The Republic of Wine

fly. The figure cried out in pain and started to wobble; the people on the other side of the door ran off in panic. The little demon went over, picked up the rock, took aim on the white figure again, and heaved it with all his might. The figure crumpled to the floor.
    A while later, beams of bright light streamed in the door, followed by people with flashlights. The little demon scooted nimbly into the corner, where he lay on the floor, face down, and pretended to be asleep.
    Then the lights snapped on above seven or eight husky men, who picked up the unconscious serving woman in white. They also picked up the injured boy, along with his severed ear, and carried them out of the room. Then it was time to find out who was responsible for all this evil.
    The little demon was flopped out on the floor snoring loudly. When a man in white picked him up by the nape of his neck, his arms and legs flailed in the air as a series of wails erupted from his mouth, like a pitiful little cat.
    The ferreting-out process produced no results. The children were exhausted from a very tiring day, and unbelievably hungry. And after being harassed by the little demon, they could barely hold their heads up and couldn’t think straight. And so the investigation ended amid the rumble of snores.
    The men in white turned off the lights, locked the door, and left. In the darkness, the little demon smirked.
    Early the next morning, before the sun was even up, the little demon got to his feet in the misty room, took the brass bells out from under his shirt, and rang them as hard as he could. The frantic pealing startled the children out of their sleep. After squatting on the floor to relieve themselves, they rolled over and went back to sleep under the glaring eyes of the little demon.
    Once the sun was up, a red light flooded the room; by then the children were up and sitting around weeping. They were famished. Hardly a trace of the previous night’s excitement remained in their heads. All that energy, all that time spent trying to nurture a sense of power in them, totally wasted. The frustrated little demon wondered how he was going to make anything out of this bunch.
    Just so I won’t screw things up as a storyteller, I’ll narrate my tale objectively, avoiding, as much as possible, any descriptions of what was going on inside the heads of the little demon and the children. Ill stick to their behavior and their speech, and leave it to you readers to interpret what sparked their behavior and lay behind their speech. This is not an easy story to tell, because the little demon keeps coming up with ways to smash it to pieces. He is not a good little boy, that’s for sure. (In truth, my story is just about wrapped up.)
    Breakfast was sumptuous: egg-drop soup, steamed rolls made of fine flour, milk, bread, jam, salted bean sprouts, and sweet-and-sour radish slices.
    The old man who delivered their breakfast took his job seriously, carefully filling each plate or bowl and handing it to one of the children. The little demon got a portion, which he received with his head lowered deferentially, so as not to upset the old fellow, who nonetheless watched him out of the corner of his eye.
    After the old fellow left, the little demon looked up, eyes shining, and said:
    ‘Comrades, children, don’t eat a bite of this! They want to fatten us up before they eat us. We’ll go on a hunger strike. Children, the skinnier you are, the later they’ll get around to eating you, and maybe never.’
    But the children paid no heed to his impassioned plea; maybe they had no idea what he was talking about. The sight and smell of all that food was all they could think about, so they dug in, stuffing their faces and raising quite a din. The little demon’s first impulse was to get rough with them, but he put that foolish thought out of his mind just in time to see a tall man walk into the room. With a furtive look at the man’s big feet, he picked up his glass of warm milk and took a long, loud drink.
    Sensing the contemptuous look on the man’s face, he went back to his milk, with a vengeance, and attacked a steamed bun, making a point of getting his face as dirty as possible and gurgling loudly. In other words, he turned himself into a gluttonous fool.
    ‘Little pig!’ he heard the man say.
    The man’s legs, both the thickness of stone pillars, ambulated toward the front, so the little demon looked up to stare at his back. He noticed that the man had a long,