Though Lao Lan's wife was an invalid, she managed to retain her poise through her illness. We were never told what she suffered from, but she had a sickly, pale complexion and was extremely frail. For me, the best comparison was of potato sprouts in a dank cellar. We often heard moans coming from her bedroom, but they stopped abruptly when she heard footsteps. Jiaojiao and I called her Aunt, and she gave us the funniest looks, with hints of a mysterious smile at the corners of her mouth. We couldn't help noticing that Tiangua didn't act like a dutiful daughter round her, almost as if she wasn't her real mother. I was well aware that mysterious relationships often infect the homes of influential people, and Lao Lan was an influential man whose home gave rise to matters most people could never comprehend.
So I left that small iron gate, the thoughts galloping through my mind like wild horses and, hugging the wall, made my way to the kitchen. As the distance shrank between me and the meat being cooked inside, the aroma intensified and I could visualize great hunks of the lovely stuff stewing in a big pot. The already high wall seemed to tower over me as I stood there looking up. Not even a grown-up—let alone a child my size—could scale a wall that high, especially since it was topped by barbed wire. But, as they say, where there's a will there's a way. Just as I was about to give up, I spotted a sewage ditch for funnelling foul water out of the kitchen. Was it dirty? Of course it was—it was a sewer. I picked up a fallen branch and moved away pig bristles and feathers and created a passage. Any hole that could accommodate my head, as I knew from experience, was big enough to crawl through, since that's the only body part that can't be made smaller. By using the dead branch as a measuring stick, I determined that the hole was larger than my head, but before squeezing my way in I took off my jacket and my pants, then spread some dirt over the sewage to keep from getting wet. I looked round—there were no people on the street, and a tractor had just passed by; a horse cart was too far away to see what I was up to. I couldn't have asked for a better time to make my move. But even though it was larger than my head, squeezing through that little hole would not be easy. I flattened on my belly and stuck my head in. A complex mixture of smells rose out of the sewer, so I held my breath to keep the foul air out of my lungs. About half way in my head got stuck, and I panicked. But only for a moment. I had to stay calm, because I knew that panicky thoughts make your head grow bigger, and then I'd really be stuck. If that happened, this sewer was where I'd end my days, and the death of Luo Xiaotong would have been a terrible waste. My first reaction was to pull my head back out. It didn't work. I knew then that I was in trouble, but I stayed calm and turned my head until I felt it loosen up a bit. Next, I stretched out my neck to free my ears; once that was done I knew I'd made it past the hardest part. Now all I had to do was shift my body slightly and I could make it through to the other side. So I did, and a moment later I was standing inside Father's plant. After hooking my clothes on the other side with a piece of wire, I cleaned most of the sewer filth off my body with a handful of grass and got dressed. Then, in a crouch, I negotiated the narrow path between the brick wall and the kitchen. When I reached the first window, I was swathed in meaty aromas, almost as if I was immersed in a sticky meat broth.
With a piece of rusty metal I jimmied the two window sections until the last obstacle to a view of the inside fell open. A blast of meaty aromas hit me, as a huge pot atop a blazing stove about fifteen feet from the window caught my attention. Soup was boiling so fiercely that waves of