The Republic of Wine

anything ever happened between her and me.’
    She wiped her face with a towel and said:
    ‘Let’s go, then. If you people who have committed incest aren’t afraid, I certainly have nothing to fear.’
    ‘Anyone who refuses to go is a goddamned turtle spawn,’ I said.
    She said:
    ‘Right. Anyone who refuses to go is a goddamned turtle spawn.’
    Dragging and tugging at each other, we walked toward the Brewer’s College. On the way, we ran into a government motorcade welcoming foreign guests. On motorcycles leading the way sat two policemen in brand new uniforms, shiny black sunglasses, and snowy white gloves. We stopped quarreling for a minute and stood like a couple of trees alongside a locust beside the road. The powerful, reeking stench of rotting animals drifted over from the ditch. Her clammy hand was gripping my arm tightly, timidly. I sneered at the foreign guest’s motorcade while feeling disgust over her clammy claw. I could see her incredibly long thumb, with green dirt packed under the hard nail. But I didn’t have the heart to shrug off her hand, for it was seeking protection, like a drowning person clutching at a straw. Son of a bitch! I cursed. A bald old woman in the crowd moving out of the way of the motorcade turned to look at me. She was wearing a baggy sweater with a row of large white plastic buttons down the front. I experienced gut-wrenching disgust over those large white plastic buttons, feelings that went back to my childhood, when I had a case of the mumps. A smelly nosed doctor whose chest was embellished with large white plastic buttons had touched my cheeks with slimy fingers like octopus tentacles, making me throw up. The woman’s big fat head rested heavily on her shoulders, her face was all puffy, her teeth yellow as brass. When she cocked her head to look at me, I shuddered. I was turning to leave when she rushed up to us in short, mincing steps. It turned out she was a friend of my wife. She grabbed my wife’s hands affectionately and shook them hard, pressing her heavy torso upward until the two of them seemed about to start hugging and kissing. She was like my wife’s mother. So, naturally, I thought about my mother-in-law and about the terrible joke of her having given birth to such a daughter. I walked alone toward Liquorland’s Brewer’s College; I wanted to ask my mother-in-law if her daughter was an abandoned child she had gotten from an orphanage or if she was switched at birth by nurses at the maternity hospital And what would I do if that really were the case?
    My wife caught up with me. She was giggling as if she’d completely forgotten that she’d tried to cut her own throat only moments before. She said:
    ‘Hey, Doctor, do you know who that old woman was?’
    I said I didn’t.
    ‘She’s the mother-in-law of Section Chief Hu of the Municipal Party Organization Department.’
    I snorted.
    ‘What are you snorting about?’ she said. ‘Stop looking down on people, and considering yourself to be the smartest person in the world. I want you to know that I’m going to be the head of the newspaper’s Culture and Life section.’
    ‘Congratulations,’ I said, ‘new Chief of the Culture and Life section. I hope you’ll write an article describing your personal experience in throwing a tantrum.’
    She stopped, shocked by my comment. 7 threw a tantrum? I’m as good as any woman who ever lived. If anyone else knew her husband was playing hanky-panky with her own mother, she’d have already poked a hole in the sky!’
    I said, ‘Let’s hurry up and go ask your father and mother to settle this.’
    ‘I’m such a fool,’ she said, standing there as if she’d just awakened from a dream. ‘Why should I go with you? Why should I go to see you and that old flirt make eyes at each other? The two of you may be shameless, but not me. There are as many men in this world as there are hairs on a cow’s hide, so why should I give a damn about you? You can sleep with whomever you want. I don’t care any more.’
    She turned and walked away nonchalantly. An autumn wind shook the treetops, sending golden leaves floating silently to the ground. My wife was walking among the poetry of autumn, her dark back making an uncanny connection with the notion of delicacy. Surprisingly, her nonchalance provoked a slight sense of loss in me. My wife’s name was Beauty Yuan. Beauty Yuan and the falling leaves of autumn formed a melancholic lyrical poem, producing a bouquet