Pow! (6 page)

Negotiations began as soon as the butchers arrived. As they circled the animals, a casual observer may have thought they were having trouble deciding which ones to buy. But if one of them reached out and grabbed a halter, within three seconds the others would do the same, and, lightning quick, all the cows would be chosen. No one could recall seeing two butchers fight over the same animal, but if that had happened, the dispute would have been quickly resolved. Competitors are rivals in most occupations but the butchers in our village, thanks to the prestige and organizational skills of Lao Lan, were united in friendship, prepared to confront any and all militant opponents as a brotherhood. Once they adopted Lao Lan's water-injection method, they were bound together by their windfall profits and their illegal activity. When each of them had a halter in his hand, the peddlers approached languidly and the bargaining began. Now that my father had cemented his
authority, these negotiations took on little importance, became pro forma, a mere custom, for it was left to him—he had the last word. The men would jockey back and forth for a while, then walk up to my father, cow in tow, like applicants for a marriage licence at the town office. But something special occurred on this particular day: instead of heading straight for the cows, the butchers chose instead to pace at the edge of the square, their meaningful smiles making the observers uncomfortable. And when they passed in front of my father, something unpleasant seemed to lurk behind those fake smiles, as if a conspiracy were afoot, one that could erupt at any moment. I cast a timid glance at Father—he sat there woodenly smoking one of his cheap cigarettes, just like every other day. The better cigarettes tossed his way by the peddlers lay on the ground, untouched. That was his custom: once the deals were struck, the butchers would come over, gather up the cigarettes and smoke them. And as they smoked, they would praise my father for his incorruptibility. ‘Lao Luo,’ one would say, half in jest, ‘if all Chinese were like you, Communism would have been realized decades ago.’ He'd smile but say nothing. And that would be the moment when my heart would swell with pride and I'd vow that this was how I'd do things, that this was the kind of man I wanted to be. It was obvious to the peddlers as well that something was in the air that day, and they turned to look at my father, except for a few who coolly observed the butchers as they paced. A tacit agreement had been reached: they would all wait to see what happened, like an audience patiently waiting for the play to begin.

Outside, the rain has let up a little, the thunder and lightning have moved away. In the yard, the stone path is submerged under a layer of water on which float leaves—some green, some brown. There is also a plastic blow-up toy, its legs pointing skyward. It appears to be a toy horse. Before long the rain stops altogether, and a breeze arrives from the fields, rustling the leaves of the gingko tree and sending down a fine silver spray, as if through a sieve, poking holes in the water below. The two cats stick their heads out of the hole in the tree trunk, screech briefly and pull their heads back in. I hear the pitiful mewling of kittens somewhere in that hole and I know that, while the sky was opening up, sending torrents of water earthward, the tailless female has had her litter. Animals prefer to give birth during downpours, so my father says. I see a black snake with a white pattern slithering through the water. Then there's a silvery fish that leaps into the air, twisting its flat body like a plough blade, beautiful yet powerful, graceful and smooth, making a moist, crisp noise as it re-enters the water, like the slap Butcher Zhang gave me, his hand slippery from pig grease, when he caught me sneaking a piece of meat. Where has that fish come from? It alone knows the answer. It can barely swim in the shallow water, its green dorsal fin exposed to the air. A bat emerges from the temple and flies past, followed by a swarm of bats, all from the same place. The other two hailstones that landed at my feet have melted before I could suck on them. Wise Monk, I say, it'll be dark soon. No response.

A bright red sun rose above the fields in the east, looking like a blacksmith's glowing face. The leading actor of the play finally appeared in the square: our village head, Lao Lan, a tall, husky man with well-developed muscles (that was before he got fat, before his belly bulged, before his jowls sagged). He had a bushy brown beard, the same colour as his eyes, which made you wonder if he was of pure Han stock. All eyes were on him the minute he strode into the square, his face glowing in the sun. He walked up
to my father but his gaze was fixed on the fields beyond the squat earthen wall, where rays of morning sun dazzled the eye. The crops were jade green, the flowers were in bloom, their scent heavy on the air, the skylarks sang in the rosy red sky. My father, who was nothing in the eyes of Lao Lan, might as well not have been sitting by the wall at all. And if my father meant nothing to him, naturally, it was even worse for me. But perhaps he was blinded by the sun. That was the first thought that entered my juvenile mind, but I quickly grasped that Lao Lan was trying to provoke my father. As he cocked his head to speak to the butchers and the peddlers, he unzipped his uniform pants, took out his dark tool and let loose a stream of burnt-yellow piss right in front of my father and me. Its heated stench assailed my nostrils. It was a mighty stream, I'd say a good fifteen metres; he'd probably been saving up all night, going without relieving himself so he could humiliate my father. The cigarettes on the ground tumbled and rolled in his urine, swelling up until they lost their shape. A strange laugh had arisen from the clusters of butchers and peddlers when Lao Lan took out his tool, but they broke that off as abruptly as if a gigantic hand had reached out and grabbed them by the throats. They stared at us, slack-jawed and tongue-tied, their faces frozen in stunned surprise. Not even the butchers, who knew that Lao Lan wanted to pick a fight with my father, imagined that he'd do something like this. His piss splashed on our feet and on our legs, some even spraying into our faces and our mouths. I jumped up, enraged, but Father didn't move a muscle. He sat there like a stone. ‘Fuck your old lady, Lao Lan!’ I cursed. My father didn't make a sound. Lao Lan wore a superior smile. My father's eyes were hooded, like a farmer taking pleasure from the sight of water dripping from the eaves. When Lao Lan finished pissing, he zipped up his pants and walked over to the cattle. I heard long sighs from the butchers and peddlers, but couldn't tell if they were sorry nothing more had happened or happy that it hadn't. The butchers then walked in among the cattle and in no time made their selections. Then the peddlers walked up and the bargaining commenced. I could tell their hearts weren't in it, that something other than the best bargain was on their minds. Though they weren't looking at my father, I was sure they were thinking about him. And what was he doing? He'd brought his knees up and hidden his face behind them, like a hawk sleeping in the crotch of a tree. Since I couldn't see his face, I had no way of knowing what he looked
like at that moment. But I was unhappy with what I saw as weakness. I may have only been a boy but I knew how badly Lao Lan had humiliated my father, and I also knew that any man worth his salt would not take that without a fight; I'd proved that by my curses. But Father remained silent, as if he were stone dead. That day's negotiations were brought to a close without his intervention. Yet when they were over, all the parties walked up as usual and tossed some notes at his feet. The first to do this was none other than Lao Lan himself. That mongrel bastard, apparently not content to piss in my father's face, took out two brand-new ten-yuan notes and snapped them between his fingers to get my father's attention. It didn't work—Father kept his face hidden behind his knees. This seemed to disappoint Lao Lan, who took a quick glance round him, then flung the two notes at my father's feet, one of them landing in the middle of the still-steaming puddle of piss and lying nestled against the soggy, disintegrating cigarettes. At that moment my father might as well have been dead. He'd lost face for himself and his ancestors. He was less than a man, no better than the bloated cigarettes swimming in his adversary's piss. After Lao Lan tossed down his money, the peddlers and butchers followed his lead, sympathetic looks on their faces, as if we were father-and-son beggars who deserved their pity. They tossed down double the usual amount, which might have been a reward for not resisting or an attempt to copy Lao Lan's generosity. As I stared at those notes, fallen at our feet like so many dead leaves, I began to cry, and at long last Father looked up. There was no sign of anger on his face, nor of sadness, nothing but the lustre of a dried-out piece of wood. As he gazed at me coldly, a look of perplexity began to show in his eyes, as if he had no idea why I was crying. I reached out and clawed at his neck. ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘you're no longer my father. I'll call Lao Lan Dieh before I ever call you that again!’ Momentarily stunned by my shouts, the men burst out laughing. Lao Lan gave me a thumbs-up. ‘Xiaotong’,’ he said, ‘you're really something, just what I need, a son. From now on, you're welcome at my house any time. If it's pork you want, that's what you'll get, and if it's beef, you'll have that too. And if you bring your mamma along, I'll welcome you both with open arms.’ That was too great an insult to ignore and I rushed at him angrily. He swiftly sidestepped my charge and I wound up face down on the ground with a cut and bleeding lip. ‘You little prick,’ he said, guffawing loudly, ‘attacking me after calling me Dieh!
Who in his right mind would want a son like you?’ Since no one offered to help me up, I had to get to my feet on my own. I walked over to my father and kicked him in the shin to vent my disappointment. Not only did that not make him angry, he wasn't even aware of what I'd done. He just rubbed his face with his large, soft hands, stretched his arms, yawned like a lazy tomcat, looked down at the ground and then, slowly, conscientiously, carefully picked up the notes steeping in Lao Lan's piss, holding each one up to the light, as if to make sure it wasn't counterfeit. Finally, he picked up the new note from Lao Lan that had been splashed with piss and dried it on his pants. Now that the money was stacked neatly on his knees, he picked it up with the middle two fingers of his left hand, spat on the thumb and forefinger of his right and began to count it. I ran up to grab it, wanting to tear the notes to shreds and fling the pieces into the air (of course I'd fling them in Lao Lan's face), to avenge our humiliation. But he was too fast for me. Jumping to his feet, he held his hand high in the air. ‘You foolish boy,’ he muttered, ‘what do you think you're doing? Money's money—it's not to blame, people are. Don't take your anger out on money.’ Grabbing his elbow, I tried to claw my way up his body and rip that shameful money out of his hand. But I didn't stand a chance, not with a full-grown man. I was so angry then that I rammed my head into his hip, over and over, but he just patted me kindly on the head and said: ‘That's enough now, son, don't get carried away. Look, over there, Lao Lan's bull. It's getting angry.’

It was a big, fat, tawny Luxi bull with straight horns and a hide like satin stretched over its rippling muscles, the kind I'd see later on athletes on TV. It was a golden yellow, all but its face, which, surprisingly, was white. I'd never seen a white-faced bull. Castrated, the way it looked at you out of the corner of one of its red eyes was enough to make your hair stand on end. Now that I think back, that's probably the look people describe when they talk about eunuchs. Castration changes a man's nature; it does the same with bulls. By pointing to the bull, Father made me forget about the money, at least for the moment. I turned in time to see Lao Lan swagger out of the square, leading his bull. Why not swagger, after the way he'd humiliated my non-resisting father? His prestige in the village and among the cattle-peddlers had just undergone a dramatic increase. He'd gone up against the only person who dismissed him as irrelevant, and won; no one in the village would defy him
again. That only makes what happened next so startling that I'm not sure I believe it even now, years later. The Luxi bull stopped in its tracks. Lao Lan tugged its halter. To no avail. Without the slightest effort, the bull made a mockery out of Lao Lan's show of strength. A cattle butcher by trade, he exuded an odour that could make a timid calf shake like a leaf and cause even the most stubborn animal to meekly await its death when he stood in front of it, butcher knife in hand. Unable to get the bull moving again, he went round, smacked it on the rump and gave an ear-piercing yell. Now, most animals would have lost control of their bowels in the wake of this smack and that yell, but the Luxi bull didn't so much as blink. Still enjoying the glow of victory over my father, and acting like a cocky soldier, Lao Lan kicked the bull's underbelly with no thought to its nature. The bull shifted its rump, split the air with a loud roar, lowered its head and flung Lao Lan into the air on its horns, as if he weighed no more than a straw mat. The peddlers and butchers were shocked, shocked and speechless. None of them dared to go to Lao Lan's aid. The bull lowered its head again and charged. Now, Lao Lan was no ordinary man, and when he saw those horns coming at him he had enough presence of mind and strength of body to roll out of the way. Eyes blazing red with anger, the bull turned to charge again, and Lao Lan rolled out of the way a second time and then a third…When he was finally able to scramble to his feet, we saw that he was injured, though only slightly. He stood there, facing down the bull, hips shifted to the side and his eyes not leaving the the animal for a second. The bull lowered its head, slobber gathering at the corners of its mouth, and snorted loudly as it prepared for the next charge. Lao Lan raised his hand to distract the bull but he was only putting up a brave front, like a frightened bullfighter who'll do anything to save face. He took a cautious step forward; the bull didn't move. Rather, it dropped its head even lower, a sign that the next charge was imminent. Lao Lan finally abandoned his macho posturing, gave one last blustery yell, turned and ran for his life. The bull took off after him, its tail sticking out stiff and straight, like an iron rod, its hooves spraying mud in every direction like a machine gun. Meanwhile, Lao Lan, who was hell-bent on escaping, headed instinctively towards the onlookers, hoping to find salvation in a crowd. But rescuing him was the last thing on their minds. The men ran for their lives, shrieking loudly and cursing their parents for not giving them more than two
legs. Luckily, the bull had enough human intelligence to single out Lao Lan and not vent its anger on anyone else. Sand flew into the air as the peddlers and the butchers scrambled over walls and up trees. Lao Lan, stupefied by his predicament, ran straight towards Father and me. In desperation, Father grabbed me by the nape of my neck with one hand and the seat of my pants with the other and flung me up onto the wall only seconds before Lao Lan ran up and took refuge behind him, grabbing his clothes to keep him in front of him and thus screen him from the charging bull. My father retreated and so, of course, did Lao Lan, until they both were backed up against the wall. Father waved his money in front of the bull and began to mutter: ‘Bull, ah, bull, there's no bad blood between you and me, not now, not ever, so let's work this out…’ It all happened faster than words can describe. Father threw the money at the bull's face and leapt onto its back before the animal knew what was happening. Then he stuck his fingers in the bull's nose, grabbed its nose ring and jerked its head up high. The cows from West County were farm animals, so they all had nose rings. Now, the nose is a bull's weak spot, and no one, not the best farmer alive, knew more about bulls than my father, though he wasn't much of a farming man. Tears sprang to my eyes as I sat there, on top of the wall. I'm so proud of you, Dieh, and of how you've washed away our humiliation and reclaimed our lost face through your wise and courageous action. The butchers and peddlers ran up to help him and wrestle the white-faced, yellow bull to the ground. So that it wouldn't get up again and hurt anyone, one of the butchers ran home rabbit-fast to fetch a butcher knife, which he then offered to the now waxen-faced Lao Lan, who took a step backward and waved away the man, turning the task over to someone else. The butcher turned from side to side, knife in hand. ‘Who'll do it? No one? Well, then, I guess it's up to me.’ He rolled up his sleeves, wiped the blade against the sole of his shoe, then hunkered down and closed one eye, like a carpenter with a plumb line. Taking aim at the slight indentation in the bull's chest, he plunged the knife in. When he pulled it out, blood spurted into the air and painted my father red.