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chopstick into the mildewed wall like an arrow. The woman who has sated me with her full breasts, the woman who is as warm as a sweet potato fresh from the oven, shoves me away. As she extracts her nipple from my mouth, stabbing pains attack my heart, I feel light-headed and fall to the floor on all fours. I try to scream but hardly any sound emerges, as if hands are choking me. Her eyes are glassy as her gaze sweeps the area as if seeking something. She wipes the wet nipples with her fingers and glowers at me. I jump to my feet, rush over and throw my arms round her. Bending, I begin to kiss her neck. She reaches down and pinches my belly, hard, then pushes me away and spits in my face. Then she turns and walks out of the room, buttocks swaying. I follow her, driven to distraction, and watch as she walks up to the Horse Spirit and mounts it from behind. The human-headed statue, with her on its back, flies out of the temple, filling the air with the sound of clattering hooves. I hear birds welcome the dawn with their chirps and, farther away, bovine mothers calling to their calves. I know that this is the hour they feed their young, and in my mind's eye I can see the calves hungrily bumping the teats with their heads as the happy yet agonizing mothers hunker down; but the breast that had been suckling me has vanished, so I sit on the cold, damp ground and cry shamelessly. After I have run out of tears, I look up and spot a hole the size of a basket in the roof, through which early morning sunlight enters like a tide. I smack my lips, as if I'd just awakened from a dream. But if this has been a dream, why does the taste of milk linger in my mouth? The injection of this mysterious liquid into my body carries me back to my youth, and even my adult body begins to shrink. If it hasn't been a dream, then where did the Aunty Wild Mule who isn't my Aunty Wild Mule go? I sit there staring woodenly at the Wise Monk, whom I'd forgotten, as he slowly returns to wakefulness, like a python emerging from hibernation. Folding up his body in that room, suffused with the golden glow of dawn, he begins his qigong breathing exercises. The Wise Monk is dressed in ordinary clothing—yes, it is the threadbare robe the woman who suckled me had worn. He has a unique way of exercising. Folding up his body, he takes his penis in his mouth and rolls round on his wide bed like a wind-up toy with a taut spring. Steam rises from his shaved head in seven distinct colours. At first, I didn't think much of his trifling exercise regimen, but when I tried it I realized that rolling round on the bed is no big deal, nor is folding up my body that way, but taking my penis in my mouth—now that's a challenge.

    Once he's finished, the Wise Monk stands on his bed to limber up, like a horse that's been rolling in soft sand. A horse will shake its body to send loose sand flying; the Wise Monk shakes his body to create a rainfall of sweat. Some of the drops hit me in the face, and one flies into my mouth. I am astounded to discover that his sweat has the fragrance of osmanthus, which now spreads throughout the room. He is a big man with large, whirlpool-shaped scars on his left breast and belly. Though I've never seen bullet wounds, I know that is what they are. Most people shot in those vital areas go straight down to the underworld, and to be not just alive but hale and hearty can only mean that he enjoys great good fortune and an enviable karma, a man born under a lucky star. As he stands on the bed, his head nearly brushes against the rafters, and it seems to me that if he stretched himself as tall as he could, then he might be able to stick his head out through the hole in the roof. Wouldn't that be a fright—his head, with its incense scars, sticking up through the roof tiles at the rear of the temple? Just think how stunningly strange that would look to the hawks wheeling low in the sky. As the Wise Monk limbers up, his body is exposed. It's a young man's body, in contrast to his old man's head. If not for a slight paunch, it could be mistaken for the body of a thirty-year-old man; but once he puts on his threadbare robe and sits cross-legged in front of the Wutong Spirit, no one who saw only his face and bearing would doubt that he was a man just shy of a hundred. Now that he's shaken the sweat off his body, and is good and limber, he climbs off the bed. What I observed has vanished under a robe that seems about to disintegrate. This has all the