‘That's ridiculous,’ Mother said unkindly and then turned to me. ‘Xiaotong, go see Huang Biao's wife and get her to help you change. I don't want you goofing off when the reporters show up. Aunty Lan treated you like a son, so repay her by acting like one.’
‘I want to go change too,’ Jiaojiao whined.
‘Jiaojiao!’ Father growled as he glared at her.
Jiaojiao's mouth trembled as though she were about to burst out crying. The unyielding look on Father's face put a stop to that, although a few tears seeped from her eyes.
POW! 39
Dusk has just settled in and work on the opera stage is done; the four workmen are carrying the freshly painted Meat God to one side of the tall stage. Its face comes alive in the moist rays of the setting July sun; its feet are nailed to a wooden base to keep it from tipping over. My heart tightens with every thud as they pound in those long, thick nails and my feet twitch in pain. I didn't realize I'd fainted till I came to. The wet stains on the front of my pants are proof, as is the taste of blood from a bitten tongue and the pain in the pinched spot between my nose and mouth. A young woman, a medical-school badge pinned to her blouse, straightens up and says to a male student with dyed blond hair: ‘Probably an epileptic seizure.’ He leans over and asks: ‘Is there a family history of epilepsy?’ Confused, I shake my head, which is pretty much empty. ‘How is he supposed to understand that kind of question?’ she says as she glares at him. ‘Has anyone in your family ever had a seizure?’ I think really hard but I'm so weak I can hardly lift my arms. A seizure? Well, Fan Zhaoxia's father frequently passed out on the street, foaming at the mouth and suffering from violent spasms, and I heard people say those were seizures. But no one in my family had them, not even when my mother was furious with my father or me. I shake my head and struggle to prop myself into a seated position with arms as weak as limp noodles. ‘It could have been a symptomatic seizure caused by emotional trauma,’ the woman says to the man. ‘What kind of traumatic experience can someone with a simple intellectual life have?’ He is not convinced. Fuck you! I fume inwardly. What do you know about my so-called simple intellectual life? My life is complex as hell. The woman raises her voice. ‘Avoid heights, don't go in the water, do not drive a car or a motorbike and no riding horses’ I understand every word but I doubt that the look on my face shows it. ‘Let's go, Tiangua’ the man says. ‘The opera is about to begin’ Tiangua? My heart lurches as an avalanche of memories thuds into my head. Is it even remotely possible that the slim-waisted, long-legged university student with shoulder-length hair, finely formed features and kind heart is Lao Lan's daughter, the girl with the dull, colourless hair, Tiangua? She has developed into quite a young woman. There's really no telling what a girl will look like when she grows up. Tiangua! It could have been me calling out or it could have been the crumbling Horse God. I hope it was me, because they say that if the Horse God calls out to a pretty girl and she makes the mistake of responding—she'll have a hard time escaping from a debilitating fate. This time she turns to see who called her name. I mean absolutely nothing to her, so she can't possibly have expected to see the swaggering Luo Xiaotong of her childhood, not in the current state, a barely conscious beggar—I'm not a beggar but I'm sure that's what she and her boyfriend think—lying on the floor of a broken-down temple recovering from some kind of seizure. She stands there, her belly up against the face of the Wise Monk, who doesn't flinch. She doesn't seem to think anything of it as she leans forward, reaches out and strokes the Horse Spirit's neck. ‘Have you read the Wutong story in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio?’ she asks her friend without turning to look at him. ‘No,’ he says with evident embarrassment. ‘We only studied our textbooks so we could get into college. The competition was brutal, since the required test scores were so incredibly high.’ ‘What do you know about the Wutong?’ she turns to asks him, a mischievous grin on her face. ‘Nothing.’ ‘That's what I thought’ ‘So what is it?’ he asks. ‘No wonder the writer Pu Songling said “After Wan's success with weapons, the area of Wu had no trouble with the remnants of the Wutong spirit,’” she teases. ‘Huh?’ is all he can manage. She smiles. ‘Forget it. But look here. She holds out her mud-stained hand. See? The Horse Sprit is sweating.’ He takes her hand and leads her out of the temple. She turns to look back, reluctant to leave, and though she is looking at the idol, she's talking to me when she says: ‘You should go to a hospital. You're not about to die but you do need some medical attention.’ My nose begins to ache, in part out of gratitude and in part over the vicissitudes of life. More and more people have joined the crowd outside, including the very old and the very young, bringing with them stools to sit on, assembling from both sides of the road and the cultivated fields behind the temple. What I find strange is that there isn't a single vehicle on the usually busy road, a departure that can only be explained if the police have cordoned it off. I wonder why they haven't erected the stage in the open field across the way instead of on the cramped temple grounds. Nothing is the way it should be, nothing makes sense. I look up and there's Lao Lan, his arm in a sling and a gauze bandage covering his left eye, looking like a defeated soldier, walking up to the temple from the cornfield behind us, escorted by Huang Biao. The girl they'd named Jiaojiao runs happily ahead of them, holding a fresh ear of corn she's just picked. Her mother, Fan Zhaoxia, cautions her: ‘Slow down, honey, you could trip and fall.’ A middle-aged man in an undershirt, holding a folding fan and smiling broadly, runs up to greet the new arrivals: ‘Boss Lan, how good of you to come.’ A man next to Lao Lan makes the introductions: ‘This is Troupe Leader Jiang of the Qingdao Opera Troupe. He's a true artist.’ ‘You can see why I can't shake your hand, Lao Lan says. My apologies’ ‘There's no need for you to apologize, General Manager. The troupe survives on your support’ ‘We help each other,’ Lao Lan replies. ‘Tell your actors to put on a good show to thank the Meat God and the Wutong Spirit. I offended the gods by firing a gun in front of the temple and got what I deserved’. ‘Don't you worry, General Manager, we'll sing our hearts out.’ Electricians with tool bags over their shoulders climb ladders to instal stage lighting, and watching them go up and down reminds me of the brothers who did electrical work back in Slaughterhouse Village years before. How things have changed. The surroundings are the same but not the people. I, Luo Xiaotong, have sunk to the lowest tier of society and am pretty well assured of never being able to turn my life round. My abilities do not extend beyond sitting in this dilapidated temple, propping up a body exhausted by the occurrence of what might have been an epileptic seizure and relating dusty old stories to a Wise Monk whose body is like rotting wood—