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cigarettes swimming in his adversary's piss. After Lao Lan tossed down his money, the peddlers and butchers followed his lead, sympathetic looks on their faces, as if we were father-and-son beggars who deserved their pity. They tossed down double the usual amount, which might have been a reward for not resisting or an attempt to copy Lao Lan's generosity. As I stared at those notes, fallen at our feet like so many dead leaves, I began to cry, and at long last Father looked up. There was no sign of anger on his face, nor of sadness, nothing but the lustre of a dried-out piece of wood. As he gazed at me coldly, a look of perplexity began to show in his eyes, as if he had no idea why I was crying. I reached out and clawed at his neck. ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘you're no longer my father. I'll call Lao Lan Dieh before I ever call you that again!’ Momentarily stunned by my shouts, the men burst out laughing. Lao Lan gave me a thumbs-up. ‘Xiaotong’,’ he said, ‘you're really something, just what I need, a son. From now on, you're welcome at my house any time. If it's pork you want, that's what you'll get, and if it's beef, you'll have that too. And if you bring your mamma along, I'll welcome you both with open arms.’ That was too great an insult to ignore and I rushed at him angrily. He swiftly sidestepped my charge and I wound up face down on the ground with a cut and bleeding lip. ‘You little prick,’ he said, guffawing loudly, ‘attacking me after calling me Dieh! Who in his right mind would want a son like you?’ Since no one offered to help me up, I had to get to my feet on my own. I walked over to my father and kicked him in the shin to vent my disappointment. Not only did that not make him angry, he wasn't even aware of what I'd done. He just rubbed his face with his large, soft hands, stretched his arms, yawned like a lazy tomcat, looked down at the ground and then, slowly, conscientiously, carefully picked up the notes steeping in Lao Lan's piss, holding each one up to the light, as if to make sure it wasn't counterfeit. Finally, he picked up the new note from Lao Lan that had been splashed with piss and dried it on his pants. Now that the money was stacked neatly on his knees, he picked it up with the middle two fingers of his left hand, spat on the thumb and forefinger of his right and began to count it. I ran up to grab it, wanting to tear the notes to shreds and fling the pieces into the air (of course I'd fling them in Lao Lan's face), to avenge our humiliation. But he was too fast for me. Jumping to his feet, he held his hand high in the air. ‘You foolish boy,’ he muttered, ‘what do you think you're doing? Money's money—it's not to blame, people are. Don't take your anger out on money.’ Grabbing his elbow, I tried to claw my way up his body and rip that shameful money out of his hand. But I didn't stand a chance, not with a full-grown man. I was so angry then that I rammed my head into his hip, over and over, but he just patted me kindly on the head and said: ‘That's enough now, son, don't get carried away. Look, over there, Lao Lan's bull. It's getting angry.’

    It was a big, fat, tawny Luxi bull with straight horns and a hide like satin stretched over its rippling muscles, the kind I'd see later on athletes on TV. It was a golden yellow, all but its face, which, surprisingly, was white. I'd never seen a white-faced bull. Castrated, the way it looked at you out of the corner of one of its red eyes was enough to make your hair stand on end. Now that I think back, that's probably the look people describe when they talk about eunuchs. Castration changes a man's nature; it does the same with bulls. By pointing to the bull, Father made me forget about the money, at least for the moment. I turned in time to see Lao Lan swagger out of the square, leading his bull. Why not swagger, after the way he'd humiliated my non-resisting father? His prestige in the village and among the cattle-peddlers had