Send it in.
That’s all my mother-in-law said, and without fanfare; five minutes later, two young women in snowy white hospital gowns and square caps carried a naked meat boy into the lecture hall in a specially designed gurney. The women would have been considered good looking, but their pale faces made me squirm. They set the gurney on the chopping block, then stepped aside, their arms hanging down stiffly. My mother-in-law bent over to inspect the pink meat boy, poked him in the chest with a soft, dainty index finger, and nodded with satisfaction. Then she stood up to remind the students one more time, with great solemnity: You must never ever forget that this is just a little animal in human form. She’d barely gotten the words out when the little animal in human form on the gurney rolled over. The students let out a suppressed gasp. Everyone, myself included, thought the little guy opening on his foot. In a strangely beautiful manner, a string of bright red drops of blood like gemstones hung down to merge with a glass jar under his foot. The lecture hall was unusually quiet. All the students – male and female – their eyes bulging, were staring at the meat boy’s foot and the string of blood that hung from it. The camera from the local TV station was also trained on the foot and the blood beneath it, which sparkled in the bright lights. Gradually I heard the students’ heavy breathing, deep like the swelling tide, and the clear, crisp, ear-pleasing sounds of blood dripping into the jar, like a creek flowing through deep ravines. My mother-in-law said, The meat boy’s blood will be completely drained in about an hour and a half. The second step is to remove the innards while keeping them intact. The third step is to loosen the hair with water heated to 70 degrees… I really don’t feel like describing my mother-in-law’s actual cooking lesson, which was boring and nauseating at the same time. Since night was falling, Doctor of Liquor Studies’ brain, which was full of wonderful ideas, and stimulated by alcohol, had to concentrate on creating a story entitled ‘Swallows’ Nests’ instead of wasting his talent on a banquet for cannibals.
Chapter Seven
I
The lady trucker’s comment knifed into the investigator’s heart. He pressed his hand against his breast like a love-struck teenager and bent over in agony. He saw her pink feet, which were livelier than her hands, rubbing back and forth across the carpet. His heart was inundated with a wicked passion. Clenching his teeth, he cursed – ‘Slut!’ – before turning and striding toward the door. He heard a shout thud into his back: Where do you think you’re going, you whoremonger? Who the hell do you think you are, bullying a woman that way?’ He kept walking. A sparkling drinking glass whizzed past his ear, bounced off the door, and landed on the carpet. Turning to look back, he saw her standing there, thrusting her chest out and breathing heavily, moisture glistening in her eyes. Beset by mixed emotions, he struggled to keep his voice under controclass="underline" ‘How could you be so shameless as to sleep with a dwarf? Was it for money?’ She burst into tears, sobbing and sobbing, until suddenly she raised her voice, hoarse yet shrill, setting the metal decorations of the frosted-glass hanging lamps tinkling loudly. She tore open her blouse, began pounding her breasts, scratching her face with her fingernails, tearing her hair, and smashing her head against the cream-colored wall. In the midst of her frenzied self-abuse, she shrieked hysterically, nearly bursting the investigator’s eardrums:
‘Get out – get out – get the hell out -’
The investigator was scared witless. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He felt as if the Angel of Death were rubbing his nose with its cold hand and red-painted nails. Spurts of urine ran down his leg. He knew how inelegant, not to mention uncomfortable, it was to be pissing his pants, yet he couldn’t help himself. It was all that kept him from falling apart. But even as he was pissing his pants, he experienced the joy of shedding an enormous emotional burden. Voice cracking with emotion, he said:
‘Don’t do that… please, I beg you…’
Unmoved by his plea or by his loss of bladder control, the lady trucker forged ahead with her self-abuse and loud wails. As she banged her head with increased vigor, the wall protested loudly, until it seemed inevitable that it would soon be splattered with her brains. The investigator ran over and threw his arms around her waist, only to have her straighten up and break his grip. Now she changed tactics: instead of banging her head against the wall, she began tearing at the back of her hands with her teeth, as if gnawing on a pig’s foot. She was really digging in, not play-acting, for soon her hands were a bloody mess. The investigator, in an act of desperate futility, fell weakly to his knees and began knocking his head on the floor in supplicating kowtows.
‘Dear woman,’ he said. ‘Does that help, calling you dear woman? My dearest woman, don’t be offended by someone as worthless as I. Be forgiving, like a wise and tolerant prime minister. Pretend that what you heard was a fart, a loud, stinky fart.’
Surprisingly, that did the trick. She stopped chewing the backs of her hands, closed her eyes, opened wide her mouth, and bawled like a baby. The investigator straightened up. Then, like something right out of the movies, he started slapping his own face – hard -first one cheek, then the other, berating himself as he did:
'I'm not human, I’m a bastard, a bandit, a hooligan, a dog, a wriggly maggot in a vat of shit. Smack, I’ll smack you to death, you lousy son of a bitch…’
The first few slaps stung, but by the fourth or fifth one, it was about the same as hitting a piece of cowhide – no pain, no sting, just numbness. Several slaps more, and even that disappeared, leaving only the horrible, loud smack, as if he were slapping the carcass of a debristled hog or the ass of a dead woman. And he kept it up, one vicious slap after another, gradually feeling an odd sense of pleasure from this act of self-vengeance. At some point, he stopped berating himself, and the energy conserved by not speaking was transferred to his hand, increasing the force of each slap and turning up the volume of the resounding smacks. He watched as her mouth closed and the wails died out; she watched his performance as if in a trance. The investigator was pleased with himself. So after a few more vicious slaps, he dropped his hands. He heard a commotion on the other side of the door. Very tentatively, he asked:
‘You’re not mad at me any more, are you, young lady?’ She didn’t move. With staring eyes, a gaping mouth, and an expression that sent shivers through the investigator, she simply stood there like a malevolent statue. Slowly he got to his feet and began to sweet-talk the woman, masking the anger in his heart, as he edged toward the door. ‘Don’t be mad at me anymore, please don’t be mad. I’ve always had a filthy mouth, as filthy as any asshole. My mouth has always gotten me into trouble, and nothing I do seems to help.’ His backside brushed against the door. ‘You didn’t deserve that, and I apologize with all my heart.’ He applied pressure on the door with his backside. It creaked loudly. I’m the lowest of the low, a disgusting creature, I mean it,’ he mumbled as a cool breeze brushed against his back. Giving her one last look, he slipped through the narrow opening and let the door close behind him. With her now on the other side, he ran toward the far end of the corridor without a second thought; but halfway there he was met by a neatly dressed little man rushing along behind a tiny serving girl. With a long stride he virtually leaped over both short people’s heads, ignoring the girl’s frightened shriek. Finally reaching the end of the corridor, he turned the corner and pushed open a greasy door, where he was greeted by a potpourri of smells – sweet, sour, bitter, spicy – and a cloud of hot steam that swallowed him up. A bunch of little men were rushing around in the steamy room, coming in and out of view as they bustled about like a covey of little sprites. Some, he saw, were carving, others were plucking hairs and feathers, yet others were washing dishes, and others still were mixing ingredients. Chaotic at first appearance, there was a distinct sense of order there. He tripped over something, and discovered it was a string of frozen donkey vaginas. He immediately thought of Dragon and Phoenix Lucky Together and the all-donkey banquet. Several of the little kitchen helpers stopped what they were doing to size him up with curious looks. Backing quickly out of the room, he turned and ran until he spotted a staircase, which he descended, guiding himself along by holding on to the banister. When he heard a woman’s heart-stopping scream, what was left in his bladder ran down his leg. Deathly silence followed that single scream, and an unhappy thought flashed through his mind. ‘To hell with her!’ Without a thought for the gaily dressed boys and girls dancing nimbly across a dance floor laid with Laiyang Red marble, and unavoidably shattering the beautiful rhythms of the dance music, like a whipped, mangy dog smelling of rancid piss, he crashed through the main hall of Yichi Tavern, a place noted for scenes of debauchery.