
The doctor, who happened to be buying cigarettes in the cooperative at the time and who commanded respect in medical matters, berated the women: ‘Are you really that brainless? Do you believe every half-baked rumour?’
But one of them responded, ‘You’re the brainless one! And it’s not a rumour. We saw the baby ourselves.’
The doctor asked, ‘And how do you know it’s a newborn? People from those parts are backward and superstitious. Who knows, maybe the kid was three years old!’
The woman gave him a reproachful glance and raised her voice: ‘We saw her give birth with our own eyes. We even gave her cotton blankets and quilts. It was with our own eyes that we saw it, right in front of us. Her face is so badly burnt that no one wants to marry her; she’s an old maid. The whole village stood around outside, watching her give birth.’ Someone nearby snickered and said, ‘What I’d like to know is, if this immaculate virgin wasn’t sneaking around with someone, then how did she get pregnant?’
The clerk, her eyes still glowing excitedly, said, ‘Exactly. That’s what’s so strange. Everyone in the village says she’s never been with anyone. They’re saying it’s the thunder god’s son. I mean, how else can you explain a giant baby like that?’
At this, the doctor realized something. For a moment he was bewildered, but then he said, ‘The medicine!’ and ran directly to his clinic. His thoughts in disarray, he began searching through the previous year’s logbook until he found the entry he was looking for. He saw the woman’s name: Ju Chunhua. Next to it, he saw the question marks he had drawn in the columns designated for ‘marital status’ and ‘reasons for infertility’.
He had given her six packets, he remembered. The formula for this medicine was something that had been handed down in his family for generations, but unexpectedly he was overcome by a kind of horror. Rather than the theory of conception-by-thunder-god, he had to admit that this preternatural birth was more likely to be a consequence of his own fertility treatment.
In the spring, the doctor quietly raised the price of his childbearing soup. Though some patients complained, he refrained from mentioning Ju Chunhua’s pregnancy to them as justification. He realized that if he tried to capitalize too brazenly on his success with her, he risked provoking the opposite reaction: they would say that a miracle was a miracle and write him off as a quack. What he did instead was to leave the logbook open on the relevant page, with a note beside it written in ballpoint pen: ‘Ju Chunhua from Wangbao got her medicine here.’ Any time a patient saw the entry, her face would light up with the same expression of enthusiasm, and she would exclaim, ‘I always said it wasn’t the thunder god who got her pregnant, didn’t I? I don’t care what anyone says, I’ll bet it was your medicine.’
In response, the doctor would laugh coolly and say, ‘You know, my medicine’s strong stuff, so you get what you pay for.’
One day a group of panic-stricken women appeared on the streets of Liushui carrying their children; their silver necklaces marked them out as Wangbao people. The cries of the women and children alarmed the townspeople as the mothers clumsily held up their children’s right hands, bound in bloodstained rags and cotton wadding. One of the Wangbao women showed her son’s hand, and in her distressed tale Ju Chunhua’s name came up once again: ‘That’s not a child that Ju Chunhua gave birth to it, it’s vermin! The little wolf cub bit my son’s thumb off!’
Weeping and pushing one another, they pressed into the clinic. The doctor, who had never encountered such a situation, became flustered. When he finally began to examine their injuries, he discovered that the thumb on the right hand of each child looked like it had been crushed by a combine harvester, and hung from the hand like a mown-down plant. The doctor, who knew exactly how to deal with infertile women, broke out in cold sweat at the sight of these little thumbs. He found the merchurocrome and absorbent cotton and asked urgently, ‘What happened? Is there a rabid dog loose in Wangbao?’
This provoked another round of wailing from the mothers of Wangbao: ‘It’s not a rabid dog, it’s that miscarriage of Ju Chunhua’s. He runs around everywhere biting the fingers off the other children.’
The doctor asked, ‘Nonsense. He’s only six months old; he won’t even have all his teeth yet.’ But the mothers of Wangbao said, ‘Doctor, he’s got all his teeth already! And he bites worse than a wolf.’
‘That’s impossible. A six-month-old baby can’t even walk.’
‘It’s not a normal child, doctor, it’s a demon! He was running around when he was eight days old, suckling at everybody’s nipples. We all gave him our milk, because he was so strong that it was no use trying to push him away.’
The doctor stared in alarm and said, ‘How can that be? His mother, Ju Chunhua, doesn’t she look after him?’
The women began to yell altogether, ‘That’s what you don’t understand, doctor! She wants him to do it! When her son bites off someone’s thumb she’s right next to him, looking on. She even smiles.’
As the women were speaking, Ju Chunhua’s burnt and hideous face flashed before his mind’s eye. He muttered to himself for a moment before asking, ‘This woman, Ju Chunhua: why does she want revenge?’