Frog

Sensei, I confess that when I saw that sculpture of the naked woman whose breasts were shiny from being rubbed, I reached out in spite of myself, which shows how sordid and yet open and candid I am. Little Lion shushed to stop me. What’s that for? I asked. This is art. That’s what all cultural degenerates say, she replied. The fake Sancho walked up with a smile, gave the impression of bowing without actually doing so, and said, Welcome, sir, madam.

He took our coats, scarves, and hats, and then led us to a table in the centre on which white candles floated in a dish filled with water. We said we preferred another table by the window, where we could enjoy the sight of fluttering snow outside and observe the restaurant’s décor at the same time. There at a table in the corner — the one that would later become my favourite spot — sat a man smoking. I knew who he was by the missing ring finger on his right hand. That and the big red nose. It was the once handsome Chen Bi, now bald on top, with hair hanging around his neck at the back, the way Cervantes had worn his. His face was gaunt, the cheeks sunken, probably a sign of missing molars. That seemed to magnify the size of his nose. He held the butt end of a lit cigarette to his lips with the thumb and two fingers of his right hand. The air filled with the strange odour of a burned cigarette filter. Two streams of smoke emerged from his wide nostrils. He had a glazed look, the typical sign of dejection. I wanted not to look at him, but couldn’t help myself. My thoughts went to the sculpture of Cervantes on the Peking University campus, and I knew why Chen Bi was here. He was strangely dressed: a nondescript long coat and a white knitted, seersucker-like scarf around his neck; the only thing missing was a sword on his hip. Then I spotted one leaning against the wall, which led my eyes to chain-mail gloves, a shield, and a spear standing in the corner. I expected to see a dirty, scrawny dog at his feet, and there was one — dirty, but not scrawny. Cervantes was believed to be missing the ring finger of his right hand, but he did not go around carrying a spear and a shield — that would be Don Quixote — and yet the man had Cervantes’ face. But then, none of us had ever actually seen Cervantes or, obviously, the fictional Don Quixote, so whether Chen Bi was made up to look like Cervantes or his fictional creation was an open question. My old friend’s current situation saddened me. I’d heard of the tragedy that had befallen his two beautiful daughters, Chen Er and Chen Mei, once Northeast Gaomi Township’s loveliest sisters. Chen Bi’s ancestral background was a mystery, but it definitely included foreign blood, and they were thus spared the flat features of most Chinese. The classical description of beauty did not fit those two, who were camels in a herd of sheep, cranes in a flock of chickens. Had they been born into a rich family or in a more prosperous land, or even if they had been born into a poor family in some distant place, but had been fortunate enough to encounter a rich man, they might well have taken the world by storm. They left home and went south together, perhaps to seek such an encounter. I heard they both took jobs at the Dongli Stuffed Animal Factory, where the manager was a foreigner — whether or not he was a real foreigner was hard to say. If two beautiful, intelligent girls in an environment of luxury and dissipation had wanted to make a great deal of money and enjoy life, their bodies could have made that happen. Instead, they toiled in a factory workshop, enduring the life of common labourers, a life of brutal exploitation, and in the end, a fire that shocked the nation turned one of them to ashes and horribly disfigured the other. The younger girl survived only through the sacrifice of her sister. How sad, how tragic, how pitiful. This proved that they had not fallen into degeneracy, but had remained as pure as jade and as unspoiled as ice, a pair of good girls — I’m sorry, Sensei, I got carried away again.

Chen Bi’s life had been one of incomparable sorrow. It seemed to me that by coming to the Don Quixote café to play the part of a famous dead man or a bizarre fictional character, his situation was much the same as that of the dwarf doorman at Beijing’s Paradise Dancehall or the giant doorman at Guangzhou’s Water Curtain Cave Bathhouse. They all sold whatever their body had to offer. The dwarf sold his pygmy stature, the giant sold his jumbo height; Chen Bi sold his nose. They were all in the same tragic circumstance.

Sensei, I recognised Chen Bi right off that night, though I hadn’t seen him in nearly twenty years. I’d have recognised him if it had been a hundred years and in a foreign country. Naturally, I think, when we recognised him, he also recognised us. You don’t need eyes to pick out a childhood friend; you can manage that with your ears — a sigh or a sneeze will do it.