Under the Red Flag Page 10

  We laughed and ignored him, because he had been wiped out. We went on chasing the remnants. Hiding in the trench, they all saw their commander knocked down; since they had no ammunition left, we subdued them easily—one by one they raised their hands to surrender.

  “Grandson, you ass ball!” Benli yelled behind us, and rushed over. “Fuck your grandma, you used stones.” On his forehead a slant cut was bleeding. Blood trickled down around his left eye.

  “So what?” Grandson said calmly. His voice startled us.

  “Damn you, you took revenge.” Benli moved forward, grabbing for him.

  “Yes, I did.” Grandson whipped out a dagger and waved it. “You touch me, I’ll stab you through.”

  Benli froze, his hand covering his forehead. We dropped our clods and moved to separate them. Benli turned around to look for a stone while Grandson produced a cake of lead, which looked like a puck and was used in the game of hitting bottle caps. He raised it and declared, “I’m ready, Benli. You come close, I’ll crush your skull with this.” He looked pale, but his eyes were gleaming. “Come on, Benli,” he said. “You have your parents at home. I don’t have a mother. Let’s kill each other and see who will lose more.”

  The emperor looked confused. We pushed him away and implored him not to further provoke Grandson, who was simply crazy and would do anything and could hurt anybody. We mustn’t fight like this within our own camp.

  “Enjoy picking apples at Willow Village, you bastard of a capitalist-backer,” Grandson shouted at Benli. This was too much. Our emperor burst into tears. We knew his father had recently been removed from the Commune Administration for being a capitalist-backer and was going down to the countryside to reform himself through labor. The family was moving soon.

  “Give me some paper, White Cat,” Benli muttered to me. But I didn’t have any paper with me.

  “Here, here you are.” Big Shrimp gave him an unfolded handbill.

  Benli wiped the blood and sweat off his face and blew his stuffy nose. He couldn’t stop his tears. We had never seen him cry like this before.

  “Come on, let’s go home,” Bare Hips said. He took Benli’s arm, and we started moving out of the yard.

  Grandson was standing there alone in the scorching sun, as though he were not one of us. He chopped the lead in his hand with the dagger, watching us retreating; he spat to the ground and stamped on his own spittle.

  After that fight, Grandson said he hated his nicknames and threatened to hit whoever happened to call him Grandson with the cake of lead, which he always carried with him. As for the other nickname, Big Babe, we had already dropped it of our own accord. In school, teachers called him Liu Damin, which was his real name but too formal to us street urchins. Only nicknames were acceptable among us. However, we found a solution to this problem. Benli was busy all the time helping his parents pack up and seldom played with us now, so we called Grandson “Vice-Emperor.” And he seemed to like that name. To tell the truth, he wasn’t a great fighter, but he was fierce and had more guts than the rest of us. Nobody among us dared challenge Emperor Benli and only Grandson could do it. Besides, he had been practicing with sandbags at night and had hard fists now. More important, after Benli’s leaving we would have to choose a new emperor for our empire—the eastern part of town. Grandson seemed to be a natural candidate.

  The day before Benli left we held a small party for him on top of a large haystack behind the Veterinary Station on the northern hill. Sickle Handle had lately stolen ten yuan from his father, who was a widower and a master blacksmith in the inn for carters and would get drunk at the end of the day. The old man couldn’t keep track of his money, so his son always had a little cash on him and would share it with us. For the farewell party we bought sodas, boiled periwinkles, popsicles, moon cakes, toffees, melons, and haw jelly. Benli and Grandson were no longer on hostile terms, though they remained distant toward each other. We ate away, reminiscing about our victories over the enemies from different streets and villages and competing with each other in casting curses. A few golden butterflies and dragonflies were fluttering around us. The afternoon air was warm and clean, and the town below us seemed like a green harbor full of white sails.

  Next morning we gathered at Benli’s house to help load two horse carts. To our surprise, no adults showed up from the neighborhood, and we small boys could only carry a chair or a basin. Fortunately the two cart drivers were young and strong, so they helped move the big chests, cauldrons, and vegetable vats. Benli’s father had seldom come out since he was named a capitalist-backer. We were amazed to find that his hair had turned gray in just two weeks. He looked downcast and his thick shoulders stooped. Throughout the moving he almost didn’t say a word. Benli was quiet too, though his small brothers and sisters were noisy and often in our way. Before the carts departed, Benli’s mother, a good woman, gave us each a large apple-pear.

  After Benli left, the boys in the other parts of town attempted to invade our territory a few times, but we defeated them. To Grandson’s credit, it must be said that he was an able emperor, relentless to the enemy and fair and square with his own men. Once we confiscated a pouch of coins from Red Rooster on Eternal Way, and Grandson distributed the money among us without taking a fen for himself. Another time we stole a crate of grapes from the army’s grocery center; we all ate to our fill and took some home, but Grandson didn’t take any back to his uncle’s. Yet we couldn’t help calling him Grandson occasionally, though nobody dared use that name in his presence. Because he held the throne firmly, the territorial order in town remained the same. No one could enter our streets without risking his skin. And of course we wouldn’t transgress the borderlines either, unless it was necessary.

  One afternoon we went shooting birds around the pig farm owned by the army. It was a stuffy day and we felt tired. For more than two hours the seven of us had killed only four sparrows. There weren’t many birds to shoot at, so we decided to go and watch the butchers slaughtering pigs for the army’s canteens and the officers’ families. Then came Squinty, running over and panting hard. “Quick, let’s go,” he said, waving his hands. “Just now I saw Big Hat in town buying vinegar and soy sauce.”

  At once our spirit was aroused. Grandson told us to follow him to intercept Big Hat at the crossroads of Main Street and Blacksmith Road; then he ordered Squinty to run home and tell other boys to join us there. We set out running to the crossroads, waving our weapons and shouting, “Kill!”

  Big Hat was the emperor of Green Village, whose boys we didn’t know very well but fought with whenever we ran into them. He had gotten that nickname because he always wore a marten hat in winter and would brag that the hat made lots of big girls crazy about him. Usually he would come to town with two or three of his strong bodyguards, but today, according to Squinty’s information, he was shopping here by himself. This inspired us to capture him. To subdue those country bandits, we had to catch their ringleader first.

  No sooner had we arrived at the crossroads than Big Hat emerged down Blacksmith Road. He was walking stealthily under the eaves on the left side of the street, carrying on his back an empty manure basket and holding, in one hand, a long dung-fork and, in the other, a string bag of bottles. He looked taller than two months before when we had fought under White Stone Bridge near his village. Seeing us standing at the crossroads, he turned around. At this instant, Doggy and Squinty with a group of boys came out of the street corner and cut off Big Hat’s retreat. Both units of our troops charged toward him, with sticks and stones in our hands. Knowing his doom, Big Hat stopped, put down the basket and the bottles, and stood with his back against the wall, holding the dung-fork.

  “Put down your arms and we’ll spare your life,” Doggy cried. We surrounded him.

  “Doggy,” Big Hat said, “you son of a black-hearted rich peasant, don’t stand in my way, or else we’ll smash your old man’s head next time he’s paraded through our village.” He grinned, and a star-shaped scar was revealed on his st
ubbly crown.

  Doggy lowered his eyes and stopped moving. Indeed several weeks before, his father, a rich peasant in the old days, had been beaten in the marketplace during a denunciation. “Stop bluffing, you son of an ass!” Grandson shouted.

  “Grandson,” Big Hat said, “let me go just this once. My granduncle is waiting for me at home. We have guests today.” He pointed at the squat bottle containing white spirits. “My granduncle is a sworn brother of Chairman Ding of our commune. If you let me go, I’ll tell him to help promote your dad.”

  We all turned to look at Grandson. Apparently Big Hat thought Grandson’s uncle was his father.

  “Tell your granduncle we all fuck him and your grandaunt too!” Grandson said.

  “Come on, your old man will be the head of his workshop if you let me go just this once. My granduncle is also a friend of Director Ma of the fertilizer plant.”

  “Fuck your granduncle!” Grandson plunged forward and hit Big Hat on the forehead with the cake of lead.

  Big Hat dropped to the ground without making a noise, and the dung-fork sprang off and knocked down one of the bottles. Blood dripped on the front of his gray shirt. Between his eyebrows was a long clean cut as if inflicted by a knife. The air smelled of vinegar.

  Big Hat was lying beneath the wall, his eyes shut and his mouth vomiting froth. We were scared and thought Grandson must have knocked him dead, but we dared not say a word.

  A moment later Big Hat came to and began crying for help. Grandson went over and kicked him in the stomach. “Get up, you bum.” He clutched his collar and pulled him up on his knees. “Today you met your grandpas. You must kowtow to everybody here and call us Grandpa, or you won’t be able to go home tonight.”

  We were too shocked to do anything. “Grandson,” Doggy tried to intervene, “spare his life, Grandson. Let him—”

  “Stop calling me that!” Grandson yelled without looking at Doggy, then turned to Big Hat. “Do you want to call us Grandpa or not?”

  “No.” Tears covered Big Hat’s face.

  “All right.” Grandson stepped away, picked up the fork, and smashed all the bottles. Dark soy sauce and colorless liquor splashed on the gravel and began fading away. “All right, if you don’t, you must eat one of these.” He pointed to the horse droppings a few paces away.

  “No!”

  “Eat the dung,” Grandson ordered, and whacked Big Hat on the back with the fork.

  “Oh, help!”

  The street was unusually quiet, no grown-ups in sight. “Yes or no?” Grandson asked.

  “No.”

  “Say it again.”

  “No!”

  “Take this.” Grandson stabbed him in the leg with the fork.

  “Oh! Save my life!”

  One of the prongs pierced Big Hat’s calf. He was rolling on the ground, cursing, wailing, and yelling. Strangely enough, no grown-ups ever showed up.

  This was too much. Surely we wanted to see that bastard’s blood, but we wouldn’t kill him and go to jail for that, so a few of us moved to stop Grandson.

  “Keep back, all of you.” He wielded the fork around as if he would strike any of us. We stood still.

  Grandson picked up one of the droppings with the fork and raised it to Big Hat’s lips. He threatened, “If you don’t take a bite I’ll gut you. Open your mouth.”

  “Oh! You bandit,” Big Hat moaned with his eyes closed. His mouth opened a little.

  “Open big,” Grandson ordered, and thrust the dung into his mouth.

  “Ah!” Big Hat spat it out and rubbed his lips with his sleeves. “Fuck your mother!” he yelled, and lay on his side wailing with both hands covering his face.

  Grandson threw the fork to the other side of the street; he looked around at us with his crazed eyes, then walked away without a word. His broad hips and short legs swayed as though he were stamping and crushing something.

  Without any delay we all ran away, leaving Big Hat to curse and weep alone.

  Shortly afterward Grandson became famous. Boys of the lower grades in our Central Elementary School would tremble at the mere sight of him. With him leading us, we could enter some other areas of town without provoking a fight. Except for us, no one dared play on Main Street any longer—the former noncombat zone was under our control now. Some of the officers’ children, a bunch of weaklings though they ate meat and white bread and wore better clothes, even begged us to protect them on their way to school and back home. They would pay us with tickets for the movies shown in the army’s theater and with tofu coupons, since Sickle Handle’s father, the old blacksmith, had lost all his teeth and liked soft food. For a short while our territory was expanding, our affairs were prosperous, and our Eastern Empire began to dominate Dismount Fort.

  But a month later, Grandson’s uncle failed to renew his contract and couldn’t find work in town. We were surprised to hear that he hadn’t been a permanent, but a temporary worker in the fertilizer plant. The Lius decided to return to their home village in Tile County.

  Grandson left with the family, and our empire collapsed. Because none of us was suited to be an emperor, the throne remained unoccupied. Now boys from the south even dared to play horse ride in front of our former headquarters—Benli’s house. We were unable to go to the department store at the western end of Main Street or to the marketplace to buy things for our parents and rent picture-story books. Most of us were beaten in school. Once I was caught by Big Hat’s men at the millhouse and was forced to meow for them. How we missed our old glorious days!

  As time went by, we left, one after another, to serve different emperors.

  Fortune

  Blind Bea, a locksmith, used to be a street fortune-teller in the old days. Though his practice was banned in the New China, people in Dismount Fort had never stopped seeing him in secret. Whenever there was a wedding or a funeral, they would go to him beforehand and ask about a lucky day or a good burial place. Because of his poor sight, Bea seldom went out, but he knew what was happening in town. Some people believed he was a kind of scholar who could fathom the mysteries between heaven and earth without stepping out of his threshold. Blind Bea lived well. Except for the children who often watched him through the back window of his hovel, nobody was jealous of his eating large white bread at lunch and dinner.

  Tang Hu of Sand Village heard that a month ago a peasant had lost a horse and gone to the fortune-teller to ask its whereabouts. After reading the bamboo slips, Blind Bea raised his knotted hand and boomed out, “He carried his balls to the poplar woods in the east.” The owner of the horse said it was a mare, but Bea told him to forget male or female and just go search the woods. A few men went there and found the horse.

  These days Tang had been thinking of visiting Blind Bea, because he had been dogged by bad luck for the past few years. The summer before last he lost two litters of piglets, and last fall a flood ruined his cabbages and turnips. Then he had acute appendicitis and could have died if a truck hadn’t happened to be passing the village and carried him to the Commune Clinic in time. Nonetheless, the doctors opened his stomach, and Tang lost all the original wind his parents had put in him. He wondered whether these misfortunes had been caused by the graves of his ancestors which faced east instead of south.

  Tang pulled up his horse cart before the locksmith’s and went inside. Blind Bea crouched over a vise filing the copper switch of a flashlight. At the sight of Tang he put down the rasp and returned to the armchair covered with a roe deer’s skin.

  “Take a seat,” Bea said.

  Tang sat down and explained what was on his mind. Blind Bea asked his name and the hour and date of his birth. Then he closed his eyes and sat back, mumbling something to himself while fingering a string of green-jade beads. Tang rolled up a cigarette and lit it. A dragonfly was fluttering on the wire gauze of the window, struggling in vain to get out.

  “I don’t see any problem here,” Bea said three minutes later.

  “Not because of my ancestors’ grave
s?”

  “No. According to the Diagram, you should have a mighty life. You were born to be a big general. Those graves can’t stop you at all.”

  “Really?” Tang was surprised. “You say I’m going to be a general?”

  “Maybe. Although the Diagram says you were born to decide the life or death of thousands, it depends on whether you can realize your destiny.”

  Tang turned his head aside and thought for a moment. “Then how come I had bad luck these years?” he asked.

  “Let’s see. What’s your son’s name?”

  “Da Long.”

  “What? A great dragon?”

  “Yes.”

  Blind Bea shook his head and began leafing through a dogeared book. He stopped at a page and read for a minute. “That won’t do,” he said.

  “What won’t do?”

  “Your son’s life is too strong. His fortune reduces yours, and he is the evil star over your head. ‘Da Long,’ what a name! Only a king should have such a name. The truth is that he is a dragon, while you’re a tiger. His life has overcome yours. See, you’re forty-three now. At your age lots of men have already made their fame and wealth, but you’re still a cart driver, commanding only a couple of scabby horses.” Blind Bea chuckled and lit his long pipe. Smoke came out through his yellow teeth.

  “What should I do?” Tang asked.

  “How old is your son?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Too late.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If he was under ten, you could change his name without hurting your fortune.”

  “But what am I to do now?”

  “Have his name changed. It’ll hurt, but it’s better than do nothing about it.”

  Silence.

  The two men seemed deliberately to avoid looking at each other. Then Tang said, “What name should he have?”

  Bea opened a notebook, tore a page out, and handed it to Tang. His other hand removed the horn-rimmed glasses from his broad face, revealing eyes like a dead fish’s.

  Taking the paper, Tang lowered his head to read it. He found five bold characters in a vertical line: “Horse, Ox, Dog, Mountain, Spirit.”