In a world threatened by war and famine, a little boy builds a frail security for his most cherished possessions, two spindly goats. Their world is China, but it might be anywhere, for this poignant story tells a universal truth about the way a child grows in maturity by taking care of something he loves.
After reading the book (condensed version), I will say that it's different from anything else I've read recently, and I don't mean that in a bad way. According to the write-up in this book, the author taught English at Lingnan University in Canton, China, from 1947 until 1950, when she was forced to leave the country. She has a distinctive voice and a gift of description, and the assuredness of someone who seems to have noticed a great deal.
I'd disagree a bit with the blurb, in that the story struck me less as being about 'a universal truth' than about the craziness and failings of humankind, some of it being funny, and some being sad, but most of it ringing true:
So Beng Gow became a goatherd. His mother never understood it, although she was always explaining it to people. All the women came with their babies tied on their backs to have it explained to them. A teacher at the Big School had heard about the virtues of her son, who certainly was not worthy of such fame, and went out driving one day to look for him. He found her worthless son sitting on a grave, minding the geese for Ah Lok, who was no account at all minding geese, and he drove her son away in the automobile to give him anything in the world he wanted. But her undeserving son wanted nothing for himself, only to serve the Gow Sow, and so he became the Gow Sow's goatherd, and was so self-denying that he would accept no more than five hundred yen every seven days.
Ah Lok's mother did not like this story, and she told one of her own. One day her son had been out obediently tending the geese, and Beng Gow, whose mother had no geese to tend, nor anything else, came along looking for something to do, and threw a stone and killed a goose. A teacher of the Big School then came by in an automobile and, taking pity on her weeping son, seized Beng Gow and took him to town to make him buy something for Ah Lok. But Beng Gow had no money, of course, so the Gow Sow bought the goats, and Beng Gow was being forced to take care of them for Ah Lok by way of payment until they were big enough to eat. As for the five hundred yen, this did not exist.
Everybody doubted both stories and modified them, and many versions were told. And indeed Beng Gow was not able to bring home the money very often, for the Gow Sow could not remember it. Sometimes he remembered and paid a thousand at once, and then Beng Gow's mother would buy a very large fish, which she showed to everybody as evidence of what she had told.
Neither mother is very close to being right in her version, by the way. Not by a long shot, actually.
A question: I was trying to find out more about the author, and haven't been able to scurry up much yet - but on various bookselling websites I've noticed several copies of a book called The Goat Boy by Augusta Walker, also from 1954, but published by Michael Joseph, London, instead of The Dial Press, New York. I'm guessing this is the same book, but I'm not sure. Does anybody know?
