Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today (5 page)

When the grenade rolled to the ground, Junni picked it up and put it to the side. "What the hell are you boys doing? That's not how brothers act!"

Jiming, weakened by his injury, was soon pinned beneath Sonny, who bound his brother's hands behind his back with one of the coats. Jiming cursed between gasps for air. But the two stopped suddenly at the sight of Junni, who had begun to undo her buttons. They watched her remove the soiled jacket, the flashes far in the distance irradiating her breasts, fine and white. It was as if her body did not belong to this blood-spattered field.

"Don't let the fact that I'm a little dirty bother you. Let me take good care of you one last time." She leaned over, straightened the coats the men had scattered during their scuffle, and then sat down, covering her lower half with an old quilted jacket. "Jiming, come lie down next to me."

Li Jiming's mouth dropped. After a moment, he stammered, "I wanted you to be my fucking wife."

Junni smiled. "I never said I'd marry you. What's the point of bringing that up again. Now is now." She turned around and pulled at Sonny's leg. "Sonny, I'll take care of you first. You've been to a whorehouse before, right? You're not an old hen like your brother."

Sonny nervously turned to look at Li Jiming, then quickly unbuttoned his tattered shirt, revealing his smooth, slight frame. He crawled under the pile of clothing.

A sudden burst of fire; the action was getting closer by the minute. Li Jiming, who had wrestled himself free of the coat, leaned against the crater wall, dully looking in the direction of the clothes. Occasionally a leg appeared, or an arm, and then he heard a rapid panting and Junni's voice: "All right, Sonny, go get your brother. It's his turn."

Sonny was silent. Junni emerged from under the pile and walked over to Li Jiming. "Stop standing around in your underwear, torturing yourself. Come on, I can take care of you both."

As her warm body clung to his, Li Jiming smelled a woman's sweat, something that he had never noticed on her before. He followed Junni to the ground.

A shell landed very near, stirring up clouds of dust. Two or three people screamed at the top of their lungs, a sound terrible and numbing.

After a long while, Junni said, "Sonny, was it OK for you?"

"It sure was."

"Jiming, are you content?"

"Hmm," said Li Jiming, still catching his breath. He felt a warmth he had never known boring up through his body all the way to his head, making him dizzy, as if he were about to melt.

"All right, then," Junni said. "I'm feeling really good, too. We're all content."

She reached over for the ice-cold grenade and held it tightly.

Neither the troops retreating across the fields of Chenguan-zhuang nor the troops advancing in the same direction paid any attention to the shell hole. Three days later, after the sulfurous smoke had dissipated, the corpses littering the field began to emit a stench that could not be ignored, and a civilian clean-up crew moved in. What they found in the hole was not easy to collect-all severed limbs and pieces of flesh-so a decision was made to dump in the frozen bodies from the surrounding area. Before long, the hole was full.

When it was dark, the crew wiped their hands on clods of dirt and, on the newly flattened earth, proceeded to build a fire and prepare dinner.

Translated By Susan Mcfadden

The story of Fragrant Cedar Street is legendary among people in my hometown. In the south of China, there are lots of streets just like it: narrow, dirty, the cobblestones forming a network of potholes. When you look out your window at the street or at the river's edge, you can see dried meat and drying laundry hanging from eaves, and you can see inside houses, where people are at the dinner table or engaged in a whole range of daily activities. What I am about to give you isn't so much a story as it is a word picture of life down south, and little more.

The brothers Shu Gong and Shu Nong lived on that particular street.

So did the Lin sisters, Hanli and Hanzhen.

They shared a building: 18 Fragrant Cedar Street, a blackened two-story structure, where the Shu family lived downstairs and the Lins above them. They were neighbors. Black sheet metal covered the flat roof of number 18, and as I stood at the bridgehead, I saw a cat crouching up there. At least that's how I remember it, fifteen years later.

And I remember the river, which intersected Fragrant Cedar Street a scant three or four feet from number 18. This river will make several appearances in my narration, with dubious distinction, for as I indicated earlier, I can only give impressions.

Shu Gong was the elder son, Shu Nong his younger brother.

Hanli was the elder daughter, Hanzhen her younger sister.

The ages of the Shu brothers and Lin sisters can be likened to the fingers of your hand: if Shu Nong was fourteen, then Hanzhen was fifteen, Shu Gong sixteen, and Hanli seventeen. A hand with four fingers lined up so tightly you can't pry them apart. Four fingers on the same hand. But where is the thumb?

Shu Nong was a timid, sallow-faced little devil. In the crude and simple classroom of Fragrant Cedar Middle School, he was the boy sitting up front in the middle row, dressed in a gray school uniform, neatly patched at the elbows, over a threadbare hand-me-down shirt with a grimy blue collar. The teachers at Fragrant Cedar Middle School all disliked Shu Nong, mainly because of the way he sprawled across his desk and picked his nose as he stared up at them. Experienced teachers knew he wasn't listening, and if they smacked him over the head with a pointer, he shrieked like splintered glass and complained, "I wasn't talking!" So while he wasn't the naughtiest child in class, his teachers pretty much ignored him, having taken all the gloomy stares from his old-man's eyes they could bear. To them, he was "a little schemer." Plus he usually smelled like he had just peed his pants.

Shu Nong was still wetting the bed at fourteen. And that was one of his secrets.

At first, we weren't aware of this secret. It was Hanzhen who let the cat out of the bag. Devoted to the act of eating, Hanzhen had such a greedy little mouth she even stole from her parents to buy snacks. One day when there was nothing to steal and she was standing outside the sweetshop looking depressed, Shu Nong happened by, dragging his schoolbag behind him. She stopped him: "I need twenty fen." He tried to walk around her, but she grabbed the strap of his bag and wouldn't let him pass. "Are you going to lend it to me or not, you little miser?" she demanded.

Shu Nong replied, "All I've got on me is two fen."

Hanzhen frowned and casually slapped him with his own strap. Then, jamming her fists onto her hips, she said, "Don't you kids play with him. He wets the bed. His sheets are hung out to dry everyday!"

I watched her spin around and take off toward school, leaving Shu Nong standing motionless and gloomy, holding his face in his hands as he followed her pudgy figure with his eyes. Then he looked at me-gloom filled his eyes. I can still see that fearful look on his fourteen-year-old face, best described as that of a young criminal genius. "Let's go," I said. "I won't tell anybody."

He shook his head, jammed his finger up his nose, and dug around a bit. "You go ahead. I'm skipping school today."

Shu Nong played hooky a lot, so that was no big deal. And I assumed he was already cooking up a way to get even with Han-zhen, which also was no big deal since he had a reputation for settling scores.

On the very next day, Hanzhen came into the office to report Shu Nong for putting five dead rats, some twisted wire, and a dozen or more thumbtacks in her bed. The teachers promised to punish him, but he played hooky that day, too. On the day after that, Hanzhen's mother, Qiu Yumei, came to school with a bowl of rice and asked the principal to smell it. He asked what was going on. Qiu Yumei accused Shu Nong of peeing in her rice pot. A crowd was gathering outside the office when the gym teacher dragged in Shu Nong, who had sauntered in to school only moments earlier and flung him into the corner.

"Here he is," the principal said. "Now what do you want me to do?"

"That's easy," Qiu Yumei replied. "Make him eat the rice, and he'll think twice about doing that again."

After mulling the suggestion over for a few seconds, the principal carried the offending bowl of rice over to Shu Nong. "Eat up," he said, "and taste the fruit of your labors."

Shu Nong stood there with his head down, hands jammed into his pockets as he nonchalantly fiddled with a key ring. The sound of keys jangling in the boy's grimy pocket clearly angered the principal, who in plain view of everyone, forced Shu Nong's head down over the rice. Shu Nong licked it almost instinctively, then yelped like a puppy, and spat the stuff out. Deathly pale, he ran out of the office, a single kernel of rice stuck to the corner of his mouth. The bystanders roared with laughter.

That evening, I spotted Shu Nong at the limestone quarry, wobbling across the rocky ground, dragging his schoolbag behind him. He picked an old tree limb out of a pile of rubbish and began kicking it ahead of him. He looked as gloomy and dejected as always. I thought I heard him announce, "I'll screw the shit out of Lin Hanzhen." His voice was high-pitched and shrill but as flat and emotionless as a girl saying to a clerk in a sweetshop, I'd like a candy figurine, please. "And I'll screw the shit out of Qiu Yumei!" he added.

A male figure climbed onto the roof of number 18. From a distance, it looked like a repairman. It was Shu Nong's father. Since the neighbors all called him Old Shu, that's what we'll call him here. To members of my family, Old Shu was special. I remember him as a short, stocky man who was either a construction worker or a pipe fitter. Whichever, he was good with his hands. If someone's plumbing leaked or the electric meter was broken, the lady of the house would say, "Go find Old Shu." He wasn't much to look at, but the women on Fragrant Cedar Street liked him. In retrospect, I'd have to say Old Shu was a ladies' man, of which Fragrant Cedar Street boasted several, one of whom, as I say, was Old Shu. That's how I see it, anyhow.

Let's say that some women doing their knitting see Old Shu on the roof of number 18. They start gossiping about his amorous escapades, mostly about how he and Qiu Yumei do this, that, and the other. I recall going into a condiments shop once and overhearing the soy sauce lady tell the woman who sold pickled vegetables, "Old Shu is the father of the two Lin girls! And look how that trashy Qiu Yumei struts around!" The condiments shop was often the source of shocking talk like that. Qiu Yumei was walking past just then but didn't hear them.

If you believed the women's brassy gossip, one look at Lin Hanzhen's father would strengthen your conviction. What did Old Lin do for a living? you ask. Let's say it's a summer day at sunset, and a man is playing chess in the doorway of the handkerchief maker's. That will be Old Lin, who plays there every day. Sometimes Hanzhen or Hanli brings his dinner and lays it next to the chessboard. Old Lin wears thick glasses for his nearsightedness. He has no special talents, but once after losing a chess game, he popped the cannon piece into his mouth and would have swallowed it if Hanli hadn't pried open his mouth and plucked it out. She knocked over the chessboard, earning herself a slap in the face. "You want to keep playing?" she complained tearfully with a stomp of her foot. "I should have let you swallow that piece!"

Old Lin retorted, "I'll swallow whatever I want to swallow, and you can just butt out!"

People watching the game laughed. They got a kick out of Old Lin's temper. They also got a kick out of Hanli, because she was so pretty and had such a good heart. The neighbors were unanimous in their appraisal of the sisters: they liked Hanli and disliked Hanzhen., Now all the players in our drama have made an appearance, all but Shu Gong and his mother, that is. There isn't much to be said about the woman in the Shu family. Craven and easily intimidated, she padded like a mouse around the downstairs of number 18, cooking meals and washing clothes, and I have virtually no recollection of her. Shu Gong, on the other hand, is very important, since for a time he was an object of veneration among young people on Fragrant Cedar Street.

Shu Gong had a black mustache, an upside-down V sort of like Stalin's.

Shu Gong had delicate features and always wore a pair of white Shanghai-made high-top sneakers.

Shu Gong had been in a gang fight at the limestone quarry with some kids from the west side, and he had had a love affair. Guess who he had the affair with.

Hanli.

In retrospect, I can see that the two families at number 18 had a very interesting relationship.

Shu Gong and Shu Nong shared a bed at first and fought night after night. Shu Gong would come roaring out of a sound sleep and kick Shu Nong: "You wet the bed again, you wet the goddamned bed!" Shu Nong would lie there not making a sound, eyes open as he listened for the prowling steps and night screeches of the cat on the roof. He got used to being kicked and slugged by his brother since he knew he had it coming. He always wet the bed, and Shu Gong's side was always clean as a whistle. Besides, he was no match for Shu Gong in a fight. Knowing how reckless it would be to stand up to his brother, Shu Nong let strategy be his watchword. He recalled the wise comment someone made after being beaten up one day on the stone bridge: a true gentleman gets revenge, even if it takes ten years. Shu Nong understood exactly what that meant. So one night after Shu Gong had kicked and slugged him again, he said very deliberately, "A true gentleman gets revenge, even if it takes ten years."

"What did you say?" Shu Gong, who thought he was hearing things, crawled over and patted Shu Nong's face. "Did you say something about revenge?" He smirked. "You little shit, what do you know about revenge?"

His brother's lips flashed in the darkness like two squirming maggots. He repeated the comment.