Frog

  Little Lion and I exchanged a glance and shook our heads. No problems for us. We’re snoring away as soon as our heads touch the pillow. I guess that proves we’re not in the genius category.

  Not everyone who suffers from insomnia is a genius, Wang Gan said, but all geniuses are insomniacs. Gugu’s insomnia is known to everyone. In the deep of the night, when silence is king, you can sometimes hear the husky sound of someone singing out in the fields. That’s Gugu. While she’s out walking at night, Hao Dashou is home making clay dolls. Their insomnia is cyclical; it follows the waxing and waning of the moon. The brighter the moon, the worse their insomnia. They manage to sleep when the moon is on the wane. That’s why our talented county chief named Hao Dashou’s creations ‘Moonlight Dolls’. He sent people from the county TV station to document the making of Hao Dashou’s moonlight dolls with the moon shining overhead. You probably haven’t seen that documentary, and there’s no reason to beat yourselves up if you haven’t. It was part of a series called Uncanny Individuals of Northeast Gaomi Township. Hao Dashou’s moonlight dolls kicked off the series. Next came ‘The Master in a Horse Trough’, the third was ‘An Uncanny Poet’, and the fourth ‘Singing amid a Chorus of Croaking Frogs’. If you want to see them, I’ll have the station send over a DVD – the unedited version. I’ll also suggest that they do an episode on you. I’ve already got a title: ‘The Prodigal Son’.

  Another glance passed between Little Lion and me. We both smiled. We knew that he’d drifted into an artistic mindset, and we saw no reason to call his attention to that. Why should we? Better to let him talk on.

  After suffering from insomnia all those years, Wang Gan said, the master used the horse trough as his bed, where he slept the untroubled slumber of a baby, just like that infant that floated down the river in a wooden trough all those years before. My eyes filled with tears of emotion. Only an insomniac knows the agony of sleepless nights, and only an insomniac knows the joy of a good night’s sleep. I maintained a silent watch over the trough, keeping my breathing shallow so as not to startle the master out of his sleep. Gradually my tear-filled eyes grew bleary, and a road seemed to open up before me, passing through lush countryside where flowers bloomed in profusion, with a riot of colours and a mist of uncommon bouquets, where butterflies flitted and bees buzzed. A sound up ahead was calling to me, a woman’s nasal voice, somewhat muffled, but pleasantly intimate. The sound led me along. I could see her lower body only: a nicely rounded bottom, long, shapely legs, bright red heels, which left shallow footprints in the soft, wet mud, so clear they provided perfect imprints of her soles. I followed behind her, on and on, as if the narrow road would never end. Little by little I sensed that I was walking side by side with the master, though I knew not when or from where he had joined me. We followed the red footprints until we reached a distant marsh, where the smell of mud and decay came to us on the wind from somewhere deep inside. We stepped on clusters of nut sedge and saw in the distance reedy marshes and patches of sweet flag, plus many kinds of strange, nameless plants and flowers. The sound of children’s laughter and shouts came from deep in the marsh. The woman with only her lower body visible shouted towards the marsh in an alluring voice: Daguai, Xiaoguai, Jinpao, Yudai, repay kindness with kindness, clear away debts owing and owed — Before she could finish what she was saying, a jumble of little children, naked but for red stomachers, came shouting out of the marsh; some had single braids pointing to the sky, others had shaved heads, and the hair of still others was formed into three tufts. The children seemed to be on the heavy side, the marsh looked to be covered by a springy membrane on which they ran, springing up with every step, like kangaroos. The boys and, of course, girls surrounded the master and me, some holding on to our legs, some jumping up onto our shoulders, some tugging on our ears, some grabbing our hair, some blowing air on our necks, some spitting in our eyes. We were wrestled to the ground by the boys and, of course, girls. The boys and, of course, girls rubbed mud all over us, and, of course, the boys did likewise to themselves . . . afterward, just how long after I can’t say, the boys and, of course, girls abruptly quieted down and sat down and formed a semicircle, lying, sitting, and kneeling in front of us, some propping their heads with their hands, some chewing their nails, and some with their mouths hanging open . . . all in all, a lively bunch in every imaginable pose. My god, they were posing as models for the master. I saw that he’d already started working. With his eyes fixed on one child, he picked up a handful of mud and began working it until the child came to life in his hands. Finishing one, he turned to another and repeated the process, over and over . . .

  A rooster cry startled me out of my sleep. I discovered I’d fallen asleep next to the horse trough and had dribbled slobber on the master’s clothing. Only by recalling a dream is an insomniac sure he’s slept. The dream I just told you about was still right before my eyes, and that was proof that I’d slept. Wang Gan, who had suffered from insomnia for years had actually fallen asleep, which was worth celebrating with firecrackers. Even happier was knowing that the master had slept. The master sneezed and slowly opened his eyes. Then, as if something important had suddenly occurred to him, he hopped out of the trough. Dawn had just broken, and rays of colourful sunrise glided in through the window. He rushed to his workbench, uncovered the clay, tore off a chunk, and began kneading, kneading and twisting, twisting and kneading, until an impish little boy with a stomacher and a braid pointing to the sky materialised on the table in front of him. I was deeply moved, as the alluring voice of the woman resounded in my ears. Who was she? Who else could she have been? It was the merciful Fertility Goddess!

  At this point in his account, Wang Gan’s eyes glistened with tears, and I saw a strange lustre in Little Lion’s eyes. She’d fallen under his spell.

  Wang Gan continued with his story. I tiptoed out to get a camera and returned to take a picture of the master – no flash – as he worked in a sort of trance. Truth is, I could have fired a gun next to him and not snapped him out of it. The expression on his face kept changing – sombre one moment, playful the next, mischievous for a while, then bleak and lonely. It didn’t take me long to discover similarities between the look on his face and that of the face of the child he was moulding. What I mean to say is, the master became the child he was fashioning in his hands. They had a flesh-and-blood bond.

  The number of children on the master’s workbench grew and grew. The boys and, of course, girls formed a semicircle facing the master, the exact formation I’d seen in my dream! I was astounded and ecstatic. And overwhelmed emotionally. Two people capable of sharing a single dream – ‘kindred spirits through and through’ is how the ancients described a man and a woman in love, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with using it to describe the master and me. We weren’t lovers, but, as fellow sufferers, we enjoyed deep mutual empathy. After hearing me this far, you two ought to understand why all the dolls the master makes are unique, that no two are alike. Not only does he take real children as his models, he even takes them from his dreams. I don’t have his talent, but I have a rich imagination and eyes that work like a camera. I can turn a child into ten children, a hundred, a thousand, and I can also shrink a thousand, a hundred, ten children down to a single child. I telepathically pass the dream images of children I’ve amassed in my head to the master, who then turns them into his artistic creations. That’s how I’m able to say that the master and I are natural partners and that the finished products are joint creations. I don’t say that to detract from his achievements. In the wake of my romantic episode, I was able to see through the ways of the world; wealth and position are like floating clouds to me. My reason for telling you this is to reveal the miraculous relationship between dreams and art and to help you understand that lost love is a wonderful asset, especially for creative artists. No one who hasn’t experienced the bitter taste of lost love can ever lay claim to the highest levels of creative art.

  All during Wang Gan’s monologue, the master m
aintained a pose of resting his head in his hands, with no observable movement. It was as if he himself had become a sculpted figurine.

  4

  Wang Gan sent over a boy with a DVD of the TV series Unique Individuals of Northeast Gaomi Township. He was in bib shorts from which emerged long, skinny, Pinocchio-like legs and high-top boots that looked much too heavy for him. His hair was the colour of flax, his brows and eyelashes nearly white, his eyes blue-grey; one look, and you knew he had foreign blood. Little Lion ran in to scare up some treats for him. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and announced in a thick Northeast Gaomi accent: He said you’ll give me at least ten yuan.

  We gave him twenty. He bowed and, with a whistle, ran downstairs. So we went to the window, where we sprawled against the sill and watched him clomp like a cartoon character on his way to the playground opposite our housing compound, where the funicular railcar hove in and out of view on its way up the mountain.

  A few days later we ran into the boy while we were strolling by the riverbank. He was in the company of a tall Caucasian woman pushing a stroller and a little girl, obviously his kid sister. They were moving gingerly along on rollerskates, protected by a colourful plastic helmet and knee- and elbow-pads. A handsome middle-aged man walking behind them was talking on his mobile phone, speaking in a lilting South China Putonghua. Bringing up the rear was a big, fat dog with golden fur. I recognised the man right off as a renowned Peking University professor and celebrated TV personality. When Little Lion bent over and all but buried her pudgy face in the blue-eyed baby, the woman smiled, a sign of good upbringing; the professor, on the other hand, reacted with a look of disdain. I reached down, grabbed Little Lion by the arm, and pulled her away from the stroller. She’d been so focused on the baby that the look on the professor’s face had escaped her entirely. I nodded by way of apology, and he accepted my gesture with a slight nod in return. I had to remind her not to pounce on pretty babies as if she were Granny Wolf. These days children are like little treasures, I told her. All you ever look at are the babies, never at their parents’ faces. Stung by the criticism, she first launched into a tirade against rich people, who have as many kids as they want, and Chinese men and women who marry foreigners, then have one baby after another. But self-pity and remorse set in for helping Gugu carry out the cruel, one-child family-planning policy, a harsh course of action that had led to a mass of aborted foetuses and, as a sort of heavenly retribution, made her sterile, unable to bear children. She told me to go marry one of those foreign girls and raise a brood of half-breed kids. I won’t be jealous, Xiaopao, she said, not at all. Go find yourself a foreign girl, and have as many kids as you want, the more the merrier. I’ll even help you raise them. By this time her eyes were glistening with tears and her breathing was rapid. Her breast heaved, filled with motherly love with no one to bathe in it. I had no doubt that if she were handed a child, her breasts would swell with milk.

  That was how things were when I put Wang Gan’s disk into the DVD player.

  With the nasal strains of Shandong operatic speech – grating to the ears of outsiders, but capable of bringing tears to the eyes of locals – swirling in the air, the lives of my aunt and the sculptor Hao Dashou unfolded in front of our eyes.

  I have to admit that, though I did not make it public, I had been personally opposed to Gugu’s marriage. My father, my brothers, and their wives had shared my feelings. It simply wasn’t a good match in our view. Ever since we were small we’d looked forward to seeing Gugu find a husband. Her relationship with Wang Xiaoti had brought immense glory to the family, only to end ingloriously. Yang Lin was next, and while not nearly the ideal match that Wang would have provided, he was, after all, a high-ranking official, which made him a passable candidate for marriage. Hell, she could have married Qin He, who was obsessed with her, and would have been better off than with Hao Dashou . . . we were by then assuming she’d wind up an old maid, and had made appropriate plans. We’d even discussed who would be her caregiver when she reached old age. But then, with no prior indication, she’d married Hao Dashou. Little Lion and I were living in Beijing then, and when we heard the news, we could hardly believe our ears. Once the preposterous reality set in, we were overcome by sadness.

  This episode of the TV series, entitled ‘Moon Child’, was supposed to be about the sculptor Hao Dashou, though the camera was always on her, talking and gesturing as she welcomed journalists into Hao’s yard and gave them a guided tour of his workshop and the storeroom where he kept his clay figurines, while he sat quietly at his workbench, eyes glazed over and a blank look on his face, like a dreamy old horse. Did all master artists turn into dreamy old horses once they reached the pinnacle of their artistry? I wondered. The name Hao Dashou was familiar to me, though I’d only met him a few times. After seeing him late on the night my nephew Xiangqun hosted a dinner to celebrate his acceptance as an air force pilot, years passed before I saw him again, and this time it was on TV. His hair and beard had turned white, but his complexion was as ruddy as ever; composed and serene, he was a nearly transcendent figure. It was during that program that we accidentally learned why Gugu had married him.

  Gugu lit a cigarette, took a drag, and began to speak, sadness creeping into her voice. Marriages, she said, are made in Heaven. By this, I’m not promoting the cause of idealism for you youngsters, for there was a time when I was an ardent materialist, but where marriage is concerned, you must believe in fate. Just ask him, she said, pointing to Hao Dashou, who sat there like one of his sculptures. Do you think he ever dreamed of one day getting me as his wife?

  In 1997, when I was sixty, she said, my superiors asked me to retire, whether I wanted to or not. I was already five years past the retirement age, and nothing I said would have made any difference. You know the hospital director, that ungrateful bastard Huang Jun, the son of Huang Pi from Hexi Village. Just who do you think dragged that little shit – they called him Melon Huang – out of his mother’s belly? Well, he spent a couple of days in a medical school, and he came out almost as stupid as the day he went in – he couldn’t locate a heart with a stethoscope, couldn’t find a vein with a syringe, and had never heard the terms inch, bar and cubit when checking a patient’s pulse. So who better to appoint as hospital director! He was admitted into the school thanks to my personal recommendation to Director Shen of the Bureau of Health. Only to be ignored by him when he was the man in charge. The wretched creature has two talents, and only two: playing the host, giving gifts, and kissing arse; and seducing, even raping, women.

  At this point, Gugu thumped her breast and stomped her foot. What a fool I was, she said angrily, letting the wolf in the door. I made it easy for him to have his way with all the girls in the hospital. Wang Xiaomei, a seventeen-year-old girl from Wang Village, had nice, thick braids, a pretty oval face, and skin like ivory. Her lashes danced like butterfly wings, her eyes could talk, and anyone who saw her would believe that if film director Zhang Yimou discovered her, she’d be a hotter commodity than Gong Li or Zhang Ziyi ever were. Sadly, Melon Huang, the sex fiend, discovered her first. He rushed off to Wang Village, where, with a glib tongue that could bring back the dead, he talked Xiaomei’s parents into sending her to his hospital to learn from me how to treat women’s problems. He said she’d be my student, but she never spent a single day with me. Instead, the lecher kept her to himself as his daily companion and nightly lover. If that weren’t bad enough, he even took her in the daytime; people had seen them. Then once he’d had enough fun with her, he went off to the county seat, where he hosted banquets for high officials with public funds, in the hope of being transferred to the big city. Maybe you haven’t seen what he looks like: a long, donkey face with dark lips, bloody gums, and breath so bad it could fell a horse. Even with a face like that, he figured he had a chance of becoming assistant director at the Bureau of Health! So he dragged Wang Xiaomei along to drink and eat and entertain the officials, probably even offering her up as a gift for their
pleasure. Evil! That’s what he was, pure evil!