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

instruction.
    “Get him out of here.”
    She scoops the child over her shoulder and takes him back into the kitchen. Tse-tan regards his furious father as he departs.
    “Your problem,” says Tse-tung, “is that you’ve only eyes for money. Is eighty-four
tan
of rice not enough for you? Still hungry for more? You want to be really fat? You think I can’t see your intentions? You tell Luo you’re pious, that this will be a pious home for his daughter, but your sons know better. Don’t we, Tse-min?”
    Tse-tung turns to his brother for reinforcement. Tse-min, who has remained hunched and motionless in his chair by the wall, now sits up in shock. The younger boy is thin-faced and scrawny, tense and insecure, almost a clone of his father in both appearance and attitude, except for his timidity in place of Jen-sheng’s brashness. He doesn’t know how to answer his brother; Tse-tung almost never speaks to him, let alone asks for his support. He stutters some inaudible phrase, shifts in his chair, and darts his eyes back and forth between his brother and his father. While Tse-min has enjoyed the candidness of this battle, he has also been dreading the possibility of being used by one faction or the other, of being forced to take a side, since he’s sure he’ll be destroyed for his participation by either his father’s blunt diminutions or his brother’s sly logic.
    Tse-tung rolls his eyes, refusing to wait for an answer from his cowardly brother, a lackey to his father. “You can’t orderme around,” he tells Jen-sheng. “I’ll throw myself into the pond before I’ll ever follow you.”
    Jen-sheng winces at the painful reminder of last year’s fight. It was a humiliating afternoon when Li and Yang and the three elder Wens from his wife’s village over Tiger Resting Path came to his house for tea. Tse-tung ambled home midway through the visit with
Three Kingdoms
tucked under his arm, his girlish hands clean and unblemished, not a second worked in the fields that morning—a shameful display before their guests. Of course, the boy received a public berating from his embarrassed father. But then, to Jen-sheng’s horror, Tse-tung did not respond with the submissive
k’ou-t’ou
appropriate to his filial role. Rather, he threw his book in the dirt, cursed his family blasphemously, and stormed out of the house, threatening to throw himself into the lotus pond. Jen-sheng and Wen Ch’i-mei followed their son to the shore, with Jen-sheng demanding a
k’ou-t’ou
in apology. Tse-tung adamantly refused out of nothing but spite. Jen-sheng had no choice but to back down and change the subject in front of all his horrified friends.
    Now Jen-sheng recalls the sharp taste in his mouth as he stood by that lotus pond. That same metallic tang is currently spreading across his tongue. His throat constricts and he thirsts for public affirmation, some definite confirmation of the indisputable fact that he, Jen-sheng, is the Confucian father, the elder, the leader of the Mao clan. He knows his thirst will only be quenched by the transformation of his stone-like son into liquid. Tse-tung must melt. It’s not even a question of what Jen-sheng wants; his role in thefamily demands it. Tse-tung must kneel before his father with his head touching the ground, absorbing into it like water. After so much defiance, the boy must show complete submission—spineless and limp. But Jen-sheng knows his present command will be as futile as last year’s. Still, he can’t help trying; he deserves an act of obeisance. The demands of his status are imprisoning and compelling.
    Jen-sheng points sternly to the ground. “
K’ou-t’ou
before your elder,” he commands again.
    Tse-tung purses his small mouth and straightens his long back. When he stands at full height, he’s a good head taller than his father. How the young Tse-tung inherited such height, no one knows for certain. Maybe it comes from his mother’s grandfather, rumoured to have