A little more, a little less

Author: Ma Zhoujia
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: Lu Zhi, whose full name is Lu Jianrong, was my primary school classmate. He was short, with a round face, round eyes, and was quite cute. From the first grade, Lu Jianrong and I were in the same class. Because Lu Jianrong's left hand was different—his pinky finger had an extra inch-long finger growing from its base, making him a six-fingered person. Also, since he was surnamed Lu, both boys and girls in the class called him Lu Zhi. In Wu dialect, "Lu" and "six" are homophonic and have the same meaning. However, Lu Jianrong didn’t mind at all. Whenever someone called him Lu Zhi, he would happily respond, as if it were his real name. During spare time, whenever a classmate wanted to look at his fingers, Lu Zhi didn’t care either. "Look if you want to," he would say, "it won’t make a difference." Some classmates would pull his left hand out, scan it from front to back and left to right with their eyes, and gently touch the extra pinky finger, feeling both amazed and curious. Some would jokingly ask him an arithmetic question: "5 plus 6 equals what?" and ask Lu Zhi to count his fingers. Lu Zhi would smile thickly, understanding what his classmates meant, and would obediently count his 11 fingers, then earn a burst of laughter from the class. Lu Zhi would also laugh along, "hehe." I’ve touched Lu Zhi’s extra finger too. In reality, it was no different from the other fingers—it had blood, flesh, bones, and nails, but it was shorter and couldn’t bend freely. It looked like a tender branch growing on a tree, and because it was on a finger, it gave people an eerie feeling.
As he grew older, when the new semester of the fourth grade started, Lu Zhi’s attitude suddenly changed 180 degrees. He knew his fingers were different and felt shy, which gradually turned into a kind of distress and psychological pressure. He no longer wanted to show his left hand, let alone let classmates touch it, and sometimes even got angry for no reason. It was said that he had once seriously asked his parents, "Books say that inbreeding is highly likely to result in mentally disabled or disabled children. Are you two related?" Lu Zhi even resentfully thought, "Having an extra finger is better than being mentally disabled—it would be easier and free from any mental burden." His parents understood that he was growing up, but his mother was from the city, while his father was a native of the small town. In that era, they had joined the rural work team, met and fell in love, and then got married. How could they be related? The only suspicious thing was that his father had developed a smoking and drinking habit in the countryside, and the "six-fingered" condition might be related to it. Because of this, his father often felt guilty toward his son and even made a firm decision to quit smoking and drinking. But he soon realized it was futile. With the family planning policy in place, they couldn’t have a second child anyway. Quitting would be pointless—his health might take a turn for the worse, and that would be even worse. So his parents had to "turn sorrow into strength" and often worked overtime at the factory, hoping to save more money in the future to take Lu Zhi to the county hospital for surgery to remove the extra finger.
Usually, the classmates would see Lu Zhi tightly tucking his left hand into his pocket. It became increasingly difficult to appreciate his left hand or play with the extra finger.
Things in the world are often strange—what’s open has no secrets, but the more hidden, the more mysterious it becomes...