The Republic of Wine (10 page)

‘Treasure's daddy, the water's too hot. Burning his skin will lower the grade.'

‘This little family wrecker, his water's got to be just right, not too cold, not too hot. All right, add half a gourdful of cool water.'

The woman scrambled to her feet without covering her droopy breasts; the hem of her blouse hung limply between her legs, like a soggy old flag. After scooping out half a gourdful of water, she dumped it into the basin and stirred it rapidly with her hand.

‘It isn't hot,' she said, ‘it really isn't. Stop crying, Treasure, stop crying.'

Little Treasure's crying died down a bit, but he continued to struggle. A bath was the last thing he wanted, and Jin Yuanbao had to keep forcing him down into the basin. The woman stood to the side, gourd in hand, as if in a trance. ‘Are you dead, or what?' Jin Yuanbao barked. ‘Give me a hand here!'

As if waking from a dream, she put down the gourd and knelt beside the basin, where she began washing the boy's back and his bottom. Their eldest daughter - a girl of seven or eight clad only in baggy red knee-length shorts, her shoulders hunched, hair a mess, barefoot - walked into the room rubbing her eyes.

‘Die [father], Niang [mother], how come you're washing him? You going to cook him and feed him to us?'

‘Get back to bed, damn it!' Jin Yuanbao snapped viciously.

At the sight of his elder sister, Little Treasure cried out to her. But the girl, not daring to say another word, turned and slinked back into the other room, stopping in the doorway to watch her parents at work.

Having cried himself hoarse, Little Treasure could only sob, a hollow, listless sound. The grime on his body turned to greasy mudballs in the murky water.

‘Bring me a washing gourd and a piece of soap,' the man said.

The woman fetched the items from behind the stove. ‘You hold him,' Jin Yuanbao said, ‘while I scrub.'

The woman and Yuanbao changed places.

Yuanbao dipped the washing gourd first in the water, then in the soap dish, and began scrubbing the boy, his neck and his bottom, and everything in between, including even the spaces between his fingers. Covered with soap bubbles, Treasure cried out in pain; the room was suffused with a strange, offensive odor.

‘Treasure's daddy, not so rough. Don't break the skin.'

‘He's not made of paper,' Yuanbao said. ‘His skin's tougher than that! You don't know how cunning those inspectors are. They even probe the assholes, and if they find any grime, they lower their appraisal by one grade. Each grade is worth more than ten yuan.'

Finally, the bath was finished, and Yuanbao held Little Treasure while the woman dried him off. His skin glowed red in the lamplight and gave off a pleasant, meaty smell. The woman fetched a new suit of clothes and took the boy from his father. Little Treasure began a new search for the breast, which his mother gave him.

Yuanbao dried his hands and filled his pipe with tobacco. After lighting it with the lantern and blowing out a mouthful of smoke, he said:

I'm soaked with sweat, thanks to this little brat.'

Little Treasure fell asleep, holding the nipple in his mouth. His mother held on to him, reluctant to let go.

‘Give him to me.' Yuanbao said. 'I've got a long way to go this morning.'

The woman slipped the nipple out of the boy's mouth, which twitched as if the nipple were still in it.

Jin Yuanbao picked up the paper lantern with one hand, his sleeping son with the other, and went out into the lane, which led to the village's main street. While walking down the lane, he could feel a pair of eyes on his back from the door, and that caused him much emotional distress; but once he was out on the street, the feeling disappeared without a trace.

The moon was still out, turning the blacktop gray. Roadside poplars, their branches bare, looked like gaunt standing men, the tips pale and ghostly. He shivered. The lantern cast a warm, yellow glow, its flickering shadow looming large on the surface of the road. He sniffled as he looked at the waxen tear running down the wick. A dog alongside someone's wall barked languidly; he looked down at the dog's shadow, sharing the sense of languor as he heard it scurry noisily into a haystack. When he left the village, he heard crying children, and looked up to see lights burning in the windows of peasant huts; he knew they were doing what he and his wife had done a while earlier. Knowing he'd gotten the jump on them lightened his mood a bit.

As he neared the Earth God Temple on the village outskirts, he took a packet of spirit money out of his pocket, lit it with the lantern, and laid it in a cauldron by the temple door. The flames licked up through the paper like coiling snakes. He looked inside the temple, where the Earth God himself sat for all time, a spirit-wife seated on either side; all three had icy smiles on their faces. The Earth God and his wives had been fashioned by Stonemason Wang, black stone for him, white for his wives. The Earth God was larger than both his wives put together, like an adult between two children. Thanks to the inadequate skills of Stonemason Wang, all three were ugly as could be. In the summer, owing to a leaky roof, moss grew on the statues, leaving a green, oily sheen. As the spirit money burned, the charred paper curled inward like white butterflies, and scarlet-tipped flames shimmered around the edges before dying out. He heard the paper crackle.

Having thus written off his son's residence registration to the local deity, Jin Yuanbao put the lantern and the little boy on the ground and knelt down to kowtow to the Earth God and his wives. Then he picked up his son and lantern and hurried off.

He reached Salty River by the time the sun rose above the mountain. Salt trees lining the riverbank seemed made of glass; the water was bright red. He blew out the lantern and hid it among the salt trees, then walked to the landing to wait for the ferry to ply its way across the river.

As soon as the boy was awake, he started bawling. Afraid that the energy used for crying might melt off pounds, Yuanbao knew he needed to pacify the child. At his age, he had already begun walking, so Yuanbao took him over to the sandy bank and snapped a branch off a nearby salt tree as a makeshift toy. Taking out his pipe and tobacco, he felt a soreness in his arms when he lifted it to his mouth. By then the boy was smashing black ants in the sand with his toy, which was so heavy it nearly tipped him over when he raised it above his head. The red sun climbing into the sky lit up not only the surface of the river, but the boy's face as well. Yuanbao was content to let his son play by himself. The river was half a li or so in width, its serene water muddy and turgid. When the sun made its appearance in the sky, it lay reflected in the river like a fallen post on a sheet of yellow satin. No sane person would consider building a bridge over a river like this.

The ferry was still tied up on the opposite bank, bobbing up and down in the shallows and looking very small at this distance. Not a big boat to begin with - he'd ridden it before - it was run by a deaf old man who lived in a rammed-earth hut by the river. Yuanbao saw a thread of greenish smoke rising from the hut, and knew that the deaf ferryman was cooking his breakfast. All he could do was wait.

As time passed, other passengers walked up, including two old-timers and a teenage boy, plus a middle-aged woman carrying an infant. The old couple, apparently husband and wife, sat quietly, staring at the muddy water with eyes blank as marbles. The boy, stripped to the waist and barefoot, wore only a pair of blue shorts; his face, like his nearly naked body, was pale and scaly. After running over to the river's edge to release a stream of urine into the water, he walked up next to Jin Yuanbao's son to watch the black ants being pounded into mush by the salt-tree branch. He said something unintelligible to the boy, who, astonishingly, seemed to understand him, since he laughed and flashed his baby teeth. The unkempt hair of the sallow-faced woman was tied up by a white string. She was wearing a blue jacket over black pants, both recently washed. Jin Yuanbao watched with alarm as she held the baby up to pee. A boy! A competitor. But a closer examination showed him to be much thinner than his own son; his skin was dark, his hair a dull brown. Confident that the boy was not in Little Treasure's league, he felt generous.

‘Sister-in-law.' he said casually, ‘is that where you're headed too?'

She looked at him suspiciously and hugged her child closer. Her lips trembled, but she said nothing.

Rebuffed, Jin Yuanbao walked off to gaze at the scenery across the river.

The sun had leaped a good ten feet above the river, which had turned from a dirty yellow to a glassy gold. The ferry remained quietly tethered on the opposite bank, as smoke continued curling up from the ceiling of the hut; no sign of the deaf ferryman.

Little Treasure and the scaly boy had walked, hand in hand, down the riverbank; anxiously, Yuanbao ran after them and scooped Little Treasure into his arms, leaving the scaly boy to look up at him with an uncomprehending stare. Little Treasure started to bawl and struggled to get down out of his father's arms.

‘Don't cry,' his father said to pacify him, ‘don't cry, now. Let's watch the old ferryman pole his boat over.'

He glanced again at the opposite bank; as if he had willed it, a man who seemed to glow limped toward the ferry, where several prospective passengers fell in behind him.

Jin Yuanbao held tight to Little Treasure, who soon calmed down and stopped crying. Haltingly, he complained that he was hungry, so his father took a handful of fried soybeans from his pocket, chewed them up, and transferred the pasty mixture to Little Treasure's mouth. Again the boy started crying, as if to protest the food, which he swallowed nonetheless.

The ferry was about halfway across the river when a tall, bearded man burst from the salt-tree thicket. Carrying a child who was at least two feet in length, he joined the crowd of waiting passengers.

Jin Yuanbao, his mouth smelling like burned nuts, tensed fearfully for some reason as he looked at the bearded man, who was sizing up the people on the riverbank. His eyes were big and very dark, his nose pointed and slightly hooked. The child in his arms - a boy- was dressed in a brand-new red outfit with gold stitching here and there, which made him stand out, even though he curled inward. His hair was thick and bristly, his face soft and white, but his slender eyes looked exceptionally old as they surveyed the scene. Definitely not the eyes of a child. And those ears, so big and fleshy. It would have been impossible not to take note of him, even though he was cradled in the bearded man's arms.

The bow of the ferry turned upstream as it drew up to the bank. The waiting passengers clustered together, eyes glued to the boat as it reached the shallows. Exchanging his scull for a bamboo pole, the deaf old man maneuvered the boat toward the bank, the bow raising dirty red waves until it was parallel with the land. A motley group of seven people jumped down off the boat after placing small bills or shiny coins in a gourd hanging beside the cabin; the deaf old man stood there, bamboo pole in hand, watching the river as it flowed east.

Once the incoming passengers had disembarked, the people waiting on the bank scurried aboard. Jin Yuanbao should have been first to board, but he lingered a moment to let the bearded man go ahead of him. The middle-aged woman carrying the child was right behind, followed by the old couple, who were aided by the scaly teenager: first he helped the old lady aboard, then the old man, before spryly leaping onto the bow himself.

Jin Yuanbao, seated directly across from the bearded man, was frightened by the man's deep, dark eyes, and even more so by the sinister gaze of the boy in red cradled in his arms. That was no child, it was a little demon, pure and simple. The penetrating look so unsettled Yuanbao that he couldn't sit still, and he fidgeted so much he made the boat rock. The old boatman may have been deaf, but he decidedly was not dumb.

‘You, there,' he said loudly, ‘sit still.'

To avoid the little demon's gaze, Yuanbao turned to look at the water, at the sun, at a solitary gray gull skimming the surface of the river. And still he was uneasy, as a series of chills swept over him, until he was forced to stare at the bare back of the boatman as he poled them across the river. Though the back was bent, the old man was quite muscular; years of living on the water had turned his skin the color of polished bronze. The sight of his body brought Jin Yuanbao a measure of comfort and revitalization, which is why he was reluctant to avert his eyes from it. The old man worked at a steady rhythm, gently moving his paddle-shaped scull from the stern, churning the water like a long brown fish chasing after them. The creaks and groans of the rope that lashed the scull down, the crashing of waves against the bow, and the old man's labored breathing all merged into a song of tranquillity; but Jin Yuanbao was anything but tranquil. Little Treasure began to howl, and he felt the child's head press painfully into his chest, as if frightened; he looked up and found himself pinned down by the awl-like gaze of the little demon. A spasm wracked Yuanbao's heart, his hair stood on end. Turning away from the gaze, he hugged his son close, as a cold sweat soaked through his clothes.

They made it to the other bank - finally. As soon as the ferry was tied up, Yuanbao took a sweat-soaked bill out of his pocket and stuffed it into the deaf old man's gourd, then hopped off the boat and onto the damp sand of the riverbank. Without so much as a glance behind him, he scurried across the sandy beach with his son in his arms. After climbing over the embankment, he found the road to town, and took off like a meteor, his feet moving like pistons. He was in a hurry to get to town, and in an even bigger hurry to put as much distance between the little demon in red and himself as possible.

The road was broad and level, and seemingly endless. Only a few yellow leaves remained on the dense yet well-spaced branches of roadside poplars; here and there a sparrow or a crow chirped or cawed. The late-autumn sky was high, the air clean; not a cloud anywhere, but Yuanbao had no time to enjoy the passing scenery as he hurried along like a rabbit trying to outrun a wolf.