the broken glass and mopped the floor, then propped up his head and pried open his mouth with a sterilized stainless-steel tongue-depressor to insert a hard plastic funnel, through which they fed him sobering-up soup, one spoonful after another.
‘What grade soup is that?’ Diamond Jin asked.
‘First,’ the red serving girl in charge replied.
‘Use second grade,’ Diamond Jin said. ‘It’ll sober him up faster.’
The serving girl went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of gold-colored liquid. As the wooden stopper was removed, a cool, refreshing odor went straight from the bottle into the hearts of the people in the room. They poured more than half of the golden liquid into the funnel. Ding Gou’er coughed, he choked, the liquid shot up out of the funnel like a geyser.
He felt a cool stream of liquid enter his digestive tract, where it extinguished the fires and reawakened his mental faculties. Now that his body had come back to life, he recaptured the beautiful butterfly of consciousness that was trying to climb out of his skull. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the headless little boy sitting in the gilded platter; that sent stabbing pains straight to his heart. Dear mother! he blurted out involuntarily. Oh the agony! He raised his pistol.
Diamond Jin raised his chopsticks.
‘Comrade Ding Gou’er,’ he said, ‘if we really are monsters who eat little boys, you have every right to shoot us dead. But what if we aren’t? The Party gave you that pistol to punish evil-doers, not to indiscriminately snuff out the lives of the innocent.’
‘If you have something to say, out with it,’ Ding Gou’er said.
Diamond Jin took one of his chopsticks and thrust it into the headless little boy’s darling little erect penis. The boy crumbled in the platter and turned into a pile of body parts. Using his chopstick as a pointer, Diamond Jin launched into his clarification:
‘This is one of the boy’s arms, it’s made of rich lotus root from Moon Lake, melon, and sixteen herbs and spices, fashioned with extraordinary artistry. This leg is actually a special ham sausage. The boy’s torso is made from a processed suckling sow. The head, to which your bullet put an end, was fashioned out of a silver melon. His hair was nothing more than strings of the hirsute vegetable. Now it’s impossible for me to give you a detailed and accurate description of all the materials or the meticulous and complex workmanship that went into the preparation of this famous dish, since it’s patented here in Liquorland. Besides, I have only a rough idea myself. Otherwise, I’d be a chef too. But I am authorized to inform you that this dish is legal and humane, and that it should be the target of chopsticks, not a bullet.’
Having said his piece, Diamond Jin picked up one of the boy’s hands and began eating it hungrily. The Party Secretary or Mine Director stabbed an arm with a silver fork and placed it on Ding Gou’er’s plate.
‘Go ahead, Comrade Ding, old fellow,’ he said respectfully, ‘dig in.’
Still agitated, Ding Gou’er subjected the arm to a careful examination. It had the appearance of rich lotus root, yet looked like a real arm. The aroma was certainly seductive, sweet, like that of lotus root, yet uniquely unfamiliar. Sheepishly he put the pistol back into his briefcase. Just because I’m here on special assignment doesn’t mean I can go around shooting anyone and anything I please! I must be more careful. Diamond Jin picked up a sharp knife and – one-two-three – chopped the other arm into ten pieces. He picked up one and held it out to Ding Gou’er.
‘Five-eyed lotus root,’ he said. ‘How about an arm, does it have eyes?’
As he listened to Diamond Jin gnaw on the arm, he could tell it was lotus root. He looked down at the piece in front of him, and couldn’t decide if he should try it or not. The Party Secretary and Mine Director were chewing on the boy’s legs. Diamond Jin handed him the knife and smiled his encouragement. Taking the knife, he tentatively laid the blade against the arm. As if drawn by a magnet, it sank into the armlike lotus root with a slurp and sliced it in two.
He picked up a piece of the arm with his chopsticks, closed his eyes, and crammed it into his mouth. Waaa, my god! His taste buds cheered in unison, his jaw muscles twitched, and a hand reached up from his throat to pull the thing down.
‘That’s the ticket.’ Diamond Jin said cheerfully. ‘Now Comrade Ding Gou’er is wallowing in the muck with the rest of us. You’ve eaten a little boy’s arm.’
Ding Gou’er froze. ‘You told me it wasn’t real,’ he said as his suspicions returned.
‘Oh, my dear comrade,’ Diamond Jin said, ‘don’t be silly. I was just having fun with you! Use your head. Liquorland’s a civilized city, not some savage, backwater nation. Who could bear to actually eat children? That the Higher Procuratorate believed such a fantastic tale and actually sent someone to investigate makes quite a case for its standards. Those of a novelist with an overactive imagination, if you ask me.’
The two mine dignitaries held out their glasses.
‘Comrade Ding,’ they said, ‘you had no reason to fire your pistol. Your punishment is three glasses!’
Ding Gou’er accepted this well-deserved punishment with equanimity.
‘Comrade Ding, you see everything in black and white,’ Diamond Jin said. ‘You either love or you hate. Here’s to you, three glasses!’
As a man who thrived on flattery, Ding Gou’er happily complied.
Now with six glassfuls in his stomach, the blur returned. When the Mine Director or Party Secretary passed half of the other arm to him, he threw down his chopsticks, snatched it up in both hands, grease and all, and attacked it with his teeth.
Everyone laughed as Ding Gou’er gobbled up the arm. The Mine Director and Party Secretary urged the red serving girls to toast their guest. The coquettish red girls managed to coax Ding Gou’er into downing another twenty-one glassfuls. He was stuck to the ceiling when he heard Diamond Jin say his good-byes. From his vantage point on the ceiling he watched Diamond Jin walk tranquilly out of the dining hall and heard him tell the Mine Director and Party Secretary to attend to something on his way out. The spring-hung naugahyde-covered doors were opened by two red girls, one on either side, respectful and attentive. He noticed how their hair was coifed atop their heads, he noticed their necks, and he also noticed the swellings on their chests. He immediately castigated himself for being such a degenerate voyeur. He saw the Party Secretary and Mine Director say something to the leader of the red serving girls on their way out. Now that all the men had left the room, the red serving girls crowded around the table and dug in, stuffing food into their mouths with both hands. They ate like barbarians, a far cry from their demeanor of a moment before. He saw the shell of his body, slouched in a chair like a hunk of dead meat, his neck pressing against the chair back, his head flopping to one side, liquor dribbling out of his mouth like an overturned gourd. From his vantage point on the ceiling, he wept over the half-dead body he had left behind.
Once they finished eating, the girls wiped their mouths with the tablecloth. One of them picked up a pack of China cigarettes when no one was looking and stuffed it into her bra. He sighed in commiseration for her breast, which had to share its cup with cigarettes. He heard the girl in charge say:
‘Come on, girls, carry this drunken kitty over to the guest house,’
Two girls tried lifting him up by the arms, but had trouble holding him, as if he were a rag doll. He heard a girl with a mole behind one ear grumble, The damned dog! That angered him. He watched as one of the girls picked up his briefcase, unzipped it, and took out the pistol, turning it over in her hand to get a good look at it. He cried out in alarm from the ceiling: Put that down! It could go off. But they might as well have been deaf. God help me! She shoved the pistol back into the briefcase, then unzipped an inner pocket and removed his mistress’s photograph. Come look at this! she said. The red girls crowded round and happily voiced their opinions. His anger reached its peak, as a stream of filthy language spewed from his mouth. The girls were oblivious to it all.
At long last, the red serving girls managed to hoist up my body enough to drag me out of the dining room and onto the hallway carpet, as if they were disposing of a corpse. One of them kicked me in the calf- intentionally. Slut. My flesh may be insensate, but my spirit isn’t. Hovering three feet above their heads, I flapped my wings and began to glide through the air, following behind my useless corporeal body and gazing at it with deep sadness. It was, it seemed, a very long hallway. I watched the liquor seep out of my mouth and run down my neck. It stank to high heaven, and the red girls plugged their noses to avoid it. One had an attack of the dry heaves. With my head slumped on my chest, my neck looked like a wilted stalk of garlic. No wonder my head lolled back and forth. I couldn’t see my face, but had a bird’s-eye view of both my pale ears. One of the red girls followed along carrying my briefcase.
At long last we made it to the end of the seemingly endless hallway, where I saw a familiar large hall. They
