Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today (10 page)

To the surprise of all, three months after Hanli's death, Hanzhen herself became the talk of Fragrant Cedar Street. Seen in retrospect, it had nothing to do with the real-life vicissitudes of Fragrant Cedar Street. What the incident actually reflected was the tragic significance of our story. Tragedy is an enormous closed box; once it is opened, people inevitably get shut back inside. If not Hanzhen, it would have been someone else. Can you understand what I'm getting at?

It starts with the sweetshop. One day as Hanzhen was passing the sweetshop on her way home from school, she noticed a jar of preserved fruit in the window. As she entered, Old Shi was hanging out a sign that said CLOSED FOR INVENTORY. Hanzhen checked the money in her pocket-she had just enough for a bag of dried plums. She thought she could make the purchase before Old Shi began the inventory. After closing the door, he asked, "What would you like, Hanzhen?"

She tapped the jar. "Dried plums," she said. "I want some dried plums." She was unaware that he had closed the door. She watched him walk around behind the counter, sit down, and start working his abacus. "I want a bag of dried plums," Hanzhen repeated.

"Wait a minute, I'm nearly finished."

As she waited for him to finish, she stared at the jar of dried plums, oblivious to the fact that the door was closed and that she was alone in the shop with Old Shi. Finally, he laid down his abacus. "Dried plums?" he said. "Come back here. I'll give you a special weighing, more than your money's worth." Hanzhen smiled bashfully and ran behind the counter, where she handed Old Shi the money in her hand. He looked at the crumpled bill, then wrapped his hand around hers. "I don't want your money," he said. "My treat."

"Why don't you want it?" Hanzhen asked wide-eyed.

"We'll work a swap," Old Shi said. "I'll give you the dried plums, and you give me something in return."

"Tell me what you want, and I'll go home and get it."

He scooped a big handful of dried plums out of a metal box. "Open your mouth, Hanzhen," he said. She did. With a giggle, he tossed in a dried plum. "Good?"

"Yum," she said.

Altogether, Old Shi flipped five dried plums into Hanzhen's mouth. "Now it's your turn," he said. "Let me se,e your belly button, that's all I want."

Unable to speak with all those dried plums in her mouth, Hanzhen just shook her head. The strange look on Old Shi's face was one she had never seen before, but the realization came too late, for Old Shi had wrapped his arms around her and was forcing her to the floor, where he crammed the rest of the dried plums into her mouth so she couldn't make a sound. The next thing she felt was Old Shi's sweaty hand pushing her undershirt up and rubbing her exposed navel. Then the hand pulled down her underpants and slipped between her legs. Hanzhen was shocked nearly out of her mind. She wanted to scream but couldn't, with all those dried plums in her mouth.

Old Shi said breathlessly, "Don't scream, don't make any noise. I'll give you ten bags of dried plums and three packages of toffee. Don't scream, don't you scream."

Hanzhen nodded and shook her head as if her life depended on it. She didn't know what he was doing to her; all she could see was Old Shi's gray head resting against her breasts. Then she felt a sharp pain down below and thought Old Shi was trying to kill her. She grabbed his gray hair with both hands and screamed, "Shame on you! Shame on you!" But there was no sound; it seemed like a fantastic, bizarre dream.

It was nearly dark when Hanzhen walked out of the sweetshop. She hugged the wall as she walked slowly, the schoolbag dangling from her hand, chock-full of preserved fruit that Old Shi had nearly forced her to take. "If you don't tell anybody," he had said, "you can have any treats you want." Hanzhen sucked on a dried plum as she walked. The place where Old Shi had done it felt as if he had left something sharp in there. Hanzhen looked down and was horrified to see a trickle of blood running down her pant leg and onto her shoes and the ground.
Whoop!
The dried plum came sailing out of her mouth as she gaped at the crimson blood. She sat down, hugged her bulging bag to her chest, and started to cry. Pass-ersby ignored her. Sometime later, Old Shu walked by, pushing his bicycle home from work. He asked what was wrong. Hanzhen looked up and bawled, "Shame on Old Shi! Shame on Old Shi!"

The only resident of Fragrant Cedar Street ever thrown into prison was Old Shi from the sweetshop. They dragged him to the local school in chains to be publicly villifled. We sat beneath the stage, gazing up at Old Shi's gray head and the look of dejection on his face. Hanzhen was sitting up front, where everyone could gawk at her, though she was oblivious to their looks. She stared blankly at Old Shi, trussed up and on display above her.

Her mortal enemy, Shu Nong, walked up and slyly felt her pocket. When he returned, he said, "She hasn't stopped eating those dried plums. She's still got some in her pocket!" He said Lin Hanzhen was trash, just like her whole family; none of the other neighborhood boys gave him an argument on that score since they had written her off as a worn-out shoe-damaged goods. Under their breath, they called her "a little worn-out shoe." Someone even made up a stinging nursery rhyme for Hanzhen, whose mother, Qiu Yumei, accused Shu Nong of authorship.

If you walked down Fragrant Cedar Street, the one thing you could not escape was the smell of the river that flowed beneath our windows. As I indicated early on, it was like a piece of rusty metal eroding the life of Fragrant Cedar Street. You could not overlook the river's influence, for the street's time was also the river's time.

The residents of Fragrant Cedar Street were tired of putting up with their river. It had taken on the color of its pollutants, and boats from the countryside no longer plied it. One day, an old-timer hooked a rotting sack with his bamboo pole and dragged it up onto the bank. Inside he found a dead infant curled up like a shrimp, a newborn baby boy with a wrinkled face that made him look like a sleeping old man.

The residents of Fragrant Cedar Street had arrived at a point where they didn't know how to deal with their river. It could drown them, but they couldn't do anything to it in return.

One day, Shu Nong had a brilliant idea: he spread a layer of flour over a spot beneath the bridge, then dropped in his fishing line. The minutes lingered until there was a violent tug on his line.

He jerked it out of the water. On the end was a worn-out leather shoe-dainty, T-shaped, made for a woman. An onlooker recognized it as one of the shoes Hanli was wearing when she jumped into the river. He threw it back in and murmured, "What cursed luck."

Why Shu Nong got into trouble isn't all that clear. Let's say it's an ordinary winter morning and Shu Nong is searching for his schoolbag after breakfast. He can rarely find his schoolbag before departing for school. So when he spots it under Shu Gong's cot, he gets down on his hands and knees to get it. But a sleepy Shu Gong presses down on him. "Quit goofing off." "Who's goofing off? I'm getting my schoolbag." Shu Gong pins him to the floor and says, "Put a bowl of porridge on the stove for me before you go." A simple request. "That's not my job," Shu Nong replies. "Do it yourself." Shu Gong narrows his eyes. "You're really not going to do it?" he asks.

"No," Shu Nong says. "Get out of bed, and do it yourself." Shu Gong snaps into a sitting position and throws off the covers. "OK, I'm up." He gets out of bed, grumbling, and takes the bowl of porridge over to the stove; then he gives Shu Nong a long look out of the corner of his eye. He jumps up and down to keep warm, bouncing straight into Shu Nong's little room. "You're a lucky bastard I don't feel like pounding you right now," he says as he pulls back the covers on Shu Nong's bed to feel the sheet. It is dry. With a grin, he undoes his pants and relieves himself on Shu Nong's sheet. When he is finished, he snaps his fingers. "Father will come in pretty soon and see you've wet your bed again. I'll let him pound you for me."

Shu Nong stands there stunned, hugging his schoolbag to his chest, his face turning red; instinctively, he runs over to the water vat, scoops out a ladleful of water, and dumps it on Shu Gong's bed. Shu Gong doesn't move a finger. He dresses and says, "Go ahead, sprinkle away. No one will believe I wet my bed, and you'll still be the one to get pounded."

Shu Nong leaves for school after soaking his brother's bed. By lunchtime, he has forgotten the morning's incident-until he sees that Mother has hung out the sheets to dry. Old Shu glares darkly at him.

"I didn't wet the bed, Shu Gong did it."

Old Shu roars, "Liar! You're not only a bed wetter, you're a liar!"

Shu Nong defends himself: "Shu Gong pissed on my bed."

Old Shu jumps up angrily. "Stop lying! Shu Gong was never a bed wetter. Why would he want to piss on your bed?"

"Ask him yourself," Shu Nong says as he sits down at the table and picks up his rice bowl.

Old Shu rushes up and grabs the bowl out of his hand, then picks him up and flings him out the door. "Fuck you, you little bastard!" he bellows. "Nothing to eat or drink for you. Then we'll see if you still wet the bed. And if you still feel like lying!"

Shu Nong sits on the ground in front of the door, looking up at his father and tracing words in the dirt with his finger-
fuck
is one of them. Old Shu slams the door shut, and Shu Nong thumps it a time or two as he climbs to his feet and brushes off the seat of his pants. The cat chooses this moment to spring out through the window. It mews at Shu Nong. It seems to be chewing on a piece of cooked fish.

"Meeow," Shu Nong mews like the cat, then follows it down the street, heading east, all the way to the auto-repair shop, where he loses track of the cat. Shu Nong enters the repair shop, where some greasy mechanics are working on cars, their heads hidden under the hoods. Shu Nong squats nearby and watches them work. "What are you doing here?" one of them asks. "Get out right now."

Shu Nong says, "I'm only watching, what's wrong with that?"

A can of gasoline sits on the floor in front of some beat-up cars. Shu Nong is squatting next to it. He sniffs the air to breathe in the gasoline smell. "I know that's gasoline," he says, "and that a single match will light it off."

"You're right," the mechanic says, "so don't play with it. If it goes up, that's the end of you."

Shu Nong hangs around watching them for a long time, and vvhen they realize he is gone, they also discover the missing gas can. They don't associate the one with the other.

Shu Nong walks home with the gas can. People see him, but the problem is no one knows what he plans to do with the stuff. He walks up to the dark building at number 18 and, after hiding the can behind the door, tiptoes inside, where he notes that both his father and Shu Gong are asleep. He softly closes his father's door and jams a toothbrush into the eye of the latch hook. Then he approaches his brother's bed. Shu Gong, whose head is under the covers, is snoring away. Shu Nong curses the covers under his breath: "Watch me even the score, you bastard." He fetches the gas can. The cat has returned home, he discovers, and is perched atop the can, staring with its lustrous-green cat's eyes. Shu Nong makes a face at the cat and shoves it off the can, which he carries over to Shu Gong's bed. He pours gasoline on the floor under the bed, smelling its aromatic scent as it spreads silently throughout the room and hearing the dry floorboards soak it up. He walks, and he pours, and he watches the clear liquid seep under the door into Father's room. That should do it, he tells himself. Confident that the gasoline will ignite, he puts the can down and takes a look around; everything is napping, the old, wormy furniture included-all except for the cat, which is watching him with its shiny green eyes. Cat, Shu Nong muses, watch me even the score now. He takes a box of matches from Shu Gong's pocket. His hand shakes; he attributes that to mild fear. So he grits his teeth, lights a match, and drops it to the floor, releasing a brief red flame. The fire takes hold under Shu Gong's bed and begins to spread. He hears the cat screech in agony and watches it streak ahead of the flames.

Shu Nong rushes desperately upstairs, without knowing why. The Lins' door is closed. Qiu Yumei and Hanzhen poke their heads out the kitchen door. "What's gotten into him?" Qiu Yumei asks.

"He's going crazy," Hanzhen says.

Shu Nong ignores them in his race to the rooftop. The first chaotic sounds rise to greet him as he crawls to the roof's edge. He believes he can hear Shu Gong scream as if his soul had left his body and Father trying with all his might to yank open the toothbrush-jammed door. He can even hear bumping sounds as Hanzhen tumbles down the stairs. By then, Qiu Yumei has thrown open a window and is shouting at the top of her lungs: "Fire fire fire fire fire fire…"

Shu Nong sees no sign of fire and wonders why. From his vantage point on the roof, he notices a red glow in one of the roof vents, then sees the cat emerge amid a ball of flames. The cat screeches as it burns, giving off a strange charred smell. Its eyes turn from green to purple; it seems poised to pounce on Shu Nong, who contemplates going over to pick it up. But he has second thoughts because of the flames licking its body. How could the cat have caught fire? How could it have followed me onto the roof? Shu Nong watches the cat slink forward a few steps, then crouch down and stop moving. The flames on its body die out, leaving a ball of cinders behind. Shu Nong realizes that his cat is dead-incinerated. He reaches out to feel the corpse-it is hot to the touch. He rubs the cat's eyes. They are still alive-deep purple and shiny bright.

People from all over Fragrant Cedar Street converge on number 18. To Shu Nong, the mob on the run looks like a pack of skittish rats bearing down on his home with loud screeches. He assumes that the building is about to be engulfed in flames, so what possesses them to enter it? He pokes his head over the edge to see what is going on down there. Black smoke pours out of the windows but no flames that he can see. How come? His thoughts are interrupted by a shout from below. "Shu Nong, it's Shu Nong, he's on the roof!" It's Shu Gong down below, brandishing his fists at Shu Nong. He's in his shorts-no sign of flames. Shu Nong wonders why Shu Gong hasn't been burned. Maybe he was pretending to be asleep. Shu Nong sees someone bring up a long ladder and lean it against the building. It's Old Shu. Shu Nong is getting lightheaded. Things aren't working out as planned. Everything is going wrong. He tries to push the ladder away but can't budge it. Old Shu, his face blackened with soot, is climbing toward him. Shu Nong clings to the top of the ladder. "Don't come up here!" he screams. "Don't come up here!" Old Shu keeps coming, silently, menacingly. Again Shu Nong tries to push the ladder away, but still he can't budge it. He watches his father's smoke-blackened face draw nearer and feels something cold drip from his heart. "Don't come up here!" Shu Nong screams hysterically. "I'll jump if you take another step!" A curtain of silence falls upon the crowd below. Everyone is looking up at Shu Nong. Old Shu stops his advance and joins the others in gazing at Shu Nong for about three seconds before continuing up the ladder. When his cramped fingers touch the roof, he sees Shu Nong leap high into the air like a cat and sail over his head.