Pow!

nothing. She and I climbed up there a few times to look round and breathe in the scent of pinewood. We saw distant villages, the river, a misty line of riverbank scrub brush, uncultivated land and all sorts of vapours snaking skyward on the horizon. The vista emptied us of our emotions. ‘I know what he does up there,’ she said. ‘What?’ I asked. Sighing like an exasperated crone, she explained: ‘He thinks about the forests up north.’ As I looked into her moist eyes, I could tell there was more she wanted to say. I'd heard Father and Mother argue over this very thing. ‘I'm like a carpenter wearing a cangue she made,’ Mother said. Father replied, ‘Don't use your narrow-minded view to judge a broad-minded person,’ replied Father. ‘I'm going to ask Lao Lan to take that down tomorrow,’ Mother declared. Father pointed his finger at her: ‘Don't talk to me about him!’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Why not?’ she responded, just as angrily. ‘What's he ever done to you?’ ‘Plenty,’ Father said. ‘Let's hear it, all of it.’ ‘Are you saying you don't know what I'm talking about?’ Mother's face reddened and venom seemed to shoot from her eyes. ‘Dry filth doesn't stick to a person,’ she said. ‘You can't have waves without wind,’ he said. ‘I've done nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said. ‘He's better off than me,’ he said. ‘His family's always been better off than ours. If you'd rather be with him, I won't stand in your way, but you'll have to settle with me first.’ He turned and stalked off. Mother flung her bowl to the floor and smashed it. ‘Luo Tong,’ she snarled at his back, ‘the next time you browbeat me like that I'll do what you think I already did!’

    I'll stop here, Wise Monk. Talking about that upsets me. I'll wrap up my story about the reporter instead.

    Father climbed the platform to smoke; Mother went back to her office. Lao Lan, Jiaojiao and I escorted the reporter to my room, a walled-off corner of the meat-cleansing workshop. I could see activity on the work floor through gaps in the plywood walls. After describing our water treatment process, we offered to cleanse his insides, if he was willing, and then deliver him to one of the kill rooms, mix his flesh with camel and dog meat and sell it in town. Bean-sized drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and we saw that his pants were wet. ‘Whoever heard of a grown man peeing in his pants?’ Jiaojiao remarked. ‘Disgusting!’ If, on the other hand, he was unwilling to be cleansed and slaughtered, we'd be happy to hire him as head of our PR department, pay him a salary of a thousand yuan a month and a two-thousand-yuan bonus each time a story about the plant made the papers, no matter the length. Well, he signed on and wrote a long feature about the plant, one that nearly filled a page. True to our word and committed to seeing things through to the end, we gave him two thousand yuan, treated him to a lavish meal and saw him off with a hundred pounds of dog meat.

    The next reporters—two of them—at the plant worked for a TV station. Pan Sun and his assistant came disguised as meat-sellers. Equipped with a hidden camera, they toured the facilities. We offered them the same hospitality and then invited them to serve as consultants too.

    All the while Lao Lan and I were dealing with the reporter, Father was on his platform smoking. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, another cigarette butt sailed to the ground. He was in the depths of depression. Dieh, you poor man.

POW! 38

    ‘If Shen Yaoyao doesn't die, I will. If she does, I'll live.’ So sobbed the film star Huang Feiyun last night as she sat on a sofa in front of Lan Laoda. ‘I can't help myself. I love you. I'll pretend I'm dead if she lives but I'll choose life if she dies. The child is your flesh and blood, so you have to marry me.’ ‘How much do you want?’ Lan asked callously. ‘Is that what you think I came to you for—money, you bastard ? ’ she fumed. ‘Why else would you try to palm off someone else's child on me ? You of all people should remember that I haven't so much as touched you since you got married. Unless I'm mistaken, your esteemed daughter was born three years after that, and I've never heard of a gestation period that long.’ ‘I knew you'd say that,’ said Huang Feiyun, ‘but you've forgotten that your sperm samples were deposited in the Celebrity Sperm Bank.’ Lan Laoda lit a cigar with his