Frog

If it had been my eyes, possibly, but not my ears. No one on earth sneezes like him. Then there were the look in his eyes and that laugh. He couldn’t change those.

Maybe he’s come back for another big investment, Little Lion said. I hear we’re going to fall under Qingdao administration before long. When that happens, the price of land and houses will shoot up.

Now, guess who he was with?

How am I supposed to guess that, Little Lion replied.

Xiao Bi.

Who?

Xiao Bi, the girl at the bullfrog farm.

I see, she said. I knew she was a slut the minute I laid eyes on her. There’s something unclean about her relationship with your cousin and Yuan Sai.

6

Little Lion found the bullfrog farm repugnant, and had little good to say about Yuan Sai and my cousin. But the day after we visited the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital, out of the blue she said: Xiaopao, I’m going to work at the bullfrog farm.

That was a shock. Her large face beamed with a smile.

Really. I’m not joking, she said soberly, the smile gone.

Those critters, I’ve been trying to drive the stubborn image of bullfrogs out of my head — after watching Gugu’s TV documentary I think I developed a phobia of all frogs — and now you say you want to raise those critters?

There’s no reason to be afraid of frogs, you know, since we have the same ancestors. Tadpoles and human sperm look about the same, and there isn’t much difference between frog and human eggs. And there’s more — have you seen human foetus specimens in the first three months, how they have a long tail? They’re just like frogs in their metamorphic stage.

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

Why does the word for frogs — wa — sound exactly like the word for babies — wa? This was a prepared speech. Why is the first sound a newborn baby makes an almost exact replica of a frog’s croak? How come so many of the clay dolls made in Northeast Gaomi Township are holding frogs in their arms? And why is the ancestor of humans called Nü wa? Like the ‘wa’ for frog. Doesn’t that prove that our earliest ancestor was a frog, and that we have evolved from her? The theory that men evolved from apes is wrong…

As she went on and on I began to detect a conversational style used by Yuan Sai and my cousin, and I knew that she’d fallen under the spell of those two smooth talkers.

Okay, I said, if you’re bored at home with nothing to do, you can give it a try. But, I added, trying to sound prophetic, I’m betting you’ll pack it in within a week.

7

Sensei, even though I said I opposed Little Lion’s plan to work at the bullfrog farm, deep down I was pleased. I am by nature someone who treasures his time alone; I like to go for solitary walks, when I can reflect on the past. And if there’s nothing in the past that captures my fancy, I let my thoughts go where they will. Taking walks with Little Lion is something I need to do, and no matter how unpleasant it is to carry out such responsibilities, it’s important to pretend I’m happy and excited to be doing them. Now things have taken a positive turn, since she leaves the house early in the morning to work at the bullfrog farm, getting there on a motorised bicycle she said my cousin had bought for her. I watch through the window as she primly motors down the riverside road, silently and effortlessly on the new ride. Once her figure disappears, I hurry down the stairs

Over a period of several months, I visited several communities north of the river. Traces of my travel could be found in woods, flower gardens, supermarkets big and small, a massage parlour run by the blind, a public fitness park, beauty salons, pharmacies, lottery stalls, malls, furniture stores, and the riverside farm products outlet. I took pictures everywhere I went with my digital camera, like a dog lifting its leg to leave its mark from place to place. I walked through fields and stopped at construction sites. Work on the impressive main buildings at some of the sites was finished, whereas work at other sites had not progressed beyond the foundation preparation, with no hint as to what was coming.

After taking in the sights on the northern bank, I turned my attention south. I could cross the high-arching suspension bridge, or I could let the flow of the river take me on a bamboo raft a dozen li or so all the way to Ai Family Pier. I usually walked; rafting seemed too risky for me. But when an accident snarled traffic on the bridge one day, I decided to take a raft and relive my experience of many years before.