Translated from the Chinese by Chen Zeping and Karen Gernant

Note from the author:

This story comprises seven parts that have neither sequential relationship nor any other logical relationship. In other words, you are free to establish any logical relationship you want. All you need to do is arrange the seven pieces of text as you please (you may even do it with your eyes). A total of 5040 sorting methods (7×6×5×4×3×2×1) was calculated. Below, what you’ll read is one of the 5040 possibilities. The game begins.

[   ]

I didn’t know yet what my father thought of this. Or rather, I did know—he didnt know what to do. He was the one who called me. He said, “He’s going to marry that woman. He wants a wedding banquet. You need to hurry back here.” My problem was, until I could figure out what I should do, I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. For example, what should I say to my supervisor, Director Zhang?

Director Zhang is a middle-aged man who has had hemorrhoids for a long time, yet he has a ruddy face with pink lips and white teeth. Besides endlessly reading newspapers (actually, that was in the old days; now he plays virtual poker on the computer, but for some reason, I still felt he was reading newspapers), the only thing he did every day was sit across from me and occasionally wiggle to make me understand how much his butt hurt. My job was roughly the same, but I didn’t wiggle my butt, because I didn’t have hemorrhoids. I liked to stand up and walk a little, and this might be why I didn’t have hemorrhoids. I didn’t go far. I walked along the hallway outside the office, passing by several , to the bathroom at the end of the hall to urinate a little. That day, I didn’t drop in at the accounting office to flirt with Ms. Wang Li as usual. I didn’t even wash my hands on my way out of the bathroom. I felt the wind in the hallway vaporizing the urine remaining between my fingers.

I went back to my office and sat down in front of Director Zhang.

“Director Zhang,” I said, “I have to take three days off.”

“Oh?” he finally raised his eyes to look at me. “Why?”

“Family affairs.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing serious.” I sucked in a little air from the corners of my mouth. “My grandfather died,” I said calmly.

[   ]

When I was in my second year of junior high school, one day in early summer, I had a severe stomachache. Father took me to the township clinic, where I was diagnosed with acute appendicitis by a barefoot doctor named Chen. The barefoot doctors knew more than people thought, and they were experienced. As it turned out, Dr. Chen’s diagnosis was correct. I had to stay in the clinic for the surgery that was also performed by Dr. Chen. He was the best surgeon in the township clinic, and he had cut out countless appendixes. Or we could say, appendixes were all over his medical career, some of them rotting and stinky at the roadside. More were inflamed and swollen inside people’s bellies. Mine was one of the latter.

Before the operation, holding a knife in his hand, Dr. Chen told me to lie down on the bed and motioned for me to take off my pants. I was scared, but I knew doctors always have good reasons for what they tell patients to do. Luckily, he didn’t cut off my penis as I imagined he might. He merely shaved off my pubic hair that had just grown out. Those hairs were very tender and lighter in color, like the first harvest leek.

Father witnessed the soft yellow hairs falling all over the sheet. At that time, Father—even though I was his own—had had no idea about this new circumstance inside my pants. In his mind, my penis should always be the way it was the last time I wore open pants, tiny and bare. What he saw now was so strange that he was frightened and bewildered. Father was a weak, pitiful man, and his expression at the moment was indescribable. I felt bad, too, as if I’d been doing something awful behind his back and lying to him ever since I no longer wore open pants. I had come to understand that the relationship between father and son is basically one of deceiving each other.

When it was done, Dr. Chen twiddled my penis with a gloved finger, and puckered up his mouth and blew twice to make sure that all the hairs had been shaved off. Then he walked out of the room with a sigh of satisfaction. Not knowing what to say, I turned my face to the wall. I heard Father approaching. I was nervous for fear he would say something. Whether his speech was long or just one syllable, it would be unbearable. Luckily, he didn’t say anything. He just flapped the sheet to get rid of the public hair. This caused the bed to vibrate and made me dizzy. Without looking back, I pushed him away with one hand. I felt him reel from my push. It was probably the first time I had ever used my strength against him, and that made me sad. I hoped he would be angry. He wasn’t, and he didn’t flap the sheet again. This hurt me even more.

My grandmother died young, early enough that I grew up thinking that there was no such thing as a grandmother. After Grandma died, my grandfather moved out of the village. He leased a fish pond and lived alone in the red brick hut at the end of the fish pond. He was not only self-sufficient, but also had some spare money every year. Besides giving some to his son and grandson, he occasionally spent money on women who came from who knows where. The fish pond was very large, and his hut was far away from the village, so we couldn’t see what he was doing out there, except for sometimes seeing female figures appear at the other end of the pond. I don’t know how Grandfather found out about my appendectomy. Anyway, he showed up without delay. He handed the fish to his son—my father—and then came to my bed. Noticing the remains of my pubic hair on the sheet, he picked one up and asked, “Is this what I think it is?” My father pointed at me and told him, “Yes, it’s his cock hair.” Because he hadn’t spoken for a long time, Father’s voice sounded strange, short of breath, choked by phlegm, and contorted as if he were crying. My grandfather was clearly unprepared for this information, but in a split second he realized that I was nearly old enough to give him a family of four generations.

[   ]

Yes, there he was. I couldn’t mistake his bald head, the two locks of long hair that encircled his bald pate, and the black leather bag that was tucked between his legs. I walked over and stood next to him. Soon the bus arrived at his stop. He glanced at me, and I caught his eye. He stood up, and I watched his butt leave the seat. Then I sat down, feeling the warmth he left behind. Before closing my eyes, I looked through the window and saw that he leapt directly onto the sidewalk, instead of stepping down on the ground first. This movement didn’t match his image. Jumping caused his long hair to hang down, and he had to push it back with one hand. Sometimes, I thought he might not have gotten off the bus so soon if I hadn’t stood beside him and caught his eye. In short, we had been friends for many years without exchanging one word. I should thank him for letting me enjoy my wonderful nightlife of watching TV and making love to Zhu Ping.

My life changed dramatically after my divorce. I no longer needed that half hour of sleep after work, and so I didn’t need to nab a seat on the bus—I’d been sitting all day in the office. I gradually forgot the bald brother, and I didn’t even know if he was still taking the bus or not, until the other day I came across him in a steamed bun shop (after my divorce, I was too lazy to cook). This shop was famous for making the best baozi in town and there was always a long line of people waiting. I hadn’t noticed the bald brother in line ahead of me, and when he bought the baozi and headed out, we exchanged a quick glance. He froze and tried to muster a smile, but then walked straight past me to a car on the side of the road. As he opened the door, I saw a young woman in the passenger seat.

There were many other changes after I divorced Zhu Ping. For example, I was attracted by all kinds of TV shows, and never again fell asleep while watching. I was even attracted to the boring commercials, especially when I saw the old traditional medicine experts, wearing white gowns and reading glasses, passionately sharing their knowledge about life, longevity, and health, as if no one in their families had ever died. They reminded me of my grandfather. On the shows promoting health products, there were always some middle-aged or older women wearing pink turtlenecks, with fluffy hair and sagging breasts. Their performances were not as exaggerated as those of the young girls on the variety shows, but their joy was also impressive when the old experts magically cured their spouses. I often wondered: if those women came across the old experts to whom they were so grateful, would they dedicate themselves to these experts?

[   ]

The peasants were probably too careless to pull up the heels after putting on the cloth shoes. And so even new shoes quickly turned into slippers, and they couldn’t afford socks. In other words, my grandfather was actually locking his eyes on his parents’ naked heels. This created an inflection point in his fate.

[   ]

The dock area was packed with stalls selling insoles, panties, socks, pots and pans, and cooked eggs. It was said that there were also whores. But I didn’t have money and I was too young for that, so I didn’t know much about that.

People pushed and shoved as they got on and off the boat. I don’t know why people had to push each other out of the way, just the way it is now with the bus. History has proven time and again that everyone always gets on board eventually, but people didn’t seem to think like this. They just had to push.

I remember one time a guy was pushed off the boat. He didn’t fall on the dock, but fell into the river. Someone threw him a colorful life buoy, but he didn’t catch it, and soon disappeared in the big whirlpool that the boat churned up as it reached shore. Someone said he was smashed by the propeller, and some others said his body floated out to sea. Anyway, he disappeared.

[   ]

Director Zhang met my grandfather and my parents when Zhu Ping and I got married.

Afterward, Director Zhang said to me

“Your grandfather is a very healthy man. He drank a lot.” He said, “Why didn’t I see your dad there?”

“My dad? He was there, too. Maybe you didn’t notice.”

“I see.”

“That’s right.”

It was just small talk.

If there was any kind of friendship between Director Zhang and me, it was quite superficial—we often attended banquets together, and went to KTV clubs afterward. Sometimes, we went to a spa, and occasionally we even went whoring at a bath.

[   ]

It doesn’t matter what your last name is. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a purebred or a bastard. It doesn’t matter whether you know who your biological parents are. If the theory of evolution is correct, my existence had proven at least one thing: that all my ancestors from single-celled organisms on down to me were one unbroken line. We all came from wombs, either by natural birth or by C-section. No one jumped out from a crack in the rocks.

I heard that my ex-wife, Zhu Ping, not only remarried, but the child she and her husband had was already a year old. She and I had been married for two years, but she had never been pregnant. Does that mean that I’m infertile? If this is true, does it mean that my evolutionary chain is going to end with me? Is it because of the law of survival of the fittest? Or because I was being punished for some kind of religious sin? I had never thought about this before another man made Zhu Ping pregnant.

Okay, now the question is: Is my eighty-year-old grandfather still fertile? Does he still want children? Let’s discuss his desire first. For years, he has resented my father and me, and he’s been bitter about my grandmother’s untimely death. He’s been sneaking women into his isolated hut, and now he’s about to marry an out-of-town woman in her forties. My grandfather gives every indication that he still has the desire. Then, what about his fertility? Hard to tell. We can only speculate theoretically. Everybody could see his remarkable physical condition: at the age of eighty, he was taking care of a fish pond, taking care of his own daily life, eating and drinking a lot, and talking loudly.

Ninety-six-year-old Ramjeet Raghav in India has become the world’s oldest father for the second time. Ramjeet Raghav achieved this distinction two years ago. When he was 94, his wife gave birth to his first son, Kalamjeet. Despite vowing that just one would be enough for him, the pensioner and his wife Shakuntara, 54, welcomed a second son, Ranjeet, in September.

I wasn’t sure that my grandfather could be like Ramjeet Raghav, but on the eve of my grandfather’s wedding, I have to state that I have no objection, nor any fear, if a new line of my family emerges.