Pow!

loads in baskets woven out of bamboo or reed strips, balanced on each end of a wide, sleek, springy shoulder pole that weighed them down as they left the station and then flew down the road, leaving the cattle merchants in their dust. They wore wide straw hats and draped blue capes over their shoulders as they sprinted along, an impressively carefree sight in contrast to the sloppy, manure-covered and dejected cattle merchants who shaved their heads, left their shirts unbuttoned and wore faddish mirrored sunglasses. Their feet splayed in a V as they headed into the red setting sun, rocking from side to side, like sailors when they step ashore, walking to our village on the dirt road. When they reached the historic Grand Canal, they led their cattle up to the water to let them drink their fill. Weather permitting—that is, if it wasn't unbearably cold—they washed their cattle, thus improving the animals’ spirits as well as their appearances until they gleamed like new brides. Once the cows were clean, it was the merchants’ turn and they lay on the fine sand of the riverbank and let the cold water wash over them. If young women happened to pass by, the men would howl like dogs baying at females in heat. Then, once they'd spent enough time horsing round, they'd climb up onto the bank and turn the cattle loose to feed on night grass while they sat in a circle to fill their stomachs with meat and baked flat bread, washing it all down with liquor. They'd carry on until the stars lit up the sky; then they'd retrieve the animals and stumble drunkenly down the road to our village. Why did they prefer to reach our village in the middle of the night? That was their secret. When I was young, I asked my parents and some of the village greybeards that very question. But they just gave me stony looks, as if I'd asked them the meaning of life or a question whose answer everyone knew. Leading the cattle into the village was a signal for the village dogs to set up a chorus of barks, which woke up everyone—man, woman, young and old—and informed them that the cattle merchants had arrived. In my youthful memories, they were a mysterious lot, and this sense of mystery was surely heightened by their late-night arrival in our village. I couldn't stop thinking that there had to be some profound significance to their timing but the grown-ups apparently never thought so. I recall how, on some moonlit nights, when the silence was broken by a chorus of dog barks, Mother would sit up, wrapped in the comforter, stick her face close to the window and gaze at the scene out on the street. That was before Father left us but already there were nights when he didn't come home. Without a sound, I'd sit up too and look past Mother out the window, watching the cattle merchants drive the animals ahead of them, slipping silently past our house, the newly bathed cattle glinting in the moonlight like giant pieces of glazed pottery. If not for the chorus of dog barks, I'd have thought I was observing a beautiful dreamscape. Even their barking couldn't take away all the mystery of that sight. Our village boasted several inns but the merchants never bedded down in any of them; instead, they led their cattle straight to the threshing floor and waited there till dawn, even if a wind was howling or it was raining, even if the air was bitter cold or steamy hot. There were stormy nights when innkeepers went out to drum up business, but the merchants and their cattle remained in the inhospitable elements like stone statues, unmoved, no matter how flowery the invitation. Was it because they didn't want to part with that little bit of money? No. People said that, after they sold their cattle, they went into town to get drunk and whore round, on a spending spree that stopped only when they had barely enough to buy a ticket for the slow train home. Their lifestyle could not have been more different from that of the peasants, with which we were so familiar. Their thinking too. As a youngster, on more than one occasion, I heard some of our more eminent villagers sigh: ‘Hai, what kind of people are they? What in the world is going on in those heads?’ That's right, what in the world could they be thinking? When they came to market they brought brown cows and black ones, males and females, fully grown cows and young calves; once they even brought a nursing heifer whose teats looked like water jugs. Father had trouble estimating a price for her since he didn't