Many of the things in life that make us throw our hands up in frustration are decided at birth. Take Little Xinjiang, for instance; ever since birth he’s been a foreigner. Everybody in the world knows that his mom made it with a foreigner before she gave birth to him. The foreigner then disappeared, as did his mother. Then after a few years of being raised by a foreign nun at some convent called the Family of something or other, he looked even more like a foreigner. Later, no matter where he went, all it took was one look at his mug and one earful of his Taiwanese Mandarin, and everyone knew that his mom got bagged by a foreigner and that after she got pregnant, this foreign daddy flew the coop. Some people would ridicule Little Xinjiang, some would pity him, and some were really strange—they went so far as to envy him! But no matter if they felt a sense of ridicule, compassion, or admiration, no one could change the fact that his father’s shameless act to his mother was, quite literally, written all over his face. Not only was there nothing he could do to change this, but he also had to face the humiliation of having people constantly notice his less than glorious origins. That’s what you call a “birth curse”—it means that from birth he was already cursed to live a pathetic life.
Ahzhi’s street-side temple style of “super-chops” martial arts was something else that was completely natural. His ability to see ghosts was also decided from birth. I’m afraid that even the seed for his view that “humans are nothing but a bunch of utterly weak, pathetic, superfluous, and obsolete machines” was also planted at birth. Apricot said that even back when Ahzhi was still in the orphanage he never listened to anybody, never learned a thing, and never obeyed any of the rules. Back then he used to always tell the teacher: there are too many people here, there are too many people there; actually he wasn’t talking about people—at least not living people. All of the teachers thought that Ahzhi had a screw loose, but the orphanage didn’t have the resources to send him to a doctor. So they just decided not to worry about it and told everyone to try not to pay too much attention to Ahzhi. Apricot said it was a good thing they didn’t send for a doctor; there was nothing one could do for him anyway, so it would have just been a waste of money. The orphanage didn’t have a lot of money to begin with, so if they’d blown all that cash on a shrink for Ahzhi, Apricot wouldn’t have gotten to eat as many apples. But Apricot didn’t think of Ahzhi’s ability to see ghosts as an illness. She considered Ahzhi’s true shortcoming to be his innate ignorance about money.
“Damn! If I were able to communicate with ghosts, I’d really put that skill to use!” Apricot would often pat her thigh and sigh. “I wouldn’t have to lift another finger in my life. I’d just open up a store, and make money off people like Old Bull. So you don’t know how your big sister died? No problem, I’ll find out for you! You don’t know where your great-grandfather’s inheritance is hidden, is that right? Well, that’s no problem, I’ll ask around for you! Have you seen that movie called Ghost? When the day comes that I can make a big killing and rake in a couple million U.S. dollars, I’ll close up shop, go home, and count my money till I die.”
Old Bull once said that actually Apricot did make a couple bucks on the side off of Ahzhi’s ghosts. Sometimes when she was hard up for cash or business on the streets was in a lull, she’d tell Ahzhi, “Come on, take me out for a bite to eat.” That meant she was gonna let Ahzhi get some. After they finished screwing, Ahzhi would be in a good mood and he’d tell Apricot what street or road had a lonely spirit or wandering ghost. Then Apricot would find a way to track down the family of that lonely spirit or wandering ghost to do some business. Sometimes it happened backward: Apricot would first get commissioned by somebody who wanted her to locate some deceased friend or relative; then she’d go out with Ahzhi for a midnight snack; then the last step would be for Ahzhi to get her in touch with the lonely spirits and wandering ghosts. Anyway, Apricot was “the window,” so people were usually more willing to accept whatever she said. I believe that things like being “the window” are also decided at birth.
Old Bull’s diarrhea of the mouth was also inborn, as was his knack for easily forgetting. Not only did he always repeat things he’d already said several times, he also often blurted out secrets that he’d previously stressed that he would never let out. My guess is that speaking and forgetting are somehow connected in a way in which they mutually complement each other. The reason Old Bull couldn’t keep his mouth shut was that he was always forgetting things. He needed to keep repeating things to himself in order to make the words sink in; that way he wouldn’t forget. As for the reason he was always forgetting, of course that stemmed from the fact that he talked too much. In order to keep the world at large safe from his blabbering, he had to forget some portions of what he wanted to say.
From birth, I’ve always been the kind of person who never finishes what he starts. No matter what it is, I always start off gung ho and want to try my hand at learning it, but once I’ve almost mastered it, I never fail to lose interest. If you don’t believe me, you can look at my report card. I’m almost always getting grades right around 70. If my grade suddenly shoots up to an 80 or 90, that just means that everybody else in class got 100. If I get a 50 or 60 that means that my classmates all got around 90. From birth, I’ve always been a 70, it has absolutely nothing to do with how much effort I put in. Even the appearance of people who are natural 70s is around 70. When I was little my head was really big; in pictures I always looked like a space alien. If I’d maintained the same head-to-body proportion as when I was little, then it would be hard to say what my appearance would be today—probably just a 10. That of course would’ve been pretty rare, like that mutant child with three legs. I could’ve sold tickets and taken myself on an exhibition tour. But as I grew, the proportion between my body and head became more and more normal, normal to the point where it couldn’t be any more normal—a 70. And so, just like Little Xinjiang’s foreign mug, there was no way to alter my appearance. At least Little Xinjiang could tell people he was from Xinjiang in order to cover up his mongrel, half-breed origins. But I was worse off: no matter where I said I was from, it didn’t matter—a 70 is a 70. I had a set of features so average that they couldn’t even leave an impression on myself!
Little Horse was a different case. Before I understood the situation with Little Horse and his despicable father, I always thought that he was 100 in every category. He was the kind of person who enticed you to always want to take another look at him. Every time you glanced at him you felt that he had to have the most straight and perfect nose in the world. If you took a second glance, you’d feel that he had the best-shaped ears in the world. Then, just as you were on the verge of being utterly stupefied by his looks, he’d blink his eyes and you’d say that he definitely had the most beautiful blink in the world. That is what you call 100 percent good looks. No matter where he went there were always people who took him for some movie star—however, the day the term “movie star” pops into your head, you’d start to feel like you were insulting this “100 percent.”
Once you’ve got 100 percent good looks, anything you do is naturally also 100 percent. Not only can you play basketball, but you can also be an excellent marksman. Not only can you swim, but you can do the butterfly stroke for 200 meters. You’re so good at shooting pool that all it takes is three shots and you’re looking at a clean table. You can play the violin, master Tae Kwon Do, speak Japanese and English—no matter what it is, you do it better than anyone else. So, do you think you’ve got what it takes to be a 100 percent person? Because that’s exactly what Little Horse is. Moreover, what’s really amazing is that he never lets others feel that there is anything so great about his being a 100 percent guy.
The day Hoop came to see us with that big bag of tea leaves, Annie was at the auto store settling the accounts, Ahzhi was at Bingo Wonderland taking care of business, and Little Xinjiang was down at Uncle Xu’s place. Little Horse, Old Bull, and I were the only people left at the junkyard. As soon as Hoop showed up, I ran outside to find something to keep me busy—another one of my inherent defects is that I despise people who play tricks on you behind your back. I didn’t care about the fact that Horsefly had Hoop in the palm of his hand, or that Hoop was acting completely in spite of herself, I just despised the way she treated us as friends, just like before. Shooting the breeze as if nothing had happened. It was really an injustice—she even intentionally brought up that guy who played dirty cards at the casino. It was as if she felt like she could cover up her despicable actions with a few gleeful cries.
Was Old Bull thinking the same thing? After a few minutes, he ran out of the tour bus carrying that big bag of tea leaves; he said he was going to bring the leaves to a cool and shady place. I could sense that he was trying to give Hoop some face. But it was Little Horse who gave Hoop the most face of all of us. He stayed with her, chatting, even offering her some mineral water, all the way until Annie returned.
“What the hell are you doing waiting on her hand and foot?” I asked unhappily.
“Don’t be like that, actually she’s quite pitiful,” said Little Horse. “Horsefly’s people are always threatening her father to scare her, forcing her to do this and that. She has to do what they say. She doesn’t have any other friends.…”
“If she’s a ‘friend,’ how come she sets up her friends?”
“Shouldn’t friends forgive friends?”
I thought over what he said for a long time, but it wasn’t the kind of thing a person like me can figure out. All I could do was go on like before in my dissatisfied tone: “Damn, you even get 100 in personal relations!”
“What?”
“I said you even get 100 in the personal relations department.”
“I don’t get it.” He then shrugged his shoulders and left.
At the time I though he was pretending to be modest, but later I learned that Little Horse truly didn’t know what being 100 percent meant—that also was decided from birth. In Little Horse’s head, numbers had absolutely no meaning.