The Pearl Jacket and Other Stories Read online

  The three kids are beautiful. So is she. The kids busy themselves around him excitedly, getting him his slippers, his tea, his newspapers. He sits down in the cushioned chair, rests his head against its back, and takes a deep breath. It feels so different with a woman around at home. He notices she has cleaned the curtains and the cushions and tidied up things elsewhere. Somehow the entire room looks much brighter than before.

  The kids are bright and thoughtful. They all come over to kiss him, the youngest one still smells like a baby. They “pester” him for a while, asking if he is exhausted from work, if he knows the latest news, and so on. They are sensitive to even his facial expressions so they know how far they can go and what questions they should not ask. They are experienced. Third Hair, the youngest, even recites a Tang poem for him. He is amazed. It’s taught by the kindergarten teacher, he is told. He likes to call the kids this way: “Big Hair, Second Hair, Third Hair.” They are like the kids he has seen on the television: bright, beautiful, and thoughtful. The boy keeps long hair, like a girl, his eyes big and deep. The girls have on puffy silky skirts and squat on the floor like little princesses.

  He likes to call her “Mei.” She comes out from the kitchen. She is beautiful, but not the in-your-face kind of beauty. It’s the housewife kind of beauty, not quite like that of a young female secretary or a film star. She has on some light makeup, her thin lips fresh red. She tells him what kind of dishes she has prepared. They are all his favorite.

  During dinner he sits at the head of the table where the head of a family is supposed to sit. The kids are enthusiastic and chatter with him nonstop. They are ready to answer any question he puts to them and are surprised by none. He asks: “How do you like Uncle Qin?” The kids reply without hesitation: “Dad, we like you better.” She stops her chopsticks, smiles, and exchanges a knowing glance between them. Heavens, how can he not melt into this all? Third Hair goes on to say: “Uncle Qin likes to cry. He cries even when he dines with us.” It feels so real, so like a warm, sweet, happy family. He is ready to cry, too.

  A happy evening is finally over. She is ready to leave with the three kids. Third Hair prints on his face one last kiss with the same baby fragrant mouth. They are all neatly dressed as if they are going somewhere. They all say “goodbye” so sweetly. Just before they leave, he hands her an envelope with money in it. She hands him a card, the same promotion card of their company which he has seen so many times before. Yet he reads it one more time:

  FIRST-RATE WARM FEELING OF FAMILY

  Good news for single people in the world: Our company provides happy families of all stripes and types to meet the emotional needs of all kinds of single, lonely people. . . .

  He breaks into a smile. Perhaps he should try a different flavor next time, a hot and spicy one that gives you no peace whatsoever. Old Qin said: You should try that kind of family life, too. It can be very exciting.

  (2000)

  portraits

  Daigou

  Shen Congwen

  “Bastard! Won’t get up until your Old Man spanks your ass?”

  “Oh. . . . my sole still hurts so!” Daigou[3] screwed up his face to look as if ready to cry.

  But he knew Pop’s hands, which were good not only for pinching the earlobes, but also for picking pears, even hard and green ones, and bringing them to him. So, while wanting to whine more about his sole still hurting, he slowly let his hairy head peer out of the messy mosquito net of crude linen—and got out of bed.

  “Hurry! Hurry up! Don’t drag your feet!”

  “Oh. . . .”

  On a small, short-legged stool in the small, gloomy thatched hut sat Pop, Old Ou; he was braiding a straw string into an “ear” on a straw shoe. The hut, windowless, was dark and he had to work by the light leaking in from a crack in the fireplace.

  “Don’t you see Daigou of the fucking Shi’s, that Hairy Duckling, already crawling up the Hill before daybreak?”

  “My foot still—”

  “Can’t go for a little hurt like that?”

  Daigo wiped his gummy eyes with the back of his hand, shook to loosen his shoulders, took a pair of straw shoes from the mud wall, and sat down to the left of Pop.

  “I’ll go and get a big load of straw—”

  “Even ghosts wouldn’t need your straw for the next few days. . . . What’re you afraid of? Why can’t you go and cut on the other side of the hill? If the Monk comes, run a bit faster is all. If you can’t get to this side of the hollows, just throw it into the bushes, and climb up a tree. The poor old Monk, blurry-eyed, won’t be able to overtake you. He will just peer around and then return to the Temple to sleep again—then you go back, carefully, all right?”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Try not to cut with too much noise.”

  “What if he steals over and catches me? What if?”

  “Stupid bastard! He hollers something like ‘Stop thief! Stop thief! Anyone catches the little Miao devil, who dares to steal my firewood, please help me punch him to death!’ He’s really more bark than bite, trying to scare off little kids is all! You really think he’ll dare to punch you to death if he ever catches you?”

  Daigou trembled again at the thought of what had happened yesterday. Only he knew why he trembled; Pop didn’t even notice.

  . . . Cut! Cut! Cut! No sooner when his sickle had cut into the tree than its echo was already bounced back. Hairy Duckling, happy, was humming away—

  Grand temple perches atop mountain high,

  Multitudes gather here from far and wide.

  Others ask blessings for their children,

  Yours truly, for none but my lovely bride.

  Suddenly, the old Monk, like a devil, appeared this side of the red wall. He rolled up the long sleeves of his robe and hollered, “Stop thief! Stop these fucking bastards!” and dashed toward where they were. Realizing the old Monk meant business, they gave up the unfinished tree and ran for it. They ran like mad, jumping through the woods and clamoring over two damn hollows, and ran, and ran, until they couldn’t hear the old Monk hollering “Stop. . . .” They were out of danger now. However, while running like mad, he stepped on a thorny twig, which seized the opportunity and bit into his sole. When Hairy Duckling managed to pull it out, so much blood had already been lost. And even this morning, the foot still hurt when touching the ground.

  The foot thing was no big deal really, compared to the devilish face of the Monk. It still dangled in his mind and seemed to have the power to shrink Daigou into a tiny size, smaller even than the ants promenading on the kitchen stove.

  Finally, in a faltering voice, he managed to give the reason why he didn’t want to go.

  “If I go again and am caught, even if he doesn’t punch me to death, he can tie up my arms with some rope and haul me up high at the mountain gate for public display. That he can certainly do! Then, I’ll be at the mercy of womenfolk on their way to the Temple, this one staring at me this way, and that one staring at me that way, cussing at the same time: ‘Serves the little bandit right!’ ‘This little devil, already stealing at this fucking age, will have to be beheaded when he grows up!’ and so on. How can I face the world after that?”

  “Then, your Old Man will go to the Zhao’s of Big Plains and ask Master Zhao to bail you out.”

  Upon hearing this from his old man, Daigo couldn’t come up with any more excuse. If he were a city kid with some schooling, he might have found another way to reason with Pop. Poor illiterates, they were so dumb!

  Bored and at the end of his wits, Daigo stood up, stretched with a yawn, and walked toward the kitchen stove, where he grabbed the sickle on the pole and fastened it behind his buttocks. Then, glancing at the ants on the kitchen stove, he said—

  “Pop, get an extra piece of bean curd when you go to town today.”

  And left.

  Between not being good at housekeeping and having a weakness for homemade wine for the sake of his joints, Old Ou was a little tight for cash. So
he had to ask his ten-year-old to go to the other side of the Nanhua Temple on the hill and do something risky there. But he was a careful and confident man. He still remembered the fortune Blind Yang had told him three years ago: His life was caught in a swift current at the moment and would not change course until six years later. So he had decided to be patient and wait out the six years before he would quit drinking. In case Daigou was indeed seized by the Monk, he had figured, and tied up and hauled up the mountain gate for public display, he could take care of it like when Daigou’s pop of the Shi’s had done when caught stealing bamboo: He would carry a load of pine needles to Zhao Dafa’s, knock his head at the feet of Dafa, and then his wife, and even the biggest trouble in the world would be gone. What Dafa had told him still rang in his ears: “Whenever you’re in trouble with the Temple, big or small, come to me and it’s as good as taken care of, ’cause the Monk would not dare to go against my will. I saw him cooking pig feet once. Once the word gets out, it’d be all over with him!”

  However, Old Ou knew that he hadn’t forced Daigou to go and be scared by the old Monk on account of Dafa’s influence alone. In fact he had something else to fall back on. He knew that Daigou, young as he was, was smart and fast, and would never be caught by the blurry-eyed old Monk. Otherwise, on one side of the scale: a big load of dry pine needles, worth well over 200 units of money, traded for someone’s influence; on the other side of the scale: a piece of firewood he didn’t even get—he knew how to do the math.

  (1926)

  A Singer That Can Sing

  Wang Meng

  No one applauded when the singer finished her performance. So she said during a meeting afterwards: “What in the world does applause mean? Beauty? Art? Gold? How much is one jin of applause worth? Just some clapping of hands from the audience and she began to tread on the cloud, forgot who she really is, was elected a star, went to places by airplane, and recorded albums. What nonsense! What travesty of the soul! Believe it or not, if I were to swing my butt and sing some phony songs, I would receive much louder applause!”

  She suggested a study be conducted to analyze audience responses to prove her point that applause had zero or negative value.

  Not long after this, at the end of another performance of hers, the whole place thundered with applause. So she said during a meeting afterwards: “We sing songs to entertain the audience. If the audience doesn’t like it, what good would a song do no matter how good its lyrics and melody? The masses have the sharpest eyes and they all have a scale in their heart. If the masses don’t like to see and don’t like to hear what we do, then we are not serving the broad masses of the people, but a small handful of the elite only, and that is a serious mistake, that is isolating ourselves from the broad masses, and that is narcissistic. What I heard was not just clapping of hands, but the beating of so many warm, passionate hearts!”

  Sometime later, a meeting was held to discuss some unhealthy trends among singers and ways to guide the audience’s tastes and raise their level of appreciation. She used the aforementioned applause-less performance as an example and proudly declared:

  “I’ve stood my ground! I’ve stood my ground! I’ve stood my ground!”

  Not long after this, another meeting was held to discuss the reasons why too few songs were well liked by the masses and ways to remedy the situation. She used the aforementioned thunderously applauded performance as an example and proudly declared:

  “I’ve done it! I’ve done it! I’ve done it!”

  (1985)

  The Story Outside My Window

  Yide'erfu

  The window of my office faces a street. On this street is a farmer’s market where no motor vehicles are allowed.

  The first thing I do when I get to my office on hot summer days is to open the window for better air circulation.

  One day, as soon as I opened the window, a middle-aged peasant came over and squatted down against the wall. In his hands was an old, dirty, torn white fur coat. What’s the good of carrying such a lousy fur coat on such a hot day? I wondered.

  Everyday for the next ten days this peasant would come and squat right outside my window, carrying in his hands the same lousy fur coat. Early in the morning when we had just come to work he would hurry over, sweaty, squat down, take a bite from the dry bun he had brought with him, and sip some water now and then. When we left for home at the end of the day, he would leave, too.

  What’s he really up to, coming to my window everyday like this? I began to be suspicious. One day, I peeked outside the window and asked him:

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m a peasant.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Elm Bay.”

  “Why are you coming here everyday?”

  “Business.”

  “Business?”

  He patted the ragged fur coat spread out on his knees: “To sell this thing here.”

  I laughed. “Who would want to buy your fur coat in this season? Besides, it is so hopelessly old and ragged. Even if someone wanted to buy it, he wouldn’t pay you enough for even one meal. I’d go home, if I were you. It’s a waste of time, not to mention the hot weather.”

  He listened, laughed “hee” twice, and shook his head.

  My advice had fallen on deaf ears. Every day he would still come and every day he would squat right outside my window.

  Elm Bay is about ten li outside the city. Every day he would journey for about twenty li, all on foot, coming in the morning and going home in the evening, for what? Selling that lousy fur coat? Is it worth it? I began to suspect there was something wrong with him.

  One day he peeked inside my window and asked:

  “Comrade, do foreigners come to this city at all?”

  “This city is open to foreign visitors,” I told him. “They come quite often.”

  His sun-baked face brightened up. He grinned and exclaimed, yellowed teeth visible through thick lips.

  “Excellent! Excellent!” He said. “I won’t be waiting for nothing then!”

  I was rather perplexed and asked: “Why did you ask about the foreigners?”

  He smiled mysteriously, “Oh, so I can sell them this fur coat of mine!”

  “Foreigners buying that lousy fur coat of yours?”

  “You don’t know? Let me tell you something. These foreigners, they don’t like our new things, but they really fancy our old things, the older, the more ragged, the better!”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Big Uncle of my nephew Ben.”

  “Where?”

  “In this city of yours, too. About a month ago he went to my nephew’s and said this. A lot of folks were present. He said he took a very old, broken armchair, a heirloom of some sort, to the farmer’s market. A foreigner bought it from him for ten thousand yuan. Big Uncle became a rich ten-thousand-aire right there!”

  “So, you found this old, dirty, ragged fur coat to trade for a foreigner’s money and want to become a ten-thousand-aire too, is that it?!”

  The peasant laughed “hee” again as he squatted down. He caught sight of a tall, blond-haired man passing by. As if having seen the God of Fortune himself, he bolted up, ran after the man, stopped him, thrust the fur coat in his face, and laughed “hee.”

  The tall man did not look amused at all. He was even more upset when the peasant, crazy-like, laughing, thrust the dirty fur coat in his face. The tall man hollered sternly: “What are you doing? Get lost!”

  “You don’t want to buy my fur coat? This fur coat of mine is old, dirty, a real heirloom!”

  “You think I’m crazy? Buy this lousy fur coat of yours?!” The tall man exclaimed as he dodged and hurried away, as if fleeing a ghost.

  The peasant watched the back of the tall man and cussed angrily: “Fuck! Fake foreigner!” Crestfallen, he returned to my window.

  Although I found the whole thing ridiculous, I felt sorry for him, too. So I tried to talk him out of it again:

  “Listen. I
’m going to say this again: Forget about selling this lousy fur coat of yours. Even if a “real” foreigner comes, he wouldn’t buy it from you, either. So, why don’t you go back to Elm Bay and be happy with working in the fields.”

  “Working in the fields? How much money can I make working in the fields?”

  “But it’s better than squatting here every day and not making anything, not to mention this brutal weather.”

  “I want to try my luck. Someday I’ll be lucky.”

  He is both ignorant and stubborn.

  He comes here every day to wait for his luck, but his luck never shows up.

  Right at this moment, he is still squatting right outside my window.

  (1989)

  Big Feet Zhuang

  Hu Qiyong

  Many years ago when she was being led off the bridal boat by the go-between, her head covered with a big red veil, the onlookers couldn’t help but let their eyes wander downward, and then, someone cried out, as if having discovered something amazing:

  “Big Feet!”

  That’s how the nickname “Big Feet Zhuang” became known in the Five Li Bridge area and beyond.

  Big Feet Zhuang and her man had got together when they became “smitten with each other.” At the time, her blind would-be mother-in-law did not approve of them getting married on account of this pair of “Big Feet.” The blind would-be mother-in-law; the blind would-be mother-in-law’s mother-in-law; the blind would-be mother-in-law’s mother-in-law’s mother-in-law, and the mothers-in-law of many generations back, had all had small, bound feet. All except for this generation, which had gotten itself a “Big Feet” daughter-in-law. So, the blind would-be mother-in-law felt her family’s proud tradition would be spoiled. Only when the son whispered into his mother’s ear that he had already gotten the girl “in the family way” did she relent, following a deep sigh. Luckily, unlike other mothers-in-law who had to “turn a blind eye” to things they didn’t quite approve of, this blind mother-in-law actually couldn’t see anything at all. Besides, less than half a year had passed before Big Feet Zhuang gave birth to a precious son, who was treasured by her man’s family. It was not until then that true “peaceful coexistence” became possible between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law.