Free The Bridegroom by Ha Jin Page A

and glum, said to a man, “Give him a shot, not too strong.”
    From a range of five feet a dart was fired into Huping’s right buttock.
    “Ow!” he cried.
    A few men assembled under the elm to catch him, but he didn’t fall. As the drug began affecting him, he turned to embrace the tree trunk and began descending slowly. A moment later the men grabbed his arms and legs and carried him away.
    One of them said, “He’s so hot. Must be running a fever.”
    “Phew! Smelly!” said another.
    Now that our hero was gone, what could we do? At last it began to sink in that the tiger was too fierce for any man to tackle. Somebody suggested having the beast gelded so as to bring the animal closer to the human level. We gave a thought to that and even talked to a pig castrator, but he didn’t trust tranquilizers and wouldn’t do the job unless the tiger was tied up. Somehow the Choice Herb Store heard about our situation and sent an old pharmacist over to buy the tiger’s testicles, which the man said were a sought-after remedy for impotence and premature ejaculation. In his words, “They give you a tiger’s spirit and energy.”
    But finally realizing that the crux of our problem was the hero, not the tiger, we decided against castrating the animal. Without a man who physically resembled Huping, we could get nowhere, even with a tamed tiger. Then someone suggested that we find a tiger skin and have it worn by a man. In other words, shoot the last part of the scene with a fake animal. This seemed feasible, but I had my doubts. As the set clerk, whose job it is to make sure that all the details match those in the previous shooting, I thought that we couldn’t possibly get a skin identical to the real tiger’s. After I expressed my misgivings, people fell silent for a long time.
    Finally Director Yu said, “Why don’t we have the tiger put down and use its skin?”
    “Maybe we should do that,” agreed Old Min, who was also in the series, playing a bad official.
    Secretary Feng was uncertain whether Huping could still fill his role. Director Yu assured him, saying, “That shouldn’t be a problem. Is he still a man if he can’t even fight a dead tiger?”
    People cracked up.
    Then it occurred to us that the tiger was a protected animal and that we might get into trouble with the law if we had it killed. Director Yu told us not to worry. He was going to talk with a friend of his in the Municipal Administration.
    Old Min agreed to wear the tiger’s skin and fight with Huping. He was good at this kind of horseplay.
    Two days later, our plan was approved. So we had the tiger shot by a militiaman with a semiautomatic rifle. The man had been instructed not to damage the animal’s head, so he aimed at its chest. He fired six shots into the tiger, but it simply refused to die—it sat on its haunches, panting, its tongue hanging out of the corner of its mouth while blood streamed down its front legs. Its eyes were half closed, as though it were sleepy. Even when it had finally fallen down, people waited for some time before opening the cage.
    To stay clear of anybody who might be involved with the black market, we sold the whole carcass to the state-owned Red Arrow Pharmaceutical Factory for forty-eight hundred yuan, a little more than we had paid for the live tiger. But that same evening we got a call from the manager of the factory, who complained that one of the tiger’s hind legs was missing. We assured him that when the carcass left our company, it was intact. Apparently en route someone had hacked off the leg to get a piece of tiger bone, which is a kind of treasure in Chinese medicine, often used to strengthen the physique, relieve rheumatic pains, and ease palpitations caused by fright. The factory refused to pay the full price unless we delivered the missing leg. But how on earth could we recover it? Secretary Feng haggled hard in vain, and they docked five hundred yuan from the original figure.
    This time there was