We ran over and grabbed him.
“Stop it!” the medic yelled at our hero. “You’ve already beaten the crap out of Little Dou!”
Huping wouldn’t listen and struggled to reach the tiger. It took five men to restrain him, wrench the rock from his hands, and haul him away. He shouted, “I killed another tiger! I’m a real tiger-fighter!”
“Shut up!” Director Yu said. “You couldn’t handle a tiger, so we gave you a man.”
Hurriedly, we removed the animal skin from the driver, who was unconscious. His lips were cut open; his mouth and eyes were bleeding.
Old Min, still unable to stop chuckling, poured some cold water on Little Dou’s face. A moment later Little Dou came to, moaning, “Help. . save me. .”
The medic began bandaging him, insisting we had to send him to the hospital without delay. But who could drive the truck? Secretary Feng rubbed his hands and said, “Damn, look at this mess!”
A young man was dispatched to look for a phone in order to call our company to have them send out the other driver. In the meantime, Little Dou’s wounds stopped bleeding, and he was able to answer some questions, but he couldn’t help groaning every few seconds. Old Min waved a leafy twig over Little Dou’s face to keep mosquitoes and flies away. Tired and bored, Huping was alone in the cab, napping. Except for the two leaders, who were in the bushes talking, we all lounged on the grass, drinking soda and smoking cigarettes.
Not until an hour later did the other driver arrive by bicycle. At the sight of him some of us shouted, “Long live Chairman Mao!” although the great leader had passed away five years before.
The moment we arrived at the hospital, we rushed Little Dou to the emergency room. While the doctor was stitching him up, the medic and I escorted Huping back to the mental ward. On the way, Huping said tearfully, “I swear I didn’t know Little Dou was in the tiger.”
After a good deal of editing, the fake-tiger part matched the rest of the scene, more or less. Many leaders of our prefecture saw the new part and praised it, even though the camera shakes like crazy. Several TV stations in the Northeast have begun rebroadcasting the series. We’re told that it will be shown in Beijing soon, and we’re hopeful it will win a prize. Director Yu has promised to throw a seafood party if our series makes the finals, and to ask the Municipal Administration to give us all a raise if it receives an award.
Both the driver and Huping are still in the hospital. I was assigned to visit them once a week on behalf of our company. The doctor said that Little Dou, who suffered a concussion, would recuperate soon, but Huping wasn’t doing so well. The hospital plans to have him transferred to a mental home when a bed is available there.
Yesterday, after lunch, I went to see our patients with a string bag of Red Jade apples. I found the driver in the ward’s recreation room, sitting alone over a chessboard. He looked fine, although the scars on his upper lip, where the stitches were, still seemed to bother him, especially when he opened his mouth.
“How are you today, Little Dou?” I asked.
“I’m all right. Thanks for coming.” His voice was smoother, as though it belonged to another man.
“Does your head still hurt?”
“Sometimes it rings like a beehive. My temples ache at night.”
“The doc said you could leave the hospital soon.”
“Hope they’ll let me drive the truck again.”
His words filled me with pity, because the other driver had just taken an apprentice who was likely to replace Little Dou eventually. So I gave him all the apples, even though he was supposed to have only half of them. He’s a bachelor without any family here, whereas Huping has two elder sisters who live in town.
I found Huping in his room. He looked well physically but no longer possessed any princely charm. He had just returned from kung fu exercises and was panting a little. He wiped his face with a grimy white towel. The backs of his hands were flecked with tiny scars, scabs, and cracks, which must have resulted from hitting sandbags. I told him that we had received over three hundred fan letters addressed to him. I didn’t reveal that more than ninety percent of them were from young women and girls, some of whom had mailed him sweetmeats, chocolates, raisins, books, fountain pens, fancy diaries, and even photos of themselves. How come when a man becomes a poor wretch he’s all the more splendid to the public?
Huping grinned like an imbecile. “So people still think I’m a tiger-fighter?”
“Yes, they do,” I said and turned my head away. Beyond the double-paned window, the yard was clear and white. A group of children were building a snowman, his neck encircled by an orange scarf. Their mouths puffed out warm air, and their shouts rose like sparrows’ twitterings. They wore their coats unbuttoned. They looked happy.
Huping stroked his stubbly chin and grinned again. “Well,” he said, “I am a tiger-killer.”
Broken
During the lunch break, Manjin’s colleagues again talked about the typist Tingting. Chang Bofan, the director of the Youth League of the Muji Railroad Company, said, “Who knows? She may already be broken.”
“How can you tell?” asked Shuwei, an older clerk.
“Haven’t you seen the way she walks?” Bofan picked his flat nose, staring at the chessboard before him.
“No. Tell us how she walks.”
“With splayed feet. She must be as broad as a city gate.” The office rang with laughter. Bofan slapped a green cannon in front of a red elephant on the chessboard. Then they stopped laughing as the door opened and the director of the Cadre Section, Tan Na, walked in. She wanted to see a league member’s file, which Manjin helped her find in a cabinet.
When talking about Tingting, they rarely failed to mention Benchou, who was a senior clerk in the Security Section at the railroad company’s headquarters and could often be found in Tingting’s office. Benchou was in his early forties, dark and handsome, but he was married and had two children. “An old bull wants to chew tender grass,” people would say behind his back. Both Bofan and Shuwei disliked Benchou, because he had gotten two raises in the past three years, whereas they each had only one.
Shen Manjin was new in the Communist Youth League Section and was too young and too shy to join others in talking about women; but he was also eager to know more about Tingting, the pretty girl who was being courted by several sons of the top officials of the Muji Railroad Company. To him she seemed too flimsy, coquettish, and expensive, like a gorgeous vase only good for viewing. She rode a galvanized Phoenix bicycle, wore a diamond wristwatch, and was dressed in silk in summer and woolens or furs in winter — during which season she changed her scarves every week and sometimes even put on a saffron shawl. Manjin had been to her office a few times to deliver documents that needed typing. She seldom said an unnecessary word to him. When they ran into each other in the building, she would tilt her head a little, just to acknowledge that she saw him.
Most of his colleagues were either married or engaged, and would eat in the dining room of the guesthouse that provided board and lodging for locomotive engineers, stokers, train police, and attendants. Food was inexpensive there and of better quality. You could buy meat and vegetables separately, and a chef would cook them in a wok for you within minutes. The manager of the guesthouse would grant the dining privilege only to some of the cadres who worked at the company’s headquarters, which was close by. If he wanted, Manjin could eat there every day; but six days a week he would walk farther east and have lunch and dinner in the Workers Dining Hall, near the company’s shopping center. He was interested in the girls who ate at that place, in particular a group of nurses who were on the company’s basketball team. They were tall and handsome; of them, he was most attracted to the one who played center. She looked healthy and sturdy, with a thin, white neck, her hair coiled like a pair of earphones. If he were to marry, he would have a tall wife, so that his children would be taller than himself and would have no difficulty in finding a spouse when they grew up.