Mo Yan - Pow!

It was a big, fat, tawny Luxi bull with straight horns and a hide like satin stretched over its rippling muscles, the kind I'd see later on athletes on TV. It was a golden yellow, all but its face, which, surprisingly, was white. I'd never seen a white-faced bull. Castrated, the way it looked at you out of the corner of one of its red eyes was enough to make your hair stand on end. Now that I think back, that's probably the look people describe when they talk about eunuchs. Castration changes a man's nature; it does the same with bulls. By pointing to the bull, Father made me forget about the money, at least for the moment. I turned in time to see Lao Lan swagger out of the square, leading his bull. Why not swagger, after the way he'd humiliated my non-resisting father? His prestige in the village and among the cattle-peddlers had just undergone a dramatic increase. He'd gone up against the only person who dismissed him as irrelevant, and won; no one in the village would defy him again. That only makes what happened next so startling that I'm not sure I believe it even now, years later. The Luxi bull stopped in its tracks. Lao Lan tugged its halter. To no avail. Without the slightest effort, the bull made a mockery out of Lao Lan's show of strength. A cattle butcher by trade, he exuded an odour that could make a timid calf shake like a leaf and cause even the most stubborn animal to meekly await its death when he stood in front of it, butcher knife in hand. Unable to get the bull moving again, he went round, smacked it on the rump and gave an ear-piercing yell. Now, most animals would have lost control of their bowels in the wake of this smack and that yell, but the Luxi bull didn't so much as blink. Still enjoying the glow of victory over my father, and acting like a cocky soldier, Lao Lan kicked the bull's underbelly with no thought to its nature. The bull shifted its rump, split the air with a loud roar, lowered its head and flung Lao Lan into the air on its horns, as if he weighed no more than a straw mat. The peddlers and butchers were shocked, shocked and speechless. None of them dared to go to Lao Lan's aid. The bull lowered its head again and charged. Now, Lao Lan was no ordinary man, and when he saw those horns coming at him he had enough presence of mind and strength of body to roll out of the way. Eyes blazing red with anger, the bull turned to charge again, and Lao Lan rolled out of the way a second time and then a third…When he was finally able to scramble to his feet, we saw that he was injured, though only slightly. He stood there, facing down the bull, hips shifted to the side and his eyes not leaving the the animal for a second. The bull lowered its head, slobber gathering at the corners of its mouth, and snorted loudly as it prepared for the next charge. Lao Lan raised his hand to distract the bull but he was only putting up a brave front, like a frightened bullfighter who'll do anything to save face. He took a cautious step forward; the bull didn't move. Rather, it dropped its head even lower, a sign that the next charge was imminent. Lao Lan finally abandoned his macho posturing, gave one last blustery yell, turned and ran for his life. The bull took off after him, its tail sticking out stiff and straight, like an iron rod, its hooves spraying mud in every direction like a machine gun. Meanwhile, Lao Lan, who was hell-bent on escaping, headed instinctively towards the onlookers, hoping to find salvation in a crowd. But rescuing him was the last thing on their minds. The men ran for their lives, shrieking loudly and cursing their parents for not giving them more than two legs. Luckily, the bull had enough human intelligence to single out Lao Lan and not vent its anger on anyone else. Sand flew into the air as the peddlers and the butchers scrambled over walls and up trees. Lao Lan, stupefied by his predicament, ran straight towards Father and me. In desperation, Father grabbed me by the nape of my neck with one hand and the seat of my pants with the other and flung me up onto the wall only seconds before Lao Lan ran up and took refuge behind him, grabbing his clothes to keep him in front of him and thus screen him from the charging bull. My father retreated and so, of course, did Lao Lan, until they both were backed up against the wall. Father waved his money in front of the bull and began to mutter: ‘Bull, ah, bull, there's no bad blood between you and me, not now, not ever, so let's work this out…’ It all happened faster than words can describe. Father threw the money at the bull's face and leapt onto its back before the animal knew what was happening. Then he stuck his fingers in the bull's nose, grabbed its nose ring and jerked its head up high. The cows from West County were farm animals, so they all had nose rings. Now, the nose is a bull's weak spot, and no one, not the best farmer alive, knew more about bulls than my father, though he wasn't much of a farming man. Tears sprang to my eyes as I sat there, on top of the wall. I'm so proud of you, Dieh, and of how you've washed away our humiliation and reclaimed our lost face through your wise and courageous action. The butchers and peddlers ran up to help him and wrestle the white-faced, yellow bull to the ground. So that it wouldn't get up again and hurt anyone, one of the butchers ran home rabbit-fast to fetch a butcher knife, which he then offered to the now waxen-faced Lao Lan, who took a step backward and waved away the man, turning the task over to someone else. The butcher turned from side to side, knife in hand. ‘Who'll do it? No one? Well, then, I guess it's up to me.’ He rolled up his sleeves, wiped the blade against the sole of his shoe, then hunkered down and closed one eye, like a carpenter with a plumb line. Taking aim at the slight indentation in the bull's chest, he plunged the knife in. When he pulled it out, blood spurted into the air and painted my father red.

Now that the bull was dead, everyone felt it safe enough to climb down. Blackish red blood continued to flow from the wound, bubbling like a fountain, releasing a heated odour into the crisp morning air. The men stood about like deflated balloons, shrivelled and diminished somehow. There was so much they wanted to say but no one said a word. Except my father, who tucked his head down low between his shoulders, opened his mouth to reveal a set of strong but yellow teeth, and said: ‘Old man in the sky, I was so scared!’ Everyone turned to look at Lao Lan, who wished he could crawl into a hole. He tried to cover his embarrassment by looking down at the bull, whose legs were stretched out straight, its fleshy thighs still twitching. One of its blue eyes remained open, as if to release the hatred still inside. ‘Damn you!’ Lao Lan said as he kicked the dead animal. ‘You spend your whole life hunting wild geese only to have your eye pecked out by a gosling.’ He then looked up at my father. ‘I owe you one, Luo Tong, but you and I aren't finished.’ ‘Finished with what?’ Father asked. ‘There's nothing between you and me.’ ‘Don't you touch her!’ hissed Lao Lan. ‘I never wanted to touch her—she asked me to,’ replied Father with a proud little laugh. ‘She called you a dog, and she'll never let you touch her again.’ I had no idea what that was all about, but later, of course, I realized out they were talking about Aunty Wild Mule, who owned a little wine shop. But when I asked him, ‘Dieh, what were you talking about?’ ‘Nothing a child needs to know,’ is what he answered. ‘Son,’ Lao Lan said, ‘didn't you say you wanted to be a member of the Lan clan? Then why did you call him Dieh just now?’ ‘You're nothing but a pile of stinking dog shit!’ I said. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘you go home and tell your mother that your father's found his way into Wild Mule's cave and can't get out.’ That made my father as angry as the bull, and he lowered his head and charged at Lao Lan. They were at each other's throat for no more than a moment before the others rushed over and separated them. But in that brief moment Lao Lan managed to break my father's little finger and my father to bite off half of Lao Lan's ear. Spitting it out angrily, Father said: ‘How dare you say things like that in front of my son, you dog bastard!’