Mo Yan - Pow!

I‘ve talked so much my mouth is parched. Fortunately, three little hailstones, no bigger than apricot pits, slant into the temple and land at my feet. If it isn't the Wise Monk, whose powers allow him to see into my heart, who has magically commanded those three hailstones to land at my feet, then it must be a happy coincidence. I sneak a look at him as he sits as straight as a rod, his eyes closed, totally relaxed; but the black hairs poking out amid the gathered flies on his ears quiver and I know he's listening. I was a precocious child of wide experience, who saw many bizarre events and many strange people, but the only person I've ever seen whose ears can boast a clump of black hairs is the Wise Monk. That ear hair alone is enough to inspire reverence for the man; but then there are his extraordinary talents and uncanny tricks. I pick up one of the hailstones and put it in my mouth. As I move it round to keep it from freezing my mucous membranes, it rattles against my teeth. A fox, whose rain-soaked coat gives it a gaunt, scruffy appearance, pauses in the doorway, a sad, pitiful look in its slitted eyes, but before I can react it scurries into the temple and disappears behind the clay idol. It doesn't take long for the rank smell of wet fur to fill the air. I don't find the smell unpleasant, because I‘ve encountered a fox before. I'll talk about that later. Back home, for a while, there was a craze over raising foxes. By then the foxes had lost their legendary mystique, though they still seemed furtive and mysterious; even in cages they were capable of stealth and magical powers. Until, that is, the village butchers began slaughtering them like pigs, like dogs, to be skinned and eaten. Once the foxes could no longer display their reputed supernatural qualities, the legends about them died. Outside, the peals of thunder have turned to crackles, sounds of fury, and wave after wave of scorched air tumbles into the temple, making me tremble with fear and jogging my memory about the legend of the Thunder God smiting sinful beasts and humans. Could this fox have been one of those sinning beasts? If so, then taking refuge here in the temple is like hiding in a strongbox, for the Thunder God will not flatten the temple, no matter how angry he becomes or how violently the Heavenly Dragon writhes, isn't that right? The Wutong Spirit is, in fact, five transcendent beasts. God has permitted them to become divine spirits and has erected a temple to house their iconic representations. They can thus enjoy the worshipful attendance of humans as well as their supply of wonderful food and beautiful women. Why then can't that fox become one of them? Look, another fox has slunk into the temple. I couldn't tell if the first one was male or female but this one is obviously a female, a pregnant one at that. How do I know? Because her sagging belly and swollen teats brush against the wet doorjamb as she slips in. That and her movements, which are less agile than those of her predecessor. Could the first one be her mate? If so, they're safe now, for nothing is fairer than natural law, and heavenly justice will never bring harm to a fox foetus. Little by little the hailstone in my mouth melts, until it's gone, just as the Wise Monk opens his eyes a crack and looks at me. He seems not to have noticed the foxes, nor is he aware of the sounds of wind, thunder and rain out in the yard, which reminds me of the great divide between us. All right, I'll keep talking —

The north wind was howling that morning, drawing loud complaints from the fire in the stove. The sheet metal lining the bottom of the flue turned bright red and grey metal filings flew off in bursts. The frost covering the walls was transformed into crystalline beads of water not quite ready to slither to the floor. The chilblains on my hands and feet itched and pus oozed from my ears. The melting of humans is a painful process. Mother, who had prepared corn congee in an undersized metal wok, about half full, selected a turnip from the pickling jar outside the kitchen window, broke it in two and handed me the larger piece. That would be our breakfast. I knew she'd saved at least three thousand RMB in the bank, apart from the two thousand she'd lent Shen Gang, a barbecued-meat vendor, at 20 per cent interest a month (a textbook case of usury, with compound interest). How could I be happy eating that kind of breakfast, given the amount of money we had? But I was a ten-year-old boy whose opinion didn't count. Oh, I complained sometimes, but those complaints were invariably met with looks of distress followed by a tongue-lashing over my youthful ignorance. Mother would tell me she was being frugal for my benefit, so that one day I could buy a house and a car, which in turn would make it easier for her to find me a wife.

‘Son,’ she'd say, ‘that heartless father of yours abandoned us, and I have to show him what I'm made of. I want people in the village to see that we get along better without him.’

She also told me that her father, my grandfather, often told her that a person's mouth is only a conduit, and that after fish and meat or grains and vegetables pass through this conduit there's no longer any difference among them. You can indulge a mule or a horse, but you can't indulge yourself. If you want to live well, you must struggle against your mouth. I saw the logic in what she was saying, that if we'd concentrated on eating well over the five years Father had been gone, then we'd have had no tiled roof over our heads, and what good would a bellyful of fatty food do us if we had to live in a thatched hut? Her and Father's philosophies were poles apart. He'd have said: ‘Who wants to live in a mansion if you have to subsist on vegetables and chaff?’ I raised both hands in support of Father's view and stomped both feet in rejection of Mother's. I wished he'd come back and take me away with him, even if he sent me right back after a meal of nice, fatty meat. But all he cared about was eating well and enjoying life with Aunty Wild Mule. He'd forgotten I even existed.

We finished our congee, licking the bowls so clean that they didn't need to be washed. Then Mother took me into the yard, where we piled goods onto the bed of the rickety old walking tractor, a Lan clan castaway whose handles still carried the marks of Lao Lan's big hands. The tires were bald, the diesel engine's cylinder and piston were badly worn and the valve stuck, making the engine sound like an old man with a heart condition and asthma. When it finally turned over, it belched black smoke. It had both an air and a fuel leak and thus produced a bizarre sound somewhere between a cough and a sneeze. Lao Lan had always been a generous man, and that generosity increased drastically after he made his fortune selling water-injected meat. It was he who invented the scientific method of forcing pressurized water into the pulmonary arteries of slaughtered animals. With this method, you could empty a bucketful of water into a two-hundred- jin pig, while with the old method you could barely empty half a bucket of water into the carcass of a dead cow. In the years since, how much of the purchase price for meat the clever townspeople had spent on water from our village will never be known, but I'm sure it would be a shockingly high figure. Lao Lan had a potbelly and rosy cheeks and his voice rang out like a pealing bell. In a word, he was born to be a rich official. That ran in the family. After he became village head, he selflessly taught his water-injection method to the villagers and thus served as the leader of a local riches-through-ruse movement. Some villagers spoke out angrily and some others put up posters accusing him of being a member of the retaliatory landlord class intent on overthrowing the village dictatorship of the proletariat. But talk like that was out of fashion. Lao Lan's response to all of this, announced over the village PA system, was: ‘Dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes and a mouse is born only to dig holes.’