Pow!

said with a look of contempt in my direction. ‘Do what I just did if you've got the guts.’

    I knew at once that we'd suffered another crushing defeat. The bastard had backed us into a corner once again. I understood that all Jiaojiao and I had to do was stab ourselves in the same way to defeat Lao Lan so resoundingly he'd have to kill himself to salvage his shredded dignity. But stabbing myself in the calf would have hurt like hell! Confucius said: ‘Your body is a gift from your parents, and keeping it from harm is the first rule of filiality.’ Stabbing ourselves would be an affront to Confucius and an admission that we were unfilial. All I could think to say was: ‘What the hell was that for, Lao Lan? Do you think you can scare us off with some hooligan trick? We're not afraid of dying. But we're not going to stab ourselves—that's what we're asking you to do. You can pare off all the meat on your calf but it won't change a thing. If it's peace of mind you're looking for, the only way to get that is to kill us.’

    We picked up the bloodstained dagger and scissors and handed them back to him. He snatched the dagger out of my hand and flung it as far as he could. It flew across the street and landed who knows where. Then he snatched the scissors out of Jiaojiao's hand and did the same.

    ‘Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao,’ he howled, almost in tears, ‘Enough of this preposterous nonsense. What do you want of me?’

    ‘That's simple,’ Jiaojiao and I said together. ‘We've lived long enough and we want you to kill us.’

    He climbed into the Jeep, bloody legs and all, and drove off.

    There's a well-known phrase that goes: Give the man a taste of his own medicine. Do you know who said that, Wise Monk? Neither do I. But Lao Lan knew, because he drew on that wisdom to find a way out of his dilemma. After he drove off, we scoured the area with a horseshoe-shaped magnet borrowed from Li Guangtong at the township TV repair shop and managed to retrieve the knife and scissors, so we could continue trying to get him to kill us. At noon, three days after that incdent, we were sitting outside the plant gate shouting at a wedding procession when a short fellow with a bulbous nose and a prominent beer belly hobbled up to us with a butcher knife. A mean-looking bully of a man.

    ‘Recognize me?’ he asked grinning deviously.

    ‘You're…’

    ‘Wan Xiaojiang, the guy you beat in the meat-eating contest.’

    ‘You've gotten fat!’

    ‘Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao, like you, I've lived long enough, more than enough. Another minute will be too long, so I'm asking the two of you to kill me. You can do it with your dagger or that pair of scissors, or you can use this butcher knife. I don't care one way or the other, it's up to you. Just do it.’

    ‘Get lost,’ I said. ‘We've got no beef with you, why would we want to kill you?’

    ‘That's right,’ he said, ‘you've got no beef with me but I still want you to kill me.’ When he tried to force his knife into my hand, both Jiaojiao and I backed away. But he was relentless—he kept coming at us, moving a lot quicker than we'd have guessed, given his bulk. He was like the offspring of a cat and a mouse. We had no idea what you'd call something like that but we couldn't shake him no matter how hard we tried.

    ‘Are you going to kill me or aren't you?’

    ‘No.’

    ‘All right, then, if you won't do it, I'll do it myself—slowly.’ He turned the butcher knife on himself and sliced a deep gash in his belly, which immediately began to ooze yellow fat and then blood.

    Jiaojiao threw up at the sight.

    ‘Are you going to kill me or aren't you?’

    ‘No.’

    He stabbed himself a second time.

    We turned and ran but he followed us relentlessly. Knife raised high and blood streaming from his belly, he came after us, shouting over and over: ‘Kill me—kill me—Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao, do a good deed by killing me—’

    The next morning, we'd barely shown up at the Huachang gate when he ran up on his stubby legs, knife in hand, and opened his shirt to show us his wounds. ‘Kill me—kill me—Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao, kill me—’

    We ran off, but even from far away we could hear his cries.

    Back home, before we even caught our breath, a man in dark glasses rode up on a motorcycle with a green sidecar and stopped at our gate. Wan Xiaojiang climbed out of the sidecar and staggered into our yard, still holding his knife, still showing us