The Republic of Wine

go all the way. When taking someone home, see him to the door.’
    ‘Do you understand science?’ she demanded angrily. If I could drive off, why stop? Besides, you’ve got my bucket.’
    Ding Gou’er made a face, knowing that this little bit of humor might make a little girl giggle, but had no effect on this shrew. Yet he made the face, anyway, in spite of himself.
    ‘Don’t make a fool of yourself,’ she growled, ‘wrinkling your nose and giving me the evil eye like that. Now go get some water.’
    ‘Out here in the middle of nowhere? Where am I supposed to find it?’
    ‘If I knew, would I be sending you?’
    Reluctantly, Ding Gou’er picked up the bucket, parted the yielding roadside shrubbery, stepped across the shallow, bone-dry roadside ditch, and found himself standing in the middle of a harvested field. It was not one of those fields to which he was accustomed, where you can see for miles in every direction, like a vast wilderness. Having made it to the outskirts of the urban center, he could see signs of where the city’s arms, or at least its fingers, had reached: here a lonely little multi-storied building, there a smokestack belching smoke, dissecting the field in crazy quilt fashion. Ding Gou’er stood there feeling unavoidably, if not overwhelmingly, sad. After a reflective moment, he looked up into the setting sun and its layers of red clouds on the western horizon, which effectively drove away his melancholy; he turned and strode in the direction of the nearest, and strangest-looking, building he saw.
    ‘Head for the mountains, and kill the horse.’ No statement was ever truer. Bathed in the blood red sunset, the building seemed so very near, but for the man on foot it was so very far. Cropland kept popping up between him and the building as if falling from the sky, keeping him from walking toward where his happiness lay. A major surprise awaited him in a harvested cornfield where only dry stalks remained.
    By then dusk had nearly fallen, turning the sky the color of red wine. Cornstalks stood like silent sentries. Even though Ding Gou’er turned sideways to walk down a plowed row, he unavoidably brushed against silken corn tassels, making rustling sounds. All of a sudden, a hulking shadow appeared in his path, as if it had sprung up out of the ground, throwing such a fright into the investigator, a man of renowned courage, that he shivered from head to toe and his hair stood on end; instinctively brandishing the tin bucket, he was ready to strike. But the monster stepped back and said in a muffled voice:
    ‘What’s the big idea, trying to hit me?’
    Once he had regained his composure, the investigator discovered that it was a very tall and very old man standing in his way. Starlight shining through the deepening dusk fell on the man’s bristly chin and rats’ nest of hair; two deep green eyes were circled by the hazy outline of a face. He sensed that the big-boned man, dressed in rags, was probably a hard-working, simple-living, diligent and courageous, decent man. His raspy breath came in thick, short bursts, mingled with metallic coughs.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ Ding Gou’er asked.
    ‘Cricket snatching,’ the old man replied, lifting a clay pot as proof.
    ‘Cricket catching?’
    ‘Cricket watching,’ the old man said.
    Crickets were leaping around in his pot, banging loudly into the clay walls - pi-pi pa-pa - as the old man stood there quietly, his shifty green eyes looking like a pair of exhausted fireflies.
    ‘Cricket catching?’ Ding Gou’er asked. ‘Do folks around here enjoy cricket fighting?’
    ‘No. Folks around here enjoy cricket snacking,’ the old man drawled, as he turned, took a couple of steps, and knelt on the ground. Cornstalk leaves rustled, then settled on his head and shoulders, transforming him into a grave mound. Starlight kept getting brighter and brighter, cool breezes wafted this way and that, leaving no trace either way and creating an air of deep mystery. Ding Gou’er’s shoulders stiffened as a chill coursed through his heart. Fireflies glided through the air like optical illusions. And then the dreary calls of crickets erupted all around him; everywhere, it seemed, nothing but crickets. Ding Gou’er looked on as the old man turned on a tiny flashlight, sending a ray of golden light to the base of a cornstalk, where it wrapped itself around a nice fat cricket: bright red body, square head with protruding eyes, thick legs and a