Frog

I sighed as I left them, walking a dozen steps before turning back for one last look. Subconsciously, I guess, I was wondering what he was going to do with the large bill I’d left, since the rest of the money in the bowl was small bills or change, crumpled paper and dirty coins. My pink bill was a real eye-catcher. I figured no one else would leave as much as I had, and thought he’d be moved by my act of generosity. Sensei, it really was a case of ‘measuring the heart of a gentleman through the eyes of a petty man.’ What I saw enraged me: a dark-skinned, fat boy in his teens ran out from behind the column, bent down in front of the full bowl, snatched up my hundred-yuan bill, and took off running. He was so fast that before I could react, he’d already run ten or fifteen metres down the alley alongside the temple, heading straight for the Sino-American Jiabao Women and Children’s Hospital. There was something familiar about the lazy-eyed boy. I knew I’d seen him somewhere, and then it hit me: it was the boy who’d handed Gugu a wrapped bullfrog at the opening of the hospital the year we returned, nearly scaring her to death.

Not even this unexpected turn of events got a reaction from Chen Bi. His dog growled a time or two, looked up at his master, and stopped. He lay his head down on his paws and quiet returned.

I couldn’t help feeling the injustice of what just happened, not only to Chen Bi and his dog, but to me too. It was my money. I wanted to complain to the people around me, but they had other things on their mind, and the incident they’d witnessed was already forgotten, like a flash of lightning that leaves no trace. What that boy had done was unforgivable, undermining the township’s reputation for honesty. What sort of breeding produced a boy like that, someone who would bully women, steal from the disabled, and other unconscionable acts? Even worse, I could tell by how expertly he’d managed his evil act that this wasn’t the first time he’d stolen money from Chen Bi’s beggar’s bowl. So I took off running after him.

He was fifty metres or so ahead of me and had stopped running. He jumped up and broke a low hanging, leaf-filled branch off a roadside weeping willow and used it as a club on all sorts of things. He didn’t so much as turn to look, knowing that the cripple and his lame dog would not come after him. Just you wait, you punk, I’m coming after you.

He turned into a riverside farmer’s market, where a canopy of plastic turned everything inside a shade of green. The people were moving like fish in water.

A rich array of goods was available on a row of stalls in the shape of a winding arcade. Strange fruits and vegetables in a variety of colours and unusual shapes that even I, a peasant by birth, could not name, were displayed on many of the stalls. As I thought back to the times of scarcity, thirty years before, I could only heave an emotional sigh. Like a cart that knows the way, he headed straight to one of the fish stalls. I ran faster, while my eyes were drawn to the seafood stalls on both sides. The shiny salmon as big as piglets were Russian imports. The hairy crabs, like oversized spiders, came from Hokkaido. There were South American lobsters and Australian abalone, but the bulk of the seafood was local — black carp, butterfish, croaker and Mandarin fish. Orange salmon meat was laid out on a bed of ice, while the fragrance of roasting fish wafted from one of the stalls. The punk was standing in front of a roasted squid stall; he bought a skewer with the stolen bill and received a wad of change. He raised his head, placed the tip of the skewer to his lips, looking like the sword swallower who performed in the temple square, and just as he was taking a tentacled strip, dripping with a dark red sauce, into his mouth, I rushed up, grabbed him by the neck, and shouted:

Where do you think you’re going, you little thief?

He hunkered down and slipped out of my fingers, so I grabbed him by the wrist as he swung the metal skewer of dripping squid at me. I let go, and he slipped away like a river loach. But not before I had him by the shoulders. He struggled, ripping his T-shirt in the process and revealing skin as dark as black mackerel. Then he started crying — no tears, just wolfish howls — and tried to stab me in the belly with the skewer. I jumped out of the way, but the skewer got me in the arm. It didn’t hurt at first, nothing more than a stinging sensation. But the sharp pain wasn’t long in coming, along with dark blood. I clamped my other hand over the wound and shouted:

He’s a thief! He stole money from a crippled beggar!

With a roar, he rushed me like a crazed boar, murder in his eyes. Sensei, I was terrified and frantically backed up, still shouting. And he kept trying to stab me.

You owe me for a shirt! he yelled. Pay me for the shirt you ruined!