The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan Page A

watch her parents at work.
    Having cried himself hoarse, Little Treasure could only sob, a hollow, listless sound. The grime on his body turned to greasy mudballs in the murky water.
    â€˜Bring me a washing gourd and a piece of soap,’ the man said.
    The woman fetched the items from behind the stove. ‘You hold him,’ Jin Yuanbao said, ‘while I scrub.’
    The woman and Yuanbao changed places.
    Yuanbao dipped the washing gourd first in the water, then in the soap dish, and began scrubbing the boy, his neck and his bottom, and everything in between, including even the spaces between his fingers. Covered with soap bubbles, Treasure cried out in pain; the room was suffused with a strange, offensive odor.
    â€˜Treasure’s daddy, not so rough. Don’t break the skin.’
    â€˜He’s not made of paper,’ Yuanbao said. ‘His skin’s tougher than that! You don’t know how cunning those inspectors are. They even probe the assholes, and if they find any grime, they lower their appraisal by one grade. Each grade is worth more than ten yuan.’
    Finally, the bath was finished, and Yuanbao held Little Treasure while the woman dried him off. His skin glowed red in the lamplight and gave off a pleasant, meaty smell. The woman fetched a new suit of clothes and took the boy from his father. Little Treasure began a new search for the breast, which his mother gave him.
    Yuanbao dried his hands and filled his pipe with tobacco. After lighting it with the lantern and blowing out a mouthful of smoke, he said:
    I’m soaked with sweat, thanks to this little brat.’
    Little Treasure fell asleep, holding the nipple in his mouth. His mother held on to him, reluctant to let go.
    â€˜Give him to me.’ Yuanbao said. 'I've got a long way to go this morning.’
    The woman slipped the nipple out of the boy’s mouth, which twitched as if the nipple were still in it.
    Jin Yuanbao picked up the paper lantern with one hand, his sleeping son with the other, and went out into the lane, which led to the village’s main street. While walking down the lane, he could feel a pair of eyes on his back from the door, and that caused him much emotional distress; but once he was out on the street, the feeling disappeared without a trace.
    The moon was still out, turning the blacktop gray. Roadside poplars, their branches bare, looked like gaunt standing men, the tips pale and ghostly. He shivered. The lantern cast a warm, yellow glow, its flickering shadow looming large on the surface of the road. He sniffled as he looked at the waxen tear running down the wick. A dog alongside someone’s wall barked languidly; he looked down at the dog’s shadow, sharing the sense of languor as he heard it scurry noisily into a haystack. When he left the village, he heard crying children, and looked up to see lights burning in the windows of peasant huts; he knew they were doing what he and his wife had done a while earlier. Knowing he’d gotten the jump on them lightened his mood a bit.
    As he neared the Earth God Temple on the village outskirts, he took a packet of spirit money out of his pocket, lit it with the lantern, and laid it in a cauldron by the temple door. The flames licked up through the paper like coiling snakes. He looked inside the temple, where the Earth God himself sat for all time, a spirit-wife seated on either side; all three had icy smiles on their faces. The Earth God and his wives had been fashioned by Stonemason Wang, black stone for him, white for his wives. The Earth God was larger than both his wives put together, like an adult between two children. Thanks to the inadequate skills of Stonemason Wang, all three were ugly as could be. In the summer, owing to a leaky roof, moss grew on the statues, leaving a green, oily sheen. As the spirit money burned, the charred paper curled inward like white butterflies, and scarlet-tipped flames shimmered around the edges before dying