‘Xiaotong, what's this?’
Without stopping to answer, I ran back into the side room, picked up the heavy tripod, carried it into the yard and laid it beside the base. On my third trip, I carried out the sleek tube, then assembled the whole thing, quickly and expertly, like a trained artilleryman. Then I stepped back and proudly declared: ‘Dieh, you're looking at a powerful Japanese 82 mm mortar!’
He walked up cautiously to the mortar, bent down and examined it carefully.
When we'd first accepted the heavy weapon, it had been so rusted it had looked like three hunks of scrap metal. I'd attacked the rust with bricks, knocking off the biggest chunks, then switched to sandpaper and removed it from every inch of the metal, even inside the tube. Finally, I rubbed on several coats of grease, until it recaptured its youth, regained its metallic sheen; now it squatted open-mouthed on the ground, like a lion, ready to roar.
‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘look inside the tube.’
Father turned his attention to the tube as a glare lit up his face. When he looked up, there was a sparkle in his eyes. I could see how excited he was. ‘This is something,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Really something. Where'd you get it?’
I shoved my hands into my pockets and pawed the ground as nonchalantly as possible.
‘From an old guy and his wife, who brought it on the back of an old mule.’
‘Have you fired it?’ he asked as he turned his attention back to the tube. ‘I'm sure it'll fire, this is the real thing!’
‘I was planning on going to South Mountain Village in the spring to look up that old man and his wife. They must have shells. I'll buy every one they've got, and the next person who picks on me will see what this thing can do to his house!’ I looked up at Father and, with an ingratiating look, said, ‘We can begin by blasting Lao Lan's house!’
With a bitter smile, Father shook his head but said nothing.
The girl had finished her baked bun. ‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘I'm still hungry.’
Father went back inside and came out with the charred buns.
The girl was shaking. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want a biscuit.’
Father looked at me, obviously embarrassed. I ran inside, picked up the packet of biscuits Mother had tossed down by the stove and held them out to her. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘eat.’
She reached out to take them but Father swept her up in his arms like a hawk taking a chicken.
She burst out crying.
‘Be a good girl, Jiaojiao,’ he said, wanting her to stop crying. ‘We don't eat other people's food.’
That unexpected comment chilled my heart.
He shifted the girl, who would not stop crying, onto his back and patted me on the head with his free hand. ‘Xiaotong,’ he said, ‘you're a big boy now, and you'll do better than your dieh ever did. Now you've got this mortar, and I know I won't have to worry about you.’
With his daughter settled on his back, he turned and walked to the gate. I struggled to hold back my tears as I ran after him.
‘Do you have to go, Dieh?’
He cocked his head to look at me. ‘Be careful with that mortar. Use it only when you have to, and don't use it on Lao Lan's house.’
The hem of his overcoat slipped through my fingers. After bending forward to make it easier for his daughter to hold on, he walked down the frozen road in the direction of the train station. He'd taken only a dozen steps or so when I shouted. ‘Dieh—’
Though he didn't turn back to look, she did. A radiant smile spread across her tear-streaked face, like an orchid in spring or a chrysanthemum in autumn. She waved, sending sharp pains through that ten-year-old heart of mine. I sat down on my haunches and watched as, in about the time it takes to smoke a pipeful, the figures of my father and the little girl disappeared round a bend in the road. Then, after about twice as long, but from the opposite direction, Mother came rushing down the road with the head of a pig, white with red showing through. ‘Where's your dieh?’ she asked, alarmed, when she reached me.
Full of revulsion over the pig's head, I pointed towards the station.
Somewhere far off a rooster crows, weak but clear, and I know we've reached that moment when total darkness precedes the dawn. The sun will be up soon, and the Wise Monk still hasn't moved. Somewhere in the room a mosquito drones wearily. The candle has burnt down, the cool wax in the candleholder is shaped like a chrysanthemum. The woman lights a cigarette and squints as the smoke drifts into her eyes. Then, with a burst of energy, she stands and shrugs her shoulders, sending her robe sliding to the floor, like dry tofu crust, gathering pathetically round her ankles. She steps on it with both feet before sitting back in her chair, where she spreads her legs and first rubs, then pinches, her nipples, spewing white streams of milk. I am both aroused and mesmerized. As I sit, I watch as the slough of my body maintains its shape, like a cicada, on the stool, while another me, this one stripped naked, walks towards the streams of milk. They spray onto his forehead and into his eyes, leaving drops on his face, like pearly tears. The milk spews into his mouth; the strong taste of human milk fills mine. He kneels in front of the woman and rests his head, with its chaotic mop of hair, on her belly, keeping it there for a long time. Finally, he looks up and asks, as if talking in his sleep: ‘Are you Aunty Wild Mule?’ She shakes her head, then nods, then sighs and says: ‘You foolish little boy.’ She cups her right breast and stuffs the nipple into his mouth…
POW! 12
A loud noise overhead sends down a mixture of broken tiles, rotting grass and mud from the sky; it smashes a bowl and drives a bamboo chopstick into the mildewed wall like an arrow. The woman who has sated me with her full breasts, the woman who is as warm as a sweet potato fresh from the oven, shoves me away. As she extracts her nipple from my mouth, stabbing pains attack my heart, I feel light-headed and fall to the floor on all fours. I try to scream but hardly any sound emerges, as if hands are choking me. Her eyes are glassy as her gaze sweeps the area as if seeking something. She wipes the wet nipples with her fingers and glowers at me. I jump to my feet, rush over and throw my arms round her. Bending, I begin to kiss her neck. She reaches down and pinches my belly, hard, then pushes me away and spits in my face. Then she turns and walks out of the room, buttocks swaying. I follow her, driven to distraction, and watch as she walks up to the Horse Spirit and mounts it from behind. The human-headed statue, with her on its back, flies out of the temple, filling the air with the sound of clattering hooves. I hear birds welcome the dawn with their chirps and, farther away, bovine mothers calling to their calves. I know that this is the hour they feed their young, and in my mind's eye I can see the calves hungrily bumping the teats with their heads as the happy yet agonizing mothers hunker down; but the breast that had been suckling me has vanished, so I sit on the cold, damp ground and cry shamelessly. After I have run out of tears, I look up and spot a hole the size of a basket in the roof, through which early morning sunlight enters like a tide. I smack my lips, as if I'd just awakened from a dream. But if this has been a dream, why does the taste of milk linger in my mouth? The injection of this mysterious liquid into my body carries me back to my youth, and even my adult body begins to shrink. If it hasn't been a dream, then where did the Aunty Wild Mule who isn't my Aunty Wild Mule go? I sit there staring woodenly at the Wise Monk, whom I'd forgotten, as he slowly returns to wakefulness, like a python emerging from hibernation. Folding up his body in that room, suffused with the golden glow of dawn, he begins his qigong breathing exercises. The Wise Monk is dressed in ordinary clothing—yes, it is the threadbare robe the woman who suckled me had worn. He has a unique way of exercising. Folding up his body, he takes his penis in his mouth and rolls round on his wide bed like a wind-up toy with a taut spring. Steam rises from his shaved head in seven distinct colours. At first, I didn't think much of his trifling exercise regimen, but when I tried it I realized that rolling round on the bed is no big deal, nor is folding up my body that way, but taking my penis in my mouth—now that's a challenge.