The Noodle Maker(68)

When he was alive, the survivor prophesied that the flyover wouldn’t open to the public until 1992, but there’s still a year and a half to go, and there are already signs that the official opening will take place soon: the flyover curfew officers have been replaced by a flyover management team, and the local traffic wardens have been issued with brand-new uniforms.

The flyover was originally scheduled to be opened last year, on the first anniversary of the dog’s death. The Central Committee wanted to make the flyover a symbol of the Open Door Policy. They decided its opening should be tied in with Ceauescu’s visit to China, and that it should be named the Sino-Romanian Friendship Flyover. They instructed the town leaders to take great pains to ensure the opening was a success. The authorities decked the railings with little red flags, in preparation for the arrival of Ceauescu, who had been invited to open the flyover during a visit organised to celebrate the twinning of this town with an industrial city in his country. The government sent engineers to the site to search for any hidden bombs, and plain-clothed security officers patrolled the surrounding streets to check that no one was pasting counterrevolutionary flyers to the walls. But unfortunately, Ceauescu was assassinated a few days before he was due to leave, so the ceremony had to be called off.

When the Campaign to Learn from Lei Feng was launched, a broadcasting cabin was built on the flyover next to the metal huts, and every citizen in town who couldn’t afford to buy a radio jumped with joy. People were able to stand in the streets and listen to the broadcasts for free. They could hear revolutionary songs, programmes from the Chinese Peoples’ Television Broadcasting Company and even international weather reports.

During those months, the streets were filled with people making desperate attempts to emulate Lei Feng. They kept their eyes peeled at all times, searching for a chance to perform a good deed. You only had to trip over a kerb, or carry a heavy-looking bag, and someone would charge forward to offer to help. And there was no chance of you ever losing anything. One day, a pencil dropped from my pocket, and before I knew it, three children rushed over, picked it up and said, ‘Uncle, you’ve lost something,’ then smiled sweetly and gave a Young Pioneer salute. I took the pencil from them and said, just as the newspaper told us to: ‘Thank you, young comrades. You are real little Lei Fengs.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ they piped in unison. ‘We’re only doing our duty.’

‘Tell me, which school are you from? I would like to inform your headmaster of your exemplary behaviour.’

‘A person who performs good deeds should never leave their name,’ they chirped, then swung round and ran back to the end of the street to wait for their next prey, just like the Young Pioneers in the propaganda films.





We can all put up with taking the wrong road, but no one can bear reaching a dead end. When the survivor was alive, I was confused about everything – including him. I had lost my way. But after he died, I found I had nowhere to go. There was no hope left for me, nothing to look forward to. He had destroyed everything I believed in.

‘Everything is decided for you by your superiors,’ the dog said one day, ‘what job you do, who you marry, how many children you have. You have no belief in your ability to control your destiny. Your lives are so dull and monotonous, if you weren’t subjected to various trials and tribulations, you would never be strong enough to look death in the face.’ The dog uttered these words on the roof terrace, his head framed by the azure sky. The fumes pouring from the chimney stacks behind him smelled like the sour steam that rises from fermenting tofu. Against the blue sky, the smoke was blindingly bright.

‘I seem to have caught a cold,’ the dog said. ‘The breeze up here is bad for my health.’ He had picked up that last phrase from me.





I still don’t know how he died, though.

Sometimes I think he must have jumped from the roof. I imagine him darting across the terrace, then retreating to the edge as the old carpenter and the other two from the dog extermination brigade approached, followed by a pack of Young Pioneers brandishing spears and spades. He was either lassoed with a rope and dragged downstairs or beaten to death on the spot. His sharp claws and teeth couldn’t protect him from them. Once they had decided he should die, there was nothing he could do.

My three-legged dog never liked the Young Pioneers. He said that after years of being told to sacrifice their lives to the Revolution, they turn into little hooligans who lack any sense of morality or common decency.

‘They are children,’ I said. ‘We should forgive them. Childhood is sacred.’