Minor goddesses stood in secondary halls to the rear: the Immortal Goddess, the Vision Goddess, the Goddess of Sons and Grandsons, the Typhus Goddess, the Mother’s Milk Goddess, the Goddess of Dreams, Peigu Goddess, the Goddess of Early Birth, and the Goddess of Delivery. Women were on their knees praying in front of each of them, with nuns standing by to pound their temple blocks. When I checked the time by the sun, I told Little Lion we could come back tomorrow; she nodded reluctantly, and while we were on the temple path, nuns chanting in a little side building saw us off:
Benefactress, don’t forget a longevity lock
for your child!
Benefactress, don’t forget to buy a rainbow
shawl for your doll!
Benefactress, don’t forget to buy cloud slippers
for your doll!
Since we had no money, we could only offer our apologies and flee.
The sun was high in the sky when we left the temple. My cousin called on my cell phone to get us moving. The grounds were like an anthill, with people scurrying back and forth; a little bit of everything was for sale for the hordes of shoppers. With no time to dawdle, we elbowed our way through the crowd to get to my cousin, who had parked his car just east of the temple grounds, at the entrance to the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital, whose grand opening was that afternoon.
We were too late for the ceremony, evidence of which – the shattered shells of firecrackers – was strewn across the ground. Baskets of flowers had been arranged at the gate, spread out like the wings of a phoenix. A pair of enormous balloons floated about the grounds, tied to an advertising banner. The building, a blue and white crescent-shaped structure, was intended to resemble a pair of embracing arms outstretched in silent elegance, a far cry from the flashy, ornamental Fertility Goddess Temple to the west.
We spotted Gugu at the same time as we caught sight of my cousin, in his suit and shiny leather shoes. People were picking flowers from the baskets and floral wreaths. Gugu was in the midst of that crowd, her hands filled with the stems of white, red, and yellow roses on the verge of blooming. We recognised her from the back. We’d have known her if she’d been in a crowd of thousands, all wearing identical clothing.
We saw a teenage boy hand her a package wrapped in white paper. As soon as she took it, he turned and ran off. When she peeled away the paper wrapping, she jumped in disbelief and cried out in fear. She reeled back and forth a time or two, then fell backward.
It was a big, black frog, which hopped away from her.
2
A phoney-looking security guard at the gate to the bullfrog farm gave my cousin a half-assed salute as the electric gate slid slowly open to allow his Passat entrance. Yuan Sai, the one-time fortune-teller and quack doctor, now CEO of the bullfrog farm, was waiting for us in front of a big, black sculpture.
It was supposed to be a bullfrog.
From a distance it looked like an armoured military transport truck.
The following words were carved into the marble plaque at the base: Bullfrog (Rana Catesbeiana), Amphibian, Order Anura, Family Ranidae, Genus Rana, Derives its name from its bull-like croak.
A picture, take a picture, Yuan Sai greeted us. After that you can take a tour and then eat.
I studied the enormous bullfrog and was properly in awe. A jet-black back, jade-green mouth and golden eye sockets, it had algae-like wrinkled skin covered with warts; the gloomy gaze from its bulging eyes seemed to carry a message from the ancient past.
Xiao Bi, my cousin shouted, bring a camera! A willowy girl with red glasses wearing a long, striped skirt came running up with a heavy camera.
Xiao Bi, formerly an honours student from Qidong University’s Art Department, is our office manager, my cousin informed us.
She’s more than just beautiful, Yuan Sai said, she’s exceptional in many ways. She can sing and dance and is a photographer and sculptor, among other talents. And, I might add, she can drink along with the best.
Mr Yuan likes to flatter people, Xiao Bi said as she blushed.
This classmate of mine is also a very special person, Yuan Sai introduced me to Xiao Bi. He was quite a runner in his youth, and we assumed he’d grow up to be a champion athlete, never expecting him to become a playwright. His name is Wan Zu, but everyone calls him Xiaopao. Now he goes by Tadpole.
Tadpole’s my pen-name, I explained.
And this is Tadpole’s wife, Little Lion. A specialist in obstetrics.
Little Lion, cradling her doll, nodded absent-mindedly.
I’ve often heard Yuan and Jin speak of you, Xiao Bi said.
The world’s number one frog! Yuan Sai said.
It’s Xiao Bi’s creation, my cousin added.
I breathed an exaggerated sigh of admiration.
I’d be honoured if the respected Tadpole would tell me what he thinks of it.
We walked around the sculpture, and no matter where I stood I could feel its eyes on me.
After the pictures were taken, Yuan Sai, my cousin, and Xiao Bi accompanied us on a tour of the breeding pond, the tadpole pond, the metamorphose pond, the young frog pond, the feed preparation station, and the frog products workshop.
From that day forward, the image of the bullfrog-breeding pond has often invaded my dreams. Mate-seeking bull-like bellows from the inflated white throats of male bullfrogs spout from the murky surface of the pond, which is some four hundred square feet in size and three feet or so deep, drawing females slowly to them, their extended limbs afloat. Coupled frogs can be seen all over, moving across the surface, males on the females’ backs, front legs holding on, rear legs constantly thumping her on the sides. The females eject transparent eggs to be fertilised by sperm ejaculated by the males. Frog fertilisation occurs outside the body – someone, either my cousin or Yuan Sai, said – with as many as ten thousand eggs laid by each female – they’re so much more advanced than humans – and croaks fill the air above the pond, which is warmed by the April sun and gives off a nauseating stench. An arena for mating, it is also an arena for producing the next generation – we add stuff to the feed to increase the production of eggs – wa wa wa – frog croaks – wah wah wah – babies’ cries . . .
With the croaking of frogs ringing in our ears, and visions of bullfrogs crammed into our heads, we were taken into a luxurious restaurant.
A pair of girls clad in pink would serve us.
Everything on today’s menu comes from frogs, Yuan Sai said.
I picked up the menu and read the list of entrees: salt and pepper frogs’ legs, fried frog skin, frog meat with green peppers, sliced frog with bamboo shoots, tadpoles in vinegar sauce, tapioca and frog’s egg soup . . .
I’m sorry, I said, but I don’t eat frogs.
Me either, Little Lion said.
Why? A surprised Yuan Sai asked. They’re delicious. Why don’t you eat them?
I tried to put the sight of those bulging eyes, sticky skin, and the cold, putrid smell out of my mind, but couldn’t. I shook my head as I suffered.
Not long ago a Korean researcher succeeded in extracting a valuable peptide from the skin of frogs that is an effective antioxidant that eliminates free radicals, a natural anti-ageing compound, my cousin, Jin Xiu, said with a meaningful look. Naturally, it has a number of other fascinating effects, including drastically raising the odds of a woman giving birth to twins and more.
How about a small taste? Yuan Sai offered. Don’t be a coward. You have no trouble with scorpions, leeches, worms or venomous snakes, so why not a bullfrog?
You haven’t forgotten that my pen-name is Tadpole, have you?
Oh, that’s right, Yuan Sai said to the serving girls. Clear the table and tell the chef to cook up a new meal – no frogs!
The new meal was served, the three rounds of toasts were completed.
How did someone like you come up with the idea of raising bullfrogs? I asked Yuan Sai.
The only way to make big money is to come up with new ideas, he said proudl
y as he blew a smoke ring.
How talented you are, I said, imitating the tone of a sitcom actor, with a sarcastic edge. You’ve been different ever since you were a child. Raising bullfrogs is fine, but doesn’t it bother you to have to give up your arcane skills of removing nails from cows’ stomachs and telling fortunes in the marketplace?
Tadpole, you stinker. Don’t hit a man in the face in a fight and don’t expose his shortcomings during a reprimand.
Not to mention using steel tongs to remove women’s IUDs, Little Lion chimed in coldly.
Aiya, dear Sister-in-law, why bring that up? My awareness was at an all-time low then, and I was too soft-hearted, no match for women who caught me in their crazed demand to have children. A third reason? I was broke.
Would you do it today? I asked him.
Do what? He glared at me.
Remove an IUD.
To hear you say it, I have no memory. I’m a new man after those years in the reform-through-labour brigade. These days I walk the straight and narrow, earning a legitimate income. I wouldn’t think of doing anything illegal, not even if you put a gun to my head.
We’re a law-abiding, public-minded, municipally recognised and outstanding enterprise that pays all its taxes, my cousin said.
Little Lion had her hand on the clay doll throughout the meal.
That damned Qin He, Yuan said, is a bona fide genius. As soon as he started making the dolls, Hao Dashou was out of business.
Xiao Bi, who had sat by quietly with a smile, joined the conversation: All of Master Qin’s creations are crystallisations of his emotions.
Are emotions really important in crafting clay dolls? Yuan Sai asked her.
Of course they are, she replied. Every artistic creation is the artist’s child.
Then that big bullfrog must be your child. Yuan Sai pointed to the sculpture.
Not another word from the red-faced girl.
Your wife must really be fond of clay dolls, my cousin said to me.
It’s not clay dolls she’s fond of, Yuan Sai said. It’s real babies.
Let’s team up, Jin Xiu said excitedly. My cousin can join us.
You want us to be part of your bullfrog farm? I asked. Just looking at those things gives me goose bumps.
We don’t farm bullfrogs exclusively. We also . . .
Don’t frighten him away, Yuan Sai interrupted. Drink up. Remember how Chairman Mao educated the youngsters back then? Rural villages are the wide-open spaces, he said, where you can do what you want!
3
Wang Gan’s comment that love is a sickness was a lesson he’d learned from personal experience. I found it almost incomprehensible that he could go on living after Little Lion married me, given his obsession over her and the bizarre direction it had taken over so many years. With that premise, Qin He’s infatuation with Gugu must also be seen as a sickness. When she married Hao Dashou, Qin neither drowned himself in the river nor hanged himself; what he did was transfer his pain onto art, and a true popular artist was born, like a newborn infant emerging from clay.
Wang Gan went beyond not trying to avoid us by bringing up the subject of his obsession over Little Lion, talking lightly about it as if it had happened to someone else. I found his attitude comforting. A sense of guilt that had been concealed in my heart for years began to fade away, and that led to a rekindling of friendship, not to mention the birth of respect.
You might not believe me, he said, but when Little Lion walked barefoot along the riverbank, I followed her footprints on my hands and knees, like a dog, inhaling the smell of her feet as tears drenched my face.
You’re just making that up, she said. She was blushing.
It’s the absolute truth, Wang Gan insisted. If one word of that is a lie, may boils grow on the tips of my hair!
Did you hear that? Little Lion said. Instead of boils on the tips of his hair he should wish that his shadow would catch cold.
That’s terrific, I said. Now I’ll have to write you into my play.
Thanks, he said. You can include every idiotic thing the moron Wang Gan did. I’m a reservoir of material.
If you dare write me in, Little Lion said, I’ll burn the manuscript.
You can burn the paper it’s written on, but you can’t burn the poetry in my heart.
Ah, here comes the bookish sentimentality again, Little Lion said. Wang Gan, I’m beginning to think I should have married you instead of him. At least you’ve gone down on your hands and knees to cry in my footprints.
No more of your world-famous jokes, please, Wang Gan said. You and Xiaopao are an ultimate match.
We must be, Little Lion said, since not even a glimpse of a child has appeared. If that’s not an ultimate match, what is it?
All right, that’s enough about us. How about you? Haven’t you found anyone after all these years?
After I got over my sickness I discovered I really don’t like women.
Have you turned gay? Little Lion joked.
I’m neither gay nor straight, Wang Gan said. I’m in love with myself. I love my arms, my legs, my hands, my head, my features, my internal organs, even my shadow. I often have a conversation with my shadow.
You must have contracted another sickness, Little Lion said.
Loving someone else exacts a price, but loving yourself doesn’t. I can love myself any way I want to. I can be my own master . . .
Wang Gan took us to the house he shared with Qin He. A wooden plaque hung at the gate. The Master’s Workshop, it said.
It was the building where livestock had been held during the commune era and one of my favourite places to play as a child. Back then the smell of horse and mule dung hung in the air day and night; there was a large vat alongside the well in the centre of the yard, and each morning, the livestock handler, a man named Fang, brought the animals out one at a time to drink, while his fellow tender, Du, poured water from the well into the vat. It was a large, well-lit space with a row of twenty feed troughs. The two larger troughs at the head were where the horses and mules were fed, while the shallow troughs inside were reserved for cattle.
As soon as I passed through the gate I was face to face with dozens of tethering posts; slogans on the walls were still visible, and the smell of the animals lingered.
They were going to tear the place down, Wang Gan said, but we heard that after an inspection, the authorities decided to leave traces of the commune for tourists, and so here it is.
Don’t they need to raise livestock here? Little Lion asked.
I doubt it, Wang Gan said, then turned and shouted: Mr Qin, we’ve got guests!
There was no response as we followed Wang Gan inside; the feeding troughs were still there, so too were holes in the walls created by the animals’ hooves, and dried cattle and horse dung. The oven where feed had been cooked and a kang just big enough for the six sons in the Fang family was there as well. I’d slept on it many winter nights when water froze before it hit the ground. Old Fang was too poor to own bedding for his children, so he stuffed dry grass into the opening beneath the kang to keep a fire burning; the bed got hot enough to fry an egg. His children slept like babies since they were used to the brick bed, but I tossed and turned all night long. Now a pair of quilts covered the kang, while the walls were pasted with New Year’s posters of unicorns delivering babies and strolling ancient scholars. A thick wooden plank laid across two feeding troughs was a bench on which mounds of clay and clay-working tools sat; our old acquaintance Qin He sat on a bench behind the plank. He was wearing a blue smock whose sleeves and front were daubed with many colours. His white hair was parted in the middle, as before; his face was drawn like a horse, with a pair of large, deep melancholy eyes. When we approached him, he looked up and his lips moved, apparently a mumbled greeting. He then went back to studying the wall, his chin resting on his hands, as if deep in thought.
We held our breath, not daring to speak loudly and walking on tiptoes to keep the noise down so as not to interrupt the
master’s train of thought.
Wang Gan gave us a show of the master’s handiwork. Unfinished dolls were drying in the cattle troughs. Dried dolls waiting to be painted were laid out on long boards against the northern wall. The children, in all their varieties, were waving to us from the cattle troughs, already lifelike, even before colours were added.
Under his breath Wang Gan said that the master sat trancelike like that every day, and sometimes didn’t climb onto the kang to sleep at night. Yet, like a machine, he kneaded the clay at regular intervals, making sure it never stopped being soft and well formed. Sometimes he’d sit all day long without making a single child; but when he began, he worked remarkably fast. I sell the master’s products and am responsible for his day-to-day living, Wang Gan said. At last I’ve found my calling, just as he’s found his.
The master’s needs are minimal. He eats what I place in front of him. Of course, I make sure it’s the most nutritious food I can provide. He’s the pride of the whole county, not just Northeast Gaomi Township.
I woke up late one night, Wang Gan said, and discovered that the master was not in bed. I immediately lit a lantern but didn’t find him at his workbench or in the yard. Where could he be? I broke out in a cold sweat, thinking that something had happened to him, and what a loss that would have been for Northeast Township. The county chief has brought the heads of the cultural and tourism bureaus here on three separate occasions. You know who the county chief is, don’t you? None other than the son of Yang Lin, the one-time county Party secretary who suffered so badly here and who had a tangled relationship with Gugu. Yang Xiong is a talented young man with penetrating eyes and neat white teeth, and who carries the smell of expensive cigarettes around on him. Word has it he studied in Germany. On his first visit he declared that the livestock-feeding building would not be torn down; the second time he invited the master to a banquet in town, but the master wrapped his arms around one of the tethering posts and held on like a man refusing to go in for a vasectomy; on the third visit, the county chief brought the master a plaque and a certificate proclaiming him to be a folk artist. Wang Gan reached into the cattle trough and brought out a gold-plated plaque and a certificate in a blue fleece cover to show us. Sure, he said, Hao Dashou has one of these plaques and a certificate, and the county chief also invited him to a banquet in town. He didn’t accept the invitation either. He wouldn’t have been Hao Dashou if he had. Well, these reactions had the county chief viewing the two Northeast Gaomi Township individuals in a new light. Wang Gan reached into his pocket for a stack of business cards, and selected three for us. See here, he said, he gives me one of these every time he visits. Lao Wang, he said to me, Northeast Gaomi Township has hidden talent just waiting to be discovered, and you’re part of that. I’m a down-and-outer, I said, with a notorious record. Outside of an infamous romantic escapade, I’ve been a complete cipher. These days I get by hawking somebody else’s clay dolls. Guess what he said to that? Anyone who can devote half a lifetime’s energy to the pursuit of a romantic vision is a legendary figure in his own right. Your township has produced its share of unusual and eccentric people, and you’re one of them. I tell you, the fellow’s part of a new breed of officials, nothing like the ones we used to know. I’ll bring you over to meet him the next time he comes to visit. He gave me the job of taking care of the master, responsible for safeguarding his welfare. So when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t find him anywhere, I panicked. What would I say to the county chief if something happened to the master? I sat in a sort of trance in front of the stove until moonlight flowed into the room. A pair of chirping crickets behind the stove invested the room with a sense of foreboding. Then I heard some chilled laughter emerge from one of the horse troughs. I jumped to my feet and looked down into the trough, where the master was lying on his back staring into the sky. The trough was too short for him, so he had to curl his legs yoga-fashion, while his hands were folded on his chest. He wore a peaceful look and a broad smile. I could tell he was fast asleep; the laugh was part of his dream. I’m sure you know that these geniuses, the pride of the township, all suffer from debilitating insomnia, and though I’m only half a genius, I too suffer from insomnia. How about you two? Any sleep problems?