Mo Yan - Pow!

‘Who's thinking of me, Daddy?’ She blinked. ‘Is it my mother?’

‘Yes,’ Father said, ‘it must be.’

A sombre expression creased Yao Qi's face as he remained standing at the door, one foot in, one foot out, neither this nor that, a sort of androgynous stance.

‘Lao Luo,’ he said heavily, ‘I'm glad you're back. I'll come by to see you in a couple of days. There's something important I want to talk to you about.’

With that he was gone; the door slid shut, keeping the clean, snow-injected air outside and thickening the foul air inside. Our sneezing contest over, Jiaojiao and I were more or less acclimated to the smell of the shop. The barber wasn't there at the moment but I knew she'd just left, because the minute I walked in the door I spotted something in the corner that looked like one of those public telephone booths I'd seen in town. A woman in a purple coat was sitting under a semi-circular canopy, her neck stiff and her head covered with brightly coloured curlers. She looked a bit like an astronaut, a bit like a rice-sprout girl at a New Year's celebration and a bit like Pidou's niang. Actually, that's who she was. Pidou's dieh was the butcher Big Ear, which made Pidou's niang Big Ear's wife. There was just one thing that kept her from looking exactly like Pidou's niang: I hadn't seen her for a long time and now she was sort of puffy, as if she had a meatball tucked in each cheek. I remembered her as having full eyebrows that swept across her forehead, the Goddess of Bad Luck. But she'd plucked them bare and replaced them with thin pencilled lines of green and red like caterpillars that dine on sesame leaves. She sat there holding a picture book in her hands, held as far out as her arms could reach—she was obviously farsighted. She hadn't looked up once since we entered, in the affected manner of a noblewoman who ignores a beggar. Shit! What are you but a self-satisfied, stinking old hag! No matter what you do—you could pull out every hair on your head, you could peel the skin from your face and you could colour your lips redder than pig's blood—you'd still be Pidou's niang and a butcher's old lady! Go ahead, ignore us—we can do the same to you! I sneaked a look at Father, who sat there remote and indifferent, quite aloof, actually, as distant as the sky on a cloudless day, as unapproachable as the head monk in a Shaolin Temple, as detached as a red-capped crane in a flock of chickens, as standoffish as a camel in a herd of sheep…The barber-chair was unoccupied, a soiled white smock covered with fine hairs draped over its back. The sight of all that hair made the back of my neck itch; and, when it occurred to me that it might be from Pidou's niang, the itch grew downright painful.

I'd been obsessively protective of my head since childhood, something my father knew all too well. That was because every time I had a haircut I had hairs all over my body that itched worse than lice. I can count the haircuts I've submitted to in my life so far. After Father left, we had not only a pair of clippers in the house but also a pair of barber's shears and a Double Arrow straight razor. Admittedly, every item in this nearly complete set came from our scavenger days and, after Father left, Mother put these rusty instruments to use in the battle of the scalp—my scalp—to save money without having to rely upon favours from anyone. Fourth Brother Kui, a neighbour of ours, gave professional-quality haircuts but Mother was unwilling to seek his help. My screams usually proved which of us was losing the battle.

Wise Monk, let me tell you about my worst haircut experience—and I'm only slightly exaggerating. When no amount of threats or inducements had any effect on me, Mother tied me to a chair to give me a New Year's haircut. She'd added plenty of muscle since Father left, and acquired a powerful grip. I tried anchoring myself to the floor, I tried rolling round like a donkey and I tried burying my head between my legs, like a dog, but nothing worked, and in the end I was strapped to the chair. I think I probably bit her on the wrist during our struggle, since my mouth was filled with the taste of burnt rubber. I was right, as I found out once I was strapped in and she examined her left wrist—it bled from two punctures and a dozen little purple tooth marks. A look of weary sadness spread across her face. I began to feel a bit of regret plus a bit of apprehension, but most of all a sense of satisfaction about what I'd done to her. Little guttural moans were followed by two lines of discoloured tears running down her cheeks. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and pretending I knew nothing about her injured hand or the look of sadness on her face; I wasn't sure what would happen next, but deep down I knew there was no escape. Sure enough, the tears stopped and the sad look went away. ‘You bastard,’ she smirked, ‘now you've done it, you little bastard. How dare you bite your mother! Merciful heavens,’ she said as she looked skyward, ‘open your eyes and look at the sorry excuse for a son I've raised! Not a son—a wolf, a contemptuous wolf! I've slaved to raise him, putting up with every shitty mess he made, and for what? So he can sink his teeth into me? I've endured back-breaking work, sweat by the bucketful and every imaginable indignity. They say the goldthread plant is bitter. Well, it's not as bitter as my life. They say vinegar is sour. Well, it's downright sweet compared to my life. After all that, this is what I ended up with! You haven't got all your teeth yet and your wings aren't hard enough to fly away, and still you sink your fangs into me? In a few years, when your teeth are grown and your wings are strong, you'll be ready to chew me up and spit me out! Well, you little bastard, I'll kill you with my own hands before I let that happen!’ Mother was still cursing when she picked up a turnip as long as my arm, one she'd brought up from the cellar that morning, and broke it over my head. I felt as if my head had exploded and I saw half a turnip fly off somewhere just as the other half pounded my head, over and over and over. It hurt, but not unbearably. For a worthless child like me, that sort of pain is like the powerful Zhang Fei snacking on bean sprouts, easy as one, two, three. But I made it look like she'd knocked me senseless and let my head sag to the side. She grabbed my ear and pulled my head up straight. ‘If you think you can fool me into thinking I've killed you, you're very much mistaken. You can roll your eyes, you can foam at the mouth, you can have a fainting spell. You're very much alive, but even if you're not I'm going to shave that scabby head of yours! If I, Yang Yuzhen, can't do that, then I've got no business being your mother!’ She put a basin on top of the stool in front of me and pushed my head down into the hot water. It was really hot—hot enough to debristle a hog—and I could no longer hold back. Glug glug glug…‘Yang Yuzhen, you stinking old woman, Yang Yuzhen, I'm going to have my dieh finish you off with that donkey dick of his!’ That filthy, disgusting curse really hit home, for I heard her screech just before a hailstorm of fists descended on my head. I screamed for all I was worth—it was my only chance for a miracle. Hoping some demon or ghost or the gods of heaven and earth would hurry up and put an end to the torture, I'd have gladly banged my head in three—no, make that six, or nine—loud kowtows to anyone who came to my rescue. Hell, I'd have called him Daddy, Dear Daddy. But it was Mother—no, not Mother, Yang Yuzhen, that bloodthirsty old woman, the hag my dieh had abandoned, who walked up, a yellow plastic apron round her waist, sleeves rolled up, a straight razor in her hand, creases in her forehead. Shave my head? She was going to cut it off! ‘Help!’ I shouted. ‘Help…murder…Yang Yuzhen is going to murder me…’ I guess my shouts weren't as effective as I thought, because her rage was abruptly replaced by snorts of laughter. ‘You little swine, is that the best you can come up with?’ I turned to see a bunch of more fortunate children—those lucky fellows—at our gate craning their necks to see what was going on inside—Yao Qi's son Fengshou, Chen Gan's son Pingdu, Big Ears’ son Pidou, and Song Gujia's daughter Feng'e…I'd stopped hanging out with that crowd since my dieh ran off, not willingly, Dieh, but because I didn't have the time. Yang Yuzhen yanked me out of school and, at my young age, turned me into a coolie labourer, working me ten times harder than a poor cowherd in the old society. She got me wondering if she was really my mother. Tell me, Dieh, was I some cast-off baby born out of wedlock that you brought home from that run-down kiln where they made earthen crockpots? No real mother could bear to treat her child as mercilessly as she treats me. I guess I've lived long enough, so go ahead, Yang Yuzhen, kill me in front of those children. I felt the cold steel of her razor on my scalp. The moment of danger had arrived! I scrunched down my neck, like a threatened turtle. Emboldened by the sight, the children, like rats that had licked the cat's arse, moved in, through the gate and into our yard, drawing closer and closer to the house until they were standing just beyond the door, giggling and watching the comedy play out in front of them. ‘Aren't you ashamed to be crying like that? Especially in front of your friends. Fengshou, Pingdu, Pidou, do you cry when you're getting your heads shaved?’ ‘No,’ chorused Pingdu and Pidou. ‘Why should we? It feels good.’ ‘You hear that?’ She waved the clippers in front of me. ‘A tiger doesn't eat her young. What makes you think your mother would do anything to hurt you?’ While I was dredging up all those bad memories of the shaved-head incident, Fan Zhaoxia, owner of Beauty Hair Salon, walked in from one of the inner rooms, wearing a white smock, her hands in her pockets and looking like a woman's doctor. Tall and slim, she had a full head of black hair and fair skin but her face was marred by purple lumps and her breath carried the heated odour of horse feed. I knew that she and Lao Lan had a special relationship and that she was the one who kept his head neatly shaved. According to what I heard, she also trimmed his beard, a process that took upwards of an hour, while he slept. There was even talk that she shaved him while sitting in his lap. I wanted to tell Dieh all about Lao Lan and Fan Zhaoxia, but he kept his head down and refused to look at me.