The two of them were still locked in each other's grip when the next round of grain wine came by. On the surface, it looked like both of them were sitting completely still, right down to their clenched teeth, but if you looked down, you could see their bottoms furiously swivelling holes into the dirt floor. The others only realised the two men were engaged in a contest of strength once the wine stopped, and even then, no one made any attempt to get them to stop; if two people really want to fight, no amount of persuasion is going to stop them.
On the other hand, if two people don't actually want to fight, then clearly there's all the less need to try to stop them. So, Enbo and Zhang Lobsang continued their motionless contest until Yang Mazhi came out of the storehouse with more grain wine and defused the tension:
"Come on, come on, leave each other alone, have some more wine, have some more wine! Wine's supposed to be a happy thing, isn't it?"
Yang Mazi was Han, and as such he spoke Tibetan with an odd accent. Mazi's funny accent was another classic storehouse of village humour.
Zhang Lobsang spoke, but only to parrot the Chinese man:
"Come on, come on."
Enbo followed, speaking with his tongue deliberately flat: "have some more wine, have some more wine."
The two of them started guffawing, and they loosened their grips on each other's collar.
Yang Mazi was satisfied:
"See, isn't this better, isn't this better, isn't it much better this way?"
All of a sudden, Enbo's eyes opened wider, and he said:
"Mazi, why don't you just get out of here and go back where you came from, huh?"
As Enbo was speaking, Mazi was in the midst of pouring grain wine into the bowl. When he heard Enbo's words, his hand suddenly seized up, and silence fell among the men who until a moment ago had been making plenty of noise—as you would expect from a group of men drinking together. A muscle in Mazi's face twitched a few times, but after only a couple of seconds, he'd regained his composure. He continued pouring the grain wine, counting it out as he poured, his lips shaking ever so slightly:
"Thirty pounds. Wait, no, thirty pounds and a half. My fellow villagers, we have thirty pounds and a half."
Enbo knew that he'd made a mistake. Ji village was after all a welcoming place, in a general kind of way; this was evident enough by the fact that the village provided a home for the outsiders who, after all, chose to settle there.
Yang Mazi was still pouring wine:
"Thirty one pounds, thirty one pounds and a half."
Everyone else was deathly silent, staring at Enbo with various strange and bemused expressions. Enbo felt like his head was going to explode. In fact, if the other men kept staring at him like that, he was sure that not just his head, but his whole body would spontaneously combust. He knew he was in the wrong; even when his words were halfway out of his mouth, he already began to regret what he said. It was as if there was a demon inside of him that was controlling him and that forcing him to say the words it dumped in his mouth.
Finally, someone spoke up.
It was Zhang Lobsang:
"It's good that all the men of Ji village are here today, because I want to ask you all a question. My question is this: is it now the case that Ji village will no longer be a place of hospitality for those with nowhere else to go? You all know that my father was Han too, and that he was a peddler who came to the village and didn't want to leave, just like Yang Mazi."
The crowd of men replied:
"Oh, no, no, absolutely, and of course your father was the bringer of the first scales in all of Ji village's long history."
Zhang Lobsang continued:
"But here we are; someone has driven Sangdan and her son away from the village, and now that person wants to do the same to Yang Mazi here."
The crowd responded with a unanimous "Oh," the rough meaning of which was 'it's a bit excessive for you to say that.'
Just at that moment, a gust of wind flared up in the square, flinging dust and bits of grass into the air. The men instinctively leaned forwards over their laps, reaching out with their hands as if to shield their wine bowl from dust, although in reality only one of them was actually holding a bowl; suffice to say the men were all feeling the influence of the wine. When the gust passed, everyone had a good laugh about their inadvertent reactions. They hadn't laughed long when a loud crash rung out somewhere else in the square—it turned out to be the wooden door of Sangdan's long-empty house, which had freed itself from its frame and fallen to the ground.
A rectangle of air flew out from under the door as it fell, throwing up more dust and dead grass. This sight reminded the men of Gela and Sangdan, and how they'd been gone a long time already now. In turn, this caused the men to focus their attention and their gazes on Enbo once more, who wanted nothing more than to open his mouth and cry his guts out. How joyous and soothing it would be just to let fly a fistful of tears, and maybe a fistful of snot for good measure! But the only thing such a display would gain him was the mockery of the other men, so he did nothing. When the wine bowl was passed to him again, he extended his neck and threw back the whole bowlful, which had only been poured seconds ago. Before the alcohol even reached his stomach, he fell on his face like a sack of potatoes that couldn't support its own weight.
Now that Enbo was on the ground, the crowd of men no longer had a target. Instead, their thoughts turned back to the door that had just mysteriously fallen from its hinges. Meanwhile, dusk was arriving; the sun was slipping down the mountain side. The evening wind blew cold through the square. Someone spoke up in the silence:
"There must be ghosts out."
Now it felt like the cold air was crawling up their backs.
"You think that woman and her son are dead?"
"Have their ghosts come back to the village?"
"Pft! Do you really think their ghosts would want to come back here if they were dead? Why would they do that? Because we were so kind and generous with them?"
