‘Lived long enough, you son of a bitch?’ The gatekeeper, basin in hand, stood there cursing and kicking the ground. Ding Gou’er quickly realized that he was the target of the curses. After shaking some of the water out of his hair and mopping off his neck, he spit out a gob of saliva, blinked several times, and tried to focus on the gatekeeper’s face. He saw a pair of coal-black, shady-looking, dull eyes of different sizes, plus a bulbous nose, bright red like a hawthorn, and a set of obstinate teeth behind dark, discolored lips. Hot flashes wove in and out of his brain, slithering through its runnels. Flames of anger rose in him, as if an internal match had been struck. White-hot embers singed his brain, like cinders in an oven, like lightning bolts. His skull was transparent; waves of courage crashed onto the beach of his chest.
The gatekeeper’s black hair, coarse as a dog’s bristly fur, stood up straight. No doubt about it, the sight of Ding Gou’er had scared the living hell out of him. Ding Gou’er could see the man’s nose hairs, arching upward like swallowtails. An evil, black swallow must be hiding in his head, where it has built a nest, laid its eggs, and raised its hatchlings. Taking aim at the swallow, he pulled the trigger. Pulled the trigger. The trigger.
Pow – pow – pow -.’
Three crisp gunshots shattered the stillness at the gate to the Mount Luo Coal Mine, silenced the big brown dog, and snagged the attention of the farmers. Drivers jumped out of their cabs, needles pricked the donkey’s lips; a moment of frozen indecision, then everyone swarmed to the spot. At ten thirty-five in the morning, the Mount Luo Coal Mine gatekeeper crumpled to the ground before the sounds had even died out. He lay there twitching, holding his head in his hands.
Ding Gou’er, chalky white pistol in his hand, a smile on his lips, stood ramrod stiff, sort of like a pagoda pine. Wisps of green smoke from the muzzle of his pistol dissipated after rising above his head.
People crowded round the metal fence, dumbstruck. Time stood still, until someone shouted shrilly:
‘Help, murder -! Old Lü the gatekeeper’s been shot dead!’
Ding Gou’er. Pagoda pine. Dark green, nearly black.
‘The old dog was an evil bastard.’
‘See if you can sell him to the Gourmet Section of the Culinary Academy.’
‘The old dog’s too tough.’
‘The Gourmet Section only wants tender little boys, not stale goods like him.’
‘Then take him to the zoo to feed to the wolves.’
Ding Gou’er flipped the pistol in the air, where it spun in the sunlight like a silvery mirror. He caught it in his hand and showed it to the people crowding round the gate. It was a splendid little weapon, with the exquisite lines of a fine revolver. He laughed.
‘Friends,’ he said, ‘don’t be alarmed. It’s a toy gun, it isn’t real’
He pushed the release button and the barrel flipped open; he took out a dark red plastic disk and showed it around. A little paper exploding cap lay between each hole in the disk. ‘When you pull the trigger,’ he said, ‘the disk rotates, the hammer hits the cap, and -pow! It’s a toy, good enough to be used as a stage prop, but something you can buy at any department store.’ He reinserted the disk, snapped the barrel back into place, and pulled the trigger.
Pow-!
‘Like so,’ he said, a salesman making his pitch. ‘If you still don’t believe me, look here.’ He aimed the pistol at his own sleeve and pulled the trigger.
Pow-!
‘It’s the traitor Wang Lianju!’ shouted a driver who’d seen the revolutionary opera The Red Lantern.
‘It’s not a real gun.’ Ding Gou’er lifted his arm to show them.
‘You see, if it had been real, my arm would have a hole in it, wouldn’t it?’ His sleeve had a round charred spot, from which the redolent odor of gunpowder rose into the sunlight.
Ding Gou’er stuffed the pistol back into his pocket, walked up, and kicked the gatekeeper who lay on the ground.
‘Get up, you old fake,’ he said. ‘You can stop acting now.’
The gatekeeper climbed to his feet, still holding his head in his hands. His complexion was sallow, the color of a fine year-end cake.
‘I just wanted to scare you.’ he said, ‘not waste a real bullet on you. You can stop hiding behind that dog of yours. It’s after ten o’clock, long past the time you should have opened the gate.’
The gatekeeper lowered his hands and examined them. Then, not sure what to believe, rubbed his head all over and looked at his hands again. No blood. Like a man snatched from the jaws of death, he sighed audibly and, still badly shaken, asked:
‘What, what do you want?’
With a treacherous little laugh, Ding Gou’er said:
I’m the new Mine Director, sent here by municipal authorities.’
The gatekeeper ran over to the gate house and returned with a glistening yellow key, with which he quickly, and noisily, opened the gate. The mob broke for their vehicles, and in no time the clearing rocked with the sound of engines turning over.
A tidal wave of trucks and carts moved slowly, inexorably toward the now open gate, bumping and clanging into each other as they squeezed through. The investigator jumped out of the way, and as he stood there observing the passage of this hideous insect, with its countless twisting, shifting sections, he experienced a strange and powerful rage. The birth of that rage was followed by spasms down around his anus, where irritated blood vessels began to leap painfully, and he knew he was in for a hemorrhoid attack. This time the investigation would go forward, hemorrhoids or no, just like the old days. That thought took the edge off his rage, lessened it considerably, in fact. There’s no avoiding the inevitable. Not mass confusion, and not hemorrhoids. Only the sacred key to a riddle is eternal. But what was the key this time?
The gatekeeper’s face was scrunched up into a ludicrous, unnatural smile. He bowed and he scraped. ‘Won’t our new leader follow me into the reception room?’ Prepared to go with the flow – that was how he lived his life – he followed the man inside.
It was a large, spacious room with a bed under a black quilt. Plus a couple of vacuum bottles. And a great big stove. A pile of coal, each piece as big as a dog’s head. On the wall hung a laughing, pink-skinned, naked toddler with a longevity peach in his hands – a new year’s scroll – his darling little pecker poking up like a pink, wriggly silkworm chrysalis. The whole thing was incredibly lifelike. Ding Gou’er’s heart skipped a beat, his hemorrhoids twitched painfully.
The room was unbearably hot and stuffy from a fire roaring in the stove. The bottom half of the chimney and the surface of the stove had turned bright red from the furious heat. Hot air swirled around the room, making dusty cobwebs in the corners dance. Suddenly he itched all over, his nose ached dreadfully.
The gatekeeper watched his face with smarmy attentiveness.
‘Cold, Director?’
‘Freezing!’ he replied indignantly.
‘No problem, no problem, I’ll just add some coal…’ Muttering anxiously, the gatekeeper reached under the bed and took out a sharp hatchet with a date-red handle. The investigator’s hand flew instinctively to his hip as he watched the man shamble over to the coal bin, hunker down, and pick up a chunk of shiny black coal the size and shape of a pillow; steadying it with one hand, he raised the hatchet over his head and – crack – the coal broke into two pieces of roughly equal size, shining like quicksilver. Crack crack crack crack crack – the pieces kept getting smaller, forming a little pile. He opened the grate and released white-hot flames at least a foot into the air – whoosh. The investigator was sweating from head to toe, but the gatekeeper kept feeding coal into the stove. And kept apologizing: It’ll warm up any minute. The coal here is too soft, burns too fast, got to keep putting in more.’