Chapter 10
It was school holiday. One evening at dinner table he was begging and nagging his mum to grant him a chance to go shooting with his uncle, making a lot of promises in regard to his study as a bargain. It was a kind of fun he had been wishing for and vividly imagining, but it had never become a real experience. Therefore, when his mum had finally yielded to his imploring, he was thrilled to the very roots, running immediately next door to pass the news, while his mother calling after him, ‘keep quiet, keep quiet, don’t let your dad know.’
On the eve of his adventure, Bing went to sleep much earlier than usual. He would have to get up as early as 4:30am in the morning and go to a hill some miles away.
Next morning, he was nudged awake by his mother, and for a moment thought that she had come to say ‘good night’ instead of ‘good morning’, because it was like he had not slept at all.
It was very quiet, except for the frog croaking in the fields. The oil-lamp was on, its light wavering. His mum was preparing him a few more clothes, muttering that the morning dew might catch him a cold. He got out of the bed and without his usual grudge in wearing more clothes, let his mother dress him as much as she wished. Then they went down carefully by the wooden fenceless staircase to the living room, where, lit by his mum, another oil-lamp was already on the dinner table, as well as a bowl of sweet potatoes. She asked him to eat all the potatoes, but this time he was too excited to fully corporate with her, and after finishing one and taking another in his hand, was impatient to go to his uncle’s. Their household dog, obviously having heard the stirrings inside the room, was creeping through the dog-hole around the wall corner, and pulling itself up, coming over to greet him, its tongue licking, its tail wagging. Bing split a little piece of potato and sent it to its mouth. The dog was exceedingly happy, its lean jaw extensively jerking as if it had caught a feast. It was a yellowish dog, very humble, overly kind, not even showing teeth to strangers or other wandering dogs. Bing patted its head and, followed by his mother, went ahead to the thick and heavy wooden door. The latch was thick and heavy too, and made a deep sound as Bing clumsily lifted it up and pulled it aside. But the jarring noise that came later with the door opening had almost frightened him in such a quietness before dawn.
They slipped outside. His mother was closing the door, as gently as she could so as to lower the squealing noise. Then Bing saw a swallow squeezing through the narrowing crack, and coming out, shooting and swirling into the dusky air.
‘Why? The swallow going out so early?’ he was puzzled. Inside the room, there was a family of swallows, two adults and two eggs, living in a nest right under the wooden ceiling. His father had only to fix a loose structure made of iron wire onto the cros*****eam and the swallows, so intelligent as they seemed to be, would detect it and enter the house to make nest over it, using all types of building materials, such as straws, little twigs, leaves, feathers, cigarette or paper scraps. And most of the time the swallows tended to keep their nest and the house clean and tidy, like a good guest is expected to behave. However, when they were having babies, the droppings on the floor and around the nest could be very ugly, and one must try to stay away from under the nest in case the baby swallow’s dirt hit his head. How many times had he been bullied in such a manner by those babies? Well, he couldn’t remember, but he did remember a couple of times after he had been hit, instead of running away, he stayed and raised his eyes to scowl at them, only seeing and receiving more of the babies’ weapons.
‘They are always early, when they detect the door opening,’ his mother commented, in a low voice. And perhaps considering the swallow might return to its home, she left the door open with a small crack.
They went to the next door, his uncle’s. He saw through chink of the door the light inside the room, and knew his uncle was already up, and would come out at any minute. He knocked at the door, twice, to send him a signal. That done, they stood under the eave, waiting.
His mother brushed a bit his clothes, muttering her reminders, ‘The road to the hill is wet and slippery, don’t rush, walk carefully, it is still dark.’
The night was deep; the sky was in semi-darkness, wherein the scattered stars were twinkling, with a light even weaker than the oil-lamp set at its lowest. The distant hills and mountains were like a pool of ink poured across the lower sky, mysterious and a little scary. In the garden bed along the fence, the plants were just like a group of black unmoving shapes.
If not for the sound of the door opening, Bing would have soon got himself into a dream. His uncle came out, hitching the long rifle along his side. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Bing followed him towards the main entrance of the house. ‘Don’t rush, follow closely uncle,’ said his mother after him.
With another creaking sound, they were then on the dusty path of the village. And immediately the dog next door started barking, and then more dogs in the village began to bark, though their voices didn’t sound angry at all. Perhaps they were just barking from habit, like birds twittering some innocent songs. For a moment, it came to him so distant and unreal that it was more like something he had often heard in his sleep.
He and his uncle thudded their steps on the narrow path fenced by the walls of houses. As his eyes became more used to the dim light, the road and things were clearer. The fewer than fifty houses in the entire Guzhai village were actually built upon a hill, their foundation level almost varying from one to another. Therefore, the only stone-paved path that wound through it was steep and zigzagging. More than twice Bing had nearly tripped over the steps. His uncle, walking briskly in the front, kept saying to him, ‘Careful, careful.’
In about ten minutes, they were out of the village, onto a track snaking uphill. A big bird was suddenly breaking out of a tree, scaring him like a ghost. The bird didn’t cry out but flapped its heavy wings, heading unhurriedly to another tree. Slightly shocked, Bing paused a second or two, but his uncle, not affected at all, didn’t slacken his steps in the least, like nothing had ever happened.
As they went up the steep hill, the path was narrower. The leaves and twigs were protruding in their way, the dew wetting his face and clothes. He felt a little cold, his mum was right, he would definitely catch cold if he had not put on extra clothes.
Along the track, he often heard some noise from the undergrowth, like the chickens scratching their claws on the soil searching for worms, but, strange enough, as they approached, it would stop at once and start at once again some distance away. It seemed to him the noise producer, whatever it might be, was able to jump from one place to another in no time.
Once, there was a loud plunging just in the front of his uncle, Bing saw only the shaking thicket but spotted neither birds nor animals that had caused the brisk rustle.
‘What is it?’ he asked frightfully.
‘A snake,’ his uncle answered.
‘Is it big?’
‘Yes,’ his uncle replied.
By the time they arrived in a thick wood, the sky was near dawn. The dull paleness began to touch the treetops, its share coming down to the undergrowth. Dots and patches of light were quivering on the dewy leaves and trunks. Birds began to sing. At first, only with one or two sleepy chirpings, then as if they were awakened by a common call, their voices more like a chorus, echoing very far and deep.
His uncle paused at a small branch of the road, and said, ‘Walk slowly, we are close to our target.’
They gingerly trod upwards by the track as narrow as his foot, moving towards a tree as high as a two-storey house.
‘That is the tree,’ his uncle pointed. ‘We need to find a hiding place, some distance away.’
‘But are there any birds there?’ Bing wondered. ‘There is no chirping out of the tree.’
‘They are still asleep.’
They stooped and sneaked towards a young pine tree about a man’s height, within half of a stone’s throw to the target. His uncle pressed the low ferns and grass, then took out the plastic sheet from his bag, unfolded it and spread it over.
Sitting down, his uncle perched the rifle onto a fork of the tree, his eyes measuring the direction to the target.
They waited. Minutes had drifted by before Bing began to see its leaves stirring, hearing a few peeps like that of little chicks. It then took less than a minute for the whole tree to turn alive, with the vibrant clamour and rustle. Oh, to imagine only a little time earlier it had been so hushed and quiet!
‘Ready to shoot?’ Bing said in an excited but very low voice, turning to his uncle.
His uncle shook his head. Cool and imperturbable, he was making his cigarette. On his palm was a small square piece of paper like the one Bing used for an exercise book. He took a small amount of tobacco from his bag, laid it onto its middle, folded a couple of times to make it fit, added two more pinches, folded again, wrapped it over, licked on the paper’s edge, pressed the tobacco tight at the larger end of the piece, and, as a final touch, thrust out his tongue again to lick the full length of the seam. The whole piece looked like a small version of the funnel his mother used to pass the rice-wine.
Then, putting the thin end of the funnel between his lips, he fired up the lighter. There was no breeze, but he still used his left hand to protect the flame. For next minute or two, he was enjoying his cigarette, while Bing sat there wondering when the real thing could begin.
The cigarette burned half way down, his uncle opened his bag and fished out a firework, a ‘double-bunger’ firecracker.
‘Fireworks! Why?’ Bing had to suppress the surprise in his voice.
‘Now, you have a job to do.’ His uncle didn’t give him a reason. ‘When I give you the signal, you light the cracker.’ He put the firework in Bing’s hand. ‘You know how to do this, don’t you?’
Of course he knew. This was his favourite fun, although it was usually during Spring Festival. ‘Do I need to point it to the tree?’
‘No. Just make sure not at yourself, we only need its sound to scare off the birds.’
‘Oh…’ Bing was still puzzled, but in another second he understood the trick. ‘Hehe, I understand.’
His uncle gave the burning cigarette to him, ‘Fire it when I give you the signal.’ Then he moved to a prostrate position, crouching like a cat. His feet, in a pair of wretched Liberation Shoes, stretched beyond their plastic mat out to the wet grass.
Bing felt his blood beating in his temples. He set up the firework in the grass with its curled wick pointing outwards, holding his breath. His fingers clutched the wet end of the cigarette, waiting for his uncle’s signal.
Finally, his uncle winked at him, ‘Yes.’ At once Bing put the red ember against the wick, but it failed to ignite; he did once more and failed once more. Then he thought of something, and sucked the cigarette until the coal was almost burning his fingers before trying the third time.
The sparks began creeping down the short lead of the cracker.
The explosion, of just a firework, produced a massive bang in the heart of the forest. A cloud of birds, in his unblinking eyes, were swelling up in all directions out of the tree. Then, an immediate explosion, many times louder than the one a second before, joined to break the air, ear-piercing, rocking everything in the space.
There was a sudden change in the birds’ flying pattern, as if they were numbed for a moment by failing of their wings. Many of them had recovered quickly and flown away, but some, after jerking a little in the air, were fluttering to the ground.
‘Not too bad, at least ten,’ his uncle declared, withdrawing the gun, which was still clouded in thin smoke.
Bing rose to his feet, running towards to where he had just noticed a falling bird. It was a sparrow. As he picked it up, its tiny feet were still quavering, though only for a brief moment. In its body there was no gunshot to be seen. ‘He must have been scared to death,’ he thought.
Rummaging through the thick undergrowth, they had searched and gathered a total of seventeen sparrows, a lot more than Bing had seen falling.
Most of them didn’t have any obvious wound on their body.
‘Why is there no wound?’ Bing asked.
‘Well, it is small, you can’t see it. The gun is a blaster, it sends out a wide shower of tiny beads.’
‘So the bead is inside the flesh. But won’t it hurt my teeth when I eat it?’
‘No, you will notice it on the surface of skin when you take the feathers off.’
The hunt was a victory. They collected the mat and the bag, tying all the birds by their feet with a long string. At first, Bing wanted to carry it himself, but his uncle said it was better hanging them on the barrel of the rifle.
Along the way back home, the birds’ chorus in the wood was sounding more feverish, as if the deadly shooting had not occurred. The daylight was now brighter, the water in the fields shining like mirrors. The swallows, with their nimbleness and agility, were sweeping low over the fields, darting and skimming upon the water. Now and again, as if called up by some spirit in the sky, they would suddenly dash skywards, catching the insects such as dragonflies and beetles. Bing knew some of them would immediately go home with their catch to feed their wailing babies, to hush those dirty and naughty, red-skinned, long-necked, and big-mouthed baby swallows.
Then he had a question, ‘Uncle, how do you light the cracker when you hunt for birds yourself?’ But he thought he had already known the answer even before he finished his asking.
‘Well, I have two hands, haven’t I?’ his uncle smiled proudly, showing his bad teeth.
‘Hehe.’
When they arrived at home, his sister was still in bed. His grandma was sitting on a stool in the front yard, peeling the taros. She said: ‘Aiya-hah, how could you go hunting…Aiya-hah, you will be in trouble if your dad knows,’ then seeing the birds in his hands, ‘Aiya-hah, so many,’ then noticing Bing’s damp clothes, she halted her work, stood up and brushed repeatedly his sleeves as if to make them dry, ‘Aiya-hah, soggy, let’s go and change your clothes.’ Grabbing his arm, she was leading him inside the room.
‘No, no, grandma,’ Bing broke away from her, ‘it will dry itself.’ He then placed the sparrows onto the fire-twigs on the ledge, and began counting again.
Of her three grandchildren, his grandma loved him the best, because he was the oldest. He had always been the first in line whenever she got some sweets or other little things for them. Oftentimes she would go to his school and wait outside his classroom for him to come out during the class break, and then watch him eat until finish the meat balls or the steamed buns she had bought from the market. On these occasions, his classmates would always gather around them with their staring jealousy. In his village, buns were regarded as a better and rarer food than rice, and could only be bought from the market.
Bing brought all the strung seventeen birds closer to his grandma, who had now sat back peeling the taros. ‘See, grandma, seventeen, that’s a lot, isn’t it, grandma.’
She reached out her old slender hand, patted his pants and shoes, repeating, ‘Aiya-hah, all dirty and wet, go and change, aiya-hah, don’t catch a cold.’
Putting the birds back onto the ledge, he went into the living room. The clock which had always been sitting importantly on the middle of the cabinet was striking six times with its round and always flinging pendulum. The sound was deeply resonating, so intimate and familiar to his ears that, like his grandma’s characteristic ‘Aiya-hah’, it was an integral part of his world. His dad had a watch, but his uncle didn’t have any. Bing wondered how his uncle could manage the time when hunting. Then, like many questions he had asked and immediately afterwards answered by himself, he knew his uncle was able to guess the time probably by the position of the sun or the moon. After all, he was a good hunter in the village, even if most of the time he still had to work the rice fields. But more often than not, he would take advantage of his hunting skills and exchange his hunted birds or mice or boar’s meat for the field labour offered by other farmers.
Having seen the birds as they came back, the villager, Wang Gua, came to the house, wishing to buy some birds to treat his guests.
‘How many do you want?’ his uncle asked.
‘Ten?’
‘All right,’ he said, turning to fetch the birds for his customer.
‘How much?’ Gua asked.
‘Don’t worry.’
‘No, no, I won’t take them if you won’t take the money.’
‘Then five Jiao.’ Five Jiao equalled half a Yuan.
Gua produced the notes from his pocket, and handed them to his uncle, who at once thrust them into Bing’s breast pocket, ‘It is your reward, buy some pens and books.’
Bing hesitated as to whether he should accept it, but his uncle by the time had already slipped inside the room. Then, in a while he came out again, pointing to the rest of the birds, ‘Ask your mum to cook them.’
‘Okay, we will eat them together,’ Bing replied.
‘No, only seven left, until next time,’ he said, going out of the house.
His mother was at the time watering the vegetables at the foot of the hill at the other end of fields. It was quite a distance away from the house, but Bing saw clearly her figure rising and falling with the long dipper in her hands. Bing couldn’t wait to tell his mum about his first hunting adventure.
Late in the afternoon, his mother cooked the birds together with porridge. The soup was delicious. Bing didn’t think he had left any bird bones un-chewed.
However, after this time, his father by one way or another had discovered his hunting secret, and got very angry. In his dad’s mind, his uncle was a person without a proper occupation, and hunting was not only dangerous but would also distract Bing’s study more than anything else. So his uncle didn’t dare to take him hunting any more.
But there was so much fun in the village that Bing could always find his way to circumvent his dad’s supervision, especially during holidays. One morning, Bing got up, feeling very bored at home. He had already done the homework assigned for the holidays and finished reading the books his father had brought home.
Then his cousin Dan came in, and tempted him, ‘Want to go fishing?’
‘But my dad will come home today,’ he said, sadly. ‘I have to stay at home.’
‘When will he come home?’
‘Don’t know. Probably this afternoon, my mum said he was coming back with some guests, for dinner.’
‘Then we try to come back before he gets home.’
‘But…’ Bing was wavering.
‘And today is good for fishing, because of yesterday’s rain. The water in the brook is rallying.’
Bing didn’t need more enticement. ‘Okay, okay, but I lost my fishing hook last time, I need to fix it first.’
Last time, the hook was entangled in weeds in the water, and as he pulled it forcefully, the hook slipped off from the line. The fishing rod was actually a long and thin bamboo stick. When unused, the fishing line was wrapped along the rod and the hook was tugged safely at the other end of the stick.
Now without the hook, Bing had to attach one to the line. Their reserve of hooks were plenty, for his grandpa, as a peddler, was seeling the hooks and fishing lines and a lot of other little things. All he and Dan had to do was to steal some when their grandpa sat in the chair dozing.
He said to Dan, with a tone of big-brother command, ‘You go and dig for the worms. I will be ready when you come back.’
Dan took a used rusty cup and a hoe with him, going out. After the rain, there were plenty of worms in the black and rich soil, especially around the well-fertilized slots with grasses and shrubs. It was even rumoured in the village that the worms were very nutritious and edible, and some people had even taken them for food. Ah, what a disgusting idea! He never liked the squirming, spineless things, let along eating them. Even a snake was better than the worms, because the snakes did have some spine-like bones. He remembered some years back eating the snake his grandpa had bought from the market. The snake had to be prepared and cooked outside the house, and the skin and other unused parts had to be burned in a fire some distance away from home, otherwise, as the villagers truly believed, the snakes in the field would be attracted by the smell of their like, swarm out to haunt the house.
Before long, Dan came back with the cup half full of worms. Bing was still busily and anxiously tightening the knot. He did it up a number of times, but every time he pulled to test the tightness of the knot, it came undone. Dan came to help, and did it very efficiently. It seemed kids who didn’t study well at school were invariably better at fun activities outside the school.
Some of the ghastly worms were climbing over the rim of cup Dan had laid on the ground. One of them had dropped to the floor, jumping with good energy like a little fish, then settling a bit, searching its way to its imagined safety. Dan came to it and snatched it and tossed it back inside the cup.
Bing reminded him, ‘You need a cover or all of them will climb out.’ But Dan couldn’t find anything good enough for the purpose. In the end, he simply got some old paper and stuffed it inside.
In a while, they were ready to go.
His sister, Ming, had been all the morning playing a spinning-top, which was made from a type of round, tipped and hard-shelled seed. Noticing Bing and Dan going out, she stopped immediately to come to Bing and pull at his hand.
‘Ge Ge, I want to go as well,’ she begged.
‘No, no, you are not allowed to, wait for grandma and mum to come back home,’ he said, as he had said to her many times on similar occasions, and he knew she would invariably listen to him, and be agreeable. In his mind, she was not really interested in fishing, or anything boys had been enjoying. However, today she seemed rather unhappy, grimacing as if about to cry.
‘It’s so boring at home, let me go with you please…’ she was appealing. For a moment, his resolve was dwindling. But a greater dread of the imagined fury of his father, on discovering they had both gone out, had firmed his will. He didn’t forget the horrendous accident last time, when his sister had hurt her middle finger in the rice-threshing machine. On that afternoon, they went to play in a field. The machine was then idle, not being used by the adults. He stepped on the pedal, the fully-teethed cylinder started rotating, but Ming moved her hand too close to its side gear, which caught her middle finger and squash its tip. It was indeed a disaster even more horrible than his grenade-incident. Her screaming was still lingering even today in his ears. Two years had gone by, her finger had recovered, but the tip was still noticeable of its disfigurement.
‘No, no, please, Ming, you stay at home. Dad will be back soon,’ he said, glancing at the injured finger, but gave up the idea to warn her by recalling that horrific accident. He knew the mere mention of their dad was sufficient to daunt her courage, because since she injured her finger, she had been ordered again and again by their father that she should not go out with boys to play in the field, anytime, anywhere.
With a sulky face like the sky going to rain, she had to give in, mumbling, ‘It is unfair, I never go out.’
Bing fondled her head, and soothed her little temper by saying, ‘You don’t have to go out, you stay home, and you eat the big fishes I bring home, hehe.’
So Bing and Dan set off on their way, with two long fishing sticks swinging in their hands. Then his grandma, who had been digging soil in one of the ridges between the fields, saw them and called out, ‘Aiya-hah, go fishing again, don’t go, don’t go, Bing, your dad will be back home, he will be angry.’
‘Grandma, we will be back before he comes back, don’t worry.’ He waved to her, paying no heed to her grumbling.
Soon enough they had got to their favourite fishing section of the creek. The water was brimming with the flow rushing down from the hill. They laid down the gear on the ground and began to bait their hooks.
Every time Bing caught a slimy writhing worm, he had a very uncomfortable feeling, a kind of vomiting, but he had to touch it for the sake of fishing, as much in the same way he didn’t like thrusting his foot into the dreadful mud yet still doing it. The sensation seemed to give him a life lesson that good feelings don’t come by themselves, but always accompanied by the unpleasantness for one to endure.
He pinched one worm, finding its head or tail he didn’t know, and pierced it through the curve of the hook, until the hook was fully disguised and covered by the struggling life. Then he nipped off the extra length. The job was one that required a sort of profound but repulsive delicacy, but Bing couldn’t wish to finish it faster.
Dan flung his bait into a deep pool. The floater, made of a dry rice-stalk, was bobbing on the surface. He then inserted the end of stick into the soil as to hold the rod. Bing went upstream, to where the water was shallow and sparkling, and where only minnows could be fished. But his experience told him it was always quicker to catch something in the rushing riffle. He threw the bait to the uppermost part of the stream, his hand far stretched, following the torrent down towards the deeper swell. He repeated the process twice, and at his third time the line started to tremble. It passed all the way from the tiny jittering tip, through the rod, then to his hand, then to his heart. He felt his body was all dissolving in that moment. It had all happened in a very short time. He pulled the rod up, and there it was, a little fish, silvery, shining, and spinning. He caught it in his hand; it quivered and wiggled passionately in his fingers. The little thing just had so much energy.
Dan came up to him, in his usual slow and unhurried manner. ‘Oh, a little minnow,’ he remarked lightly, reached up his hand to touch it once, as if it was not a victory anyone should be proud of.
A year younger than Bing, Dan was, to all those in the village, a boy of a quiet temperament. Bing was tall and slim, Dan short and stout. When Dan was walking, or better, straggling, he tended to part his steps outwards to the side, in a typical fork-step, or in Chinese, the Ba Zi step. His brow was prominent, hooding over his eyes. He didn’t resemble the look or temperament of his father, who was rather quick and lithe in both mind and body. To think of Dan going hunting like his dad was rather ironical, hardly imaginable. Dan seemed to have inherited or even manifested more from his mother, who had a pacific and complacent disposition, and also a pair of outstanding eyebrows.
In all the fun that went on in the village, Dan had always been Bing’s companion. He smiled a lot, but rarely laughed from his belly. He seemed to possess a cool and humorous or sarcastic quality that belied his age. He never liked the books or school. Bing even doubted he could write his own name properly, for Bing scarcely saw him writing anything at all.
Bing unhooked the fish, five centimetres long, even smaller than a medium-sized loach common in the rice fields. Dan dawdled back to his own position, watching the float on the water. Bing placed the fish, still alive with its tail flicking, into the basket. Then he thought to let the fish swim in the water, but in their haste they hadn’t brought any bottle or bucket for the purpose. He looked around, and knowing Dan wouldn’t like to be bothered with such a thing, went to the lower side of the shore, and dug a small hole, where the water was able to seep and form a puddle. He then put the fish into it. The fish appeared very delighted with the water and the sudden freedom, but still frightened enough to escape. Its little head was banging against the muddy wall a number of times, then thrust it in and hid its head and eyes in the soil, leaving its body swaying gently in the water. There, feeling itself finally safe, it ceased its struggle and stuck in a kind of illusionary security.
With the first victory, Bing continued to make best of the fun in the riffles. He caught three more minnows, which evidently disrupted the coolness of his cousin. Dan finally pulled himself up, lifted his line out of the water, looking around for a more rewarding position. Bing, as he always did whenever a line was lifted out of the water, gave a curious glance at Dan’s hook, and at once burst into quick laughter on seeing it stripped bare of the worm.
‘It must have been a smart fish nibbling at it,’ Bing chuckled.
‘No, more like the worm slipped off by itself,’ Dan corrected, without a smile nor with a dismal expression in his face. He went to the cup and fixed another worm on his hook, before joining Bing to catch the little minnows.
A few more minnows were caught. Then as if the fishes had grown wary of today’s worms, or perhaps all the stupid ones in the rivulet had already been taken, their harvest dried up.
‘Let’s try another place,’ Bing said.
‘Yes,’ Dan agreed. ‘Let’s go farther upstream, to White Water Valley.’
They picked up the fishes from the puddle, most of which already dead, and went upstream to the new destination. On their way they threw their lines into the water here and there, but without any success. White Water Valley was the farthest fishing spot for the kids in the village. Most parents would not permit their children to go that far. It was said boars and some deadly snakes had been seen around the place. But today, enraptured by the little minnows he had caught, Bing seemed to have forgotten all the fears and warnings.
Some time later they arrived at the spot, and made themselves ready on two big boulders along the brook. The water was rushing and laughing. Their bold adventure was fairly rewarded, for the minnows they had caught in the Valley were considerably fatter and bigger, almost three times the size of their previous ones, and their skin was gleaming with lustrous sheen. For a long time, the two boys, highly delighted and excited, were engrossed in the frequent vibration of their sticks and catches.
Then the minnows lost their attraction. They decided to do some more patient fishing for bigger ones, such as catfish and carp which were only available in deeper ponds.
Fortune was indeed with Bing today. He didn’t have to wait long before his float started to dip, a sure sign a fish was upon the bait.
Unlike the minnows in the shallow water, a longer acting time was needed for bigger fish. He waited, and waited, his nerves jumping with the thrilling movement, until the float was submerged under the water. Feeling as if his hair was standing on end, and with a force that must be great enough to lift his own body, he pulled back the bamboo stick.
It was a carp, the biggest in his memory. Such a live thing, with a dignity and nobility incomparable to the minnows. He grabbed it hard lest it struggle off the hook and drop back into the water. Should he lose it, just as he had experienced a few times before, the loss would be so big that for many days on he would be buried with the uttermost regret and misery.
Therefore, he was only relieved when he had climbed onto the solid land, where his catch could be kept safe from the water. Dan jumped off his stone, full of admiration, and touched it and weighed it even longer than Bing himself. Unlike Bing, who would be happy at catching a fish big or small, Dan tended to discriminate his joy by its size.
This time, Dan helped him dig a bigger puddle in the field, stacking up a higher soil-fence to host the carp. As safe as it should be, in his next fishing hour, Bing came back many times to check his triumphant catch to ensure it was still there, as if it might just vanish if he didn’t frequently see it and touch it.
They continued to fish on the same spots, patiently nurturing any new surprise. But luck refused to visit them any more. A lot of time had passed, but they caught no big ones but a few more minnows.
Their enthusiasm was diminishing.
Then, suddenly a snake slipped out of the nook around the rocks; caught in its mouth was a green frog, whining feebly, its legs kicking.
‘Look, snake,’ Bing shouted, but didn’t move, half expecting the snake would soon go away, half stunned by its lithe, golden and fantastic body, until only a second later he realized the snake was actually swimming swiftly across the water, towards where he was sitting, and it looked like about to wind along his fishing stick.
At a sudden loss, he at once threw his stick away, and jumped aside into the water to avoid its direct approaching. The water was rushing, though only up to his knees. He waded in the torrent as quickly as he could, then a slippery stone caused him to tumble, his chin hitting an emerged boulder. He scrambled to his feet, making great efforts to steady himself among the slippery pebbles.
Then feeling his chin tickling, he rubbed it to find the blood in his hand. Strange, he felt no pain.
By then, Dan had come to the platform where Bing had sit, looking at his drenched cousin in the water. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have run away from a water-snake like that. It is not venomous. I was bitten a number of times by it, and it was nothing,’ he said amusedly, loftily and smirkingly.
Bing was only conscious of the tickling on his chin, he rubbed it, then washed his hand in the water, then rubbed again, then washed again, as if this way he could wash away the blood from his chin and stop its bleeding. But it didn’t stop; it kept coming. And worse, he began to feel the pain, the throbbing pain, more severe with every ticking second.
‘Don’t rub it, just hold your hand there to block the flow,’ Dan said, standing there in the same majestic way, without coming down to offer any help.
Nevertheless, Bing did as he said, holding his chin, and manoeuvred his way towards the land.
He sat on the grass, his hand holding tight his chin. In a few minutes, Dan advised him to remove his hand. Bing hesitated for a moment or two before taking his hand away. The pain was as sharp as anything he had ever remembered.
‘It’s stopped,’ Dan observed, without a trace of sympathy in his words. ‘It is just skin opening, no major wound.’
Bing looked at him in vexation, as if his cousin was the real cause of his injury. But in another second, he was distracted by thinking of another issue. ‘Oh, now my dad will definitely notice that, how can I hide from him?’
Without Dan’s presence, Bing would have surely begun to cry. A new and bigger problem was now in his hand.
‘Let’s go home,’ Dan said, only now he looked worried. Like Bing, Dan was also very afraid of Bing’s father, far more than of his own. Bing’s father was not a standard farmer, which must be the reason to recognise certain authority, the very reason his uncle and his mum and other people in the village seemed to show him a great deal of respect.
On their way home, they were speechless, like two soldiers who had just lost a battle. Only when they counted the fish as a handy distraction were they able to draw some consolation. They had fished a total of thirteen minnows and a carp of considerable size.
Approaching their house, Bing asked Dan go home first, taking all the gear and fishes with him, and to check for his dad’s presence.
While staying away, Bing was becoming more and more anxious with his wound, constantly nursing it as if to cure it fast or suppress his anxiety. The blood was congealed like half-dried porridge, and the pain was pulsing like his heart beat, which was still tolerable if without the dread of being reproached by his father. Considering his previous grenade-injury and his sister’s finger injury, his father’s fury at more of such incidents was not unreasonable.
Dan came back with the good news. His dad was not yet home, reporting that only their grandma was questioning where himself had been.
Bing dashed home, welcomed promptly by his grandma, who had just come out to look for him.
‘Aiya-hah, look, look at you, what happened?! Tripped over, all drenched, aiya-hah, how careless...’ her words came to him like bullets, her hands turned his head, her eyes examined his chin so close as if to kiss it. ‘So long a cut, quick, quick, go inside, aiya-hah, you need a wrap.’
She led him to the room and fetched quickly a tiny bottle, a basin of water, a bundle of white gauze and the tape. She first washed around his chin with something like alcohol, and he was feeling only fresh and cool, but when she brushed it closer the wound, he shuddered, the pain was so acute and real. In spite of himself, his tears began. Then his sister, who had been worrying all the while since she noticed his injury, was in tears ever more.
‘Hurt? Hang on a moment… ’ his grandma consoled him, in her concentration upon her task. Then he saw her taking out some cotton to absorb the liquid from the bottle and brush it over the surface. The odour was pungent, assaulting his nostrils to make his nose and brows severely wrinkled. Finally, she covered his chin with the gauze, fixed by two strips of tape.
But Bing protested, ‘No, no, dad will see it! He will scold me, can you take that off?’
She said, ‘Aiya-hah, it is such a big cut, if taking it off, you will lose your chin, ugly, and unable to find a wife, now you know the trouble, I told you not to go, but you not listen, aiya-hah, now come to change clothes, your dad is soon coming back.’
She then led him upstairs. Following her, he begged, ‘Grandma, can you just tell dad that I fell over somewhere, not from fishing?’
‘Aiya-hah, I don’t know, not good, telling lie, now, quick, come …your dad is coming back.’
After changing into a new set of dry clothes, he checked himself in the mirror in his parents’ bedroom, and found his face awful, like that of a wounded soldier he had seen in a movie.
Ming was with him all the time, anxious as much as himself, with her frequent, annoying questions, ‘Ge Ge, painful, painful?’
But his mind was entirely possessed with the coming dread of confronting his father.
He dared not come down, when his father eventually got home, with two other guests.
Staying upstairs, he strained his ears to hear what was being spoken between his dad and grandma.
‘Mum, can you go boil some water, I have to kill a duck,’ his dad said to her.
‘Aiya-hah, ... do you need Tian home to help?’ she asked.
‘No, I can handle it,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’
‘She is in the field, weeding.’
‘Where is Bing, and Ming? Where have they run to?’
‘Upstairs, doing homework.’
His father said no more. In a while, he heard the quaking of a duck. His dad was a good cook, and often took the opportunity to cook when the family had guests to treat. The duck, fried with ginger and spring onion, never failed to make Bing’s mouth water.
Then he heard his grandma’s voice, ‘Dan has caught some fish today, may make a nice little dish,’ following which came his dad’s, ‘Has he? Then wash and clean them for me.’
So far, so good, half the weight on Bing’s heart seemed to have dropped. His grandma was doing very well to cover him. Now, the last thing was about the ugly wound on his chin. But he was confident his grandma would make up a fine story.
Before long, his mum returned home from the field. A few amiable greetings were exchanged downstairs between her and the two guests.
Approaching the dinner, his grandma went upstairs to call Bing and Ming. Bing was nervous, but she whispered to persuade him, ‘Come down, now, a good time to face him, he is busy with cooking, won’t spare a moment.’
But his face was still of great concern, ‘What would you tell him? Don’t tell him I went fishing.’
She pulled his arm, ‘Aiya-hah, just come.’
So, headed by his grandma, the team of three began to descend the stairs, and went directly to the kitchen. His parents noticed it immediately.
‘What happened to your chin?’ his dad asked, in a horrible voice, yet without stopping his work over the big wok. His mother instantly rose from the bench in front of the stove, coming up to check him, ‘Did you fall over?’
‘He fell over to the ground,’ interposed his grandma timely. ‘Scratching a little.’
‘Have you been running wild again?’ his dad was frowning suspiciously.
‘No, just skipped over something,’ Bing muttered, aching to run away.
‘So careless,’ his mother said, touching about his chin to inspect it a while longer, ‘careful not to contact water.’ She then resumed her own task, grabbing the firewood and grass-tinder from the piles in the storage, poking them into the square door of the stove.
The alarm was off. Bing and Ming and his grandma walked in measured steps towards the door, going out of the kitchen like a family of sheep, with three lightening hearts. The moment was indeed hilarious. It was a kind of freedom from oppression, a successful escape from a fearful punishment.
Dan came out from his room, and stood against the wall poised with only one leg on the floor. His eyes, twinkling, looked at him and made a grimace of amusement, gloating.
At dinner, even if the two guests or the uncles as Bing was asked to title them, repeatedly called the whole family to come and dine together at the dinner table, his mother just smiled and declined, saying they had enough food in the kitchen, where they would have their separate dinner. To Bing, this was indeed another great relief, because he would avoid being questioned again at the dinner table by his father. In his memory, the dinner table was the very place for his father doing his preaching and reprimanding. It was also the place for every thread of topic or argument or gossip that might come to his parents’ minds. Many a time, the conversation would turn sour, the heated dispute between them could break out without any warning, and on such occasions his mother would walk away, sometimes in tears.
So four of them had their dinner in the kitchen. They had also called Dan to join them, but he declined, as he often did whenever there were other guests in Bing’s household.
The duck and the fish had never been so tasty. Bing picked the bits of fishes he had himself caught, put them into the bowls of the other three, who must have been very surprised by his unusual gesture. It was indeed the first time he had picked food for others during meal.
But really, under the circumstances, he was on the top of world.
-- End of Chapter 10--
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