Frog

A few days later we ran into the boy while we were strolling by the riverbank. He was in the company of a tall Caucasian woman pushing a stroller and a little girl, obviously his kid sister. They were moving gingerly along on rollerskates, protected by a colourful plastic helmet and knee- and elbow-pads. A handsome middle-aged man walking behind them was talking on his mobile phone, speaking in a lilting South China Putonghua. Bringing up the rear was a big, fat dog with golden fur. I recognised the man right off as a renowned Peking University professor and celebrated TV personality. When Little Lion bent over and all but buried her pudgy face in the blue-eyed baby, the woman smiled, a sign of good upbringing; the professor, on the other hand, reacted with a look of disdain. I reached down, grabbed Little Lion by the arm, and pulled her away from the stroller. She’d been so focused on the baby that the look on the professor’s face had escaped her entirely. I nodded by way of apology, and he accepted my gesture with a slight nod in return. I had to remind her not to pounce on pretty babies as if she were Granny Wolf. These days children are like little treasures, I told her. All you ever look at are the babies, never at their parents’ faces. Stung by the criticism, she first launched into a tirade against rich people, who have as many kids as they want, and Chinese men and women who marry foreigners, then have one baby after another. But self-pity and remorse set in for helping Gugu carry out the cruel, one-child family-planning policy, a harsh course of action that had led to a mass of aborted foetuses and, as a sort of heavenly retribution, made her sterile, unable to bear children. She told me to go marry one of those foreign girls and raise a brood of half-breed kids. I won’t be jealous, Xiaopao, she said, not at all. Go find yourself a foreign girl, and have as many kids as you want, the more the merrier. I’ll even help you raise them. By this time her eyes were glistening with tears and her breathing was rapid. Her breast heaved, filled with motherly love with no one to bathe in it. I had no doubt that if she were handed a child, her breasts would swell with milk.

That was how things were when I put Wang Gan’s disk into the DVD player.

With the nasal strains of Shandong operatic speech — grating to the ears of outsiders, but capable of bringing tears to the eyes of locals — swirling in the air, the lives of my aunt and the sculptor Hao Dashou unfolded in front of our eyes.

I have to admit that, though I did not make it public, I had been personally opposed to Gugu’s marriage. My father, my brothers, and their wives had shared my feelings. It simply wasn’t a good match in our view. Ever since we were small we’d looked forward to seeing Gugu find a husband. Her relationship with Wang Xiaoti had brought immense glory to the family, only to end ingloriously. Yang Lin was next, and while not nearly the ideal match that Wang would have provided, he was, after all, a high-ranking official, which made him a passable candidate for marriage. Hell, she could have married Qin He, who was obsessed with her, and would have been better off than with Hao Dashou… we were by then assuming she’d wind up an old maid, and had made appropriate plans. We’d even discussed who would be her caregiver when she reached old age. But then, with no prior indication, she’d married Hao Dashou. Little Lion and I were living in Beijing then, and when we heard the news, we could hardly believe our ears. Once the preposterous reality set in, we were overcome by sadness.

This episode of the TV series, entitled ‘Moon Child’, was supposed to be about the sculptor Hao Dashou, though the camera was always on her, talking and gesturing as she welcomed journalists into Hao’s yard and gave them a guided tour of his workshop and the storeroom where he kept his clay figurines, while he sat quietly at his workbench, eyes glazed over and a blank look on his face, like a dreamy old horse. Did all master artists turn into dreamy old horses once they reached the pinnacle of their artistry? I wondered. The name Hao Dashou was familiar to me, though I’d only met him a few times. After seeing him late on the night my nephew Xiangqun hosted a dinner to celebrate his acceptance as an air force pilot, years passed before I saw him again, and this time it was on TV. His hair and beard had turned white, but his complexion was as ruddy as ever; composed and serene, he was a nearly transcendent figure. It was during that program that we accidentally learned why Gugu had married him.