Mother came in and bathed him with cotton soaked in the herbal mixture. She could see he was embarrassed. “Son,” she said, “you could live to be a hundred, but in my eyes you’ll always be a little boy.” She cleaned him from head to toe, even the dirty spaces between his toes. Evening winds entered the room as the smell of the herbal concoction grew heavier. He’d never felt more refreshed or cleaner than at that moment. He heard Mother sobbing and muttering out behind the house, alongside a wall of empty liquor bottles. He began to sleep and, for the first time, was not startled awake by a nightmare. He slept till dawn. When he opened his eyes in the morning, his nose filled with the smell of fresh milk. But it was different from the mother’s milk and goat’s milk he’d lived on before, and he tried to determine the source: the feeling he’d experienced years earlier, when, as the Snow Prince, he’d blessed all those women by caressing their breasts, flooded into his mind. The greatest sense of longing came from the last breast he’d caressed that day, the one belonging to the proprietor of the sesame oil shop, Old Jin, the woman with only one breast.
Mother was delighted to see that he appeared to be on the mend. “What would you like to eat, son?” she asked. “Whatever it is, I’ll make it. I went into town and borrowed some money from Old Jin. She’ll bring a cart over one of these days and take away all those bottles in back for repayment.”
“Old Jin …” Jintong’s heart was pounding. “How is she?”
With her one good eye — even it was failing — she looked at her son, puzzled by how uneasy he seemed, and let out an exasperated sigh. “She’s turned into the ‘queen of trash’ of the entire area. She owns a car and has fifty employees who melt down used plastic and rubber. She’s doing fine financially, but that man of hers is worthless. She has a bad reputation, but I had no choice but to go see her. She’s as generous as ever, a woman in her fifties, and, strangely, she even has a son …”
As if slapped in the face, Jintong bolted upright, like someone who has seen the merciful, bright red face of God. A happy thought came to him: My feelings weren’t wrong after all. He was sure that the one-eyed breast of old Jin was heading toward his room and that the sandpapered breasts of Long Qingping were retreating. “Mother,” he blurted out with a degree of bashfulness, “could you step outside before she comes?”
Momentarily at a loss, she regained her composure and said, “Son, you’ve managed to send away the death demon, so I’ll do anything you ask. I’m going now.”
Jintong lay back down, filled with excitement, and was quickly immersed in that life-giving aroma. It came from his memory, not from anywhere outside, bursting upon him. He closed his eyes and saw her fuller yet still smooth face. Her eyes were as dark as ever, moist and seductive, every movement intended to snatch away a man’s soul. She was moving quickly, like a comet, and that breast of hers, left unseated by time, jiggled under her cotton shirt, as if straining to get out. Very slowly, the spiritual aroma emanating from his heart and the material aroma emanating from Old Jin’s breast drew together like a pair of mating butterflies. They touched and quickly merged. He opened his eyes, and there, standing by his bed, was Old Jin, just as he had imagined her.
“Little brother,” she said emotionally as she bent down and took his brittle hand in hers, her dark eyes awash with tears, “my dear little brother, what is wrong with you?”
Feminine tenderness melted his heart. Arching his neck like a newborn puppy that has yet to open its eyes, he nibbled at her breast with his feverish lips. Without a moment’s hesitation, she lifted her shirt and lowered her overflowing breast, full as a muskmelon, onto his face. His mouth sought out the nipple; the nipple sought out his mouth. Once his trembling lips encircled her and she entered his mouth trembling, they were both boiling hot and moaning madly. Powerful jets of sweet, warm milk hit the membranes of his mouth and converged at the opening of his throat, where it coursed down into a stomach that had retched up everything it held. At the same time, she felt the morbid infatuation for this onetime beautiful little boy she had stored up for decades leave her body along with the milk …
He sucked her dry, then, like a baby, fell asleep with the nipple in his mouth. She stroked his face tenderly and gently pulled the nipple away. His mouth twitched, but she could see the color returning to his sallow face. Mother was standing by the door, watching sadly. But what she detected in the weather-worn face of the old woman was neither rebuke nor jealousy; rather, it was self-rebuke and gratitude. Old Jin stuffed her breast back under her shirt and said resolutely, “I wanted to do it, aunty. It’s something I’ve wanted to do all my life. He and I had a bond in a previous life.”
“Since that’s the case,” Mother said, “I won’t thank you.”
Old Jin took out a roll of bills. “Old aunty, the other day I calculated wrong. That pile of bottles out back is worth more than I gave you.”
“Sister-in-law,” Mother said, “I don’t think Brother Fang will be happy when he finds out.”
“As long as he’s got a bottle around, he’s happy. I’m awfully busy these days, and I can only come once a day. When I’m not around, give him something light and watery.”
Under the ministrations of Old Jin, Jintong quickly regained his health. Like a molting snake, he shed a layer of dead skin. For two whole months, the only nutrition he received was from Old Jin; on those frequent occasions when his stomach rumbled, all he had to do was think about regular, coarse food for darkness to settle around him and his intestines to knot up painfully. His mother’s brow, smoothed out after he had been pulled back from the brink of death, now began to knit again. Every morning he stood in front of the wall of bottles behind the house, the wind whistling in the bottlenecks, like a child waiting for its mother or a woman waiting for her lover, eyes cast anxiously in the direction of the road that led from the bustling new city, through the open fields, to where she stood, nearly bursting with anticipation.
One day Jintong waited from dawn to dusk for Old Jin, but she didn’t show. He stood until his legs were numb and his eyes began to glaze over, so he sat down and leaned up against the wall of whistling bottles. At dusk, the chorus of music sounded mournful, only deepening his sense of dejection. Tears slipped unnoticed down his cheeks.
Supporting herself on her cane, Mother stood beneath the darkening sky looking scornfully at him, her expression a mixture of pity over his misfortunes and anger over his inability to overcome them. She watched him for a while without saying a word, then turned and walked back into the house, accompanied by the taps of her cane on the ground.
The following morning, Jintong picked up the family sickle and a basket and walked over to the nearby trench. At breakfast, he’d eaten a pair of mushy yams, staring wide-eyed as if someone were stripping the skin from his body. Now his stomach ached badly and he had a sour taste in his throat. He had to fight not to throw up as he followed his nose to the delicate fragrance of wild peppermint. He recalled that the co-op’s purchasing station was willing to buy peppermint. Naturally, earning some extra money wasn’t the only reason he wanted to gather peppermint; even more importantly, he thought it might help him break his addiction to Old Jin’s milk. The stuff grew from halfway down the slope all the way to the water’s edge, and its odor was invigorating. He even found that he could see more clearly. He breathed in deeply, wanting to fill his lungs with the fragrance of peppermint. Then he began cutting it down, using skills he’d honed during his fifteen years in the labor reform camp and quickly leaving a trail of fallen peppermint stalks, with their white sap and fine hairs.
As he moved down the slope, he discovered a hole the size of a rice bowl. His initial fright over the discovery quickly turned to excitement as it occurred to him that it must be a rabbit hole. Presenting Mother with a wild rabbit would bring a little joy into her life. He began by sticking the handle of his sickle into the hole and shaking it. Something moved down there — he heard it — which meant the hole was occupied. So he sat down, gripping his sickl
e tightly, and waited. The rabbit stuck its head up out of the hole until its furry mouth showed. Jintong swung his sickle, but the rabbit pulled its head back just in time. The next time, however, he felt the sickle cut deeply into the rabbit’s head; jerking it back, the rest of the animal appeared, still twitching, and landed at his feet. The tip of the sickle had entered the rabbit’s eye, from which trickles of blood emerged and ran down the glistening blade of the weapon. The little marble-like eyes were barely visible through tiny slits. Suddenly chilled to the bone, Jintong threw down the sickle, scrambled up to the top of the slope, and looked around like a boy in deep trouble who needs help.
Mother was there already, right behind him. “Jintong, what are you doing?” she asked in a voice that crackled with age. “Mother,” he blurted out in agony, “I killed a rabbit… oh, the poor thing … what have I done? Why did I have to kill it?”
“Jintong,” Mother said in a stern voice she’d never used with him before, “you’re forty-two years old, and still you act like a little sissy! I haven’t said anything to you these past few days, but I can’t hold back any longer. You know I can’t be here with you forever. After I’m gone, you’ll have to shoulder the family responsibilities and get on with your life. You can’t go on like this.”
Looking down at his hands in disgust, Jintong wiped off the rabbit blood with dirt. His face was burning, stung by Mother’s criticism, and he wasn’t happy.
“You have to go out into the world and do something. It doesn’t have to be anything big.”
“What can I do, Mother?” he said dejectedly.
“Here’s what you can do. Be a man and take that rabbit down to the Black Water River. Skin it, gut it, and clean it, then take it home and cook it for your mother. I haven’t tasted meat in six months at least. Maybe you’ll have trouble skinning and gutting the rabbit, worrying about being cruel. But isn’t it just as cruel for a grown man to be sucking at a woman’s breast? Don’t ever forget that a woman’s milk is her lifeblood, and sucking it dry is ten times crueler than killing a rabbit. If you think like that, you’ll be able to do it, and it will give you a satisfying feeling. Killing an animal doesn’t bring a hunter remorse over taking a life, it brings him pleasure. And that’s because he knows that all the millions of beasts and birds in this world were put here by Jehovah to satisfy human needs. Humans are the pinnacle of existence, people represent the soul of this earth.”
Jintong nodded vigorously as he felt something hard settle slowly in his chest. His heart, which up till then had seemed to be floating on water, felt as if it were starting to sink.
“Do you know why Old Jin stopped coming?”
Jintong looked into Mother’s face. “Was it you …”
“Yes, it was me! I went to talk to her. I couldn’t stand by while she ruined my son.”
“You … how could you do that?”
She continued, ignoring his tone. “I told her that if she really loves my son, she can sleep with him, but I won’t allow you to suckle at her breast anymore.”
“Her milk saved my life!” Jintong shouted shrilly. “If not for her milk, I’d be dead now, rotting away, food for the worms!”
“I know that. Do you think I could ever forget that she saved your life?” She thumped the ground with her cane. “I’ve been a fool all these years, but I finally understand that it’s better to let a child die than let him turn into a worthless creature who can’t take his mouth away from a woman’s nipple!”
“What did she say?” he asked anxiously.
“She’s a good woman. She told me to go home and tell you that there will always be a pillow for you on Old Jin’s bed.”
“But she’s a married woman …” Jintong’s face had grown pale.
Mother threw down a challenge, her voice quaking with madness. “If you don’t show a little spunk, you’re no son of mine. Go see her. I don’t need a son who refuses to grow up. What I want is someone like Sima Ku or Birdman Han, a son who’s not afraid to cause me some trouble, if that’s what has to be done. I want a man who stands up to piss!”
3
With newfound valor, he crossed the Black Water River, as Mother had told him to, and went to see Old Jin. With Mother’s help, this was to be the start of his life as a real man. But as he set out on the road to the newly created city, his courage left him like a tire with a slow leak. The high-rises, with mosaic inlays on the sides, were impressive in the sunlight, while at a number of work sites, the yellow arms of cranes swung massive prefabricated forms into place. Insistent jackhammers thudded against his eardrums, arc welders on steel girders near the sandy ridge lit up the sky more brightly than the sun. White smoke curled around a tower, and his eyes began to wander. Mother had given him directions to Old Jin’s recycling station, which was near the bay where Sima Ku had been shot all those years ago. Some of the buildings alongside the wide asphalt street had been finished, others were in the process of going up. No sign remained of the Sima family compound. The Great China Pharmaceutical Company was gone. Several large excavators were digging deep trenches in the ground. Where the church had once stood, a bright yellow, seven-story high-rise towered over its surroundings like a golden-toothed member of the nouveau riche. Red characters, each the size of an adult sheep, proclaimed in glittering fashion the power and prestige of the Dalan Branch Office of the China Bank of Industry and Commerce.
Old Jin’s recycling station was spread out over a large area, behind a plaster board fence. The scrap was separated by type: empty bottles formed a great wall that dazzled the eyes, a mountainous prism of broken glass; old tires were stacked in heaps; a mound of old plastic rose higher than a rooftop; smack in the middle of discarded metal stood a howitzer minus its wheels. Dozens of workmen, towels covering the lower half of their faces, were scampering all over the place like ants. Some were lugging tires, others were doing the sorting, while still others were loading or unloading trucks. A black wolfhound was tied to the base of a wall with the chain from an old waterwheel, still wrapped in red plastic. It appeared far more ferocious than the mongrels at the labor reform camp; its fur looked as if waxed. Lying on the ground in front of the dog were a whole roasted chicken and a half eaten pig’s foot. The watchman had a mass of unruly hair, rheumy eyes, and a deeply wrinkled face; on closer examination, he looked like the militia leader of the original Dalan Commune. A large furnace stood in the yard for melting plastic. Strange-smelling black smoke was belching out of a squat sheet-metal chimney; dust skittered along the ground. A group of scrap vendors was gathered around a large scale, arguing with the old man in charge of the scale. Jintong recognized him as Luan Ping, a salesclerk at the old Dalan Co-op. A white-haired old man rode into the station on a three-wheeled cart; it was Liu Daguan, onetime head of the local branch of the Post and Telecommunications Bureau. Once known for the way he strutted around, he was now in charge of Old Jin’s workers’ dining hall. Feeling his nerve slipping away, Jintong stood in the yard looking helpless. But a window in the simple two-story building in front of him was pushed open, and there stood the capitalist, single-breasted Old Jin in a pink bathrobe, holding her hair in one hand and waving to him with the other. “Adoptive son,” he heard her shout brazenly, “come on up!”
It seemed to him as if everyone in the yard turned to watch him walk toward the building, head down, their stares making every step an awkward one. What about my arms? Should I cross them? Let them hang straight down? Stick them in my pockets, maybe, or clasp them behind my back? Finally, he decided to let them hang at his sides, shoulders hunched, and walk the way he’d been trained during his fifteen years at the camp, like a whipped dog, slinking along with its tail between its legs, head bowed but always looking from side to side, moving as rapidly as possible alongside a wall, like a thief. When Jintong reached the bottom of the stairs, Old Jin shouted from the second floor, “Liu Daguan, my adoptive son’s here. Put on a couple more dishes.” Out in the yard, someone — he didn’t know who — sang a nasty li
ttle ditty: “If a child wants to grow up strong, he needs twenty-four wanton adoptive mothers …”
As he climbed the wooden staircase, the heavy aroma of perfume floated down to him. He looked up timidly and saw Old Jin standing at the top of the stairs, her legs spread, a mocking smile on her powdered face. He stopped and clenched the metal banister with his sweaty palm.
“Come on up, adoptive son,” she welcomed him, her mocking smile now gone.
He forced himself to keep going, until a soft hand gripped his wrist. In the dark hallway it felt as if the odor of her body were dragging him along to a den of seduction, a brightly lit, carpeted room where the walls were papered; colorful balls made of paper hung from the ceiling. In the center of the room stood a desk, on which a fountain-pen holder rested. “That’s all for show. I don’t read or write much.”
Jintong stood rooted to the floor, unwilling to look her in the eye. All of a sudden, she laughed and said, “I can’t believe this is happening. This has to be an all-time first.”