The Real Story of Ah-Q Read Free Page B

sh
as in she
    z:
ds
as in folds
    zh:
j
as in job

NOSTALGIA
     
    A green parasol tree, around thirty feet high, towered outside the gate to the family home, every year hanging heavy with large clusters of nuts. Hoping to bring them down, children would hurl stones into the branches, the occasional missile sailing through the canopy to land on my desk, at which point my teacher – whom I respectfully knew as Mr Bald – would stride out to give those responsible a scolding. A clear foot in diameter, the leaves would wilt in the summer sun before springing back – like a fist opening out – in the resuscitating night air. At this point in the day, after drawing water to scatter over the overheated ground, our family’s old gatekeeper, Wang, might gather up a battered old stool and head off with his pipe to swap stories with my amah, Li. And there they would sit and chat, deep into the night, the darkness interrupted only by sparks from his pipe.
    While they were out there enjoying the cool of one particular evening, I remember, my teacher was enlightening me on the principles of verse composition – my task being to come up with a poetic match to a given subject. To his ‘Red Flower’, I tried ‘Green Tree’. Objecting that the tonal patterns were not consonant, he told me to go back to my seat and think again. Not yet nine years old at the time, I had not a clue what tonal patterns were; but since my teacher did not seem about to share his mature wisdom with me, I returned to my desk. After a long, fruitless ponder, I very slowly opened out my fist and slapped it resonantly against my thigh, as if I had swatted a mosquito, hoping to communicate to my instructor the extent of my mental discomfort, but he continued to take no notice. On and on I sat, until he at last drawled that I should approach – which I smartly did. He then wrote down the characters for Green Grass. ‘ “Red” and “flower” are level tones,’ he explained, ‘while “green” is falling and “grass” rising. Dismissed.’ I was bounding through the door before the word was out of his mouth. ‘No hopping and skipping about!’ he drawled again. I carried on my way, although more sedately.
    The parasol tree was out of bounds. In the past, whenever I had made for Wang, badgering him for stories of the mountain people, my teacher (who, I may have already mentioned, was bald) would follow close on my heels. ‘Wicked child, stop wasting time!’ he would glower. ‘Had your supper? Then go back inside and finish your homework.’ A moment’s hesitation would bring his ruler down, hard, on my head the next day: ‘Wicked, lazy, stupid boy!’ Since my teacher was fond of settling scores in the classroom, in time I chose to avoid the tree. Experience had taught me that the next day would bring me little joy, unless it was a holiday. If only I could fall ill of a morning, then recover of an afternoon, thereby winning myself a half-day’s reprieve; or if my teacher could sicken and – ideally – die. But if neither of these optimal outcomes resulted, I would have no choice but to return to Confucius the following morning.
    And there I found myself, the next day, suffering another lecture on
The Analects
, my teacher’s head swinging from side to side as he glossed each and every word. He was so shortsighted he was almost kissing the book, as if he wanted to gobble it up. I was always being accused of not looking after my books: of leaving them in a state of disastrous disrepair less than half a chapter in. Well, they didn’t stand a chance with my snorting, dribbling teacher – their chief instrument of destruction – blurring and mangling the pages far more efficiently than I ever could. ‘Confucius says,’ he was saying, ‘that at sixty his ears were obedient to the truth – that’s “ear” as in ear that you hear with. By seventy, he could achieve his heart’s desire without breaking the bounds of social morality…’ The