Suddenly she let out a loud, piercing cry, her voice like a sharpened bamboo stalk, totally incompatible with her age, her identity, and her usual dignity and elegance. The incompatibility created a powerful discrepancy, which terrified me. I was worried she might go so far as to hang her naked self from one of the nails in the room, like a cooked swan. Which nail would that be? The one from which the picture hung? Or the one holding the calendar? Or the one for hats? Two were too flimsy, the other both flimsy and short; since none could sustain my mother-in-law’s budlike body, with its snowy white skin, my fears were superfluous. But her remarkable cry had sent a chill down my spine, and I thought that the only way to still her voice was to keep rapping on her door.
As I continued, I tried to explain things and comfort her. At the moment, she was like a ball of tangled camel hair, and it was essential to console her with patient, rhythmic knocks and smooth talk like Wujia herbal liquor, which has a soothing effect and aids the body’s circulation. What exactly did I say? I guess it was something along the lines of: My father-in-law had embraced a lifelong desire to rush up to White Ape Mountain one night. He was willing to sacrifice his life for liquor. I told her that his departure had nothing to do with her. I said that he would very likely find his Ape Liquor, thereby making a great contribution to mankind, enriching an already splendid liquor culture, turning a new page in mankind’s distilling history, bringing glory to our nation, making a name for the Chinese, and generating revenue for Liquorland. I also said, ‘No one can catch a cub without entering the tiger’s lair.’ How could he obtain Ape Liquor if he didn’t go up the mountain? Besides, I told her, I believed that my father- in-law would return one day, whether he found the ape liquor or not, to live out his years with her.
My mother-in-law screamed:
‘Who cares if he comes back? I don’t want him to come back! I’ll be disgusted if he comes back! I hope he dies up on White Ape Mountain. I hope he turns into a hairy ape!’
Her words made my hair stand on end; cold sweat seeped from every pore of my body. Prior to this moment, I’d only vaguely sensed that they lived in disharmony, and that there were some minor frictions. I’d never dreamed that her hatred for her husband was deeper than that which a poor peasant feels for the landowner, deeper than a worker’s enmity toward a capitalist. The creed that ‘Class hatred is stronger than Mount Tai,’ which had been pounded into me for decades, crumbled. If one person’s hatred for another could reach such proportions, it was an unquestioned form of beauty, a magnificent contribution to humanity. How closely it resembled a purple, poisonous poppy blooming in the swamp of human emotions; as long as you don’t touch or ingest it, it will exist as a form of beauty, possessing an attraction that no kindly, friendly flower could ever have.
Then she began recounting my father-in-law’s misdeeds – every word, every sound, was filled with blood and tears. She said:
‘How can he call himself human? How can he call himself a man? For decades, he has treated his liquor like a woman. It was he who started the evil practice of comparing a beautiful woman to vintage liquor. Drinking has taken the place of sexual intercourse. He has devoted all his sexual appetite to liquor, to his bottles, to his wine glasses…’
‘Dr Li, I’m not really your mother-in-law. I never gave birth -how could I? Your wife was an abandoned infant I picked out of a trash can.’
The truth was out. I let out a deep breath, as if a big load had been lifted from my chest.
‘You’re an intelligent person, Doctor. Sand in the eyes doesn’t throw you off the track. You must have sensed that she wasn’t my biological daughter. That is why I think we can become close friends, and I can tell you everything. Doctor, I’m a woman, not a stone lion outside the Palace Museum, or a weather vane on a rooftop, and surely not a lowly, androgynous worm. I have a woman’s desires, but I am denied any… Who can know the pain I feel?’
I said:
‘Then why haven’t you divorced him?’
I’m weak, I’m afraid of people’s scorn…’
I said:
‘That’s absurd.’
‘Yes, it is. But the absurd days are over now. Doctor, I can tell you why I never divorced him. It was because he distilled a strong herbal liquor especially for me, which he called “Ximen Qing,” after the licentious hero of classical novels. Drinking this liquor creates mind-blowing illusions, some even better than sex…’
I detected a sweet shyness in her voice.
‘But when you showed up, the power of the liquor mysteriously disappeared.’
I didn’t feel like rapping on the door anymore.
‘There’s this woman who, like a bear’s claw drenched in spices, has been stewing over a low heat for decades. Now she has finally ripened. Her fragrance is overpowering. Don’t tell me you can’t smell it, my dear Doctor…’
The door opened wide. The aroma of braised bear’s paw rolled out in waves. I held tightly to the door frame, like a drowning man with a death-grip on a ship’s railing…
IV
After the swarthy dwarf was shot, his body flew upwards, as if he were about to fly away. But the hot lead had destroyed his central nervous system, and his limbs twitched spastically. The spasms made one thing abundantly clear: He could no longer call forth the mystical powers described in Doctor of Liquor Studies’ story ‘Yichi the Hero,’ where he soared into the air and stuck to the ceiling like an oversized lizard. Quite the opposite: after jerking a few centimeters into the air, he slid off the lady trucker’s lap and landed on the floor, where Ding Gou’er watched him struggle to straighten himself out, his thigh muscles stretched as taut as utility wires in a gale. Blood and brain matter oozing from the hole in his head fouled the polished floorboards. Then one of his legs began to jerk in and out like the neck of a rooster as the knife enters; his body, wracked by powerful spasms, spun around in smooth, easy circles. After about a dozen revolutions, his legs quit banging the floor, and what happened next was this: The spasmodic flailing stopped, but he began to quake. At first the trembling involved his whole body, creating a steady twang; but then it became localized, his muscle groups acting like sports fans performing the wave. Starting from the tip of his left foot, it moved up to his left calf then to his left thigh then to his left hip and then to his left shoulder, where it crossed over to his right shoulder and moved down to his right hip then to his right thigh then to his right calf then to the tip of his right foot, and from there changed direction and headed back to the starting point. This movement continued for a long while before the trembling stopped altogether. Ding Gou’er heard a loud release of air from the dwarf’s body just before it went limp and lay spread out on the floor.
Dead as a doornail, he looked like a leathery alligator in a swamp. Not for a second while he was watching the death-throes of the dwarf did Ding lose sight of the lady trucker. At the instant when the dwarf slid to the floor from her glossy, bare knees, she fell over backwards onto the inner-sprung mattress, which was covered by a snow- white bedsheet and a jumble of odd-shaped pillows and cushions. The pillows were down-filled, Ding Gou’er noted as he watched delicate goose feathers ooze from the seam of a large pillow with pink floral borders and soar skyward when the pillow was crushed by her falling head. Her legs spread wide and hung limp over the side of the bed as she lay face-up, a posture that stirred the sediment in Ding Gou’er’s mind. Reminded of the lady trucker’s wild passion, he felt stabs of jealousy, and even as he bit down on his lower lip, wicked thoughts consumed him, sending pains like those of a mortally wounded hunter’s prey tearing through his heart. Agonizing moans slipped through his clenched teeth. He gave the dwarf’s lifeless body an angry kick, then threw himself onto the bed alongside the lady trucker, the smoking gun still in his hand. Her sprawled body reawakened love-hate feelings toward her; he hoped she was dead yet prayed that she had just fainted from fear. Lifting up her head, he saw a faint sparkle of light reflected off barely glimpsed shell-like teeth between soft yet brittle, slightly parted lips. Scenes from that late autumn morning at the Mount Luo Coal Mine flashed before the investigator’s eyes; back then those lips crushing down on his mouth had felt cold, yielding, devoid of elasticity, and altogether weird, like clumps of used cotton wadding… there between her eyes he spotted a dark hole the size of a soy bean, around which tiny metallic filings were arrayed; he knew they had come from a bullet. His body rocked to one side, as once again he felt a sickeningly sweet liquid rise up into his throat. As he threw himself at her feet, a stream of fresh blood spewed from his mouth, painting her flat belly a bright red.
I’ve killed her! he thought, terror-stricken.
He reached out and felt the hole with his forefinger. It was hot to the touch, the splintery skin around it scraped
