by Hua Bai
and it gives his last cry of zhi! When the body of the mouse is rolled on the tongue, it becomes soft as a dumpling, and as it touches every corner of one’s palate, all one’s senses make the saliva ooze. Everything sinks to oblivion, and all one’s nerves concentrate on the passage from mouth to
esophagus to stomach. Particularly the stomach because the bowels, having moved ahead of time, can hardly wait for the well-chewed, bloody baby mouse. If I had heard such a
thing before coming to prison, I would have puked. But my living in an era that tests a man’s courage to eat human hearts, plus the hard conditions of prison, where I lived on seven ounces of coarse daily rations, made me willing to seduce the singing sparrow to come down, and I would have swallowed it, feathers and all, if I could have. Under such circumstances it is a pleasure to hear someone describe in a most civilized manner how to eat baby mice who have not
seen the light of day. I greedily relished every detail told by anyone on the subject of cooking and eating. The man
charged with the crime of attempting to bomb City H with a handheld nuclear device collected a great many recipes.
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Through sleepless nights, he talked about how to cook and eat special dishes. In my childhood, although ghost stories kept me awake because I was afraid that a headless female ghost would sit on my face with her bare bottom, I loved to hear them. Similarly, in prison I loved to hear about food, even though I knew that each spiritual feast would excite my digestive system without a crumb of real food to satisfy it. I would suffer shivering limbs, cold sweats, and insomnia. It is well said that a man is a mill and that his hunger stops only when he sleeps. During the sleepless hours, hunger attacks you ten times more frantically, seizing every nerve and pinching every blood vessel. You thirst for something more than water, for some solid substance. You would swallow a stone if you could in order to fill your emptiness.
I was jealous of number 96, who had compiled The Ouyang Dictionary of Self-Criticism, for he told me in privacy that his wife smuggled in a large tube of White Jade toothpaste every other week. The tube actually contained con-
densed milk – as I found out through careful observation.
Every day before bedtime, he would squeeze some con-
densed milk into his mouth under the pretext of brushing his teeth. Although it did not help his empty stomach, it was a comfort for his digestive and nervous systems. My
sense of smell was particularly keen. Moreover, he and I shared a wooden block as a pillow. So when he fell asleep, his mouth would open to release all his hidden smells. Condensed milk in a toothpaste tube made me think of his capable wife; then thoughts of his wife led to thoughts of my Yunqian. What was Yunqian’s relationship to me? It did
not matter whether or not she belonged to me. The question was, Could she smuggle a tube of condensed milk to me
through the mercy of the prison director? But before she tried this backdoor, she must first learn that I was in prison and where my prison was located. Pity, she had no knowledge of my present situation. Every night the smell of condensed milk from number 96 threatened my whole exist-
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ence. It kindled flames of starvation, which burned night after night, until I wanted to commit suicide. One midnight, unable to put up with it anymore, I shook number 96
out of his sound sleep. “I am going to report you.”
“Nonsense!” He woke up from a muddled dream. “What
can you report me for?”
I whispered into his ear, “Condensed milk in the tooth-
paste tube.”
“What?” He sat up speechless. I had hit a nerve. If I made a fuss over it, at least his secret lifeline would be cut off, for the warden would no longer allow any toothpaste to be
brought to his cell. “What do you want, then? Half of it?”
“No. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“A citation of merit? If you want that, you’re making a
terrible mistake. Because the warden would hate you to the marrow. You know I got these tubes with his special permission. Even if I could no longer get them, you wouldn’t benefit from my misfortune. Instead, he’d find a pretext to put another set of chains on you.”
“I want only to know how your toothpaste is brought to
the prison and why the warden gives you special permis-
sion.”
He straightened his body into a more comfortable posi-
tion and said proudly, “My wife is pretty, and the warden is willing to help – ”
“So the cost of your toothpaste is very high.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know – no matter how high the
cost is, it’s no concern of mine. She does it for me anyway.”
I didn’t pursue the question any further. With a sigh I let my head sink back onto our shared wooden pillow. Instantly a concrete image of Yunqian rose before me. I wanted her passionately. She overwhelmed my physical hunger. In
my mind our cocoon became dearer than a house of gold. I regretted that I had not enjoyed it fully and had never
tidied it up: my lethargic attitude toward life. I had always thought our stay together to be mere coincidence, not 2 1 5
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something for life. I had listened to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony numerous times. Although each listening had
thrilled and intoxicated me, many of the notes had escaped me, making it impossible for me to string those themes
together in my memory. And although Yunqian and I had
spoken often, we had never touched on anything profound. I hadn’t even asked her whether our intercourse was love. If it weren’t love, what was it? To tell the truth, when I lost her I missed her body most. I had indulged myself with her body, even making experiments according to The Art of Healthy Sex. Most of our experiments were not very successful because the written techniques were not universally applica-ble. Making love is like painting. Technique alone cannot produce a masterpiece. The masterpiece needs to be completed by the soul, even if it is only a splash of ink and some simple color. Apart from longing for her body, I also longed for the spirit of her body that stimulated my desire. That is a female’s most essential spirit. Those smooth, warm arms of hers, like two melodies merging together, gently circled my head. My face lay at the bottom of the valley between two soft mounds. I breathed to the rhythm of her heart. Because of her soul’s longing, her body yielded to me, a gift of gratitude. No wonder the Chinese classical novels regard man’s joy and woman’s love as forms of gratitude. Beneath her
right breast there was a black mole – the only idea of her body I retained. Otherwise, she gave me only abstract memories. Even those abstract memories were mere illusions
exaggerated by my sexual impulses, without clear outline, shade, or color. Many times I made up my mind to see,
draw, and memorize her body so that I could behold her as a whole in her absence. But each time my effort was sabotaged by my uncontrollable sexual drive. When my desire
ebbed, my vision vanished. How stupid I was. Just like the monkey king eating the peaches of immortality and Pigsy
chewing ginseng, I remained a primitive man. Would I
have another opportunity to be close enough to her to
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admire her generous love in the way I admire Rodin’s sculpture? Could I still, half drunk and half sober, explore every inch of her body with kisses: every line, the smooth curves of her waist, and the dark valley hidden from sight?
I couldn’t understand how number 96 could tolerate such
an exchange – using his beautiful wife’s body to bribe the warden simply for a supply of condensed milk in toothpaste tubes. I would l
et myself be gnawed to death by hunger
night after night before accepting such a deal.
Believing I was intimidated and no longer dared to
report him, he went back to sleep. Suddenly I found his
appearance despicable as he exhaled the smell of condensed milk from his gaping mouth. In my mind’s eye, his swollen face transformed itself now and then into a hog’s face with its black bristles burned off. Although I had never seen his wife, I drew a sketch of her in my imagination. She was very beautiful and pleasantly plump. Wearing an awkward smile and biting her quivering lips, she shut her eyes, tilted her head, and used her hands to push away the warden’s hairy chest in helpless resistance. Disguising her pain and disgust, she put up with him, like leaping over a chasm, hoping this would be the last time. It would be over, it would be over soon.
I would refuse to pay the price number 96 had sacrificed and not only for condensed milk. If it were for doughnuts, roast chicken, seasoned cakes, rice, braised pork, cooked pig feet, boiled dumplings, or pies filled with crabmeat, even if it were for freedom or for Yunqian herself, I would still refuse.
I gaze at her window. In the past, it was pasted over with black paper; now a cloth curtain with tiny blue flowers hangs there.
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After becoming axiao, Sunamei and Ying-
zhi, like a pair of bamboo shoots after a warm spring rain, pierced through their husks one morning, high above all the other bamboo around them. They swayed in the rosy morning sun; every leaf glistened with pearly dew. They suited each other so well that no other men dared to court Sunamei, and Ami Cai’er woke up more than once from her
dreams with happy laughter.
Yingzhi had grown up in the same siri as Sunamei. He was not rich. Unlike Longbu, who came each time on a
giant horse carrying a large sack of food, Yingzhi, having no horse, could come only on foot with a few gifts. But Yingzhi could bring Sunamei a happiness that differed from the
mature passion of Longbu. They were two flames of youth
come together, circling and teasing and burning stronger and stronger. They were full-fledged white cranes on the lake in May, feeling fresh and excited over every flight and landing. They were a melody gliding past groves of reeds as the water surface, shattered by playful indulgence, gradually grew calm, and the silvery moon, replacing the golden sun, shed its light on their bodies. The stillness of nature at this moment was their sweet, long solitude. Ami Cai’er treasured those moments of solitude most. As she grew older, she felt more keenly that the space of a woman’s heart is not so big after all. It accepts only a few men, or rather, one man. All other men are merely shadows, and some are
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merely mildew left on the memory, recalling an unpleasant experience.
Sunamei’s eyes brightened, her waist and thighs grew
supple, her breasts arched, her laughter grew clear, and her songs sonorous. Many women gossiped about her out
of jealousy. But their reverence for Goddess Ganmu made
them accept their own fate. They knew it was Ganmu’s
favor that had created another Zhima. No, she was even
more attractive than Zhima. Neither men nor women could
resist her smile. While dancing, whenever she stood in the middle, the team surrounding her would change its rhythm and pattern according to her example or at her subtle suggestion. She had such self-confidence. Every movement of her hand and her foot was precise, graceful, and charming.
What surprised people most was her singing. Previously,
hardly anyone knew she could sing; like her personality, her song had been obscure. Now, not only did her voice
make the girls of Youjiwa Village silent like cicadas in the cold, but her capacity for improvising amazed all the villagers. When they heard her singing, they intoned the name of the goddess. Oh, Goddess, because you bless her
with beauty, why did you also give her all the wisdom?
Goddess, being an omniscient overmother, declined to
answer such silly questions raised by people on earth.
And especially when Sunamei stripped off her clothes and plunged into the open spring to bathe, whoever saw her
would utter a cry of amazement: Ami! you must have come
from heaven, Sunamei.
Luo Ren, deputy head of the county cultural bureau, was
visiting Youjiwa Village. He stayed with Team Leader Sula for several days. It was rare for a cadre to stay in a small Mosuo village, and, because he came not from the local
county but from County H, the news quickly spread from
door to door. The whole community was trying to guess the purpose of his visit. Luo Ren was a short, bespectacled, thirty-year-old man of the Han nationality. He could speak 2 1 9
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the language of the Li nationality, which the Mosuo also spoke. He was bold enough to eat Mosuo preserved pork as well as Li boiled tripe. He was not only skilled in the dances of the Li, Mosuo, and Tibetan nationalities, but could also play the flute, stringed instruments, the accordion, and a type of mouth organ called kouxuan. Because he knew how to weave the half-singing and half-wailing language of love through the quivering of a bamboo reed, by playing the
kouxuan he could make the Li girls blush and hide themselves in the woods. He could also join in the singing dialogues with Mosuo women in the Li language, boldly using even their most erotic terms. However, no one had ever
heard of his having an axiao, not even for one night of romance. Luo Ren never dared to try, because his axiao would tell every woman she saw all about it the following morning. As a Han, a cadre, and a party member, he would be disciplined for the slightest misbehavior. At the very least he could be expelled from the party or even sent to a farm for labor reform, thus losing the freedom of a cultured man in a small town. It was said that once a twenty-year-old Mosuo girl had earnestly invited him to spend a night in her huagu. She assured him over and over, “I know you are a cadre and a Han man, and that the party forbids your visiting huagu. But if you come, I will tell no one, not even my ami. If you are afraid, you may come in the small hours and I’ll come out to meet you. I can bring you a set of my awu’ s clothes so no one will recognize you. No one will see
you.… If you don’t want to do it in my huagu, we can get a horse and ride to Mount Hawa. Near the summer pasture on the mountain is a row of empty wooden cabins. If we bring a box of matches, we can make a warm fire. There, no one will see or hear us. I will make you happy, let you touch my body at your will. I know how to make a man happy. If you don’t believe me, try now. Touch me while I shut my eyes.
Please come to my huagu or climb Mount Hawa with me. I have a horse and will bring wine, cookies, dried beef.…”
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But when she opened her eyes, Luo Ren had long disap-
peared. From then on, Mosuo women gossiped about Luo
Ren’s lacking a penis. One woman was said to have groped in his crotch when he was off guard. However, such tales were denied by team Leader Sula, who said that the commune secretary had once passed through City H on his way to the provincial capital for a conference. Because he was Luo’s old friend, he had shared a meal in his house and had seen his wife and children. The children were not convincing because the Mosuo never cared about which man’s seeds led to their birth. But seeing his wife was powerful evidence. If he really lacked that thing, how could she stay with him? But Luo Ren remained an ambiguous man in
their minds. They even discussed ways of seducing him into taking a bath in the spring so everyone could have a clear answer.
What had Luo Ren come here for this time? People were
curious, although they knew he was n
ot involved in imposing marriages or castrating women, but that he engaged in delightful things like singing and dancing. He had visited the village a few years before, collecting ancient tales from Daba and other elders. He had filled a dozen notebooks.
Later he stopped his research in this area, for anything ancient belonged to the category of the Four Olds. Those notebooks had caused him to endure more than thirty criticism meetings, and all his hair had been yanked out. This time when he came to Youjiwa Village, he wore an old army cap, never daring to take it off. Several girls schemed to snatch it away to expose his bald head, which must have
resembled a piece of grassland grazed by sheep after a frost.
But those girls knew that Luo Ren was a smart man who
only appeared dull. It was nearly impossible to seduce him to take off his pants, and it would be no easy matter to remove his cap. In fact, one audacious girl, instead of taking off his cap, wound up with her own skirt pulled down in
public. Their tactics did not seem to be working.
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Luo Ren seemed to have no special mission this time.
During the day he helped the women with the weeding, and in the evening he joined the dances in the clearing. He
loved to play his flute vigorously with the team dancing behind him or pluck strings and sing with the girls. But when the crowds cheered for Sunamei to sing, he lifted his eyes and fixed his gaze on her passionate lips. Sunamei’s lips were a bit thick, like two full-grown orange segments. Yet they contained not juice but coursing blood that gave them the transparent red of pomegranate seeds. Today she looked exceptionally happy. During the dance she followed Luo