Frog by Mo Yan

Author:Mo Yan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780857979322
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-10-22T04:00:00+00:00

8

For days on end it was cloudy and drizzly; the roads were disrupted, keeping the buyers of our local peaches from getting through. Every family had picked fruit. Some went into baskets that piled up like a little mountain, keeping the rain off with plastic cloths, some were just stacked willy-nilly in the yard so the rain could do its damage. Peaches do not keep well; in previous years, the trucks had driven right into the groves, where the fruit was picked, weighed and loaded straight onto the trucks. The drivers didn’t mind working all night so they could get on the road at first light and make deliveries many miles away. This year the heavens seemed to have decided to punish people who had enjoyed a succession of fine harvests by putting an end to clear days when the fruit ripened. With a series of heavy rains, moderate rains and drizzles, if the people chose not to pick the fruit, it rotted on the trees. If they did pick it, there was a glimmer of hope in waiting for the skies to clear, so the trucks could drive in and load up. But there were no signs of clearing on this day.

Our family only had thirty trees. Because Father was getting old, the trees were not well tended, yet they produced a modest harvest of nearly six thousand jin. We only filled sixteen baskets, due to a shortage of baskets, which we stored in a side room. The rest we simply laid out in the yard and covered with plastic cloth. Father kept going out in the rain to lift a corner of the cloth and check the peaches. And each time the cloth was raised our noses were hit by the smell of rotting fruit.

As Little Lion and I were newly married, my daughter stayed with Father. She ran after him every time he went out into the rain, carrying a little umbrella with animals printed on it.

She treated us with cool courtesy. She held her hands behind her back when Little Lion offered her sweets, but said, Thank you, Gugu.

Call her Mama, I said.

She glared at me, shocked.

She doesn’t have to, she doesn’t have to call me anything like that. People call me Little Lion – she pointed to the lion on her umbrella – so you can call me Big Lion.

Do you eat children? my daughter asked.

No, I don’t eat children, Little Lion answered her. I protect them.

Father brought in some overripe peaches in his conical hat and peeled them with a rusty knife. He sighed.

Might as well eat the good ones, I said.

But these are money, Father said. The heavens don’t care about us common folk.

Dad – this was the first time Little Lion had called him that, and it felt awkward – the government won’t just stand by. They’ll come up with something.

All the government knows is family planning, Father said with obvious resentment. Nothing else interests them.

The village committee loudspeaker sounded just then. Worried that he might miss something, Father ran into the yard to listen carefully.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.