The Republic of Wine

which a poor peasant feels for the landowner, deeper than a worker’s enmity toward a capitalist. The creed that ‘Class hatred is stronger than Mount Tai,’ which had been pounded into me for decades, crumbled. If one person’s hatred for another could reach such proportions, it was an unquestioned form of beauty, a magnificent contribution to humanity. How closely it resembled a purple, poisonous poppy blooming in the swamp of human emotions; as long as you don’t touch or ingest it, it will exist as a form of beauty, possessing an attraction that no kindly, friendly flower could ever have.
    Then she began recounting my father-in-law’s misdeeds - every word, every sound, was filled with blood and tears. She said:
    ‘How can he call himself human? How can he call himself a man? For decades, he has treated his liquor like a woman. It was he who started the evil practice of comparing a beautiful woman to vintage liquor. Drinking has taken the place of sexual intercourse. He has devoted all his sexual appetite to liquor, to his bottles, to his wine glasses…’
    ‘Dr Li, I’m not really your mother-in-law. I never gave birth -how could I? Your wife was an abandoned infant I picked out of a trash can.’
    The truth was out. I let out a deep breath, as if a big load had been lifted from my chest.
    ‘You’re an intelligent person, Doctor. Sand in the eyes doesn’t throw you off the track. You must have sensed that she wasn’t my biological daughter. That is why I think we can become close friends, and I can tell you everything. Doctor, I’m a woman, not a stone lion outside the Palace Museum, or a weather vane on a rooftop, and surely not a lowly, androgynous worm. I have a woman’s desires, but I am denied any… Who can know the pain I feel?’
    I said:
    ‘Then why haven’t you divorced him?’
    I’m weak, I’m afraid of people’s scorn …’
    I said:
    ‘That’s absurd.’
    ‘Yes, it is. But the absurd days are over now. Doctor, I can tell you why I never divorced him. It was because he distilled a strong herbal liquor especially for me, which he called “Ximen Qing,” after the licentious hero of classical novels. Drinking this liquor creates mind-blowing illusions, some even better than sex…’
    I detected a sweet shyness in her voice.
    ‘But when you showed up, the power of the liquor mysteriously disappeared.’
    I didn’t feel like rapping on the door anymore.
    ‘There’s this woman who, like a bear’s claw drenched in spices, has been stewing over a low heat for decades. Now she has finally ripened. Her fragrance is overpowering. Don’t tell me you can’t smell it, my dear Doctor…’
    The door opened wide. The aroma of braised bear’s paw rolled out in waves. I held tightly to the door frame, like a drowning man with a death-grip on a ship’s railing…
    IV
    After the swarthy dwarf was shot, his body flew upwards, as if he were about to fly away. But the hot lead had destroyed his central nervous system, and his limbs twitched spastically. The spasms made one thing abundantly clear: He could no longer call forth the mystical powers described in Doctor of Liquor Studies’ story ‘Yichi the Hero,’ where he soared into the air and stuck to the ceiling like an oversized lizard. Quite the opposite: after jerking a few centimeters into the air, he slid off the lady trucker’s lap and landed on the floor, where Ding Gou’er watched him struggle to straighten himself out, his thigh muscles stretched as taut as utility wires in a gale. Blood and brain matter oozing from the hole in his head fouled the polished floorboards. Then one of his legs began to jerk in and out like the neck of a rooster as the knife enters; his body, wracked by powerful spasms, spun around in smooth, easy circles. After about a dozen revolutions, his legs quit banging the floor, and what happened next was this: The spasmodic flailing stopped, but he began to quake. At first the trembling involved his whole body, creating a steady twang; but then it became localized, his muscle groups acting like sports fans performing the wave. Starting from the tip of his left foot, it moved up to his left calf then to his left thigh then to his left hip and then to his left shoulder, where it crossed over to his right shoulder and moved down to his right hip then to his right thigh then to his right calf then to the tip of his right foot, and from there changed direction and headed back to the starting point. This