Pow!

as bright as a glowworm's tail alongside the burning candle, and that in a room in which hung a twenty-eight-bulb crystal chandelier encircled by twenty-four spotlights. If they had all been turned on, you would have been able to count the ants crawling across the floorboards. But electric lights lacked the mystique of candles. Tiangua looked even stranger and less human as she sat across from me in the flickering light, but the more I tried to avoid looking at her the harder it was and the less human her image became. Her face underwent constant changes, like ripples on water. She was a bird one moment, a cat the next and then a wolf. And then I realized that her eyes were locked onto me, refusing to let go. Yet what really made my heart race was her posture—she was sitting on the edge of her stool, legs bent and taut, leaning forward like a predatory animal poised to attack. At any moment, I imagined, she'd spring from her stool, bound across the clay pot with its burning paper and pounce, then wrap her hands round my neck and gnaw on my face— crunch crunch , like a turnip—until she'd eaten my head. Then she'd howl and take on her true form, with a long, bushy tail, and flee without a trace. I knew that the real Tiangua had died long before, and that the figure seated across me was actually an evil spirit that had assumed her form and was waiting for the right moment to partake of the flesh of Luo Xiaotong, a meat-eater and thus tastier than other children. I'd once heard an alms-begging monk talk about retribution on the wheel of life; he'd said that individuals who ate meat would themselves be eaten by other meat-eaters. That monk had achieved a high degree of Buddhist attainments, one of many such monks in that place of ours. Take that alms-begging monk, for instance. He once sat in the snow in the middle of the winter, naked to the waist, lotus position, without eating or drinking for three days and nights. Many kindhearted women, afraid he would freeze to death, brought him blankets to keep warm, only to discover that his face was nice and ruddy and that steam rose from his scalp, almost as if his head were a stove. Blankets were the last thing he needed. Admittedly, there were people who said he had taken a ‘fire dragon’ pill, that he had no special gift. But who has ever seen one of those pills? The stuff of legend. But the monk in the snow? I saw him with my own eyes.

    The face of Cheng Tianle, who had just lost a tooth, was mapped with more than eighty creases. Chosen as the master of ceremonies for the memorial service, he had a white ribbon draped over his shoulders and wore a white, heavily pleated hat like a rooster's coxcomb. He made a late appearance, though, causing people to wonder where he'd hidden himself for so long. He smelt heavily of alcohol, salted fish and damp earth, which made me surmise that he'd spent the time in Lao Lan's cellar. Well on his way to being drunk, he had trouble focusing his bleary eyes, almost gummed together with sticky residue. His assistant was Shen Gang, the man who'd once borrowed money from my mother. Smelling the same as Cheng Tianle—his cellar mate, obviously—he was dressed in black, with a pair of white oversleeves. In one hand he carried a hatchet and in the other a rooster—white with a black cockscomb. An important individual who walked into the room with them cannot go unmentioned—Su Zhou, younger brother of Lao Lan's wife, a close relative of some note who ought to have made an early appearance. His late arrival was either planned or was the result of his being delayed on the road.

    Father, Yao Qi, Xiao Han and a clutch of brawny fellows followed the trio into the main room. A pair of low benches had been set up in the yard, where men with poles waited under the veranda eaves.

    ‘Homage to the coffin—’

    As Cheng Tianle's shout echoed in the air, Lao Lan rushed out of his room and fell to his knees in front of the coffin. ‘Oh, dear mother of our daughter—ah huh huh huh—’ he wailed, pounding the lid, ‘you have cruelly left Tiangua and me behind—’

    He thumped the coffin lid loudly with his hand and tears streaked his face, revealing the depth of his overwhelming grief (and immediately squelching a good many rumours).

    Out in the yard the musicians played a dirge as the monks chanted, loudly and with enthusiasm. Inside and out, sound triumphantly created an aura of unbearable grief. For the moment I had no thoughts for