"That Pock-marked Lu, I'd run his ancestors through! Son of a tiger and a pig-sticker, stupid he was, evil too, even if his death took seven days and nights it still wouldn't settle these scores!" When he reached the bit about his grandmother's funeral, he couldn't stop himself howling and yowling. Out came the snot and tears again, once again he wiped his nose with the palm of his hand.

This wipe set my mind more at rest.

"If Chairman Mao and the Communist Party hadn't come, I, Luo Yuxing, wouldn't be here today!"

"Well said! You must say that when you get onto the stage, you must cry."

"Cry? Of course I'll cry!"

To my everlasting regret, he didn't actually cry. But still, it wasn't too bad: though he stammered a little from nerves, he basically produced the memorized speech, going from history to reality, from the individual to society, using philosophies like the "externals/fundamentals" theory, spoke of his own outstanding achievements, and praised socialism. He didn't wander too far off the point, thanks to my repeated earlier warnings to him, didn't end up blabbing about having been a porter for the GMD and having eaten American flour. The worst he did was to extemporize a little when denouncing revisionist philosophy: revisionism was really bad, he said, it plotted against Chairman Mao and harmed the meeting we were having now, held up work. Although this wasn't quite the point, it still went along with the general idea.

So, as it turned out, the three days I'd spent getting him to memorize it weren't wasted.

Afterwards the commune nominated him a few times to go and speak in other communes. By then Fd been given a temporary transfer to the County Cultural Institute to write theater scripts and didn't have much to do with him. All I heard about was that one time when, returning from philosophy work, he passed a mad dog on the road that attacked him and took a bite out of his leg; medical treatment came too late and he was bedridden for about six months. Later on, he scattered-died.

I remember the last time I saw him: a plaster stuck on his forehead, hardly anything left of him apart from his two eyes, he was watching oxen from the side of the field. A golden yellow butterfly was nibbling at the oxen's backs.

When I asked about his sickness, his eyes widened in surprise: "Strange, isn't it, I've never been bitten by a dog, and now one comes and bites me here."

This remark struck me as odd.

He lifted up his leg to show me. What he meant was, there'd been a scar on this leg where a sickle had cut him, where he'd fallen, and in the end a dog bit him here as well. He'd reflected on this replication a hundred times without ever figuring it out.

"Be better soon, eh?"

"How's it going to get better then?"

"Had an injection?"

"Doctors can cure illness, they can't cure fate."

"You should have faith, old man, it'll get better."

"What's the good in getting better? Won't I still have to slave like a beast of burden? Planting rice, digging the hills, what's so great about that? Much better to watch oxen like I am now."

"Don't you want to get better?"

"What's the good in not being better? It hurts me to take just one step, I can't even squat in the toilet hut."

He hadn't lost his way with words.

He had a small, pink radio in his hand, probably brought to him recently by his godson, a rare treasure indeed for country people.

"Here's a good friend," he pointed to the radio, "from morning till night, never stops talking, never stops singing, don't know where he gets his energy from."

He held the radio to my ear. I couldn't hear very well since the sound was too soft; probably the batteries were too low.

"Everyday I know whether it's raining in Beijing," he said smiling.

It was only later that I found out the illness had already reached his vital organs, that he'd put his funeral shoes at the head of the bed, afraid that when the moment came he wouldn't have time to put them on. But still, calmly as ever, he got out of bed to watch the oxen for a couple of days, to put down a layer of fresh grass in the ox pen, to twist two lengths of ox tether; he even smiled and discussed the rain in Beijing with me.

: The team leader had asked the bamboo carpenters to mend the bamboo baskets and winnowing baskets, but there was no money for meat. Fucha, who, in his capacity as public accountant, was responsible for getting hold of meat to treat the carpenters, reckoned that Uncle Luo would be flush, that maybe he'd have his remittance from his godson in Nanjing, and decided to try borrowing a couple of yuan to tide things over.

Uncle Luo said he didn't have any money; what godson? he said, he spends all his salary on Party fees, he'd long forgotten all about his birth-meeting godfather.

Fucha didn't really believe him and said he'd return anything he borrowed, he wasn't going to keep what was his. What good was the money doing moldering in a crack in the wall?

This needled Uncle Luo: "Slanderer, you slanderer! Fucha, my boy, I'm eight years older than your dad, where's your conscience? Where's your conscience?"

That day Fucha had been frazzled by the sun, traipsing everywhere- with no success-to borrow the money, and as he walked along the road afterwards he couldn't stop himself swearing: "Flip your feet!"

You couldn't help saying things like this when the sun was just too hot.

Little did he realize that "Flip your feet," the most taboo oath that Maqiao people knew, the most poisonous curse imaginable, was practically equivalent to digging up someone's ancestral grave. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, two bamboo carpenters standing nearby jumped in surprise and looked Fucha over twice. Fucha was probably just like me, having no idea about the phrase's history, nor much time for mouth-bans, and the words just slipped out of his mouth when his guard was down.

The next day, Uncle Luo was bitten by a mad dog and set off for the underworld.

Uncle Luo's death became a source of terrible heartache for Fucha. There were, besides, some private mutterings in Maqiao that held Fucha responsible. According to local custom, a curse could still be retracted even after it'd been set loose: all it would've taken was for Fucha to stick incense into his doorframe in time, cut off a chicken's head, wash the threshold with chicken's blood, and Uncle Luo's life would have been protected. But Fucha had been busy that day and he forgot about this set of procedures. Afterwards, he explained to a lot of people that it'd been an accident, he hadn't at all meant to curse Uncle Luo to death. Nor had he known how serious the curse was. Why did a mad dog happen to come along so coincidentally? He tended particularly to address such remarks to Educated Youth, because Educated Youth came from barbarian parts and didn't care much for Maqiao rules; they all told him to give himself a break, that he shouldn't pay any credence to it being a mouthban, or whatever. Some Educated Youth even thumped their chests in fraternal spirit: curse me, then, curse as hard as you can, they'd say, let's see what demons you can bring out!

Quite overcome, Fucha would wend his uncertain way back home.

Not long after this, whenever he was talking about the drought or grain rations with other people, he'd meander distractedly onto the business of Uncle Luo, how he hadn't really meant it, it was just that the sun had frazzled his brain and his mouth had run away with him for a moment, and so on and so forth. This started to get on people's nerves, started to become a problem.

A "mouth-ban" is a linguistic taboo. Words are, in fact, just words, no more than a whoosh of wind past the ears, unable to harm a single hair on anyone's body. But Fucha quickly shed a layer of flesh, the white hairs on his head noticeably increased, and even when he flashed a smile it would lack depth, it would be a facial exercise without roots in his inner being. Previously, he'd generally been a neat dresser, would even glance in the mirror and comb his hair, would always pin his collar down straight and smooth with a few clips. But now his clothes were a mess: there was mud on his shoulders, his concentration easily wandered, had him doing his buttons up wrong, or losing his pen, his keys. In the past, he'd only needed a day to do the end-of-year accounts; now he had to sweat over them for three or four days, the accounts sheets heaped into a confused pile. His mind was decidedly not on the job, he'd search for ages, up and down in the pile of account books, until he'd forgotten what he was looking for. In the end, after he'd managed inexplicably to lose five hundred yuan of cotton money in the supply and marketing cooperative, the team committee no longer felt he could stay on as accountant.