came a whirring sound; his head received a heavy blow; and when he turned about, quickly the Hsiu-t'sai stood malignantly before him with a huge bamboo pole in his grasp.
"You scoundrel — you low —"
The stout bamboo was again directed down upon his head. Ah Q covered his head with both hands and the blow landed on his finger joints, which smarted with exceeding great pain. As he dashed out of the kitchen door, it seemed that his back had also received a crack.
"Bad egg of a dark turtle!" cried the Hsiu-t'sai in an oath, using Mandarin.
Ah Q retreated to the rice-pounding room and stood there alone. He still felt the pain in his fingers and still remembered the "bad egg of a dark turtle," because the Weichuangites had never spoken these Mandarin words, which were used exclusively by the élite who were intimate with officials. Hence he was the more frightened, and the words were the more deeply imprinted upon his mind.
But by this time, his thought of "woman" had vanished, and after he had been beaten and reviled, it seemed as if the whole affair had ended once and for all. Accordingly, he experienced no anxiety and set his hands into motion to pound the rice. Having pounded for a while, he became warm, stopped, and took off his coat.
