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suited to slaughterhouse work but also to the sale of scrap. On frigid days, the injected water would not seep out of the slaughtered animals and the meat would not spoil; on frigid days, buyers of scrap, preferring to stay warm, were content to cast a cursory glance at the material, which meant that our water-soaked paper would pass inspection with ease. Mother untied the electric cord that served as a belt, then took off her brown men's jacket and tucked her new cast-off sweater into her trousers; she was small but full of energy and quite impressive. Words were embroidered on the front of her sweater round the image of a girl performing a flying kick. Mother treasured that sweater; green flecks flew off it when she took it off at night, making her moan softly. When I'd ask if she was in pain, she'd say no but that taking it off gave her a nice tingly feeling. Now that I've accumulated a bit of knowledge I know all about static electricity, but at the time I thought she'd laid her hands on something magical. Once I considered sneaking the sweater out of the house to sell it for the price of half a pig's head, but in the end I couldn't go through with it. There were plenty of things I didn't appreciate about my mother, but I couldn't help thinking about some of her virtues. My greatest complaint about her was that she wouldn't let me eat the meat I craved. But she didn't eat any either. If she'd gone off and feasted behind my back, forget about the sweater—I'd have sold her to a slave trader without batting an eye. But she suffered along with me, struggling to make ends meet, and wouldn't allow herself even a pig's tail, so what could I say? With Mother taking the lead, her son could only follow, sustained by the hope that one day Father would return and bring these hard times to an end. Determined to spare no effort, she resumed her stance, took two deep breaths, then one more, held it, bit down on her lip and turned the crank as hard as she could. The flywheel spun at the rate of a couple of hundred RPMs, about the equivalent of five horsepower; if that wasn't sufficient to fire it up, then that was one sorry fucking tractor, a true bastard—not your ordinary bastard but one for the ages, that's right, a bastard for the ages. Mother flung the crank handle to the ground, her strength sapped. The tractor just smiled indifferently, not making a sound. Mother's face was sallow, her stare blank; she was defeated, disheartened, she'd lost the battle. All in all, she looked better this way. What disgusted and frightened me was how she could be so full of fight, so proud and confident, for that was when she was the most miserly, when what she really wanted was for us to eat dirt and drink the wind. The way she was now opened up the possibility that she'd part with enough to make some noodles, fry up some cabbage, add a little vegetable oil, maybe even put in some smelly shrimp paste that was so salty it nearly made you jump in the air. In a village where electric lights had lit up houses for more than a decade, our large, tile-roofed home went without. When we lived in the hut my grandfather had left us, we had electric lights, but now we'd gone back to the dark ages and used kerosene lamps. She wasn't being miserly, Mother said. This was her way of protesting against the corrupt village officials who kept hiking the price of electricity. When we ate dinner by lamplight, her face glowed proud in the dim room. ‘Go ahead, raise the price,’ she'd say, ‘raise it until it costs eight thousand a unit. I couldn't care less because I don't use any of your damned electricity!’ When she was in a good mood, we'd eat in the dark—no lamps or anything—and if I complained, she'd simply say: ‘You're eating dinner, not doing needlework. Don't tell me you need light to avoid shovelling food up your nose!’ She was right, I never did get food up my nose. Stuck with a mother who advocated hard struggles and plain living, I had to resign myself to my bad luck and simply forget about putting up a fight.

    Unable to get our tractor started, Mother walked out into the street, perhaps to seek some advice. Would she go to Lao Lan? Perhaps, since the tractor was his castoff and he knew the thing better than anyone. She hurried back in a little while. ‘Son,’ she said, excitedly. ‘Light a fire. We're going to burn this son of a bitch!’

    ‘Did Lao Lan tell you to do that?’

    She hadn't expected that. ‘What's wrong with