Frog

  SUPERVISOR: That’s enough. Stand your watch, keep your eyes and ears open, and stop all suspicious individuals at the gate.

  SECURITY GUARD: Oh, come on. Don’t pay attention to Big Head’s nonsense. Who wants to come to a hospital on special days? Even crooks celebrate holidays.

  SUPERVISOR: Stop clowning around! Is this some kind of game to you? (lowers his voice secretively) On New Year’s a terrorist gang entered the (unintelligible) Maternity Hospital and snatched eight babies as hostages . . .

  SECURITY GUARD: (soberly) Oh . . .

  SUPERVISOR: (mysteriously) Are you aware that a certain someone’s mistress is in the hospital to have a baby?

  SECURITY GUARD: (cocks his ear to listen attentively)

  SUPERVISOR: (softly, secretively) Get it? Remember, a black Mercedes and a green BMW are his cars. Be sure to give them snappy salutes coming and going. No sloppy behaviour!

  SECURITY GUARD: Yes, sir! (reaches out) Now can you give me back my cell phone?

  SUPERVISOR: No, absolutely not! This is a special night. Not only is Boss Jin’s wife expecting to deliver, but Party Secretary Song’s daughter-in-law is due as well. A black Audi A-6, licence 08858, keep your eyes open for it.

  SECURITY GUARD: (unhappily) Those pricks sure know how to pick the right day! My girlfriend told me that the moon tonight will be the brightest and roundest in the last fifty years. (gazes into the sky) When is the moon full? I ask with a glass in my hand. We toast the heavens with wine . . .

  SUPERVISOR: (in a mocking tone) Oh, please! If you’ve memorised everything from school, what are you doing as a security guard? (suddenly alert) What’s that?

  Chen Mei, dressed in black, a black veil covering her face, enters carrying a tiny red sweater.

  CHEN MEI: (swaying from side to side, as if drunk) My baby . . . my baby . . . where are you? Mummy’s coming for you, where are you hiding?

  SECURITY GUARD: Her again. She’s crazy.

  SUPERVISOR: Go chase her away.

  SECURITY GUARD: (stands up straight) I cannot leave my post.

  SUPERVISOR: I’m ordering you to chase her away.

  SECURITY GUARD: I am a sentry.

  SUPERVISOR: Your duty station extends to fifty metres on either side of the gate.

  SECURITY GUARD: If anything suspicious occurs in the vicinity of the gate, the guard on duty is required to man his post and stop suspicious individuals from entering, then report immediately to his superior. (He takes his walkie-talkie from his belt.) Reporting, sir, a suspicious individual to the right of the main gate. Request backup.

  SUPERVISOR: Damn you!

  Stage lights focus on a spot in front of the signboard.

  CHEN MEI: (points to the baby photos) Baby, my baby, Mummy’s calling you. Can you hear me? Are you playing hide-and-seek with Mummy? Not letting her find you? Hurry, you naughty thing, you little angel, come out so Mummy can nurse you. If you don’t, a puppy will take Mummy’s milk from you . . . (points to one of the photos) You want my milk? No, you can’t have it. You’re not my baby. My baby has double-fold lids and big eyes. You’re squinting . . . you want my milk too? But you’re not my baby either. My baby has nice, apple red cheeks, but your face is sallow . . . you definitely aren’t mine, my baby is a boy, a pudgy little boy, but you’re a little girl, and girls aren’t worth anything. (alertly) Fifty thousand to bear a boy, only thirty thousand for a girl. You bastards, with your feudal preference for boys over girls, your mothers were girls, weren’t they? Your grandmothers . . . If everyone had boys and no girls, the world would end, wouldn’t it? All you high officials, you intellectuals, you great thinkers, how can you not know something as simple as that? What’s that, you say you’re my baby? You little rascal, the smell of my milk has you drooling, hasn’t it? (sniffs) You can’t fool me, you rascal, go dream someplace else. I’m telling all of you, you could cover my face with a blindfold, or you could put my baby in the middle of a thousand babies, and I could find him with my nose alone. Didn’t your mothers tell you that every baby has its own smell? If you’re hungry, go find your mummy. Oh, that’s right, you charmed children don’t call them ‘niang’, you call them ‘mama’ and you don’t say ‘nursing’, you say ‘drinking mother’s milk’. What’s that? Your mama has no milk? How can someone with no milk be a mama? All your talk about moving forward, to me it’s going backward, so far backward that children don’t have to arrive via the birth canal and breasts no longer have to produce milk. You people have turned your job over to cows and goats. Children who grow up on cow’s milk give off a bovine smell, and those who grow up on goat’s milk smell like them. Only children who grow up on mother’s milk have a human smell. If you think you can buy my milk, you have another thing coming, not if you came up with a mountain of gold. My milk is for my baby . . . hurry, come to Mummy. If you don’t, these children will take my milk from me. See how hungry they are, see all those open mouths? They’re hungry because their mamas sold their milk for cosmetics for their faces and perfume for their bodies. They are not good mamas. All they care about is showing themselves off. Their babies’ health means nothing to them . . . be a good little baby and come to Mummy . . .

  SUPERVISOR: (stands at attention and salutes) Madam, this is a maternity hospital. The patients and their babies need peace and quiet, so please leave at once and stop creating a scene.

  CHEN MEI: Who are you? What are you doing here?

  SUPERVISOR: We’re security.

  CHEN MEI: What does security do?

  SUPERVISOR: We maintain social order and are responsible for the safety of institutions like schools, businesses, post offices, banks, markets, restaurants, bus and train stations, and more.

  CHEN MEI: I know you! (mad laughter) I know who you are, you’re Yuan Sai’s bodyguards, the ones people call watchdogs.

  SUPERVISOR: I’ll not stand for such insults. Without us, there would be anarchy.

  CHEN MEI: You’re the ones who stole my baby! I’d know you even without your surgical gown and mask.

  SUPERVISOR: (alarmed) Watch what you’re saying, madam. If you’re not careful I’ll sue you for slander.

  CHEN MEI: Did you really think you could hide your identity from me by changing clothes? That putting on a uniform would make you a decent person? You’re one of Yuan Sai’s dogs. Wan Xin, that witch, delivered my baby, let me have one look . . . (painfully) no, not even a single look . . . they covered my face with white cloth, I wanted to see my baby, just one look, but they took my baby away without letting me have a look . . . but I heard my baby cry, crying for me, he wanted to see me too. Is there a child on earth that doesn’t want to see his mother? But they snatched him away from me. I knew he was hungry, he wanted to nurse, you people don’t know how precious the first drops of colostrum are to a baby, you thought I was uncultured, and didn’t know things like that, but I do, I know everything. I sent all the finest elements of my body up to my breasts, including the calcium in my bones, the oil in my marrow, the protein in my blood, and the vitamins in my flesh. My milk would ensure that my baby would not suffer from colds, diarrhoea or fevers, would grow fast and strong, and would be handsome, but you people took my baby away before he had a drop of my milk. (goes up and claws at the supervisor)

  SUPERVISOR: (flustered) You’ve got the wrong person, madam, take my word for it. Round-cheeked or square-faced Yuan, it makes no difference, I don’t know who he is.

  CHEN MEI: Of course you’d say that. You thieves, you gangsters, you steal children to sell them, a pack of devils. You may not know me, but I know you. Wasn’t it you people who gave me sleeping pills after you stole my baby, and when I woke up told me he was stillborn? Wasn’t it you people who flashed a skinned cat in front of my eyes and told me it was my baby’s dead body? After stealing my baby, you cheated me out of my fee, you said a live birth was worth fifty thousand, but my baby was stillborn, so you only gave me ten thousand, and after taking my baby, you tried to steal my milk. You came with a bowl and a baby bottle to
squeeze first milk out of my nipples, saying each gram was worth ten yuan. You bastards, that milk is for my baby. Ten yuan? I wouldn’t sell it for ten thousand!

  SUPERVISOR: I’ll ask you one more time to leave, madam. If you don’t, I’ll have to call the police.

  CHEN MEI: The police? Good, call them. That’s exactly who I want to see. The people’s police love the people. Can they ignore people who lose children?

  SUPERVISOR: No, they can’t. They’ll even help you find a lost dog, let alone a child.

  CHEN MEI: That’s good. I’ll go find a policeman.

  SUPERVISOR: Good idea, do it now. (points out the way to go) Straight ahead, then right at the traffic light. The Binhe precinct station is next to the dancehall.

  A car drives up from the hospital, horn blaring.

  CHEN MEI: (briefly dazed, then comes to) My baby, they’re taking my baby away in that car. (rushes towards the car) Give me my baby, you thieves!

  The supervisor tries to stop her, but she is uncommonly strong and shoves him away.

  SUPERVISOR: (exasperated) Stop her!

  The security guard rushes up and wraps his arms around Chen Mei as she tries to block the car’s way. She struggles. The supervisor comes up to help the guard restrain Chen Mei. Her veil is torn loose in the struggle, revealing a horribly disfigured face destroyed by fire. The guard and supervisor recoil in horror.

  SECURITY GUARD: My god!

  SUPERVISOR: (spots frogs that have been flattened by the car’s tyres and people’s feet) Shit! Where did all these damn things come from?

  Curtain

  Act II

  Green lights turn the stage into a gloomy underwater world. The entrance to a cave at the rear is moss-covered. The croaks of frogs and wails of babies emerge from the cave. A dozen bawling babies hang down from above the stage, limbs flailing.

  A pair of workbenches for making clay dolls has been placed at the front of the stage.

  Hao Dashou and Qin He sit behind the benches in lotus position creating clay dolls.

  Gugu crawls out from the cave. She is wearing a baggy black robe, her hair is uncombed.

  GUGU: (as if reciting from memory) My name is Wan Xin, I am seventy-two years old, and have been an obstetrician for fifty years. Though I am retired, I am anything but idle. I have been in attendance at the birth of nine thousand eight hundred and eighty-three babies. (She looks up at the babies hanging above the stage.) You children, I love to hear the sound of your crying. It makes me feel alive and real. Not hearing you cry makes Gugu feel empty inside. There isn’t another sound anywhere to match that of your crying. It is Gugu’s requiem. I only wish there had been tape recorders around back then to record the sounds of your crying as you were born. Gugu would play those sounds every day while she was alive and have them played at her funeral when she died. What wonderfully moving music the sound of nine thousand eight hundred and eighty-three babies crying together would make. (totally carried away) Let your crying move Heaven and Earth, let it deliver Gugu into Paradise . . .

  QIN HE: (gloomy) Be careful their crying doesn’t send you down to Hell!

  GUGU: (wanders lightly among the babies hanging above the stage like a fish swimming spryly through the water, lightly spanking their bottoms as she passes among them) Cry, my darlings, cry! Not crying means there’s something wrong with you, crying means you’re healthy.

  HAO DASHOU: Crazy!

  QIN HE: Who is?

  HAO DASHOU: I am.

  QIN HE: It’s okay to say you’re crazy, but not me. (self-importantly) Because I am Northeast Gaomi Township’s most famous clay-doll artisan. Though some may disagree, they’re welcome to their opinion. Where making things out of clay is concerned, I am the world’s number one. People have to learn how to promote themselves. If you don’t treat yourself like someone special, who will? The dolls I create are objets d’art, each valued at a hundred US dollars.

  HAO DASHOU: Did you all hear that? That’s what you call shameless! When I was making dolls out of clay you were crawling on the ground scrounging for chicken feed. I was designated a master folk artist by the county chief himself. And what are you?

  QIN HE: Comrades, friends, did you hear that? Hao Dashou, you’re not shameless, you’re too thickheaded to even feel shame, you’re deranged, you’re obsessive-compulsive. After a lifetime of making clay dolls, there isn’t one that can be called finished. You make one, then destroy it. The next one will be the one, you tell yourself. You’re like the bear in the cornfield picking ears and discarding them. Comrades, friends, take a good look at those hands. Hao Dashou, Big-Hands Hao? Those aren’t hands, they’re frog claws, duck’s feet, webbing and all . . .

  HAO DASHOU: (angrily throws a lump of clay at Qin He) You’re full of shit, you’re deranged. Get the hell out of here!

  QIN HE: Make me!

  HAO DASHOU: This is my house.

  QIN HE: Can you prove that? (points to Gugu and the hanging children) Can she? Can they?

  HAO DASHOU: (points to Gugu) Of course she can.

  QIN HE: Prove it.

  HAO DASHOU: She’s my wife.

  QIN HE: Prove it.

  HAO DASHOU: We’re married.

  QIN HE: Got any proof?

  HAO DASHOU: We’ve slept together.

  QIN HE: (deeply hurt, holds his head) No – you’re a liar, you’re lying to me. I gave up my youth for you, you promised you wouldn’t marry anyone, not ever!

  GUGU: (looks daggers at Hao) Why are you provoking him? We agreed.

  HAO DASHOU: I forgot.

  GUGU: You forgot? Let me remind you. I told you back then that I’d marry you, but only if you accepted him as my kid brother, and that you’d put up with his outbursts, his foolishness, his crazy talk; and that you’d supply his room, board and clothing.

  HAO DASHOU: And let him sleep with you?

  GUGU: Deranged, you’re both deranged.

  QIN HE: (points angrily at Hao) He’s deranged, not me.

  HAO DASHOU: Make as much noise as you want, be as angry from embarrassment as you want, it won’t make any difference. You can raise your fists above the trees, cherries can spray from your eyes, you can grow horns, birds can fly out of your mouth, you can grow pig’s bristles all over your body, and none of those will alter the fact that you’re deranged. That is etched in stone.

  GUGU: (mocking) Is that language you learned from Tadpole’s little drama?

  HAO DASHOU: (points to Qin He) Every two months you have to check in to the Ma’er Shan Asylum for a three-month stay. They put you in a straitjacket and a sedative regimen; if that doesn’t work, they use electric shock therapy. When they finish with you, you’re skin and bones and glassy-eyed, like an African orphan. Your face is covered with flyspecks, like an old wall. You finally escape, but are never out more than two months. Tomorrow or the day after, you have to go back there again. (deftly imitates the sound of an ambulance siren. Qin He trembles and falls to his knees) When you go in this time, you’ll not come out again. If they let you out with your manic condition, you would introduce an element of disharmony into harmonious society.

  GUGU: That’s enough!

  HAO DASHOU: If I were a doctor, I’d lock you up for good and use a cow prod till you foamed at the mouth, till your body was racked by spasms, and you went into such deep shock you’d never come out of it. But if somehow you did, you’d have no memory.

  Qin He wraps his arms around his head as he rolls on the ground and releases horrifying shrieks.

  HAO DASHOU: Braying like a donkey and rolling on the ground are paltry skills. Go on, keep rolling. Look, your face is getting longer. Your ears are getting bigger. Feel them yourself. You’re becoming a donkey. A donkey turns a millstone, round and round and round. (Qin He crawls on the floor, his rump raised, as he mimics a donkey turning a millstone) Right, that’s it, you’re a fine donkey. After you mill two pecks of black beans, mill a bushel of sorghum. A good donkey doesn’t need blinders, because a good donkey doesn’t nibble at
the grain on the millstone. Do a good job and your master will treat you well. I’ve got your feed already prepared, just waiting for you.

  Gugu goes up to stop Qin He, but he bites her hand.

  GUGU: Damn you, you don’t know what’s good for you!

  HAO DASHOU: I’ve told you you’ve got no business here. You go take care of the children. Make sure they’re not cold or hungry. But don’t let them eat too much either or get too warm. Like you’ve always said: Children are best comforted by keeping them slightly hungry and a little cold. (turns to Qin He) Why have you stopped? You lazy donkey, do I have to use a whip on you?

  GUGU: Stop abusing him, he’s not well.

  HAO DASHOU: He’s not well, I think you’re not well!

  Qin He collapses on the stage, foaming at the mouth.

  HAO DASHOU: Get up, you can stop playing dead. This isn’t the first time you’ve played that game. I’ve seen it many, many times. If you think you can scare me with that, you’re mistaken. Even a stinkbug knows how to play dead. What you need to do is really die. Do it now, don’t wait another minute.

  Gugu rushes up to help Qin He. Hao Dashou gets up and stops her.

  HAO DASHOU: (painfully) My patience has run out. I’m not going to let you save him like that . . .

  Gugu moves left, Hao follows; Gugu moves right, Hao follows.

  GUGU: He’s not well. In the minds of us doctors there are two types of people, healthy and sick. If he’d hit my mother yesterday and was struck by illness today, I’d put aside my hatred and treat him to the best of my ability. If his brother had an epileptic seizure while he was raping me I’d push him off and try to save him.

  HAO DASHOU: (abruptly stiffens and lowers his voice to say painfully) You finally admit that you had illicit relations with the two brothers.

  GUGU: History is like that, the history of thousands of years of civilised society. Those who acknowledge history are history’s materialists. Those who deny it are history’s idealists.