Pow!

  At Cheng's house we managed to get our hands on a rusty dagger with a blade shaped like a cow's ear. We didn't want a big knife but one we could hide on us, and this one fit the bill. We carried a whetstone into our house, turned up the volume on the TV, shut the door, blocked out the windows and then began to sharpen the knife with which we were going to kill Lao Lan.

  My sister and I seemed to have become honoured guests at homes throughout the village during that time and were fed nothing but the best food. We ate camel's hump (a lump of fat), sheep's tail (pure lard), fox brain (a plate full of cunning). I can't list every item we ate, but I have to tell you that at Cheng Tianle's, besides bone soup, we were treated to a bowl of a green, bitter liquor. He didn't tell us what it was but I guessed its origin—liquor in which had been steeped the gallbladder of a leopard. I assumed that the bones in the pot were those of that same leopard. So Jiaojiao and I ate leopard gallbladder—the so-called seat of courage—which converted us from timid, mouse-like creatures into youngsters whose courage knew no bounds.

  By plying us with the best food they had, my fellow villagers instilled us with enviable strength and courage. And though no one breathed a word about it, we had no doubts about what lay behind all this nurturing. Usually, after we'd been treated to a fine meal, we'd thank our hosts with vague expressions of appreciation: ‘Elder Master and Mistress, Elder Uncle and Aunt, Elder Brother and Sister, please be patient. My sister and I are people who know their history and are committed to the cause of righteousness. We will avenge every slight and repay every kindness.’

  Every time I uttered this little monologue, a sense of solemnity flooded my mind and hot blood raced through my veins. Those who heard our little piece were invariably moved; their eyes would light up and heartfelt sighs escape their mouths.

  The day of reckoning drew nearer.

  And then it arrived.

  A meeting was held that day in the plant's conference room to discuss a major structural change—the shift from a collective ownership to a stockholder system. Jiaojiao and I were stockholders, with twenty shares each. I won't waste time talking about that foolish meeting; the only reason it became the talk of the town, so to speak, was because of our attempt to wreak vengeance. I drew the dagger from my belt. ‘Lao Lan,’ I shouted, ‘give me back my parents!’

  My sister pulled a pair of rusty scissors from her sleeve—before we set out I'd asked her to sharpen them but she'd said that rusted scissors would give him tetanus. ‘Lao Lan,’ she shouted, ‘give me back my parents!’

  We raised our weapons and ran at Lao Lan behind the podium.

  Jiaojiao tripped on the stairs, fell flat on her face and began to bawl.

  Lao Lan stopped talking, walked over and picked her up.

  He turned up her lip with a finger, and I saw a cut—there was blood on her teeth.

  My plans too fell flat. Like a punctured tyre, I felt my anger dissipate. But then how would I face my fellow villagers or fulfil my debt to my parents if I just gave up? So, holding my breath, I raised my dagger once more and, as I moved towards Lao Lan, I had a vision of my father moving towards the same man with his hatchet held high.

  Lao Lan dried Jiaojiao's tears with his hand. ‘That's a good girl,’ he said, ‘don't cry, don't cry…’ There were tears in his eyes as he handed my sister to the barber Fan Zhaoxia in the front row. ‘Take her to the clinic and have something put on this,’ he said.

  Fan took her in her arms. Lao Lan bent to pick up the scissors and tossed them onto the podium. Then he picked up a chair, carried it up to me, set it down and sat in it.

  ‘Right here, worthy Nephew,’ he said as he patted his chest.

  Then he closed his eyes.

  I looked first at his pitted, freshly shaved scalp, then at his newly shaved chin and the ear my father had taken a bite out of and finally at the trails of tears on his twitching face. Sorrow washed over me along with the shameful desire to throw myself into the son of a bitch's arms. At that moment I realized why Father had buried the hatchet in Mother's skull. But there was no one close to Lao Lan, and I had no argument with anyone in the seats before us—so who was I supposed to stab? I was stuck. But, as they say, heaven doesn't shut all the doors at once. Lao Lan's bodyguard, Huang Biao, burst into the room. That tiger-feeding bastard—killing him would be like cutting off Lao Lan's right arm. So I raised my dagger and charged at him, a war cry on my lips, my mind a blank. I've already told you about Huang Biao. Who was I, a young weakling, to take on a man with his uncommon martial skills? I thrust the dagger at his midsection but he merely reached out, grabbed me by the wrist and jerked my arm upward.

  I heard a pop as my shoulder dislocated.

  My act of vengeance came to a whimpering end.

  For a long time after that, Luo Xiaotong's ‘act of vengeance’ was the most popular joke in the village. My sister and I suffered both from considerable humiliation but also from a spot of fame. Some people even came to our defence and said that we were not to be taken lightly, that Lao Lan's day of judgement would come once we grew up. Be that as it may, people stopped inviting us to their homes for a meal. Lao Lan had Huang Biao's wife send food over a few times, but not for long. Huang Biao put aside any grudges he might have had to deliver a message from Lao Lan: I was invited to return to United Meatpacking as director of the meat-cleansing workshop. I turned him down. I may have been small and insignificant but I had my pride. Did he really expect me to go back to work at the plant, now that neither my father nor my mother was there? But that decision had no effect on my memories of the good times in the plant, and Jiaojiao and I often found ourselves walking past it without intending to. Our legs just carried us over on their own, and there we were confronted by an imposing gateway of black granite that sported a new sign—the company's name in a large bold script—and an automated double gate, all modern improvements. The plant had been transformed from the modest United Meatpacking Plant into the imposing Rare Animals Slaughterhouse Corporation. The grounds were landscaped with exotic plants and trees and the workers streaming in and out all wore white smocks. People familiar with the place knew it was a slaughterhouse, but everyone else would have thought it was a hospital. There was one thing, however, that hadn't changed—the pine rebirth platform, which still stood in a corner of the yard, a symbolic link to the past. One night, both Jiaojiao and I dreamt that we climbed the platform and saw Father and Mother moving rapidly along a newly paved road in a wagon pulled by a camel. She saw both our mothers seated at a table groaning under plates of good food, repeatedly clinking their glasses for a toast. The liquor in their glasses was green, she said, and she wondered if it was infused with leopard gallbladder.

  What I suffered from most during those days was neither hunger nor loneliness but embarrassment, a result of my failed attempt to wreak vengeance. It simply could not continue; I had to break the hold of this emotion and find a way to make Lao Lan suffer. Killing him was no longer possible, nor was it absolutely necessary. If I managed to stick a knife in him and end his life, we'd wind up suffering a similar fate. There must be better way. But what? Then it came to me—the perfect plan.

  At noon on one fine autumn day Jiaojiao and I strode into the plant with our dagger and scissors. No one tried to stop us. We were met by Huang Biao. When we asked him about Lao Lan, he nodded in the direction of the banquet hall. ‘Hey, brave boy,’ he called out as we walked towards the hall.

  Lao Lan and the new plant manager, Yao Qi, were entertaining clients and feasting on delicacies such as donkey lips, cow anuses, camel tongues and horse testicles—everything that sounded terrible but tasted divine. We were greeted by the pungent odours of their meal. Neither Jiaojiao nor I had tasted meat in a long time, and the sight of that loaded table made us drool. But we were on a mission and would not be distracted. Lao Lan spotted us when we stepped into the room. The infectious smile on his face was immediately replaced by a frown. At his discreet signal, Yao Qi stood up to greet us: ‘Ah, it's you,
Xiaotong, Jiaojiao. The food is in another room. Come with me.’

  ‘They are the orphaned children of two former workers,’ Lao Lan explained to his guests softly. ‘The plant is responsible for their welfare.’

  ‘Out of my way!’ I pushed Yao Qi aside and approached Lao Lan. ‘Don't be afraid, Lao Lan,’ I said. ‘You don't have to break into a sweat or get tied up in knots. We're not here to kill you—we're here to let you do the killing.’ I turned the dagger round in my hand, Jiaojiao did the same with her scissors, and we offered them, handles first, to Lao Lan. ‘Go ahead, Lao Lan,’ I said. ‘We've lived long enough, more than long enough, so come on, kill us!’

  ‘If you don't,’ Jiaojiao added, ‘you're a cowardly son of a bitch!’

  The blood rushed to his face. ‘What kind of a joke is this?’

  ‘It's no joke. We're here to ask you to kill us.’

  ‘Children,’ he said with an unhappy smile, ‘You are the victims of a huge misunderstanding. You're too young to truly understand what happens with adults. I'll bet some evil person has put you up to this. You'll understand some day, so I won't try to explain things to you now. If you hate me so much, you can kill me any time you please. I'll be waiting.’

  ‘Kill you? Why would we want to do that? And we don't hate you. We just have no desire to go on living and would like to die at your hands. Please, do it for us.’

  ‘I'm a son of a bitch, a real son of a bitch. How's that?’

  ‘Not good enough,’ Jiaojiao insisted. ‘You have to kill us.’

  ‘Xiaotong, Jiaojiao, be good children and give up this charade. I feel terrible about what happened to your parents, just terrible. I have no peace of mind. And I've been thinking about your future. Listen to me. If it's a job you want, I'll take care of it, and if you'd rather go to school, I'll take care of that too. What do you say?’

  ‘Dying is the only thing we want. You have to do it today.’

  ‘Where'd you get these two?’ one of the clients, a fat man, laughed. ‘I'm impressed.’

  ‘They're a couple of whiz kids,’ answered Lao Lan with a smile. Then he turned back to us. ‘Xiaotong, Jiaojiao, go get something to eat—have Huang Biao give you the best meat we've got. I'm busy right now but I'll make sure we find a way to deal with this problem.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don't care how busy you are, this'll only take a minute. Two quick stabs is all you'll need. Once we're dead, you can go on with what you're doing. We won't take much of your time. If you don't finish us off now, we'll keep pestering you for as long as it takes.’

  ‘You really are a pain, you foolish children!’ Lao Lan said gruffly, clearly upset. ‘Huang Biao, take them out of here!’

  Huang Biao came up and grabbed me by the neck with one hand and Jiaojiao with the other. We did not put up a fight as he dragged us out of the room. But the second he let go, back we'd run, weapons in hand, begging for Lao Lan to kill us.

  Our prestige soared, like fireworks lighting up the sky, and we took advantage of that by seeking out Lao Lan every day. And when we found him we begged him to kill us. When he stationed guards at the gate, we sat outside, waiting for a glimpse of his car. Then we'd run over to it, kneel before it, raise our weapons over our heads and beg him to kill us. Eventually, he stopped leaving the compound, so we stood outside the gate and shouted: ‘Lao Lan, oh, Lao Lan, come out and kill us—Lao Lan, oh, Lao Lan, do us a favour and kill us—’

  When we were alone we sat there quietly, but when there were people about we stood up and began to shout. Passers-by came up to ask what we were doing. ‘Lao Lan, oh, Lao Lan,’ we'd respond, shouting even louder, ‘come kill us—we beg you—’

  We knew it wouldn't take long for news to reach half way round the county, and it didn't. Actually, it was more like half way round the province, or even the country, because Huachang's customers came from far and wide.

  One day Lao Lan disguised himself as an old man and tried to leave the plant in an old Jeep. Jiaojiao and I detected his peculiar odour long before he reached the gate. We blocked the Jeep, then dragged him out and crammed our dagger and scissors into his hand. ‘An unlanced boil,’ he said, scowling at us, ‘will cause trouble sooner or later.’

  He placed his right foot on the Jeep's running board, rolled up his trouser leg, took aim with the dagger and embedded it in his calf. Then he placed his left foot on the running board, rolled up his trouser leg, took aim with the rusty scissors and embedded them in his other calf. Then he stepped down, held up both trouser legs above the wounds and their embedded weapons and circled the gate area twice, leaving a trail of blood on the ground. Then he stepped onto the running board with his right foot, plucked out the dagger—releasing a spurt of dark-red blood—and threw it at my feet. Next he stepped up with his left foot, plucked out the scissors—releasing a spurt of blue blood—and threw it at Jiaojiao's feet. ‘Let's see what you're made of, you little punk,’ he said with a look of contempt in my direction. ‘Do what I just did if you've got the guts.’

  I knew at once that we'd suffered another crushing defeat. The bastard had backed us into a corner once again. I understood that all Jiaojiao and I had to do was stab ourselves in the same way to defeat Lao Lan so resoundingly he'd have to kill himself to salvage his shredded dignity. But stabbing myself in the calf would have hurt like hell! Confucius said: ‘Your body is a gift from your parents, and keeping it from harm is the first rule of filiality.’ Stabbing ourselves would be an affront to Confucius and an admission that we were unfilial. All I could think to say was: ‘What the hell was that for, Lao Lan? Do you think you can scare us off with some hooligan trick? We're not afraid of dying. But we're not going to stab ourselves—that's what we're asking you to do. You can pare off all the meat on your calf but it won't change a thing. If it's peace of mind you're looking for, the only way to get that is to kill us.’

  We picked up the bloodstained dagger and scissors and handed them back to him. He snatched the dagger out of my hand and flung it as far as he could. It flew across the street and landed who knows where. Then he snatched the scissors out of Jiaojiao's hand and did the same.

  ‘Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao,’ he howled, almost in tears, ‘Enough of this preposterous nonsense. What do you want of me?’

  ‘That's simple,’ Jiaojiao and I said together. ‘We've lived long enough and we want you to kill us.’

  He climbed into the Jeep, bloody legs and all, and drove off.

  There's a well-known phrase that goes: Give the man a taste of his own medicine. Do you know who said that, Wise Monk? Neither do I. But Lao Lan knew, because he drew on that wisdom to find a way out of his dilemma. After he drove off, we scoured the area with a horseshoe-shaped magnet borrowed from Li Guangtong at the township TV repair shop and managed to retrieve the knife and scissors, so we could continue trying to get him to kill us. At noon, three days after that incdent, we were sitting outside the plant gate shouting at a wedding procession when a short fellow with a bulbous nose and a prominent beer belly hobbled up to us with a butcher knife. A mean-looking bully of a man.

  ‘Recognize me?’ he asked grinning deviously.

  ‘You're…’

  ‘Wan Xiaojiang, the guy you beat in the meat-eating contest.’

  ‘You've gotten fat!’

  ‘Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao, like you, I've lived long enough, more than enough. Another minute will be too long, so I'm asking the two of you to kill me. You can do it with your dagger or that pair of scissors, or you can use this butcher knife. I don't care one way or the other, it's up to you. Just do it.’

  ‘Get lost,’ I said. ‘We've got no beef with you, why would we want to kill you?’

  ‘That's right,’ he said, ‘you've got no beef with me but I still want you to kill me.’ When he tried to force his knife into my hand, both Jiaojiao and I backed away. But he was relentless—he kept coming at us, moving a lot quicker than we'd have guessed, given his bulk. He was like the offspring of a cat and a mouse. We had no i
dea what you'd call something like that but we couldn't shake him no matter how hard we tried.

  ‘Are you going to kill me or aren't you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, then, if you won't do it, I'll do it myself—slowly.’ He turned the butcher knife on himself and sliced a deep gash in his belly, which immediately began to ooze yellow fat and then blood.