Frog

  My cousin Jin Xiu approached Chen Bi, looked up at him, and said, Elder Brother Chen, you’re like a god in our village.

  Chen took out a pack of cigarettes, handed one to Jin Xiu, and lit one for himself. Then with his hands thrust into his pockets, he said proudly, So, tell me, what do they say about me?

  They say you flew to Shenzhen with only ten yuan in your pocket, Jin Xiu said as he scratched his neck, and that you fell in behind a delegation of Russians. The girls who worked there all thought you were part of the delegation and bowed to you. You responded with Harasho – very good. They say you checked into that fancy hotel with the Russian delegation, that you ate and drank like a king for three days, and that you received a lot of gifts that you turned around and sold on the street, making enough to buy twenty digital watches, which you sold here. You used what you earned to make more money, and it didn’t take long to get rich.

  Chen Bi stroked his big nose. Go on, he said, keep the story going.

  They say you went to Jinan and roamed the streets until you saw an old fellow wandering aimlessly, and when you asked him why he was crying, he said he’d gone out for a walk and now couldn’t find his way back. You saw him home. The old fellow’s son was the head of the Jinan Supply and Marketing Department, and he rewarded your good deed by declaring himself to be your sworn brother. And that is how you were able to acquire cigarettes wholesale.

  Chen had a big laugh over that. Are you writing a novel, young man? he said when he finished laughing. Now I’ll tell you the real story. I’ve flown on aeroplanes many times, and I’ve bought my own ticket for every flight. I do have friends at the Jinan tobacco plant, and they sold me cigarettes at a slim discount, enough for me to make three fen per pack.

  No matter what you say, you’re someone who knows how to get things done, my cousin said with heartfelt admiration. My dad wants me to become your apprentice.

  The one who really knows how to get things done is right here, Chen Bi said, pointing to Yuan Sai. He’s conversant with heavenly principles and earthly truths. He knows everything that happened five hundred years ago and half of what will happen five hundred years from now. He’s the master you’re looking for.

  Elder Brother Yuan is a great man too, my cousin said. He set up his fortune-telling stand back home in the Xia Village marketplace, where we know him as the Little Immortal. When an old hen in my aunt’s house went missing, Elder Brother Yuan curled his fingers and said, Ducks on the river, chickens in the grass. Go see if there’s a grassy nest. Well, that’s exactly where we found it.

  He’s not just a diviner, Chen Bi said. He can do lots of things. If he taught you even one of them, you’d have enough to live on for the rest of your life.

  Kowtow to the master, Wuguan said.

  No, the things I do are appropriate only for someone in the lower walks of society who’s eking out a living. You need to follow your cousin by going into the army and becoming an officer. Or take the college exam and go to school. Those are the paths to a bright future as a leading member of society. Yuan Sai first pointed to himself and then to Chen Bi. We, including him, are not engaged in lines of work that are on the up and up. We do what we do because we have no choice. But you, you’re still young, so don’t follow in our footsteps.

  No, my cousin insisted stubbornly, you’re the ones with real skills and abilities. That’s not the case with the army or college.

  Good for you, young man. You think for yourself, that’s good. In the future, we can work together, Chen Bi said.

  Where’s Wang Gan? I asked Wuguan.

  I’ll bet you anything he’s posted himself at the health centre.

  That guy’s possessed, Chen Bi said. A team of horses couldn’t pull him away from it.

  The problem is his house, Yuan Sai said mysteriously. The front door is in the wrong place, so is the toilet. I told your father-in-law more than a decade ago that he had to make changes to his front door and to move the toilet; if not, someone in his family would go batty. He thought I was putting a curse on him and picked up a whip to use on me. So what happened? What I warned against came true. Every chance he gets he picks up a cane, bends at the waist, and goes to the health centre to put on a shameless act. If that isn’t batty, I’d like to know what is. Wang Gan’s no better, a farmer with petty bourgeois ideas who’s gone gaga over that pimply Little Lion. In other words, batty.

  All right, everyone, forget Yuan Sai’s eyewash and come inside, I said. Come inside, all of you.

  The feng shui of our commune is no good, either, Yuan Sai said. Since olden days, the yamen, the official residence, has always faced south. But the gate of our commune faces north, and is directly opposite the slaughterhouse, where knives go in clean and come out red all day long, with blood and guts everywhere, and a grisly atmosphere. When I went to complain they accused me of propagating feudal superstitions and barely fell short of locking me up. So what happened? The old Party Secretary Qin Shan suffered a paralytic stroke and his brother, Qin He, has been crazy for years. When Qin’s replacement, Secretary Qiu, took a dozen people down south on an inspection tour, there was a traffic accident that killed or injured every one of them. Feng shui is of vast importance. No matter how unyielding a fate you have, it’s never greater than that of the Emperor, and not even he is immune to the power of feng shui.

  Take your seat, I said again as I gave Yuan Sai a tap on the shoulder. Feng shui is important, good master, but so are eating and drinking.

  If they don’t do something about the commune main gate, more people will go batty, and more major incidents will occur. You can believe me or not, Yuan Sai said. It’s up to you.

  5

  Wang Gan’s one-sided infatuation with Little Lion led to many strange occurrences that were the talk of the village. He was a laughing-stock, but I never laughed at him, for he had both my sympathy and my respect. He was, in my view, a uniquely talented individual who had been born in the wrong time and place. A devoted lover, if chance had allowed, he could have composed a sentimental love poem that would be sung for millennia. During our childhood, when we were ignorant of what romantic love was all about, Wang Gan was in the first bloom of love for Little Lion. I recall how years before he had said: Little Lion is so pretty! By any standard, she was not a pretty girl, not even attractive. My aunt had once thought of introducing her to me, and I’d declined with the excuse that she was the girl of Wang Gan’s dreams. To be perfectly honest, her looks were a turn-off. But in his eyes, she was the most beautiful girl in the world. In elegant terms, it could be a case of a lover seeing in her the classical beauty Xi Shi; less elegantly, it could be seeing a green bean through the eyes of a turtle – the size and colour make a perfect match.

  After posting his first love letter to Little Lion, Wang Gan was so excited he dragged me down to the riverbank to pour out his feelings. That was in the summer of 1970, soon after our graduation from the rural middle school. Grain stalks and dead critters were being swept along by raging waters over which a solitary gull flew quietly past. Wang Renmei’s father was sitting on the riverbank fishing in the calmer water close by. Li Shou, a schoolmate younger than us, was crouched down watching him.

  Want to tell Li Shou?

  He’s just a kid, he wouldn’t understand.

  We climbed an old willow tree halfway down the riverbank and sat side by side on a branch that reached out over the water. The tip actually broke the surface, creating a series of ripples.

  What do you want to tell me?

  You have to promise not to tell anyone.

  Okay, I promise. If I breathe a word of what Wang Gan tells me, let me fall into the river and drown.

  Today I . . . I finally dropped a letter to her in the postbox . . .

  Wang Gan had turned pale and his lips quivered as he spoke.

  To who? The way you’re acting, it sounds like you wrote to Chairman Mao.

  Why would you say that? What does Chairman Mao have to do with me? No, I wrote to her. H
er.

  Who is ‘her’? I started to tense up.

  You promised to never tell anyone.

  I promised.

  She’s as far as the ends of the earth, yet right in front of your eyes.

  The suspense is killing me!

  Her, she . . . A strange look came into Wang Gan’s eyes. With a tone of longing, he said, She’s my Little Lion.

  Why write to her? Want to marry her or something?

  You and your practical view of things! Wang Gan said emotionally. Little Lion, my dearest Little Lion, the one I want to love with all my youth, with my very life . . . my love, my true love, please forgive me, for I have already kissed your name a hundred times . . .

  Cold chills and goose bumps were my only reaction. Wang Gan was obviously reciting his letter as he wrapped his arms around the trunk, face pressed tightly against the bark of the tree, tears in his eyes.

  . . . I fell under your spell the first day I saw you at Xiaopao’s house. From that moment till this very day, till the end of time, this heart of mine belongs to you only, and if you wished to eat it, I would unhesitatingly dig it out for you . . . I’ve fallen in love with your bright pink face, your lively nose, your soft lips, your fluffy hair, and your sparkling eyes; I’ve fallen in love with your voice, your smell, and your smile. Your laughter makes me dizzy, makes me want to fall to my knees, wrap my arms around your legs, and gaze up at your smiling face . . .

  Fisherman Wang jerked his pole backward; beads of water dripped from the flashing brightness of his line, glistening like pearls in the sunlight. At the end of his hook a soft-shelled beige turtle the size of a tea bowl crashed to the ground, and was probably dizzy from the fall, lying on the ground looking skyward, its white underbelly exposed, four legs pawing the air, sad but awfully cute.

  A turtle! Li Shou shouted gleefully.

  Little Lion, my dearest, I am lowborn, the son of a farmer, while you are a doctor whose table is graced with top quality food. There’s a chasm between our social standings, and you may not care to even take notice of me. After you finish my letter, only laughter will emerge from your lovely mouth before you tear it to shreds. Or maybe when it reaches you, you will toss it into a wastepaper basket unread. Nevertheless, I want to say to you, my dear, my dearest one, if you will accept my love, like a tiger with wings or a fine steed with a carved saddle, I will acquire unprecedented power and, as if boosted by an injection of blood from a young rooster, my spirit will be invigorated. There will be bread and milk; with your encouragement, I will improve my social status to stand with you as someone who, like you, subsists on marketable grains . . .

  Hey, what are you two doing up there, reciting passages from novels? Li Shou shouted when he spotted us up in the tree.

  . . . If you won’t accept me, my dear, I’ll not retreat, not give up, but will quietly follow you, trail you wherever you go, going down on my knees to kiss your footprints, I will stand outside your window to gaze at the lamplight inside, from first light to last – I want to turn into a candle and burn for you until there is nothing left of me. My dear, if I spit up blood and expire, I will be content if you favour me by coming to my gravesite for a brief look. If you can shed a tear for me, I will die with no regrets – your tears, my dear, a magic elixir that will bring me back from the dead . . .

  The goose bumps on my arms were gone, and I was starting to be moved by his recitation of infatuation. I’d never dreamed he could fall for Little Lion and fall that hard, or that he had the literary talent to write such a plaintive letter. At that moment I felt that the doorway to adolescence was rumbling open for me, and that Wang Gan was leading the way. I knew nothing about love, but its splendour would draw me dashing recklessly towards it, like a moth to the flame.

  The way you love her, I said, she has to love you back.

  Do you think so? He gripped my hand, his eyes blazing. Will she really love me?

  She will, absolutely. I gripped his hand back. If it doesn’t happen, I’ll ask my aunt to act as matchmaker. Little Lion will do anything she says.

  No, he said, no, no, no. I don’t want to rely on anyone else. A melon won’t be sweet if you yank it off the vine. I want to win her heart with my own effort.

  Li Shou looked up. What goofy stuff are you guys up to? he asked.

  Fisherman Wang grabbed a handful of mud and threw it at us. You’re scaring the fish with all that jabbering.

  A motorised red and blue boat chugged towards us from downstream, the sound of its engine instilling in us a hard-to-describe sense of anxiety, panic even. The boat was straining against the rapid flow, its bow throwing up whitecaps and ploughing thin ridges right and left that filled back in little by little. A layer of blue mist floated atop the surface of the river, the smell of diesel fuel spread to our lips. A dozen seagulls glided along behind the boat.

  The boat belonged to the commune’s family-planning group, that is, Gugu’s boat. Little Lion was aboard, of course. County officials had assigned the boat to Gugu to aid her in keeping residents from exceeding the family-planning quotas through illegal pregnancies and other unanticipated problems, and to keep the bright family-planning banner flying even when passage across the swamped stone bridge was interrupted during flood season. The small cabin had a pair of faux leather seats; a twelve-horsepower diesel motor was attached to the stern and loudspeakers were mounted on the bow to broadcast a lilting popular Hunan song, a paean to Chairman Mao that was soft on the ear. The bow turned towards our village and the music ended. A brief moment of silence intensified the motor noise. Then: The Great Chairman Mao has instructed us, Gugu announced hoarsely, that humanity must proceed with planned population growth . . .

  Wang Gan went silent at the moment Gugu’s boat hove into view. I saw that he was shaking, that his mouth hung open, that his moist eyes were fixed on the boat. As it passed by us it listed to one side, drawing a cry of alarm from Wang Gan. He tensed, and it seemed to me he might jump into the river. Farther up in the slow current, the boat turned and sped lightly towards us, the sound of its motor settling into a rhythmic hum. Gugu had arrived. So had Little Lion.

  The boat was piloted by a familiar figure – Qin He. In the latter days of the Cultural Revolution, his older brother had been restored to the post of commune Party secretary, while he had been reduced to begging in the marketplace; no matter how civilised his begging methods were, he was as an embarrassment to his brother. We’d heard that he had asked his brother to assign him to work in the obstetrics ward at the commune health centre – You’re a man, how can you work in an obstetrics ward? – There are lots of men in obstetrics wards – You have no medical skills – What do I need those for? – and so Qin He was made pilot of the family-planning boat. In the weeks and months that followed, he hardly ever left Gugu’s side. On days when a boat was required, he went out onto the river; on other days he sat idly in the cabin.

  His hair was parted down the middle, like the young men in movies set in the May Fourth period, and even in the dog days of summer he wore his blue gabardine student uniform, still with two pens in the breast pocket: a fountain pen and a two-colour ballpoint pen. His face seemed darker than the last time I’d seen him. He manoeuvred the boat slowly towards the riverbank, up near the twisted old willow. The motor slowed, ramping up the loudspeaker volume, making our ears ring. The commune had built a temporary pier west of the willow tree for the exclusive use of the family-planning boat. Crossbars had been fixed with wire to four thick posts in the water and overlaid by planks. After securing the boat to the pier, Qin He stood at the prow. The motor shut down and the loudspeakers went silent, reintroducing us to the splash of the river and the cries of gulls.

  Gugu was first out of the cabin. The boat rocked, so did she. Qin He reached out to give her a hand but she pushed it away. She jumped onto the pier; though now on the heavy side, she was nimble as always. A bandage on her forehead emitted a harsh light.

  Little Lion was next. Short and squat to begin with, she
was dwarfed by the oversized medicine kit on her back. Though much younger than Gugu, her movements were clumsier. It was she who caused Wang Gan to wrap his arms tightly around the branch, his face pale, his eyes filling with tears.

  Huang Qiuya was the third person to emerge. In the years since I’d last seen her, she’d become noticeably stooped; her head was thrust forward, her legs were no longer straight, and her movements were laboured. She rocked with the motion of the boat, arms in rapid motion to keep from losing her balance. All that kept her from crossing to the pier were legs that seemed incapable of leaving the boat. Qin He watched her impassively. No helping hand was offered. So she leaned forward and reached out to embrace the structure with both hands, like an orangutan, but stopped when Gugu said gruffly, Old Huang, why don’t you stay aboard? Without even turning her head, she continued, Watch her carefully. Don’t let her run off.

  Gugu’s order was directed at both Qin He and Huang Qiuya, since Qin immediately bent down to look inside the cabin. The sound of a woman’s sobs soon emerged.

  Once ashore, Gugu strode quickly along the riverbank heading east, Little Lion trotting to keep up with her. Blood had stained the bandage on Gugu’s forehead. Her face was set, her gaze intense, her expression unrelentingly firm, almost menacing. Naturally, Wang Gan was not looking at Gugu; no, his gaze followed Little Lion. He was muttering something under his breath. I sort of felt sorry for him, but more than that I was moved. I could not understand how a man might lose his head over a woman.

  We later learned that Gugu’s injury had come as a result of being clubbed by a man who’s wife was pregnant with their fourth child in Dongfeng Village, the birthplace of many bandits in the pre–Liberation era. The man, Zhang Quan, who had bovine eyes and a solid family background, was feared by all the men in the village. Every woman of child-bearing age in Dongfeng Village who had given birth twice had had their tubes tied off if one of them had been a son. If they’d had only girls, Gugu said she’d taken village customs into consideration, and chosen not to force the women to have their tubes tied; however, they were required to insert IUDs. After a third pregnancy, even if they were all girls, the tubes had to be tied. Zhang Quan’s wife was the only woman in any of the more than fifty commune villages who had neither had her tubes tied nor used an IUD, and she was pregnant again. Gugu’s boat had travelled to Dongfeng Village during a downpour expressly to get Zhang Quan’s wife to go to the health centre for an abortion. While Gugu was on her way, Party Secretary Qin Shan phoned the branch secretary of Dongfeng Village, Zhang Jinya, ordering him to take all steps and use any force necessary to deliver Zhang Quan’s wife to the health centre. When Gugu reached the village, Zhang Quan was standing guard at his gate with a spiked club; eyes red, he was shouting almost insanely. Zhang Jinya and a team of armed militiamen were watching from a distance, not daring to get close. Zhang’s three daughters were kneeling in the doorway, noses running, tears flowing, as they cried out in what seemed to be practised unison: Merciful elders and uncles, mothers and aunts, brothers and sisters, spare our mother . . . she has a rheumatic heart. If she has an abortion she will die for sure – if she dies, we will be orphans.