The sixteenth shell was supposed to hit the meatpacking plant's conference room but it was missing one of its wings and began to wobble in mid-air. It landed in Yao Qi's pigsty, killing the sow they had spoilt so badly.
The meat-inspection office was the recipient of the seventeenth shell. Chief Inspector Han and his deputy were lightly wounded. One piece of shrapnel, big enough to end Lao Lan's life, hit the model-worker brass medal, presented by the city officials and pinned to the left breast of his jacket. The impact sent him reeling into the wall. His face paled and he all but spat blood. It was the most damage any of my shells had inflicted on him so far; and even though he survived the blow it scared the hell out of him.
If any of the shells was assured of taking Lao Lan out it was the eighteenth—because he was standing in an open-air public toilet relieving himself, totally exposed. The projectile could easily slip through the gaps of the parasol-tree branches overhead. But then I was reminded of the hero from the old couple's village who had killed an enemy soldier while he was taking a shit—what a shameful way to kill a man. Killing Lao Lan while he was taking a leak would not bring me glory, and so I had no choice but to alter the course slightly and have the shell land in the nearby privy. POW! He was covered in shit. A lot of fun but a low blow.
After firing the nineteenth shell, I realized that I had just violated an international treaty. It landed in the township treatment room and sent glass flying everywhere. The nurse on duty, the lazy sister-in-law of the deputy township head, normally sat in a chair behind a patient spread-eagled over a table, arse in the air, ready to receive to an injection. When the mortar shell hit she was so frightened that she squatted on the floor and cried like a baby. Lao Lan lay in bed hooked up to an IV drip filled with artery-cleaning serum. The blood of people like him who feast on rich, fatty food sticks to the artery walls like glue.
Along with the municipalization of agricultural populations came the rise of rampant consumerism. A bowling alley had been built near the township headquarters. Lao Lan was a champion bowler, a master of strikes, despite his terrible form. He used a twelve-pound purple ball. Spurning an approach, he walked to the line, swung his arm and the ball, like a shell from a mortar, shot straight into the pins; they toppled over with cries of anguish. My twentieth shell landed on the bowling-alley lane. Smoke rose and shrapnel flew.
Lao Lan emerged unscathed. Was the son of a bitch wearing a protective talisman?
The twenty-first shell landed in the meatpacking plant's fresh-water well. Lao Lan was standing beside it gazing at the reflection of the moon, and I assumed he was musing over the story of the monkey that tried to scoop the moon out the water. I can't think of anything else he might have come out to see in the middle of the night. That well played a prominent role in my life, as you know, Wise Monk, so I won't go into that here. The moon was bright and pristine. When it fell into the well, the shell failed to explode but it did shatter the moon's pristine reflection and muddy the water.
Despite the twenty-first shell's failure to kill Lao Lan, his poise and aplomb had deserted him. Sooner or later an earthen well jar will break—it's inevitable. One of these exploding shells has your name on it and the Western Heaven awaits your arrival. Resorting to trickery, Lao Lan put on a worker's clothes and tried to pass himself off as one of the night-shift men in the kill room. What looked like an attempt to become one with the masses was in fact a ploy to save his skin. He greeted the workers, even slapped some of them familiarly on the shoulder, producing smiles from those favoured by such an unexpected but welcome gesture. At the moment they were slaughtering camels, those ships of the desert, dispatched in great numbers because their hooves were sought after at formal banquets on the tables of Han and Manchu diners. Camel was the ‘in’ meat of the day, as a result of Lao Lan's success in buying off several nutrition experts and local reporters who then published a series of articles extolling the virtues of camel meat. There was a plentiful supply of the animals from Gansu and Inner Mongolia, although the finest were imported from the Middle East. By this time the kill rooms were semi-automated. The animals were transported by hoists from the meat-cleansing workshop into Kill Room No. 1, where they were first washed with cold water and then subjected to a steam bath. Their legs flailed wildly as they hung from the hoists. Lao Lan was standing under one of the suspended camels, listening to the workshop foreman Feng Tiehan, when I seized the moment and dropped the twenty-second shell into the tube. Trailing a live wire, it flew to its target, exploding on the roof and severing the steel cable supporting the unfortunate camel. It plunged to its death.
The twenty-third shell entered the workshop through the hole opened by its predecessor and rolled on the killing floor like a giant spinning top. With no thought for his safety, Feng Tiehan threw himself at Lao Lan, knocking him to the floor and covering him with his body. POW! Blast waves and billowing gunpowder smoke swept through the workshop. Four hooves flew for a distance and then fell onto Feng's back, where they looked like frogs engaged in a serious discussion.
Lao Lan crawled out from under Feng's body, wiped the steel splinters and camel blood off his face and sneezed. His clothes lay in tatters at his feet; all that remained on him was a leather belt. ‘Luo Xiaotong,’ he screamed, picking up a rag to cover his privates, ‘you little prick, what did I ever do to you?’
You've never done anything to or for me. I took the twenty-fourth shell from the old man and dropped it down the tube. This would be my answer. Taking the same course as its two predecessors, it landed in the new crater. Lao Lan hit the ground and rolled over to take cover behind the camel carcass. The edge of the crater blocked splinters of shrapnel and saved him from injury. Some of the other men lay flat on the workshop floor but a few stood stock still. One especially brave man crawled up to Lao Lan. ‘Are you hurt, General Manager?’ he asked. ‘Get me some clothes,’ Lao Lan said. Hiding behind a dead camel with his bare arse sticking up in the air put him in a very sorry state.
The courageous worker ran into the foreman's office to fetch a set of clothes, but as he handed them to Lao Lan the twenty-fifth shell streaked towards him. With a burst of inspiration, he caught the flying missile in the heavy canvas clothing and flung it out the window. That action not only displayed how cool-headed and decisive he could be, but was also testimony to his superior strength. If he'd been a soldier during wartime, he'd have been a hero extraordinaire. The shell exploded outside the window—POW!
Before it was time to fire the twenty-sixth shell, the old woman hobbled up to me, took a piece of turnip from her mouth and stuffed it into mine. That was revolting, I don't deny it. But thoughts of how pigeons exchange food and crows feed their aged parents turned my revulsion into a feeling of intimacy. I was also reminded of an incident with my mother. It was back when my father had gone off to the northeast and Mother and I were dealing in scrap. We were taking a break at a roadside stall—she'd spent twenty fen that day for two bowls of beef-entrail soup for us to soak our hard biscuits in. A blind couple with a chubby, fair-skinned baby were eating at the stall. The baby, obviously hungry, was crying. The woman, hearing my mother's voice, asked if she would feed the baby. So Mother took the baby from her and a hard biscuit from the man, which she chewed into pulp before feeding him mouth-to-mouth. Afterwards she said: ‘That's what's called pigeons feeding each other.’ I swallowed the turnip the old woman put in my mouth and felt suddenly sharp-eyed and clear-headed. I aimed the twenty-sixth shell at Lao Lan's bare arse, but it was still in the air when the workshop collapsed with a roar. It was an amazing sight, like those demolitions you see on TV. The shell landed amid the rubble and knocked aside a steel beam that had pinned Lao Lan underneath, creating an opening through which he crawled free and once again escaped death.