Big Breasts and Wide Hips (57 page)

My left hand touched the fullness of a large breast; my right hand touched nothing, and at that moment I knew that single-breasted Old Jin had arrived. After coming perilously close to being shot following a mass-struggle session, this flirtatious widow, who ran a sesame oil shop, married the poorest man in the village, a homeless beggar named One-eyed Fang Jin, and was now the wife of a poor peasant. Her husband had one eye; she had a single breast. It was a match made in heaven. Old Jin wasn't really old, but word of her unique style of making love had made the rounds among the village men, and had even reached my ears on several occasions, although I didn't understand much of what I heard. As I was cupping her breast with my left hand, she grabbed my right hand and brought it over, until her unusually full breast weighted down both hands. Under her guidance, I felt every inch of it. It was a lonely mountain peak spread across the right side of her chest. The top half an easy, relaxing slope, the bottom half was a droopy hemisphere. Hers was the warmest breast I'd ever felt, like a vaccinated rooster, so hot it nearly sparked. It was smooth and glossy, and would have been more so if not for the heat. The end of the droopy hemisphere jutted out like an overturned bowl for wine, tipped by a slightly upturned nipple. It was hard one second, soft the next, like a rubber bullet; several drops of a cool liquid stuck to my hand, and I was reminded of something said to me by a diminutive villager who had traveled to the south to sell silk: he said lusty Old Jin was like a papaya, a woman who oozed white fluids the moment she was touched. Since I'd never seen a papaya, I could only imagine that they were an ugly fruit with a deadly attraction. The discharge of the Snow Prince's sacred duties was gradually taken off course by Old Jin's single breast. My hands were like sponges, soaking up the warmth of her breast, and it seemed to me that my fondling brought her contentment as well. Grunting like a little pig, she grabbed my head and buried it in her bosom, where her overheated breast burned my face, and I heard her mutter softly, “Dear boy … my own dear boy …”

The snow market rule was broken.

A single utterance invited disaster.

                                                              *   *   *

A green Jeep was parked in the square in front of Taoist Men's house. Four security police in khaki uniforms with white cotton insignia over the breast pockets piled out and, with nimble precision, burst through Taoist Men's door; they reappeared moments later with handcuffed Taoist Men in tow. As he was bundled up to the Jeep, he cast a sorrowful look my way, but said nothing. He meekly climbed into the Jeep.

Three months later, the leader of the reactionary sect, Men Shengwu, Taoist Men, who had regularly secreted himself on a high mountain slope to fire signal shots to secret agents, was shot beneath Enchanted Bridge in the county seat. His blind dog ran after the Jeep in the snow, only to have his head blown apart by a sharpshooter riding in the car.

I sneezed, and woke myself up. Golden light from the kerosene lamp coated the glistening walls. Mother was sitting beneath the lamp rubbing the golden pelt of a weasel, a pair of shears lying across her knees. The weasel's bushy tail jumped and leaped in her hand. A grimy, monkey-faced man in a brown army greatcoat sat on a stool in front of the
kang.
He was scratching the scalp under his gray hair with crippled fingers.

“Is that you, Jintong?” he asked tentatively as a look of pity shone from his black eyes.

“Jintong,” Mother said, “this is your … it's your elder cousin Sima …”

It was Sima Ting. I hadn't seen him in years, and just look what those years had done to him! Sima Ting, the township head who had stood atop the watchtower all those years ago, lively and full of energy, where had he gone? And his fingers, red as ripe carrots, where were they?

Back when the mysterious horseman had shattered the heads of Sima Feng and Sima Huang, Sima Ting had jumped out of the horse trough beside the west wing of our house, like a carp leaping out of the water, as the crack of gunfire split his eardrums. He stormed around the mill house like a spooked donkey, circling it over and over. The clatter of horse's hooves rolled through the lane like a tidal wave. I have to run away, he was thinking. I can't hang around here waiting to be killed. With wheat husks clinging to his head, he clambered over our low southern wall and landed in a pile of dog shit. As he lay sprawled on the ground, he heard a disturbance somewhere in the lane, and scrambled on his hands and knees over to an old haystack, which he discovered he shared with a laying hen with a bright red comb. The next sounds he heard, only seconds later, were a heavy thud and the crash of a splintering door. Immediately after that, a gang of men in black masks came outside and headed straight for the wall. They trampled the weeds and grass at the base of the wall in their thick-soled cloth shoes. All were armed with black repeater rifles. Moving with the assurance of fearless bandits, they negotiated the wall like a flock of black swallows He wondered why they had covered their faces, but when he later learned of the deaths of Sima Feng and Sima Huang, a glimmer of light filtered into his clouded mind, clearing up things he hadn't understood until then. The men spilled into the yard. Caring only for his head and letting his rear end take care of itself, he squirmed into the haystack to await the outcome.

“Number Two is Number Two, and I'm me,” Sima Ting said to Mother in the lamplight. “Let's be clear on that, Sister-in-law.”

“Then he'll call you Elder Uncle. Jintong, this is your elder uncle, Sima Ting.”

Before I drifted off to sleep again, I watched Sima Ting take a shiny gold medal out of his pocket and hand it to Mother. “Sister-in-law,” he said in a muffled, bashful voice, “I've made amends for my crimes.”

After crawling out of the haystack, Sima Ting slipped out of the village in the dark of night. Half a month later, he was dragooned into a stretcher unit, where he was paired with a dark-faced young man. During one of the battles, he lost three fingers of his left hand in an explosion. But he did not let the pain stop him from carrying a squad leader who had lost a leg to the hospital on his back.

I listened to him prattle on and on, relating all his strange adventures, like a young man spinning yarns to divert attention from his errors. Mother's head rocked in the lamplight, a golden sheen on her face. The corners of her mouth were turned up slightly in what looked like a sneer.

When I woke up early in the morning, a foul smell assailed my nostrils. I saw Mother in a chair, leaning against the wall, fast asleep. Sima Ting was squatting on a bench next to the
kang
, he too was asleep, looking like a perched eagle. The floor in front of the
kang
was littered with yellow cigarette butts.

Ji Qiongzhi, who would later be my homeroom teacher, came down from the county government and started a Woman's Remarriage Campaign in Dalan Town. She brought with her a bunch of female officials who acted like a herd of wild horses; they called a meeting of all the township widows to publicize a campaign to have them remarry. Under their active mobilization and organization, just about all the widows in our village found husbands.

The only widows to become obstacles to this campaign were those of the Shangguan family. No one dared to seek the hand of my eldest sister, Laidi, since all the local bachelors knew she'd been the wife of the traitor Sha Yueliang, had been exploited by Sima Ku, who'd fled the revolution, and that she'd also been the wife of the revolutionary soldier Speechless Sun. Even in death, these three men were no one to get on the bad side of. Mother fell within the age limit set by Ji Qiongzhi, but she refused to remarry. The moment the official stepped foot in the door to try to talk Mother around, she was sent away with a barrage of curses. “Get out of my house!” Mother yelled. “Why, I'm older than your mother!”

But, strangely enough, when Ji Qiongzhi herself came over to give it a try, Mother spoke to her genially: “Young lady,” she said, “who do you plan to have marry me?”

“Someone younger than you would not be a good match, aunty,” Ji Qiongzhi said, “and about the only man in your age group is Sima Ting. Even though there are blemishes in his history, he set everything straight with his meritorious service. Besides, you two have a special relationship.”

With a wry smile, Mother said, “Young lady, his younger brother is my son-in-law.”

“What does that matter?” Ji Qiongzhi said. “You're not related by blood.”

The wedding ceremony for forty-five widows took place in the decrepit old church. I attended, in spite of the anger I felt. Mother took her place among the widows, with what looked like a pink tinge to her puffy face. Sima was standing with the men, scratching his head with his crippled hand the whole time, maybe to cover his embarrassment.

On behalf of the government, Ji Qiongzhi gave each of the new couples a towel and a bar of soap. The township head presented them with marriage certificates. Mother blushed like a young maiden as she accepted the towel and certificate.

Wicked thoughts burned in my heart. My face was hot with a sense of shame for Mother. There was only dust on the spot on the wall where the jujube Jesus had once hung. And on the platform where Pastor Malory had baptized me stood a bunch of brazen men and women. They seemed to be cowering, their glances evasive, like a gang of thieves. Even though Mother's hair had turned gray, here she was, about to marry the elder brother of her own son-in-law. One of the female officials scattered some withered China rose petals from a yellow gourd ladle in the direction of the hapless new couples. Some landed on Mother's gray hair, which was slicked down with elm sap, falling like dirty rain, or shriveled bird feathers.

Like a dog whose soul had taken flight, I slunk out of the church. There, on the ancient street, I saw Pastor Malory, a black robe draped across his shoulders, slowly wandering along. His face was mud-spattered; tender yellow buds of wheat were sprouting in his hair. His eyes, looking like frozen grapes, shone with the light of sorrow. In a loud voice, I reported to him that Mother had married Sima Ting. I saw his face twitch in agony, and watched as his frame and the black robe began to break up and dissolve into curls of black, stinking smoke.

Eldest Sister was in the yard, her snowy white neck bent down as she washed her lush black hair. In that position, her lovely pink breasts were singing like a pair of silky-voiced orioles. When she straightened up, crystalline beads of water coursed down the valley between her breasts. With one hand, she coiled the back of her hair as she narrowed her eyes and looked at me, a smirk on her face. “Are you aware,” I said, “that she's marrying Sima Ting?” Again that smirk; she ignored me. Mother walked into the house hand in hand with Shangguan Yunii, shameful rose petals still stuck to her hair. Dejected Sima Ting was right behind them. Eldest Sister picked up her basin and flung the water into the air, where it spread into a luminous fan. Mother sighed, but said nothing. Sima Ting handed his medal to me, either to win me over or to prove his worth, but I just stared at him solemnly. A look of hypocrisy was frozen on his smiling face. He averted his eyes and covered his embarrassment with a cough. I flung the medal away. It flew over the rooftop like a bird, trailing a gold-colored ribbon behind it. “Go pick that up!” Mother said angrily. “No,” I replied defiantly.

Sima Ting said, “Let it be, forget it. There's no need to keep that around.”

Mother slapped me.

I fell backward and rolled around on the ground. Mother kicked me.

“Shame on you!” I spat out venomously. “You have no shame!”

Mother's head slumped from her weighty sorrow and a loud wail burst from her mouth; she turned and ran tearfully into the house. Sima Ting sighed before squatting beneath the pear tree to have a smoke.

Several cigarettes later, he stood up and said, “Go in and talk to your mother, nephew. Get her to stop crying.” Then he took the marriage certificate out of his pocket, tore it into strips, and tossed them to the ground just before walking out of the yard, stooped over, an old man, like a candle guttering in the wind.

At the height of the age of bluster, Sima Ku gave his revered mentor, the nearsighted Qin Er, a pair of rhinestone eyeglasses. Now, with the counterrevolutionary gift perched on his nose, Qin was sitting at a brick rostrum holding an open volume of Chinese literature, his voice trembling as he lectured to us, Northeast Gaomi Township's first freshman class, a group whose ages varied dramatically. The heavy eyeglasses slid halfway down the bridge of his nose; a single drop of oily green snot hung from the tip of his nose, threatening to drop to the floor, but somehow hanging on.
Big goats are big
— he intoned. Even though it was already the sixth month, among the hottest of the year, he sat there wearing a lined, black, full-length robe and a black satin skullcap with a red tassel.
Big goats are big
— we shouted out the words, trying to mimic his tone of voice.
Little goats are little
— he intoned sorrowfully. The room was stifling, dark and dank, and we sat there, barefoot and shirtless, our bodies covered with greasy sweat, while our teacher, dressed for winter, his face pale and his lips purple, looked as if he were freezing.
Little goats are little
— our voices resounded in the room, which smelled like stale urine, like a neglected goat pen.
Big goats and little goats run up the hill — Big goats and little goats run up the hill — Big goats run, little goats bleat — Big goats run, little goats bleat —
given my profound knowledge of goats, I knew that big goats, with their sagging teats, couldn't run; why, they could barely walk. For little goats to bleat was entirely possible, and, for that matter, to run. Big goats grazed lazily in the pasture, while little goats ran around bleating. I was tempted to raise my hand to ask the venerable teacher his opinion, but I didn't dare. A discipline ruler lay in front of him, its sole purpose to smack the palms of disobedient students' hands.
Big goats eat a lot — Big goats eat a lot — Little goats eat a little — Little goats eat a little
— those were true statements. Of course big goats eat more than little goats, and little goats eat less than big goats.
Big goats are big — little goats are little
— with that, we went back and started over from the beginning. The teacher intoned on and on tirelessly, but classroom order began to fall apart. One of the students, Wu Yunyu, was a tall, husky eighteen-year-old son of a farm laborer. He was already married to the widowed proprietor of a bean curd shop, who was eight years his senior and in the last stage of pregnancy. He was about to become a daddy. The soon-to-be daddy took a rusty pistol from his waistband and took aim at the red tassel of Qin Er's cap.
Big goats run — Big goats — pow! Ha ha ha ha, run
— The teacher looked up, his gray ovine eyes peering down over the top of the rhinestone lenses. He was so myopic he probably couldn't see a thing. So he went back to reading.
Little goats bleat—pow!
Wu Yunyu fired off another imaginary shot, and the red tassel on the old teacher's cap fluttered. Laughter filled the room. The teacher picked up his ruler and smacked the table. “Quiet!” he demanded, like a judge. The recitation recommenced. Guo Qiusheng, the seventeen-year-old son of a poor peasant, left his seat at a crouch and tiptoed up to the rostrum, where he stood behind the teacher, bit his lower lip with his ratlike front teeth, and made gestures of stuffing shells into a mortar, the barrel of which was the top of the teacher's bony skull. Over and over he fired his imaginary weapon. Chaos took over in the classroom, with all of us rocking back and forth laughing. Xu Lianhe, a big boy, pounded his desk, while the smaller but fatter Fang Shuzhai tore out the pages of his book and flung them into the air, where they fluttered like butterflies.