Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

“When I was four, I was sold to a White Russian woman. No one could tell me why this woman wanted to buy a Chinese girl.” Qiao Qisha continued in Russian, with Huo Lina interpreting. “One day the Russian woman died of alcohol poisoning and I was left to roam the streets, until I was taken in by a railroad station manager. He and his family treated me like their own daughter. Since they were well-off, they paid for me to go to school. After Liberation, in 1949,1 was admitted to a medical school. But then, during the great airing of views, I said that there are bad poor people, just as there are good rich people, and I was labeled a rightist. I believe I am your seventh sister.”
    Qisha shook Huo Lina’s hand to thank her. Then she took Jintong by the hand and led him to one side, where she said softly, “I’ve heard things about you. I studied medicine. Your teacher told me that you had sex with the woman before she killed herself. Is that right?” “It was after she did it,” Jintong said haltingly. “That’s despicable,” she said. “The security section chief was a fool. This flood saved your life. You know that, don’t you?” Jintong nodded. “I saw her corpse float away, and so they have no evidence against you,” the woman claiming to be my seventh sister said in a flat voice. “Be firm. Deny ever having sex with her — if we manage to survive the flood, that is.”
    Qiao Qisha’s prediction came true. The flood had come to Jintong’s aid. By the time the chief investigator of the County Security Bureau and a medical examiner arrived in a rubber raft, half the people lay unconscious on the Flood Dragon River dike, while the remainder had survived by eating rotting grass they’d fished out of the river, like starving horses. The moment the men climbed out of the raft, they were surrounded by hungry, hopeful people. They responded by flashing their badges, unholstering their pistols, and announcing that they were there to investigate the rape and murder of a heroic woman. A chorus of angry curses erupted. The scowling investigator demanded to see the survivors’ leader, and was directed to Lu Liren, who lay on the muddy ground, his gray uniform torn apart by his bloated body. “That’s him.” Holding his nose, the investigator made a wide turn around the decaying, fly-specked body of Lu Liren, searching out the farm’s security section chief, who had reported the crime by telephone. He was told that the man had floated down the river on a plank three days earlier. The investigator stopped in front of Ji Qiongzhi; the chilled looks they exchanged revealed the complex emotions of a divorced couple. “The death of a person means about as much as the death of a dog these days, doesn’t it?” she said. “So what’s to investigate?” The investigator glanced out at the corpses floating in the murky water, some animal and others human, and said, “Those are two separate matters.” So they went looking for Shangguan Jintong and began to grill him, applying a range of psychological tactics. But Jintong held firm, refusing to divulge this final secret.
    Several days later, after tramping through a sea of knee-high mud, the conscientious chief investigator and the medical examiner found Long Qingping’s body, which had been snagged by the wire fence. But as the examiner was photographing the body, it exploded like a time bomb, its rotting skin and sticky juices fouling the water over a wide area. All that remained snagged on the fence was a skeleton. The medical examiner retrieved the skull, with its bullet hole, and examined it from every angle. He arrived at two conclusions: the muzzle was up against the temple when the shot was fired, and while it looked like suicide, murder was a possibility.
    They prepared to take Jintong back with them, but were quickly surrounded by rightists. “Take a good look at this boy,” Ji Qiongzhi said, taking advantage of her special relationship with the chief investigator. “Does he look like someone who’s capable of rape and murder? That woman was a terrifying demon. This boy, on the other hand, was my student.”
    By that time, the chief investigator had himself nearly been driven to suicide by hunger and the pervasive stench. “The case is closed,” he said, fed up with the whole matter. “Long Qingping took her own life.” With that, he and the medical examiner climbed into their rubber raft to return to headquarters. But the raft no