Lin and Manna were at their wits' end, since nobody knew what to do about the babies' nervous disorder. A cook suggested they give the twins some mashed garlic. They told him that the babies were too young for that. Besides, garlic mainly works as an antibiotic, and the bacteria in the babies' intestines had been eliminated.

Then Hua came one evening and told her father, "Mother said you should feed them some mashed taro mixed with white sugar and egg yolk."

"How come she's so sure it will work?" Lin asked. Manna moved closer, listening intently.

"Mother said it helped me once," Hua answered. " When I was five and had dysentery, Mother made me drink a lot of herb decoction, but it didn't cure the disease. Our neighbors thought I was dying and couldn't be saved. Uncle Bensheng ran to Wujia Town and got the recipe from an old doctor."

"How do you cook the egg yolk?" Manna broke in.

"Just hard-boil the eggs."

Though still doubtful, without delay Lin bought five pounds of taros from a vegetable shop and prepared the folk remedy. The twins enjoyed eating the mashed taro, opening their mouths like baby swallows receiving food from the mother bird. To everyone's amazement, that very night the babies stopped defecating. Within two days they began to urinate normally. Many doctors and nurses harbored misgivings about folk remedies, but this time everybody was impressed.

At long last the twins were cured, and Lin was possessed by a new, mysterious emotion, which occasionally brought tears to his eyes. He felt the babies had almost become a part of himself. The week before, he had read in Heilongjiang Daily that a retired clerk had donated a kidney to his son. These days Lin kept asking himself whether he could do the same for his children.

10

Along with their dysentery, the babies' nightly wakefulness was also cured. Now they would go to sleep early in the evening and remain peaceful until daybreak. Even when they were given the bottle at midnight and when their father changed their diapers, they would make no noise. Their normal sleep made it possible for their parents to spend some time together in the evening. After the babies fell asleep, Lin and Manna often lounged on the sofa, chatting or watching news or a movie on TV. At last they could enjoy a little peace.

One evening in late November there was a featured report on TV entitled "To Get Rich Is Glorious," which showed how some people in the South had responded to the Party's call and grown affluent. A young man had bought dried mushrooms and ginseng roots from Manchuria and sold them in Fujian Province at higher prices, and within five years he owned seven stores in different cities. An engineer had quit his regular job and made a fortune by running two chicken farms, which employed 130 hands. A middle-aged woman had opened a clothing shop just three years ago, but now she had become a local magnate and had hired sixty workers to make fashionable garments in her shop. At the last Spring Festival she donated ten thousand yuan to an elementary school, so she was admitted into the Communist Party and elected a model citizen. Every one of these entrepreneurs became a legendary figure. A few years ago their ways of making money had been illegal, but now the nouveaux riches were held up as examples for the masses to follow.

Manna was grating turnips over a terra-cotta basin, while Lin, never interested in making money, was reading a back issue of Popular Medicine, fascinated by an article about a folk way of getting rid of kidney stones. As he was wondering why sesame oil and walnuts were prescribed in the recipe, the woman reporter announced on TV, "Now we have another rich man, from Feidong County, Anhui Province. Comrade Geng Yang."

At the mention of that name, Manna let out a moan and dropped the steel grater into the basin. Lin turned his head and asked, "What's wrong?"

She didn't respond, her eyes riveted on the TV screen. He turned and saw Geng Yang's face growing larger and closer. It was almost the same as eleven years before, sallow and long, only less stern and marked with a few wrinkles. Geng Yang had some gray hair now, but he was bulkier and darker, a picture of health.

The young reporter asked him, "Are you the richest man in Fei-dong County?"

He beamed, licking his upper lip. "Well, I never thought I could get rich. I owe it entirely to our Party's great policy." Behind him a crane was hoisting a load of bricks onto a building under construction. Three clusters of white sparks were radiating from welding torches in the air. Somewhere a steam hammer was clanking rhythmically.

"How much did you make last year?" The woman raised the microphone close to his mouth.

"Twenty thousand yuan."

"Wow, that's about twenty times the amount you pay a worker. How come you made so much?"

His eyes flickered as though fireflies were flitting in his pupils. Manna recognized the same lustful look in those eyes. "Well," he said, "this construction company used to lose money all the time. Three years ago they set up a new policy: Whoever managed this company would get ten percent of its profit; but if the company lost money again, the manager would have to pay three percent of the loss out of his own pocket. Nobody would take the risk of steering such a sinking boat. I was the daredevil that stepped in to try." He tipped his head back and gave a hearty laugh.

"How did you make this company profitable within a year?"

"By strengthening discipline and order, by rewarding and punishing the workers fairly and strictly. Everyone here must do his job efficiently, or else we'll dock a certain amount from his wages. Now the company is organized like an army unit – a battalion, I should say. Each team must carry out its task on time, and I hold its leaders responsible for any delay and sloppy work."

"How about this year? How much profit do you expect to get personally?"

"Probably twenty-three thousand."

"So you're having another banner year?"

"Yes. "

"Thank you, Manager Geng."

As the camera panned away from Geng Yang to a roaring bulldozer on the construction site, Manna burst out sobbing, wiping her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt. Meanwhile Lin was flabbergasted at Geng Yang's appearance on TV. How could that devil be doing so well? So full of vitality? Enjoying so much fortune and publicity? No wonder Honggan had called him a lucky dog at their wedding last winter.

Lin got to his feet and went over to Manna as she was screaming, " It's unfair, unfair!"

"Shh, don't wake up the babies." He sat down beside her, removed the half-grated turnip from her hand and put it into the basin. He held her hand, lifted it up, and pressed it against his cheek. Her fingers were still wet and flecked with bits of turnip, giving off a pungent smell.

"How come an evil man like him can get rich and famous so easily?" she asked. "The Lord of Heaven has no eyes!"

Lin sighed, shaking his head. "Life's always like this, ridiculous – a monster thrives for a thousand years, while the good suffer and die before their time."

"How I'm scared of him!" she moaned in tears.

He turned and embraced her, whispering, "Don't be scared. He's not here. I won't let him hurt you."

Gently he twisted the tip of her ear to calm her down, as though she were a little girl who had just come in from a pitch-black night. He went on murmuring, "Don't be scared." She put her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.

His words and the warmth of his body invoked in her the old overpowering pain that had arisen from the absence of consolation during the first days after the rape eleven years before, so now she simply couldn't stop crying, holding him tight and whimpering incoherently. Something in her chest snapped as tears flowed out of her eyes. It was so good to have a trustworthy friend in whose arms she could cry without feeling embarrassed, without being afraid of the kind of ridicule unleashed by the hostile world, without worrying about becoming the target of endless gossip and mockery, and without having to say, "Forgive me." For the first time she was weeping with abandon, like a child. Her tears soaked the front of his woolen vest. Her thick hair kept touching his chin. He grew tearful too and stroked the nape of her neck.