unable to find a reason for doing so, this is the excuse the wall needs. Its remains are strewn across the ground, dead. Most of it has collapsed into a ditch, sending stagnant water flying ten feet in the air, only to fall back in a bright cascade. The female cat crawls out of the ditch, covered with mud; no sign of the male. Caterwauling grief spills from her mouth as she paces beside the ditch. The young colt, on the other hand, gallops away, feeling its oats. Despite the male cat's bad luck, a collapsing wall is an exciting event. And the bigger and more intimidating the occurrence, the greater the sense of excitement. Now the highway beyond the compound lies spread out before us, as does a rammed-earth stage that has been thrown up on the broad grassy field on the other side, surrounded by colourful banners stuck in the ground and a large horizontal, slogan-bearing banner in front. A generator is up and running on a yellow truck; a blue-and-white TV van is parked off to the side. A dozen little men in yellow shirts run about dragging black cables behind them. Ten motorcycles in an impressive triangular formation, the sun shining behind them, come our way at thirty miles an hour. ‘There's nothing more impressive than a motorcycle gang!’ I heard that line in a film once, and it's stayed with me ever since. When something makes me really happy or miserably sad, that's what I shout: ‘There's nothing more impressive than a motorcycle gang!’ ‘What does that mean?’ my sister once asked me. ‘It means exactly what it says,’ I replied. If that darling little girl were with me now, I'd point to the motorcycles across the way and say, ‘Jiaojiao, that's what “There's nothing more impressive than a motorcycle gang!” means’ But she's dead, so she'll never know. Ah, that makes me so sad. No one knows my sorrow!
POW! 14
The motorcycles stay in tight formation, as if welded together with an invisible steel pipe. The bikers wear identical white helmets and uniforms, their waists cinched by wide belts from which hang black holsters. Two black sedans with red and blue flashing lights and blaring sirens are thirty yards or so behind the motorcycles, leading the way for three even blacker cars. Wise Monk, those are Audis, so the men inside them must be high-ranking cadre. The Wise Monk's eyes open a crack and send purple rays of light to the cars but just as quickly draw them back. Another pair of police cars brings up the rear; no sirens. I follow the passage of this overweening caravan with my eyes, so excited I feel like shouting. But the Wise Monk's statue-like calmness cools my ardour in a heartbeat. ‘It has to be a big shot,’ I say softly, ‘a very big shot.’ Wise Monk ignores my comment. What's a big shot like that doing on a day like this? I think to myself. Not a holiday, not a special day, just another day. Oh, of course! How could I forget? It's the first day of the Carnivore Festival, Wise Monk. It's a holiday created by the butchers in my village. Ten years ago, we—I, mainly—came up with this holiday, but it was quickly taken over by people in the township. One celebration later, it was quickly taken over by people in the city. Wise Monk, I got as far away from the village as possible after my mortar attack on Lao Lan, but I still get the news and hear all kinds of talk about me. If you take a trip to my hometown, Wise Monk, and ask the first person you meet on the street: ‘Does the name Luo Xiaotong mean anything to you?’, you'll get an earful of gossip and rumours. I'll be the first to admit that a lot of what you'll hear has been blown out of proportion, and things other people did have somehow got stuck to my name. But there's no denying that Luo Xiaotong—the Luo Xiaotong of ten years ago, not now—was special. There was, of course, someone else who had a similar reputation, and I don't mean Lao Lan. No, it was Lao Lan's third uncle, a man who had relations with forty-one different women in the space of a single day, a remarkable feat that made it into the Guinness Book of Records. Or so that bastard Lao Lan said, for what it's worth, and