Free The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers by Anton Piatigorsky Page A

his jaw, falling onto the rough spun cotton of his robe. The base of his small silk hat is stained dark with sweat as well.
    “I don’t think so,” continues Jen-sheng. “No, you’re perfectly well. So why don’t you remember your duties? Remember the Master’s saying:
Give your father and mother no cause for anxiety other than illness
. Your bride’s locked in the sedan. Waiting is not the rite.”
    Tse-tung doesn’t say anything. An iridescent dragonfly, which has found its way into the dark room, now circles wildly in the stifling space between father and son in its confused search for an exit. Tse-tung follows the insect’s trajectory with a squint, his grin unyielding. There’s something maddening to Jen-sheng about how his son watches this dragonfly in themidst of their confrontation, his ability to be distracted by something so ordinary, and smirking all the while.
    “I said waiting is not the rite.”
    “It’s true,” Tse-tung retorts. “But then the Master also said:
If one is guided by profit in one’s actions, one will incur much ill will
.”
    “Your wedding’s decreed by heaven,” insists Jen-sheng. “The contract accepted. Eight characters matched.”
    “You don’t believe in that old superstition.”
    “It’s heaven’s will,” repeats Jen-sheng. “The old man in the moon has knotted the threads.”
    Tse-tung tilts his head and laughs, high-pitched and girlish. “Oh yes!” he cries. “The old man’s threads! This, from you: a father who hasn’t made an offering to his ancestors once in his life. Now it’s ‘the old man’s threads’ and ‘a marriage decreed by heaven,’ like some peasant girl. That’s really too much. You’re full of gall.”
    The dragonfly buzzes near Tse-tung and he swats it down with a flip of his wrist. The insect hits the earth and lies stunned for a moment before testing its wings and rising into the air again.
    “A marriage for your son precisely when it’s too much for you to manage all the new land by yourself,” he continues. “How thoughtful of heaven. How fortunate the eight characters have matched so seamlessly at such a good time for your profit. With the laundry and the sewing, and the pigs bursting from their sty, and the rice milling more labour than Wu can handle by himself. Are you sure heaven hasn’tdecreed a wife who can also work the abacus? That would’ve been thoughtful too. You miser. You can’t bear to part with even one extra tael to pay for more help. And you quote the Master at me? Believe me, I know what Confucius says.
The gentleman understands what’s moral. The small man understands what is profitable
.”
    The farmhouse’s mud-brick walls, sturdy by village standards, are nowhere near thick enough to mute this family dispute. Outside, in the courtyard, with the heat still oppressive although the sun’s nearly down, neither the malodorous matchmaker nor the thirsty peasants nor the grinning labourer Wu show any signs of overhearing this eldest son’s scandalous rebellion, but no doubt they’re already dreaming of returning to their homes and local tea houses, where they will gossip in earnest about Jen-sheng’s unfilial boy in Shaoshan. Woman Luo, the only hidden one, sitting in her locked and oven-like sedan, is especially attuned to every word of the fight, since the moods of this father and son control her fate. Each harsh phrase stabs her like a knife. His mocking grunts, his taunting laughs, the blunt refusals of a future husband are jabs to her inner organs.
    Inside the house, Tse-tan, a plump two-year-old naked but for a pair of thin cloth shorts, marches into the central room and baldly stares at his brother in the corner, his face full of open curiosity.
    “I think the little one’s also ready for a wife,” says Tse-tung, gesturing at the boy. “Are you sure heaven hasn’t decreed that as well?”
    “Wen!” shouts Jen-sheng.
    The boys’ mother scampers into the central room and awaits further