"They're all blaming you, but it wasn't you who threw the firecracker."
Gela sat up gasping:
"So then who was it? You have to tell me! Was it Aga? Or the Wang Tie brothers, or loudmouth Lhowu Dongzhug's son harelip Jimi, or …"
It was a peculiar dream. Every time Gela said the name of a boy from the village, that boy's face would materialise in the space behind Bunny. As they grew in number, the faces turned nasty and began to circle around Bunny. They spoke with one voice:
"TELL ME, WHO WAS IT!"
Bunny's face grew whiter and fainter until it blew away like a sheet of paper in the wind. Gela called for his Ah-Ma. But his Ah-Ma wasn't at home; she must be at the threshing barn again. In the barn, there were piles of straw that had a special, heady fragrance—a good place for men and women to take their pleasure together. Great, gulping tears streamed down Gela's face.
Gela was an illegitimate child, and he often wondered if that was the reason he was so alone in this world. Maybe his birth was also why this horrendous injustice had fallen on his head. Precisely because of this doubt inside him, the kindness and calm smiles that used to shine so often from the faces of the two de-frocked monks had always given him a feeling of warmth, and even a kind of intimacy.
Jamcan Gonbo was already fifty when he returned to the secular world, so it is no surprise that he maintained a monkish distance from women once he was back in the village. Gela enjoyed watching the normally serene Lama's awkwardness upon encountering Gela's mother, who was the kind of woman that wore her belt loose, so to speak. As far as any good monk was concerned, this kind of woman was a she-demon, dripping with the deadliest evil. But the she-demon had no mind to seduce him or infringe on his piety, just a habit of giggling in a way that people found affecting, though her giggles really had no specific object. She also liked to mumble to herself, though as with her giggles, her chattering was always a one-sided interaction.
Gela used to secretly imagine that the de-frocked monk Enbo was his father. But Enbo was married to another woman, the lovely Ler Kymcog, and together they had their own child, Bunny—Bunny of the feeble constitution. But then, Bunny's life was whisked away by a firecracker, and as word in the village had it, that firecracker came from Gela's hand.
Gela called out for his mother, but she had gone out to the threshing barn. Moonlight entered the room, so he reached his hand out toward the window. His hand had never known the touch of a firecracker's red paper packaging, an object that made a huge noise way out of proportion to its size. But now, under the wavering moonlight, he clearly felt a firecracker, a distinct action, explode from his fingertips. He saw the dripping of blood as a sharp pain ripped apart his lungs.
Two
Ler Kymcog really was lovely, yet back when she was single, there were very few men in the village willing to marry her.
Her appeal lay in her delicate waist and porcelain complexion, but these days the people of Ji village favoured a more robust version of beauty. This new trend gave the old people something to sigh about; they said that if she had been a young woman before the People's Army came and carried out the Great Liberation, she wouldn't have lasted long in the village. She would surely have caught the eye of some chieftain or other who would have quickly married and carted her away.
But in this era, the whole village had to go to work in the fields together; no exceptions for old chieftains or headmen—hunger was an ever present and very egalitarian threat. So Ler Kymcog's ill-timed beauty came down to one question: who could afford such an indulgent taste in aesthetics in days like these?
"If someone doesn't get on with it and pick this lovely flower soon, she'll wither away" , Enbo's mother liked to sigh. She herself was once a big-eyed beauty. In fact, it was from her that Enbo got his own large eyes and thick eyebrows, which, combined with his masculine build, gave the de-frocked monk quite the dashing appearance.
When spring came, it brought new depths of concerned compassion for the young woman into the heart of Enbo's mother. One day, she commandeered Ler Kymcog and led her by the hand to Enbo, so the issue could be addressed directly.
"It would be such a pity if such a beautiful young flower like you wasn't picked by a man who deserved you," she murmured to Ler Kymcog, still holding her hand.
Actually, by that point Ler Kymcog was already heavily pregnant, as was clearly evident by how her previously tiny waist had swelled to the width of a barrel. But Enbo's poor, elderly mother didn't know that—she had cataracts and couldn't see very well.
Generally, only a very small number of Ji village women were able to keep their faculties sharp past the age of fifty; most of them were too kind-hearted to stave off old age, which took advantage of their softness and left them addled. By contrast, Ler Kymcog's nerves were as delicate as her figure, so when the old woman stroked her hand, the dry rasp of skin on skin was all the reason she needed to skittishly pull her hand back and make a dash for freedom.
The old woman stayed where she was and pricked up her ears. She could hear the receding swish of the young woman's skirt. She could also hear the wind weaving through the wheat fields, bringing with it the spring-time sound of cuckoo calls.
"What a shy girl!" she laughed.
Little did the old woman know, shy Ler Kymcog went from that short-lived intervention straight to her son's arms. She wriggled and pinched in Enbo's embrace, and said to him, through a mixed shower of sobs and laughs:
"Oh Enbo, your mother really likes me you know, why don't you just hurry up and marry me?" she implored.
Enbo's heart felt burdened, so he went to his uncle:
"Please beat me, master," he presented himself to the lama.