"Sexual relations?" Baldy Li cackled a few times, thinking that it was a funny phrase. But he shook his head and laughed bitterly. "I've lost my sex drive."
Now it was Blacksmith Tongs turn to cackle. He said, "This little bastard is impotent."
Baldy Li laughed along. He asked Blacksmith Tong, "What does impotent mean?"
Tong laid down his hammer and wiped his face with the towel draped around his neck. "Loosen your pants and look at your weenie," he said.
Baldy Li loosened his pants and took a look. Blacksmith Tong asked, "So is it soft?"
Baldy Li nodded. "Its as soft as dough."
"That's called impotence." Blacksmith Tong hung the towel back around his neck and, squinting, explained: "When your weenie is hard like a little cannon about to fire, that means you have a sex drive. But when it's soft as dough, then you're impotent."
Baldy Li let out an "oh." As if discovering a new continent, he exclaimed, "So I'm impotent."
By this time Baldy Li was already notorious. In Liu, there were quite a few loafers loitering in the streets who would sometimes raise their fists, shout a few slogans, and follow behind some parading troupe, or sometimes they would lean idly against the wutong trees, yawning nonstop. These loafers were all acquainted with Baldy Li, and whenever they saw him, they would get excited and start chuckling, calling out to one another, "That pole-humping fellow is here."
But Baldy Li was no longer his old self. Song Fanping had been locked in the warehouse, and Song Gang, who had lost his voice, was no longer speaking to him. Alone and constantly hungry, Baldy Li walked dejectedly along the main streets, having lost all interest in the wooden poles lining the streets. The loafers, however, remained very interested in him. Keeping an eye on the parade making its way down the street, they blocked his path and pointed at the wooden poles along the street, whispering, "Hey, kid, haven't seen you hump the poles for a while."
Baldy Li shook his head and answered in a ringing voice, "I no longer have sexual relations with them."
These loafers shook with laughter and surrounded Baldy Li to prevent him from getting away. They waited until the crowds had passed, then asked him again, "So why don't you have sexual relations anymore?"
With a practiced air Baldy Li unfastened his pants and instructed them to look at his penis. He said, "See that? See my weenie?"
Knocking their heads together, they looked down Baldy Li's pants, and when they nodded, their heads knocked together again. Holding their heads, they answered that they'd seen it, and Baldy Li continued, "So is it as hard as a little cannon? Or is it as soft as dough?"
These people didn't know what Baldy Li was getting at, so they nodded, "Soft, definitely soft, like dough."
"So that's why I no longer engage in sexual relations," explained Baldy Li.
Then he waved his hands like a famous knight errant bidding farewell to his fighting days, and parted the crowd. After a few steps he turned back. Sounding as if he had seen the sorrow of the ages, he said with a sigh, "I'm impotent."
Buoyed by the crowd's laughter, Baldy Li regained his spirit. He raised his head and strutted off. And when he walked past a wooden electrical pole, he gave it a kick, as if proclaiming that he had fully ended his relationship with all such poles.
CHAPTER 13
BALDY LI didn't have a cent to his name as he roamed the streets. When he was thirsty, he drank from the river. When he was hungry, he could only swallow his saliva and head home. By that point his home was like a shattered vase. The armoire had been pushed over, but he and Song Gang didn't have the strength to lift it back up; the floor was strewn with clothes, but the children were too lazy to pick them up. Since Song Fanping had been taken away and locked up in that warehouse, crowds came to search their house twice more. Each time Baldy Li immediately ducked out, leaving Song Gang to deal with them on his own. He was sure that when Song Gang rasped to them, they would lose their tempers and smack him on the head.
During those days, Song Gang never left the house and instead started cooking like a chef. Song Fanping had once taught the boys how to cook, and while Baldy Li had completely forgotten everything, Song Gang remembered his lessons. When Baldy Li returned home dejected, his stomach growling, he'd find that Song Gang had prepared dinner, had set out their rice bowls and those two pairs of chopsticks of the ancients, and was sitting at the table waiting for him. When he saw Baldy Li walk in swallowing his saliva, Song Gang would start his rasping. Baldy Li knew that he was saying, "You're finally home." The moment Baldy Li stepped inside, he would grab his rice bowl and gulp everything down.
Baldy Li had no idea how Song Gang passed his days — how every day he would stand at the stove and light a match in order to ignite the strip of cotton, and how each day he'd have to pull the cotton out a little farther as it burned shorter and shorter. He worked himself up into a huge sweat, his hands coated in charcoal and his fingernails black, only to serve Baldy Li a pot of half-cooked rice. Baldy Li ate the rice as if he were chewing on kernels, crunching and gnawing until his stomach hurt. The vegetables that Song Gang stir-fried tasted extraordinarily foul. When Song Fanping made them, they were glistening and green, but Song Gang's always came out yellow and wilted, like pickled cabbage. Moreover, the greens would be speckled with black, charcoal-like specks and would always be either too salty or too bland. Baldy Li had stopped speaking to Song Gang, but he would lose his temper at mealtimes, complaining bitterly, "The rice is still raw, and the greens are wilted. You are a landlords son."
Song Gang would turn beet red and rasp a string of unintelligible words. Baldy Li said, "Stop rasping, you sound like a mosquito farting or a dung beetle crapping."
By the time Song Gang regained his voice, he had learned how to cook the rice evenly. The children had long finished the last of the greens that Song Fanping had left behind for them and had almost emptied the rice barrel. Song Gang put the well-cooked rice in a bowl and placed a bottle of soy sauce next to it. When he saw Baldy Li come in, he exclaimed with surprise, "This time its fully cooked!"
Song Gang had indeed succeeded in cooking the rice so that each grain was round and glistening. This was the best bowl of rice Baldy Li could remember ever having eaten, and though later in life he would have many far better bowls of rice, he always felt that they could not equal the one Song Gang made on this occasion. Baldy Li thought this was a case of blind luck on Song Gangs part, sheer accident that he had produced such a perfect pot of rice. After several days of half-cooked rice, they finally sat down to enjoy the real thing. They didn't have any greens, but they did have soy sauce. The boys poured the soy sauce on top of the steaming hot rice and stirred it in. The rice glistened as if lacquered with red and black paint, and the fragrance of soy sauce mingled with the steaming hot rice, filling the entire room.
By this point it was dark. The children ate their fill of this delicious, oily concoction. Moonlight shone through the window, and a breeze slid past the rooftop. Song Gang started speaking in his raspy voice, his mouth full of soy-sauce rice: "When do you think Papa will come home?"
Tears began to stream down his face even before he finished speaking. He put down his bowl and bent over, sobbing, as he continued swallowing bites of rice. Then he wiped his eyes and began wailing, his raspy voice sounding like a weak siren, a long wail followed by a short one, until his entire body shook.