Frog

Late one afternoon, after the fishmongers had left for home, I saw him walking into the sunset, trailing a long shadow; so I fell in behind him, hoping to discover his secret. When he realised he was being followed, he stopped, turned, and greeted me with a deep bow. Please don’t do this, dear friend, he said. In an imitation of his voice, I said, I’m not doing anything, dear friend. What I mean, he said in a forlorn voice, is please don’t follow me. You’re walking, I replied, so am I. I’m not following you. He shook his head and murmured, Please, my friend, show some pity for a man of misfortune. He turned and continued walking. I fell in behind him again. He started loping, taking long, high-stepping strides, his body nearly floating as he rocked from side to side, sort of like a paper cutout. I kept up with him at about half-speed, until he stopped to catch his breath, his face the colour of gold foil. Friend… his face was tear-streaked… I beg you, let me go. I’m terribly disabled, a severely wounded man…

Moved by his plea, I stopped and let him continue alone, my eyes filled with the image of his back, my ears to the sound of his sobs. I hadn’t meant to bother him; I’d just wanted to know a bit about how he lived, like, for instance, where he slept at night.

As a teenager I had exceptionally long legs and big feet — size 40 shoes — which caused my mother no end of worries. Our gym teacher, Mr Chen, was a one-time track and field star athlete, and a rightist. Like a buyer of livestock, he squeezed my legs and feet and pronounced me to have the wherewithal to be a star, with the right training, of course. He taught me how to run, to breathe correctly, and to use my strength to best advantage. I proudly took third place in the three-thousand-metre race in the youth category at the all-county elementary and middle school track meet. My skipping school to run to the fish market to see what was happening became an open secret.

That incident initiated a friendship between Qin He and me. He always greeted me with a friendly nod. It was a pan-generational friendship, since he was more than ten years older than me. In addition to Qin, two other beggars camped out in the fish market: Gao Men was a broad-shouldered man with big hands, someone you’d peg as a man of considerable strength. Lu Huahua, who had suffered from jaundice, for some reason had been given a girl’s name. One day Gao and Lu, one with a willow club, the other with a worn-out shoe, ganged up on Qin He and gave him a severe beating. Qin did not raise a hand to defend himself. Beat me to death, he said, and I’ll be eternally grateful. But don’t eat any frogs. Frogs are our friends, and you mustn’t eat them. They have parasites that will make you stupid if you ingest them…

I saw green smoke spiralling into the air from a bonfire under a willow tree, and deep in the fire some half-cooked frogs; next to the fire burnt frog skins and bones gave off a foul, nauseating stench. That’s when I realised that Qin He had been beaten for trying to keep them from cooking and eating frogs. The sight of him being beaten brought tears to my eyes. Everyone ate frogs during the famine, though my family vehemently opposed the practice. We’d have rather starved than eat a frog. From that angle, Qin He was our ally. I picked a piece of burnt wood out of the bonfire and used it to poke Gao Men in the butt and Lu Huahua in the neck. Then I took off running down the riverbank with the two beggars hot on my heels. I kept them at a comfortable distance to have some fun, and each time they stopped chasing me, I shouted insults or threw objects at them.

That was the day commune members from forty-eight villages streamed down roads or across the frozen river, waving red flags and beating gongs and drums and pots and pans, as they dragged village miscreants to the retarding basin, where a rally was to be held to subject Yang Lin, the county’s number one capitalist roader, and bad people from all commune departments to public denouncements. We made our way across the river ice, some on homemade skateboards. Gym teacher Chen, who had been such a generous tutor, was wearing a paper dunce cap and a pair of straw sandals, a goofy smile on his face, as he followed the scowling school principal, who also wore a dunce cap. Xiao Shangchun’s son, Xiachun, was driving them along with a javelin. His father was the head of the commune revolutionary committee, while Xiachun himself was the leader of our school’s Red Guard brigade. He was wearing the white Warrior brand sneakers he’d taken off Teacher Chen’s feet. A double-bang starting pistol I’d have loved to get my hands on, and which was supposed to have been public property, now hung from Xiao Xiachun’s belt. From time to time he drew the pistol, added gunpowder, and fired it into the air: Pow pow! White smoke followed the explosions, saturating the air with the pleasant odour of nitrate.