Once he's finished, the Wise Monk stands on his bed to limber up, like a horse that's been rolling in soft sand. A horse will shake its body to send loose sand flying; the Wise Monk shakes his body to create a rainfall of sweat. Some of the drops hit me in the face, and one flies into my mouth. I am astounded to discover that his sweat has the fragrance of osmanthus, which now spreads throughout the room. He is a big man with large, whirlpool-shaped scars on his left breast and belly. Though I've never seen bullet wounds, I know that is what they are. Most people shot in those vital areas go straight down to the underworld, and to be not just alive but hale and hearty can only mean that he enjoys great good fortune and an enviable karma, a man born under a lucky star. As he stands on the bed, his head nearly brushes against the rafters, and it seems to me that if he stretched himself as tall as he could, then he might be able to stick his head out through the hole in the roof. Wouldn't that be a fright—his head, with its incense scars, sticking up through the roof tiles at the rear of the temple? Just think how stunningly strange that would look to the hawks wheeling low in the sky. As the Wise Monk limbers up, his body is exposed. It's a young man's body, in contrast to his old man's head. If not for a slight paunch, it could be mistaken for the body of a thirty-year-old man; but once he puts on his threadbare robe and sits cross-legged in front of the Wutong Spirit, no one who saw only his face and bearing would doubt that he was a man just shy of a hundred. Now that he's shaken the sweat off his body, and is good and limber, he climbs off the bed. What I observed has vanished under a robe that seems about to disintegrate. This has all the qualities of a hallucination. I rub my eyes and, like the heroes in wildwood tales who ponder their reactions to strange encounters, I bite my finger to see if I am dreaming. A pain shoots through my finger, proof that I am in the flesh and that what I observed was real. The Wise Monk—at this moment he is a faltering Wise Monk—seems to have at that moment discovered me as I crawl up to him; he reaches out, pulls me to my feet, and, in a voice dripping with compassion, says: ‘Young patron, is there something this aged monk can do for you?’ ‘Wise Monk,’ I say, a myriad feelings welling up inside me, ‘Wise Monk, I haven't finished my story from yesterday.’ The Wise Monk sighs, as if recalling events of the day before. ‘Do you want to continue?’ he asks compassionately. ‘If I keep it inside, Wise Monk, and don't let it all out, it will become an open sore, a toxic boil! He shakes his head ambiguously. ‘Come with me, young patron,’ he says. I follow him into the temple's main hall, where we stop in front of the Horse Spirit, one of the five. In this just and honourable place, we kneel on the rush mat, which looks so much more tattered than it did yesterday, dotted, as it is, with grey rain-produced mushrooms. The flies that seemed to have crawled round in his ears the day before now swarm back and cover them completely; two hang in the air for a moment before landing on his exceptionally long, twisting eyebrows which shake like branches supporting squawking birds. I kneel beside the Wise Monk, my buttocks resting on the heels of my feet, to continue my story. But I am beginning to wonder if I am still firm in my goal to become a monk. It seems to me that, in the space of one night, my relationship with the Wise Monk has undergone a significant change. The image of his young, robust body, which radiates sexual passion, keeps appearing in front of my eyes and his threadbare monk's robe turns transparent, throwing my heart into turmoil. But I still feel like talking. As my father taught me: anything with a beginning deserves to have an ending. I continue—
Regaining her composure, Mother grabbed me by the arm and led me in the direction of the station, taking long strides.
My right arm grasped in her left hand and the white, pink-tinged pig's head in her right, we walked faster and faster and then finally broke into a run.
I tried to twist free of her iron grip but she held on. I was angry at her. Father came home this morning, Yang Yuzhen, and your attitude stinks! He's a good man who's down on his luck. The fact that he swallowed his pride and bowed to you may not qualify as earth-shattering but it was enough to draw tears. What more do you want, Yang Yuzhen? Why provoke him with such vile language? He gave you a way out, but instead of climbing off your high horse you cried and wailed and bawled and spewed a stream of ugly curses at a man who made a small mistake. How do you expect a respectable man to take that? Then, to make things worse, you dragged my little sister into it. Your slap sent her cap flying and exposed a white cotton knot, and then you made her cry, breaking the heart of someone who has the same father but a different mother—me. Yang Yuzhen, why can't you understand Father's feelings? Yang Yuzhen, a bystander—me—saw things more clearly than the actor—you—and you should know that you ruined everything with that slap. It destroyed any conjugal feelings he might have retained, it froze his heart. And mine. You're such a heartless mother that you've made me, Luo Xiaotong, wary of you. I was hoping he'd come back to live with us but now I think that leaving was the best thing he did. If it'd been me, I'd have left, and so would anyone with a shred of dignity. In fact, I should have gone with him, Yang Yuzhen, and left you to enjoy the good life in a five-room, tiled-roof house all by yourself!
My mind was racing, my thoughts all over the place, as I stumbled along behind Yang Yuzhen, my mother. My struggling to get away and the weight of the pig's head slowed us down. People stared at us—some curious, others obviously puzzled. On that extraordinary morning, the sight of my mother dragging me down the road leading from the village to the train station must have struck passers-by as a scene from a strange yet lively little drama. And it wasn't just people: even the dogs first looked, then barked, at us; one even nipped at our heels.
Though she was reeling from an emotional blow, she refused to let go of the pig's head. Instead of dropping it, the way a film actress might do, she held it tightly, like a beaten soldier who refuses to let go of his weapon. Holding on to me with one hand and clutching the unheard-of purchase of a pig's head, meant to patch up things with my dieh, with the other, she ran as fast as she could, though it was difficult. Water glistened on her gaunt cheeks. Sweat or tears? I couldn't tell. She was breathing hard, yet she continued to gasp out a stream of curses. Should she have been sent down to the Hell of Severed Tongues for that, Wise Monk?
A motorbike passed us, a line of white geese hanging from the rear crossbar, necks twisting as they writhed like snakes. Dirty water dripped from their beaks, like a bull urinating as it walks; the hard, dry road was lined with water stains. The geese honked pitifully and their little black eyes were forlorn. I knew their stomachs had been filled with dirty water, for anything that emerged from Slaughterhouse Village, dead or alive, did so full of water: cows, goats, pigs, sometimes even hen's eggs. A Slaughterhouse Village riddle runs: In the village of butchers, what is the only thing you can't inject with water? After two years, no one but I knew the answer. How about you, Wise Monk, do you know the answer? It's water! In a village of butchers, the only thing you can't inject with water is water itself!
The man on the motorbike turned to look at us. What's so damned interesting about us? I may have hated Mother, but not as much as I hated people who stared. She'd told me that people who laugh at widows and orphans suffer the wrath of Heaven. Which is what happened: he was so busy staring at us that he ran into a poplar tree. As he flew backward, his heels struck the goose-covered rear crossbar and all those soft, pliable necks got tangled up in his legs and he tumbled into a ditch. He was wearing a leather overcoat that shone like a suit of armour and a fashionable knit cap. Large-framed sunglasses perched on his nose. In a word, he was dressed like a film tough. There'd been rumours of bandits on the road for a while, so even Mother had begun to dress that way in an effort to keep up her courage; she even learnt how to smoke, though she refused to spend money on decent cigarettes. Wise Monk, if you could have seen Mother in her black leather overcoat and cap and sunglasses, a cigarette dangling from her lips, sitting proudly on our tractor, you wouldn't have believed she was a woman. I didn't get a good look at the man's face when he passed us, nor when he turned back to look. But when he somersaulted into the ice-covered ditch, his cap and sunglasses flying through the air, I had a perfect view—he was the township government's head cook and purchasing agent, a frequent visitor to our village. For years, he'd bought everything that contained animal fat or protein and then served it up on the tables of the Party and government officials. A man with political credentials impeccable enough to guarantee the safety, the very lives, of our township leaders, he'd been one of Father's drinking buddies. His name was Han, Han shifu. Father told me to call him Uncle Han.