The Republic of Wine (35 page)

‘Gramps Qiu, I've disturbed you again,' the peddler said softly to the old man.

‘Liu Four, how many times have I told you not to set up shop here? And still you refuse to listen to me!'

‘Gramps Qiu, I didn't mean to anger you, but what can a poor man do? I have to come up with my daughter's tuition. I'll do anything for my kids, but I don't dare go into the city, because they'll fine me if they catch me, and there goes half a month's income.'

Gramps Qiu waved his shotgun in the air. ‘You there,' he said sternly, ‘toss that pistol over here!'

Like an obedient child, Ding Gou'er tossed the pistol over to to where Gramps Qiu was standing.

‘Put your hands up!' Gramps Qiu demanded.

Slowly Ding Gou'er raised his hands, then watched as the skinny old man whom the aging wonton peddler had called Gramps Qiu held his shotgun in one hand to free up the other. Then, bending his legs while keeping his upper body straight - so he could shoot if necessary - he picked up the six-nine service pistol Gramps Qiu studied the gun from every angle, before announcing disdainfully, ‘A beat-up Luger!' Ding Gou'er, seeing his opportunity, said, ‘I can tell you're a weapons expert.' The old man's face lit up. In a high and scratchy yet infectiously powerful voice, he said, ‘You're right there. I've handled at least thirty, maybe even fifty different weapons in my time, from the Czech rifle to the Hanyang, the Russian submachine gun, the tommy gun, the nine-shot repeater … and that's only the rifles. As for handguns, I've used the German Mauser, the Spanish Waist-Drum repeater, the Japanese Tortoise Shell Mauser, the Chinese Drumstick revolver, and three kinds of Saturday-night specials, not counting this one here.' He tossed Ding Gou'er's pistol into the air and caught it on its way down, in a nimble practiced fashion that belied his years. He had an elongated head, narrow eyes, a hooked nose, no eyebrows and no sideburns; his deeply wrinkled face was dark as a tree trunk that's been charred in a kiln. ‘This pistol,' he said scornfully, ‘is better suited for women than for men.' The investigator replied evenly, ‘It's very accurate.' The old man examined it again, then said authoritatively, ‘It's fine within ten meters. More than that, it isn't worth shit.' To which Ding Gou'er replied, ‘You know your business, Gramps.' The old man stuck Ding Gou'er's pistol into his waistband and snorted contemptuously.

The wonton peddler said, ‘Gramps Qiu is a veteran revolutionary. He's in charge of Liquorland's Martyrs' Cemetery.'

‘No wonder,' Ding Gou'er said.

‘What about you?' the old revolutionary asked.

‘I'm an investigator for the provincial Higher Procuratorate.'

‘Let's see your papers.'

‘They were stolen.'

‘You look like a fugitive to me.'

‘I know I look like one, but I'm not.'

‘Can you prove it?'

‘Call your Municipal Party Secretary, or your Mayor, or your Police Chief, or your Chief Prosecutor, and ask if they know a special investigator by the name of Ding Gou'er.'

‘Special investigator?' The old revolutionary couldn't suppress a giggle. ‘Where'd they find a dogshit special investigator like you?'

‘I was brought down by a woman,' Ding Gou'er said. Intending to laugh at himself, he was surprised by the heart stabs this simple admission produced. Falling to his knees in front of the wonton stand, he began pummeling his already bloody head with his already bloody fists and screeching, ‘I was brought down by a woman, by a woman who slept with a dwarf…'

The old revolutionary walked up, poked Ding Gou'er in the back with his shotgun, and demanded:

‘Get your ass up!'

Ding Gou'er looked up through his tears at the dark, elongated head of the old revolutionary, as if seeing a friend from home or like an underling looking at his superior or, most fitting of all, like a son laying eyes on his father for the first time in years. In the grip of strong emotions, he wrapped his arms around the old revolutionary's legs and said tearfully, ‘Gramps, I'm a useless sack of shit to have been brought down by a woman …'

The old revolutionary jerked Ding Gou'er to his feet by his collar. His shiny, tiny eyes bored mercilessly into the wretched man for about half as long as it takes to smoke a pipeful, before he spat on the ground, drew the pistol from his waistband, and threw it down at his feet. Then he turned and swaggered off without so much as a grunt. The big yellow dog followed on his heels, also without a grunt, its damp fur glistening like a coat of tiny pearls.

The wonton peddler laid the shiny bullet down next to the pistol, picked up his stand, turned down the gas lantern, hoisted the whole rig onto his shoulder, and walked off without a sound.

Standing petrified in the dark, Ding Gou'er watched the man's retreating back until all he could see was pale yellow lamplight, flickering like a will-o'-the-wisp; the canopy of the French kolanut overhead kept the raindrops off him and made a rustling sound that seemed louder now that the other people had left, taking the lamplight with them. In a state of utter stupefaction, he managed to stay upright; he had the presence of mind to pick up his pistol and the bullet. The night air was cold and damp, he ached all over, and he was a stranger in a strange land; he felt as if his day of reckoning had arrived.

The menacing look in the old revolutionary's eyes had implied that Ding Gou'er was not up to snuff, and felt a need to pour out his heart to the man. What power could, in such a short time, transform a man so tough he could eat nails and shit springs into a mangy cur who had lost his soul? And was it possible that an ordinary-looking woman could possess that power? The answer was no, so putting all the blame on her was unfair. Something mysterious was going on here, and the old man who patrolled the night with his dog was at the heart of that mystery. Sensing that great wisdom was contained in that elongated head, Ding Gou'er made up his mind to go looking for him.

He set out on legs that had turned stiff, heading in the direction the old man and his dog had taken. From off in the distance came the sound of night trucks driving across a steel bridge, a steady
clang-clang
that deepened the night and its mystery. The road rose and fell beneath his feet, and at the top of one particularly steep hill, he sat on the ground and slid down. When he looked up, he saw a pile of broken bricks in the halo of a streetlight. A layer of white, like frost, blanketed the pile. A few steps more, and he was standing beside an ancient gateway. A light burning in the window of the battlement above illuminated a wrought-iron gate and a white placard on which red letters proclaimed:

LIQUORLAND MARTYRS' CEMETERY

He rushed up to the gate and grabbed hold of the steel rods rising above the gate, like a man in jail; they were sticky enough to peel the skin right off his hands. The big yellow dog ran up to the gate, barking frantically, but he held his ground. Then the loud, scratchy voice of the old revolutionary emerged from the other side of the battlement; the dog stopped barking and hopping around, then hung its head and wagged its tail. The old revolutionary appeared before Ding Gou'er, shotgun slung over his shoulder, the brass buttons on his overcoat emblematic of his commanding authority,

‘What the hell are you up to?' he demanded sternly.

With a loud sniffle, Ding Gou'er replied tearfully, ‘Gramps, I really am a special investigator for the provincial Higher Procuratorate.'

‘What are you here for?'

‘To investigate a very serious matter.'

‘What serious matter might that be?'

‘A gang of cannibalistic dignitaries are cooking and eating infants.'

Til kill every last one of them!'

‘Don't go off half-cocked, Gramps. Let me in and I'll tell you the whole story.'

The old revolutionary swung open a small side gate. ‘Squeeze in through there,' he said.

Ding Gou'er hesitated, because he'd spotted some fine yellow hairs stuck in the corner.

‘Are you coming in or not?'

Ding Gou'er bent down and slipped through the gate.

‘Stuffed bellies like you can't hold a candle to my dog.'

As Ding Gou'er followed the old revolutionary into a gate house, he was reminded of the gate house at the Mount Luo mine and the gateman with the wild mop of bristly hair.

The gate house was ablaze with light, the walls a snowy white. A fire-heated brick bed occupied half the room's space; a wall as wide as the bed separated it from a stove on which a wok rested. Pine kindling kept the fire roaring and filled the air with its fragrance.

The old revolutionary unstrapped his shotgun and hung it on the wall, removed his overcoat and tossed it onto the bed, then rubbed his hands and said:

‘Burning firewood and sleeping on a heated bed is my one special privilege.' He looked at Ding Gou'er and asked, ‘After decades of making revolution, which left me with seven or eight scars the size of ricebowls, don't you think I deserve it?'

So mellowed by the pervading warmth that he was about to doze off, Ding Gou'er replied, ‘Yes, of course you do.'

‘But that rotten son of a bitch Section Chief Yu wants to have me start burning acacia instead of pine. I've made revolution all my adult life, even had the head of my prick shot off by the Jap devils - I'll never have sons or grandsons to carry on my line - so what's the big deal in burning a little pine in my old age? I'm already eighty, how many pine trees can I use up in the years left to me, hm? I tell you, if the King of Heaven came to earth, he couldn't stop me from burning pine!' Waving his arms and slobbering, the old fellow was getting increasingly agitated.'What was it you said just now? Something about people eating infants? Cannibals? They're worse than animals! Who are they? Tomorrow I'll go kill every last one of them! I'll shoot ‘em first and make my report later. At worst I'll get a demerit or two. I've killed hundreds of people in my lifetime, all of them bad - traitors, counterrevolutionaries, invaders - and now that I'm old, it's time to kill a few cannibalistic animals!'

Ding Gou'er itched all over; his clothes reeked of moist, steamy ashes. ‘That's what I'm here to investigate,' he said.

Investigate, my ass!' the old revolutionary cackled. ‘Take ‘em out and shoot ‘em, I say! Investigate, my ass!'

‘Gramps, we're living under a system of laws these days. You can't just go around shooting people without hard evidence.'

‘Then get on with your investigation. What the hell are you hanging around here for? What happened to your class consciousness? What happened to your work ethic? The enemy's out there eating infants, and you're in here getting toasty warm! I'll bet you're a Trotskyite! A member of the bourgeoisie! A running dog of imperialism!'

This flood of invective from the old revolutionary snapped Ding Gou'er out of his dreamy stupor, as if his head had been splattered with dog's blood, his chest filled with roiling waves of heat. He tore off his clothes, until he was standing there naked, except for his scuffed shoes. Squatting down in front of the stove, he stirred the fire inside and added some oily pine kindling, sending white smoke reeking of pine up his nostrils; he sneezed, and it felt good. Draping his clothing over pieces of kindling, he held it up to the fire to dry; it sizzled like a reeking donkey hide. The fire also heated his bare skin, making it sting and itch. The more he scratched and rubbed himself, the better he felt.

‘Have you got fucking scabies?' the old revolutionary asked. I got scabies once from sleeping in a haystack. The whole platoon got them. Itch? We scratched and rubbed until we bled. It didn't help. Even our damned insides itched, and we weren't a fighting unit anymore. We lost men without a fight. The assistant squad leader of Squad 8, Ma Shan, had a brainstorm. He bought a bunch of green onions and garlic, smashed them to a pulp, then added some salt and vinegar, and rubbed it all over our bodies. It stung like hell, it numbed the skin, it felt like a dog scratching its balls. I've never felt anything so good! All those fucking mites, gone just like that with a home remedy. You get sick, the government takes care of you. That's how it's done. I hung my head on my belt and fought for the revolution, so by rights they should take care of me…'

The investigator detected a note of bitterness, a grumbling tone in the old revolutionary's words, a history of revolutionary hardship and suffering. What was supposed to have been a chance to pour out his heart had elicited a litany of grievances from the old-timer. Sadly disappointed, he was beginning to realize that no one can really rescue anyone else, that everyone has his own problems, and talking about them doesn't help - the hungry man's belly is just as empty, the thirsty man's mouth stays just as dry. He shook out his clothes, knocked off some of the dried mud, and got dressed. The hot fabric burned his skin, transporting him to Seventh Heaven. But now that he was swathed in comfort, his spiritual suffering swelled, as a picture of the naked lady trucker and the pigeon-breasted, bow-legged humpback together in bed flashed into his head, clear as day and lifelike as a movie, the sort of thing he'd seen once through a keyhole. The longer he let the picture roll, the livelier it got, and the richer. The lady trucker was the golden color of a plump female loach, covered with oily, slippery mucus that gave off a subtle and not very pleasant odor. Yu Yichi, that warty little toad, was pawing her with his webbed feet, frothy bubbles popping in the corners of his mouth as he croaked and croaked … Ding's heart was like a leaf shuddering in the wind; how he wished he could rip open his chest, gouge out that heart, and fling it in her face. Slut slut filthy slut! He could, it seemed, see, and see conclusively: Investigator Ding Gou'er, majestic as a statue hewed from pure marble, kicks in the cream-colored door with the tip of his leather shoe. There in front of him a bed, a solitary bed, on which the stupefied lady trucker and Yu Yichi sit - he rolls off the bed like a toad, his belly covered with hideous red spots - he stands cowering at the base of the wall - pigeon breast, humped back, bowed legs (or knock-kneed), an oversized head, white eyes, a crooked nose, no lips, yellow teeth with wide gaps, a mouth like a black hole that gives off a festering stench, big, dry, almost transparently thin and slightly yellow, twitching ears, black apelike arms that nearly scrape the ground, bushy hair all over his body, mutant-looking feet with more than the usual supply of toes, not to mention his black-as-ink donkey dick - How could you possibly sleep with a hideous creature like that?