eat nails and shit springs into a mangy cur who had lost his soul? And was it possible that an ordinary-looking woman could possess that power? The answer was no, so putting all the blame on her was unfair. Something mysterious was going on here, and the old man who patrolled the night with his dog was at the heart of that mystery. Sensing that great wisdom was contained in that elongated head, Ding Gou’er made up his mind to go looking for him.
He set out on legs that had turned stiff, heading in the direction the old man and his dog had taken. From off in the distance came the sound of night trucks driving across a steel bridge, a steady
LIQUORLAND MARTYRS’ CEMETERY
He rushed up to the gate and grabbed hold of the steel rods rising above the gate, like a man in jail; they were sticky enough to peel the skin right off his hands. The big yellow dog ran up to the gate, barking frantically, but he held his ground. Then the loud, scratchy voice of the old revolutionary emerged from the other side of the battlement; the dog stopped barking and hopping around, then hung its head and wagged its tail. The old revolutionary appeared before Ding Gou’er, shotgun slung over his shoulder, the brass buttons on his overcoat emblematic of his commanding authority,
‘What the hell are you up to?’ he demanded sternly.
With a loud sniffle, Ding Gou’er replied tearfully, ‘Gramps, I really am a special investigator for the provincial Higher Procuratorate.’
‘What are you here for?’
‘To investigate a very serious matter.’
‘What serious matter might that be?’
‘A gang of cannibalistic dignitaries are cooking and eating infants.’
Til kill every last one of them!’
‘Don’t go off half-cocked, Gramps. Let me in and I’ll tell you the whole story.’
The old revolutionary swung open a small side gate. ‘Squeeze in through there,’ he said.
Ding Gou’er hesitated, because he’d spotted some fine yellow hairs stuck in the corner.
‘Are you coming in or not?’
Ding Gou’er bent down and slipped through the gate.
‘Stuffed bellies like you can’t hold a candle to my dog.’
As Ding Gou’er followed the old revolutionary into a gate house, he was reminded of the gate house at the Mount Luo mine and the gateman with the wild mop of bristly hair.
The gate house was ablaze with light, the walls a snowy white. A fire-heated brick bed occupied half the room’s space; a wall as wide as the bed separated it from a stove on which a wok rested. Pine kindling kept the fire roaring and filled the air with its fragrance.
The old revolutionary unstrapped his shotgun and hung it on the wall, removed his overcoat and tossed it onto the bed, then rubbed his hands and said:
‘Burning firewood and sleeping on a heated bed is my one special privilege.’ He looked at Ding Gou’er and asked, ‘After decades of making revolution, which left me with seven or eight scars the size of ricebowls, don’t you think I deserve it?’
So mellowed by the pervading warmth that he was about to doze off, Ding Gou’er replied, ‘Yes, of course you do.’
‘But that rotten son of a bitch Section Chief Yu wants to have me start burning acacia instead of pine. I’ve made revolution all my adult life, even had the head of my prick shot off by the Jap devils – I’ll never have sons or grandsons to carry on my line – so what’s the big deal in burning a little pine in my old age? I’m already eighty, how many pine trees can I use up in the years left to me, hm? I tell you, if the King of Heaven came to earth, he couldn’t stop me from burning pine!’ Waving his arms and slobbering, the old fellow was getting increasingly agitated.’What was it you said just now? Something about people eating infants? Cannibals? They’re worse than animals! Who are they? Tomorrow I’ll go kill every last one of them! I’ll shoot ‘em first and make my report later. At worst I’ll get a demerit or two. I’ve killed hundreds of people in my lifetime, all of them bad – traitors, counterrevolutionaries, invaders – and now that I’m old, it’s time to kill a few cannibalistic animals!’
Ding Gou’er itched all over; his clothes reeked of moist, steamy ashes. ‘That’s what I’m here to investigate,’ he said.
Investigate, my ass!’ the old revolutionary cackled. ‘Take ‘em out and shoot ‘em, I say! Investigate, my ass!’
‘Gramps, we’re living under a system of laws these days. You can’t just go around shooting people without hard evidence.’
‘Then get on with your investigation. What the hell are you hanging around here for? What happened to your class consciousness? What happened to your work ethic? The enemy’s out there eating infants, and you’re in here getting toasty warm! I’ll bet you’re a Trotskyite! A member of the bourgeoisie! A running dog of imperialism!’
This flood of invective from the old revolutionary snapped Ding Gou’er out of his dreamy stupor, as if his head had been splattered with dog’s blood, his chest filled with roiling waves of heat. He tore off his clothes, until he was standing there naked, except for his scuffed shoes. Squatting down in front of the stove, he stirred the fire inside and added some oily pine kindling, sending white smoke reeking of pine up his nostrils; he sneezed, and it felt good. Draping his clothing over pieces of kindling, he held it up to the fire to dry; it sizzled like a reeking donkey hide. The fire also heated his bare skin, making it sting and itch. The more he scratched and rubbed himself, the better he felt.
‘Have you got fucking scabies?’ the old revolutionary asked. I got scabies once from sleeping in a haystack. The whole platoon got them. Itch? We scratched and rubbed until we bled. It didn’t help. Even our damned insides itched, and we weren’t a fighting unit anymore. We lost men without a fight. The assistant squad leader of Squad 8, Ma Shan, had a brainstorm. He bought a bunch of green onions and garlic, smashed them to a pulp, then added some salt and vinegar, and rubbed it all over our bodies. It stung like hell, it numbed the skin, it felt like a dog scratching its balls. I’ve never felt anything so good! All those fucking mites, gone just like that with a home remedy. You get sick, the government takes care of you. That’s how it’s done. I hung my head on my belt and fought for the revolution, so by rights they should take care of me…’
The investigator detected a note of bitterness, a grumbling tone in the old revolutionary’s words, a history of revolutionary hardship and suffering. What was supposed to have been a chance to pour out his heart had elicited a litany of grievances from the old-timer. Sadly disappointed, he was beginning to realize that no one can really rescue anyone else, that everyone has his own problems, and talking about them doesn’t help – the hungry man’s belly is just as empty, the thirsty man’s mouth stays just as dry. He shook out his clothes, knocked off some of the dried mud, and got dressed. The hot fabric burned his skin, transporting him to Seventh Heaven. But now that he was swathed in comfort, his spiritual suffering swelled, as a picture of the naked lady trucker and the pigeon- breasted, bow-legged humpback together in bed flashed into his head, clear as day and lifelike as a movie, the sort of thing he’d seen once through a keyhole. The longer he let the picture roll, the livelier it got, and the richer. The lady trucker was the golden color of a plump female loach, covered with oily, slippery mucus that gave off a subtle and not very pleasant odor. Yu Yichi, that warty little toad, was pawing her with his webbed feet, frothy bubbles popping in the corners of his mouth as he croaked and croaked… Ding’s heart was like a leaf shuddering in the wind; how he wished he could rip open his chest, gouge out that heart, and fling it in her face. Slut slut filthy slut! He could, it seemed, see, and see conclusively: Investigator Ding Gou’er, majestic as a statue hewed from pure marble, kicks in the cream-colored door with the tip of his leather shoe. There in front of him a bed, a solitary bed, on which the stupefied lady trucker and Yu Yichi sit – he rolls off the bed like a toad, his belly covered with hideous red spots – he stands cowering at the base of the wall – pigeon breast, humped back, bowed legs (or knock-kneed), an oversized head, white eyes, a crooked nose, no lips, yellow teeth with wide gaps, a mouth like a black hole that gives off a festering stench, big, dry, almost transparently thin and slightly yellow, twitching ears, black apelike arms that nearly scrape the ground, bushy hair all over his body, mutant-looking feet with more than the usual supply of toes, not to mention his black-as-ink donkey dick – How could you possibly sleep with a hideous creature
