The Republic of Wine (16 page)

Just so I won't screw things up as a storyteller, I'll narrate my tale objectively, avoiding, as much as possible, any descriptions of what was going on inside the heads of the little demon and the children. Ill stick to their behavior and their speech, and leave it to you readers to interpret what sparked their behavior and lay behind their speech. This is not an easy story to tell, because the little demon keeps coming up with ways to smash it to pieces. He is not a good little boy, that's for sure. (In truth, my story is just about wrapped up.)

Breakfast was sumptuous: egg-drop soup, steamed rolls made of fine flour, milk, bread, jam, salted bean sprouts, and sweet-and-sour radish slices.

The old man who delivered their breakfast took his job seriously, carefully filling each plate or bowl and handing it to one of the children. The little demon got a portion, which he received with his head lowered deferentially, so as not to upset the old fellow, who nonetheless watched him out of the corner of his eye.

After the old fellow left, the little demon looked up, eyes shining, and said:

‘Comrades, children, don't eat a bite of this! They want to fatten us up before they eat us. We'll go on a hunger strike. Children, the skinnier you are, the later they'll get around to eating you, and maybe never.'

But the children paid no heed to his impassioned plea; maybe they had no idea what he was talking about. The sight and smell of all that food was all they could think about, so they dug in, stuffing their faces and raising quite a din. The little demon's first impulse was to get rough with them, but he put that foolish thought out of his mind just in time to see a tall man walk into the room. With a furtive look at the man's big feet, he picked up his glass of warm milk and took a long, loud drink.

Sensing the contemptuous look on the man's face, he went back to his milk, with a vengeance, and attacked a steamed bun, making a point of getting his face as dirty as possible and gurgling loudly. In other words, he turned himself into a gluttonous fool.

‘Little pig!' he heard the man say.

The man's legs, both the thickness of stone pillars, ambulated toward the front, so the little demon looked up to stare at his back. He noticed that the man had a long, oval head beneath a cap from which several curls of brown hair peeked out. When the man turned around, the little demon saw a ruddy face, with a long, greasy, beaklike nose that resembled a deformed water chestnut smeared with lard.

‘Children.' the man said with a devious smile, ‘did you have a good breakfast?'

Most replied that they had, but some said no.

‘Dear children.' the man said, ‘you mustn't eat too much at one sitting, or your digestion will suffer. Now let's go play a game, all right?'

No response from the children, who blinked in disbelief.

The man smacked himself on the head and admitted that he had foolishly forgotten that they were only children and hadn't yet learned what games were all about. ‘Let's go out and play the hawk and the chicks, what do you say?'

Shouting their approval, the children followed the man out into the yard. With apparent reluctance, the little demon tagged along.

As the game began, the hawk-nosed man chose the little demon to be the mother hen - maybe because his red clothes made him so conspicuous - with all the other children lined up behind him as the brood. The man was to be the hawk. Flapping his arms, he stared at them and bared his teeth as he began to screech.

Suddenly the hawk swooped down, scrunching up its beak until it nearly touched its thin upper lip, a menacing glare radiating from its eyes. This was indeed a savage, carnivorous raptor. Its dark shadow fell upon the children from above. Nervously, the little demon eyed its deadly twitching talons, as it settled onto the carpet of green grass, then rose into the air, unhurriedly toying with the children, waiting for the right moment. A hawk is a very patient hunter. And since the initiative always rests with the attacker, the defender must never let down its guard, not for a minute.

Suddenly the hawk swooped down like lightning, and the little demon reacted by rushing valiantly to the tail-end of his troops to butt and bite and scratch until the targeted child was wrenched free of the hawk's grasp. The other children whooped and hollered, excited and frightened at the same time, as they fled from the hawk. The little demon nimbly threw himself between hunter and prey. The glare in his eyes conquered that of the stunned hawk.

The second attack commenced, drawing the little demon back into the fray, as he broke free from the brood of children. His movements were too nimble and focused for a mere child. Before the hawk had time to react, the little demon was at its neck, and it suddenly feared for its life. It felt as if an enormous black spider had attached itself to its neck, or a vampire bat with bright red membranes flaring beneath its limbs. It wrenched its head violently to shake the child free, but in vain, for by then the little demon's claws were buried in its eyes. The excruciating pain took all the fight out of it, and with a tortured howl, it stumbled forward and thudded to the ground like a felled tree.

The little demon jumped off the man's head, a smirk on his face that can only be described as evil and brutal. Walking up to the children, he said:

Children, comrades, I scooped out the hawk's eyes. It can't see us. Now it's time to play!'

The eyeless hawk writhed on the ground, sometimes arching like a footbridge and sometimes slithering like a dragon. Black blood oozed out from between its fingers, which covered its face, like squirming black worms. It wailed pitifully, a sad, shrill, chilling sound. Instinctively, the children huddled together. The little demon took a vigilant look all around; the compound was deserted, except for a few white butterflies flitting over the grass. Black smoke belched from a chimney on the other side of the wall, sending a cloud of heavy fragrance straight to the little demon's nostrils. Meanwhile, the wails of the hawk grew increasingly pitiful and shrill So after a couple of frenetic spins, he jumped back onto the hawk's back, quickly burying all ten claws into its throat. The look on his face was too horrifying for words as his fingers dug deep in the man's thick neck. Did that give him the same feeling as thrusting his fingers into hot sand or a bucket of lard? Hard to say. Was he enjoying the satisfaction of revenge? Again, hard to say. You, my readers, are more intelligent than the author, something the narrator believes without question. Well, by the time the little demon withdrew his fingers, the hawk's wails were barely audible; blood spurted from the holes in its neck, rising and falling, as if home to crabs that were foaming at the mouth. Holding up ten bloody fingers, the little demon announced calmly:

‘The hawk is in its death throes.'

The bolder children crowded around, with the others falling in timidly behind, all gazing down at the hawk's expiring body. It was still twitching, writhing on the ground, though the intensity of movement was weakening. Suddenly the hawk's mouth opened, as if to release a screech; but instead of sound, only blood emerged, making a pattering sound as it hit the grass, sticky and hot. The little demon picked up a handful of mud and stuffed it into the hawk's mouth. Sounds rumbled up from the throat, followed by an explosion of mud and blood.

Children,' the little demon demanded, ‘suffocate him, stuff up the hawk's mouth, so he can't eat us.'

The children sprang into action, as ordered. In unity there is strength. Dozens of hands scrambled to dig up mud, grass, and sand, and cram it into the hawk's mouth; then, like a downpour of rain, they covered its eyes and pinched its nostrils shut. As the children's enthusiasm mounted, they were in the grip of euphoria, enjoying the game of life as they buried the hawk's head in mud. That is how children are; they will gang up on a poor frog, or a snake crossing the road, or a wounded cat. And after beating it half to death, they'll crowd around to enjoy the spectacle.

‘Is he dead?'

A pop of air escaped from the hawk's bottom.

‘He isn't dead, he just farted. Keep stuffing.'

Another deluge of mud ensued, nearly burying the hawk - yes, it was all but buried under the mud.

When the person in charge of the Special Purchasing Section of the Culinary Academy heard a series of demonic wails in the yard outside the Meat Child Room, her neck and bladder constricted, and the demon of doom bored insect-like into her mind.

She stood up and walked over to the telephone, but when her right hand touched the handset, what felt like an electric shock shot up her arm from her fingertip, numbing half her body. Dragging her paralyzed body back over to the desk, she sat down, feeling as if she'd been cloven in two, one side cold, the other feverishly hot. Hastily, she opened a drawer and took out a mirror to look at herself. One half of her face was dark and ruddy, the other a ghostly white. Her nerves shot, she somehow made it back to the telephone, but her hand recoiled as if lightning had struck again as soon as she reached out. She seemed on the verge of crumpling to the floor, just as a divine light emerged from her brain to illuminate a road ahead. A lightning-struck tree stood beside the road, half of it a lush green, covered with leaves and luscious fruit, the other half with bronze limbs and an iron trunk, completely denuded, emitting a magical glow in a sea of sunlight. She knew at once: That tree is me. That thought filled her heart with intense warmth, and tears of joy wetted her cheeks. As if mesmerized or infatuated, she gazed at the half of that big tree that had been petrified by lightning, turning away from the green half in disgust. She called out for lightning, summoned it to turn the green half of the tree into bronze limbs and an iron trunk, to transform the tree into one glorious whole. She then reached out to the telephone with her left hand, and her body was as if on fire. Feeling ten years younger, she ran out into the yard and from there to the lawn in front of the Meat Child Room. When she saw the buried hawk, she burst out laughing. Clapping her hands, she said:

‘You've killed him well, children, killed him well! Now you must flee, get as far away from this den of murderous monsters as you can!'

With her in the lead, the children passed through a series of iron gates and wound their way through the labyrinthine grounds of the Culinary Academy. But her attempt was doomed to failure. With the exception of the little demon, who made good his escape, every one of the children was caught and dragged back, and the woman was discharged from her post. Why, gentle readers, do you think I've wasted so much ink on this woman? Because she is my mother-in-law. That is to say, she is the wife of Professor Yuan Shuangyu of the Brewer's College. Everyone says she went crazy, and that's how I see it. She spends her time these days at home writing letters of accusation, ream upon ream of them, all mailed off, some to the Chairman of the Central Committee, some to the provincial Party Secretary, one even to the legendary magistrate of Kaifeng Prefecture, Magistrate Bao. Now, I ask you, if she's not crazy, who is? At this rate, she'll go broke just buying stamps.

When two flowers bloom at once, take care of them one at a time. A gang of white-uniformed men dragged the fleeing boys back to the Meat Child Room. It nearly wore them out, since the boys had undergone the baptism of their mortal battle with the now-dead hawk, and had turned savage and crafty; they had run into a wooded area or into hidden spots in walls, or they had climbed trees, or they [had jumped into latrines. If there was a hiding place, they found it. The fact of the matter is, after my mother-in-law opened the iron gate of the Meat Child Room, the children went absolutely wild. Though she felt she was leading a group of children out of a den of monsters, it was pure fantasy, since the only thing following her was her own shadow. As she stood by the rear gate of the academy, loudly urging the children to flee, her shouts were heard only by old men and old women who lay hidden beside the waterway leading from the Culinary Academy to the nearby river, awaiting the passage of delectable scraps from the kitchen. My mother-in-law could not see them in their hiding spots amid the astonishingly dense foliage. So why did my mother-in-law, who held such an important position, go crazy? Whether or not it was the result of the electric shocks will require another story.

After the children's escape was discovered, the Culinary Academy's Security Section called an urgent meeting to map out emergency measures, including sealing off the academy. Once the gates were closed, detachments of crack troops began combing the grounds. During the search, ten of the troopers were bitten savagely by the meat children, and one, a woman, was blinded in one eye by a gouging finger. The academy leadership showered the wounded troops with sympathy and consoling words, and even distributed lavish bonuses based upon the severity of their injuries. The recaptured meat children were placed under strict surveillance in a secure room, where a roll call turned up one missing child. According to the white-uniformed serving woman, who had regained her senses after some emergency therapy, the escaped

who held such an important position, go it was a result of the electric shocks will meat child was none other than the boy who had wounded her. He must have also been the one who murdered the hawk. She vaguely recalled that he was dressed all in red, and had a pair of gloomy, snakelike eyes.

A few days later, a janitor out cleaning the waterway discovered a set of red clothing, filthy beyond description; but there was no trace of the little demon, the murderer, the leader of the meat children.

Gentle readers, would you like to know what happened to the little demon?

Dear Doctor of Liquor Studies Yidou

Thanks for the letter. I've read your story ‘Child Prodigy.' The little demon, wrapped in his red flag, had my heart pounding and my skin crawling. I couldn't sleep for days. The language in this story is highly polished, my friend, and the ingenuity of the plot never seems to end; it puts me to shame. If you insist that I air specific views, I suppose I can offer a perfunctory criticism or two: the absence of any background on the little demon, which flies in the face of conventional realism, for instance, or the overly loose organization and relative lack of authorial restraint. Not worth worrying about. In the face of your ‘demonic realism,' I shy away from any real criticism. I've already forwarded ‘Child Prodigy' to
Citizens' Literature
, Since this is an official publication, it's flooded with manuscripts, most of which wind up at the bottom of towering stacks. So don't be surprised that you've heard nothing about the two earlier stories. I wrote to a couple of renowned editors of
Citizens' Literature
, Zhou Bao and Li Xiaobao, and asked them to check into it for me. The two ‘treasures' [bao] are friends of mine, and I'm sure they'll help out.