Emperor

We were playing horse ride in the afternoon on Main Street, which was a noncombat zone for the boys in Dismount Fort. The fourteen of us were in two groups. Seven were riding on the backs of the others, and we wouldn’t switch roles until one rider’s feet touched the ground. It was hot, though a breeze came now and then.

“Look at that,” our emperor Benli said, pointing to a horse cart coming up the street. The harness bells jingled listlessly while the horses’ hooves thudded on the white gravel. The cart was loaded with a mountain of beehives.

“Let’s hit him,” Bare Hips said. He referred to the cart driver, who looked tipsy and was humming a folk song.

Benli ordered, “Get ready.”

We set about gathering stones and clods and hiding ourselves in the ditch along the road. About fifty paces behind us stood five latrine cleaners, resting in the shade of locusts. Ten buckets, filled with night soil, were reeking. Amused, the latrine cleaners watched us preparing to ambush the enemy’s vehicle.

“Give me that brick, Grandson,” Hare Lips said.

“No,” Grandson said timidly, hiding the fragment of a brick behind him.

“Got a problem, eh? Refusing your grandpa?” Hare Lips slapped him on the face and grabbed the brick away from him.

Grandson didn’t make a peep. He had another nickname, Big Babe, because he looked like a girl with curved brows, round eyes, a soft face, and a pair of plump hands with fleshy pits on the knuckles. He was too timid to fight anybody and every one of us could beat him easily. That was why he became our Grandson.

The cart was coming close, and the driver’s voice was clear now:

Square tables I ordered four,
Long benches we have twelve,
Meat and fish course by course,
My brothers, help yourselves—

“Fire!” Benli shouted.

We started throwing stones, bricks, wooden grenades, and clods at the horses and the driver. He sat up with a start and turned his small egg-shaped face to us. Then he swung his long whip to urge the horses on. The lash was cracking like firecrackers while our missiles hit both the man and the horses, which were startled and began galloping. The latrine cleaners laughed noisily behind us.

Suddenly the whiplash touched the top of the load. A beehive tumbled down the other boxes, fell off the cart, and crashed to the ground. Bees poured out from all the hives. In a few seconds the cart was swathed by a golden cloud ringing madly.

“Oh Mother! Help!” the driver yelled.

The horses sprang up and plunged into the ditch on the other side of the road. The cart careened, turned over, and scattered the hives everywhere. Most of the bees were swarming to the struggling horses and the man; some were flying to us.

“Help! Help!” the driver screamed, but none of us dared move close. Even the latrine cleaners were too scared to go over, though one of them was running away to the Commune Clinic, which was nearby, to get help. Stunned, we dropped our weapons and watched speechlessly.

The three horses disentangled themselves and ran off with long neighing. The spotted shaft horse was charging toward us, and we all went behind the thick trees. It dashed by with a loud fart and kicked down two buckets of night soil. The street at once smelled like a compost heap.

“Help,” the man groaned in the ditch, his voice very small. We couldn’t see him. Over there only the swarm of bees was waving and rolling in the breeze.

Half an hour later most of the bees had flown away, and the medical people rescued the cart driver. He had stopped breathing, though we were told that his heart was still alive. His face was swollen, covered with blood and crushed bees, and his fingers looked like frozen carrots. They carried him on a stretcher, rushing back to the Commune Clinic.

Then Zu Ming, the head of town police, arrived and ordered everyone not to move, including the latrine cleaners. He must have heard that we had thrown things at the cart, for promptly he questioned us about who had started it. If we didn’t tell him, he said, he would lock us up in the police station for a few days. We were scared.

“You,” Zu pointed at Sickle Handle, “you hit a beehive with a stone, didn’t you?” Zu’s face was dark and long, so long that people called him Donkey Face.

“No, I didn’t.” Sickle Handle stepped away.

“How about you?” Zu pulled Benli’s ear.

“No, not me.” Our emperor grimaced, a thread of saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “Oh, let me go, Uncle. It hurts.”

“Then tell me who started it.” Zu twisted Benli’s ear harder.

“Ouch! Not me.”

“Tell me who did it.” A cigarette bobbed around the tip of Zu’s nose as two lines of smoke dangled beneath his nostrils.

“He did it,” Benli moaned.

“Who?”

“Grandson.”

“Louder, I can’t hear you.”

“Grandson.”

“Who is Grandson?” Zu let Benli go and looked around at us. Our eyes fell on Big Babe.

“No, I just threw one clod,” Grandson said, his face turning pale.

“All right, one is enough. You come with me.” Zu went up to Grandson, who was about to escape. Grandson had hardly run a step when Zu caught him by the neck. “You piglet, where are you going?” He threw him on his broad shoulder and carried him away to the police station.

“Fuck your mother!” Grandson yelled at Benli.

We all followed them to see what would happen to him, while the latrine cleaners laughed with their heads thrown back, pointing at Grandson, who was kicking in the air. Then they shouldered their loads of night soil and set out for Elm Village, where they lived. One of them carried two empty buckets with his pole.

“Stop it!” Zu whacked Grandson on the back, who stopped kicking instantly.

“Fuck all your grandmas!” Grandson shouted at us, wailing and sniffling.

We didn’t swear back and followed them silently. The hot sun cast our slant shadows on the whitish road; cicadas were hissing tirelessly in the treetops. We hated Zu Ming, who only dared to bully us children. Two months ago he had gone to Dalian City with a truck from the Harvest Fertilizer Plant. There they had been caught by the gunfire of the revolutionary rebels. The driver, Squinty’s father, was hit by a bullet in the leg, but he managed to drive the truck out of the city. Though nothing touched Zu, he was so frightened he messed his pants. The whole town knew that.

The blue door of the police station closed behind them. Bang, we heard Zu drop the boy on the floor.

“Oh! My arm,” Grandson cried.

Immediately we rushed to the windows to watch. “Take this. I’m going to break your legs too.” Zu kicked Grandson in the hips and stomach.

“Don’t kick me!”

Two policemen came in, and Zu turned to them to explain what had happened. Fearing they might detain Grandson for some time and hurt him badly, Benli told Hare Lips, “Go tell his uncle that Big Babe is in trouble here.”

Grandson’s parents had died seven years before in a famine, so he lived at his uncle’s. One reason we would make fun of him was that all his cousins were small girls. We could beat him or do him in without worrying about being caught by a bigger brother.

“Did you overeat, huh? Have too much energy?” Shen Li shouted, clutching Grandson’s neck. Shen was a squat young man, like a Japanese soldier, so we called him Water Vat.

“Don’t. You’re hurting me!” Grandson cried.

“How about this?” A slap landed on his face.

“Oh!”

“Tell us why you did that.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You still don’t admit it. All right, let your grandpa teach you how to be honest.” Shen punched him in the flank.

“Ouch!” Grandson dropped to the floor, holding his sides and yelling, “Help! They’re killing me.”

“Shut up!” Zu ordered, and pulled him to his feet. “Now tell me, did you do it or not?”

Grandson nodded.

“Sign your name here then.” Zu took him to a desk and pointed at a sheet of paper.

We were restless outside, having never seen how the police handled a child criminal. We were also anxious to get him out.

Finally Grandson’s uncle came, wearing blue work clothes spattered with paint. We stepped aside to let the tall man go in. A few of us even ventured to enter together with him, but Water Vat pushed us back and shut the door.

We thought Grandson’s uncle would be mad at the police, but to our surprise he cursed his nephew instead. “How many times did I tell you not to cause trouble on the streets, huh? Young rabbit, I’d better kill you or starve you to death.” He slapped him on the face.

The policemen took both of them into another room. Since we couldn’t see them anymore, we left the windowsills, cursing the police and their families. We swore we would whack Zu’s oldest daughter once she started her first grade.

A few minutes later the door opened and Grandson and his uncle came out, the three policemen following behind. “Liu Bao,” Zu said aloud, “keep a good eye on your boy. You see, that cart driver could have been killed. We don’t want the youngster to commit homicide.”

“I will, Chief Zu,” Grandson’s uncle said, then turned around and cursed under his breath, “Son of a bitch!” He gnashed his teeth, his wrinkled face ferocious.

Grandson had black eyes and swollen lips. His yellow T-shirt was stained with the blood from his nose. The red characters “Revolution to the End” became blurred on his chest. He was too deflated to swear anymore and only looked at us with his dim eyes.

His uncle took off his own straw hat and put it on Grandson’s head. With his sinewy arm around his nephew’s neck, the man led the boy home.

For a week Grandson didn’t show up on the streets. During the day we played games—hitting bottle caps, fanning paper crackers, throwing knives, and waging cricket fights; in the evenings we gathered at the train station to make fun of strangers, calling them names or firing at them with slingshots. They could never catch us in the darkness. If they chased us we could easily throw them off, since they were not familiar with the streets and alleys. If they were women we would follow them and chant, “My little wife, come home with me. There’s a warm bed and hot porridge.” The women would stop to swear curses, which we always took with laughter.

In the meantime we had a big fight with the boys from Sand Village. They defeated us because they outnumbered us two to one. Also, their emperor, Hu Ba, was notorious for his ferocity. Most boys in town and its vicinity would slink away at the sight of him. On a victory he would whip his captives with iron wire and even pee into their mouths. We were lucky, as we got captured and flogged but weren’t humiliated further. They didn’t catch our emperor, though, because Benli was a fast runner. They pursued him ten kilometers until he reached his aunt’s home in Horse Village.

On the following Wednesday Grandson came out. To our amazement, all the bruises had disappeared from his face. He looked calm and was reticent, but his eyes were shining strangely.

That afternoon we had a clod fight in the backyard of the Middle School, where some sunken vegetable cellars could be used as trenches and strongholds. More clods were available there too, since no stones or any other hard things were allowed in a fight among friends. Emperor Benli divided us fourteen boys into two groups, one of which was to hold the eastern part of the yard while the other held the western part. The two groups would attack and counterattack until one side surrendered.

Bare Hips, Big Shrimp, Grandson, Squinty, and I and two smaller boys were to fight Benli, Hare Lips, Sickle Handle, and four other fellows. We collected clods and placed them on the edge of our trench, for we knew Benli’s team was always on the offensive initially. We wanted to consume their ammunition first. Once they ran out of clods, we would fight them back to their trench and rout them there.

The fight started. As we expected, they began charging at us. Missiles were sailing over our heads while we were waiting patiently for them to come close. Our commander, Bare Hips, raised his hands, his fingers circling his eyes like binoculars, to observe the enemy approaching.

“Ready,” he cried.

Every one of us held big clods like apples, preparing to give them the best of it. Bare Hips raised his left hand. “Fire!”

We all threw out clods, which stopped their charging immediately. One clod exploded on Hare Lips’s head. With both hands around his skull, he fled back to their trench.

We jumped out to fight at close quarters. Seeing us fully equipped, they all turned around to escape, except Benli, who was still moving toward us. I hit him in the chest with a clod. It didn’t stop him. Grandson hurled a big one at him, and it struck his head. “Oh!” Benli collapsed to the ground.

We laughed and ignored him, because he had been wiped out. We went on chasing the remnants. Hiding in the trench, they all saw their commander knocked down; since they had no ammunition left, we subdued them easily—one by one they raised their hands to surrender.

“Grandson, you ass ball!” Benli yelled behind us, and rushed over. “Fuck your grandma, you used stones.” On his forehead a slant cut was bleeding. Blood trickled down around his left eye.

“So what?” Grandson said calmly. His voice startled us.

“Damn you, you took revenge.” Benli moved forward, grabbing for him.

“Yes, I did.” Grandson whipped out a dagger and waved it. “You touch me, I’ll stab you through.”

Benli froze, his hand covering his forehead. We dropped our clods and moved to separate them. Benli turned around to look for a stone while Grandson produced a cake of lead, which looked like a puck and was used in the game of hitting bottle caps. He raised it and declared, “I’m ready, Benli. You come close, I’ll crush your skull with this.” He looked pale, but his eyes were gleaming. “Come on, Benli,” he said. “You have your parents at home. I don’t have a mother. Let’s kill each other and see who will lose more.”

The emperor looked confused. We pushed him away and implored him not to further provoke Grandson, who was simply crazy and would do anything and could hurt anybody. We mustn’t fight like this within our own camp.

“Enjoy picking apples at Willow Village, you bastard of a capitalist-backer,” Grandson shouted at Benli. This was too much. Our emperor burst into tears. We knew his father had recently been removed from the Commune Administration for being a capitalist-backer and was going down to the countryside to reform himself through labor. The family was moving soon.

“Give me some paper, White Cat,” Benli muttered to me. But I didn’t have any paper with me.

“Here, here you are.” Big Shrimp gave him an unfolded handbill.

Benli wiped the blood and sweat off his face and blew his stuffy nose. He couldn’t stop his tears. We had never seen him cry like this before.

“Come on, let’s go home,” Bare Hips said. He took Benli’s arm, and we started moving out of the yard.

Grandson was standing there alone in the scorching sun, as though he were not one of us. He chopped the lead in his hand with the dagger, watching us retreating; he spat to the ground and stamped on his own spittle.

After that fight, Grandson said he hated his nicknames and threatened to hit whoever happened to call him Grandson with the cake of lead, which he always carried with him. As for the other nickname, Big Babe, we had already dropped it of our own accord. In school, teachers called him Liu Damin, which was his real name but too formal to us street urchins. Only nicknames were acceptable among us. However, we found a solution to this problem. Benli was busy all the time helping his parents pack up and seldom played with us now, so we called Grandson “Vice-Emperor.” And he seemed to like that name. To tell the truth, he wasn’t a great fighter, but he was fierce and had more guts than the rest of us. Nobody among us dared challenge Emperor Benli and only Grandson could do it. Besides, he had been practicing with sandbags at night and had hard fists now. More important, after Benli’s leaving we would have to choose a new emperor for our empire—the eastern part of town. Grandson seemed to be a natural candidate.

The day before Benli left we held a small party for him on top of a large haystack behind the Veterinary Station on the northern hill. Sickle Handle had lately stolen ten yuan from his father, who was a widower and a master blacksmith in the inn for carters and would get drunk at the end of the day. The old man couldn’t keep track of his money, so his son always had a little cash on him and would share it with us. For the farewell party we bought sodas, boiled periwinkles, popsicles, moon cakes, toffees, melons, and haw jelly. Benli and Grandson were no longer on hostile terms, though they remained distant toward each other. We ate away, reminiscing about our victories over the enemies from different streets and villages and competing with each other in casting curses. A few golden butterflies and dragonflies were fluttering around us. The afternoon air was warm and clean, and the town below us seemed like a green harbor full of white sails.

Next morning we gathered at Benli’s house to help load two horse carts. To our surprise, no adults showed up from the neighborhood, and we small boys could only carry a chair or a basin. Fortunately the two cart drivers were young and strong, so they helped move the big chests, cauldrons, and vegetable vats. Benli’s father had seldom come out since he was named a capitalist-backer. We were amazed to find that his hair had turned gray in just two weeks. He looked downcast and his thick shoulders stooped. Throughout the moving he almost didn’t say a word. Benli was quiet too, though his small brothers and sisters were noisy and often in our way. Before the carts departed, Benli’s mother, a good woman, gave us each a large apple-pear.

After Benli left, the boys in the other parts of town attempted to invade our territory a few times, but we defeated them. To Grandson’s credit, it must be said that he was an able emperor, relentless to the enemy and fair and square with his own men. Once we confiscated a pouch of coins from Red Rooster on Eternal Way, and Grandson distributed the money among us without taking a fen for himself. Another time we stole a crate of grapes from the army’s grocery center; we all ate to our fill and took some home, but Grandson didn’t take any back to his uncle’s. Yet we couldn’t help calling him Grandson occasionally, though nobody dared use that name in his presence. Because he held the throne firmly, the territorial order in town remained the same. No one could enter our streets without risking his skin. And of course we wouldn’t transgress the borderlines either, unless it was necessary.

One afternoon we went shooting birds around the pig farm owned by the army. It was a stuffy day and we felt tired. For more than two hours the seven of us had killed only four sparrows. There weren’t many birds to shoot at, so we decided to go and watch the butchers slaughtering pigs for the army’s canteens and the officers’ families. Then came Squinty, running over and panting hard. “Quick, let’s go,” he said, waving his hands. “Just now I saw Big Hat in town buying vinegar and soy sauce.”

At once our spirit was aroused. Grandson told us to follow him to intercept Big Hat at the crossroads of Main Street and Blacksmith Road; then he ordered Squinty to run home and tell other boys to join us there. We set out running to the crossroads, waving our weapons and shouting, “Kill!”

Big Hat was the emperor of Green Village, whose boys we didn’t know very well but fought with whenever we ran into them. He had gotten that nickname because he always wore a marten hat in winter and would brag that the hat made lots of big girls crazy about him. Usually he would come to town with two or three of his strong bodyguards, but today, according to Squinty’s information, he was shopping here by himself. This inspired us to capture him. To subdue those country bandits, we had to catch their ringleader first.

No sooner had we arrived at the crossroads than Big Hat emerged down Blacksmith Road. He was walking stealthily under the eaves on the left side of the street, carrying on his back an empty manure basket and holding, in one hand, a long dung-fork and, in the other, a string bag of bottles. He looked taller than two months before when we had fought under White Stone Bridge near his village. Seeing us standing at the crossroads, he turned around. At this instant, Doggy and Squinty with a group of boys came out of the street corner and cut off Big Hat’s retreat. Both units of our troops charged toward him, with sticks and stones in our hands. Knowing his doom, Big Hat stopped, put down the basket and the bottles, and stood with his back against the wall, holding the dung-fork.

“Put down your arms and we’ll spare your life,” Doggy cried. We surrounded him.

“Doggy,” Big Hat said, “you son of a black-hearted rich peasant, don’t stand in my way, or else we’ll smash your old man’s head next time he’s paraded through our village.” He grinned, and a star-shaped scar was revealed on his stubbly crown.

Doggy lowered his eyes and stopped moving. Indeed several weeks before, his father, a rich peasant in the old days, had been beaten in the marketplace during a denunciation. “Stop bluffing, you son of an ass!” Grandson shouted.

“Grandson,” Big Hat said, “let me go just this once. My granduncle is waiting for me at home. We have guests today.” He pointed at the squat bottle containing white spirits. “My granduncle is a sworn brother of Chairman Ding of our commune. If you let me go, I’ll tell him to help promote your dad.”

We all turned to look at Grandson. Apparently Big Hat thought Grandson’s uncle was his father.

“Tell your granduncle we all fuck him and your grandaunt too!” Grandson said.

“Come on, your old man will be the head of his workshop if you let me go just this once. My granduncle is also a friend of Director Ma of the fertilizer plant.”

“Fuck your granduncle!” Grandson plunged forward and hit Big Hat on the forehead with the cake of lead.

Big Hat dropped to the ground without making a noise, and the dung-fork sprang off and knocked down one of the bottles. Blood dripped on the front of his gray shirt. Between his eyebrows was a long clean cut as if inflicted by a knife. The air smelled of vinegar.

Big Hat was lying beneath the wall, his eyes shut and his mouth vomiting froth. We were scared and thought Grandson must have knocked him dead, but we dared not say a word.

A moment later Big Hat came to and began crying for help. Grandson went over and kicked him in the stomach. “Get up, you bum.” He clutched his collar and pulled him up on his knees. “Today you met your grandpas. You must kowtow to everybody here and call us Grandpa, or you won’t be able to go home tonight.”

We were too shocked to do anything. “Grandson,” Doggy tried to intervene, “spare his life, Grandson. Let him—”

“Stop calling me that!” Grandson yelled without looking at Doggy, then turned to Big Hat. “Do you want to call us Grandpa or not?”

“No.” Tears covered Big Hat’s face.

“All right.” Grandson stepped away, picked up the fork, and smashed all the bottles. Dark soy sauce and colorless liquor splashed on the gravel and began fading away. “All right, if you don’t, you must eat one of these.” He pointed to the horse droppings a few paces away.

“No!”

“Eat the dung,” Grandson ordered, and whacked Big Hat on the back with the fork.

“Oh, help!”

The street was unusually quiet, no grown-ups in sight. “Yes or no?” Grandson asked.

“No.”

“Say it again.”

“No!”

“Take this.” Grandson stabbed him in the leg with the fork.

“Oh! Save my life!”

One of the prongs pierced Big Hat’s calf. He was rolling on the ground, cursing, wailing, and yelling. Strangely enough, no grown-ups ever showed up.

This was too much. Surely we wanted to see that bastard’s blood, but we wouldn’t kill him and go to jail for that, so a few of us moved to stop Grandson.

“Keep back, all of you.” He wielded the fork around as if he would strike any of us. We stood still.

Grandson picked up one of the droppings with the fork and raised it to Big Hat’s lips. He threatened, “If you don’t take a bite I’ll gut you. Open your mouth.”

“Oh! You bandit,” Big Hat moaned with his eyes closed. His mouth opened a little.

“Open big,” Grandson ordered, and thrust the dung into his mouth.

“Ah!” Big Hat spat it out and rubbed his lips with his sleeves. “Fuck your mother!” he yelled, and lay on his side wailing with both hands covering his face.

Grandson threw the fork to the other side of the street; he looked around at us with his crazed eyes, then walked away without a word. His broad hips and short legs swayed as though he were stamping and crushing something.

Without any delay we all ran away, leaving Big Hat to curse and weep alone.

Shortly afterward Grandson became famous. Boys of the lower grades in our Central Elementary School would tremble at the mere sight of him. With him leading us, we could enter some other areas of town without provoking a fight. Except for us, no one dared play on Main Street any longer—the former noncombat zone was under our control now. Some of the officers’ children, a bunch of weaklings though they ate meat and white bread and wore better clothes, even begged us to protect them on their way to school and back home. They would pay us with tickets for the movies shown in the army’s theater and with tofu coupons, since Sickle Handle’s father, the old blacksmith, had lost all his teeth and liked soft food. For a short while our territory was expanding, our affairs were prosperous, and our Eastern Empire began to dominate Dismount Fort.

But a month later, Grandson’s uncle failed to renew his contract and couldn’t find work in town. We were surprised to hear that he hadn’t been a permanent, but a temporary worker in the fertilizer plant. The Lius decided to return to their home village in Tile County.

Grandson left with the family, and our empire collapsed. Because none of us was suited to be an emperor, the throne remained unoccupied. Now boys from the south even dared to play horse ride in front of our former headquarters—Benli’s house. We were unable to go to the department store at the western end of Main Street or to the marketplace to buy things for our parents and rent picture-story books. Most of us were beaten in school. Once I was caught by Big Hat’s men at the millhouse and was forced to meow for them. How we missed our old glorious days!

As time went by, we left, one after another, to serve different emperors.