Chaos and All That: An Irreverent Novel

Chapter 2

1 9 The most essential qualification for being a Red Guard was that you had to be able to say to people’s faces the kinds of thing you usually only find written on toilet walls. Mommy said that it was only people from the worst families with the thickest skins that would come out with things like that. When Brother heard her mention thick skin, he offered this story: There was once a man who died and went to hell. When he reached the netherworld, he asked King Yama why he hadn’t grown a beard. King Yama told him, “You were actually supposed to have an inch of beard, but the skin on your face was two inches thick so the whiskers never managed to stick through.” Brother obviously wasn’t bothered by the prospect of not growing a beard and didn’t mind throwing in some choice vocabulary of his own. What’s more important in life anyway, glory or facial hair? Auntie said, “You kids needn’t think you’re through the worst of it, there’s things ahead of you yet.” That was true enough: everyone seemed to be doing their best to make life difficult for us. After gym class there was walking, running, talking, pole climbing, parallel bars, handstands, swimming, dancing, writing, arithmetic – all so that you could have a report card that said you weren’t some kind of bonehead. The reason the doctors had put me through all that physical therapy when I was a baby was simply so that I would be quicker at standing, walk- 2 0 ing, running, talking, thinking, cursing others, and being cursed. “Work out till you drop!” hissed the boy as he pumped weights. “Work out!” shouted the captain of the Young Pioneers. “Let’s go outside and work out!” yelled the two boys as they squared off against each other. All human life was reduced to one thing – working out. “Fuck!” Behind a locked door I worked out in front of the mirror, practicing facial expressions. As my mouth slowly opened, the eyes in the mirror grew rounder. “Fuck!” Now the eyes in the mirror narrowed to slits. “Fuck you!” I really worked at it this time, teeth clenched, lips thin, eyes staring more than ever. You had to practice to the point where everybody would be afraid of you as soon as you said the words. But when I said the you bit, I noticed that I still had dimples in my cheeks. Hey! I was getting to look like that actress, you know, what’s-hername ! “So what’s the big deal about being an actress?” Brother sneered. “They all look the same anyway.” Auntie told Brother, “You need to have the right look to act. Haha’s got it, and you haven’t. Go on, Haha; give us your militant heroine again!” So I did the revolutionary glowering at the class enemy, complete with bulging neck and popping eyes. Auntie clapped her hands and hooted with laughter. “Cunt!” This was the worst word I knew. The face in the mirror blushed scarlet and looked all around. There was no one there, of course. Even the old ground beetle on the wall didn’t come out to listen. He was a dirty great black beetle, clinging to the whitewashed toilet walls with hairy feet. Often he would work his way along the wall to a point above the toilet bowl, so that you might well see him if you looked up while you were sitting there. He never avoided people, but we all avoided him, and I got so I couldn’t shit when he was around. The house was too old and too big. I was the first genera- 2 1 tion of our family to be born there, but the beetles, rats, lizards , millipedes, and ants could well have been there for hundreds of generations. Auntie told us that the human occupants of the house had changed with every change of dynasty: the previous master of the house had killed someone here and then run off to Taiwan with the nationalists; the one before him had committed treason and got himself executed; the one before him had fallen out with President Yuan Shikai; the one before him had been an imperial eunuch at the court of the Dowager Empress Cixi; and the one before that . . . Daddy said it...