In the Pond (10 page)

Bin remained silent as Hsiao raised the door curtain, which was made of strings of glass beads, and walked out. “Coward,” he cursed Hsiao under his breath.

How embarrassing to be hurt like this. Bin felt too ashamed to go to the Commune Clinic, where he would have to show the bruise to a doctor or a nurse. All he could do was cover the purple area with a flat bottle of cold water. Meilan cried and wanted to go to the leaders and curse them and their ancestors, but he dissuaded
her. It was no use quarreling with those savages who knew only one language: brute force.

Unlike Bin, Liu didn’t mind showing the bite on his rear to others. Before the conference was adjourned for lunch and a nap, he left for the photo shop, which was on Main Street, near the entrance to the marketplace. Since the fair had been moved, few customers were in the shop. When Liu arrived, the photographer Jia Cheng was reading
Evergreen News
, the town’s newspaper, and smoking a pipe in the dim waiting room.

“Old Jia,” Liu said, “can you take a picture of me now?”

“Of course, Secretary Liu, we’re not busy today.” Jia stood up, knocking the pipe on his palm, and turned to the studio.

“No, not there.” Liu explained that he wanted to have a photograph taken of the wound on his bottom, so there was no need for the tall camera and they had better do it in a quiet place.

Unfortunately, the shop’s miniature Seagull camera had been sent to Dalian City for repair. They had no choice but to use the tall camera. Jia called over the receptionist, a pallid girl with two tiny brushes of hair behind her ears, and told her to stand at the door of the studio and allow nobody to enter. Then in the heat of the intense lights, Liu ascended the platform, which was used for family or group pictures, to raise his behind to the level of the lens. He was facing the backdrop, an oil
painting of a vast landscape filled with terraced fields, in which red flags were flying here and there and midget human figures were working with picks and shovels and carrying baskets loaded with soil. He unbuckled his pants and let them drop over his feet. Turning a little, he kept his right hip toward the camera. His hand held up the leg opening of his red shorts; the wound was displayed above the gluteal fold.

“Goodness, it’s black! Is it a dog bite?” Jia asked while turning to the camera.

“No, a man bite,” Liu said with his teeth gritted.

“How did it happen?”

“Shao Bin, the son of a turtle, early this morning he went to break up the conference. We tried to stop him, and he went wild and turned on me.”

Chuckling, Jia went behind the camera and covered himself with the cloth, saying, “A little bit to your left, that’s good.”

The photograph taken, Liu buckled up his pants and followed Jia out of the studio. The girl looked at him with a knowing smirk on her face, her eyes rolling. Liu smiled back, then turned to the photographer. “Old Jia, can you make it express? I need five pictures as soon as possible.”

“I’ll do my best,” Jia said in a nasal voice. “At the latest, they’ll be ready the day after tomorrow. All right?”

“Good, thanks.” Liu turned to the girl. “How much?”

“One twenty-eight.”

He paid and went out. But before crossing the granite slabs over the gutter to get to the street, he remembered something and returned to the photo shop. At the sight of him, the girl tittered and sniffled.

“I need a receipt,” Liu said.

“Sure.” She kept her head low.

While she was writing the receipt, Liu went into the darkroom, in which Jia was coloring a photograph with a little brush. Liu said, “Old Jia, I forgot something very important.”

“What?” Jia stood up, brush in hand.

“I want you to put the date on the pictures. Today’s June thirtieth.”

“I can do that. No problem.” Jia’s smile revealed a gold molar.

On his way to the Commune Guesthouse, where the conference attendees were to eat a six-course lunch, Liu felt that this time he had caught Shao Bin. He would publicize this incident across the whole county and make him notorious as a mad, man-biting dog. Yes, he was going to heat up the water and boil this turtle alive.

A
FTER LIU GOT THE PHOTOGRAPHS
, a general meeting was held in the plant. Since everybody had heard of the incident in the commune’s theater, the attendance was unprecedented; never had the dining hall been so full. About a dozen men were sitting on the windowsills.

Director Ma first described how Bin had bitten Secretary Liu. Next he announced that Bin was temporarily dismissed from his work, so that he could have time to write his self-criticism and self-examination. Hearing this, some men booed, because they thought Bin was lucky to have a few days off.

Then Liu took over and addressed the audience. “Comrades, I once observed that Shao Bin had mental trouble. What happened two days ago has proved my point. You all know how important that methane conference was to our commune, but Shao Bin was so crazy he went there to spoil all the work we had done for it. Director
Ma and I stopped him in time and tried to persuade him to leave. He wouldn’t listen. As we were taking him out, he turned wild and bit my butt.” Unconsciously Liu touched his behind with his right hand as though the wound had been inflicted just now.

Too outraged to stand it any more, Bin jumped up and yelled, “If you didn’t kick my privates, how could I bite you! If you didn’t sit on my face, how could my mouth reach your stinking ass!”

Some of the audience laughed.

“Who kicked your balls?” Liu asked and looked bewildered, as if he had never heard of such a thing.

The laughter grew louder.

“You, you broke my private parts!” Bin was choking with anger and truly believed it was Liu, not Ma, who had hurt him.

“I did?” Liu smiled contemptuously, his eyes half closed. “You’ve lost your mind. Show us how broken your balls are, anyway.”

A burst of laughter filled the room as Bin turned red to the neck. “Shameless snake!” he cursed and sat down.

“Watch your language, Comrade Shao Bin,” Liu said. “We’re all rational adults, aren’t we? We are here to discuss the problem and not to call each other names.” He took a wallet out of his pocket, opened it, and raised it to the audience, displaying the photograph of a dark wound. “Here’s my butt. Comrade Shao Bin, this isn’t a
dog bite, is it? Your teeth marks are here. It’s ironclad evidence, as solid as a mountain, and with the date on it too.” He took the picture out of the cellophane sleeve and slammed it on the table. “I leave it here for everybody to see after the meeting. Shao Bin, you said I broke your balls. Where are your balls? Show us the evidence if you have any.”

Liu looked so serious that nobody dared make a noise, though quite a few people tried hard to hold back their laughter. On the verge of tears, Bin stood up and rushed away to the door, shouting back, “You’re worse than landowners and capitalists! More pernicious than a counterrevolutionary.”

That brought out an explosion of laughter; Bin stormed out of the meeting.

He didn’t write a word of self-criticism. Instead, he spent the following days painting plum blossoms and copying stone inscriptions from the Han Dynasty. He had always aspired to possess that kind of ancient simplicity and solidity in his calligraphy. To some degree, he felt happy to be able to practice his arts again. During the day Shanshan was at the nursery school of the department store, so he was alone at home, painting, writing, and humming at will until four o’clock, when he would cook dinner for his family.

Peace and joy, however, were temporary. A few days later the leaders sent Huang Dongfang over to see how
much self-criticism Bin had written. Realizing he had done nothing, they ordered him back to work; so he returned to the plant.

Despite his calm appearance, Bin was filled with anxiety. He knew that soon the admission letter would come to the plant, and that the school would request his file and a current evaluation of his moral character, working habits, and lifestyle. This would give the leaders an opportunity to stop him again. They didn’t even have to do anything — just withholding his file would be enough to spoil the whole thing. On the other hand, the leaders couldn’t hold him back without facing some public pressure, because the admission would surely become known in town. In over twenty years only one boy and two girls in the commune had passed the exams and entered college. People would be impressed this time and say, “Shao Bin is a chosen scholar now. He’s leaving for the provincial capital and to be a big official there someday. Who could tell a golden phoenix was hatched in a henhouse? Now whoever is his enemy must be careful, and he will come back someday and have them punished.”

So far Bin dared not tell anybody about the admission; he had made Meilan promise that she wouldn’t breathe a word. He understood happiness was a private thing and couldn’t be shared with others. In addition, he didn’t want the leaders to know of the admission before the official letter arrived. If it came, he preferred it to come like
thunder, to strike them dumb. Had they heard of the admission beforehand, they would have had time to calculate their moves. This would have left him little time to work on them.

He was unsure how to bring them around; too much enmity had built up recently. He dared not seek advice from anybody in town, because that would be similar to broadcasting the secret. Besides, he had no close friend here.

Having thought about the matter for several days, he decided to ask Yen Fu’s opinion, since Yen lived far away. By the time the secret spread from Gold County and reached Dismount Fort, the university’s letter would have arrived at the plant.

He wrote to Yen with a fountain pen. Because Yen knew his calligraphy well, there was no need for a brush. The letter went:

After putting the letter into a small envelope, he couldn’t find the glue bottle. So he sealed it with a few grains of cooked rice. When he went to the nursery school to fetch his daughter, he took the letter with him; the post office was on the way.

Three days later, Bin received a note from the Provincial College Examination Committee. It informed him of his exam results: Math — 18; Politics — 73; Language and Literature — 64. He was so embarrassed by the note that he used it in the latrine. He didn’t even mention it to his wife. He was afraid that the plant might get such a note as well. If so, the leaders would definitely make good use of it.

Yen’s letter came the next afternoon. He advised Bin to remain calm and patient, biding his time. “Brother
Shao,” he wrote, “you must be able to endure; otherwise you will lose the opportunity. Don’t talk back or argue with them. Just keep quiet.” Yen also suggested that between the two leaders Ma seemed less wicked, so Bin should work on Ma, trying to bring him around first. Meanwhile, Yen would find someone in the county town who knew Secretary Yang well, to persuade him. Once Yang and Ma agreed to let Bin go, Liu would have to concede.

Meilan and Bin thought Yen’s advice sound and feasible; they decided to work on Ma without delay.

After supper, they left Shanshan with the salesgirls who lived next door and set out for Ma’s. Bin rode his National Defense bicycle, Meilan sitting on its carrier. Coming toward the plant, he saw in the distance the houses in Workers’ Park lined up neatly, the red tiles, wet with rain, glistening in the setting sun, and the sycamores beside the houses already leafy with small crowns. Again the sight of the compound kindled his anger, but he forced himself to remain unperturbed. He kept saying to himself, a strong man must be able to stoop and stand up according to circumstances. Housing is something outside yourself and shouldn’t be valued too much.

Without Bin’s knowledge, that afternoon the official news of his admission had arrived. It indeed came like thunder and blew up the leaders’ plan to make a jackass of him in the eyes of the plant. Shao Bin had done it again!
Whatever you called him, a lunatic or a mad dog, you couldn’t deny he was bursting with talent and energy and was a scholar by nature. With only five years’ education, he had tackled those difficult exams and got admitted to a college, whereas every one of the commune’s three hundred high-school graduates had flunked the exams this year. Who could deny that Shao Bin had an extraordinary mind?

The leaders, especially Ma, felt they should have let Bin do the propaganda work; such a conciliatory gesture on their part could have prevented the hostility between Bin and them from mounting up.

“You know what,” Ma said to Liu on their way to Workers’ Park, “we should’ve made better use of this odd man and given him an apartment last year.”

“Yes, but it’s too late now,” Liu said thoughtfully. “He’s already our deadly enemy. From now on, we must be very careful when dealing with him, or he’ll capsize our boat. Who could foretell he’d grow into such a big fish?”

Ma made no further comment and parted company with Liu. He and his wife had saved four thousand yuan for their youngest daughter’s college education, but year after year the girl failed the exams. Shao Bin, this wizard of a fitter, had made it with only two weeks’ preparation. What could you say? You had to admit he was a tremendous learner at least. In his heart Ma couldn’t help but respect Bin. It seemed there was simply no way to stop
this weird fellow, and sooner or later he would become somebody.