his fingertip. It was a familiar feeling. By jogging his memory, he finally managed to recall the youthful sensation of feeling a new tooth with the tip of his tongue. Then he was reminded of the time he scolded his son for doing the same thing. The little boy, with his moon face and big, round eyes, looking slovenly no matter how new or clean his clothes might be, a book bag strapped to his back, a red bandanna tied haphazardly around his neck, a willow switch in one hand, walked up to him, moving a loose tooth around with his tongue. The investigator patted him on the head, for which he was rewarded by a crack across the leg from the willow switch. Stop that! the boy had demanded unhappily. Who said you could pat the top of my head? Don’t you know that can make a person stupid? He cocked his head and squinted, a no-nonsense look. With a laugh, the investigator said, You stupid little boy, a pat on the head can’t make you stupid! But playing with new teeth with your tongue will make them grow in crooked… powerful nostalgia sent his juices nearly to the boiling point, and as he jerked his hand back, tears spilled from his eyes. Softly intoning his son’s name, he thumped his own forehead and cursed:
You son of a bitch! Ding Gou’er, you son of a bitch. How could you do something like this?
The little boy stared at him disgustedly, then turned and walked off, his chubby little legs pumping. He was quickly swallowed up in the cross-traffic.
Murder’s a tough rap to beat, he thought to himself. But I want to see my son one last time before I die. Then his thoughts drifted to the provincial capital, which seemed at this moment to be on the other side of the world.
He picked up his pistol, which had only one bullet left, and ran out the gate of Yichi Tavern; the two dwarf gatewomen grabbed his clothes as he passed, but he shook them off and darted among the cars on the street, risking life and limb. He heard the jarring sound of screeching brakes to his left and right, and one car probably bumped his hip as he ran; but this only spurred him on, until he reached the safety of the pedestrian lane. He heard a chorus of noises from the Yichi Tavern gate; people were shouting. Following the leaf-strewn pedestrian lane, he ran for all he was worth, sensing vaguely that it was early morning, and that the rain-washed sky was filled with blood-streaked clouds. A cold rain that had fallen all night long made it slippery going; a coat of icy dewdrops beautified the low-hanging branches. In what seemed like no time, he found himself on the familiar cobblestone street. Opaque steam rose from the roadside ditch, on the surface of which floated delicacies like roasted pig’s head, fried meatballs, turtle shell, braised shrimp, spicy pig’s knuckles. Some old-timers in rags were fishing the delicacies out of the water with nets on long poles. Their lips were greasy, their faces flushed, bearing witness, he thought, to the nutritive value of the garbage they salvaged. Some passersby on bicycles reacted with disgust just before, with shrieks of alarm, they careened into the ditch. They and their bicycles shattered the calm surface and sent the heavy smell of distiller’s grains and animal carcasses into the air, nearly making him gag. He hugged the wall as he ran, but lost his footing on the rocky road. Shouts and heavy footsteps behind him. Scrambling to his feet and turning to look, he saw a crowd jumping up and down, and shouting loudly, but not daring to chase after him. He continued on his way, more slowly now, his heart pounding so hard his chest ached. There on the other side of the stone wall was the familiar Martyrs’ Cemetery, over which the white canopies of towering pagoda evergreens lent an aura of purity and sanctity.
Why am I running? he was thinking as he ran. Heaven casts its net wide. I can run but I can’t hide. And still his legs kept churning. He spotted the giant ginkgo tree, and under it the old wonton seller, standing straight as the tree itself; puffs of steam rising from his wonton baskets blotted out his face, like the hideous countenance of the moon fronted by floating clouds. He vaguely recalled the old man standing there holding a copper bullet as payment for the wonton he had consumed. He ought to retrieve that bullet, he thought to himself as the taste of pork-and- scallion wonton rose from his stomach; early winter scallions are the best, and the costliest. Hand in hand, he and she are buying groceries in the provincial capital’s open-air market, where vegetable peddlers from the outskirts hunker down behind their baskets and poles to chew on cold stuffed buns, which leave their teeth spotted with bits of scallion. The old man opened his hand to show off the beautiful bullet that lay in his palm, a supplicating look showing through the mist that was trying to obscure his face. As he strained to figure out what the old man wanted, a dog’s barks shattered his concentration. The big striped canine appeared before him like an apparition, without warning, although its barks seemed to be coming from far, far away, rolling across the tips of grass in a distant meadow and losing most of their timbre by the time they got to this point. He watched as the dog’s heavy head sagged in a strange nod; it opened its great mouth, but no sound emerged, producing a dreamlike, furtive effect. Under the bright red morning sun, faint shadows from the sparse leaves on the ginkgo tree cast a loose net over the dog’s body. He could see that the look in the animal’s eyes was non-threatening; its barks were a friendly hint or a sign for him to get moving again. He mumbled something to the old wonton peddler, but a gust of wind carried the sound off. So when the old-timer asked him what he said, he stammered:
I want to go find my son.
Nodding to the dog and giving it a wide berth, he walked to the back of the ginkgo tree, where he spotted the elderly caretaker of the Martyrs’ Cemetery, leaning against the tree and cradling his shotgun, its muzzle pointing into the tree’s canopy. The same look – a friendly hint or a sign to get moving again – showed in the old man’s eyes. Deeply touched, he bowed respectfully to the old-timer before running over to a block of cold, uninviting, and apparently deserted buildings up ahead. A shot rang out behind him. He hit the ground instinctively, then rolled sideways to take cover behind the chilled leaves in a bed of roses. Then another shot. This time he looked back to see where it had come from, just in time to see the canopy of the ginkgo tree shudder and several yellow leaves flutter earthward in the reddish rays of sunlight. The old cemetery caretaker was still up against the tree, not moving a muscle. Blue smoke curled from both barrels of his shotgun. By then the big yellow dog had shambled over from the other side of the tree and was crouching beside the caretaker, its eyes reflecting the sun’s rays like gold nuggets.
Before entering the block of buildings, he crossed a desolate sidewalk park where some old men were out airing birds in cages and some kids were jumping rope. Tucking his pistol into his waistband and acting as if he hadn’t a care in the world, he sauntered past them and headed for the buildings. But the minute he reached his objective, he discovered he’d made a big mistake, for he’d walked into the middle of an early morning flea market. Crowds of peddlers were hunkering down beside their secondhand goods, which included used clocks and watches, Mao Zedong badges and plaster busts from the Cultural Revolution, and things like old wind-up gramophones. Plenty of sellers, but not a single buyer. The peddlers eyed each infrequent passerby greedily. It felt like a trap to him, a lure for the unwary, and that the peddlers were actually plainclothes cops. And the more closely Ding Gou’er observed them, the more a lifetime of experience told him that’s exactly what they were. Alertly, he retreated to a spot behind a white poplar to observe the goings-on. He saw seven or eight youngsters, boys and girls, sneak out from behind one of the buildings, their expressions and demeanor telling Ding Gou’er that this was a group of kids involved in some unlawful activity. The girl in the center, wearing a knee-length gray coat, a red cap, and a necklace of Qing dynasty brass coins, was their leader. All of a sudden, he noticed the wrinkles in the girl’s neck and detected the acrid smell of foreign tobacco on her breath, so close it was as if she were nearly on top of him. He focused his attention on her, watching the lady trucker’s features slowly take form on the face of this unfamiliar girl, the way a cricket emerges from the thin casing of its cocoon. A trickle of rose-colored blood oozing from a bullet hole between her eyes ran down her nose and dripped from the tip to divide her mouth into two equal halves; from there it slid to her navel, down and down, neatly cleaving her body in two and forcing gurgles out of her internal organs. With a shout of alarm, the investigator turned and ran, but no matter how fast his legs churned, they could not take him out of the flea market. Finally, he hunkered down in front of a peddler selling used handguns and pretended to be a customer, as he examined the rusty old guns laid out in front of him. He sensed that the girl who had been cloven in half was standing behind him wrapping herself in green paper bindings. She worked very fast; at first she was wearing cream-colored rubber gloves as her hands flew through the air, but before long, they were yellow blurs that were quickly swallowed up in wet green paper the color and consistency of seaweed. The green was such a transcending green it exuded a powerful life force. And then the paper bindings began to move on their own, and in a matter of seconds had her wrapped in a tight cocoon. He felt a chill on his back, but tried to act nonchalant, picking up a beautifully crafted revolver and trying to spin its rusty cylinder. It wouldn’t budge. He asked the peddler, Do you have any aged Shanxi vinegar? The peddler said he didn’t. Disappointed, he heaved a sigh. The peddler said, You act like a pro, but you’re actually a rank amateur. I don’t have any aged Shanxi vinegar, but I do have some Korean white vinegar, which is a hundred times better at removing rust than the Shanxi stuff. He watched the peddler reach into his shirt with a pale, delicate hand and feel around as if looking for something. Ding Gou’er caught an occasional glimpse of two little glass bottles tucked into a lacy pink bra. They were green, but frosty, not see-through, the sort of bottle so many famous foreign liquors come in. The frosty green looked
