The Republic of Wine

grade.’
    ‘This little family wrecker, his water’s got to be just right, not too cold, not too hot. All right, add half a gourdful of cool water.’
    The woman scrambled to her feet without covering her droopy breasts; the hem of her blouse hung limply between her legs, like a soggy old flag. After scooping out half a gourdful of water, she dumped it into the basin and stirred it rapidly with her hand.
    ‘It isn’t hot,’ she said, ‘it really isn’t. Stop crying, Treasure, stop crying.’
    Little Treasure’s crying died down a bit, but he continued to struggle. A bath was the last thing he wanted, and Jin Yuanbao had to keep forcing him down into the basin. The woman stood to the side, gourd in hand, as if in a trance. ‘Are you dead, or what?’ Jin Yuanbao barked. ‘Give me a hand here!’
    As if waking from a dream, she put down the gourd and knelt beside the basin, where she began washing the boy’s back and his bottom. Their eldest daughter - a girl of seven or eight clad only in baggy red knee-length shorts, her shoulders hunched, hair a mess, barefoot - walked into the room rubbing her eyes.
    ‘Die [father], Niang [mother], how come you’re washing him? You going to cook him and feed him to us?’
    ‘Get back to bed, damn it!’ Jin Yuanbao snapped viciously.
    At the sight of his elder sister, Little Treasure cried out to her. But the girl, not daring to say another word, turned and slinked back into the other room, stopping in the doorway to watch her parents at work.
    Having cried himself hoarse, Little Treasure could only sob, a hollow, listless sound. The grime on his body turned to greasy mudballs in the murky water.
    ‘Bring me a washing gourd and a piece of soap,’ the man said.
    The woman fetched the items from behind the stove. ‘You hold him,’ Jin Yuanbao said, ‘while I scrub.’
    The woman and Yuanbao changed places.
    Yuanbao dipped the washing gourd first in the water, then in the soap dish, and began scrubbing the boy, his neck and his bottom, and everything in between, including even the spaces between his fingers. Covered with soap bubbles, Treasure cried out in pain; the room was suffused with a strange, offensive odor.
    ‘Treasure’s daddy, not so rough. Don’t break the skin.’
    ‘He’s not made of paper,’ Yuanbao said. ‘His skin’s tougher than that! You don’t know how cunning those inspectors are. They even probe the assholes, and if they find any grime, they lower their appraisal by one grade. Each grade is worth more than ten yuan.’
    Finally, the bath was finished, and Yuanbao held Little Treasure while the woman dried him off. His skin glowed red in the lamplight and gave off a pleasant, meaty smell. The woman fetched a new suit of clothes and took the boy from his father. Little Treasure began a new search for the breast, which his mother gave him.
    Yuanbao dried his hands and filled his pipe with tobacco. After lighting it with the lantern and blowing out a mouthful of smoke, he said:
    I’m soaked with sweat, thanks to this little brat.’
    Little Treasure fell asleep, holding the nipple in his mouth. His mother held on to him, reluctant to let go.
    ‘Give him to me.’ Yuanbao said. 'I've got a long way to go this morning.’
    The woman slipped the nipple out of the boy’s mouth, which twitched as if the nipple were still in it.
    Jin Yuanbao picked up the paper lantern with one hand, his sleeping son with the other, and went out into the lane, which led to the village’s main street. While walking down the lane, he could feel a pair of eyes on his back from the door, and that caused him much emotional distress; but once he was out on the street, the feeling disappeared without a trace.
    The moon was still out, turning the blacktop gray. Roadside poplars, their branches bare, looked like gaunt standing men, the tips pale and ghostly. He shivered. The lantern cast a warm, yellow glow, its flickering shadow looming large on the surface of the road. He sniffled as he looked at the waxen tear running down the wick. A dog alongside someone’s wall barked languidly; he looked down at the dog’s shadow, sharing the sense of languor as he heard it scurry noisily into a haystack. When he left the village, he heard crying children, and looked up to see lights burning in the windows of peasant huts; he knew they were doing what he and his wife had done a while earlier. Knowing he’d gotten the jump on them lightened his mood a bit.
    As he neared the