The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers by Anton Piatigorsky

shock waves up her legs, the months of immobility and subsequent tender steps, and even her wretched and putrid feet when finally unwrapped—the way they glistened with pus in the candlelight—she must also recall her grandmother’s whispered reminders about marriage and
yuan fang
, about this night, this very rite. Her grandmother’s soothing voice accompanying the terrible sting of the washcloth, the bite of tighter wrapping, the extended agony. “Marriage is the purpose of your life.” This rite of
yuan fang
. Everything must be buried away beneath this rite. And then she will have sons. Even the infuriating scratch in her chest, the first tickling of the tuberculosis that will leave her dead in two years, her insatiable need to cough as she lies on her husband’s bed, is suppressed beneath her fierce need to complete the rite, as it has been all day. One does not cough in the sedan. One does not cough in the tea ceremony. One does not coughin
yuan fang
. There is no question about that. The pain in her chest is nothing compared with the agony she feels from the complete and total inaction of the boy lying beside her.
    An agony that won’t abate for the young bride tonight.
    The rice paddies of Shaoshan valley are flooded for planting season. Tse-tung has hidden himself on a knoll, in the cool shade of a pine tree, near the old tomb wall. His conical hat and a half-empty sack of young rice shoots rest beside him.
    He has been reading and rereading a section of
Water Margin
, his favourite novel, under this tree for an hour. In it, the novel’s hero, Sung Chiang, kills his evil blackmailing wife Yan Poxi. Tse-tung has been imagining himself as that noble head clerk, wearing long silk robes, charging through the governor’s
yamen
on important business—the kind of man who doesn’t let a woman manipulate or corner him. After killing Yan Poxi, who’s been threatening to expose his growing relationship with the rebel factions, the hero retreats into the mountains and joins the fabled bandits at Liang Shan Po. Tse-tung admires how Sung Chiang smiles at his enemies and pledges allegiance to the authorities—but when cornered, proves quite adept at double-crossing them. He never has a wrong instinct. Tse-tung decides that he too will be fierce against injustice, generous to a fault, and the model of filial piety.
    His gently floating fantasy snags on the barb of reality. He is incapable of filial piety. Neither Sung Chiang nor Tseng Kuo-fan, another of Tse-tung’s heroes, the great Hunaneseleader who defeated the Taiping rebels and established a new Confucian orthodoxy, would ever have refused
their
fathers. Both of them would have performed
yuan fang
with woman Luo. All the helium of the boy’s fantasy escapes through this rough tear, leaving him deflated and limp.
    His bowels rumble and he grimaces in discomfort, shifting his weight so he can release a loud fart. The smell is acrid and sharp, product of a troubled body. He can’t go on like this, with so much stomach trouble, nausea, exhaustion, and weight loss. He’s passed three endless nights without sleep, unnamed woman Luo lying beside him, her legs parted, ready for
yuan fang
. Three nights with only an hour or two of rest. His temples are throbbing and there’s a dull ache in his legs.
    Now Tse-tung recalls his father’s vicious goading at the dinner table. “Why don’t you stick her? Look, she’s very pretty. It’s not like we married you to a plowing ox. It’s your duty to make her bleed.” After getting no response, his father turned his wrath on woman Luo, who sat curled over her rice, unable to look at anyone directly in her state of constant humiliation. “Make yourself pretty, woman. Smile at the boy. Why don’t you show him what you’ve got? You’re not married without
yuan fang
. It’s your duty to produce a son.”
    A patch of dark cloud passes overhead, dulling the midday light. Thunder rumbles in the distance. Tse-tung studies the