Frog by Mo Yan Read Free Book Online

guilty for not letting me see Gugu’s watch the night before, my brother drew one on my wrist with a fountain pen. It looked like the real thing; it was beautiful, and I took pains to keep it that way. I kept it dry when I washed my hands and covered it up in the rain. Whenever it started to fade, I borrowed my brother’s pen to add ink. It stayed on my wrist for three whole months.

6
    The man who gave Gugu the Enicar wristwatch was an air force pilot. In those days that was something to be excited about – an air force pilot! When they heard the news, my brothers and sisters croaked like an army of frogs, while I turned somersaults in the yard.
    This was a joyous event for more than our family; the elation spilled across the township. Everyone considered a pilot the perfect match for Gugu. Cook Wang from the school kitchen, who had fought in the Korean War, was of the opinion that they were made of gold. Can you make a person out of gold? I asked him, filled with doubt. In front of the teachers and the commune cadres, who were eating their dinner, he said: How stupid can you be, Xiaopao Wan? What I mean is, the cost of training an air force pilot to the nation is the equal of seventy kilograms of gold. Oh, my, Mother said when I told her what Wang had said. How in the world are we supposed to treat your new uncle when he comes to the house?
    We youngsters spread all sorts of fanciful talk about pilots. Chen Bi said his mother had seen a Soviet pilot when she lived in Harbin. They wore deerskin jackets, high-topped leather boots, had gold inlays in their mouths, wore gold wristwatches, ate black bread and sausage, and drank beer. Xiao Xiachun (Lower Lip, the characters later changed to summer and spring), son of Xiao Shangchun (Upper Lip), the granary watchman, said that China’s pilots ate better than their Soviet counterparts, and even created a menu, as if he were going to cook for them. Breakfast: two eggs, milk, four oily fritters, two steamed buns, and a chunk of pickled tofu. Lunch: braised pork, a whole croaker, and two large corn cakes. Dinner: roasted chicken, two pork buns, two mutton buns, and a bowl of millet congee. Fruit, of course, after each meal: bananas, apples, pears, grapes . . . whatever they couldn’t eat they could take home. Pilots’ leather jackets had two large pockets. What for? For carrying fruit. What people said about the pilots made us drool. We all dreamed of one day becoming air force pilots and living a magical life.
    When the air force announced that they were coming to our county’s Number One High School to recruit pilots, my eldest brother signed up excitedly. Our great granddad had worked as a landlord’s hired hand, was a tenant farmer, and served the People’s Liberation Army as a stretcher-bearer. He’d fought in the battle of Mengliang Mesa and was one of those who’d carried the body of Zhang Lingfu down the mountain. My maternal grandmother’s family was also dirt poor. Add to all that the fact that my great granddad was a revolutionary martyr, and our family background and social status were above reproach. One day my brother, who was a high school sports star, a discus thrower, came home for lunch and feasted on a fat lamb’s tail. Back at school that afternoon, he had energy to burn, so he picked up a discus and flung it over the school wall into the field beyond. It so happened that the farmer was ploughing his field at that moment, and the discus hit his water buffalo’s horn, slicing it off. All this is to say that my brother’s background was unimpeachable, his grades in school were excellent, he was especially fit, and his aunt was going to marry an air force pilot. Everyone naturally assumed that even if they only picked one candidate from our county, it would surely be him. He wasn’t chosen. The reason: a scar on his leg from a childhood boil. Our school cook told us that scars were immediate disqualifiers, because the pressure of high-altitude