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  Thunder rolls in the distance, like cavalry bearing down on us. Some feathers fly into the dark temple, carrying the stink of blood, like frightened children, bobbing in the air and then sticking to the Wutong Spirit. The feathers remind me of the recent slaughter in the tree outside, and announce that the wind is up. It is, and it carries with it the stench of muddy soil and vegetation. The stuffy temple cools down, and more cinders fall out of the air over our heads, gathering on the Wise Monk's shiny pate and on his fly-covered ears. The flies remain unmoved. Studying them closely for a few seconds, I see them rub their shiny eyes with their spindly legs. In spite of their bad name, they're a talented species. I don't think any other creature can rub its eyes with its legs and be so graceful about it. Out in the yard, the immobile gingko tree whistles in the wind which has grown stronger. As have the smells it carries, which now include the fetid stench of decaying animals and the filth at the bottom of a nearby pond. Rain can't be far off. It's the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the day when the legendary herd-boy and the weaving maid—Altair and Vega—separated for the rest of the year by the Milky Way, get to meet. A loving couple, in the prime of their youth, forced to gaze at each other across a starry river, permitted to meet only once a year for three days—how tortured they must be! The passion of newlyweds cannot compare to that of the long separated, who want only to embrace for three days—as a boy, I often heard the village women say things like that. Lots of tears are shed over those three days, which are fated to be full of rain. Even after three years of drought, the seventh day of the seventh lunar month cannot be forgotten! A streak of lightning illuminates every detail of the temple interior. The lecherous grin on the face of the Horse Spirit, one of the five Wutong Spirit idols, makes my heart shudder. A man's head on a horse's body, a bit like the label of that famous French liquor. A row of sleeping bats hangs upside down from the beam above its head as the dull rumble of thunder rolls towards us from far away, like millstones turning in unison. Then more streaks of lightning, and deafening thunderclaps. A scorched smell pounds into the temple from the yard. Startled, I nearly jump out of my skin. But the Wise Monk sits there, placid as ever. The thunder grows louder, more violent, an unbroken string of crashes, and a downpour begins, the raindrops slanting in on us. What look like oily green fireballs roll about in the yard. Something like a gigantic claw with razor-sharp tips reaches down from the heavens and waits, suspended above the doorway, eager to force its way inside and grab hold of me—me, naturally—and then hang my corpse from the big tree outside, the tadpole characters etched on my back announcing my crimes to all who can read the cryptic words. As if by instinct, I move behind the Wise Monk, who shields me, and I am reminded of the beautiful woman who lay sprawled in the breach in the wall, combing her hair. Now there is no trace of her. The breach has turned into a cascade, and I think I see strands of hair in the cascading water, infusing a subtle osmanthus fragrance into the torrent…Then I hear the Wise Monk say: ‘Go on—’

  POW! 2

  My teeth were chattering. So cold! I buried my head under the covers and curled into a ball. Heat from the dead fire under the kang had long since disappeared, and the bedding was too thin to protect me from the icy concrete floor. Not daring to move, I wished I could turn into a cocooned bug. Through the bedding I heard the muffled sounds of Mother lighting the fire in the next room, the cracks of splitting firewood (that's how she vented her ire towards Father and Aunty Wild Mule). Why didn't she hurry and get the fire roaring?—that was the only way to drive the damp chill out of the room. At the same time I didn't want her to hurry because as soon as she had the fire going she'd try and get me out of bed. Her first shout would be relatively gentle; her second louder and higher and more annoyed. The third would be a bestial roar. A fourth had never been necessary, for if I hadn't rocketed out from under the covers on the third shout, she'd flick the covers off and whack my bottom with her broom. When it got that far, I knew I was doomed. For if, after the first painful whack, I jumped out of bed and onto the windowsill or scuttled out of range on the far side of the kang, she'd jump up without even taking off her muddy shoes, grab me by the hair or the scruff of my neck, press me down against the kang and really pound me with that broom. If I didn't try to get away or to resist, which she always took as a sign of contempt, her anger would boil over and she'd beat me even harder. However things progressed, if I was not on my feet by the third shout, my bottom and the poor broom were both bound to suffer. The beatings were accompanied by heavy breathing and guttural sounds—the growls of a wild animal, filled with emotion but devoid of identifiable words. But after the broom had hit me thirty times or so, the strength in her arms began to flag and the edge in her voice grew dull. The shouting would grow softer and softer and then the curses would begin—‘little mongrel’, ‘bastard turtle’, ‘rabbit runt’—followed by a verbal assault on my father. Actually, she didn't have to waste time on him, since she more or less repeated what she'd said to me, with few inventions. It was never a particularly spirited effort and even I could tell it lacked punch. When you went into the city from our village, you had to pass the little train station. When Mother finished cursing me, she made a quick pass through Father on her way to Aunty Wild Mule, her true destination. Spitting on Father's reputation, she'd move down the narrow tracks to Aunty Wild Mule. Her voice would grow louder once again, and the tears that had come to her eyes while she was cursing Father and me would be seared dry by fury. I would have invited anyone who did not subscribe to the saying ‘When enemies come face to face, their eyes blaze with loathing’ to look at my mother's eyes while she cursed Aunty Wild Mule. With my father, it was always the same few epithets, over and over, but when it was Aunty Wild Mule's turn the richness of the Chinese language was plumbed as never before. ‘My man is a stud horse reduced to fucking a jackass!’ ‘My man is an elephant humping the life out of a little bitch!’ And so on. Mother's classic curses were of her own creation but, even with their many variations, they never strayed far from the central theme. My father, truth be known, had become Mother's principal weapon in exacting revenge. Only by imagining him as a large, powerful beast, and only by depicting Aunty Wild Mule as a little frail animal victimized by his power, was she able to release the loathing that filled her heart. As she described the humiliating effect of Father's genitals on Aunty Wild Mule, the tempo of the broom-beating slowed and the force of each whack lessened until she forgot all about me. At that point, I silently got up, dressed and stood off to one side to listen, fascinated, as she continued to curse brilliantly, and a rash of concerns flooded my mind. First, I was disappointed by the curses hurled at me. If I was a ‘mongrel’, then which illicit canine affair produced me? If I was a ‘bastard turtle’, then where did I come from? And if I was a ‘rabbit runt’, who was the mamma bunny? She thought she was cursing me but she was cursing herself. When she thought she was cursing my father, she was also cursing herself. Even the curses she poured on Aunty Wild Mule, when you think about it, were pointless. My father couldn't turn into an elephant or a stud horse in a million years and, even if he did, how was he supposed to mate with a bitch? A domesticated stud horse might mate with a wild mule, but that would only happen if the mule was willing. Of course I'd have never revealed any of this to Mother—I can't imagine what that would have led to. Nothing to my advantage, that's for sure, and I wasn't stupid enough to go looking for trouble. After she'd tired herself cursing, Mother would cry, buckets of tears. Then, after she'd cried herself out, she'd dry her eyes with her sleeve and walk out into the yard, dragging me along, to begin earning the day's wages. As if to make up for the time wasted beating, cursing and crying, she'd double her speed of activity. At the same time, she'd keep closer watch on me than usual. All this illustrates why a kang that was never warm enough held little attraction for me, and all it took to wake me up was the crackling sounds of the stove, whether or not Mother shouted at me. I'd clamber into clothes that were as cold as a suit of armour,
roll up the bedding, scurry off to the toilet to pee and then stand in the doorway, hands at my sides, waiting for Mother to tell me what to do. As I've said, she was more than frugal, she was downright mean and not given to casually lighting a fire. But the cold, dank rooms once made us both as sick as dogs: our knees swelled up bright red, our legs grew numb and we had to spend quite a bit on medicines before either of us was back on our feet again. The doctor warned us: If we planned to go on living, we had to warm up the house to burn the chill off the walls. ‘Coal is cheaper than medicine,’ he said. Mother had no choice but to set up a stove. So she went to the train station and bought a tonne of coal to heat our new house. How I wished the doctor had said: ‘Unless you're in a hurry to die, you have to start eating meat.’ But he never did; in fact, the quack told us not to eat greasy food, to follow a bland, and if possible vegetarian, diet. It would not only keep us healthy but also help us live longer. Arsehole! He should have known that after Father ran off we were reduced to eating plain food every day, as plain as a funeral procession, as plain as snow on a mountain peak. Five long years and I'll bet the strongest soap in the world couldn't scrape a drop of grease off my intestines.

  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—

  POW! 3

  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.