received in return was money. What the butchers in town injected into the meat was water; what they received in return was also money. After Father ran off, Mother would not allow herself to wallow in self-pity. So, deciding to become a butcher, she apprenticed herself to Sun Zhangsheng. I went along. Mother and Sun's wife were distant cousins. But the ‘white knife in, red knife out’ profession is not suited to women; and even though Mother had an abundance of patience and endurance, she never matched the ferocity of Madame Sun. She and I did all right when it came to slaughtering young pigs and sheep but adult cows were a different matter altogether. They made things almost impossible as we stood there clutching a glinting butcher knife. ‘This is no job for you, Aunty,’ Sun Zhangsheng said to Mother. ‘They're telling people in town to sell undoctored meat, so sooner or later what we're doing will be illegal. We butchers earn our living by injecting the meat with water. The day they put a stop to that is the day our profits dry up.’ He's the one who urged Mother to take up the scavenging business—it required no capital and was a guaranteed livelihood. He was right. In three years, everyone within thirty li knew us as the Queen and Prince of Trash.
We carried the frozen paper over to the tractor, then tied it down with rope. Our destination was the county seat, which we visited every few days and which always left me very sad. So many delicacies were sold there, I could smell them from twenty li away, especially the meat, but also the fish. Yet for me meat and fish might as well not have existed. Mother had our provisions all ready—two cold corncakes and a lump of salted greens. If, by hook or by crook, we got a good price for our scrap, slipped a thing or two past a buyer—local businesses had become increasingly clever over the years, after being cheated by scrap-peddlers from all over—she'd be in a good mood and I'd be rewarded with a pig's tail. We'd sit on our haunches in a sheltered area by the front gate of the local-products business—in the summer we'd sit under a shady tree—and treat ourselves to all the aromas wafting over from a street that slanted off from where we sat while we chewed on corncakes and salted greens. Stewed meat was sold from a dozen open-air cooking pots—the heads of pigs, sheep, cows, mules and dogs; the feet of pigs, sheep, cows, mules and camels; the livers of pigs, sheep, cows, mules and dogs; the hearts of pigs, sheep, cows, mules and dogs; the stomachs of pigs, sheep, cows, mules and dogs; the entrails of pigs, sheep, cows, mules and dogs; the lungs of pigs, sheep, cows, mules and dogs; and the tails of pigs, sheep, cows, mules and camels. There was also roasted chicken, roasted goose, braised duck, steamed rabbit, barbecued pigeon and fried sparrow…the cutting boards groaned under every possible kind of steaming, and colourful meat. The sellers held gleaming knives; some cut the fine meat into strips, some into chunks. Their red, oily faces looked hale and hearty. Some had thick fingers, some thin; some had long fingers, some short. They were all lucky fingers, free to caress the meat at will, covered in grease and overlain with redolence. How happy I'd have been to turn into one of those fingers. But it was not to be. More than once I was tempted to snatch a piece of meat and stuff it into my mouth, but the knives in their hands were powerful deterrents. So I chewed on my half-frozen corncake as the cold winds swirled round me, and wept tears of sadness. My mood improved if Mother rewarded me with a pig's tail, but how much meat did one of those have? A few mouthfuls at best. I even crunched up the little bones and swallowed them. But the pig's tails merely made the meat-starved worms in my stomach hungrier, and as I stared at the multi-hued meats in front of me my tears flowed unchecked. ‘Why are you crying, son?’ Mother asked. ‘I miss Dieh.’ Her face darkened. But after pondering my answer, she smiled sadly and said: ‘It's not him you miss, son, it's the taste of meat. Don't think you can put something over on me. I can't satisfy that craving of yours, at