in her stomach and saw that her face had turned blue. Then I saw the lice crawling out of her hair and I knew she was dead. ‘Baby sister,’ I cried out, but I'd barely got the words out when chunks of undigested meat spilt from my mouth.
I vomited, my stomach feeling like a filthy toilet and the putrid smell of rotting food filling in my mouth. It was the meat, hurling filthy curses at me. Chunks of meat thrown up from my stomach began to crawl like toads…I was disgusted and filled with loathing. At that moment, Wise Monk, I vowed to never eat meat. I'd rather eat dirt from the road than a single bite of meat, I'd rather eat horse manure in a stable than a single bit of meat, I'd rather starve to death than a single bite of meat…
It took me several days to clear my stomach of meat. I crawled down to the river and drank mouthfuls of clean water with bits of ice in it; I ate a sweet potato someone had thrown onto the riverbank. Slowly my strength returned.
One day child came running up to me. ‘Luo Xiaotong. You're Luo Xiaotong, aren't you?’
‘Yes, but how did you know?’
‘I just know,’ he said. ‘Come with me. Someone is looking for you.’
I followed him into a two-room hut in a peach grove, where I saw the old couple who had sold us the beat-up mortar years earlier. The mule, now aged a great deal, was there too, standing alone beneath a peach tree eating dry leaves.
‘Grandpa, Grandma…’ I threw myself into the old woman's arms as if she really were my grandmother and wet her clothes with my tears. ‘I've lost everything,’ I sobbed. ‘I've got nothing. Mother's dead, Father's arrested, my sister's dead and I can't bear to eat meat any more…’
The old man pulled me out of her arms and smiled. ‘Look over there, son.’
There in the corner of the hut stood seven wooden cases. On them were printed words that were as unfamiliar to me as I was to them.
The old man opened one of the cases with a crowbar and peeled back a sheet of oiled paper to reveal six long, tenpin-shaped objects with wing-like fins. My god—mortar shells—I'd dreamt of possessing them—mortar shells!
He carefully removed one. ‘Each case holds six of these, except this last one, which is missing a shell. A total of forty-one. I tested one before you arrived. I tied a rope to one of the wings and threw it over a cliff. It blew up just the way it was supposed to. The explosion echoed through the mountains, frightening the wolves out of their dens.’
I gazed down at the shells and at their strange lustre in the moonlight. Then I looked into the old man's eyes, glowing like burning coal. I felt my weakness vanish and the rise of a magnificent heroic spirit.
‘Lao Lan,’ I said, clenching my jaw, ‘your day of reckoning has arrived!’
POW! 41
The production of the opera From Meat Boy to Meat God nears its finale. The dutiful meat boy is kneeling on the stage, slicing flesh from his arm to brew for his ailing mother. She recovers but, owing to a prolonged state of exhaustion, starvation and loss of blood, he dies. In the last scene, a surreal dreamlike sequence, the mother reveals through her tears how she misses her son and grieves over his death. Then the meat boy, splendidly attired and wearing a golden headdress, appears, as if descended from a cloud of mist. His mother holds her head and sobs when they meet, but the meat boy consoles her with the news that the Celestial Ruler, moved by his dutiful act, has anointed him a Meat God whose domain is the world of meat-eaters. The opera appears to have ended happily but it has done nothing to dispel my feelings of desolation. The mother, still weeping, sings an aria: ‘Better to feed my son weak tea and simple food on earth than see him as a Meat God in a heavenly berth…’ The mist fades and the opera is over. The performers return for their curtain call (there is, of course, no curtain), and are greeted by sporadic applause. Troupe Leader Jiang rushes onstage to announce: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, tomorrow's performance will be Slaying the Wutong Spirit. Don't miss it.’ The crowd chatters noisily as it disperses. Now the food-vendors make their final attempts at a sale. ‘My