Mo Yan - Pow!

My father was a regular visitor to the platform, which stood ten metres tall and gave off a pleasant pine smell; he sometimes stayed up there for hours, not coming down even at mealtimes. ‘Dieh,’ I once asked, ‘what do you do up there?’ ‘Nothing,’ he said woodenly. ‘I know,’ Jiaoajiao said. He rubbed her head, looked glum and said nothing. She and I climbed up there a few times to look round and breathe in the scent of pinewood. We saw distant villages, the river, a misty line of riverbank scrub brush, uncultivated land and all sorts of vapours snaking skyward on the horizon. The vista emptied us of our emotions. ‘I know what he does up there,’ she said. ‘What?’ I asked. Sighing like an exasperated crone, she explained: ‘He thinks about the forests up north.’ As I looked into her moist eyes, I could tell there was more she wanted to say. I'd heard Father and Mother argue over this very thing. ‘I'm like a carpenter wearing a cangue she made,’ Mother said. Father replied, ‘Don't use your narrow-minded view to judge a broad-minded person,’ replied Father. ‘I'm going to ask Lao Lan to take that down tomorrow,’ Mother declared. Father pointed his finger at her: ‘Don't talk to me about him!’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Why not?’ she responded, just as angrily. ‘What's he ever done to you?’ ‘Plenty,’ Father said. ‘Let's hear it, all of it.’ ‘Are you saying you don't know what I'm talking about?’ Mother's face reddened and venom seemed to shoot from her eyes. ‘Dry filth doesn't stick to a person,’ she said. ‘You can't have waves without wind,’ he said. ‘I've done nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said. ‘He's better off than me,’ he said. ‘His family's always been better off than ours. If you'd rather be with him, I won't stand in your way, but you'll have to settle with me first.’ He turned and stalked off. Mother flung her bowl to the floor and smashed it. ‘Luo Tong,’ she snarled at his back, ‘the next time you browbeat me like that I'll do what you think I already did!’

I'll stop here, Wise Monk. Talking about that upsets me. I'll wrap up my story about the reporter instead.

Father climbed the platform to smoke; Mother went back to her office. Lao Lan, Jiaojiao and I escorted the reporter to my room, a walled-off corner of the meat-cleansing workshop. I could see activity on the work floor through gaps in the plywood walls. After describing our water treatment process, we offered to cleanse his insides, if he was willing, and then deliver him to one of the kill rooms, mix his flesh with camel and dog meat and sell it in town. Bean-sized drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and we saw that his pants were wet. ‘Whoever heard of a grown man peeing in his pants?’ Jiaojiao remarked. ‘Disgusting!’ If, on the other hand, he was unwilling to be cleansed and slaughtered, we'd be happy to hire him as head of our PR department, pay him a salary of a thousand yuan a month and a two-thousand-yuan bonus each time a story about the plant made the papers, no matter the length. Well, he signed on and wrote a long feature about the plant, one that nearly filled a page. True to our word and committed to seeing things through to the end, we gave him two thousand yuan, treated him to a lavish meal and saw him off with a hundred pounds of dog meat.

The next reporters—two of them—at the plant worked for a TV station. Pan Sun and his assistant came disguised as meat-sellers. Equipped with a hidden camera, they toured the facilities. We offered them the same hospitality and then invited them to serve as consultants too.

All the while Lao Lan and I were dealing with the reporter, Father was on his platform smoking. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, another cigarette butt sailed to the ground. He was in the depths of depression. Dieh, you poor man.

‘If Shen Yaoyao doesn't die, I will. If she does, I'll live.’ So sobbed the film star Huang Feiyun last night as she sat on a sofa in front of Lan Laoda. ‘I can't help myself. I love you. I'll pretend I'm dead if she lives but I'll choose life if she dies. The child is your flesh and blood, so you have to marry me.’ ‘How much do you want?’ Lan asked callously. ‘Is that what you think I came to you for—money, you bastard ? ’ she fumed. ‘Why else would you try to palm off someone else's child on me ? You of all people should remember that I haven't so much as touched you since you got married. Unless I'm mistaken, your esteemed daughter was born three years after that, and I've never heard of a gestation period that long.’ ‘I knew you'd say that,’ said Huang Feiyun, ‘but you've forgotten that your sperm samples were deposited in the Celebrity Sperm Bank.’ Lan Laoda lit a cigar with his pistol-shaped cigarette lighter and looked up at the ceiling. ‘You're right,’ he said. ‘I was tricked into making that deposit because they said I had extraordinary genes. Did you put them up to that ? You've gone to great lengths, haven't you ? But if that's how things stand, you can send the boy over. I'll hire the best tutor and the best nanny to educate him and take care of him and make him into a statesman, and you can concentrate on being the virtuous wife of a businessman.’ Huang Feiyun was unyielding : ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why not ? Why is it so important for you to marry me ? ’ Tears in her eyes, she said, ‘I know it makes no sense. I know you're a big-time gangster, a monster who works both sides of the road, criminal and law-abiding, and that marrying you is like signing my death warrant. But that's what I want. I think of it every minute of every day, I'm under your spell.’ Lan Laoda laughed : ‘I was married once and she suffered because of it. Why would you want to suffer too ? Listen to me when I say I'm not a man — I'm a horse, a stud horse, and stud horses belong to all the mares in a herd. After a stud horse has serviced a mare, he's done with her and she must go away. As I say, I'm not a man, and you shouldn't consider yourself a woman. And if you're a mare, then you wouldn't entertain the absurd idea of marrying me.’ Huang Feiyun pounded her chest and said in a voice choked with anguish: ‘I'm a mare, I am, a mare who dreams night after night of coupling with a stud horse that empties her out.’ Crying, she ripped open her bodice and her now ruined, expensive dress fell to the floor. She then tore off her bra and her panties. Completely naked, she began running round the living room shouting: ‘I'm a mare…I'm a mare…’ I am startled awake by an uproar outside the temple gate, though Huang Feiyun's hysterical shouts continue to echo in my ears. When I sneak a peek at the Wise Monk, the look of agony in his face has been replaced by one of serenity. Before I can continue with my tale, there is a racket outside. When I look up I see a large truck parked by the side of the road, piled high with sawed planks and thick logs. A gang of men begin heaving the lumber on which they were sitting to the ground, where a boy is nearly crushed by one of the cascading logs. ‘Hey,’ he shouts, ‘what are you doing ? ’ ‘Get out of the way, boy,’ a squat worker in a wicker hard hat shouts back, ‘or there'll be no one to weep over your corpse.’ ‘I want to know what you're doing,’ the boy demands. ‘Run home and tell your mother that there'll be an opera here tonight,’ the man says. ‘Oh, so you're going to build a stage ! Which opera ? ’ he asks, barely able to control his delight. A long plank cuts loose and slides off the truck. ‘Get out of the way, boy ! ’ a man on the truck shrieks. ‘I can't, not till you tell me which opera.’ ‘OK, all righty, it's From Meat Boy to Meat God. Now, will you get out of the way ! ’ ‘Sure,’ he says, ‘now that you've told me.’ ‘What a strange little prick, one of them says as a log rolls to the ground. The boy hops out of the way but the log rolls after him, as if it has him in its sights and then finally comes to a stop at the little temple gate. The fresh, clean smell of tree sap brings news of the virgin forest and, as I breathe in the clean fragrance of pine, I am reminded of the rebirth platform at United Meatpacking Plant all those years ago. As usual it stirs up painful memories. That was where my poor father went to smoke, to meditate and to be lonely. It's where he began spending most of every day, effectively putting affairs of the plant out of his mind.