me many years ago that women weren't men's slaves and followers anymore? And what men could not give us, we needed to fight for with our own hands?”
Teacher Gu looked at his wife, his body shaking. The lies he had been forced to teach many years ago had come back to bear down on him, making him into a clown. He thought of throwing the chicken stew against the wall or onto the hard cement floor; he would let the soup splatter everywhere, hot and oily, and he would watch the china bowl smash into pieces. But what would that do except put him down on the level of an uneducated, illogical man? His anger, overwhelming a moment ago, was replaced by disappointment and exhaustion. He looked at his wife with a half smile. “Of course we're living in the Communist era now,” he said. “Forgive an old man's confusion, comrade.”
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that Nini could throw a girlish tan trum, requesting a demonstration of loyalty from him? A rose with a thorny stem was worth the risk and pain, but what if it was a wild-flower by the roadside that considered itself a rose and grew unpleasant thorns? Bashi chuckled to himself. Perhaps he needed to keep an eye on Nini's temperament and make sure she did not grow into one of those grumpy old hens in the marketplace. He watched a young nurse fresh off the night shift stand in front of a shop window, unsatisfied with the way her hair parted and trying hard to fix the problem with her fingers. He walked up to her and brought out a bag of candies that he always carried with him in case there was a young girl to strike up a conversation with. “Your hair looks great,” he said. “Do you want a treat?”
The young woman studied Bashi with a cold look. “Go home and look at yourself in the mirror,” she said.
“Why? I don't need a mirror to know what I look like,” said Bashi. “It's you who are pruning your feathers in the street.”
“What rotten fortune to meet a toad in the morning,” the woman said to a cat strolling by, and she hurried away, her hand still combing her hair.
Who does she think she is, a swan in disguise? Bashi looked at his reflection in the shop window, a presentable lad in a new jacket. Three teenage boys, heads shaved bald and all sporting sunglasses, stopped next to him. “Hey, Bashi, what do you need a jacket like that for?”
Bashi looked for their eyes but only saw six figures of himself in the dark lenses. He did not know the boys, and from a few unfortunate encounters with the newly sprouted gangs of Muddy River, he had learned not to attract their attention. “Nice sunglasses,” he said, patting his pocket and finding the package of cigarettes he kept for these moments. The boys caught the cigarettes Bashi threw to them. “Can we borrow your jacket for a day?” the youngest one said with a grin.
“Yes,” said Bashi. “There's nothing that I don't share with my brothers.” He took off the jacket and shivered in the morning breeze. The boys nodded and walked on, the youngest trying on the jacket for the older brothers to assess.
What a dangerous bunch this city is breeding, thought Bashi. He patted a wad of cash in a pocket of his pants —he was wise not to have left any money in the jacket. He went into a nearby store and asked for a small bag of sunflower seeds, and when he came out, he put a few of the seeds in his mouth and chewed them into an inedible mess, imagining all of them to be unfriendly people crushed between his teeth. Only with Nini did he have the respect he deserved. But what did he give Nini, except for a few basketfuls of coal and vegetables? She was right that he needed to prove himself. “Name the people who make you unhappy,” he imagined himself saying to Nini first thing the next morning. “Name them all and they are Lu Bashi's enemies too. I won't let them live happily.” He would start with that mother of the executed woman, who hated Nini.
At the entrance to an alley, Bashi saw the dog Ear. “Hello, my friend,” Bashi said, putting a hand into his pocket. Ear wagged his tail. “Come on,” Bashi said sweetly. “How are you? Are you looking for me? I was just thinking about you.”
The dog came closer and rubbed his neck on Bashi's leg. What a stupid dog, Bashi thought; he withdrew his hand from his pocket and clapped. “Sorry, I haven't got meat for you today. You see, I'm running some other errands.”
The dog circled him for a minute and ran away. Bashi felt satisfied. The new friendship with Ear was a by- product of his plan for Kwen's dog—it had not taken a long time or much ham to win Ear's heart, and what dog could refuse a piece of meat? Dogs were dogs, after all, unable to compete with man's intellect.
Bashi entered a store with a black wooden plaque bearing the golden characters
Hadn't he heard about the medicine woman from Eastern Village who had discovered new ways to communicate with the dead? asked the old woman. She had just paid a visit to the medicine woman, who had given her the message that her husband did not have enough money for liquor in the next world.
“Ha, you believed him?” Bashi said. He looked at the money on the counter; the husband certainly would not get drunk from that poor amount. “Maybe he uses your money to buy a woman out there?”
The old woman mumbled and said her husband had never been into women; it was drinking that he had lived for and then died from. Bashi thought of this fool dying before knowing the real joy of life and shook his head in disbelief. “What a pity,” he said. “What's so good about drinking?”
“You say that because you don't know the real taste,” said the shop owner, a middle-aged woman with a new perm. “People always put liquor and a woman's beauty together, you understand why, little brother? Drinking and women are the two best things for men.”
Bashi snorted. What did a shop owner know about men? He picked up stacks of paper money, a miniature mansion, carriages pulled by four horses, a chest, and some other knickknacks, all made of white rice paper and ready to be burned into ashes to accompany his grandmother to the otherworld. He asked for some rat poison too, and the shop owner was taken aback. “My store serves those who have stepped into the immortal garden,” she said. Like all people in Muddy River, the woman resorted to any euphemism possible to avoid mentioning death, and Bashi smiled. He paid for the paper products and said he had asked for the poison because he did not want any rats to bother his grandmother's body. Frightened, the paled woman bowed to a Buddha that sat in a corner of the store with burning incense in front of him. Please forgive the boy's ignorance, the woman said, and Bashi laughed and decided not to bring any more nightmares to the merchant. A few doors down the street, he bought a packet of rat poison in a drugstore.
When he arrived home, Bashi left the paper offerings next to his grandmother's casket. “Nana, tomorrow Old Hua and his wife are sending you off to my grandpa and my baba,” he said, talking to the old woman as he worked; he had developed a habit of talking to her when he was alone. He hacked off a thick slab of ham, punched a few holes in it, and soaked it in liquor. “When you get there, say a few words for me to my grandpa and my baba. Tell them I am doing well and won't bring disgrace to their name. See, I can't go with you tomorrow, because I have something more important to take care of.” He unpacked the rat poison and poured some pellets into the mortar his grandmother had used to grind dried chili peppers. The pellets were a nasty, dark grayish brown color. What rat would ever want to touch such a disgusting thing, Bashi wondered aloud as he ground the pellets into powder. He