‘Put some oomph into it, gentlemen!’ Yao Qi shouted. ‘Your host will show his gratitude later.’
Yao Qi's loathsome face glowed, a petty man intoxicated by his perceived glory. The same man who had once approached my father with a plan to bring Lao Lan to his knees was now his chief lackey. But I knew how unreliable he was, that he had the bones of a backstabber and that Lao Lan would be wise to keep him at arm's length. Now that I was out, I had no desire to return to the head of the coffin so, together with Jiaojiao, who had shown up from somewhere, I ran round the yard taking in all the excitement. She had gouged out the eyes of a paper horse and was clutching them like treasured objects.
As the music from the monks and musicians came to an end, Huang Biao's wife, who had changed into an off-white dress, pranced into the yard like an operatic coquette and placed tea services on both tables. Biting her lower lip, she poured the tea. After a drink of tea and some cigarettes, it was time to perform. The monks began by intoning loud, rhythmic chants, liquid sounds filled with devotion, like pond bullfrogs croaking on a summer night. The crisp, melodic clangs of cymbals and the hollow thumps of the wooden fish highlighted the clear voices. After a while the minor monks ended their chorus, leaving only the strains of the old monk's full voice, with its uncanny modulation, to mesmerize the listeners. Everyone held their breath as they drank in each sacred note emerging from deep in the old monk's chest; it seemed to send their spirits floating idly, lazily, into the clouds. The old monk chanted on for several moments, then picked up his cymbals and beat them with changing rhythms. Faster and faster, now throwing his arms open wide and bringing them back, now barely moving. The sounds changed with the movements of his hands and arms, heavy clangs giving way to thin chattering clicks. At the moment of crescendo, one of the cymbals flew into the air and twirled like a magic talisman. The old monk uttered a Buddhist incantation, spun round and held the remaining cymbal behind his back, waiting for its mate to drop from the sky atop it; as it landed it produced a metallic tremble that lingered in the air. A cry of delight rose from the crowd and the monk flung both cymbals skyward—they chased each other like inseparable twins and, on meeting, sent a loud clang earthward. As they descended they seemed to seek out the old monk's hands. The performance that day by the wise old monk, a Buddhist devotee of high attainments, left a lasting impression on every one of us.
Their performance ended, the monks sat down and returned to their tea. The crowd now turned its attention to the musicians in anticipation of something new. The monks’ performance would be a hard act to follow, but we would have been disappointed with the musicians for not surpassing it.
Without a moment's hesitation, the musicians stood up and began as an ensemble, opening with the tune ‘Boldly Move Forward, Little Sister’, followed by ‘When Will You Return’ and then the brisk ‘The Little Shepherd’. When they laid down their instruments, they turned their eyes to their shifu, who peeled off his jacket, revealing a frame so slight you could count his ribs. He shut his eyes, raised his head and then began to play a funereal tune on his suona, his Adam's apple sliding up and down rhythmically. I didn't know the tune but its sad effect on me was unmistakable. As he played, the suona moved from his mouth up into one of his nostrils, which muted the notes while retaining the instrument's mournfully melodic tone. His eyes still shut, he reached out his hand and into it a disciple placed a second suona. The reed of this one too he inserted into a nostril, and now two suonas created a tune of surpassing sorrow. His face grew bright red, his temples throbbed and his audience was so moved it forget to cheer. Yao Qi had not exaggerated when he said he'd engaged a suona master of great renown. When the tune ended, he extracted the instruments from his nostrils, handed them to his disciples and fell into a chair. Disciples rushed up to pour him tea and hand him a cigarette, which he lit and immediately blew two streams of thick smoke from his nose, like dragons’ whiskers. And then blood slithered, worm-like, out of both nostrils.
‘Your reward for wonderful performances—’ Yao Qi bellowed.
Xiao Han, the meat inspector, ran out from the eastern wing with a pair of identical red envelopes and laid one on each table. The old monk and head musician immediately began a man-to-man competition, and it was hard to tell who won. But I doubt that you're interested in hearing about such things, Wise Monk, so I'll skip this part and move on to what unfolded next.
Back in the eastern wing Yao Qi was boasting of the great service he'd rendered my father, Xiao Han and several of the men who had helped out, telling them how he had travelled five hundred li to engage the services of the two troupes, ‘wearing out the soles of my shoes in the process'. He lifted his foot as proof. Xiao Han, known for his caustic tongue, couldn't resist a barb: ‘I hear you used to think of Lao Lan as your mortal enemy. You must have changed your mind when you decided to be his chief lackey.’
Father's lip curled and, though he held his tongue, his face spoke volumes.
‘We're all lackeys,’ Yao Qi remarked nonchalantly. ‘But at least I sell myself. Some people sell their wives and children.’
Father's face darkened. ‘Who are you talking about?’ he demanded, gnashing his teeth.
‘Only myself, Lao Luo, why so angry?’ Yao Qi replied slyly. ‘I hear you're going to be married soon.’
Father picked up his ink box and flung it at Yao Qi and then stood up.
A brief look of anger on Yao Qi's face was supplanted by a sinister grin. ‘What a temper, Old Brother, you have to “out with the old” before you can “in with the new”. For a big-time plant manager like you, nothing could be easier than getting your paws on a young maiden. Just leave it to me. I may not have what it takes to be an official, but as a matchmaker I'm peerless. How about your young sister, Xiao Han?’
‘Fuck you, Yao Qi!’ I cursed.
‘Director Luo, no, it should be Director Lan,’ Yao Qi said, ‘you're the crown prince of the village!’
Xiao Han rushed at the man before Father could, grabbed him by the arms and spun him so hard that his head drooped. Then he pushed him towards the door, jammed his knee into his buttocks and gave him a shove that sent him out the door as if he'd been shot from a cannon. He lay sprawled on the ground for a long while after.
At five that evening, it was time for the formal funeral ceremony to begin. Mother grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me back to the coffin, where she pushed me down into the dutiful son's spot. A pair of white candles as thick as turnips burnt on the table behind the coffin, their flickering light heavy with the rancid odour of sheep's tallow. Light from the bean-oil lantern showed up about as bright as a glowworm's tail alongside the burning candle, and that in a room in which hung a twenty-eight-bulb crystal chandelier encircled by twenty-four spotlights. If they had all been turned on, you would have been able to count the ants crawling across the floorboards. But electric lights lacked the mystique of candles. Tiangua looked even stranger and less human as she sat across from me in the flickering light, but the more I tried to avoid looking at her the harder it was and the less human her image became. Her face underwent constant changes, like ripples on water. She was a bird one moment, a cat the next and then a wolf. And then I realized that her eyes were locked onto me, refusing to let go. Yet what really made my heart race was her posture—she was sitting on the edge of her stool, legs bent and taut, leaning forward like a predatory animal poised to attack. At any moment, I imagined, she'd spring from her stool, bound across the clay pot with its burning paper and pounce, then wrap her hands round my neck and gnaw on my face—crunch crunch, like a turnip—until she'd eaten my head. Then she'd howl and take on her true form, with a long, bushy tail, and flee without a trace. I knew that the real Tiangua had died long before, and that the figure seated across me was actually an evil spirit that had assumed her form and was waiting for the right moment to partake of the flesh of Luo Xiaotong, a meat-eater and thus tastier than other children. I'd once heard an alms-begging monk talk about retribution on the wheel of life; he'd said that individuals who ate meat would themselves be eaten by other meat-eaters. That monk had achieved a high degree of Buddhist attainments, one of many such monks in that place of ours. Take that alms-begging monk, for instance. He once sat in the snow in the middle of the winter, naked to the waist, lotus position, without eating or drinking for three days and nights. Many kindhearted women, afraid he would freeze to death, brought him blankets to keep warm, only to discover that his face was nice and ruddy and that steam rose from his scalp, almost as if his head were a stove. Blankets were the last thing he needed. Admittedly, there were people who said he had taken a ‘fire dragon’ pill, that he had no special gift. But who has ever seen one of those pills? The stuff of legend. But the monk in the snow? I saw him with my own eyes.