Big Breasts & Wide Hips

1

From where he lay quietly on the brick-and-tamped-earth sleeping platform, his kang, Pastor Malory saw a bright red beam of light shining down on the Virgin Mary’s pink breast and on the pudgy face of the bare-bottomed Blessed Infant in her arms. Water from last summer’s rains had left yellow stains on the oil tableau, investing the Virgin Mary and Blessed Infant with a vacant look. A long-legged spider hung from a silvery thread in the bright window, swaying in a light breeze. “Morning spiders bring happiness, evening spiders promise wealth.” That’s what the pale yet beautiful woman had said one day when she saw one of the eight-legged creatures. But what happiness am I entitled to? All those heavenly breasts and buttocks in his dream flashed through his head. He heard the rumble of carts outside and the cries of red-crowned cranes from the distant marsh, plus the angry bleats of his milk goat. Sparrows banged noisily into the paper window covering. Magpies, the so-called happiness birds, chattered in poplar trees outside. By the look of things, happiness could well be in the air today. Then suddenly his head cleared, and the beautiful woman with the astonishingly big belly made a violent appearance, haloed in blinding light. Her nervous lips quivered, as if she were about to say something. She was in her eleventh month, so today must be the day. In a flash Pastor Malory understood the significance of the spider and magpies. He sat up and got down off the kang.

After picking up a black earthenware jug, he walked out to the street behind the church, where he saw Shangguan Lü, wife of Shangguan Fulu, the blacksmith, bent over to sweep the street in front of the shop. His heart skipped a beat, his lips quivered. “Dear Lord,” he muttered, “almighty God…” He crossed himself with a stiff finger and backed slowly into a corner to silently observe the tall, heavyset Shangguan Lü as she silently and single-mindedly swept the dew-soaked dust into her dustpan, carefully picking out pieces of trash and tossing them aside. Her movements were clumsy but vigorous; her broom, woven from golden millet tassels, was like a toy in her hand. After filling the dustpan and tamping down the dust, she straightened up.

Just as Shangguan Lü reached the head of her lane, she heard a commotion behind her and turned to see what it was. Some women came running through the black gate of Felicity Manor, home of the town’s leading gentry family. They were dressed in rags, their faces smeared with soot. Why are these women, who normally dress in silks and satins, and are never seen without rouge and lipstick, dressed like that? Just then, a wagon master known to all as “Old Titmouse” emerged from the compound across the way on his new wagon, with its dark green canopy and rubber tires. The women clambered aboard even before it came to a complete stop. The wagon master jumped down and sat on one of the still damp stone lions to silently smoke his pipe. Sima Ting, steward of Felicity Manor, strode out from the compound with his fowling piece, his movements as quick and nimble as a young man. Jumping to his feet, the wagon master glanced at the steward, who snatched the pipe out of his hand, took several noisy puffs, then looked up at the early-morning rosy sky and yawned grandly. “Time to go,” he said. “Wait for me at the Black Water River Bridge. I’ll be along shortly.”

With the reins in one hand and his whip in the other, the wagon master turned the wagon around. The women in the bed behind him shouted and chattered. The whip snapped in the air, and the horses trotted off. Brass bells around the horses’ necks sang out crisply, the wagon wheels crunched on the dirt road, and clouds of dust rose in the wagon’s wake.

After taking a piss in the middle of the road, Sima Ting shouted out at the now distant wagon, then cradled his fowling piece and climbed the watchtower, a thirty-foot platform supported by ninety-nine thick logs and topped by a red flag that hung limply in the damp morning air. Shangguan Lü watched him as he gazed off to the northwest. With his long neck and pointy mouth, he looked a little like a goose at a watering trough.

A cloud of feathery mist rolled through the sky and swallowed up Sima Ting, then spat him back out. Bloody hues of sunrise dyed his face red. To Shangguan Lü, the face seemed covered by a dazzling layer of sticky syrup. By the time he raised the fowling piece over his head, his face was red as a cockscomb. She heard a faint metallic click. It was the trigger sending the firing pin forward. Resting the butt of the piece against his shoulder, he stood waiting solemnly. So did Shangguan Lü, as the heavy dustpan numbed her hands, and her neck was sore from cocking it at such a rakish angle. Sima Ting lowered his fowling piece and puckered like a pouting little boy. She heard him curse the gun: “You little bastard, how dare you not fire!” He raised it again and pulled the trigger. Crack! Flames followed the crisp sound out of the barrel, simultaneously darkening the sun’s rays and lighting up his red face. Then an explosion shattered the silence hanging over the village; sunlight filled the sky with brilliant colors as if a fairy standing on the tip of a cloud were showering the land below with radiant flower petals. Shangguan Lü’s heart raced from excitement. Though only a blacksmith’s wife, she was much better with a hammer and anvil than her husband could ever hope to be. The mere sight of steel and fire sent blood running hot through her veins. The muscles of her arms rippled like knotted horsewhips. Black steel striking against red, sparks flying, a sweat-soaked shirt, rivulets of salty water flowing down the valley between pendulous breasts, the biting smell of steel and blood filling the space between heaven and earth. She watched Sima Ting jerk backward on his perch, the damp morning air around him soaked with the smell of gunpowder. As he circled the tiny platform, he broadcast a warning to all of Northeast Gaomi Township:

“All you elders, fellow townsmen, the Japs are coming!”

2

Shangguan Lü emptied her dustpan onto the exposed surface of the kang, whose grass mat and bedding had been rolled up and put to one side, then cast a worried look at her daughter-in-law, Shangguan Lu, who moaned as she gripped the edge of the kang. After tamping the dirt down with both hands, she said softly to her daughter-in-law, “You can climb back up now.”

Shangguan Lu trembled under the gentle gaze of her mother-in-law. As she stared sadly at the older woman’s kind face, her ashen lips quivered, as if she wanted to say something.

“The devil’s gotten back into that old bastard Sima, firing his gun so early in the morning!” Shangguan Lü announced.

“Mother…” Shangguan Lu said.

Clapping her hands to loosen the dirt, Shangguan Lü muttered softly, “My good daughter-in-law, try your best! If this one’s a girl, too, I’d be a fool to keep defending you.”

Tears trickled from Shangguan Lu’s eyes as she bit down on her lip; holding up her sagging belly, she climbed back onto the dirt-covered kang.

“You’ve been down this road before,” Shangguan Lü said as she laid a roll of white cotton and a pair of scissors on the kang. “Go ahead and have your baby.” Then, with an impatient frown, she said, “Your father-in-law and Laidi’s daddy are in the barn tending to the black donkey. This will be her first foal, so I should be out there giving them a hand.”

Shangguan Lu nodded. Another explosion flew in on the wind, setting off a round of barking by frightened dogs. Sima Ting’s booming voice came in fits: “Fellow townsmen, flee for your lives, don’t wait another minute…” She felt the baby inside her kick, as if in response to Sima Ting’s shouts, the stabbing pains forcing drops of rancid sweat out of every pore in her body. She clenched her teeth to keep the scream inside her from bursting out. Through the mist of tears she saw the lush black hair of her mother-in-law as she knelt at the altar and placed three sandalwood joss sticks in Guanyin’s burner. Fragrant smoke curled up and quickly filled the room.

“Merciful Bodhisattva Guanyin, who succors the downtrodden and the distressed, protect and take pity on me, deliver a son to this family…” Pressing down on her arched, swollen belly with both hands, cold to the touch, Shangguan Lu gazed up at the enigmatic, glossy face of the ceramic Guanyin in her altar, and said a silent prayer as fresh tears began to flow. Removing her wet trousers and rolling up the shirt to expose her belly and her breasts, she gripped the edge of the kang. In between contractions she ran her fingers through her matted hair and leaned against the rolled-up grass mat and millet stalks.

The chipped quicksilver surface of a mirror in the window lattice reflected her profile: sweat-soaked hair, long, slanted, lusterless eyes, a pale high-bridged nose, and full but chapped lips that never stopped quaking. Moisture-laden sunbeams streamed in through the window and fell on her belly. Its twisting, swollen blue veins and white, pitted skin looked hideous to her; mixed feelings, dark and light, like the clear blue of a summer sky in Northeast Gaomi with dark rain clouds rolling past, gripped her. She could hardly bear to look at that enormous, strangely taut belly.

She had once dreamed that her fetus was actually a chunk of cold steel. Another time she’d dreamed that it was a large, warty toad. She could bear the thought of a chunk of steel, but the image of the toad made her shudder. “Lord in Heaven, protect me… Worthy Ancestors, protect me… gods and demons everywhere, protect me, spare me, let me deliver a healthy baby boy… my very own son, come to Mother… Father of Heaven, Mother of Earth, yellow spirits and fox fairies, help me, please…” And so she prayed and pleaded, assaulted by wrenching contractions. As she clung to the mat beneath her, her muscles twitched and jumped, her eyes bulged. Mixed in with the wash of red light were white-hot threads that twisted and curled and shrank in front of her like silver melting in a furnace. In the end, willpower alone could not keep the scream from bursting through her lips; it flew through the window lattice and bounced up and down the streets and byways, where it met Sima Ting’s shout and entwined with it, a braid of sound that snaked through the hairy ears of the tall, husky, stooped-over Swedish pastor Malory, with his large head and scraggly red hair. He stopped on his way up the rotting boards of the steeple stairs. His deep blue ovine eyes, always moist and teary, and capable of moving you to the depths of your soul, suddenly emitted dancing sparks of startled glee. Crossing himself with his pudgy red fingers, he uttered in a thick Gaomi accent: “Almighty God…” He began climbing again, and when he reached the top, he rang a rusty bronze bell. The desolate sound spread through the mist-enshrouded, rosy dawn.

At the precise moment when the first peal of the bell rang out, and the shouted warning of a Jap attack hung in the air, a flood of amniotic fluid gushed from between the legs of Shangguan Lu. The muttony smell of a milk goat rose in the air, as did the sometimes pungent, sometimes subtle aroma of locust blossoms. The scene of making love with Pastor Malory beneath the locust tree last year flashed before her eyes with remarkable clarity, but before she gained any pleasure from the recollection, her mother-in-law ran into the room with blood-spattered hands, throwing fear into her, as she saw green sparks dancing off those hands.

“Has the baby come yet?” her mother-in-law asked, nearly shouting.

She shook her head, feeling ashamed.

Her mother-in-law’s head quaked brilliantly in the sunlight, and she noted with amazement that the older woman’s hair had turned gray.

“I thought you’d have had it by now.” Shangguan Lü reached out to touch her belly. Those hands – large knuckles, hard nails, rough skin, covered with blood – made her cringe; but she lacked the strength to move away from them as they settled unceremoniously onto her swollen belly, making her heart skip a beat and sending an icy current racing through her guts. Screams emerged unchecked, from terror, not pain. The hands probed and pressed and, finally, thumped, like testing a melon for ripeness. At last, they fell away and hung in the sun’s rays, heavy, despondent, as if she’d come away with an unripe melon. Her mother-in-law floated ethereally before her eyes, except for those hands, which were solid, awesome, autonomous, free to roam where they pleased. Her mother-in-law’s voice seemed to come from far away, from the depths of a pond, carried on the stench of mud and the bubbles of a crab: “… a melon falls to the ground when it’s time, and nothing will stop it… you have to tough it out, za-za hu-hu… want people to mock you? Doesn’t it bother you that your seven precious daughters will laugh at you…” She watched one of those hands descend weakly and, disgustingly, thump her belly again, producing soft hollow thuds, like a wet goatskin drum. “All you young women are spoiled. When your husband came into this world, I was sewing shoe soles the whole time…”

Finally, the thumping stopped and the hand pulled back into the shadows, where its hazy outline looked like the claws of a wild beast. Her mother-in-law’s voice glimmered in the darkness, the redolence of locust flowers wafted over. “Look at that belly, it’s huge, and it’s covered with strange markings. It must be a boy. That’s your good fortune, and mine, and the whole Shangguan family, for that matter. Bodhisattva, be here with her, Lord in Heaven, come to her side. Without a son, you’ll be no better than a slave as long as you live, but with one, you’ll be the mistress. Believe me or not, it’s up to you. Actually, it isn’t…”

“I believe, Mother, I believe you!” Shangguan Lu said reverently. Her gaze fell on the dark stains on the wall, grief filling her heart as memories of what had happened three years before surfaced. She had just delivered her seventh daughter, Shangguan Qiudi, driving her husband, Shangguan Shouxi, into such a blind rage that he’d flung a hammer at her, hitting her squarely in the head and staining the wall with her blood.

Her mother-in-law laid a basket upside down next to her. Her voice burned through the darkness like the flames of a wildfire: “Say this, ‘The child in my belly is a princely little boy’ Say it!” The basket was filled with peanuts. The woman’s face was suffused with a somber kindness; she was part deity, part loving parent, and Shangguan Lu was moved to tears.

“The child I’m carrying is a princely little boy. I’m carrying a prince… my own son…”

Her mother-in-law thrust some peanuts into her hand and told her to say, “Peanuts peanuts peanuts, boys and girls, the balance of yin and yang.”

Gratefully wrapping her hand around the peanuts, she repeated the mantra: “Peanuts peanuts peanuts, boys and girls, the balance of yin and yang.”

Shangguan Lü bent down, her tears falling unchecked. “Bodhi-sattva, be with her, Lord in Heaven, come to her side. Great joy will soon befall the Shangguan family! Laidi’s mother, lie here and shuck peanuts until it’s time. Our donkey’s about to foal. It’s her first, so I cannot stay with you.”

“You go on, Mother,” Shangguan Lu said emotionally. “Lord in Heaven, keep the Shangguan family’s black donkey safe, let her foal without incident…”

With a sigh, Shangguan Lü reeled out the door.

3

The dim light of a filthy bean-oil lamp on a millstone in the barn flickered uneasily, wisps of black smoke curling from the tip of its flame. The smell of lamp oil merged with the stink of donkey droppings and urine. The air was foul. The black animal lay on the ground between the millstone and a dark green stone trough. All Shangguan Lü could see when she walked in was the flickering light of the lamp, but she heard the anxious voice of Shangguan Fulu: “What did she have?”

She turned toward the sound and curled her lip, then crossed the room, past the donkey and Shangguan Shouxi, who was massaging the animal’s belly; she walked over to the window and ripped away the paper covering. A dozen rays of golden sunlight lit up the far wall. She then went to the millstone and blew out the lamp, releasing the smell of burned oil to snuff out the other rank odors. Shangguan Shouxi’s dark oily face took on a golden sheen; his tiny black eyes sparkled like burning coals. “Mother,” he said fearfully, “let’s leave. Everybody at Felicity Manor has fled, the Japanese will be here soon…”

Shangguan Lü stared at her son with a look that said, Why can’t you be a man? Avoiding her eyes, he lowered his sweaty face.

“Who told you they’re coming?” Shangguan Lü demanded angrily.

“The steward at Felicity Manor has been firing his gun and sounding the alarm,” Shangguan Shouxi muttered as he wiped his sweaty face with an arm covered with donkey hairs. It was puny alongside the muscular arm of his mother. His lips, which had been quivering like a baby at the tit, grew steady, as his head jerked up. Pricking up his tiny ears to listen for sounds, he said, “Mother, Father, do you hear that?”

The hoarse voice of Sima Ting drifted lazily into the barn. “Elders, mothers, uncles, aunts – brothers, sisters-in-law – brothers and sisters – run for your lives, flee while you can, hide in the fields till the danger passes – the Japanese are on their way – this is not a false alarm, it’s real. Fellow villagers, don’t waste another minute, run, don’t trade your lives for a few broken-down shacks. While you live, the mountains stay green, while you live, the world keeps turning – fellow villagers, run while you can, do not wait until it’s too late…”

Shangguan Shouxi jumped to his feet. “Did you hear that, Mother? Let’s go!”

“Go? Go where?” Shangguan Lü said unhappily. “Of course the people at Felicity Manor have run off. But why should we join them? We are blacksmiths and farmers. We owe no tariff to the emperor or taxes to the nation. We are loyal citizens, whoever is in charge. The Japanese are human, too, aren’t they? They’ve occupied the Northeast, but where would they be without common folk to till the fields and pay the rent? You’re his father, the head of the family, tell me, am I right?”

Shangguan Fulu’s lips parted to reveal two rows of strong, yellow teeth. It was hard to tell if he was smiling or frowning.

“I asked you a question!” she shouted angrily. “What do you gain by showing me those yellow teeth? I can’t get a fart out of you, even with a stone roller!”

With a long face, Shangguan Fulu said, “Why ask me? If you say leave, we leave, if you say stay, we stay.”

Shangguan Lü sighed. “If the signs are good, we’ll be all right. If not, there’s nothing we can do about it. So get to work and push down on her belly!”

Opening and closing his mouth to build up his courage, Shangguan Shouxi asked loudly, but without much confidence, “Has the baby come?”

“Any man worth his salt focuses on what he’s doing,” Shangguan Lü said. “You take care of the donkey, and leave women’s business to me.”

“She’s my wife,” Shangguan Shouxi muttered. “No one says she isn’t.”

“My guess is this time it’s a boy,” Shangguan Shouxi said as he pressed down on the donkey’s belly. “I’ve never seen her that big before.”

“You’re worthless…” Shangguan Lü was losing spirit. “Protect us, Bodhisattva.”

Shangguan Shouxi wanted to say more, but his mother’s sad face sealed his lips.

“You two keep at it here,” Shangguan Fulu said, “while I go see what’s going on out there.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Shangguan Lü demanded as she grabbed her husband’s shoulders and dragged him back to where the donkey lay. “What’s going on out there is none of your business! Just keep massaging the donkey’s belly. The sooner she foals, the better. Dear Bodhisattva, Lord in Heaven. The Shangguan ancestors were men of iron and steel, so how did I wind up with two such worthless specimens?”

Shangguan Fulu bent over, reached out with hands that were as dainty as his son’s, and pressed down on the donkey’s twitching belly. The donkey lay between him and his son; pressing down one after the other, they seemed to be on opposite ends of a teeter-totter. Up and down they went, massaging the animal’s hide. Weak father, weak son, accomplishing little with their soft hands – limp wicks, fluffy cotton, always careless and given to cutting corners. Standing behind them, Shangguan Lü could only shake her head in frustration, before reaching out, grabbing her husband by the neck, and jerking him to his feet. “Go on,” she demanded, “out of my way!” She sent her husband, a blacksmith hardly worthy of the name, reeling into the corner, where he sprawled atop a sack of hay. “And you, get up!” she ordered her son. “You’re just underfoot. You never eat less than your share, and you’re never around when there’s work to be done. Lord in Heaven, what did I do to deserve this?”

Shangguan Shouxi jumped to his feet as if his life had been spared and ran over to join his father in the corner. Their dark little eyes rolled in their sockets, their expressions were a mixture of cunning and stupidity. The silence in the barn was broken once again by the shouts of Sima Ting, setting father and son squirming, as if their bowels or bladders were about to betray them.

Shangguan Lü knelt on the ground in front of the donkey’s belly, oblivious of the filth, a look of solemn concentration on her face. Rolling up her sleeves, she rubbed her hands together, creating a grating noise like scraping the soles of two shoes together. Laying her cheek against the animal’s belly, she listened attentively with her eyes narrowed. Then she stroked the donkey’s face. “Donkey,” she said, “go on, get it over with. It’s the curse of all females.” Then she straddled the donkey’s neck, bent over, and laid her hands on its belly. As if planing a board, she pushed down and out. A pitiful bray tore from the donkey’s mouth and its legs shot out stiffly, four hooves quaking violently, as if beating a violent tattoo on four drums, the jagged rhythm bouncing off the walls. It raised its head, left it suspended in the air for a moment, then brought it crashing back to earth with a moist, sticky thud. “Donkey, endure it a while longer,” she murmured. “Who made us female in the first place? Clench your teeth, push… push harder…” Holding her hands up to her chest to draw strength into them, she took a deep breath, held it, and pushed down slowly, firmly.

The donkey struggled, yellow liquid shot out of its nostrils as its head jerked around and banged on the ground. Down at the other end, amniotic fluid and wet, sticky feces sprayed the area. In their horror, father and son covered their eyes.

“Fellow villagers, the Jap horse soldiers have already set out from the county seat. I’ve heard eyewitness accounts, this is not a false alarm, run for your lives before it’s too late…” Sima Ting’s shouts entered their ears with remarkable clarity.

Shangguan Fulu and his son opened their eyes and saw Shangguan Lü sitting beside the donkey’s head, her own head lowered as she gasped for breath. Her white shirt was soaked with sweat, throwing her solid, hard shoulder blades into prominent relief. Fresh blood pooled between the donkey’s legs as the spindly leg of its foal poked out from the birth canal; it looked unreal, as if someone had stuck it up there as a prank.

Once again, Shangguan Lü laid her twitching cheek against the donkey’s belly and listened. To Shangguan Shouxi, his mother’s face looked like an overripe apricot, a serene golden color. Sima Ting’s persistent shouts floated in the air, like a fly in pursuit of rotting meat, sticking first to the wall, then buzzing over to the donkey’s hide. Pangs of fear struck Shangguan Shouxi’s heart and made his skin crawl; a sense of impending doom wracked him. He lacked the courage to run out of the barn, for a vague sense of foreboding told him that the minute he stepped out the door, he’d fall into the hands of Jap soldiers – those squat little men with short, stubby limbs, noses like cloves of garlic, and bulging eyes, who ate human hearts and livers and drank their victims’ blood. They’d kill and eat him, leaving nothing behind, not even bone scraps. And at this very moment, he knew, they were massing in nearby lanes to get their hands on local women and children, all the while bucking and kicking and snorting like wild horses. He turned to look at his father in hopes of gaining solace. What he saw was an ashen-faced Shangguan Fulu, a blacksmith who was a disgrace to the trade, sitting on a sack of hay, arms wrapped around his knees as he rocked back and forth, his back and head banging against the wall. Shangguan Shouxi’s nose began to ache, he wasn’t sure why, and tears flowed from his eyes.

With a cough, Shangguan Lü slowly raised her head. Stroking the donkey’s face, she sighed. “Donkey, oh donkey,” she said, “what have you done? How could you push its leg out like that? Don’t you know the head has to come out first?” Water spilled from the animal’s lackluster eyes. She dried them with her hand, blew her nose loudly, then turned to her son. “Go get Third Master Fan. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to buy two bottles of liquor and a pig’s head for him, but we’ll just have to spend the money. Go get him!”

Shangguan Shouxi shrank up against the wall in terror, his eyes glued to the door, which led to the lanes outside. “The l-lanes are f-filled with J-Japanese,” he stammered, “all those J-Japanese…”

Enraged, Shangguan Lü stood up, stormed over to the door, and jerked it open, letting in an early-summer southwest wind that carried the pungent smell of ripe wheat. The lane was still, absolutely quiet. A cluster of butterflies, looking somehow unreal, flitted past, etching a picture of colorful wings on Shangguan Shouxi’s heart; he was sure it was a bad omen.

4

The local veterinarian and master archer, Third Master Fan, lived at the eastern end of town, on the edge of a pasture that ran all the way to Black Water River. The Flood Dragon riverbank wound directly behind his house. At his mother’s insistence, Shangguan Shouxi walked out of the house, but on rubbery legs. He saw that the sun was a blazing ball of white above the treetops, and that the dozen or so stained glass windows in the church steeple shone brilliantly. The Felicity Manor steward, Sima Ting, was hopping around atop the watchtower, which was roughly the same height as the steeple. He was still shouting his warning that the Japanese were on their way, but his voice had grown hoarse and raspy. A few idlers were gaping up at him with their arms crossed. Shangguan Shouxi stood in the middle of the lane, trying to decide on the best way to go to Third Master Fan’s place.

Two routes were available to him, one straight through town, the other along the riverbank. The drawback of the riverbank route was the likelihood of startling the Sun family’s big black dogs. The Suns lived in a ramshackle compound at the northern end of the lane, encircled by a low, crumbling wall that was a favorite perch for chickens. The head of the family, Aunty Sun, had a brood of five grandsons, all mutes. The parents seemed not to have ever existed. The five of them were forever playing on the wall, in which they’d created breaches, like saddles, so they could ride imaginary horses. Holding clubs or slingshots or rifles carved from sticks, they glared at passersby, human and animal, the whites of their eyes truly menacing. People got off relatively easy, but not the animals; it made no difference if it was a stray calf or a raccoon, a goose, a duck, a chicken, or a dog, the minute they spotted it, they took out after it, along with their big black dogs, converting the village into their private hunting ground.

The year before, they had chased down a Felicity Manor donkey that had broken free of its halter; after killing it, they’d skinned and butchered it out in the open. People stood by watching, waiting to see how the folks at Felicity Manor, a powerful and rich family in which the uncle was a regimental commander who kept a company of armed bodyguards, would deal with someone openly slaughtering one of its donkeys. When the steward stamped his foot, half the county quaked. Now here were all these wild kids, slaughtering a Felicity Manor donkey in broad daylight, which was hardly less than asking to be slaughtered themselves. Imagine the people’s surprise when the assistant steward, Sima Ku – a marksman with a large red birthmark on his face – handed a silver dollar to each of the mutes instead of drawing his pistol. From that day on, they were incorrigible tyrants, and any animal that encountered them could only curse its parents for not giving it wings.

While the boys were in their saddles, their five jet black dogs, which could have been scooped out of a pond of ink, sprawled lazily at the base of the wall, eyes closed to mere slits, seemingly dreaming peaceful dreams. The five mutes and their dogs had a particular dislike for Shangguan Shouxi, who lived in the same lane, although he could not recall where or when he had managed to offend these ten fearsome demons. But whenever he came across them, he was in for a bad time. He would flash them a smile, but that never kept the dogs from flying at him like five black arrows, and even though the attacks stopped short of physical contact, and he was never bitten, he’d be so rattled his heart would nearly stop. The mere thought of it made him shudder.

Or he could head south, across the town’s main street, and get to Third Master Fan’s that way. But that meant he would have to pass by the church, and at this hour, the tall, heavyset, redheaded, blue-eyed Pastor Malory would be squatting beneath the prickly ash tree, with its pungent aroma, milking his old goat, the one with the scraggly chin whiskers, squeezing her red, swollen teats with large, soft, hairy hands, and sending milk so white it seemed almost blue splashing into a rusty enamel bowl. Swarms of redheaded flies always buzzed around Pastor Malory and his goat. The pungency of the prickly ash, the muttony smell of the goat, and the man’s rank body odor blended into a foul miasma that swelled in the sunlit air and polluted half the block. Nothing bothered Shangguan Shouxi more than the prospect of Pastor Malory looking up from behind his goat, both of them stinking to high heaven, and casting one of those ambiguous glances his way, even though the hint of a compassionate smile showed that it was given in friendship. When he smiled, Pastor Malory displayed teeth as white as those of a horse. He was forever dragging his dirty finger back and forth across his chest – Amen! And every time that happened, Shangguan Shouxi’s stomach lurched amid a flood of mixed feelings, until he turned tail and ran like a whipped dog. He avoided the vicious dogs at the mutes’ house out of fear; he avoided Pastor Malory and his milk goat out of disgust. What irritated him most was that his wife, Shangguan Lu, had special feelings for this redheaded devil. She was his devout follower, he was her god.

After wrestling with his thoughts for a long moment, Shangguan Shouxi decided to take the north and east route, even though the watchtower, with Sima Ting standing on its perch, and the scene below had him in its thrall. Everything seemed normal down here, except, of course, for the steward, who was acting like a monkey. No longer petrified by the prospect of encountering Jap devils, he had to admire his mother’s ability to size up a situation. But just to be on the safe side, he bent down and picked up a couple of bricks. He heard the braying of a little donkey somewhere and a mother calling to her children.

As he walked past the Sun compound, he was relieved to see that the wall was deserted: no mutes saddled in the breaches, no chickens perched on top, and, most importantly, no dogs sprawled lazily at the base. A low wall to begin with, the breaches brought it even closer to the ground, and that gave him an unobstructed view of the yard, where a slaughtering was in progress. The victims were the family’s proud but lonely chickens; the butcher was Aunty Sun, a woman of ample martial talents. People said that when she was young, she was a renowned bandit who could leap over eaves and walk on walls. But when she fell afoul of the law, she had no choice but to marry a stove repairman named Sun.

Shangguan Shouxi counted the corpses of seven chickens, glossy white, with splotches of blood here and there the only traces of their death struggles. An eighth chicken, its throat cut, flew out of Aunty Sun’s hand and thudded to the ground, where it tucked in its neck, flapped its wings, and ran around in circles. The five mutes, stripped to the waist, hunkered down beneath the house eaves, staring blankly at the struggling chicken one minute and at the razor-sharp knife in their grandmother’s hand the next. Their expressions and movements were alarmingly identical; even the shifting of their eyes seemed orchestrated. For all her renown in the village, Aunty Sun had been reduced to a skinny, wrinkled old woman, although her face and her expression, her figure and her bearing, carried evocative remnants of her former self. The five dogs sat in a huddle, heads raised, blank, mysterious looks in their eyes, bleak gazes that defied attempts to guess what they meant.

Shangguan Shouxi was so mesmerized by the scene in the Suns’ yard that he stopped to watch, his mind purged of anxieties and, more significantly, his mother’s orders. He was now a forty-two-year-old shrimp of a man leaning up against a wall, a rapt audience of one. Feeling the icy glare of Aunty Sun sweep past him like a knife, yielding as water and sharp as the wind, he felt scalped. The mutes and their dogs also turned to look at him. Evil, restless glares emerged from the eyes of the mutes; the dogs cocked their heads, bared their fangs, and growled as the hair on the back of their necks stood up. Five dogs, like arrows on a taut string, ready to fly. Time to get moving, he was thinking, when he heard Aunty Sun cough threateningly. The mutes abruptly lowered their heads, swollen from excitement, and all five dogs hit the ground obediently, legs splayed in front of them.

“Worthy nephew Shangguan, what’s your mother up to?” Aunty Sun asked calmly.

He was stuck for a good answer; there was so much he wanted to say, and not a word would come out. As his face reddened, he just stammered, like a thief caught in the act.

Aunty Sun smiled. Reaching down, she pinned a black-and-red rooster by the neck and stroked its silky feathers. The rooster cackled nervously, while she plucked the stubborn tail feathers and stuffed them into a woven rush sack. The rooster fought like a demon, madly clawing the muddy ground with its talons.

“Do your daughters know how to kick shuttlecocks? The best ones are made from the tail feathers of a live rooster. Ai, when I think back…”

She stopped in midsentence and glared at him as she sank into the oblivion of reverie. Her gaze seemed to bounce off the wall then bore through it. Shangguan Shouxi’s eyeballs didn’t flicker, and he held his breath, fearfully. Finally, Aunty Sun seemed to deflate in front of his eyes, like a punctured ball; her eyes went from blazing to mournfully gentle. She stepped down on the rooster’s legs, wrapped her left hand around the base of its wings, and pinched its neck. Unable to move, it gave up the struggle. Then, with her right hand, she began plucking the fine throat feathers until its reddish purple skin showed. Finally, after flicking the rooster’s throat with her index finger, she picked up the shiny knife, shaped like a willow leaf, made a single swipe, and the throat opened up, releasing a torrent of inky red blood, large drops pushing smaller ones ahead of them. Aunty Sun slowly got to her feet, still holding the bleeding rooster, and looked around wistfully. She squinted in the bright sunlight. Shangguan Shouxi felt lightheaded. The smell of poplars was heavy in the air. Scat! He heard Aunty Sun’s voice and watched as the black rooster tumbled through the air and thudded to the ground in the middle of the yard. With a sigh, he let his hands drop from the wall.

Suddenly, he remembered that he was supposed to be getting Third Master Fan to help with the donkey. But as he was turning to leave, the rooster, bloody but fighting to stay alive, struggled miraculously to its feet, propped up by its wings. Shorn of feathers, its tail stood up in all its strange, hideous nakedness, frightening Shangguan Shouxi. Blood still streamed from its open throat, but the head and comb, bled dry, were turning a deathly white. Yet it kept fighting to hold it up. Struggle! It held its head high, but then it sagged and hung limply. Again it rose in the air, then drooped, and rose one more time, this time, it seemed, to stay. It shook from side to side, as the rooster sat down, blood and foamy bubbles seeping from its beak and then from the opening in its neck. Its eyes glittered like gold nuggets. Distressed by the sight, Aunty Sun wiped her hands with straw and seemed to be chewing on something, even though her mouth was empty. She spat out a mouthful of saliva and yelled at the five dogs, “Go!”

Shangguan Shouxi fell flat on his backside.

When he pulled himself back to his feet, black feathers were flying all over the yard; the arrogant rooster was being torn apart, splattering the ground with raw meat and fresh blood. Like a pack of wolves, the dogs fought over the entrails. The mutes clapped their hands and laughed -guh-guh. Aunty Sun sat on the doorstep holding a long pipe, smoking like a woman deep in thought.

5

The seven daughters of the Shangguan family – Laidi (Brother Coming), Zhaodi (Brother Hailed), Lingdi (Brother Ushered), Xiangdi (Brother Desired), Pandi (Brother Anticipated), Niandi (Brother Wanted), and Qiudi (Brother Sought) – drawn by a subtle fragrance, came out of the side room to the east and huddled under Shangguan Lu’s window. Seven little heads, pieces of straw stuck in their hair, crowded up to see what was happening inside. They saw their mother sitting on the kang leisurely shucking peanuts, as if nothing were amiss. But the fragrance continued to seep through their mother’s window. Eighteen-year-old Laidi, first to comprehend what Mother was doing, could see the sweaty hair and bloody lips, and noted the frightening spasms of her swollen belly and the flies flitting around the room. The peanuts were being crushed into crumbs.

Laidi’s voice cracked as she cried out, “Mother!” Her six younger sisters followed her lead. Tears washed all seven girls’ cheeks. The youngest, Qiudi, cried pitifully; her little legs, covered with bedbug and mosquito bites, began to churn, and she broke for the door. But Laidi ran over and swept her up in her arms. Still bawling, the little girl pummeled her sister’s face.

“I want Mommy, I want my Mommy…”

Laidi’s nose began to ache, and there was a lump in her throat. Hot tears streamed down her face. “Don’t cry, Qiudi,” she coaxed her little sister as she patted her on the back, “don’t cry. Mommy’s going to give us a baby brother, a fair-skinned, roly-poly baby brother.”

Shangguan Lu’s moans emerged from the room. “Laidi,” she said weakly, “take your sisters away. They’re too small to understand what’s going on. You should know better.” Then a shriek of pain tore from her mouth, and the remaining five girls crowded up to the window again.

“Mommy,” fourteen-year-old Lingdi cried out, “Mommy…”

Laidi put her sister down and ran to the door on feet that had been bound briefly then liberated. She tripped on the doorsill’s rotting boards and crashed into the bellows, smashing a large dark green ceramic bowl filled with chicken feed. When she clambered to her feet, she spotted her grandmother, who was kneeling at the Guanyin altar, where incense smoke was curling into the air.

Quaking from head to toe, she righted the bellows, then bent down to pick up the pieces of the broken bowl, as if by somehow putting it back together she could lessen the severity of her blunder. Her grandmother stood up quickly, like an overfed horse, swaying from side to side, her head shaking crazily, as a string of strange sounds spilled from her mouth. Shrinking into herself and holding her head in her hands, Laidi braced for the anticipated blow. But instead of hitting her, her grandmother pinched her thin, pale earlobe and pulled her up, then propelled her toward the door. With a screech, she stumbled into the yard and fell on the brick path. From there she watched her grandmother bend down to scrutinize the broken bowl, her posture now resembling a cow drinking from a river. After what seemed like a very long time, she straightened up, holding some of the pieces in her hand and tapping them with her finger to produce a pleasantly crisp sound. Her wrinkled face had a pinched quality; the corners of her mouth turned down, where they merged with two deep creases running straight to her chin, making it seem as if it had been added to her face as an afterthought.

Kneeling on the path, Laidi sobbed, “Grandma, you can come beat me to death.”

“Beat you to death?” Shangguan Lü said sorrowfully. “Will that make this bowl whole again? It comes from the Yongle reign of the Ming dynasty, and was part of your great-grandmother’s dowry. It was worth the price of a new donkey!”

Her face ashen, Laidi begged her grandmother for forgiveness.

“It’s time for you to get married!” Shangguan Lü sighed. “Instead of getting up early to do your chores, you’re out here causing a scene. Your mother doesn’t even have the good fortune to die!”

Laidi buried her face in her hands and wailed.

“Do you expect me to thank you for smashing one of our best utensils?” Shangguan Lü complained. “Now quit pestering me, and take those fine sisters of yours, who aren’t good for anything but stuffing their faces, down to Flood Dragon River to catch some shrimp. And don’t come home until you’ve got a basketful!”

Laidi clambered to her feet, scooped up her baby sister Qiudi, and ran outside.

After shooing Niandi and the other girls out the door like a brood of chickens, Shangguan Lü picked up a willow shrimping basket and flung it to Lingdi. Holding Qiudi in one arm, Laidi reached out with her free hand and took the hand of Niandi, who took the hand of Xiangdi, who took the hand of Pandi. Lingdi, shrimping basket in one hand, took Pandi’s free hand with her own, and the seven sisters, tugging and being tugged, crying and sniffling, walked down the sundrenched, windswept lane, heading for Flood Dragon River.

As they passed by Aunty Sun’s yard, they noticed a heavy fragrance hanging in the air and saw white smoke billowing out of the chimney. The five mutes were carrying kindling into the house, like a column of ants; the black dogs, tongues lolling, kept guard at the door, expectantly.

When the girls climbed the bank of the Flood Dragon River, they had a clear view of the compound. The five mutes spotted them. The oldest boy curled his upper lip, with its greasy mustache, and smiled at Laidi, whose cheeks suddenly burned. She recalled the time when she’d gone to the river to fetch water, and the mute had tossed a cucumber into her bucket. He had grinned at her, like a sly fox, but with no sinister intent, and her heart had leapt, for the first time in her life. With blood rushing to her cheeks, she’d gazed down at the glassy surface of the water and seen how flushed her face had become. Afterwards, she’d eaten the cucumber, and the taste had lingered long after it was gone. She looked up at the colorful church steeple and the watch-tower. A man at the top was dancing around like a golden monkey and shouting:

“Fellow villagers, the Japanese horse soldiers have already set out from the city!”

People gathered below the tower and gazed up at the platform, where the man grabbed the railing from time to time and looked down, as if answering their unasked questions. Then he’d straighten up again, make another turn around the platform, cupping his hands like a megaphone to warn one and all that the Japanese would soon be entering the village.

Suddenly, the rumble of a horse-drawn wagon emerged from the main street. Where it had come from was a mystery; it was as if it had simply dropped from the sky or risen out of the ground. Three fine horses were pulling the large, rubber-wheeled wagon, the clip-clopping of twelve hooves racing along, leaving clouds of yellow dust in their wake. One of the horses was apricot yellow, one date red, the other the green of fresh leeks. Fat, sleek, and fascinating, they seemed made of wax. A dark-skinned little man stood spread-legged on the shafts behind the lead horse, and from a distance, it looked as if he were straddling the horse itself. His red-tasseled whip danced in the air – pa pa pa – as he sang out, haw haw haw. Without warning, he jerked the reins, the horses whinnied as they stiffened their legs, and the wagon skidded to a halt. Clouds of dust that had followed them quickly swallowed up the wagon, the horse, and the driver. Once the dust had settled, Laidi saw the Felicity Manor servants run out with baskets of liquor and bales of straw, which they loaded onto the wagon. One burly fellow stood on the steps of the Felicity Manor gateway, shouting at the top of his lungs. One of the baskets fell to the ground with a thud, the pig-bladder stopper fell out, and the fine liquor began to spread on the ground. When a pair of servants rushed over to pick up the basket, the man in the gateway jumped down off the step, swirled his glossy whip in the air, and brought the tip down on their backs. They covered their heads and hunkered down in the middle of the street to take the whipping they deserved. The whip danced like a snake coiling in the sun. The smell of liquor rose in the air. The wilderness was vast and still, wheat in the fields bent before the wind, waves of gold. On the watchtower the man shouted, “Run, run for your lives…”

People emerged from their houses, like ants scurrying around aimlessly. Some walked, others ran, and still others stood frozen to a spot; some headed east, others headed west, and still others went in circles, looking first in one direction, then another. The aroma drifting across the Sun compound was heavier than ever, as a cloud of opaque steam rolled out through the front door. The mutes were nowhere to be seen, and silence spread throughout the yard, broken only by an occasional chicken bone sailing out the door, where it was fought over by the five black dogs. The victor would take its prize over to the wall, to huddle in the corner and gnaw on it, while the losers glared red-eyed into the house and growled softly.

Lingdi tugged at her sister. “Let’s go home, okay?”

Laidi shook her head. “No, we’re going down to the river to catch shrimp. Mommy will need shrimp soup after our baby brother is born.”

So they walked single file down to the river’s edge, where the placid surface reflected the delicate faces of the Shangguan girls. They all had their mother’s high nose and fair, full earlobes. Laidi took a mahogany comb out of a pocket and combed each of her sisters’ hair; pieces of straw and dust fluttered to the ground. They grimaced and complained when the comb pulled through the tangles. Finished with her sisters, Laidi then ran the comb through her own hair and twisted it into a single braid, which she tossed over her back; the tip fell to her rounded hip. After putting away the comb, she rolled up her pant legs, revealing a pair of fair, shapely calves. Then she took off her blue satin shoes, with their red embroidered flowers; her sisters all stared at her bare feet, which had been partially crippled from the bindings. “What are you gawking at?” she demanded angrily. “If we don’t bring home lots of shrimp, the old witch will never forgive us!”

Her sisters hurriedly took off their shoes and rolled up their pant legs; Qiudi, the youngest, stripped naked. Laidi stood on the muddy bank looking down at water grasses swaying gently at the bottom of the slow-flowing river. Fish frolicked there, while swallows skimmed the surface of the water. She stepped into the river and shouted, “Qiudi, you stay up there to catch the shrimp. The rest of you, into the water.”

Giggling and squealing, the girls stepped into the river.

As her heels, accentuated by the bindings she’d worn as a little girl, sank into the mud, and the underwater grasses gently stroked her calves, Laidi experienced an indescribable sensation. Bending over at the waist, she carefully dug her fingers into the mud around the roots of the grasses, since that was the best place to find shrimp. Without warning, something leaped up between her fingers, sending shivers of delight through her. A nearly transparent, coiled freshwater shrimp the thickness of her finger, each of its feelers a work of art, lay squirming in her hand. She flung it up onto the riverbank. With a whoop of joy, Qiudi ran over and scooped it up.

“First Sister, I got one, too!”

“I got one, First Sister!”

“So did I!”

The task of retrieving all the shrimp was too much for two-year-old Qiudi, who stumbled and fell, then sat on the dike and bawled. Several of the shrimp were able to spring back into the river and disappear in the water. So Laidi went up and took her sister down to the water’s edge, where she washed her muddy backside. Each splash of water on bare skin resulted in a spasm and a shriek mixed with a string of meaningless foul words. With a swat on her sister’s bottom, Laidi let go of the younger girl, who nearly flew to the top of the dike, where she picked a stick out of some shrubbery, pointed it at her big sister, and cursed like a shrewish old woman. Laidi laughed.

By then, her sisters had made their way upriver. Dozens of shrimp leaped and squirmed on the sunlit bank. “Scoop them up, First Sister!” Qiudi shouted.

She began putting them into the basket. “I'll get you when we get home, you little imp!” Then she bent down, a smile on her face, and continued scooping up the shrimp, enough to wipe her mind clear of worries. She opened her mouth, and out came a little song – where it had come from, she didn’t know: “Mommy, Mommy, you are so mean, marrying me to an oil vendor, sight unseen…”

She quickly caught up with her sisters, who stood shoulder to shoulder in the shallows, their rumps sticking up in the air, chins nearly touching the water. They moved ahead slowly, hands buried in the water, opening and closing, opening and closing. Yellow leaves that had snapped off the plants floated in the muddy water they left in their wake. Each time one of them stood up meant another shrimp caught. Lingdi, then Pandi, then Xiangdi, one after another they straightened up and tossed shrimp in the direction of their big sister, who ran around, scooping them up, while Qiudi tried to keep up.

Before they realized it, they had nearly reached the arched footbridge spanning the river. “Come out of there,” Laidi shouted, “all of you. The basket’s full, we’re going home.” Reluctantly, the girls waded out of the water and stood on the dike, hands bleached by the water, calves coated with purplish mud. “How come there are so many shrimp in the river today, Sis?” “Has Mommy already given us a baby brother, Sis?” “What do the Japs look like, Sis?” “Do they really eat children, Sis?” “How come the mutes killed all their chickens, Sis?” “How come Grandma’s always yelling at us, Sis?” “I dreamed there was a big, fat loach in Mommy’s belly, Sis…” One question after another, and not a single response from Laidi, whose eyes were fixed on the bridge, its stones glittering in the sunlight. The rubber-wheeled wagon, with its three horses, had driven up and stopped at the bridgehead.

When the squat wagon master flicked the reins, the horses stepped restlessly onto the bridge flooring. Sparks and a loud clatter rose from the stones. Some men were standing nearby; they were stripped to the waist, wide leather belts cinching up their trousers, brass belt buckles glinting in the sun. Laidi knew the men: they were Felicity Manor servants. Several of them jumped up onto the wagon and tossed down the rice straw, then unloaded the liquor baskets, twenty altogether. The wagon master tugged on the reins to back the shaft horse over to a vacant piece of ground beside the bridgehead, just as the assistant steward, Sima Ku, rode out of the village on a black German-made bicycle, the first ever seen in Northeast Gaomi Township. Laidi’s granddad, Shangguan Fulu, who could never keep his hands to himself, had once reached out, when he thought no one was looking, to fondle the handlebar; but that had been back in the spring. Blue flames nearly shot out of Sima Ku’s angry eyes. He was wearing a long silk robe over white imported cotton trousers, tied at the ankles with blue bands and black tassels, and white-soled rubber shoes. His trouser legs billowed, as if pumped full of air; the hem of his robe was tucked into a belt woven of white silk tied at the front, with one long end and one short one. A narrow leather belt over his left shoulder crossed his chest like a sash, and was connected to a leather pouch with a piece of flaming red silk. The German bicycle bell rang out, heralding his arrival, as if on the wind. He jumped off the bicycle and removed his wide-brimmed straw hat to fan himself; the red mole on his face looked like a hot cinder. “Get moving!” he ordered the servants. “Pile the straw on the bridge and soak it with liquor. We’ll incinerate those fucking dogs!”

The servants busily carried the straw onto the bridge until it stood waist high. White moths carried along with the straw flitted around the area; some fell into the water and wound up in the bellies of fish, others were snapped up by swallows.

“Douse the straw with the liquor!” Sima Ku ordered.

The servants picked up the baskets and, struggling mightily, carried them up onto the bridge. After pulling out the stoppers, they poured the liquor onto the straw, beautiful, high-octane liquor whose fragrance intoxicated an entire section of river. The straw rustled. Rivulets of liquor spread across the bridge and down to the stone facing, where it puddled before showering into the river, becoming a cascade by the time all twelve baskets were empty, and washing the stone facing clean. The straw changed color, a transparent sheet of liquor falling into the water below, and before long, little white fish were popping up on the surface. Laidi’s sisters wanted to wade out into the river and scoop up the drunken fish, but she stopped them: “Stay away from there! We’re going home!”

But they were mesmerized by the activity on the bridge. In fact, Laidi was as curious as they were, and even as she tried to drag her sisters away, her gaze kept returning to the bridge, where Sima Ku stood, smugly clapping his hands; his eyes lit up and a smile creased his face. “Who else could have devised such a brilliant strategy?” he crowed to the servants. “No one but me, damn it! Come on, you little Nips, get a taste of my might!”

The servants roared in response. “Second Steward, shall we light it now?” one asked.

“No, not until they arrive.”

The servants escorted Sima Ku over to the bridgehead and the Felicity Manor wagon headed back to the village. The only sound was of liquor dripping into the river.

Shrimp basket in hand, Laidi led her sisters to the top of the dike, parting the shrubbery that grew on the slope on her way up. Suddenly, a skinny, black face materialized in the brush in front of her. With a shriek, she dropped the basket, which bounced on the springy shrubbery and rolled all the way down to the edge of the water, spilling the shrimp, a shimmering, squirming mass. Lingdi ran down to pick up the basket, while her sisters went after the shrimp. As Laidi retreated toward the river, she kept her eyes fixed on that black face, on which an apologetic smile appeared, exposing two rows of teeth that shone like pearls. “Don’t be afraid, little sister,” she heard him say softly. “We’re guerrilla fighters. Don’t scream. Just get away from here as fast as you can.”

Looking around, she spotted dozens of men in green clothing hiding in the shrubs, hard looks in their staring eyes; some were armed with rifles, others held grenades, and others still carried rusty swords. The man behind the dirty, smiling face held a steel blue pistol in his right hand and a shiny, ticking object in his left. It wasn’t until much later that she learned that the object was a pocket-sized timepiece; by that time, she was already sharing her bed with the dark-faced man.

6

Third Master Fan, drunk as a lord, walked grumbling into the Shangguan house. “The Japanese are on their way. Bad timing by this donkey of yours. But what can I say, since it was my horse that impregnated her? Whoever hangs the bell on the tiger’s neck must take it off. Shangguan Shouxi, I see you’ve got enough face to pull this off, oh shit, what face do you have? I’m only here because of your mother. She and I… ha ha… she made a hoof-scraper for my horses…” Shangguan Shouxi, his face covered with sweat, followed Third Master Fan in the door.

“Fan Three!” Shangguan Lü cried out. “You bastard, the local god makes a rare appearance!”

Feigning sobriety, Third Master Fan announced, “Fan Three has arrived.” But the sight of the donkey lying on the floor turned him from completely drunk to half sober. “My god, would you look at that! Why didn’t you send for me earlier?” He tossed his leather saddlebag to the floor, bent down to stroke the donkey’s ears, and patted its belly. Then he went around to the animal’s rear, where he tugged on the leg protruding from the birth canal. Straightening up, he shook his head sadly, and said, “I’m too late, it’s a lost cause. Last year, when your son brought the donkey over for mating, I told him the donkey was too scrawny, and that you should mate it with one of its own. But he insisted on mating it with a horse. That horse of mine is a thoroughbred Japanese stallion. His hoof is bigger than your donkey’s head, and when he mounted your animal, she nearly crumpled under the weight. Like a rooster and a house sparrow. But he’s a good stud horse, so he just closed his eyes and humped away. If it’d been another horse, shit! See, the foal won’t come out. Your donkey isn’t made to have a mule. All she’s good for is producing donkeys, a scrawny donkey…”

“Are you finished, Fan Three?” Shangguan Lü interrupted his monologue angrily.

“Finished, yes, I’ve said what I wanted to say.” He picked up his leather bag, flung it over his shoulder, and, returning from half sober to completely drunk, stumbled toward the door.

Shangguan Lü grabbed him by the arm. “You’re leaving?” she said.

Fan Three smiled grimly. “Old sister-in-law,” he said, “haven’t you been listening to the Felicity Manor steward? The village is almost deserted. Who’s more important, that donkey or me?”

“Three, you’re afraid I won’t make it worth your while, is that it? Well, you’ll get your two bottles of fine liquor and a fat pig’s head. And don’t forget, in this family, what I say goes.”

Fan Three glanced at father and son. “I’m well aware of that,” he said with a smile. “You’re probably the only old woman anywhere in this country who’s a true blacksmith. The strength in that bare back of yours…” A strange smile creased his face.

“Up your mother’s ass!” Shangguan Lü cursed as she thumped him on the back. “Don’t go, Three. We’re talking about not just one, but two lives here. That stud horse is your son, which makes this donkey your daughter-in-law, and the mule in her belly your grandson. Do what you can. If the mule lives, I’ll thank you and reward you. If it dies, I’ll blame my own meager fate, not you.”

“You’ve gone and made these four-legged creatures my family,” Fan Three said unhappily, “so what can I say? I’ll see if I can bring this half-dead donkey back to the land of the living.”

“That’s right, why listen to the ravings of that crazy Sima? What would the Japanese want with a backwater village like ours? Besides, by doing this, you’ll be storing up virtues, and the ghosts always steer clear of the virtuous.”

Fan Three opened his bag and took out a bottle filled with an oily green liquid. “This is a secret family tonic, handed down for generations. It works miraculously on breech births and other obstetric irregularities in animals. If this doesn’t do it, even the magical Monkey couldn’t bring that animal into the world. Sir,” he summoned Shangguan Shouxi, “come over here and lend a hand.”

“I’ll do it,” Shangguan Lü said. “He’s a clumsy oaf.”

Fan Three said, “The Shangguan hen goes and blames the rooster for not laying eggs.”

“If you have to insult someone, Third Younger Brother,” Shangguan Fulu said, “do it to my face, and don’t beat around the bush.”

“Is that anger I hear?” Fan Three asked.

“This is no time to bicker,” Shangguan Lü said. “What shall I do?”

“Raise the donkey’s head,” he said. “I’m going to give it the tonic.”

Shangguan Lü spread her legs, mustered her strength, and picked up the donkey’s head. The animal stirred; bursts of air snorted from its nostrils.

“Higher!” Fan Three said.

She strained to lift it higher; bursts of air were now snorting from her nostrils, too.

“Are you two dead or alive?” Fan Three complained.

The two Shangguan men rushed up to help, and nearly tripped over the donkey’s legs. Shangguan Lü rolled her eyes; Fan Three shook his head. Finally, they got the donkey’s head up high enough. It curled its lips back and showed its teeth. Fan Three stuck a funnel made of an ox horn into the animal’s mouth and emptied the contents of the bottle into it. “That’ll do it,” Fan said. “You can lower its head.”

As Shangguan Lü tried to catch her breath, Fan Three took out his pipe, filled it, and hunkered down to smoke. Two streams of white smoke quickly exited through his nostrils. “The Japanese took the county town and murdered the county chief, Zhang Weihan, then raped all the women in his family.”

“Did you hear that from the Simas?” Shangguan Lü asked him.

“No, my sworn brother told me. He lives near Eastgate in the county seat.”

Shangguan Lü said, “The truth never travels more than ten li.”

“Sima Ku took the family servants to set fires on the bridge,” Shangguan Shouxi said. “That’s more than a rumor.”

Shangguan Lü looked at her son angrily. “I never hear an encouraging, proper sentence from that mouth of yours, and you never tire of spouting nonsense and rumors. Fancy you, a man and the father of a large brood of children, and I can’t tell if that thing on your shoulders is a head or an empty gourd. Haven’t any of you considered the fact that Japanese have mothers and fathers, just like everybody else? There’s no bad blood between them and us common folk, so what are they going to do with us? Run off? Do you think you can outrun a bullet? Hide out? Until when?”

In response to her chiding, the Shangguan men could only bow their heads and hold their tongues. But Fan Three knocked the ashes from his pipe and tried to save the situation. “In the long run, our sister here sees things more clearly than we do. I feel better after what she said. She’s right. Go where? Hide where? I might be able to run and hide, but what about my donkey and my stud horse. They’re like a couple of mountains, and where can you hide a mountain? You might stay hidden past the first of the month, but you’ll never make it through the fifteenth. Up their mother, I say. Let’s get that baby mule out of there, and then figure out what to do next.”

“That’s the attitude!” Shangguan Lü said happily.

Fan took off his jacket, cinched up his belt, and cleared his throat, like a martial arts master about to take on an opponent. Shangguan Lü nodded approvingly. “That’s what I like to see, Three. A man leaves behind his good name, a wild goose leaves behind its call. If you bring this mule into the world, I’ll give you an extra bottle of liquor and beat a drum to sing your praises.”

“That’s pure shit,” Fan said. “Whose idea was it to make your donkey pregnant by my stud horse, anyway? This is what’s called doing the sowing and the harvesting.” He circled the donkey, tugged at the mule’s leg, and muttered, “Donkey, my little in-law, you’re standing at the gate of Hell, and you’re going to have to tough it out. My reputation hangs in the balance. Gentlemen,” he said as he patted the donkey’s head, “get a rope and a stout carrying pole. She can’t get it done lying there. We need to get her to her feet.”

The Shangguan men looked over at Shangguan Lü, who said, “Do as he says.” Once father and son had done as they were told, Fan ran the rope under the donkey just behind its front legs, then tied a knot, and had Shangguan Fulu stick the pole through the hole made by the rope.

“Stand over there,” he ordered Shangguan Shouxi.

“Bend down and lift the pole with your shoulders!”

The Shangguan men began lifting the pole, which dug deeply into their shoulders.

“That’s it,” Fan said. “Now there’s no hurry. Straighten up when I tell you, and put some shoulder into it. You’ll only get one chance. This animal can’t take much more suffering. Sister-in-law, your spot is behind the donkey. It’s up to you to keep the foal from dropping to the ground.” He went around to the donkey’s rear, where he rubbed his hands, took the lamp from the millstone, poured oil over his palms and rubbed them together, and then blew on them. When he tried sticking one of his hands up the birth canal, the little leg flailed wildly. By this time, his entire arm was inside the animal, up to the shoulder, his cheek pressed up against the mule’s purple hoof. Shangguan Lü’s eyes were glued to him; her lips were quivering. “Okay, gentlemen,” Fan said in a muffled voice, “on the count of three, lift with all your might. It’s life or death, so don’t cave in on me. All right?” His chin rested against the animal’s rump; his hand appeared to be grasping something deep inside. “One – two – three!” With a loud grunt, the Shangguan men made a rare display of mettle, straining under their load. Taking a cue from the effort around her, the donkey rolled over, tucked her front legs under her, and raised her head. Her rear legs shifted and curled up beneath her. Fan Three rolled with the donkey, until he was nearly lying facedown on the ground. His head disappeared from view, but his shouts continued: “Lift! Keep lifting!” The two men struggled up onto the balls of their feet, while Shangguan Lü slid beneath the donkey and pressed her back against its belly. With a loud bray, it planted its feet and stood up, and at that moment, a large, slippery object slid out from the birth canal, along with a great deal of blood and a sticky fluid, right into Fan Three’s arms, and from there to the ground.

Fan quickly cleared the little mule’s mouth of the fluid, cut the umbilical cord with his knife, and tied off the end, then carried the animal over to a clean spot on the floor, where he wiped down its body with a rag. With tears in her eyes, Shangguan Lü muttered over and over, “Thanks to heaven and earth, and to Fan Three.”

The baby mule staggered unsteadily to its feet, but quickly fell back down. Its hide was satiny smooth, its mouth the purplish red of a rose petal. Fan Three helped it to its feet. “Good girl,” he said. “A chip off the old block. The horse is my son and you, little one, you’re my granddaughter. Sister-in-law, bring some watery rice for my donkey daughter, returned from the dead.”

7

Shangguan Laidi hadn’t led her sisters more than a few dozen paces when she heard a series of sharp noises that sounded like strange bird cries. She looked into the sky to see what it was, just in time to hear an explosion in the middle of the river. Her ears rang, her brain clouded. A shattered catfish came on the air and landed at her feet. Threads of blood seeped from its split orange head; its feelers twitched, and its guts were spread all over its back. When it landed, a spray of muddy hot river water drenched Laidi and her sisters. Numbed and sort of dreamy, she turned to look at her sisters, who returned the look. She saw a gob of sticky stuff in Niandi’s hair, like a wad of chewed grass; seven or eight silvery fish scales were stuck to Xiangdi’s cheek. Dark waves churned in the river no more than a few dozen paces from where they stood, forming a whirlpool; heated water rose into the air, then fell back down into the whirlpool. A thin layer of mist hovered above the surface, and she could smell the pleasant odor of gunpowder. She struggled to figure out what had just happened, gripped by a foreboding that something was very wrong. Wanting to scream, all she could manage was a shower of tears that fell noisily to the ground. What am I crying for? No, I’m not really crying, she was thinking, and why should I? Maybe they were drops of river water, not tears at all. Chaos reigned inside her head. The scene arrayed before her – the sun glinting off the bridge beams, the churning, muddy river, densely packed shrubbery, all the startled swallows, and her stunned sisters – enveloped her in a chaotic mix of images, like a tangled skein of string. Her eyes fell on her baby sister, Qiudi, whose mouth hung slack and whose eyes were squeezed shut; tears ran down her cheeks. A sizzle filled the air around them, like beans popping in the sun. Secrets hidden amid the riverbank bushes produced a rustling sound like skittering little critters, but no sound from the men in green she’d seen in the bushes a few minutes before. The shrub branches pointed silently upward and their gold-coin-like leaves shimmied slightly. Were they still there? If so, what were they doing? Then she heard a flat, distant shout: “Little sisters, hit the ground… little sisters… down on your bellies…”

She searched the landscape to locate the source of the shouts. Deep down in her brain a crab crawled around, and it hurt terribly. She saw something black and shiny fall from the sky. A pillar of water as thick as an ox rose slowly out of river just east of the stone bridge, and spread out once it reached the height of the dike, like the branches of a weeping willow. Within seconds the smells of gunpowder, river mud, and shattered fish and shrimp rushed into her nostrils. Her ears stung so badly she couldn’t hear a thing, but she thought she saw sound waves spreading through the air.

Another black object fell into the river, sending a second pillar of water skyward. Something blue slammed into the riverbank, its edges curled outward like a dog’s tooth. When she bent down to pick it up, a wisp of yellow smoke rose from the tip of her finger, and a sharp pain shot through her body. In a flash, the crashing noises of the world rushed at her again, as if the now searing pain in her finger came from her ear, breaking up the blockage. The water was lapping noisily, smoke was rolling upwards. Explosions rumbled in the air. Three of her sisters were howling, the other three were lying on the ground with their hands over their ears, their fannies sticking up, like those stupid, awkward birds that bury their heads in the sand when they’re pursued, forgetting all about their hindquarters.

“Little sisters!” Again she heard a voice in the bushes. “Down on your bellies, hit the ground and crawl over here…”

She lay on her belly and searched for the man in the bushes. Finally, she spotted him amid the lithe branches of a red willow. The dark-faced stranger with the white teeth was waving her over. “Hurry!” he shouted. “Crawl over here.”

A crack opened up in her confused mind and let in rays of light. Hearing the whinny of a horse, she turned to look behind her and saw a gold-colored colt, its fiery mane flying as it galloped onto the stone bridge from the southern end. The lovely, halterless colt was unruly, lively, reveling in its youth. The son of Third Master Fan’s Japanese stud horse, it belonged to Felicity Manor; in other words, the golden colt was another of his grandsons. She knew that lovable colt, and she liked it. She often saw it galloping up and down the lane, throwing Aunty Sun’s dogs into a frenzy. When it reached the middle of the bridge, it stopped as if brought up short by the wall of straw, or made woozy by the liquor it was soaked in. It cocked its head and scrutinized the straw. What could it be thinking? she wondered. Another shriek tore through the air as a lump of blinding molten metal crashed into the bridge with a thunderous roar, seemingly having traveled a great distance. The colt disintegrated before her eyes; one of its charred legs landed in the bushes nearby. A wave of nausea drove a sour, bitter liquid up from her stomach into her throat, and at that moment, she understood everything. The colt’s severed leg showed her what death was all about, and a sense of horror made her quake, made her teeth chatter. Jumping to her feet, she dragged her sisters into the bushes.

All six younger sisters huddled around her, holding on to each other like stalks of garlic wrapped around the stem. Laidi heard that now familiar hoarse voice shouting at her, but the seething waters of the river swallowed up the sound.

Folding her baby sister into her arms, she felt the searing heat of the little girl’s face. A calmness returned to the river for the moment, giving the layer of smoke a chance to dissipate. More of those hissing black objects flew over the Flood Dragon River, dragging long tails behind them before landing in the village with muffled explosions, followed by faint screams from women and the thud of collapsing structures. Not a soul in sight on the opposite dike, nothing but a solitary locust tree. On the riverbank below stood a line of weeping willows whose branches touched the surface of the water. Where were these strange, scary flying objects coming from? she wondered stubbornly. A shout – Ai ya ya – broke her concentration. The sight of the Felicity Manor assistant steward, Sima Ku, riding his bicycle up onto the bridge appeared through the branches. What’s he doing? she wondered. It must be because of the horse. But he was holding a lit torch, so it wasn’t the horse, whose corpse was splattered all over the bridge and whose blood stained the water below.

Sima Ku slammed on the brakes and flung the torch into the liquor-soaked straw, sending blue flames into the sky. Jerking his bicycle around, but too rushed to climb onto it, he ran it down the bridge, the blue flames licking at his heels. The eerie Ai ya ya shouts kept spilling from his mouth. When a sudden loud crack sent his wide-brimmed straw hat flying into the river, he let go of his bicycle, bent low at the waist, stumbled, and fell face-first onto the bridge flooring. Crack, crack, crack, a string of noises like firecrackers. Sima Ku hugged the bridge flooring and crawled like a lizard. Suddenly he was gone, and the cracking noises stopped. The bridge all but disappeared in blue, smokeless flames, those in the center rising higher than the others and turning the water below blue. Laidi’s chest constricted in the stifling air and waves of heat; her nostrils were hot and dry. The waves of heat changed into gusting, whistling winds. The bushes were wet, sort of sweaty; the leaves of trees curled up and withered. Then she heard the high-pitched voice of Sima Ku emerge from behind the dike:

“Fuck your sisters, you little Nips. You may have crossed Marco Polo Bridge, but you’ll never cross Fiery Dragon Bridge!”

Then he laughed:

“Ah ha ha ha, ah ha ha ha, ah ha ha ha…”

Sima Ku’s laughter seemed endless. On the opposite bank, a line of yellow caps popped up over the top of the dike, followed by the heads of horses and the yellow uniforms of their riders. Dozens of horse soldiers were now perched atop the dike, and though they were still hundreds of meters away, Laidi saw that the horses looked exactly like Third Master Fan’s stud horse. The Japs! The Japs are here! The Japs have come…

Avoiding the stone bridge, which was engulfed in blue flames, the Japanese soldiers eased their horses down the dike sideways, dozens of them bumping clumsily into each other all the way down to the riverbed. She could hear the men’s grunts and shouts and the horses’ snorts as they entered the river. The water quickly swallowed up the horses’ legs, until their bellies rested on the surface. The riders sat their mounts comfortably, sitting straight, heads high, their faces white in the bright sunlight, which blurred their features. With their heads up, the horses appeared to be galloping, which in fact was impossible. The water, like thick syrup, had a sticky, sweet smell. Struggling to move ahead, the massive horses raised blue ripples on the surface; to Laidi, they looked like little tongues of fire singeing the animals’ hides, which was why they were holding their large heads so high, and why they kept moving forward, their tails floating behind them. The Japanese riders, holding the reins with both hands, bobbed up and down, their legs in a rigid inverted V. She watched a chestnut-colored horse stop in the middle of the river, lift its tail, and release a string of droppings. Its anxious rider dug his heels into the horse’s flanks to get it going again. But the horse, refusing to move, shook its head and chewed noisily on the bit.

“Attack, comrades!” came a yell from the bushes to her left, followed by a muted sound like tearing silk. Then the rattle of gunfire – crisp and dull, thick and thin. A black object, trailing white smoke, hit the water with a loud thunk and sent a pillar of water into the air. The Japanese soldier on the chestnut horse was thrown forward at a bizarre angle, then sprang back, his arms flailing wildly in the air. Fresh black blood gushing from his chest soaked the head of his horse and stained the water. The horse reared, exposing its muddy forelegs and its broad, shiny chest. By the time its front hooves crashed through the surface of the water again, the Japanese soldier was draped face-up across the animal’s rump. A second Japanese soldier, this one on a black mount, flew headfirst into the river. Another, riding a blue horse, was thrown forward out of his saddle, but wrapped his arms around the animal’s neck and hung there, capless, a trickle of blood dripping from his ear into the river.

Chaos reigned on the river, where riderless horses whinnied and spun around to struggle back to the far bank. All the other Japanese soldiers lay forward in their saddles, clamping down with their legs as they aimed their shiny rifles at the bushes and opened fire. Dozens of snorting horses made their way to the shoals the best they could. With beads of water dripping from their bellies and mud covering their purple hooves, they dragged long glistening threads all the way out to the middle of the river.

A sorrel with a white forehead, a pale-faced Japanese soldier on its back, jumped and leaped toward the dike, its hooves thudding clumsily and noisily into the shoals. The squinting, tight-lipped soldier on its back smacked its rump with his left hand and brandished a silvery sword in his right, as he charged the bushes. Laidi saw beads of sweat on the tip of his nose and the thick lashes of his mount, and she could hear the air forced out through the horse’s nostrils; she could also smell the sour stench of horse sweat. All of a sudden, red smoke emerged from the sorrel’s forehead, and all four of its churning legs stiffened. Its hide was creased with more wrinkles than she could count, its legs turned to rubber, and before its rider knew what was happening, both he and the horse fell crashing into the bushes.

The Japanese cavalry unit headed south along the riverbank all the way up to where Laidi and her sisters had left their shoes. There they reined in their horses and cut through the bushes up to the dike. Laidi kept looking, but they were gone. She then turned to look down at the dead sorrel, its head bloody, its big, lifeless blue eyes staring sadly into the deep blue sky. The Japanese rider lay facedown in the mud, pinned beneath the horse, his head cocked at an awkward angle, one bloodless hand stretched out to the riverbank, as if fishing for something. The horses’ hooves had chewed up the smooth, sundrenched mud of the shoals. The body of a white horse lay on its side in the river, rolling slowly in the shifting water, until it flipped over and its legs, tipped by hooves the size of clay jugs, rose terrifyingly into the air. A moment later, the water churned and the legs slipped back into the water to wait for the next opportunity to point to the sky. The chestnut horse that had made such an impression on Laidi was already far downriver, dragging its dead rider with it, and she wondered if it might be off looking for its mate, imagining it to be the long-separated wife of Third Master Fan’s stud horse.

Fires were continued to burn on the bridge, the now yellow flames sending thick white smoke out of the piles of straw. The green bridge flooring arched high in the air as it groaned and gasped and moaned. In her mind, the burning bridge was transformed into a giant snake writhing in agony, trying desperately to fly up into the sky with both its head and tail nailed down. The poor bridge, she thought sadly. And that poor German bicycle, the only modern machine in Gaomi, was now nothing but charred, twisted metal. Her nose was assailed by the smells of gunpowder, rubber, blood, and mud that turned the heated air sticky and thick, and her breast was suffused with a foul miasma that seemed about to explode. Worse yet, a layer of grease had formed on the roasted bushes in front of them, and a wave of sparking heat rushed toward her, igniting crackling fires in the bushes. Scooping Qiudi up in her arms, she screamed for her sisters to leave the bushes. Then, standing on the dike, she counted until they were all there with her, grimy-faced and barefoot, their eyes staring blankly, their earlobes roasted red. They scampered down the dike and ran toward an abandoned patch of ground that everyone said was once the foundation and crumbled walls of a Muslim woman’s house that had since been reclaimed by wild hemp and cocklebur. As she ran into the tangle of undergrowth, her legs felt as if they were made of dough, and the nettles pricked her feet painfully. Her sisters, crying and complaining, stumbled along behind her. So they all sat down amid the hemp and wrapped their arms around each other, the younger girls burying their faces in Laidi’s clothing; only she kept her head up, gazing fearfully at the fire raging over the dike.

The men in green uniforms she’d seen before trouble arrived came running out of the sea of flames, shrieking like demons. Their clothes were on fire. She heard the now familiar voice shout, “Roll on the ground!” He was the first to hit the ground and roll down the dike, like a fireball. A dozen or more fireballs followed him. The flames were extinguished, but green smoke rose from the men’s clothes and hair. Their uniforms, which only moments earlier had been the same eye-catching green as the shrubbery in which they were hiding, were now little more than black rags that clung to their bodies.

One of the men, not heeding the order to roll on the ground, screamed in agony as he ran like the wind, carrying the flames with him all the way up to the wild hemp where the girls were hiding, heading straight for a big puddle of filthy water; it was covered by a profusion of wild grasses and water plants, with thick red stems and fat, tender leaves the color of goose down, and pink, cottony flower buds. The flaming man threw himself into the puddle, sending water splashing in all directions and a host of baby frogs leaping out of their hiding places. White egg-laying butterflies fluttered into the air and disappeared into the sunlight as if consumed by the heat. Now that the flames had sputtered out, the man lay there, black as coal, gobs of mud stuck to his head and face, a tiny worm wriggling on his cheek. She could not see his nose or his eyes, only his mouth, which spread open to release tortured screams: “Mother, dear Mother, I’m going to die…” A golden loach accompanied the screams out of his mouth. His pitiful writhing stirred up mud that had accumulated over the years and sent an awful stench into the air.

His comrades lay on the ground, moaning and cursing, their rifles and clubs scattered about – except for the thin man with the dark face, who still held his pistol. “Comrades,” he said, “let’s get out of here. The Japanese will be back!”

As if they hadn’t heard him, the charred soldiers stayed where they were on the ground. A couple of them climbed shakily to their feet and took a few wobbly steps before their legs gave out. “Comrades, let’s get out of here!” he bellowed, kicking the man nearest him.

The man crawled forward and struggled into a kneeling position. “Commander,” he cried out pitifully, “my eyes, I can’t see anything…”

Now she knew that the dark-faced man was called Commander. “Comrades,” he said anxiously, “the Japs are coming. We must be ready for them…”

Off to the east, she saw twenty or more Japanese horse soldiers in two columns on the top of the dike, riding down like a tide in tight formation in spite of the flames around them, the horses trotting across the ridge, heads thrust out, one close on the heels of the other. When they reached Chen Family Lane, the lead horse turned and negotiated the slope, the others quickly falling in behind it. They skirted a broad expanse of open land (the land, which served as a grain-drying ground for the Sima family, was flat and smooth, covered by golden sand), then picked up speed, galloping in a straight line. All the Japanese horsemen brandished long, narrow swords that glinted in the sun as they bore down on the enemy like the wind, their war whoops shattering the silence.

The commander raised his pistol and fired at the onrushing cavalry troops, a single puff of white smoke emerging from the mouth of the barrel. Then he threw down the pistol and limped as fast he could toward where Laidi and her sisters were hiding. A speeding apricot-colored horse brushed past him, its rider leaning over in the saddle as he slashed the air with his sword. The commander hit the ground in time to keep his head from being struck by the sword, but not quickly enough to avoid having a chunk of his right shoulder sliced off; it sailed through the air and landed nearby. Laidi saw the palm-sized piece of flesh twitch like a skinned frog. With a scream of pain, the commander rolled on the ground, then crawled up against a large cocklebur and lay there without moving. The Japanese soldier spun his mount around and headed straight for a big man who was standing up holding a sword. With fear written on his face, the man swung his sword weakly, as if aiming for the horse’s head, but he was knocked to the ground by the animal’s hooves, and before he knew it, the rider leaned over and split his head open with his sword, splattering the Japanese soldier’s pants with his brains. In no time at all, a dozen or more men who had escaped from the burning bushes lay on the ground in eternal rest. The Japanese riders, still in the grip of frenzied excitement, trampled the bodies beneath their horses’ hooves.

Just then, another cavalry unit, followed by a huge contingent of khaki-clad foot soldiers, emerged from the pine grove west of the village and joined up with the first unit; the reinforced cavalry forces then turned and headed toward the village along the north-south highway. The helmeted foot soldiers, rifles in hand, fell in behind their mounted comrades and stormed the village like locusts.

On the dike the fires had died out; thick black smoke rose into the sky. Laidi could see only blackness where the dike was, while the ruined bushes gave off a pleasant charred odor. Swarms of flies, seemingly dropping out of the sky, fell upon the battered corpses and the puddles of blood near them, and on the scarred branches and leaves of the shrubs, and on the commander’s body. The flies seemed to blot out everything within sight.

Her eyes felt dull and heavy, her lids sticky, in the presence of a world of strange sights she’d never seen before: there were the severed legs of horses, horses with knives stuck in their heads, naked men with huge members hanging between their legs, human heads rolling around on the ground clucking like mother hens, and little fish with skinny legs hopping on hemp plants in front of her. But what frightened her most was the commander, whom she thought was long dead; climbing slowly to his knees, he crawled over to the chunk of flesh from his shoulder, flattened it out, and stuck it onto the spot where it had been cut off. But it immediately hopped back off and burrowed into a patch of weeds. So he snatched it up and smashed it on the ground, over and over, until it was dead. Then he plucked a tattered piece of cloth from his body and wrapped the flesh in it.

8

An uproar in the yard startled Shangguan Lu awake. She was crestfallen when she saw that her belly was as swollen as ever, even now that half the kang was stained with her blood. The fresh dirt her mother-in-law had spread over the kang had turned into sticky, blood-soaked mud, and what had been only a vague feeling suddenly turned crystal-clear. She watched as a bat with pink wing membranes flew down from the rafters, and a purple face materialized on the black wall across from her; it was the face of a dead baby boy. A gut-wrenching, heartrending pain became a dull ache. Then her curiosity was piqued by the sight of a tiny foot with bright toenails poking out from between her legs. It’s all over, she thought, my life is all over. The thought of death brought feelings of deep sadness, and she saw herself being placed in a cheap coffin, with her mother-in-law looking on with an angry frown and her husband standing nearby, gloomy but silent. The only ones wailing were her seven daughters, who stood in a circle around the coffin…

Her mother-in-law’s stentorian voice overwhelmed the girl’s wails. She opened her eyes, and the hallucination vanished. The window was suffused with daylight; the heavy fragrance of locust blossoms gusted in. A bee banged into the paper window covering. “Fan Three, don’t worry about washing your hands,” she heard her mother-in-law say. “That precious daughter-in-law of mine still hasn’t had her baby. The best she can do is one leg. Can you come help out?”

“Elder sister-in-law, don’t be foolish. Just think what you’re saying. I’m a horse doctor, I can’t deliver a human baby.”

“People and animals aren’t that different.”

“That’s nonsense, elder sister-in-law. Now get me some water so I can wash up. I say forget the expense and go get Aunty Sun.”

Her mother-in-law’s voice exploded like a clap of thunder: “Stop pretending you don’t know I can’t stand that old witch! Last year she stole one of my little hens.”

“That’s up to you,” Fan Three said. “It’s your daughter-in-law who’s in labor, after all, not my wife. All right, I’ll do it, but don’t forget the liquor and the pig’s head, because I’ll be saving two lives for your family!”

Her mother-in-law changed her tone of voice from anger to melancholy: “Fan Three, show some kindness. Besides, with all that fighting out there, if you went out and ran into Japanese…”

“That’s enough!” Fan said. “In all the years we’ve been friends and neighbors, this is the first time I’ve done anything like this. But let’s get something straight first. People and animals may not be that different, but a human life matters more…”

The clatter of footsteps, mixed with the sound of someone blowing his nose, came toward her. Don’t tell me that my father-in-law and husband and that slick character Fan Three are coming in while I’m lying here naked. The thought of it angered and shamed her. Puffy white clouds floated before her eyes. When she strained to sit up and find something to cover her nakedness, the pool of blood she lay in made that impossible. The intermittent rumble of explosions from the edge of the village came on the air, punctuated by a mysterious yet somehow familiar clamor, like the magnified noise made by a horde of tiny crawling critters, or the gnashing of countless teeth… I’ve heard that sound before, but what is it? She thought and she thought. Then a flash of recognition quickly transformed itself into a bright light that brought into focus the plague of locusts she’d witnessed a decade or more earlier. The red swarms had blocked out the sun; it was a raging flood of insects that stripped every tree bare, even the bark of willows. The sickening gnawing sound ate its way into the marrow of her bones. The locusts have returned! she thought to her horror, as she sank into the mire of despair. “Heavenly Master, just let me die, I can’t take it anymore… God in Heaven, Blessed Virgin! Send down your grace and bounty to save my soul…” she prayed hopefully even in the throes of despair, sending prayers both to China’s supreme deity and to the paramount god of the West. When she had finished, her mental anguish and physical agonies had lessened a bit, and she thought back to that late spring day when she and the redheaded, blue-eyed Pastor Malory had lain in the grass, and he had told her that China’s Heavenly Master and the West’s God were one and the same, like the two sides of your hand, or just as the lianhua and hehua are both lotus flowers. Or, she thought bashfully, like a cock and a dick are the same thing. He stood amid the locust trees, as spring was giving way to summer, that thing of his standing up proudly… the surrounding trees in full bloom with white flowers, and red flowers, and yellow flowers, a rainbow of colors dancing in the air, their rich fragrance thoroughly intoxicating her. She felt herself rise in the air, like a cloud, like a feather. With gratitude filling her breast, she gazed at the somber and sacred, friendly and kindly smile on Pastor Malory’s face, and her eyes filled with tears.

When she closed her eyes, the tears spilled into the creases all the way to her ears. The door was pushed open, and her mother-in-law said meekly, “Laidi’s mother, what’s wrong? You must hold out, child. Our donkey’s had a lively little mule. Now, if you have this baby, the Shangguan family can be content at last. You might be able to hide the truth from your parents, but not from a doctor. Since it doesn’t matter whether a midwife is male or female, I’ve asked Third Master Fan to come over…”

The rare note of tenderness moved her. Opening her eyes, she looked up into the golden aura of the older woman’s face and nodded weakly. Her mother-in-law turned and summoned Fan Three. “You can come in now.”

He entered with a long face, trying hard to look dignified. But he averted his eyes, as if he’d seen something so terrifying it drained the blood from his cheeks. “Elder sister-in-law,” he said softly as he backed to the door, his gaze resting fearfully on the body of Shangguan Lu, “raise your merciful hand and spare me. Threaten to kill me if you want, but I cannot do what you ask.” He turned and ran out the door, only to bump into Shangguan Shouxi, who was craning his neck to see what was going on inside. With disgust, Shangguan Lu noted her husband’s gaunt, pointy face, looking more like a rat than ever, as her mother-in-law ran out on the heels of Fan Three.

“Fan Three, you fucking dog!”

When her husband stuck his head in the door a second time, she mustered the strength to raise an arm to signal him and say icily – she couldn’t be sure if the words actually emerged from her mouth: “Come over here, you son of a bitch!” By this time, she’d forgotten her hatred and enmity toward her husband. Why take it out on him? He may be a son of a bitch, but it’s my mother-in-law who’s the bitch, an old bitch…

“Are you talking to me?” Shangguan Shouxi asked from where he stood beside the kang, looking out the window in embarrassment. “What do you want?” She gazed up sympathetically at this man with whom she’d lived for twenty-one years, and felt pangs of remorse. A sea of locust blossoms rippled in the wind… in a voice as thin as a single hair, she said:

“This child… it’s not yours…”

In tears, Shangguan Shouxi said, “Mother of my children… don’t die on me… I’ll go get Aunty Sun…”

“No…” She looked into her husband’s eyes and implored him, “Go beg Pastor Malory to come…”

Out in the yard, Shangguan Lü, sensing a pain worse than having her skin flayed, took an oilpaper bundle from her pocket and peeled it back to reveal a shiny silver dollar; she clutched it tightly as the corners of her mouth curled in a grimace and her eyes glowed red. The sun shone down on her gray head; black smoke drifted over in the hot air. She heard a loud disturbance to the north, near the Flood Dragon River; bullets whistled through the air. “Fan Three,” she sobbed, “can you just stand by and watch someone die? ‘There is nothing more poisonous than a hornet’s sting and nothing more ruthless than a physician’s heart.’ They say ‘money can make the devil turn a millstone.’ Well, this silver dollar has rested against my skin for twenty years, but it’s yours in return for my daughter-in-law’s life.”

She laid the silver dollar in Fan Three’s hand, but he flung it to the ground, as if it were a piece of hot metal. A film of sweat covered his oily face, and his cheeks twitched so violently they distorted his features. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he shouted, “Elder sister-in-law, please let me go… I’ll get down on my knees and bang my head against the ground for you…”

He had nearly reached the gate when Shangguan Fulu, stripped to the waist, came barging through. He was wearing only one shoe, and his bare, scrawny chest was smeared with something green, like axle grease, like a gaping, festering wound. “Where have you been, you walking corpse?” Shangguan Lü cursed angrily.

“Elder brother, what’s going on out there?” Fan Three asked anxiously. Ignoring both the curse and the question, Shangguan Fulu stood there with an idiotic smile on his face, a string of duh-duh-duhs streaming from his mouth, like chickens pecking the bottom of an earthenware dish.

Shangguan Lü grabbed her husband by the chin and shook him hard, wrenched his mouth up one minute and down the next, stretching it horizontally and then vertically. A dribble of saliva emerged from one corner. He coughed, then spat up, and finally settled down. “What’s going on out there” He looked at his wife with deep sorrow.

As his mouth twisted, he sobbed. “The Japanese horse soldiers have reached the river…”

The dull thuds of approaching horse hooves froze them in their tracks. A flock of magpies with white tail feathers flew overhead, their cries settling over the compound. Then the stained glass in the church steeple shattered noiselessly, splintered glass glinting in the sunlight. But immediately after the glass began flying, the crisp sound of an explosion engulfed the steeple, sending dull sound waves like the rumble of iron wheels spreading in all directions. A powerful wave of heat toppled Fan Three and Shangguan Fulu like harvested wheat. It sent Shangguan Lü reeling backward into the wall. A black earthenware chimney with ornamental carvings rolled off the roof and landed on the brick path in front of her, where, with a loud crash, it crumbled into pieces.

Shangguan Shouxi ran out of the house. “Mother,” he sobbed, “she’s dying, she’s going to die. Go get Aunty Sun…”

She glared at her son. “If it’s your time to die, then you die. If it isn’t, you don’t. Nothing can change that.”

Listening but not quite grasping her meaning, the three men looked at her with tears in their eyes. “Fan Three,” she said, “do you have any more of that secret potion that speeds the delivery process? If you do, give a bottle to my daughter-in-law. If not, then to hell with it, and with you.” Without waiting for his answer, she tottered in the direction of the gate, head high, chest thrown out, not looking at any of them.

9

On the morning of the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, 1939, in the largest village of Northeast Gaomi Township, Shangguan Lü led her mortal enemy, Aunty Sun, into her house, ignoring the bullets whizzing overhead, to help deliver her daughter-in-law’s baby. At the very moment they walked through the door, out on the open field near the bridgehead, Japanese horse soldiers were trampling the corpses of guerrilla fighters.

Shangguan Fulu and his son were milling in the yard with the horse doctor, Fan Three, who proudly held up a bottle filled with a viscous green liquid. The three men had been in the same spot when Shangguan Lü left to find Aunty Sun, but were now joined by the redheaded Pastor Malory. Wearing a loose Chinese robe, with a heavy brass crucifix around his neck, he was standing beneath Shangguan Lu’s window, head up, facing the morning sun, as he intoned a prayer in the local dialect: “Dear Jesus, Lord in Heaven. Merciful God, reach out to touch the heads of me, Your devoted servant, and the friends gathered here, give us the strength and the courage to face this challenge. Let the woman inside safely deliver her infant, give the goat plenty of milk and the laying hens plenty of eggs, throw a sheet of black before the eyes of the evil invaders, let their bullets jam in their weapons, and let their horses lose their way and perish in bogs and marshes. Dear Lord, send all Your punishments down on my head, let me take unto myself the suffering of all living creatures.” The other men stood silently listening to his prayer. The looks on their faces showed the depths to which they were moved.

With a sneer, Aunty Sun pushed Pastor Malory aside and walked in the door. His “Amen” came as he stumbled wide-eyed to keep his balance, hurriedly crossing himself to bring his prayer to an end.

Aunty Sun’s silvery hair was combed into a bun held in place by a shiny silver ornament; her sideburns were pinned with mugwort spikes. She was wearing a starched white cotton jacket with a slanted lapel that buttoned down the side; a white handkerchief was tucked in between two of the buttons. Her black cotton trousers were tied around the ankles above a pair of green cotton slippers with black embroidery and white soles. The fresh smell of soap clung to her body. She had prominent cheekbones, a high nose, and lips that formed a tight line above her chin. Bright, piercing eyes were set deeply in lovely sockets. Her poise and confident bearing stood in stark contrast to the prosperous, well-fed Shangguan Lü. Taking the bottle of green liquid from Fan Three, Shangguan Lü walked up to Aunty Sun and said softly, “Aunty, this is Fan Three’s potion to hasten childbirth. Will you use it?”

“My dear lady Shangguan,” Aunty Sun said with obvious displeasure, her gaze covering Shangguan Lü with icy beauty, then shifting to the men in the yard, “who have you asked to help with the delivery, me or Fan Three?”

“Don’t be angry, Aunty. As they say, ‘When a patient is dying, find doctors where you can,’ and ‘Anyone with breasts is a mother.’” Forcing herself to be congenial, she kept her voice low and controlled. “I’m asking you, of course. I wouldn’t have disturbed such an eminent personage if I hadn’t reached the end of my rope.”

“Didn’t you once accuse me of stealing your chickens?” Aunty Sun remarked. “If you want me as the midwife, tell everyone else to stand clear!”

“If that’s how you want it, that’s how you shall have it,” Shangguan Lü said.

Aunty Sun removed a thin piece of red cloth from around her waist and tied it to the window lattice. She then strode purposefully into the house, and when she reached the door of the inside room, she stopped, turned, and said to Shangguan Lü, “Lady Shangguan, come with me.”

Fan Three ran up to the window to retrieve the bottle of green liquid Shangguan Lü had left there. He stuffed it into his bag and headed quickly toward the gate, without so much as a backward glance at the Shangguan father and son.

“Amen!” Pastor Malory repeated, making another sign of the cross. Then he nodded to the Shangguan father and son in a show of friendship.

A shriek from Aunty Sun tore from inside the room, followed by horrible wails from Shangguan Lu.

Shangguan Shouxi hunkered down on the ground and covered his ears with his hands. His father began pacing the yard, hands clasped behind his back, head down, as if he were looking for something he’d lost.

Pastor Malory repeated his prayer in a muted voice, eyes cast to the misty blue sky.

Just then the newborn mule emerged from the barn on shaky legs. Its damp hide shone like satin. Its weary mother followed it outside to the accompaniment of Shangguan Lu’s agonizing wails. With its ears standing straight up and its tail tucked between its legs, the donkey wobbled over to the water trough under a pomegranate tree, casting a fearful glance at the men in the yard. They ignored it. Shangguan Shouxi, his ears covered, was weeping loudly. Shangguan Fulu was still pacing the yard. Pastor Malory was praying with his eyes closed. The donkey buried its mouth in the water and drank noisily. When it had drunk its fill, it walked slowly over to the peanut vines held up by stalks of sorghum and began nibbling at the stalks.

Meanwhile, inside the house, Aunty Sun stuck her hand up the birth canal to extract the baby’s other leg. The pregnant mother screeched once before passing out. Then, after inserting some yellow powder into Shangguan Lu’s nostrils, Aunty Sun grabbed the baby’s legs and waited calmly. Shangguan Lu moaned as she regained consciousness, then sneezed, causing a series of violent spasms. Her back arched, then settled back down heavily. That was what Aunty Sun had been waiting for: she pulled the baby out of the birth canal, and as its long, flat head cleared the mother’s body, it made a loud popping sound, as if shot from a cannon. Aunty Sun’s white jacket was spattered with blood.

Hanging upside down in Aunty Sun’s hand was a purplish baby girl.

Shangguan Lü began beating her chest and wailing. “Stop crying! There’s another one in there!” Aunty Sun demanded angrily.

Shangguan Lu’s belly was jerking and twitching horribly; blood gushing from between her legs washed out another down-covered infant.

When she spotted the little wormlike object between the baby’s legs, Shangguan Lü fell to her knees beside the kang.

“What a shame,” Aunty Sun said pensively, “another stillborn.”

Suddenly dizzy, Shangguan Lü fell forward and banged her head on the kang. She stood with difficulty, propping herself up by the kang, and gazed at her daughter-in-law, whose face was stone gray. Then, with a moan of despair, she shuffled out of the room.

A pall of death hung over the yard. Her son was on his knees, the bloody stump of his neck resting on the ground, a stream of fresh blood snaking along the ground; his head, a look of fear frozen on the face, sat perfectly upright in front of his torso. Her husband was gnawing a brick on the path; one of his arms was tucked under his abdomen, the other stretched out in front of him. A mixture of gray matter and bright red blood from a gaping wound in the back of his head stained the path around him. Pastor Malory was on his knees, making the sign of the cross and mumbling something in a foreign tongue. Two massive horses, reins draped across their backs, were eating the sorghum stalks supporting the peanut vines, while the donkey and her newborn mule huddled in a corner of the wall, the young animal’s head tucked under one of its mother’s legs, its tail writhing like a snake. Two Japanese men in khaki stood there, one cleaning his sword with a handkerchief, the other hacking down sorghum stalks with his sword, sending peanuts to the ground, where they were eaten by the two horses, whose tails swished happily.

Suddenly feeling the earth wheel on its axis, Shangguan Lü had a single thought: to rescue her son and her husband. Instead, she crumpled heavily to the ground like a toppled wall.

Aunty Sun quickly skirted Shangguan Lü’s body and strode steadily out of the yard. But one of the Japanese soldiers, who had remarkably wide-set eyes and short eyebrows, threw down his handkerchief and moved to block her way, standing rigidly between her and the gate. Pointing the tip of his sword at her heart, he said something that was only gibberish to her, a loutish expression on his face. She looked at him calmly, the hint of a sneer on her lips. She took a step backward; the Japanese soldier took a step forward. She retreated two more steps, he took two steps forward, the tip of the sword still pressed up against her breast. As he bore relentlessly down on her, Aunty Sun reached up and brushed his sword to the side. Then one of her feet flashed through the air and landed precisely on his wrist, knocking the sword out of his hand. She rushed up and slapped him across the face. With a yelp of pain, he covered his face. His comrade ran up, sword in hand, and aimed it at Aunty Sun’s head. She spun out of the way and grabbed his wrist, shaking it until he too dropped his sword. Then she boxed his ear, and although it didn’t seem to be much of a slap, his face began to swell immediately.

Without so much as looking back, Aunty Sun strode out of the yard, as one of the soldiers raised his rifle and fired. Her body stiffened for a moment, then sprawled forward in the gateway of the Shangguan house.

At that moment, the two youngest mute grandsons, who had come looking for her, were felled by the same bullet on the steps leading up to the Shangguan gate. The three older grandsons were, at the time, occupied with cutting up the rump of a dead horse on the riverbank, where the smell of gunpowder thickened the air.

At around noon, a swarm of Japanese soldiers filled the Shangguan compound. The horse soldiers found a basket in the barn, into which they scooped the loose peanuts and carried them out into the lane to feed their weary horses. Two of the soldiers took Pastor Malory captive. Then a military doctor, eyeglasses perched on the pale bridge of his nose, followed his commander into the room where Shangguan Lu lay. With a frown, he opened his medical kit, donned a pair of surgical gloves, and cut the babies’ umbilical cords with a stainless steel knife. Picking up the infant boy by the feet, he slapped it on the backside until a hoarse cry emerged from the other end. He then picked up the baby girl and repeated the procedure until there were signs of life. After cleaning the cuts on the umbilical cords with iodine, he wrapped the babies in white gauzy cotton and gave Shangguan Lu injections to stop the bleeding. All the while the doctor was performing his lifesaving procedures on mother and children, a journalist was taking photographs from various angles. A month later, these photographs would appear in a Japanese newspaper back home to bear witness to the friendship between China and Japan.