"I was still drinking breast milk at thirteen! My mom was always away at work but the wet nurse would still make me drink!" He'd always be making announcements like this to explain the reasons for his incomparable physical strength and drop hints about how he came from a family of revolutionary cadres.

Human milk was a good thing, to be sure, and the peasants were entirely convinced by this explanation.

Zhongqi very early on expressed a particular interest toward him. When winter arrived, Zhongqi would produce a steaming-basket that he carried around with him everywhere when he got off work. The basket was so small it could only hold two or three burning pieces of charcoal at a time and could only be hugged by one person between the legs or against the chest, but still it was an ember that brought heat. Zhongqi had never let anyone else enjoy the use of his basket: even when women came to warm their hands, he might chortle generously but would still impose time limits and give them frequent warnings about their charcoal consumption and their massive expenditure of heat. Master Black was the lone exception to whom, with a clackety-clack of his shoes, he'd voluntarily pass the basket. Unfortunately, Master Black wasn't interested in this object, since his health was good and he'd never felt the cold; he took one look, then walked outside with a snort.

Zhongqi had weaseled out a lot of the village's secrets, none of which he'd make public just like that. At times, one sentence would be the furthest he'd go and as soon as anyone inquired any further, the smug taunts would immediately begin: "Take a guess, go on, take a guess." So no one ever got much sense out of him. Only with Master Black was he willing to share his secrets: a scrap today ("There was a pile of chicken feathers in Fucha's house yesterday"), another scrap tomorrow ("Uncle Luo tripped over on the mountain two days ago"), the day after that, in even more hushed tones, "Someone visited Shuishui's mom and brought two piglets."

Mou Jisheng had no interest in these secrets and only wanted to hear the low stuff. Zhongqi looked embarrassed, hemmed and hawed, reddened, then decided to make an offering. He mentioned the time when Fucha's mother, however many years ago it'd been, had woken up in a daze from a midday nap and discovered there was a man pressing down on her who turned out not to be Fucha's dad. But she'd been too tired and weak to resist, had lacked the will to figure out who this person was, so she shouted into the other room: "Quick, come here, third son, your granny's boiling hot! Come and tell me what this idiot's playing around at!" Her son was asleep in the other room and didn't wake. But her shout managed to frighten this hazy human form away. She turned over comfortably and continued her deep, heavy-breathing sleep.

"Is that it?" Deeply disappointed, Mou Jisheng didn't feel this secret was worth knowing either.

As I later discovered, relations between Zhongqi and Mou Jisheng gradually grew in intimacy. In the past, as soon as evening came on, Mou Jisheng would make a big fuss about turning off the lamp and going to sleep, but now, unexpectedly, he often went out alone and sometimes only returned to bed very late. When asked where he'd been, he'd go all mysterious and hedge our questions, a wrinkle of self-satisfaction between his eyebrows, then carelessly let out a burp smelling of dates or egg that would drive us wild with incredulous jealousy. He wasn't about to let us share his gourmet's luck: we'd have to beat him to death before he'd spit the truth out, this we knew full well. Our later investigations revealed that his burps were linked to Zhongqi: we discovered that Zhongqi had made glutinous rice cakes for him and that Zhongqi's wife had washed his quilt and shoes for him. We couldn't make any sense of it: Zhongqi was normally such a stingy so-and-so, he wouldn't help out just any old Wang, Li, or Zhang, so why was he sucking up to that halfwit Master Black?

One night, some time after we'd all fallen asleep, we were startled awake by a violently angry shove at the door. Lighting the oil lamp, we discovered Master Black huffing and puffing on his bed, spitting with rage.

"What's up with you?"

"I'll do him in!"

"Who?"

Not a word.

"Are you talking about Mr Agreed?"

Still not a word.

"What's he done to you?"

"Go to sleep!" Master Black rolled around on the bed plank, producing a series of loud creaks that woke everyone else up-he was the first to start snoring, though.

On the afternoon of the following day, Zhongqi's shoes were heard approaching the door, a Mao button as big as an egg flashing and glinting on his chest. "Chairman Mao says debts should be repaid. Where does it say that debts can be left unpaid in socialism?" He coughed loudly, "I won't bother the national government with unimportant matters like this: if Mou Jisheng can't pay me back in cash, grain will do as well."

Mou Jisheng rushed out: "What money do I owe you? You old fool!"

"You know what I mean."

"It was always you who invited me. I didn't beg, I didn't ask for anything, everything I ate I've shat out, so go and look in the toilet hut!"

"Comrade, you must be truthful, you must keep studying. You intellectuals shouldn't try to run before you can walk, you're still being educated by us poor and lower-middle peasants, understand? Tell you the truth, I know everything about you, Master Black, it's just I don't tell anyone. I've been kind to you so far!" Zhongqi's words contained a veiled menace.

"Talk, then! Talk!"

"Me, talk? You really want me to talk?"

"I'd give my dragon to hear you talk!"

"Okay, then. When we were planting peanuts last year, there was a shortfall in the team's planting peanuts every day-d'you think I didn't see the peanuts in your shit? A few days ago, you said you were having a wash, but what were you actually doing?…"

His face flushed scarlet, Master Black dashed forward, dragged Zhongqi outside and clanged his head against the doorframe. "He's killing me! He's killing me!" Zhongqi whimpered.

Afraid things would turn murderous, we rushed over to stay Master Black's hand, trying desperately to pry the two of them apart. Availing himself of this opportunity, Zhongqi wormed his way out from under my armpit and headed for the drying terrace, his shoes clacking away as he went.

When the sound of his cursing had faded off into the distance, we asked Mou Jisheng what had really happened.

"What happened? He wanted me to do low stuff."

"What kind of low stuff?"

"Sleep with his wife!"

There was a moment of unutterably astonished silence, before we all started cackling with laughter. One female Educated Youth ran off screaming in fright and didn't dare show her face again.

It was only later that we badgered any sense of the matter out of him, that Zhongqi was sterile, and had earmarked Master Black to do the job for him. "It must be you're special, brother Mou." "You've got to stick for your supper" (see the entry Stick[y]). "You shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth." We were enjoying ourselves enormously, determined not to let Master Black stand up for himself, determined not to let him escape the Zhongqi family bed.

"These turtle people!" He pretended not to hear.

"Who're you swearing at now? Tell us the truth: did you sleep with her?"

"Would you sleep with her? Have you seen what his wife looks like? One look at her takes your appetite away! I'd rather sleep with a pig!"

"If you don't sleep with her, will you keep eating their chickens?"

"What chickens are you talking about? They take a month to eat a chicken, one ladle of soup at a time-the bowl's empty before you've tasted anything. Just drop the subject, just talking about it makes me mad."

That afternoon in the fields, the Master Black affair became the principal topic of conversation. What surprised me was that apart from Fucha, no one else in the village thought Zhongqi had done anything wrong. Poor old Zhongqi, so set on making friends with Master Black, d'ycm think it'd been easy to keep him fed and watered? He was a sick man, he'd just wanted to borrow a seed to produce a descendant-nothing unreasonable about that. He hadn't forced Master Black to get married or anything, he'd just wanted to borrow a tiny little thing he wasn't bothered about, what was so bad about that? It was the choice of someone who had no other choice. Zhaoqing also said that in any case, whether Master Black agreed or not, he'd eaten so much it would be mean not to repay him.