Frog (29 page)

I felt better after leaving the café. Why make such a fuss over something as common as the birth of a child? The sun was still shining, bird calls still filled the air, flowers bloomed, grass was still green, and breezes blew. In the square the Fertility Goddess ceremony was well underway, as women flocked to the temple amid the clamour of drumbeats and music, hoping to snatch a precious child out of the Goddess’s hand. Everyone was passionately singing the praises of childbirth, looking forward to celebrating the birth of a child, while I agonised, worried and brooded over someone carrying my child. What that proves is: society didn’t create my problem; I was the problem.

Sensei, I spotted Chen Bi and his dog behind a large column to the right of the temple entrance. Unlike the local mutt that wound up under the wheels of the police car, this was an obviously noble foreign breed with black spots all over its body. Why in the world would a dog with that pedigree choose to partner up with a vagrant? While it seemed to be a mystery, on second thought it wasn’t so surprising. Here in developing Northeast Gaomi Township, it was common for the foreign and the domestic to come together, for good and bad to coexist, for beauty and ugliness to be indistinguishable, and for truth and falseness to look the same. Many faddish members of the nouveau riche could not wait to raise a tiger as a pet when the money was rolling in, and were anxious to sell their wives to pay off their debts when the money petered out. So many of the stray dogs on the street were once the costly playthings of the rich. In the previous century, when the Russian Revolution erupted, hordes of rich White Russian women were stranded in the city of Harbin, where they were forced to sell their bodies for bread or marry coolie labourers. They produced a generation of mixed children, one of whom could have been Chen Bi, with his high nose and sunken eyes. The spotted abandoned dog and Chen Bi appeared to belong to similar species. My thoughts were running wild. At a distance of a dozen metres or so, I watched the two of them. A pair of crutches rested beside him, a red cloth spread out in front. On the cloth, predictably, was a written plea for charity for a disabled man. From time to time, a bejewelled woman would bend down and place money – paper or a few coins – in the metal bowl. Every time that happened the dog looked up and rewarded the woman with three gentle, emotional barks. Three barks, no more, no fewer. The charitable woman would be moved, some to the extent of digging in her purse a second time. I’d given up my idea of paying him to talk Chen Mei into terminating the pregnancy and approached him now more out of curiosity than anything, wanting to see what was written on the red cloth – the bad habit of a writer. Here’s what it said:
I am Iron-Crutch Li, come to the human world with a heavenly jade dog. My aunt the Fertility Goddess has sent me here to beg for alms. Your charity will reward you with a son, who will ride the streets as scholar number one.

I assumed that the lines had come from Wang Gan, and that the calligraphy was Li Shou’s, each using his unique talent to help an old classmate. He had rolled up the baggy cuffs of his pants to expose legs like rotten eggplants, and I was reminded of a story Mother had told me:

After Iron-Crutch Li became an immortal, one day there was no kindling at home for cooking, so his wife asked him: What shall we use for a fire? My leg, he said. With that he stuck one of his legs into the belly of the stove and lit it. The fire roared, water in the pot boiled, and the rice was cooked as his sister-in-law walked in and was startled by what she saw. Oh, my! she said, take care, brother-in-law, that you don’t become a cripple. Well, he did.

After Mother finished her story, she warned us to be silent when confronted by miraculous sights and, under no circumstances, to show alarm.

Chen Bi was wearing a brick red down jacket that was grease-spotted and shiny as a suit of armour. The fourth lunar month, a time of warm southerly breezes and millet ripening in the far-off fields, was mating season for amphibians in distant ponds and, nearby, in the bullfrog breeding farm, where loud croaks were carried on the air. Girls and young women had changed into light satin dresses that showed off their curves, but our old friend was still wearing winter garments. I felt hot just looking at him, while he was curled up, shivering. His face was the colour of bronze, the bald spot on his head shone as if sandpapered. Why, I wondered, was he wearing a dirty surgical mask? To hide his nose from curious stares? My gaze recoiled as it met his, emanating from a pair of sunken eyes, and I turned to his dog, which was staring indifferently my way. Part of its left front claw was missing, as if sliced off by a sharp object, and that was when I knew that man and dog were united by common suffering. I also knew there wasn’t a thing I could say to him, that all I could do was put some money in his bowl and leave. All I had on me was a hundred-yuan bill, meal money for lunch and dinner. But with no hesitation, I placed it in the bowl. He did not react, but his dog released three routine barks.

I sighed as I left them, walking a dozen steps before turning back for one last look. Subconsciously, I guess, I was wondering what he was going to do with the large bill I’d left, since the rest of the money in the bowl was small bills or change, crumpled paper and dirty coins. My pink bill was a real eye-catcher. I figured no one else would leave as much as I had, and thought he’d be moved by my act of generosity. Sensei, it really was a case of ‘measuring the heart of a gentleman through the eyes of a petty man.’ What I saw enraged me: a dark-skinned, fat boy in his teens ran out from behind the column, bent down in front of the full bowl, snatched up my hundred-yuan bill, and took off running. He was so fast that before I could react, he’d already run ten or fifteen metres down the alley alongside the temple, heading straight for the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital. There was something familiar about the lazy-eyed boy. I knew I’d seen him somewhere, and then it hit me: it was the boy who’d handed Gugu a wrapped bullfrog at the opening of the hospital the year we returned, nearly scaring her to death.

Not even this unexpected turn of events got a reaction from Chen Bi. His dog growled a time or two, looked up at his master, and stopped. He lay his head down on his paws and quiet returned.

I couldn’t help feeling the injustice of what just happened, not only to Chen Bi and his dog, but to me too. It was my money. I wanted to complain to the people around me, but they had other things on their mind, and the incident they’d witnessed was already forgotten, like a flash of lightning that leaves no trace. What that boy had done was unforgivable, undermining the township’s reputation for honesty. What sort of breeding produced a boy like that, someone who would bully women, steal from the disabled, and other unconscionable acts? Even worse, I could tell by how expertly he’d managed his evil act that this wasn’t the first time he’d stolen money from Chen Bi’s beggar’s bowl. So I took off running after him.

He was fifty metres or so ahead of me and had stopped running. He jumped up and broke a low hanging, leaf-filled branch off a roadside weeping willow and used it as a club on all sorts of things. He didn’t so much as turn to look, knowing that the cripple and his lame dog would not come after him. Just you wait, you punk,
I’m
coming after you.

He turned into a riverside farmer’s market, where a canopy of plastic turned everything inside a shade of green. The people were moving like fish in water.

A rich array of goods was available on a row of stalls in the shape of a winding arcade. Strange fruits and vegetables in a variety of colours and unusual shapes that even I, a peasant by birth, could not name, were displayed on many of the stalls. As I thought back to the times of scarcity, thirty years before, I could only heave an emotional sigh. Like a cart that knows the way, he headed straight to one of the fish stalls. I ran faster, while my eyes were drawn to the seafood stalls on both sides. The shiny salmon as big as piglets were Russian imports. The hairy crabs, like oversized spiders, came from Hokkaido. There were South American lobsters and Australian abalone, but the bulk of the seafood was local – black carp, butterfish, croaker and Mandarin fish. Orange salmon meat was laid out on a bed of ice, while the fragrance of roasting fish wafted from one of the stalls. The punk was standing in front of a roasted squid stall; he bought a skewer with the stolen bill and received a wad of change. He raised his head, placed the tip of the skewer to his lips, looking like the sword swallower who performed in the temple square, and just as he was taking a tentacled strip, dripping with a dark red sauce, into his mouth, I rushed up, grabbed him by the neck, and shouted:

Where do you think you’re going, you little thief?

He hunkered down and slipped out of my fingers, so I grabbed him by the wrist as he swung the metal skewer of dripping squid at me. I let go, and he slipped away like a river loach. But not before I had him by the shoulders. He struggled, ripping his T-shirt in the process and revealing skin as dark as black mackerel. Then he started crying – no tears, just wolfish howls – and tried to stab me in the belly with the skewer. I jumped out of the way, but the skewer got me in the arm. It didn’t hurt at first, nothing more than a stinging sensation. But the sharp pain wasn’t long in coming, along with dark blood. I clamped my other hand over the wound and shouted:

He’s a thief! He stole money from a crippled beggar!

With a roar, he rushed me like a crazed boar, murder in his eyes. Sensei, I was terrified and frantically backed up, still shouting. And he kept trying to stab me.

You owe me for a shirt! he yelled. Pay me for the shirt you ruined!

I can’t bring myself to write all the words that came out of his mouth, and I tell you, Sensei, I am mortified that Northeast Gaomi Township has produced this sort of youngster. I picked up the first thing I could see, a signboard on which the origins and prices of fish for sale were written and held it as a shield to ward off the thief’s attacks, each one more vicious than the last; he had murder on his mind. The board took the brunt of his skewer attacks, but I didn’t pull my right hand away quickly enough to avoid being stabbed. The blood flowed. Sensei, my mind was in turmoil, I simply didn’t know what to do except retreat in the name of survival. I stumbled backward, and was nearly tripped up by baskets of fish and signboards more than once. If I’d fallen, Sensei, I wouldn’t be writing you this letter. That savage punk would have pounced on me, resulting in either my death or serious injury and a life-or-death race to the hospital. Sensei, I don’t mind admitting that I was scared to death, that my inherent cowardice rose to the surface at that moment. My eyes darted from side to side, hoping that the fish sellers would come to my rescue. But they just stood around, arms folded, watching – some indifferently, others with shouts of encouragement. Sensei, I’m worthless, clinging to life. Instead of raising a hand in defence, I let myself be victimised by a teenager. I heard a series of sobbing cries for help escape from my lips, like the pathetic yelps of a whipped dog:

Help me . . . help me . . .

The boy had stopped howling by then – he hadn’t ever really cried – and was glaring, his eyes round as saucers, with hardly any white showing, the irises like a pair of fat tadpoles. Biting down on his lip, he glowered, paused briefly, then pounced again. Help me! I screamed as I raised the signboard, and was stabbed in the hand a second time . . . more blood . . . and another attack, and another. I kept screaming and backing up in a single-minded cowardly retreat, all the way out into the bright sunlight.

I threw down the signboard and took off running, still screaming for help. Sensei, I’m embarrassed to tell you about my pathetic exhibition, but I don’t know who else I can divulge my sad tale to. I ran and ran, wherever my feet took me, my ears throbbing with shouts on both sides. I ran into the narrow street where light snacks were sold. A silver sedan was parked in front of a café. A black shop sign hanging in front of it was inscribed with two strange words: Pheasant Hen. Two women sat in the doorway, one big and fat, the other small and slim. They jumped to their feet, and I ran to them as if I’d seen my saviour, tripping and falling before I got there and ending up with a split lip and bleeding gums. What tripped me was a metal chain strung between two metal posts, one of which I’d knocked over. The women ran over, picked me up, and held me between them as they slapped and spat on me. But I was happy to see that the little punk had stopped chasing me. Then misfortune arrived, as the two women at Pheasant Hen stopped me from going anywhere. They said that when I knocked down their metal post, it fell onto their car and dented it. Sensei, there was a white ding on the car’s boot, but one not caused by the falling post. Refusing to let me go, they called me terrible names, drawing a crowd. Sensei, the little one was the worst. She wasn’t much different from the punk who was trying to kill me. She kept jabbing at me, damn near putting my eye out each time. Every word I uttered in my defence was drowned out by curses. Sensei, I wrapped my arms around my head and crouched down out of feelings of despair. The reason Little Lion and I had decided to return home was that we’d experienced something similar near the Huguo Temple in Beijing. It was at a restaurant called Wild Pheasant on a street near the People’s Playhouse. As we walked up to read a poster in front of the playhouse we tripped over a metal chain connected to a red and white post, which fell to the ground, not even close to the rear of a white car parked there. But a young woman with hair dyed a golden yellow, a pinched face, and lips as thin as knife blades, who was sitting in front of Wild Pheasant, ran over to the car, spotted a white ding on it and accused us of causing it. With wild gestures, she tore into us verbally, using all sorts of Beijing gutter talk. She said she’d lived her whole life in that lane and had seen every kind of person there was. But what do you out-of-town turtles climb out of your burrows and come to the capital to do? Embarrass the Chinese people? Fat, and reeking of haemorrhoid cream, she charged me, fists swinging, and bloodied my nose. Young men with shaved heads and bare-chested old men stood by shouting encouragement and showing off as old-time Beijingers, insisting that we apologise and make restitution. Sensei, weak as always, I gave her the money and said I was sorry. When we got home, Sensei, we wept first and then decided to move back to Northeast Gaomi Township. Since this was our hometown, I didn’t think I’d have to worry about being bullied here. But these two women were every bit as vicious as the woman on Snack Street in Beijing. What I don’t understand, Sensei, is why people have to be so horrible.