Yu Hua - Brothers

"Of course we should," Baldy Li said. "Let Lin Hong prepare herself, because otherwise it may all be too sudden for her. What will we do if she simply faints from the excitement?"

Baldy Li selected five six-year-old boys he ran across on his way to work at the Good Works Factory to serve as his messengers. These boys had been playing in the street when they started pointing at Baldy Li and arguing. One boy said that this baldy was none other than the one who was said to have peeped at Lin Hongs bottom and who was rumored to have developed a nosebleed upon seeing her again. Another boy said that this must be someone else, because that person was called Baldy Li. When Baldy Li heard them, he thought that if even these little ruffians knew of the rumors, he must already have become a legendary figure in Liu Town. He paused and waved them over. The snot-nosed boys came and looked up at the infamous Baldy Li, who pointed at himself and said, "This old man is Baldy Li."

Several of the boys stared at Baldy Li in happy astonishment. Baldy Li gestured for them to wipe their noses and then asked, "You also know Lin Hong?"

The boys all nodded and replied, "The Lin Hong who works at the knitting factory."

Baldy Li snorted in amusement and said that he wanted to give them a glorious assignment: "Run over to the knitting factory and wait at the door for Lin Hong to get off work, like a midnight cat waiting at a mouse hole for a midnight mouse. When she does comes out, I want you to call out to her …" Baldy Li then shouted out in a boys voice, "'Baldy Li wants to court you!'"

The boys giggled and hollered in unison, "Baldy Li wants to court you!"

"That's right," Baldy Li said approvingly and patted them on their heads. "There is one more sentence: ‘Are you ready?'"

The boys cried out, "Are you ready?"

Baldy Li was very satisfied and complimented the boys on having learned so quickly. He counted them and found that there were five boys. He retrieved a nickel from his pocket, bought ten pieces of hard candy from a street stall, and then gave one to each boy, placing the five remaining pieces back into his own pocket. Baldy Li told the boys that when they finished their task, they could come for the rest of their reward. Then Baldy Li, like a general on a battlefield directing his soldiers to advance, gestured in the direction of the knitting factory and shouted, "Forward, march!"

The boys immediately unwrapped their candies and stuffed them into their mouths, then stood there without moving, happily sucking on their candy. Baldy Li gestured again, but they still didn't budge. Finally, he said, "Damn it, hurry up and go!"

After looking at one another, they asked Baldy Li, "What does to court mean?"

"To court?" Baldy Li pondered hard and then said, "To court means to marry someone, to sleep together at night."

The boys giggled, and Baldy Li once again pointed to the knitting factory with his short, stubby finger. They walked forward while crying out, "Baldy Li wants to court you! Get married! Sleep with you! Are you ready?"

"Fuck. Get back here!" Baldy Li called out urgently. "Don't mention anything about marriage or sleeping together. Just focus on the courtship part."

That afternoon Baldy Li's five emissaries of love walked toward the knitting factory, shouting all the way. The people of Liu stared in amazement upon seeing them go by, never in their wildest dreams having imagined that Baldy Li would resort to such a tactic as having a bunch of snot-nosed and split-pants-wearing boys court Lin Hong on his behalf. Everyone laughed and shook their heads, saying that Baldy Li must have shit and piss for brains to come up with such an idiotic plan. They concluded that he, having spent all his time with two cripples, three idiots, four blind men, and five deaf men, had allowed his own brain to become handicapped.

Poet Zhao was also there and agreed with everyone's assessment. Noting that he had known Baldy Li for a long time, Poet Zhao said that although in the past Baldy Li had not been very clever, neither had he been stupid, but since he had gone to work at the Good Works Factory — and especially since becoming the director of the cripples, idiots, and blind and deaf men — he had become dumber and dumber. Poet Zhao summed up the situation with an old expression: "This is a case of those close to ink become black, and those close to cinnabar become vermilion."

The boys sucked in their snot and hollered as if they were singing a song, first shouting "to court" for the length of one entire street, and then switching to "get married" for the second. By the time they reached the third street, they were calling out "go to bed." It was only then that they remembered Baldy Li's instructions that they not mention going to bed, so they backtracked and again sang about getting married but then remembered that he had instructed them not to speak of getting married either. When they tried to backtrack even further, they couldn't for the life of them remember the phrase to court. They stopped in the middle of the street and looked around, wiping their noses with their hands and then wiping the snot on their bottoms, making their pants look as shiny as if a slug had crawled all over them.

Poet Zhao happened to be wandering down the third street and overheard the boys’ argument. Reminded of how Baldy Li had bragged that he was going to beat him until his true laborer colors showed, Zhao laughed bitterly, then waved the boys over and told them quietly, "The word is intercourse ."

The five boys looked at one another and felt that this sort of sounded like the phrase they had forgotten, yet it didn't seem quite right. Poet Zhao quickly added, "It is definitely intercourse."

The boys nodded and happily proceeded to the knitting factory. At the entrance they started calling out, and when they saw the gatekeeper, they shouted in unison in the direction of the closed iron gate, "Baldy Li wants to have intercourse with you!"

The old man initially leaned over curiously, and only after they had shouted it three times did he finally understand. Furiously, he grabbed the broom behind the door and rushed at them, making the boys scurry away in terror. The gatekeeper waved the broom and cursed, "Fuck your mother, and your grandmother, too!"

The boys apprehensively regrouped and embarrassedly told the old man, "Baldy Li told us to say that."

"Fuck Baldy Li's mother." The old man threw the broomstick down and yelled, "Does he dare come have intercourse with me? I'll rip him a new one."

The boys’ heads shook their heads vigorously, explaining to the old man, "Not with you, with Lin Hong."

"It doesn't matter who it's with, it's still not okay," the old man said sternly. "Even if it were with his own mother, it still wouldn't be okay."

The five boys didn't dare approach the factory gate again; instead they hid behind a nearby tree, staring intently at the old man. As soon as he came out they immediately ran away, and when he went back inside, they cautiously walked back to the tree and peeked out. Following Baldy Li's instructions, the boys waited, like a midnight cat waiting at a mouse hole for a midnight mouse, until the closing bell rang, signalling the end of the workday. Then they saw Lin Hong walking over with a crowd of female workmates. Two boys who recognized Lin Hong started waving energetically at her while the other three kept an eye out for the old man in the entranceway. The two boys called out softly, "Lin Hong, Lin Hong."

As Lin Hong was walking, chatting with the other women, she heard the mysterious call and stopped curiously to see the five boys hiding behind the tree. Her companions also stopped and joked that Lin Hong's beauty had spread so far and wide that even little boys wearing split pants came looking for her. At that moment, the boys shouted in unison, "Baldy Li wants to have intercourse with you!"