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.WEI JIA TURNED SIX years old that summer.For his birthday, his parents served him a special meal of instant noodles topped with a fried egg.The noodles were a rare treat, because the boy almost never ate packaged foods.Periodically his parents took him to Beijing for follow-up blood tests, and they all came back normal.He was bigger now, and he had started to develop a barrel chest like his father.Sometimes he was given chores around the house, such as sweeping the threshing platform.Around this time he learned to ignore the Idiot like everybody else.As a small boy, Wei Jia had sometimes played with the disabled man, and engaged him by making faces and gestures, but soon he recognized that there was something wrong with him.And now the Idiot was finally alone—once the last child in the village grew up, there was nobody left who perceived the man as normal.At the end of summer Wei Jia’s parents prepared him for school.He had missed nearly all of kindergarten, and in fact last year’s school had been condemned, because conditions were so bad.This year Wei Jia would attend first grade in Shayu, a village about six miles away, where he would board in the dormitory with other children.During the final weeks of summer, the boy’s parents trained him to sleep alone.Like most rural families, they usually spent nights together on the kang, but now they forced Wei Jia to occupy a bed in a side room.For the first few nights he complained and slept poorly, but by the end of the month he was used to it.The week before Wei Jia was to start school, I rented a Jetta and drove to the village.I offered to take Wei Jia and Cao Chunmei down to the valley for registration, and she said it would take place on either Sunday or Monday.“They still haven’t made the announcement,” she explained, referring to Sancha’s daily propaganda broadcasts.“There aren’t any other first-graders in the village, are there?” I asked.“No,” she said.“He’s the only one.”“If there’s only one kid, are you sure they’re going to announce it?”“They’ll announce it,” she said.I wondered if perhaps it might be worth a phone call, but this is the way of the countryside: wait for the information to come to you.Sure enough, at precisely noon on Friday the speakers crackled to life.A shrill woman’s voice rang out across the valley, echoing off the cliff walls, resounding among the high peaks, alerting all relevant parties:ATTENTION!ALL FIRST-GRADERS MUST REPORTTO SHAYU ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AT 8:00 A.M.ON SUNDAY MORNING!ATTENTION!ALL FIRST-GRADERS MUST REPORTTO SHAYU ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AT 8:00 A.M.ON SUNDAY MORNING!ATTENTION!ALL FIRST-GRADERS MUST…Early Sunday morning, all first-graders in the village reported to duty, and every single one of them sat on Cao Chunmei’s lap in the front of my Jetta.Wei Ziqi remained in Sancha, because he expected guests that afternoon.Wei Jia had taken a bath the night before, and he picked out clean clothes for himself.He wore blue trousers and a matching shirt with a cartoon cat that said, in English, “Ready-Witted.” He still had the Mickey Mouse backpack from kindergarten.“Do you remember what happened last year?” Cao Chunmei said.“Yes,” Wei Jia said.“Are you going to cry again?”“No.”“You can’t cry this year,” she warned him.“You’re a first-grader now.If you cry, I’ll smack you.”Wei Jia grinned; this particular conversation had been recurring for days.He leaned forward as we cruised into the valley.The walnut season had returned, and we passed dozens of men armed with their long sticks.It was a beautiful morning—clear and warm, the sun about to rise above the eastern ridgeline.All along the road there were children in clean clothes, carrying new backpacks, heading toward Shayu.Our first stop was the dormitory, where Wei Jia checked in.He was assigned to room number four, bed number two.Eight bunks in all: rough metal frames with thin mattresses atop wooden boards.Windows were barred.The moment I saw these military-style quarters, my heart sank, but the boy seemed unperturbed.He liked the fact that he had been assigned a metal locker with a key.We still hadn’t seen his classmates, because the children were gathering in the schoolyard for registration [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]