Frog

I don’t deserve such an honour, I said. You’re the director of a big hospital, while I’m just an ordinary obstetrician. If you were my son I’d die from the honour. So, please, tell me what you have in mind. More heh-heh-hehing, before he got around to revealing the shameless reason he’d summoned me. I’ve made the mistake all leading cadres make sooner or later — through my own carelessness Wang Xiaomei got pregnant. Congratulations! I said. Now that Xiaomei is carrying your dragon seed, the hospital is guaranteed leadership continuity. Don’t mock me, Great Gugu, I’ve been so upset the past few days I can’t eat or sleep. Can you believe the bastard actually said he had trouble eating and sleeping? She’s demanding that I divorce my wife, and if I won’t she’s threatened to report me to the County Discipline Commission. Really? I said. I thought having second wives was popular among you officials these days. Buy a villa, install her in it, and you’ve got it made. I asked you not to make fun of me, Great Gugu, he said. I couldn’t go public with a second or a third wife. Besides, where would I get the money to buy a villa? Then go ahead and get a divorce, I said. He pulled that donkey face longer than ever and said, Great Gugu, you know full well that my father-in-law and those pig-butcher brothers-in-law of mine are violent thugs. They wouldn’t hesitate to butcher me if they found out about this. But you’re the Director, an official! All right, that’s enough, Great Gugu. In your old eyes the director of a hospital in a piddling, out-of-the-way town is about as important as a loud fart, so instead of mocking me, why don’t you help me come up with something! What in the world could I come up with? Wang Xiaomei admires you, he said. She’s told me that many, many times. You’re the only person she’ll listen to. What do you want me to do? Talk her into having an abortion. Melon Huang, I protested through clenched teeth, I’ll never again soil my hands with that atrocious act! Over the course of my life I’ve been responsible for more than two thousand aborted births, and I’ll never do it again. Just wait until you’re a father. Xiaomei is such a pretty girl, she’s bound to present you with a lovely boy or girl, and that should make you happy. You go tell her that when the time comes, I’ll be there to deliver the child.

With that, I turned on my heel and walked out of the office pleased with myself. But that feeling lasted only till I was back in my own office and had drunk a glass of water. My mood turned dark. No one as bad as Melon Huang deserved to have an heir, and what a shame it was that Wang Xiaomei was carrying his child. I’d learned enough from delivering all those children to know that a person’s core — good or bad — is determined more by nature than nurture. You can criticise hereditary laws all you want, but this is knowledge based on experience. You could place a son of that evil Melon Huang in a Buddhist temple, and he’d grow up to be a lascivious monk. No matter how sorry I felt for Wang Xiaomei, I would not put ideas in her head; I simply couldn’t let that fiend find an easy way out of his predicament. If the world had another lascivious monk, so be it. But in the end I helped her abort the baby she was carrying.

Xiaomei herself came to me, wrapped her arms around my legs, and dirtied my trousers with her tears and snot. Gugu, she sobbed, dear Gugu, he tricked me, he lied to me. I wouldn’t marry that bastard if he sent an eight-man sedan chair for me. Help me do it, Gugu, I don’t want that evil seed in me.

So that’s how it was. Gugu lit another cigarette and puffed on it savagely, until I couldn’t see her face for all the smoke. I helped rid her of the foetus. Once a rose about to bloom, Wang Xiaomei was now ruined, a fallen woman. Gugu reached up and dried her tears. I vowed to never do that procedure again, I couldn’t take it any longer, not for anyone, not even if the woman was carrying the offspring of a chimpanzee. The slurping sound as it was sucked into the vacuum bottle was like a monstrous hand squeezing my heart, harder and harder, until I broke out in a cold sweat and began to see stars. The moment I finished I crumpled to the floor.