‘So what if it’s illegal.’ She couldn’t believe the words had slipped out.
‘What are you saying, missus, what do you mean?’ The butcher’s face darkened. These customers were just making trouble — best have nothing to do with them. He picked up his cleaver and started chopping up a joint.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she stammered, ‘that’s not what I meant … we just want to buy the bones.’
‘Just take them.’
‘But they’re too cheap,’ she protested, ‘only 50 cents each!’
‘What do you think they are?’ the butcher shouted. ‘Human skulls?’
They shivered, suddenly uneasy.
‘We want the skulls,’ my father said.
‘Hey, don’t say things like that … get out of here. Get out of here both of you, leave me alone.’
They didn’t move.
‘We want the skulls!’ he shouted.
The butcher rushed out from behind his counter and tried to shove them away, but they stood firm, because otherwise it would all be over, otherwise they’d be condemned to a life of mediocrity. They stood there, on the margins between life and death, battling for their principles.
How could a couple of old people be so strong?
‘OK, OK.’ The stallholder gave in. ‘Just pay me whatever you like.’
But what were gourd bones really worth nowadays? They were willing to pay anything to fulfil their dream, but they had no idea how much ‘anything’ actually was. In the old days a gourd bone cost five cents, but incomes had gone up 30 times since then. So five cents times 30: one and a half yuan.
‘Three yuan the pair,’ she said.
‘OK, OK,’ said the butcher, waving his hand in defeat. ‘Just take them away. And don’t you go telling the Department of Industry and Commerce I ripped you off.’
‘Of course we wouldn’t,’ she said.
‘Go on then. Get lost.’
They put the money on the counter. The stallholder didn’t even look at it.
7
They set off home, happily clutching their precious gourd bones. As she fumbled for her change on the steps of the bus, she put the bag down by the ticket machine.
‘Take those off!’ yelled the driver. ‘Filthy, nasty things.’
‘What do you mean?’ said my father. ‘Don’t you know what they are?’
‘They’re bones, aren’t they?’ said the driver.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but what kind of bones?’
‘They’re just bones,’ said the driver. ‘They’re not worth anything.’
‘And how much do you think they cost?’ my mother asked.
‘You tell me,’ the driver shot back.
Three yuan altogether. Not even as much as a couple of bus fares. They took their seats in silence.
After a while he blurted out: ‘We didn’t pay enough.’
‘We should have paid a bit more. How can you use income to work it out? Prices have gone up much faster than income over the last 20 years, but how can you calculate it with price increases? It’s impossible.’
‘We didn’t think,’ he said. ‘He gave them to us almost for free.’
‘It was as if he was giving us charity,’ she declared.
‘But we don’t need charity. Huh, how ridiculous!’
They decided to leave the bag of bones on the bus, but when they got home they were bereft. They had wanted to buy some gourd bones so much, but as soon as they got hold of them, they abandoned them. They felt empty and foolish. How had they got into such a mess? No one else was so serious about anything nowadays. The pragmatic solution was to go back to the supermarket and buy some bones — any old bones. Spare ribs would do, or even a piece of pork loin if they couldn’t get ribs. When they got there the butcher wouldn’t just sell them the bones, they had to buy the meat too. But all they did was cut off the meat and throw it away. It was the most wasteful thing they’d ever done.
She simmered the bones and made a broth. A pungent smell of vinegar wafted up.
‘We have gourd bone soup!’ she cried as she carried it to the table.
It was just like the old days. What a magician she was, taking spare rib and transforming it into fragrant gourd bone soup.
She performed the little ritual from the old days, carrying the enamel basin around the table as if she was dancing a ballet or making a spell which transformed the lowly bones into a pure meat soup. But now she had transformed a meat soup into a bone broth. And it was much more delicious. The broth had the power to seep into every taste bud and release the gastric juices.
‘Pork loin soup, spare rib soup, thigh bone soup, none of them are a patch on gourd bone soup,’ he cried.
Everyone wanted pork loin back then. At works dinners, their colleagues’ eyes glinted like leopards’ when a dish with meat was carried out. Everyone thrust their spoons into the bowl and stirred it around, desperate to scoop up a few morsels of meat with the broth. Nobody wanted to be too obvious about it. They used to swirl their spoons around in the bowl, pretending to talk. But their spoons went rat-a-tat-tat against the sides of the bowl in search of meat, like an exchange of gunfire.
‘When I look back, the more hardship we suffered, the more fun it was,’ he said. ‘Oh I know we were very poor, but we were so young. Remember the heavy guns we carried in military training? We worked all day, studied politics in the evenings and we laboured in the fields too, “emulating Lei Feng”, “preparing against war and natural disasters”, digging air raid shelters, dredging rivers, all sorts of patriotic volunteering work. Once you even fainted on the river bed.’
They burst out laughing. Life had been hard back then but, looking back, she had happy memories. There was something romantic about those days …
‘That must have been how we got the certificate to buy the bones,’ she said. ‘One of the district leaders said “We’ve got to look after this good, hard-working comrade,” and she made our work unit do me a letter saying I needed meat.’
‘And what use was that letter to you?’ He pulled a wry face. ‘You only wangled a sick note because I managed to get hold of that great-uncle of mine who was a doctor.’
‘So you’re quite capable of lying,’ she teased.
But he had no problem admitting he had lied, or even that he’d broken the law.
‘If I hadn’t lied, would you be here today?’ he said.
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she nodded.
‘I remember the first time we went to buy bones with the sick note,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t let me go on my own, so we got up together at the crack of dawn on a freezing cold winter’s morning — we were worried there might be none left. We drank some hot water to warm us inside and off we went, terrified we’d make a mess of it and get found out and they’d arrest us.’ The colour drained from their faces at the memory. He patted her shoulder and went on. ‘We went to the meat counter to pay … No, that’s not right. I went alone, so you could stay in the background in case I needed back-up. If they thought I had a fake sick note, I’d need your help to escape.’
The mystery and excitement of their former crime filled them with courage, firing them up even though they were now frail and old. He carried on with the story.
‘We saw some bones on the counter. Some had more meat on them than others, like the thigh bone, which at least had marrow inside. There were pigs’ heads, with all sorts of bits you could eat between the skull bones — the brains, the palate, the eyeballs. But what would they sell us? I spotted a bone at the very end of the counter, a gourd bone. “I want … that one … ” I said. The butcher looked up. I jumped. Good heavens, what a glare! But I couldn’t back out now, because retreat would make him even more suspicious. So I screwed up my courage and said again: “I want… that one … ”.’