Pow!

but my soul had left to follow Lao Lan, Huang Bao and that pair of unreal horses. I'd have stood there till dawn if Mother hadn't taken me inside. I used to think that talk of souls escaping from bodies was superstition, utter nonsense, but in the wake of that sumptuous dinner, when those magnificent horses sped out of sight, I gained a true understanding of what it was for the soul to fly away. I felt myself leave my body, like a chick emerging from its egg. I became as pliant and as light as a feather, immune to the pull of gravity. All I had to do was touch my toe to the ground to spring into the air like a rubber ball. In the eyes of this new me, the northern breezes took on form, like water flowing through the air, and I could lie out flat and let them carry me away. I could come and go at will, do whatever I pleased. If I was headed for a collision with a tree, I willed the wind to lift me high in the air and out of danger. If I couldn't avoid a head-on encounter with a wall, I willed myself into a thin sheet of nearly invisible paper and passed through a gap too small to be detected by the human eye.

    Mother dragged me back into the yard and closed the gate with a loud clang, forcing my soul to reluctantly return to my body. Without fear of exaggeration I can say that my head was chilled when my soul made its way in, much like the feeling a child experiences when he slides under a warm comforter after being out in the cold. If you're looking for proof of the existence of the soul, there it is.

    Father carried Jiaojiao, who had fallen asleep, to the kang , where he handed Mother the red envelope. She opened it and took out a fistful of hundred-yuan notes, ten altogether, and looked extremely nervous. With a glance at Father, she spat on her hands and counted the notes a second time. Still ten—a thousand yuan.

    ‘That's too much for a greeting gift,’ she said, with another look at Father. ‘We don't deserve this.’

    ‘Don't forget Xiaotong's,’ he said.

    ‘Let me have it,’ she said, now angry.

    I hated to but I handed it over. First she gave it a quick count, as with the other envelope, then she spat on her hands and counted it more carefully. Again, ten hundred-yuan notes, a thousand yuan.

    In those days, two thousand yuan was a great deal of money, which is why the thought of lending Shen Gang two thousand yuan, never to be returned, had caused Mother such grief and indignation. Back then, you could buy a water buffalo strong enough to pull a plough for seven or eight hundred; a thousand was enough to buy a mule to pull a big wagon. Lao Lan had given Jiaojiao and me enough money to buy two mules. During the land-reform period, any family that owned two adult mules would, without question, have been counted as part of the landlord class and bad times would be waiting just round the corner.

    ‘Now what do we do?’ Mother mumbled, her forehead creased with worry, like an old woman of seventy or eighty. Her arms were stiff and her back was bent, as if what she held in her hands were bricks, not money.

    ‘Why not return it to him?’ Father said.

    ‘How?’ Mother asked, clearly worried. ‘You want to do it?’

    ‘Send Xiaotong,’ he said. ‘Nothing shames a child, and he won't find fault with the boy.’

    ‘I say you can shame a child!’

    ‘Then you decide,’ said Father. ‘I'll do whatever you say.’

    ‘I guess we'd better hold on to it for the time being. We were supposed to be treating him to a meal. But he not only supplied us with carp soup and shark's fin dumplings, he also handed us a gift like this.’

    ‘That shows he's serious about wanting to mend the relationship,’ said Father.

    ‘If you want the truth, he's not as petty-minded as you think. When you weren't here, he helped us out quite a bit. He sold me that tractor at scrap-metal cost and didn't ask for anything to approve the foundation of the house. Lots of people gave gifts right and left but still didn't get their approvals. If not for him, this house would never have been built.

    ‘All on account of me,’ Father said with a sigh. ‘From now on I'll be his advance foot soldier and repay a favour with a favour.’

    ‘This money is not to be spent. Put it in the bank,’ Mother said. ‘We can send Xiaotong and Jiaojiao to school after the New Year's holiday.’

    As dazzling fireworks briefly light up the dark sky, I'm suddenly in the grip of fear, as if I'm straddling the line between life and