Another accomplishment of the Great Cultural Revolution! Big-head Lan Qiansui said coldly. His fingers were bleeding profusely. I handed him the medicine I’d prepared beforehand. He rubbed it on his fingers, stopping the bleeding at once.
– Her face reddened and her chest swelled, and I knew exactly what that was all about. While she may not have been secretly in love with Ma Liangcai, seeing him cozy up to my sister upset her. I’m not going to worry about you now, I said. I’ll take care of you later, you tramp. Falling for my brother – No, he’s no longer my brother, hasn’t been for a long time, he’s just Ximen Nao’s bad seed. So’s your sister, she said. That stopped me. My throat felt like it was clogged by a hot sticky pastry. They’re different, I said finally. She’s decent and gentle, good-hearted, red-blooded, humane. She’s my sister. – She has almost no humanity left. She smells like a dog. She’s the bastard offspring of Ximen Nao and a mongrel bitch, and you can smell it on her every time it rains, Huzhu said, clenching her teeth. I turned my spear around. During the revolutionary period, the people had the power to execute individuals. The Jia Mountain People’s Commune passed the execution authority down to the village level, and Mawan Village had killed thirty-three people in a single day, the oldest eighty-eight, the youngest thirteen. Some were clubbed to death, and some were sliced in half with hay cutters. I aimed my spear at her chest. She threw out her chest to meet the tip. Go ahead, kill me if you’ve got the guts! I’ve lived long enough already. Tears sprang from her lovely eyes. Something strange there, something I couldn’t figure out. Huzhu and I had grown up together. We’d played together on the riverbank, naked as the day we were born, and she developed such a special interest in my little pecker that she ran home in tears, telling her mother, Wu Qiuxiang, that she wanted one. How come Jiefang has one and I don’t? Wu Qiuxiang stood under the apricot tree and really chewed me out: Jiefang, you little thug, if you take ever advantage of Huzhu again, I’ll cut your pecker off when you’re not looking. It seemed like only yesterday, but now, suddenly, Huzhu had become as enigmatic as a river turtle. I turned and ran. A woman’s tears always rattle me. As soon as a woman starts to cry, I get nose-aching sad. I get lightheaded. I’ve suffered over that sign of weakness my whole life. Ximen Jinlong dumped red paint in my dad’s eyes, I shouted back, and I have to find my sister to save his eyesight… Serves him right. Your family, dog eat dog… Her hateful comment chased me down. I guess you could say I’d broken free from Huzhu at that moment, though my growing hatred for her was tempered by the same amount of lingering fondness. I knew she had no feelings for me, but at least she’d told me where my sister was.