Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today (7 page)

The first order of business for Old Shu, whose methods of punishment were unique on Fragrant Cedar Street, was to tie Shu Gong to his bed. Then he removed a cigarette from his son's pack, lit it, and puffed it vigorously. He asked the hogtied Shu Gong, "Want a puff?" Shu Gong shook his head. "Here, try it. Don't you want to be a smoker?" Before waiting for an answer, he shoved the lit end of the cigarette into Shu Gong's mouth, and Shu Gong screamed bloody murder. Old Shu clamped his hand over his son's mouth. "Stop that crazy screaming. It won't hurt long. The cigarette will burn out in no time. You can have another one tomorrow if you want."

Shu Nong's punishment was a touchier matter since Old Shu wasn't sure how to handle the situation. When he called his younger son into the little storeroom, he could barely keep from laughing as he held the three condoms in his hand and asked, "Do you know what these are?"

"No."

"Where did you get them?"

"The river. I fished them out."

"What did you have in mind? You're not making balloons out of them, are you?"

Shu Nong didn't answer. Then Old Shu saw flashes of deep green light in his son's eyes as he answered in a raspy voice: "They're yours."

"What did you say?" Suddenly, Old Shu knew he had a problem. He wrapped his hands around Shu Nong's neck and shook his puny skull for all he was worth. "How do you know they're mine?"

Shu Nong's face was turning purple, but rather than answer, he just stared into the strangler's face, then let his gaze slide down past the brawny chest and come to rest on his father's fly.

"What are you looking at?" Old Shu slapped Shu Nong, who flinched although his gaze stuck stubbornly to his father's fly. He was given another glimpse of the blue glare, which made him lightheaded. Old Shu grabbed his son's hair and banged his head against the wall. "Who were you spying on? Who in the hell have you been spying on?" Shu Nong's head banged into the wall once, twice, but he felt no pain. He was watching blue specks dance before his eyes like a swarm of wasps. He heard the screech of a cat on the roof; he and the sound merged into a single entity.

"Cat," Shu Nong said weakly as he licked his torn gums.

Old Shu wasn't sure what his son was talking about. "Are you saying the cat was spying?"

"Right, the cat was spying."

Some Fragrant Cedar Street neighbors passing beneath the window at number 18 stopped to gawk as Old Shu beat his son mercilessly. People living on Fragrant Cedar Street considered boys well raised if they were beaten often, so there was nothing unusual here. But the victim's behavior perplexed them. Instead of screaming and carrying on, Shu Nong appeared determined to bear up under the punishment, which was a big change from before.

"What did Shu Nong do?" one of the window gawkers asked.

"Wet the bed!" Old Shu replied from inside.

No one had any reason to suspect any different, since Shu Nong's bed-wetting was well-known up and down Fragrant Cedar Street. The neighbors were sensitive, alert people but not particularly adept at digging beneath the surface to get to the heart of a matter. When Shu Nong's destructive tendencies first began to manifest themselves, the people were too tied up in their belief that he was still fourteen and still wet the bed to spot the differences.

Shu Nong had stopped wetting the bed at the age of fourteen, but no one would believe it. Or better put, people found Shu Nong's bed-wetting interesting, but not the cessation of his bed-wetting. Take Shu Nong's mortal enemy, Hanzhen, for instance: she chanted the following when she jumped rope:

One four seven, two five eight,

Shu Nong bed-wets at a nightly rate.

Hanli, who rarely spoke to her mother, told a schoolmate, "My mother's a slut, and I despise her."

Folks assumed that Hanli was aware of her bloodline. Since half the women on Fragrant Cedar Street feuded with Qiu Yumei, any one of them would have happily let her in on the secret. But more to the point was Hanli's precociousness. She didn't need to be told what was what. You can't wrap a fire in paper, after all.

Hanli had not spoken to Old Shu for years. He bought her a scarf for her seventeenth birthday, but deaf to his entreaties, she cut him dead at the foot of the stairs. So he gave the scarf to Qiu Yumei, who tried to drape it around Hanli's shoulders. Hanli tore it out of her hands and flung it to the ground, then spit on it. "Who needs it? Who knows what you're up to?"

"Old Shu gave it to you only because he likes you. Don't be an ingrate."

"Who asked him to like me? Who knows what you're up to?"

"What do you mean by 'what we're up to'?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"No, I
don't
. You tell me."

"I'm ashamed to." Suddenly burying her face in her hands, Hanli burst out crying. Then, with tears still streaming down her face, she began combing her hair before the mirror. In the reflection, she saw her mother bend over to pick up the scarf, her face frightfully pale. Hanli wished her mother would rush up and pull her hair so they could have a real fight and get some of that hatred out of their systems. But Qiu Yumei just stood there, wordlessly twisting the scarf around her fingers. Threads of pity settled over Hanli, who said through her sobs, "I don't want it. Give it to Hanzhen."

So Qiu Yumei took back the scarf, and the next day she wore it outside. Eventually it was Hanzhen who went to school with Old Shu's scarf draped around her shoulders. When asked, she said her mother had ordered it from Shanghai and that her mother loved her and not Hanli.

It was a different matter with Old Lin, whom Hanli treated with fatherly respect. In fact, this alone was the source of at least half the praise Hanli received on Fragrant Cedar Street. Whenever Old Lin was in the middle of a neighborhood chess game, she brought him food and tea, and back home she drew his bathwater. She even trimmed his nails for him. Qiu Yumei told people Hanli was trying to be an elder sister to Old Lin, treating him like a little boy.

"And what about you?" they would ask. "How does that make you feel?"

"It's fine with me," Qiu Yumei would say. "It makes my life easier."

Let's say it's a blustery day and that the rain is pounding the sheet-metal roof of number 18, turning everything wet and forsaken at dusk. A frustrated Old Lin is searching for an umbrella beneath the stairs. He never knows where the family umbrella is kept. He opens Hanli's door. "Where's the umbrella?" Hanli looks at him but says nothing, so he tosses things around until he finds an umbrella with broken ribs and torn oil paper, which he can't open, no matter how hard he tries.

"Chess," Hanli says. "That's all you think about even when it's pouring rain. Don't come running to me if you catch your death of cold."

Old Lin flings the broken umbrella to the floor. "Don't tell me there isn't a working umbrella anywhere in the house!"

"There is," Hanli says, "but she took it when she went out. Would it kill you to stick around and pass up one chess match?"

Old Lin sighs. "Shit, what's there to do on a day like this except play chess?" He sits down and arranges the pieces just to keep busy, and Hanli surprises him by sitting down across the table.

"I'll play a game," Hanli says.

"Don't be silly, you don't know how to play."

"Sure I do. I learned by watching you."

"All right." Old Lin reflects for a moment. "I'll hand over one of my pieces. What do you want, cart, horse, or cannon?"

Hanli looks down at Old Lin's hands without answering. She's acting strange today.

"You can have two carts and a cannon. What do you say?"

"Up to you."

Old Lin removes two carts and a cannon and lets Hanli open. But she just moves her vanguard cannon and stops. Obviously, her mind isn't on chess.

"Papa, why don't you two sleep in the same room?"

"Just play, and no foolish questions."

"No. I want some answers."

"She doesn't like me, and I don't like her, so why should we sleep in the same room?"

"But I hear noises in her room at night."

"She walks in her sleep. She's never been a sound sleeper."

"No, I heard Old Shu from downstairs-"

"Keep playing, and stop with all that nonsense."

"Everyone says she and Old Shu-"

"You're getting on my nerves!" He picks up a chess piece and bangs the board with it. "What you people do is your business."

"What do you mean
our
business? It's your business, too. Do you know what people call you?"

"Shut up! Now you're really getting on my nerves!" He stands up, grabs the chessboard, and dumps everything on Hanli. "You bastards won't let me live in peace!"

Old Lin scoops up the broken umbrella and runs downstairs. Rain beating down on the sheet-metal roof has turned the dusk wet and forsaken. Hanli is on her knees, picking up the chess pieces, biting her lip to keep from crying out loud. She tries to figure out what's up with her father. What's up with this family? She can tell by the sound that the rain is picking up, and before long she fantasizes that it is about to innundate Fragrant Cedar Street. From where she sits on the floor, she feels as if the whole building were sinking. With darkness settling around her, she gets up to turn on the lights. Nothing happens, which scares her. Rushing over to the window to look downstairs, she sees Shu Gong poke his head out his window to pull in the line on which his blue underpants had been drying. Darkness claims Fragrant Cedar Street, all but a single bright spot on the crown of Shu Gong's head. Hanli runs downstairs, her flying feet making the stairway shake and creak. In the grip of a vaguely despairing thought, she hears her heart murmur, People should leave one another alone. I'll leave you alone, and you do the same for me.

Hanli bursts into the little room in the Shu flat and plops breathlessly into a wicker chair. Shu Gong eyes her suspiciously. "Who's after you?"

"Ghosts," Hanli says.

"The electricity is out, probably a clowned wire."

"It's not the dark I'm afraid of."

"Then what is it?"

"I'm not sure."

"You don't have to be afraid of anything while I'm around." Unable to see Hanli's face in the darkness, Shu Gong grabs hold of the wicker chair and leans down to look more closely; but she turns away from him, the tip of her braid brushing his face.

"People should leave one another alone," Hanli says. "I'm not going to get involved in their affairs anymore, and they'd better not get involved in mine."

"Who's involved in whose affairs?" Shu Gong stops to ponder. "People should try to take care of themselves."

"I'm not talking to you," Hanli says.

"Then who are you talking to?" Shu Gong lifts a strand of her hair and tugs it.

"To myself." She slaps at his hand but misses, which he finds exciting.

"You're something, sure as hell." He yanks the hair out by its root. "It sure is long," he says, mesmerized by the strand of hair. "And really dark." A pulsating desire wraps itself around him; suddenly materializing, it emanates from Hanli, her natural scent making him limp all over. It is more than he can stand. He can hardly breathe. The time has come to inject life into the fantasy that visits him at night. Without warnings he throws his arms around Hanli, sticks out his tongue, and licks her lips. She screams and struggles to get out of the wicker chair, but the frantically licking Shu Gong covers her mouth with his hand. "Don't scream! Keep it up, and I'll kill you!"

Hanli recoils like a little bunny and lets him lick her face as much as he likes, calming herself by staring at the curtain of rain outside the window. "This isn't so bad," she says, sensing the time has come to see what it's like to be with a boy. She can show Qiu Yumei that she knows a thing or two about being shameless, too.

This isn't so bad. People should leave one another alone. Hanli smiles and gently pushes Shu Gong away. "We need a real date," she says in the darkness, emphasizing the word
date
.

"How do we do that?" Shu Gong asks, holding her hand and not letting go. He is breathing hard.

"Leave it to me, I'll teach you," she says. "Now let go."

"If you're playing games with me, I'll kill you." Shu Gong shoves her away. He is already very, very wet.

"I'm not." Hanli gets to her feet, puckers up, and gives Shu Gong a peck on the cheek. "I have to go upstairs. We'll do it. Just be patient."

In his search for some wire to make a toy gun, Shu Nong went into the storage room beneath the stairs. The latch was broken, so all it took was a good shove to open the door. Shu Nong found it strange that the room was deserted except for the cat sitting on an old slatted trunk, its eyes flashing. He wondered if the cat was up to no good, since cats are such inscrutable animals. When he walked over to pick it up, the cat sprang out of the way, leaving a pair of plum-blossom paw prints on the trunk. Shu Nong recalled this trunk as a place where his father stored all kinds of odds and ends. Maybe he'd find the wire he needed inside. He raised the lid and nearly jumped out of his skin. Two people were coiled up inside, and they were as frightened as he was.

Shu Gong and Hanli tried to make themselves invisible inside the trunk. He was naked, so was she. His face was scarlet, hers was ghostly white.

"What do you think you're doing?" Shu Nong nearly shouted.

"Playing hide-and-seek." Hanli covered her face with her hands.

"Liar," Shu Nong said scornfully. "I know what you're up to."

"Don't tell anybody, Shu Nong." Hanli grabbed his arm. "I'll give you anything you want."

"We'll see how I feel."

Shu Nong slammed the lid down and turned to leave. By then, the cat was outside, so he walked toward it. Shu Gong jumped out of the trunk, grabbed him from behind, and dragged him back into the storage room. He easily knocked Shu Nong to the floor, then walked over and shut the door. "What are you doing here?"