Mo Yan - Frog

HAO DASHOU:But you’re not Cao Yu, and you’re not Lao She.

QIN HE:And we’re not actors, and we’re definitely not directors.

TADPOLE:But you are characters in my play! I worked hard to enhance your images. You’ll be sorry if you don’t listen, but if you do, and there are parts you’re unhappy with, I can change them. Otherwise, the play will be staged and will be published as a libretto, and then it will be too late for you to do anything about it. ( suddenly sad ) I’ve worked on this play for ten years and have gone through everything I owned. I even sold off the rafters in my house. ( with his hands on his chest, he coughs painfully ) For the sake of this play, I smoked cheap tobacco, and when I had none of that, I smoked the leaves of locust trees — countless sleepless nights, deteriorating health, my very life drained, all for what? Fame? Fortune? ( shrilly ) No, and no! For Gugu’s love, to give permanent recognition to Northeast Gaomi Township’s very own goddess. If you won’t listen to me read, I’ll kill myself in front of you.

HAO DASHOU:Who are you trying to scare? How do you plan to do it? Rope? Poison?

QIN HE:It actually sounds slightly moving. I think I’d like to hear it.

HAO DASHOU:You can read your play if you want to, but not in my house.

TADPOLE:First and foremost, this is Gugu’s house; only after that is it yours.

Gugu crawls out from the cave.

GUGU:( lazily ) Who’s talking about me?

TADPOLE:It’s me, Gugu.

GUGU:I know it’s you. What are you doing here?

TADPOLE:( hastily opens his briefcase and takes out a manuscript; reads quickly ) Gugu, it’s me, Tadpole from Two Counties Village. ( Qin and Hao exchange puzzled looks ) Yu Peisheng is my father, Sun Fuxia is my mother, I was one of the ‘sweet potato kids’ and the first child you ever delivered. You also delivered my wife, Tan Yu’er. Her father is Tan Jinhai, her mother is Huang Yueling…

GUGU:Stop there. You’ve changed your name to be a playwright? And your date of birth? Your parents, the name of your village, and your wife?

Gugu wanders among the babies hanging above the stage, stopping from time to time to lower her head in thought or to beat her breast and stomp her feet. Then she stops and whacks the bottom of one of the babies, making him cry. She does the same to all the others, and now they are all crying. Surrounded by all that noise, she begins to jabber nonstop, and the crying gets less intense.

GUGU:Listen to me, you sweet potato kids. I’m the one who brought you all into the world. And not one of you made it easy on me. For fifty years Gugu has delivered babies, and cannot rest even now. During those fifty years, Gugu did not enjoy more than a few hot meals or a few good nights’ sleep. Bloody hands and a sweaty body soiled by babies’ bodily waste, and you probably think that a village obstetrician has an easy life. In the eighteen villages that make up Northeast Gaomi Township, is there even one of the more than five thousand thresholds I’ve not stepped across? Is there one of your mothers or wives whose dusty belly I haven’t seen? And it was me who tied off the tubes of those weasels you call fathers. Some of you are now high-ranking officials; others have gotten rich. You can be willful before the county chief and insolent in the mayor’s office, but around me you have to act like gentlemen. When I think back to those days, the way I see it, I should have castrated every one of you little studs and saved your wives a peck of trouble. Quit smirking and straighten up. Family planning has an impact on the national economy and the people’s livelihood, and it is of the greatest importance. Don’t bare your teeth at me, you’re just wasting your time. Keep them or lose them, it’s not up to me. Men are no damned good. Know who said that? You don’t? You really don’t? Well, neither do I. All I know is, men are no damned good, but we can’t do without you. It’s all part of God’s plan. Tigers and wild hares, sparrow hawks and sparrows, flies and mosquitoes… we need them all in this world. I’ve heard there’s a tribe in the African jungle that lives in the trees. They make their nests in the trees, where the women lay eggs and perch on branches to eat wild fruit. The men cover their backs with leaves and sprawl on top of the eggs for forty-nine days, when the infants break through the shells, jump out, and start climbing the tree. Do you believe that? You don’t? Well, I do. Gugu once delivered an egg as big as a football, placed it at the head of the kang for two weeks, and out jumped a fat little baby, fair-skinned and pudgy. I named him Hatchling. Unfortunately he died of encephalitis. He’d be forty years old today, and would be a great writer. When, as a baby, he was given a choice of things to grab, he chose a writing brush. When there is no tiger on the mountain, the chimp is king. Hatchling died, giving you the chance to be a writer…

TADPOLE:( with great respect ) Gugu, your words are like poetry. You are more than a wonderful woman’s doctor; you are also a natural playwright. The words tumble out of your mouth ready-made for the dramatic stage.

GUGU:What do you mean by tumbling out of my mouth? Every word Gugu says is carefully considered. ( points to the manuscript in Tadpole’s hand ) Is that your play?

TADPOLE:( modestly ) Yes.

GUGU:What’s it called?

TADPOLE: Wa .

GUGU:Is that ‘ wa ’ as in ‘ wawa ’ for babies or ‘ wa ’ as in ‘ qingwa ’ for frogs?

TADPOLE:For now it’s the ‘ wa ’ in ‘ qingwa ’, but I can change it later to the ‘ wa ’ in ‘ wawa ’ for babies, or in ‘Nüwa’, the goddess who created mankind. After she populated the earth with people, the character for frogs symbolised a profusion of children, and it has become Northeast Gaomi Township’s totem. Frogs appear as creatures of veneration in our clay sculptures and our New Year’s paintings.

GUGU:Is it possible that you are unaware of my fear of frogs?

TADPOLE:Analysing Gugu’s fear of frogs is the central aim of my play. After reading my play, the complexities will be unravelled, and you may find that you no longer fear frogs.

GUGU:( reaches out ) Then hand me your manuscript.

Tadpole respectfully hands the manuscript to Gugu.

GUGU:( to Qin He and Hao Dashou ) Which of you is going to take this manuscript out and burn it?

TADPOLE:Gugu, that’s ten years of blood, sweat, and tears.

GUGU:( flings the manuscript into the air, pages flying everywhere ) I don’t need to read it. One sniff tells me what kind of fart you’ve just laid. With what little knowledge you possess, do you really think you can figure out why Gugu is afraid of frogs?

Tadpole, Qin He, and Hao Dashou scramble across the stage fighting over pages.

GUGU:( caught up in nostalgic thoughts ) On the morning you were born, Gugu was down by the river washing her hands, when she saw a tight mass of tadpoles in the water. It was a year of drought, and there were more tadpoles than the water could accommodate. That got me thinking that no more than one out of ten thousand of them would become frogs; the others would become part of the muddy riverbed. Just like a man’s sperm, except for them, only about one in ten million penetrates the egg to make a child. Gugu was reflecting that a mysterious connection exists between tadpoles and humans in the propagation of species. So when your mother asked me to give you a name, Tadpole was the first word out of my mouth. A good name, your mother said, a perfect name. Tadpole. Children with debased names are easy to raise. Tadpole, you could not ask for a better name.