Red Sorghum

1

IN THE CRUEL fourth lunar month, frogs lay their transparent eggs in the Black Water River under radiant starlight. Then, in the sweltering heat of the sun, swarms of inky-black, squirming tadpoles emerge into the warmth of water that looks like freshly extracted bean oil to form inky-black schools that swim with the slowly flowing river. Dog-turd reeds grow in profusion on the banks; wild mustard flowers so red they seem purple bloom furiously amid the water grasses.

It was a good day for birds. Clay-coloured larks covered with white dots soared in the high sky, filling the air with shrill cries. Glossy swallows skimmed the mirror-like surface of the river. The dark, rich soil of Northeast Gaomi Township revolved ponderously beneath the birds’ wings. Hot winds from the west rolled across the land, and murky dust clouds attacked the Jiao-Ping highway.

It was also a good day for Grandma. Granddad, who had joined the Iron Society, eventually replacing Black Eye as its leader, was about to fulfill his promise to give her a proper funeral, now that nearly two years had passed. News of the impending ceremony had spread a month earlier among the villages of Northeast Gaomi Township. The eighth day of the fourth lunar month had been chosen. By noon of the seventh day, donkey carts and ox carts began arriving, carrying common folk from far away, including wives and children. Hawkers and peddlars had a field day. On the streets and in the shade of trees at the head of the village, dumpling peddlars set up their earthen stoves, flatcake vendors heated their pots, and cold-bean-noodle stands with white canvas awnings were thrown up. Grey hair and ruddy cheeks, men, women, boys, and girls, seemed to fill every inch of space in our village.

By the spring of 1941, the Leng detachment and the Jiao-Gao regiment had worn each other down with their frequent clashes, and had been further harassed by the systematic kidnappings by Granddad’s Iron Society and an annihilation campaign by the Japanese and their Chinese puppet troops. The Leng detachment apparently had fled to the Three Rivers Mountain region of Changyi to rest and build up their strength, while the Jiao-Gao regiment hid out in the Great Marshy Mountain region of Pingdu County to lick its wounds. The Iron Society, under the leadership of Granddad and his erstwhile romantic rival, had grown, in a little over a year, into a force of over two hundred rifles and fifty or more fine horses; but their movements were so secretive and so shrouded in religious superstition that the Japanese and their puppets seemed to take no notice of them.

In national terms, 1941 witnessed the cruellest stage of the war of resistance against Japan; the people of Northeast Gaomi Township, however, enjoyed a brief respite of peace and quiet. The survivors planted a new crop on top of last year’s rotting sorghum. The seeds were barely in the ground when a light but adequate rain fell to soak the thirsty earth. Then the radiant sun took over, and, seemingly overnight, tender shoots covered the ground. Drops of fragrant dew were impaled on the tips of delicate red shoots. Grandma’s funeral fell on a day of rest for the farmers.

On the evening of the seventh, the area around the village walls was packed with people, while dozens of wagons, their donkeys and oxen tethered to trees and axles, were lined up on the dusty street. The setting sun shone on the glossy spring hides of livestock and turned immature leaves blood-red, their shadows ancient coins stamped on the animals’ backs.

As the sun fell behind the mountain, an herbal physician rode his mule into the village from the west. Clumps of bristly hairs emerged from the blackness of his nostrils; his scalp and forehead were covered by a tattered felt cap, out of place on this late-spring day, and a sombre glare radiated from beneath his slanting eyebrows.

The physician and his scrawny mule swaggered past the marketplace, drawing curious stares. The melodious tinkle of a little brass bell in his hand produced an air of unfathomable mystery, and the people fell in behind him instinctively, kicking up a cloud of dust that settled on the foul-smelling back of the sweaty mule and on the physician’s greasy face. His eyes blinked constantly, and he sneezed with a loud, tinny sound, as his mule released a string of farts. That broke the spell. The people laughed and drifted off to find a spot to set up camp for the night.

A new moon covered the village with hazy shadows. Cool breezes swept in from the fields, and the croaking frogs in the Black Water River filled the air; more visitors arrived for the funeral, but there was no room in the village, so they slept in the fields.

The physician took a tour on his mule around the tent set up by Granddad’s Iron Society. A towering, intimidating presence, it was the largest structure ever seen in our village. Grandma’s bier rested in the centre of the tent, through whose seams filtered the light of many candles. Two Iron Society soldiers with pistols in their belts stood guard at the entrance, their shiny heads shaved back from their foreheads, a sight that instilled fear in whoever saw them. All two hundred soldiers were quartered in satellite tents, while their fifty or more sturdy mounts were tethered to the crotches of willow trunks in front of a long feeding trough. The horses snorted, pawed the ground, and swished their tails to drive off hordes of horseflies. Grooms dumped dry mash into the trough, saturating the air under the trees with the redolence of parched sorghum.

The aroma caught the attention of the physician’s scrawny mule, which strained toward the trough. Following his mount’s pitiful gaze, he said, as much to himself as to his mule, ‘Hungry? Listen to me. Rivals and lovers are destined to meet. Men die over riches, birds perish over food. The young must not scoff at the old, for flowers don’t bloom forever. One must know when to yield to others. No sign of weakness, it will work to one’s later advantage….’

The physician’s crazy ramblings and furtive behaviour caught the attention of two Iron Society soldiers, disguised as common folk, who fell in behind him as he led his animal towards the horses. They quickly blocked his way, one in front and one in back, pistols in hand.

Showing no sign of fear, he merely split the darkness with a sad, shrill laugh that made the soldiers’ hands tremble. The one in front saw the physician’s smouldering eyes, the one behind saw the back of his neck stiffen when he laughed. The heavy silence was broken by the whinnies of two horses fighting over food in the trough.

The central tent was lit up by twenty-four tall red candles that flickered uneasily, casting a fearful light on the objects inside. Grandma’s scarlet bier was surrounded by snow pines and snow willows made of paper; beside it stood two papier-mâché figures — a boy in green on the left, a girl in red on the right — crafted by Baoen, the township’s famous funeral artisan, from sorghum stalks and coloured paper.

On Grandma’s host tablet behind the coffin was an inscription:

For the Spirit of My Departed Mother, Surnamed Dai.

Offered by Her Filial Son, Yu Douguan.

A drab brown incense-holder in front held smouldering yellow joss sticks, whose fragrant smoke curled into the air, the ash suspended above the scarlet flames of the candles. Father had shaved the front of his scalp to show that he, too, was a member of the Iron Society. Granddad, also shaved, sat behind a table next to Black Eye, the society leader, watching the Jiao County funeral master instruct my father in the three prostrations, six bows, and nine kowtows. As the funeral master droned on with infinite patience, Father started getting fidgety, and went through the motions, cutting corners whenever he could.

‘Douguan,’ Granddad said sternly, ‘stop clowning around! Do your filial duties, no matter how unpleasant they may be!’

The Iron Society, which spent an enormous sum of money on my grandma’s funeral, financed its activities in Northeast Gaomi Township after the departure of the Leng detachment and the Jiao-Gao regiment by issuing its own currency, in denominations of one thousand and ten thousand yuan, printed on coarse straw paper. The designs were very simple (a strange humanoid astride a tiger), the printing haphazard at best (using printing blocks carved for holiday posters). At the time no fewer than four separate currencies circulated in Northeast Gaomi, their strength and fluctuating value determined by the power of the issuing authority. Currency backed by military force constituted the greatest exploitation of the people, and Granddad was able to finance Grandma’s funeral by relying on this sort of concealed tyranny. The Jiao-Gao regiment and the Leng detachment had been squeezed out, so Granddad’s coarse currency was very strong in Northeast Gaomi Township for a while. But then the bottom dropped out, a few months after Grandma’s funeral, and the tigermount currency wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

The two Iron Society soldiers entered the funeral tent with the physician in tow; they blinked in the bright candlelight.

‘What’s this all about?’ Granddad snarled, rising from his seat.

One of the soldiers went down on his knee and covered the shaved part of his head with both hands. ‘Deputy Commander, we’ve caught a spy!’

Black Eye, whose left eye was rimmed by dark moles, kicked the table leg and barked out an order: ‘Off with his head! Then rip out his heart and liver and cook them to go with the wine!’

‘Not so fast!’ Granddad countermanded. He turned to Black Eye. ‘Blackie, shouldn’t we find out who he is before we kill him?’

‘Who the fuck cares who he is!’ Black Eye picked a clay teapot up off the table and threw it to the ground. Then he stood up, his pistol sticking out of his belt, and glared at the soldier who had made the report.

‘Commander…’ the soldier stammered fearfully.

‘I’ll fuck your living mother, Zhu Shun! “Commander” means nothing to you, I see! You son of a bitch, get out of my sight. You’re a fucking thorn in my eye!’ The ranting Black Eye looked down at the teapot on the ground and gave it a swift kick, sending shards of clay flying; some of them landed in the grove of graceful snow willows beside the coffin and made them rustle.

A boy about Father’s age bent over, picked up the pieces of the teapot, and tossed them outside the tent.

‘Fulai,’ Granddad said to the boy, ‘put the commander to bed. He’s drunk!’

Fulai stepped up and put his arms around Black Eye, who sent him reeling. ‘Drunk? Who’s drunk? You ungrateful shit! I set up shop, and you eat free. A tiger kills its prey just so the bear can eat it! You little shit, you won’t get away with throwing sand in my black eye! Just wait!’

‘Blackie,’ Granddad said, ‘you don’t want to lay your prestige on the line in front of the men.’ His lips curled in a grim smile, and cruel wrinkles appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Black Eye rested his hand on the bakelite handle of his pistol. In a tired, strangely hoarse voice he said, ‘Get the fuck out of here! And take that little son of a bitch with you!’

‘It’s easy to invite the gods, hard to send them away,’ Granddad said.

Black Eye drew his pistol and waved it in front of Granddad, who held out his green ceramic cup, took a sip of wine, and swished it around in his mouth before leaning forward and spitting it in Black Eye’s face. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he flung the cup at the muzzle of Black Eye’s pistol; the cup shattered on impact, the pieces flying everywhere. Black Eye’s hand twitched, and the muzzle of the pistol drooped.

‘Put your gun away!’ Granddad shouted in a steely voice. ‘I’m not finished with you yet, Blackie, so don’t get smart with me!’

Black Eye’s face was bathed in sweat. He grumbled, picked up his pistol, stuck it in his leather belt, and sat down.

The mule-riding physician, who had watched the episode with a disdainful smile, suddenly started laughing so hard he could barely stand, so hard that hot tears streamed down his cheeks. His behaviour made everyone squirm uncomfortably.

‘What’s so funny?’ Black Eye asked. ‘I’ll fuck your mother! I asked you, what’s so funny?’

The laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and the physician said dryly, ‘Fuck away, if that’s what you want. My mother’s been dead and buried in the black earth for ten years, and she’s all yours!’

Black Eye was speechless. The moles around his eye turned the colour of fresh leaves. Leaping to his feet, he slapped the physician seven or eight times, sending trickles of blood out of his nostrils and down the bristly black hairs. The physician licked his lips greedily, his shiny white teeth stained with blood.

‘How’d you get here?’ Granddad asked him.

‘My mule!’ the physician replied, stretching his neck as though he were swallowing a mouthful of blood. ‘What have you done with my mule?’

‘I guarantee you he’s a Japanese spy!’ Black Eye said. ‘Bring me a whip. I’ll teach the son of a bitch something!’

‘My mule! Give me back my mule! I want my mule….’ There was panic in the physician’s voice. He tried to run out of the tent, but was stopped by the guards. One of them punched him in the temple. His head slumped forward, as though his neck had snapped like a sorghum stalk. He crumpled to the ground.

‘Search him!’ Granddad ordered.

The Iron Society soldiers searched him thoroughly, but all they found was a couple of marbles, one bright green, the other bright red, each with a little cat’s-eye bubble in the centre. Granddad held them up to the candlelight to reflect the brilliant rays. They were beautiful. With a perplexed shake of his head, he set them on the table. Father reached out and snatched them away.

‘Give one to Fulai,’ Granddad told him.

Reluctantly, Father held them out to Fulai, who was standing beside Black Eye. ‘Which one do you want?’

‘The red one.’

‘No,’ Father said. ‘You can have the green one.’

‘I want the red one.’

‘The green one; take it or leave it.’ Fulai grudgingly took the green one out of Father’s hand.

As the physician’s neck gradually straightened, the ominous light in his eyes was as strong as ever. His bloodstained, wispy beard bristled.

‘Talk! Are you a Japanese spy or not?’ Granddad asked him.

Like a stubborn child, the physician picked up where he’d left off: ‘My mule, my mule! I won’t say a word until you bring me my mule.’

Granddad laughed mischievously, then said, ‘Bring it over. Let’s see what he’s trying to sell.’

The scrawny mule was led to the tent, where the dazzling candlelight, the shiny coffin, and the dark, forbidding paper figures so frightened it that it balked at the entrance and refused to take another step. The physician covered its eyes with his hands and led the animal inside. Its skinny legs shook, and a rat-tat-tat of loud farts was released towards Grandma’s bier.

The physician threw his arms around the mule’s neck and patted its bony forehead. ‘Scared, fellow?’ he asked tenderly. ‘Don’t be. I’m telling you, don’t be scared. Not even if they lop off your head and leave a scar as big as a bowl! Even if it’s the size of a basin, in twenty years you’ll come back as a real hero!’

‘Okay, talk! Who sent you? What are you here for?’ Granddad asked him.

‘My dad’s ghost sent me here to sell my potion.’ He took his saddlebags off the mule’s back, removed a packet of patent medicine, and began to chant, ‘A dash of croton beans, two of bezoar, three of blister beetle, four of musk, seven onion whites, seven dates, seven grains of paper, seven slices of ginger.’

Everyone’s mouth dropped in astonishment as they looked at the expression on the physician’s face. The mule, having grown used to its surroundings, began pawing the ground casually with its pale, cracked hooves.

‘What kind of potion?’ Black Eye asked.

‘Fast-action abortion medicine,’ the physician said with a cunning smile. ‘Even if you’re made of bronze, iron, or steel, one packet of this medicine, taken in three portions, will drive the baby right out of you. Money-back guarantee.’

‘You goddamned immoral bastard!’ Black Eye lashed out.

‘There’s more, there’s more!’ He reached into his saddlebags and held up another packet as he chanted, ‘A dog’s penis has the emperor, a goat’s penis has the minister. Some rice wine and crown-prince ginseng, the bark of eucommia, some chain fern and ursine seal, the tips of March bamboo shoots as a base.’

‘What’s it good for?’ Black Eye asked.

‘Impotence. Whether you’re as wispy as a silkworm’s thread or as soft as fluffed cotton, one packet, taken in three portions, and you’ll have a rod of steel that’ll get you through the night. Money-back guarantee.’

Black Eye rubbed his shiny forehead with his hand and smiled lewdly. ‘You’re a goddamn wild man engaged in inhuman business!’ he said, and asked to see the potion.

The physician handed Black Eye something that looked like a withered branch. He held it under his nose and sniffed it. ‘You call this a goddamn dog’s penis?’

‘The genuine article, the penis of a black dog!’

‘Old Yu, take a look and tell me if this isn’t the dried root of an ordinary tree.’ Black Eye handed it to Granddad, who held it up to a candle and examined it through squinting eyes.

The physician suddenly began to quake, and his bristly chin twitched noticeably. Father stopped playing with his marble, his heart racing as he watched the physician shrink in front of his eyes.

Suddenly the physician thrust his left hand into his saddlebags and caught everyone by surprise by spraying a packet of medicine in Granddad’s face. Something in his left hand flashed — a green-tinted dagger. Everyone stood stupefied as the physician, agile as a black cat, stabbed at Granddad’s throat. But Granddad had leaped to his feet and instinctively covered his neck with his arm, which took a long gash from the physician’s dagger. Granddad kicked over the table, whipped out his pistol, and got off three quick shots. But since his eyes were stinging from the medicine powder, his shots went wild, one hitting the tent, another slamming into the heavily varnished coffin, and ricocheting out of the tent opening, the third shattering the mule’s right foreleg. It brayed pitifully as a stream of white and red liquid spurted from its smashed kneecap. Tormented by pain, the mule crashed into the paper snow pines and snow willows, which rustled loudly as they crumpled and fell to the ground. The candles around the coffin were sent flying, their glowing wicks and hot wax quickly igniting the paper and straw and immersing Grandma’s momentarily gloomy spirit table in a burst of radiance. The tinder-dry sides of the tent curled towards the tongues of flame, as Iron Society soldiers came to life and converged on the tent.

Amid the growing conflagration, the physician, whose skin shone like ancient bronze, rushed Granddad again with his dagger. Black Eye, the trace of a gloating smile on his lips, stood off to the side but didn’t fire his pistol. Father whipped out his Luger, cocked it, and fired a single round, striking the physician squarely in his right shoulder. His arm sagged, and the dagger dropped harmlessly onto the table. Father cocked his pistol again and a fresh bullet entered the chamber. Granddad shouted, ‘Hold your fire!’

Bang, bang, bang. Black Eye’s pistol barked three times, and the physician’s head exploded like a hardboiled egg. Granddad glared at Black Eye.

Iron Society soldiers swarmed into the tent, where the fire was raging. The mule, shrouded in flames, writhed on the ground.

A mad dash for the opening.

‘Put out the fire!’ Black Eye screamed. ‘Hurry! Fifty million tigermount bills to whoever saves the coffin!’

The spring rains had only recently passed, and the pond at the head of the village was filled with water. Together the Iron Society soldiers and common folk who had come for the funeral pushed the red billowing cloud of the burning tent to the ground, and put out the fire.

Green smoke rose from the seared coffin. In the muted light of the dying flames, it seemed as sturdy as ever. The curled body of the mule lay beside it, the stench of its scorched hide filling the air.

2

THE DATE FOR Grandma’s funeral wasn’t changed in spite of the unforeseen events of the night before. The old Iron Society groom bandaged Granddad’s injury as best he could, while Black Eye watched with a mocking look and recommended postponing the funeral. Granddad emphatically rejected the suggestion. He didn’t sleep a wink that night; he sat on a bench without moving, his bloodshot eyes half open, his cold hand resting on the rough Bakelite handle of his pistol, as though he were glued to the spot.

Father lay on a grass mat and stared at Granddad until he drifted off into a troubled sleep. He woke before daybreak and cast a furtive glance at Granddad, intransigent in the flickering candlelight. His arm was stained with the dark dried blood that had oozed out from under the bandage. Not daring to say anything, Father closed his eyes again until the five funeral musicians hired for the event ran up against the envious local musicians, and their battle of horns disrupted everyone’s sleep. Father’s nose began to ache; scalding tears flowed from his eyes and ran into his ear. Here I am, he was thinking, nearly sixteen already. I wonder if these turbulent days will ever end. He looked at his father’s bloody shoulder and waxen face, and a feeling of desolation that didn’t suit his tender years entered his heart.

A lone village rooster announced the coming day, and a predawn breeze carried the acrid smell of spring into the tent, where it caused the candles to flicker. The voices of early risers were now discernible; warhorses tethered to nearby willows began pawing the ground and snorting; Father curled up comfortably, and thought of Beauty, who would one day be my mother, and the tall, robust woman Liu, who should rightfully be considered my third grandma. They had disappeared three months earlier, when Father and Granddad had gone for training with the Iron Society to a remote little outpost south of the railway tracks; when they returned, their huts were empty and their loved ones gone. The sheds they’d thrown up in the winter of 1939 were covered with cobwebs.

As soon as the red morning sun had made its entrance, the village came to life. Food peddlars raised their voices to attract customers, as the steamy, tantalising odours of buns in ovens, won tons in pots, and flatcakes in skillets began to waft through the air. A pockfaced peasant argued with a peddlar of buns, who refused to accept North Sea currency; the peasant had none of the Iron Society’s tiger-mount currency. By then twenty of the little buns had already found their way into the peasant’s stomach. ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ he said. ‘Take it or leave it.’ The crowd urged the peddlar to accept the North Sea currency, whose value would be restored as soon as the Jiao-Gao regiment fought its way back. He did, and moved on, raising his voice: ‘Buns! Meat-filled buns! Fresh from the oven!’

The tent showed the effects of the raging fire of the night before. Iron Society soldiers had dragged the physician and his scrawny mule the fifty paces or so to the inlet, where the stench of their scorched bodies attracted scavenger birds. The area around Grandma’s coffin had been swept clean of torn canvas, and the occasional unbroken wineglass lying in the cinders had been smashed by rakes. Grandma’s coffin shone in the early-morning light, hideous and scary. The deep-scarlet surface, once so sombre and mysterious, had been eaten away by flames, and the thick varnish had melted and split, leaving a maze of deep cracks. The coffin was so enormous that, as my father stood at its sweeping head, it seemed like the tallest thing in the world, and he had trouble breathing. He recalled how the coffin had been seized, and how its owner, an old man who must have been at least a hundred and still wore his white hair in a little queue, had refused to let go of the front edge:

‘This is my home…. No one else can have it…. I was a licentiate in the Great Qing dynasty, even the county magistrate called me “elder brother”…. You’ll have to kill me first… you pack of brigands….’ His tears had given way to curses.

Granddad had stayed behind that day, sending a cavalry detachment under the command of his trusted lieutenant to confiscate the coffin. Father tagged along. He had heard that this particular coffin had been made in the first year of the Republic from four pieces of cypress, four and a half Chinese inches thick. It had been varnished yearly ever since, thirty coats already. The ancient owner rolled on the ground in front of the coffin, and it was impossible to tell if he was laughing or crying. Clearly he had lost his mind. The lieutenant tossed a bundle of Iron Society tiger-mount currency into his hands and said, ‘We pay for what we take, you old bastard!’ The old man ripped open the bundle and began tearing at the bills with his few remaining teeth as he cursed: ‘You bunch of bandits, not even the emperor stole people’s coffins…. You brigands…’ ‘You old bastard offspring of a stinking donkey!’ the cavalry-detachment commander shouted back. ‘Now, you listen to me. Everybody has a role in the war of resistance against Japan. Consider yourself lucky if they roll you up in sorghum leaves and dump you in the ground. How the hell do you rate a coffin like this? This coffin is for a hero of the resistance!’ ‘What hero?’ ‘The wife of Commander Yu, who is now in charge of the Iron Society, that’s who.’ ‘Heaven and earth won’t allow it, they won’t allow it! No woman can sleep in my home…. I’ll kill myself first….’ He ran towards the coffin and rammed his head straight into it, producing a hollow thud. Father saw the scrawny neck bury itself in his chest and the flattened head sink into the space between his bony shoulders…. Father could still see the tufts of white hair in the old man’s nostrils and the wispy goatee on his chin, which jutted up like a gold ingot.

Granddad made a sling out of black cloth for his injured right arm; his gaunt face was deeply etched with exhaustion. The commander of the cavalry detachment walked over from the ring of horses and asked him something. Father heard him answer, ‘Five Troubles, you don’t need to ask my permission. Go ahead!’

Granddad looked long and meaningfully into the eyes of Five Troubles, who nodded, turned, and walked back to the horses.

Just then Black Eye emerged from one of the other sheds and stood in front of Five Troubles to block his way. ‘What the hell are you up to?’ he asked angrily.

‘I’m posting sentries on horseback,’ Five Troubles said with a scowl.

‘I didn’t give the order!’

‘No, you didn’t.’

Granddad walked up and said with a wry smile, ‘Blackie, are you sure you want to take me on?’

‘Do whatever you want,’ Black Eye said. ‘I was only asking.’

Granddad patted his broad, round shoulder with his good hand and said, ‘You’ve got a role in this funeral, too. We can settle our differences afterwards.’

Black Eye just shrugged the shoulder Granddad had patted and screamed angrily at the people milling around the village wall, ‘Don’t stand so damned close! You women there, are you going to wear sackcloth head coverings or not?’

Five Troubles took a brass whistle out of his shirt and blew it three times. Fifty Iron Society soldiers scrambled out of tents near the willow grove and ran up to their tethered horses, which whinnied with excitement. The men were crack soldiers and carried light, excellent weapons: razor-sharp sabres in their hands and Japanese rifles slung over their backs. Five Troubles and four of his burliest men had Russian submachine guns. They mounted, closed ranks, and formed two tight columns. The horses trotted out of the village towards the bridge at the Black Water River. The hair fringing their hooves quivered in the morning breeze; silver light flashed from their glistening metal shoes. Five Troubles led on his powerful dappled colt. Father watched the horses gallop across the smooth black earth like a dark gathering cloud rolling off into the distance.

The funeral master, dressed in a Chinese robe and traditional overjacket, stood on a stool and shouted at the top of his lungs, ‘Drum-and-bugle corps —’

A drum-and-bugle corps in black uniforms with red caps squeezed through the crowd and ran over to the six-foot-high roadside bandstands, built of wood and reeds. They took their positions.

The funeral master raised his voice: ‘Ready —’

Horns and woodwinds took up sound and the excited people crushed forward, craning their necks to get a good look. Those behind pushed forward in waves, causing the rickety bandstands to creak and sway. The frightened musicians broke ranks, screaming like demons, and the oxen and donkeys tied to nearby trees raised a noisy complaint.

‘What now, Blackie?’ Granddad asked courteously.

Black Eye shouted, ‘Old Three, bring out the troops!’

Fifty or more Iron Society soldiers appeared at once. They prodded the crowd, by then out of control, with their rifles. It was impossible to calculate how many thousands of people had converged on the village to watch the funeral, but they simply overwhelmed the exhausted soldiers.

Black Eye whipped out his pistol and fired into the sky, then again, over the sea of black heads. When the soldiers also began firing wildly into the sky, the front ranks of the surging crowd scurried backward, while those behind kept pushing forward, leaving straight up as the only direction left for those caught in the middle; the crowd looked like a black inchworm in motion. Shrieking children were knocked to the ground. Musicians plunged off the swaying bandstands, their screams merging with those of the people being trampled to create the most piercing scream in a whirlpool of chaotic screams. At least a dozen old and infirm people were trampled to death in the stampede, and months later the rotting carcasses still drew flies.

The soldiers finally managed to quell the riot, and the hapless musicians returned to their bandstands. Realising the danger, most of the people headed to the outskirts to line the road to Grandma’s gravesite and wait for the procession to pass. Five Troubles ordered his troops to patrol the road.

The badly shaken funeral master stood on his tall stool and shouted, ‘Lesser canopy!’

Two Iron Society soldiers with white sashes around their waists carried up a small, sky-blue canopy, a yard tall, and rectangular, with a ridge down the middle and curled-up ends, like the heads of dragons. Inlaid pieces of glass the colour of blood formed the crown.

‘Host tablet, please!’ the funeral master shouted.

Mother once told me that a host tablet is used for the ghost of the deceased. Later on, I learned that the host tablet actually indicates the social status of the deceased at the time of the funeral, and has nothing to do with ghosts; its common name is ‘spirit tablet’. Leading the procession, amid the flags of the honour guard, it provides testimony of status. Grandma’s original host tablet had been burned to a cinder during the fire, and the black paint on the hurried replacement, carried by two handsome Iron Society soldiers, was still wet. The script read:

Born on the Morning of the Ninth Day of the Sixth Month in the Thirty-second Year of the Great Manchu Emperor Guangxu. Died at Midday on the Ninth Day of the Eighth Month in the Twenty-eighth Year of the Republic of China.

Daughter of the Dai Family, First Wife of Yu Zhan’ao, Guerrilla Commander from Northeast Gaomi Township, Republic of China, and Leader of the Iron Society. Age at Time of Death: Thirty-two. Interred in the Yang of White Horse Mountain and the Yin of Black Water River.

Grandma’s spirit tablet was draped with three feet of white bunting that lent it graceful solemnity. The Iron Society soldiers carefully placed it in the lesser canopy, then stood at attention beside the opening.

The funeral master shouted, ‘Great canopy!’

The drum-and-bugle corps struck up the music as a stately procession of sixty-four Iron Society soldiers carried in the large scarlet canopy, on which blue crowns the size of watermelons had been inlaid. The buzzing of the onlookers stopped, until the only sounds in the air were the sad strains of the musicians’ pipes and flutes and the anguished wails of mothers whose children had been trampled in the riot.

A solitary, repulsive horsefly flitted around Granddad’s injured arm, intent on getting at the clotted dark blood. It darted away when he swatted at it and flew around his head, buzzing angrily. The mournful sound of a brass gong seized his heart and called up a string of tangled memories from the fleeting past.

He was only eighteen when he murdered the monk, an act that forced him to flee his home and wander the four corners of the earth. By the time he returned to Northeast Gaomi Township at the age of twenty-two to become a bearer for the Wedding and Funeral Service Company, he had endured all the torments of the society of man, and had suffered the humiliation of sweeping streets in the red-and-black pants of a convict. With a heart as hard as fishbone and the physique of a gorilla, he had what it takes to become a formidable bandit. He carried with him always the humiliation of being slapped in the home of the Qi-family Hanlin scholar, an incident that occurred in Jiao City in 1920.

Golden rays of blazing light shone down on the musicians in the tilted bandboxes, their cheeks bouncing like little balls as they tooted away, sweat dripping from their faces. People stood on tiptoe to watch the funeral, and the light from hundreds of pairs of eyes settled like anxious moonbeams over real people and papier-mâché figurines inside the circle, over an ancient, resplendent culture, as well as a reactionary, backward way of thinking.

Father was wearing thick white knee-length mourning clothes, tied at the waist by a length of grey hemp, and a square mourning hat covered the shaved part of his scalp. The sour odour of sweat from the crowd and the smell of burned varnish from Grandma’s coffin fouled the air and made him weak-kneed. Grandma’s pitted coffin had grown hideous beyond belief: it lay on the ground, high at the front end and low at the rear, like a huge muddleheaded beast. Father had the feeling that at any moment it might stand up with a yawn and charge the black-massed crowds. In his mind the black coffin began to billow like a cloud, and Grandma’s remains, encased in thick wood and the dust of red bricks, seemed to form before his eyes. She had looked remarkably lifelike when Granddad dug up her grassy mound beside the Black Water River and raked up layer after layer of rotted sorghum stalks. Just as he would never forget the sight of Grandma looking up at the bright-red sorghum as she lay dying, he would also never forget the sight of her face as it came into view in her grave.

He relived these spectacular experiences as he carried out his complicated filial obligations to the deceased. The funeral master gave the order: ‘Move the coffin….’

The sixty-four soldiers who had borne the great canopy rushed up to the coffin like bees. ‘Heave!’ they shouted. It didn’t budge, as though it had taken root. Granddad swatted the fly away and stared at the men with scorn in his eyes. He signalled to the officer and said, ‘Get some cotton ropes. Without them you could struggle with the coffin until sunup and never get it into the canopy!’ The officer stared at Granddad with apprehension, but Granddad averted his eyes, looking at the Black Water River, which cut a swath through the black plain.

Two flagpoles, whose red paint had peeled off completely, stood in front of the Qi family home in Jiao City, the ancient, rotting wood standing as a symbol of the family’s status. The old man, a Hanlin scholar in the latter years of the Qing dynasty, was dead, and his sons and grandsons, who had shared the good life with him, made elaborate funeral preparations. Although everything was ready, they delayed their announcement of the date of interment. The coffin had been placed in a building at the rear of the vast family compound, and in order to move it out to the street they would have to trundle it through seven narrow gates. The managers of a dozen wedding-and-funeral-service companies had come to look at the coffin and the lay of the land, and all had left hanging their heads, even though the Qi family had promised an astonishingly high fee.

Then the news reached the Northeast Gaomi Township Wedding and Funeral Service Company. Payment of five hundred silver dollars to move a coffin was tempting bait to Granddad and his fellow bearers, and threw them into the confusion of a pining young woman who has been given the eye by a handsome young lad.

They went to see the manager, Second Master Cao, and swore they could put Northeast Gaomi Township on the map with this job, not to mention the five hundred in silver the company would make. Second Master Cao sat stiffly in his wooden armchair without so much as passing wind. The only movement was in his cold, intelligent eyes, and the only sound was the gurgling of the water pipe. ‘Second Master, it’s not for the money!’ Granddad and the others argued. ‘A man only lives once. Don’t let the world look down on the people of Northeast Gaomi Township!’ At this point Second Master Cao shifted his buttocks and slowly farted. ‘You men go and get some rest,’ he said. ‘If you botch the job and some of you are crushed to death, so what? But if you lose face for Northeast Gaomi Township and ruin my business, that’s another matter altogether. If you’re short of money, maybe I can help you out.’

With that, he closed his eyes. But the bearers began to clamour: ‘Second Master, don’t destroy our prestige while furthering the ambitions of others!’ Second Master Cao replied, ‘Don’t swallow a scythe if your stomach isn’t curved. You think earning that five hundred is going to be easy? Well, there are seven gates in the Qi compound, through which you have to carry a coffin filled with quicksilver! Do you hear me? I said quicksilver! Mull that over in your dog brains for a while, and figure out how much that coffin must weigh.’ He looked at his bearers out of the corner of his eye, then snorted derisively. ‘Go on, get out of here,’ he said. ‘Let the true heroes earn the real money! As for you, well, little men leave little records. Go out and earn your twenty or thirty yuan, and be happy to carry the paper-thin coffins of the poor!’

His comments went straight to the bearers’ hearts like poison arrows. Granddad strode forward before anyone else moved and said loudly, ‘Second Master Cao, working for someone as stupid as you is goddamned suffocating! A dogshit soldier is one thing, but a dogshit general is another! I quit!’

The hot-blooded bearers echoed his shouts. Second Master stood up, thumped Granddad hard on the shoulder, and said with genuine feeling, ‘Zhan’ao, now you’re a man! The seed of Northeast Gaomi Township. The Qi family got where it is by taking advantage of people like us, who earn their living as bearers. If you’ll work together and get that coffin out, the reputation of Northeast Gaomi Township is assured. You can’t buy glory for any amount of money. But don’t forget that, as the descendants of a Qing-dynasty Hanlin scholar, they follow strict decorum. This won’t be easy. If you can’t sleep tonight, stay up and figure out how you’re going to get through those seven gates.’

Before the bearers had left the office, two strangers walked in and announced that they were stewards from the Hanlin scholar’s home, come to enlist the services of the Northeast Gaomi Township bearers.

Once they had stated their purpose, Second Master Cao asked listlessly, ‘How much will you pay?’

‘Five hundred in silver! You won’t see a fee like that many times in your life!’

Second Master Cao tossed his silver water pipe onto the table and sneered. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘we have all the business we need, and second, we’ve got money to burn. Maybe you’d better go find someone else.’

The Qi family stewards smiled knowingly. ‘Proprietor,’ one of them said, ‘we are all businessmen!’

‘Yes,’ Second Master Cao replied, ‘we are. And you will have no trouble finding someone to do the job for that fee.’

He closed his eyes sleepily.

A quick look passed between the two stewards. The one in front spoke up. ‘Proprietor, let’s not beat around the bush. Name your price!’

‘I’m not about to risk the lives of my men for a few silver dollars,’ Second Master Cao replied.

‘Six hundred!’ the steward said. ‘In silver!’

Second Master Cao sat there like a stone.

‘Seven hundred! Seven hundred silver dollars! In business you have to deal in good conscience, proprietor.’

Second Master Cao’s lips curled.

‘Eight hundred, then, and that’s our final offer!’

Second Master Cao’s eyes snapped open. ‘One thousand!’ he said flatly.

The steward’s cheeks puffed out like those of a man with impacted wisdom teeth. He stared at the harsh, unyielding expression on Second Master Cao’s face.

‘Proprietor… we don’t have the authority….’

‘Then go back and tell your boss. One thousand. We won’t do it for less.’

‘All right. You’ll have your answer tomorrow.’

The steward rode up from the county town on a lathered horse with purple mane the following morning. The date was settled, and a deposit of five hundred silver dollars handed over, the remainder payable when the coffin had been successfully moved.

Sixty-four bearers rose well before sunrise on the day of the funeral, ate a hearty breakfast, and set out for Jiao City, stepping on starlight. Second Master Cao brought up the rear on his black donkey.

Granddad recalled that the sky that day was dotted with morning stars. The dew was icy, and the steel hook he’d tucked into his waistband kept thumping against his hip bone. Dawn had broken when they reached town, and the streets were already packed with people who had turned out to watch the funeral. When Granddad and the others heard whispers from the crowd, they raised their heads and thrust out their chests, wanting to leave a gallant impression. Deep down, however, they were worried.

The Qi compound sported a row of tile-roofed buildings half a block in length. Granddad and the other men followed the family servants through three gates into a garden filled with snow trees and silver flowers, the ground covered with paper money, and the smoke of incense all around. Few families could match that kind of grandeur.

The steward walked up to Second Master Cao in the company of the head of the household, a man of about fifty with a tiny hooked nose high above a broad mouth on a gaunt face. He glanced at the team of men and, with a nod to Second Master Cao, said, ‘A thousand silver dollars requires an appropriate amount of decorum.’

Second Master Cao returned his nod and followed him through the final gate.

When he emerged from the house, his shiny face had turned ashen and his long-nailed fingers trembled. He called the bearers over to the wall and said with a gnashing of his teeth, ‘We’ve had it, boys!’

‘What’s the problem, Second Master?’ Granddad asked him.

‘Men, the coffin’s as wide as the door, and on top of it there’s a bowl filled to the brim with wine. He says he’ll penalise us a hundred silver dollars for every drop we spill!’

They were speechless. The wails of mourners inside the funeral chamber floated on the air like a song.

‘What should we do, Zhan’ao?’ Second Master Cao asked.

‘This is no time for the chickenhearted,’ Granddad replied. ‘We’ll carry the thing out even if it’s filled with iron balls.’

‘Okay, men,’ Second Master Cao said in a low voice, ‘let’s go. If you get it out, you’re like my own sons. The thousand-dollar fee is all yours. I don’t want any of it!’

‘No more of that kind of talk!’ Granddad said with a quick glance at him.

‘Then let’s get ready,’ Second Master Cao said. ‘Zhan’ao, Sikui, you two man the cable, one in front and one behind. I want twenty of you other men inside, and as soon as the coffin is off the ground, slip under it and prop it on your backs. The rest of you stay out here and move in rhythm as I beat the gong. And men, Cao the Second is in your debt!’ Second Master Cao, normally the tyrant, bowed deeply this time.

The head of the Qi household walked up with a retinue of servants and said, ‘Not so fast. We need to search you first.’

‘What sort of decorum is that?’ Second Master Cao shot back angrily.

‘The decorum of one thousand silver dollars!’ the head of the household replied haughtily.

The Qi family servants removed the steel hooks the men had hidden in their waistbands and tossed them to the ground.

Okay! Granddad thought. Anybody can lift a coffin by using steel hooks. A stirring emotion, like that of a fearless man on the way to his execution, surged into his heart. After cinching his pant cuffs and waistband as tight as he could, he took a deep breath and entered the funeral chamber. The mourners — boys and girls — stopped wailing and stared wide-eyed at the bearers, then at the bowl of wine on top of the coffin. The smoky air was nearly suffocating, and the faces of the living were like hideous floating masks. The ebony coffin of the old Hanlin scholar rested on four stools like a huge boat in drydock.

Granddad uncoiled a thick hempen cable and ran it under the coffin from end to end. The tips were finished with loops of twisted white cotton. The other bearers strung thick, water-soaked cotton ropes under the cable and held on to the ends.

Second Master Cao raised his gong. The sound split the air. Granddad squatted down at the head of the coffin, the most dangerous, the heaviest, the most glorious spot of all. The thick cotton rope pulled hard against his neck and shoulders, and he realised how heavy the coffin was before he’d even straightened up.

Second Master Cao banged his gong three more times. A shout of ‘Heave!’ cleaved the air.

Granddad took a deep breath and held it, sending all his energy and strength down to his knees. He dimly heard Second Master Cao’s command; dazed though he was, he forced the strength concentrated in his knees to burst forth, fantasising that the coffin containing the corpse of the Hanlin scholar had begun to levitate and float atop the curling incense smoke like a ship on the ocean. The fantasy was shattered by the pressure of the brick floor on his buttocks and sharp pains up and down his backbone.

The enormous coffin remained anchored in place like a tree with deep roots. Second Master Cao nearly fainted when he saw his bearers crumple to the floor like sparrows that had smashed into windows. He knew they were finished. The curtain had come crashing down on this drama! There was the vigorous, energetic Yu Zhan’ao, sitting on the floor like an old woman holding a dead infant. There was no mistaking it now: the drama had ended in complete failure.

Granddad imagined the mocking laughter of the Hanlin scholar in his tomb of shifting quicksilver.

‘Men,’ Second Master Cao said, ‘you have to carry it out… not for my sake… for Northeast Gaomi Township….’

Bong! Bong! This time the sound of the gong nearly tore Granddad’s heart to shreds.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he began raising himself up, crazily, suicidally (amid the chaos of lifting the coffin, Second Master Cao saw the bearer called Little Rooster quickly thrust his lips into the bowl on top of the coffin and take a big gulp of wine). With a tremor, the coffin rose up off the stools. The deathly stillness of the room was broken only by the cracking of human joints.

Granddad had no way of knowing that his face was as pale as death. All he knew was that the thick cotton rope was strangling him, that his neck was about to snap, and that his vertebrae were compressed until they must have looked like flattened hawthorns. When he found he was unable to straighten up, it took only a split second for despair to undermine his resolve, and his knees began to buckle like molten steel. The quicksilver shifted, causing the head of the coffin to press down even harder on him. The bowl on top sloped to one side, the colourless wine inside touching the rim and threatening to overflow. Members of the Qi family stared at it wide-eyed.

Second Master Cao gave Granddad a vicious slap.

Granddad would later recall that the slap had set his ears ringing, and that all feeling in his waist, legs, shoulders, and neck seemed to be squeezed out of his consciousness, as though claimed by some unknown spirit. A curtain of black gauze fell in front of his eyes, and he straightened up, raising the coffin more than three feet off the ground. Six bearers immediately slipped under the coffin on all fours and supported it on their backs. Granddad finally released a mouthful of sticky breath. The breath that followed seemed to him warm and gentle as it rose slowly and passed through his throat….

The coffin was lugged past all seven gates and placed in a bright-blue great canopy.

As soon as the thick white cloth rope fell from Granddad’s back, he forced his mouth open, and streams of scarlet blood spurted from his mouth and nostrils….

3

DRESSED IN MOURNING clothes, Father stood facing southwest on a high bench and thumped the waxwood butt of his rifle on the ground as he shouted: ‘Mother — Mother — head southwest — a broad highway — a long treasure boat — a fleet-footed steed — lots of travelling money — Mother — rest in sweetness — buy off your pain —’

The funeral master had ordered him to sing this send-off song three times, since only a loved one’s calls can guide the spirit to the southwestern paradise. But he got through it only once before choking on hot, sour tears of grief. Another long-drawn-out ‘Mom’ escaped from his lips, fanned out, and glided unsteadily in the air like a scarlet butterfly, its wings carrying it to the southwest, where the wilderness was broad and the airstream swirled, and where the bright sunlight raised a white screen over the Black Water River. Powerless to scale the translucent screen, the wisp of ‘Mom’ turned and headed east after a momentary hesitation, despite Father’s desire to send her to the southwestern paradise. But Grandma didn’t want to go there. Instead she followed the meandering dike, taking fistcakes to Granddad’s troops, turning her head back from time to time to signal her son, my father, with her golden eyes.

Twenty days earlier, Father had gone with Granddad to dig up Grandma’s grave. It was definitely not a good day for swallows, for a dozen sodden clouds, like torn cotton wadding, hung in the low sky, reeking like rotting fish and spoiled shrimp. An ill wind carried a stream of sinister air down the Black Water River, along whose banks the corpses of dogs shattered by muskmelon grenades during the battle with humans the previous winter lay decomposing amid the sallow water grass; swallows migrating north from Hainan Island flew across the river with dread, as frogs below began their mating ritual, gaunt bodies caught up in the passions of love following a winter of hibernation.

Father stood with Granddad and nineteen Iron Society soldiers, all carrying hoes and pickaxes, at the head of Grandma’s grave. Golden flowers of bitterweed, the first of the year, dotted the faded black earth of the column of mounds.

Three minutes of silence.

‘Douguan, you’re sure this is the one?’ Granddad asked.

‘It’s this one,’ Father replied. ‘I could never forget.’

‘Okay,’ Granddad said. ‘Start digging!’

The Iron Society soldiers raised their tools, but were reluctant to start. So Granddad took a pickaxe from one of them, aimed at the mound, which arched up like a woman’s breast, and swung with all his might, to bury the tool in the soil with a heavy thud. He then pulled it towards him, scooping out a chunk of the black earth.

Father’s heart knotted up as the pickaxe split the grave mound, and at that instant he experienced fear and loathing for Granddad’s ruthlessness.

‘Dig it up,’ Granddad said feebly.

Forming a ring around Grandma’s grave, the soldiers began to chop and dig, levelling the mound in no time. Father’s thoughts returned to the night of the ninth day of the eighth lunar month, 1939, when they had buried Grandma. Fires raging on the bridge and torches ringing her body had illuminated her dead face, nearly bringing it back to life, before it was swallowed up by the black earth. Now the likeness was being dug up again, and Father grew tense as the layers were pared away, until he thought he saw Grandma’s smile as she kissed death through the earth separating them.

The Iron Society soldiers stopped digging when the final layer of soil covering the sorghum was removed and cast pleading looks at Granddad and Father, who saw their noses twitch as the overpowering stench of decay rose from the grave. To Father, who breathed in greedily, it was the odour of the milk he’d suckled at Grandma’s breast.

‘Clear it away!’ Granddad ordered, his black eyes devoid of pity. ‘Clear it away!’

Reluctantly they bent down and began pulling the sorghum out of the grave. Transparent drops of water oozed from the naked stalks, turned by decay into the glossy red of moist jade.

Deeper and deeper they went, the stench growing stronger. But to Father it was the rich aroma of sorghum wine, intoxicating, dizzying. He wanted to see Grandma as soon as possible, but the prospect also frightened him. The sorghum covering grew ever thinner, yet he felt the distance between him and Grandma increase. The final layer of stalks suddenly rustled loudly, wrenching shouts of alarm from some of the soldiers and striking others dumb with fear. Their faces were ashen, and only Granddad’s insistence gave them the courage to peek down into the grave.

Father watched as four brown field voles scrambled up the sides of the unearthed grave, while a fifth one, pure white, squatted on a supremely beautiful sorghum stalk in the middle of the grave. Everyone stared at the brown voles as they scampered away; meanwhile, the white one perched haughtily without stirring, staring back with its tiny, jet-black eyes. Father picked up a clod of earth and hurled it into the grave. The vole sprang two feet into the air, fell back, and scurried madly around the edges. With loathing swelling their insides, the soldiers rained clods of earth down on the white vole until it lay smashed in the middle of the grave.

According to Father, Grandma emerged from the resplendent, aromatic grave as lovely as a flower, as in a fairy tale. But the faces of the Iron Society soldiers contorted whenever they described in gory detail the hideous shape of her corpse and the suffocating stench issuing from the grave. Father called them liars. His senses were particularly keen at the time, he recalled, and as the last few stalks were removed, Grandma’s sweet, beautiful smile made the area crackle as though swept by a raging fire. His only regret was how fleeting the moment had been. For, when Grandma’s body was lifted out of the grave, her lustrous beauty and delicate fragrance turned into a mist and floated gently away, leaving behind only a white skeleton.

After lifting the body out of the grave, the soldiers ran down to the bank of the Black Water River and vomited dark-green bile into the dark-green water. Granddad spread out a piece of white cloth and told Father to help him lift Grandma’s skeleton onto it. Infected by the sound of vomiting in the river, Father felt a spasm in his neck, and hacking sounds erupted from his throat. He hated the thought of touching the pale-white bones.

‘Douguan,’ Granddad said, ‘you don’t think your own mom’s bones are too dirty to touch, do you? Not you!’

Moved by the rare tragic look on Granddad’s face, Father bent down and tentatively reached out to touch Grandma’s pale leg bone, which was so icy it froze his guts. Granddad tried to lift the skeleton by the shoulder blades, but it disintegrated and landed in a heap on the ground. A pair of red ants crawled in the sockets that had once been home to Grandma’s limpid eyes, their antennae vibrating. Father threw down Grandma’s leg bone, turned tail, and ran, filling the air with howls of grief.

4

AT NOON, THE funeral master announced loudly, ‘Begin the procession,’ and mourners swept into the fields like a human tide, followed by the Yu family bier, moving slowly towards them like a floating iceberg. Large open tents in which sumptuous road offerings were displayed had been placed on both sides of the road every couple of hundred yards. Cavalry troops led by Five Troubles formed a guard on either side of the road, galloping round and round.

A fat monk in a yellow robe, his left shoulder and arm exposed, led the procession with a halberd from which chimes hung, twinkling as it spun around his body, sometimes flying up in the air towards the onlookers. At least half the onlookers recognised him as the pauper monk from the Tianqi Temple who never burned incense and never chanted the Buddha’s name, preferring to drink great bowlfuls of wine and boldly partake of meat and fish. He kept a skinny yet uncommonly fertile little woman, who presented him with a whole brood of little monks. He opened a passage through the crowds by flinging his halberd at their heads, his face beaming.

An Iron Society soldier followed, holding a long pole with a spirit-calling banner woven from thirty-two white strips of paper, one for each of Grandma’s years; it fluttered and snapped, though there wasn’t a breath of wind. Then came the banner of honour, held ten feet in the air by a strapping young Iron Society soldier, its white silk ornamented with large black letters:

Casket of the Woman Dai, 32-Year-Old Wife of Yu Zhan’ao, Guerrilla Commander of Northeast Gaomi Township, Republic of China.

Behind the banner of honour came the lesser canopy, in which Grandma’s spirit tablet lay, and behind that, the great canopy encasing her coffin. Sixty-four Iron Society soldiers marched in perfect cadence to the mournful strains of the funeral music. Father, white mourning hood over his head and shoulders, a willow grief-stick in his hand, was being carried by two Iron Society soldiers. His desolate wails were the standard dry variety — his eyes were dry, and blank. Thunder with no rain. This sort of dry wailing was more moving than tearful shrieks, and many of the onlookers were deeply touched by his performance.

Granddad and Black Eye walked shoulder to shoulder behind my father, their solemn expressions belying the conflicts raging inside them.

At least twenty armed Iron Society soldiers surrounded Granddad and Black Eye, their bayonets glinting deep blue under the sun’s rays. They in turn were followed by a dozen musicians from Northeast Gaomi Township playing beautiful music, and some men on stilts. Two lion figures brought up the rear, waving their tails and swinging their heads to the antics of a big-headed child who tumbled over the roadway.

The procession snaked along for at least two li, the going made difficult by the crowds of people jamming the narrow roadway and the need to stop at each roadside tent to pay respects to the spirits; when the coffin was halted, incense was burned, and the funeral master, bronze wine vessel in hand, performed an age-old ritual, all of which combined to keep the procession at a snail’s pace.

Three li outside the village, the procession stopped to pay respects to the spirits. As always, the funeral master performed the ritual sombrely and conscientiously. All of a sudden a shot rang out at the head of the procession, and the Iron Society soldier holding the banner of honour slipped slowly to the ground, his bamboo pole crashing down on the onlookers by the side of the road. The gunfire caused the crowd to scurry like ants, screaming and wailing like a raging river that has breached its dikes.

As the sound of the rifle shot died out, a dozen or so shiny black grenades came arching out of the crowds on either side of the road and landed at the feet of the Iron Society soldiers, spewing puffs of white smoke.

‘Villagers, on your bellies!’ someone shouted.

But they were packed so tightly they could barely move, and as the grenades exploded, powerful golden blasts ripped through the sky. At least a dozen soldiers were killed or wounded, including Black Eye, who was struck in the hip. Covering the bleeding wound with his hand, he screamed, ‘Fulai — Fulai —’

But Fulai, who was about Father’s age, was beyond answering, beyond coming to his aid. The night before, when Father had given Fulai the physician’s green marble, he’d put it in his mouth as though it were a precious gem and rolled it around with his tongue. Now Father saw the marble anchored in the fresh blood flowing from Fulai’s mouth, as green as jade, as green as anything could ever be, emitting a radiance like the legendary fox-spirit that spat out the elixir of life.

A piece of shrapnel hit the jugular vein of the funeral master, and he fell to the ground, his bronze wine vessel crashing beside him and spilling its contents onto the black earth, where it turned into a light mist. The great canopy tipped to one side, revealing Grandma’s black coffin.

‘Fellow villagers,’ came another shout, ‘on your bellies!’ Another salvo of grenades. With his arms wrapped around my father, Granddad hit the ground and rolled into a roadside ditch, where dozens of feet trampled on his injured arm. At least half of the Iron Society soldiers had thrown down their weapons and were fleeing helter-skelter. The rest stood mesmerised, quietly waiting for the grenades to explode. Finally, Granddad spotted a man whose face he knew throwing a grenade. It was the Jiao-Gao regiment! Little Foot Jiang’s men!

Another salvo of violent explosions. Gunsmoke rolled up and down the roadway, dust flew into the sky, and chunks of shrapnel shrieked in all directions, as people were cut down like harvested grain.

Granddad drew his pistol, awkwardly, and aimed at the bobbing head of the Jiao-Gao soldier. He squeezed the trigger, and the bullet hit the man right between the eyes, popping his green eyeballs out of their sockets like a pair of moth eggs.

‘Charge, comrades, get their weapons!’ someone shouted from the crowd.

Now that the shock had worn off, Black Eye and his Iron Society soldiers turned their guns on the crowd. Every bullet that left a barrel bit into flesh; every shell passed through at least one body and either embedded itself in another or gouged a lovely curving scar in the black earth.

Granddad scanned the faces of the Jiao-Gao troops. They were struggling like drowning men, and the looks of rapacious brutality hit Granddad like a knife in the heart. One after another, he smashed their faces with awesome precision, confident that he hit no innocent bystanders.

In the village, a bugle sounded the charge, and Granddad saw a hundred or more shouting Jiao-Gao soldiers running towards them, waving rifles, swords, and clubs behind their leader, Little Foot Jiang. In the sorghum field to the south, Five Troubles smacked his dappled horse on the rump and took off at full speed, leading his troops. The Iron Society soldiers reformed ranks on Granddad’s shrill orders and, taking cover behind the cover of funeral flags and memorial tents, fired at Little Foot Jiang’s men.

Granddad’s Iron Society recruiting exploits had seriously depleted the Jiao-Gao strength; yet the poorly armed soldiers advanced courageously, filled with the spirit of sacrifice, and even as their comrades were cut down by bullets, they charged, brandishing primitive weapons good only for hand-to-hand combat. They came in waves, awesome in their display of defiance as they overran the Iron Society soldiers. As soon as they were within range, the Jiao-Gao soldiers hurled grenades, routing the panicky Iron Society soldiers, who were pursued mercilessly by shrapnel that ripped their flesh.

As he watched the rout of his soldiers, Five Troubles grew anxious and confused. Angrily, he hacked at the men around him, while his horse bit anyone within range, like a dog. He led his cavalry troops onto the road, only to be met by a salvo of wooden-handled grenades lobbed by the Jiao-Gao regiment. Years later, Granddad and Father would recall the practised way the Jiao-Gao soldiers used their grenades, much as a chess master recalls his defeat at the hands of an inferior opponent who has employed a trick move.

As they retreated towards the Black Water River that day, Father was hit in the buttocks by a reconditioned bullet from a beat-up old Hanyang rifle fired by a Jiao-Gao soldier. Granddad had never seen a bullet wound quite like it. Since the Jiao-Gao regiment was so short of ammunition, they collected their spent cartridges after each battle to make new shells. Whatever dogshit material they used for the bullet, it melted by the time it left the muzzle, and pursued its target like a gob of warm snot.

The latest salvo of hand grenades cut a swath through Five Troubles’ cavalry troops, sending the men flying and the horses tumbling. Five Troubles’ dappled mount jumped into the air with a pitiful whinny and threw its rider into a shallow ditch beside the road. No sooner had Five Troubles crawled out than he spotted some Jiao-Gao soldiers coming at him with glistening bayonets. After aiming his submachine gun, he opened fire and cut down about ten of them.

But three Jiao-Gao soldiers, gnashing their teeth in anger, buried their bayonets in the chest and belly of the man who had caused the deaths of so many. Five Troubles grabbed one of the heated barrels with both hands and lurched forward. His black eyeballs rolled up and disappeared in his head, and a stream of hot blood emerged from his mouth. The Jiao-Gao soldiers, straining hard, withdrew their blood-drenched bayonets from Five Troubles, who remained standing for an instant before settling slowly into the ditch, where the sun’s rays shone down on the fine porcelain whites of his eyes.

The extermination of the cavalry unit shattered the Iron Society soldiers’ morale. Those who had fought on stubbornly behind the cover of funeral flags broke and fled to the south, dragging their rifles behind them, and not even Granddad’s and Black Eye’s commands could hold them. Heaving a long sigh, Granddad wrapped his arms around Father, then took off toward the Black Water River, firing as he ran.

The valiant warriors of the Jiao-Gao regiment collected the Iron Society soldiers’ abandoned weapons and mounted the chase, Little Foot Jiang in the lead. Granddad scooped up an abandoned Japanese ‘38’ rifle, threw himself down behind a pile of dung, and pulled back the bolt to send a cartridge into the chamber. His racing heart made his shoulder jerk up and down and caused Little Foot Jiang’s head to slip in and out of his sights. So he aimed for the chest, just to be on the safe side. When the rifle fired, Father heard the crack and saw Little Foot Jiang’s arms fly out as he fell headlong to the ground. The troops behind him threw themselves down in terror. That was what Granddad was waiting for; grabbing Father by the arm, he ran like the wind to catch up with his retreating men.

Granddad’s shot had hit Little Foot Jiang in the ankle. A medic rushed up and bandaged it for him, and, with iron determination, he ordered, ‘Get moving, forget about me, follow them! I want their weapons! Every last one of them. Charge, comrades!’

Invigorated by Little Foot Jiang’s exhortations, the Jiao-Gao soldiers jumped to their feet and mounted an even more furious chase in the face of the occasional round fired their way. The exhausted Iron Society soldiers, not wanting to run any more, threw down their weapons and waited to surrender.

‘Fight!’ Granddad bellowed. ‘Pick up your guns and fight!’

‘Commander,’ a young soldier said, ‘don’t make them madder than they already are. They only want our weapons. Let’s give them what they want, so we can all go home and plant our sorghum.’

Black Eye fired a shot, and the Jiao-Gao soldiers responded with a fusillade of fire from three submachine guns, wounding three Iron Society soldiers and killing another.

Black Eye was about to fire another shot when a burly Iron Society soldier wrapped his arms around him. ‘That’s enough, Commander,’ the man said. ‘Don’t provoke those mad dogs.’

The Jiao-Gao troops were nearly upon them when Granddad reluctantly lowered his rifle.

Just then a machine gun began barking like a dog from behind the Black Water River dike. An even more brutal fight awaited the Iron Society and Jiao-Gao regiments on the other side of the dike.

5

THE GLOOMY, RAINY autumn of 1939 was followed by a freezing winter. Dogs that had been shot to death or blown up by hand grenades hurled by Father, Mother, and their martyred friends lay in the soggy marshland, frozen together with fallen stalks of sorghum. Dogs killed by blasts of Japanese muskmelon grenades in the Black Water River and those that had struggled to become pack leaders, only to die cruelly, lay icebound among withered water grasses and weeds along the banks. Famished crows pecked at the frozen corpses with their purple beaks. Like black clouds they soared in the sky between the riverbank and the marshland.

Granddad, Father, Mother, and the woman Liu hibernated in their dilapidated village through the endless winter. Father and Mother were already aware of the relationship between Granddad and the woman Liu, but it didn’t bother them. The way she looked after everyone during these trying days was something my family remembered even decades later. Her name was formally added to our ‘family scroll’, where she is listed just below Passion, who follows Grandma, who is second only to Granddad.

It was the woman Liu who had consoled Granddad after Father lost one of his testicles. ‘Single-stalk garlic is always the hottest,’ she said. With her encouragement, Beauty, who would become my mother, had aroused Father’s wounded, ugly, strange-looking little pecker, thereby ensuring the continuation of our family line.

All this had happened in late autumn, when migrating wild geese often appeared in the sky, and fangs of ice were forming in the marshland. With the arrival of blustery northwest winds, one of the coldest winters in history began.

The shack was piled high with dry sorghum leaves; and there was plenty of grain in the kitchen. To supplement their diet with more nutritious food and keep up their strength and health, Granddad and Father often went dog-hunting. The death of Red had turned the dogs of Northeast Gaomi Township from a roving pack into a bunch of individual marauders. They were never organised again. Human nature once more won out over canine nature, and the paths gouged out by the dogs were slowly reclaimed by the black earth.

Father and Granddad went hunting every other day, bagging only a single dog each time. The meat provided necessary nutrition and internal heat, and by the spring of 1940, Father had grown two fists taller. Having fed on human corpses, the dogs were strong and husky; eating a winter’s supply of fatty dog meat was, for Father, the same as eating a winter’s supply of human flesh. Later he would grow into a tall, husky man who could kill without batting an eye. I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that, indirectly, he had cannibalised his own people?

One night a warm southeasterly wind blew, and the next morning they could hear the ice cracking on the Black Water River. New buds the size of rice appeared on weeping willows, and tiny pink flowers exploded onto the branches of peach trees. Early-arriving swallows flew through the air above the marshland and the river, hordes of wild rabbits chased one another in mating rituals, and the grass turned green. After several misty rain showers, Granddad and Father took off their dogskin clothing. Day and night, the black soil of Northeast Gaomi Township was the scene of endless stirrings by a host of living, growing things.

Now that spring had arrived, Granddad and Father felt confined in the shack. They went out to walk along the dikes of the Black Water River, then crossed the stone bridge to visit the graves of Grandma and of Granddad’s fallen soldiers.

‘Let’s join the Jiao-Gao regiment, Dad,’ Father said.

Granddad shook his head.

‘How about joining up with Detachment Leader Leng?’

Granddad shook his head.

The sun shone bright and beautiful that morning. Not a cloud in the sky. They stood speechless before Grandma’s grave.

East of the bridge, far off in the distance, they saw seven horses trotting sluggishly towards them on the northern dike. When they got closer, Father and Granddad recognised the freshly shaved foreheads of the Iron Society. Leading them was a swarthy man with a ring of dark moles around his right eye. It was Black Eye, who had already had an illustrious reputation way back when Granddad was living a bandit’s life. Back then bandit gangs and the Iron Society went their own ways — well water not mixing with river water — and Granddad had held them in contempt. Then, in the early winter of 1929, Granddad and Black Eye had fought on the dusty bank of the Salty River, with no winner and no loser.

The seven horses trotted up to the dike in front of Grandma’s grave, where Black Eye reined in his mount. Instinctively Granddad rested his hand on the handle of his Japanese ‘tortoiseshell’ pistol.

‘So it’s you, Commander Yu!’ Black Eye sat steadily in his saddle.

Granddad’s hand shook. ‘It’s me!’

When Granddad challenged him with a dark look, Black Eye chuckled dully and dismounted. He gazed down at Grandma’s grave. ‘She’s dead?’

‘She’s dead!’ Granddad said tersely.

‘Goddamn it!’ Black Eye spat out angrily. ‘A good woman like that winding up dead as soon as you get your hands on her!’

Flames shot from Granddad’s eyes.

‘If she’d come with me back then, it wouldn’t have turned out like this!’ Black Eye said.

Granddad drew his pistol and aimed it at Black Eye.

‘If you’ve got the balls,’ Black Eye said calmly, ‘you’ll avenge her. Killing me only proves how chickenhearted you are!’

What is love? Everybody has his own answer. But this demon of an emotion has spelled doom for more valiant men and lovely, capable women than you can count. Based upon Granddad’s romantic history, my father’s tempestuous love affairs, and the pale desert of my own experiences, I’ve framed a pattern of love that applies to the three generations of my family.

The first ingredient of love — fanaticism — is composed of heart-piercing suffering: the blood flows through the intestines and bowels, and out of the body as faeces the consistency of pitch. The second ingredient — cruelty — is composed of merciless criticism: each partner in the love affair wants to skin the other alive, physically and psychologically. They both want to rip out each other’s blood vessels, muscles, and every writhing internal organ, including the heart. The third ingredient — frigidity — is composed of a protracted heavy silence. Icy emotions frost the faces of people in love. Their teeth chatter so violently they can’t talk, no matter how badly they want to.

In the summer of 1923, Granddad lifted Grandma down off her donkey, carried her into the sorghum field, and laid her on his straw rain cape; thus began the tragic ‘internal-bleeding’ phase. In the summer of 1926, when Father was two, Grandma’s servant Passion became the third member of a triangle, thrusting her lovely thighs between Granddad and Grandma; this was when the ‘skinning alive’ began. Their love thus moved from the heaven of fanaticism to the hell of cruelty.

Passion was one year younger than Grandma, who turned nineteen in the spring of 1926. The eighteen-year-old girl had a strong, healthy body, long legs, and large, unbound feet. Her dark face featured round watery eyes, a pert little nose, and thick, sensual lips. The distillery was flourishing at the time, and our sorghum wine had taken eighteen counties in nine prefectures by storm. The air was redolent with the aroma of wine. In the intoxicating atmosphere, when the days were long and the nights short, the men and women in my family had enormous capacities for wine. Granddad and Grandma, of course; but even the woman Liu, who had never tasted wine before, was now able to drink half a decanter at one sitting.

Passion, who at first only drank to accompany Grandma, eventually couldn’t live without her wine. The alcohol enlivened them and instilled them with the courage to face danger fearlessly and view death as a homecoming. They abandoned themselves to pleasure, living an existence of moral degeneracy and fickle passions. Granddad had become a bandit by then: he coveted not riches, but a life of vengeance and countervengeance, a never-ending cycle of cruelty that turned a decent commoner into a blackhearted, ruthless bandit with great skills and courage to match.

After killing Spotted Neck and his gang, and nearly paralysing my greedy great-granddad with fear, he left the distillery and began a romantic life of looting and plundering. The seeds of banditry in Northeast Gaomi Township were planted everywhere: the government produced bandits, poverty produced bandits, adultery and sex produced bandits, banditry produced bandits. Word of Granddad’s prowess in single-handedly wiping out the seemingly invincible Spotted Neck and his gang at the Black Water River spread like wildfire, and lesser bandits flocked to him. As a result, the years 1925 to 1928 marked a golden age of banditry in Northeast Gaomi Township. Granddad’s reputation rocked the government.

This was during the tenure of the inscrutable Nine Dreams Cao, whom Granddad still detested for having beaten him with the shoe sole until his skin peeled and his flesh gaped. His day of vengeance against the Gaomi county magistrate would come.

In early 1926, he and two of his men kidnapped Nine Dreams Cao’s fourteen-year-old son in front of the government office. Carrying the screaming little boy under one arm and holding his pistol in the other hand, Granddad swaggered up and down the granite-paved street in front of the official residence. The shrewd, competent enforcer, Little Yan, pursued him with county soldiers, shouting and shooting from a safe distance. Granddad spun around and put his pistol to the boy’s temple. ‘You there, Yan!’ he shouted. ‘Get your ass back there and tell that old dog Nine Dreams Cao that he can have his son back for ten thousand silver dollars. If I don’t get it within three days, this kidnap is going to end with a dead kid!’

‘Old Yu,’ Little Yan asked genially, ‘where do we make the exchange?’

‘In the middle of the Black Water River bridge.’

Granddad and his two men filed out of town, the boy still under his arm. He had white teeth and red lips, and though his features were contorted by all that crying, he was still a handsome boy. ‘Stop crying,’ Granddad told him. ‘I’m your foster-dad, and I’m taking you to see your foster-mom!’ He really started crying then, which tried Granddad’s patience. Waving his short, glistening sword under the boy’s nose, he threatened, ‘I said no more crying. If you keep it up, I’ll slice off your ear!’ The boy stopped crying immediately and was carried along between the two younger bandits with a stunned look on his face.

When they were about five li out of town, Granddad heard hoofbeats behind him. Spinning around to look, he saw a cloud of dust, raised by galloping horses. Granddad ordered the two bandits over to the side of the road, where the three of them huddled together with their hostage, a gun at his head.

The horsemen, led by the shrewd Little Yan, circled Granddad and his men, then headed towards Northeast Gaomi Township, a trail of dust in their wake.

Momentarily confused, Granddad quickly realised what was happening. ‘Damn!’ he said, slapping his thigh. ‘We’re wasting our time with this!’

His two young accomplices asked stupidly, ‘Where are they going?’

Without stopping to answer, Granddad fired at the retreating horsemen; but they were out of range, and his bullets disappeared into the dust.

Little Yan led his men to our village in Northeast Gaomi Township and straight to our house. He had a speedy horse and he knew the way. Meanwhile, Granddad was running as fast as his legs would carry him. Nine Dreams Cao’s son, used to a life of ease and luxury, managed only a li or so before he collapsed. ‘Finish him off and be done with it,’ one of the younger bandits suggested. ‘He’s too much trouble.’

‘Little Yan’s going after my son,’ Granddad said, as he picked up Young Master Cao, hoisted him over his shoulder, and took off at a trot. When the younger bandits urged him to speed up, he said, ‘We’re already too late, so there’s no need to go any faster. Everything will be all right as long as this little bastard stays alive.’

Back in the village, Little Yan and his men burst into the house, grabbed Grandma and Father, and tied them onto a horse.

‘You blind dog!’ Grandma railed. ‘I’m Magistrate Cao’s foster-daughter!’

With a sinister smile, Little Yan said, ‘His foster-daughter is precisely who he told us to nab.’

Little Yan and his horsemen met up with Granddad on the road. Hostages on both sides had guns at their heads as they passed so close they could have reached out and touched each other; but no one dared make a move.

Granddad looked up at Father, who was held tightly in Little Yan’s arms, and at Grandma, whose hands were tied behind her back. ‘Zhan’ao,’ she said to Granddad, who had a dejected look on his face, ‘let my foster-dad’s son go, so they’ll set us free.’

Granddad squeezed the boy’s hand tightly. He knew he’d have to let him go sooner or later, but not just now.

When it was time to exchange the hostages at the wooden bridge over the Black Water River, Granddad mobilised nearly all the bandits in Northeast Gaomi Township, over 230 of them. Their weapons loaded and ready, they lay or sat around the northern bridgehead.

At midmorning, the magistrate’s soldiers arrived, winding their way down from the southern dike of the river. Four of them carried a sedan chair that rocked above them. When they reached the southern bridgehead, Nine Dreams Cao greeted Granddad. With a smile on his face he said, ‘Zhan’ao, how could the husband of my foster-daughter kidnap his own nephew? If you needed money, all you had to do was ask for it.’

‘It’s not the money. I haven’t forgotten those three hundred lashes with the shoe sole!’

Rubbing his hands together and laughing, Nine Dreams Cao said, ‘It was a mistake, all a mistake! But if it hadn’t been for that beating we’d never have met. Worthy son-in-law, you achieved real glory by eliminating Spotted Neck, and I will make that known to my superiors, who will in turn reward you for your deed.’

‘Who cares about being rewarded by you for my deeds?’ Granddad said rudely. His words belied the fact that his heart was softening.

Little Yan pulled back the curtain of the sedan chair, and Grandma slowly emerged with Father in her arms.

She started to walk out onto the bridge, but was stopped by Little Yan. ‘Old Yu,’ he said, ‘bring Young Master Cao out onto the bridge. We’ll release them on command.’

‘Now!’ Little Yan called out when both sides were ready.

With a shout of ‘Dad!’ Little Master Cao ran towards the southern bridgehead, while Grandma walked with Father at a dignified pace to the northern side.

Granddad’s men aimed their short rifles; the government soldiers aimed long ones.

Grandma and the Cao boy met in the middle of the bridge, where she bent over to say something to him. But, with a loud wail, he skirted her and ran like the wind to the southern bridgehead.

This incident witnessed the end of the golden days of banditry in Northeast Gaomi Township.

In the third month of 1926, Great-Grandma passed away. With Father in her arms, Grandma rode one of our black mules back to her childhood home to make funeral arrangements, planning to be gone only three days and never imagining that heaven would interfere to make that impossible. On the day after her departure, the skies opened up and released a torrential rain so dense that even the wind couldn’t penetrate it. Since Granddad and his men could no longer stay in the greenwoods, they returned to their homes, for in such weather even swallows hole up in their nests to twitter dreamily. Government soldiers were kept from going out, but they really weren’t needed anyway, since the truce between Nine Dreams Cao and Granddad was still holding. The bandits returned to their homes, stuck their weapons under their pillows, and slept the days away.

Granddad was surprised to learn from Passion that Grandma had braved the violent rainstorm to return to her parents’ home to arrange for her mother’s funeral. In her loathing for her parents, Grandma had refused to have anything to do with them for years. But as they say, ‘Strong winds eventually cease, unhappy families return to peace.’

The rain sluiced down from the eaves like waterfalls. The murky water rose waist-high, saturating the soil and eroding the bases of walls. Rain-weary, Granddad fell into a state of numbness: drinking and sleeping, sleeping and drinking, until the distinction between day and night blurred, and chaos reigned. More restless than he had ever felt in his life, he scratched the curly black hair on his chest and thighs, but the more he scratched the more they itched. The kang exuded a woman’s acrid, salty smell. He threw a wine bowl onto the kang. It shattered. A little rat with a gaping mouth jumped out of the cabinet, gave him a mocking look, and leaped up onto the window ledge, where it stood on its hind legs and cleaned its mouth with its front claws. Granddad picked up his pistol and fired, blowing the rat out of the window.

Passion ran into the room, her dark hair a mess; seeing Granddad on the kang with his arms wrapped around his knees, she bent over wordlessly, picked up the shards of the wine bowl, and turned to leave.

A hot flash surged into Granddad’s throat. ‘You… stop there…’ he said with difficulty.

Passion bit her thick lower lip. Her sweet smile suffused the gloomy room with a ball of golden light. The beating of raindrops beyond the window seemed suddenly blocked by a wall of green. Granddad looked at Passion’s mussed hair, her delicate little ears, and the arch of her breasts. ‘You’ve grown up,’ he said.

Her mouth twitched, and two cunning little wrinkles appeared in the corners.

‘What were you doing?’

‘Sleeping!’ She yawned. ‘I hate this weather. How long is it going to rain? The bottom must have fallen out of the Milky Way.’

‘Douguan and his mom must be stuck there. Didn’t she say she’d return in three days? The old lady must have rotted by now!’

‘Is there anything else?’ Passion asked him.

He lowered his head and, after a pensive moment, said, ‘No, that’s all.’

Passion bit her lip again, smiled, and walked out, wiggling her hips.

Darkness returned to the room, and the grey curtain of rain beyond the window was thicker and heavier than ever.

Passion walked back in and leaned up against the door frame, watching Granddad through misty eyes. He felt the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands began to sweat.

‘What do you want?’

She smiled demurely. The room was once again filled with golden light.

‘Do you feel like drinking?’ Passion asked him.

‘Will you join me?’

‘All right.’

She brought in a decanter of wine and sliced some salted eggs.

Outside, the rain beat like thunder, and a chilling air seeped in through the window, causing Granddad’s nearly naked body to shudder.

‘Cold?’ Passion asked disdainfully.

‘I’m hot!’ he fired back testily.

She filled two bowls with wine, kept one, and handed him the other.

After tossing their empty bowls onto the kang, they just gazed at each other. Two blue flames danced in the golden glow in the room. The golden flames singed his body, the blue flames singed his heart.

‘A noble man gets his revenge, even if it takes ten years!’ Granddad said icily as he shoved his pistol into its holster.

Black Eye straightened up and walked from the dike down to Grandma’s grave. He circled it once, kicked the earth, and sighed. ‘People live but a generation, and grass dies each autumn! Old Yu, the Iron Society is going to fight the Japanese. Join us!’

‘Join a superstitious society like yours?’ Granddad sneered.

‘Don’t get on your high horse! The Iron Society is protected by the gods. Heaven smiles on us and the people trust us. Being asked to join is an honour.’ Black Eye stamped his foot at the head of Grandma’s grave and continued: ‘Your black master here is willing to take you on for her sake.’

‘I don’t need your damned pity! One of these days, you and I are going to settle things, once and for all. Our business isn’t finished!’

‘You don’t scare me!’ Black Eye patted the revolver on his hip. ‘I know how to use one of these, too.’

A handsome young Iron Society soldier walked down from the dike and stayed his leader’s hand. With modest self-control, he said, ‘Commander Yu, the soldiers of the Iron Society have long respected you, and we’d be honoured if you joined us in our mission to keep the country whole. We must put aside our squabbles and drive off the Japanese! Individual scores can be settled later.’

Granddad was intrigued by the man, who reminded him of his own valiant young Adjutant Ren, who had died tragically while cleaning his gun. ‘Are you a member of the Communist Party?’ he asked derisively.

‘Not the Communist Party,’ the young man replied, ‘and not the Nationalist Party. I hate them both!’

‘I like your spirit!’ Granddad said approvingly.

‘They call me Five Troubles.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ Granddad said.

Father had been standing motionless beside Granddad for a long time, gazing curiously at the shaved foreheads of the Iron Society soldiers. That was their identifying mark, but its significance escaped him.

6

PASSION AND MY Granddad made wild love for three days and nights, until her already thick lips were puffy and swollen. Trickles of blood seeped into the cracks between her teeth, and when Granddad kissed her, the taste of blood nearly drove him crazy. The rain didn’t let up during those three days, and when the blue-and-gold light vanished from the room, the rustling of grey-green sorghum, the watery croaks of frogs, and the nibbling sounds of wild rabbits came on the air from the fields. The chilled, fetid air was saturated with a thousand smells.

When Granddad awoke on the morning of the fourth day, he looked at Passion lying beside him and discovered how gaunt and bony she had become; her closed eyes were rimmed with dark-purple circles, her thick lips were cracked and peeling. Hearing the loud crash of a house collapsing somewhere in the village, he quickly dressed and stumbled down off the kang, only to fall flat on his face; he was stunned. As he lay on the floor, his stomach rumbled from hunger. Managing to get to his feet, he called out weakly for the woman Liu. No answer. He went into the room that Passion shared with her, but the only thing lying on the kang mat was a green frog; no sign of Liu.

Returning to the room where he and Passion had spent the last three days and nights, he picked up several squashed slices of salted eggs and gobbled them down, shell and all. But they only whetted his appetite, so he went into the kitchen and dug through the cabinet, where he found four mildewed buns, nine salted eggs, two pieces of preserved bean curd, and three withered scallions; he gobbled everything down and finished it off with a ladleful of peanut oil.

The sun’s rays spread across the sorghum field like blood. Passion was still asleep, and Granddad looked at her body, sleek as the hide of the black mule. He poked her in the belly with his pistol, and she awoke with a smile, blue flames leaping out of her eyes; but he staggered out into the yard and looked up at the huge, round sun, which was like a damp, newborn infant, still covered with its mother’s blood. All around him, rain puddles shone bright red.

The wall separating the eastern and western compounds had come down. Uncle Arhat, the woman Liu, and the distillery hands ran outside to look at the sun.

‘Were you in there gambling all this time?’ Granddad asked.

‘Yes,’ Uncle Arhat answered, ‘for three days and three nights.’

Once the rain had stopped and the sky was clear, the water receded quickly, exposing a layer of soil as wet and shiny as grease. Grandma rode up on her mud-spattered black mule out of the gooey muck of the field, holding Father in her arms. As they picked up each other’s scent, the two mules, separated for so long, began to paw the ground, bob their heads, and bray loudly. When they were led up to the feeding trough, they nudged and nibbled each other intimately.

Embarrassed, Granddad took Father from Grandma, whose eyes were red and puffy; she smelled slightly of mildew. ‘Did you take care of everything?’ Granddad asked her.

‘We buried her this morning. Two more days of rain and the maggots would have got to her.’

‘That was quite a rain, all right. The bottom must have fallen out of the Milky Way.’ He turned to my father. ‘Douguan, say hello to your foster-dad.’

‘Foster-dad? That’s a “bloodless” relationship. Yours is “blooded”,’ Grandma chided him. ‘Hold him while I go inside and change.’

Passion walked outside with a brass basin to get some water. Granddad smiled knowingly, to which she responded with a look of annoyance.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked softly.

‘It’s all the fault of that damned rain!’ she snapped back.

‘What did you say to him?’ he heard Grandma ask Passion after she carried the water inside.

‘Nothing.’

‘Didn’t you say it was all the fault of that damned rain?’

‘No, no, I said that damned rain probably came because the bottom fell out of the Milky Way.’

Grandma uttered an ‘Oh!’ Granddad heard the water splashing in the brass basin.

Three days later, Grandma said she was going home to burn incense for Great-Grandma. When she and Father were seated on the black mule, she said to Passion, ‘I won’t be back tonight.’

That night the woman Liu went over to the eastern compound to gamble with the hired hands. Golden flames lit up Grandma’s room again.

After riding the mule back under the stars, she stood beneath the window and listened to what was going on inside. During the angry tirade that followed, Grandma gouged a dozen bloody lines in Passion’s face with her nails and slapped Granddad’s left cheek — hard. He just laughed. She raised her hand again, but before it reached his cheek it went limp, and she merely brushed his shoulder. He sent her reeling with a vicious slap.

Grandma burst out crying.

Granddad left, taking Passion with him.

7

THE IRON SOCIETY soldiers freed up one of their mounts so Granddad and Father could ride. Whipping his horse, Black Eye took the lead, while the glib Five Troubles, who hated the Communists and the Nationalists, trotted alongside Granddad. His dappled colt was very young and eager to catch up to the others, but Five Troubles kept a tight rein. Never a man to mince words, he looked back and said, ‘Commander Yu, I’ve been doing all the talking. You haven’t said anything.’

Granddad smiled wryly. ‘I can barely read two hundred words. I’m an expert in murder and arson, but you might as well take me to the slaughterhouse if you want me to talk about national affairs!’

‘Then who do you think we ought to turn the country over to after we drive out the Japanese?’

‘That has nothing to do with me. All I know is that no one would dare take a bite out of my dick.’

‘What would you say if the Communists were in charge?’

Granddad snorted contemptuously out of one nostril.

‘How about the Nationalists?’

He snorted out of the other nostril.

‘That’s what I say. What China needs is an emperor! I’ve got it all figured out: struggles come and go, long periods of division precede unity and long periods of unity precede division, but the nation aways falls into the hands of an emperor. The nation is the emperor’s family, the family is the emperor’s nation. That’s why he governs so benevolently. But if a political party is in charge, everybody’s got his own idea, with Grandpa saying it’s too cold and Grandma complaining about the heat, and everything’s all fucked up.’

He reined in his dappled colt and waited for Granddad to catch up. Then, leaning over secretively, he said, ‘Commander Yu, I’ve been reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marshes since I was a kid, and I know them like the back of my hand. The seat of my courage is as big as a hen’s egg, but unfortunately I don’t have a wise leader to serve. I used to think Black Eye was one. That’s why I left home, to join up with him and do something worthwhile before I got married and settled down.

‘Who’d have guessed that he was as stupid as a pig and as dumb as an ox, short on courage and long on bullshit? All he cares about is his little plot of land in Saltwater Gap. Our ancestors had a saying: Birds perch on the best wood, a good horse neighs when it sees a master trainer. After thinking it over, I’ve concluded that in all of Northeast Gaomi Township you, Commander Yu, are the only true leader. My comrades and I demanded that Black Eye bring you into the society. It’s what they call “inviting the tiger into the house”. When you’re one of us, if you can sleep on firewood and drink gall, like the famous king of Yue, you’ll gain everyone’s sympathy and respect. Then I’ll wait for a chance to get rid of Black Eye and nominate you to replace him. With a change in the ruling house, discipline will be tightened. Once we bring Northeast Gaomi Township under our control, we’ll move north and occupy Southeast Pingdu Township and Northern Jiao Township, then unite all three areas.

‘When that’s done, we can set up our capital in Saltwater Gap under the flag of the Iron Society, with you in command. From there we’ll send our forces in three directions, taking Jiao, Gaomi, and Pingdu counties, annihilating the Communists, the Nationalists, and the Japs. With the three capitals in our hands, we can set up our own nation!’

Granddad nearly fell off his horse. He looked with amazement at this handsome young man who was bursting with ideas of statehood, and his insides ached with excitement. Reining in his horse, he tumbled out of the saddle and, since it didn’t seem appropriate to kneel before Five Troubles, reached up, grabbed his sweaty hand, and said in a tremulous voice, ‘Sir! Why couldn’t I have met you before this? Why did it take so long?’

‘A leader shouldn’t talk like that. Let’s put our hearts and minds together to do something really important!’ Five Troubles said with tears in his eyes.

Black Eye, who was more than a li ahead of them, reined in his horse and shouted, ‘Hey — are you two coming or not?’

Cupping his hand over his mouth, Five Troubles yelled, ‘We’re coming! Old Yu’s girth broke. We’re fixing it now!’ He turned to look at Father, who was sitting bright-eyed on his horse. ‘Young Master Yu,’ he said, ‘we’ve been discussing serious matters. Don’t breathe a word of our conversation to anyone!’

Father nodded vigorously.

Granddad felt more clearheaded than ever before in his life. Five Troubles’ words were a rag that had wiped his heart clean, until it shone like a mirror; finally, he could see the purpose of his struggles, and he uttered something that even Father, who was sitting in front of him, didn’t hear clearly: ‘Heaven’s will!’

Alternating between a gallop and a trot, the horses arrived at the banks of the Black Water River at noon. That afternoon they left the river behind them, and as night was about to fall, Granddad rose up in the saddle to gaze out at the Salty Water River, which was half as broad as the Black Water River and meandered through alkaline plains. Its grey waters looked like dull glass that gave off a murky glare.

8

COUNTY MAGISTRATE NINE Dreams Cao had used a brilliant stratagem in the late autumn of 1928 to wipe out the bandits of Northeast Gaomi Township led by my granddad. Decades later, when Granddad was in the mountains of Hokkaido, this tragic page in history was always before him. He thought back to how smug he had felt as he was driven in his black Chevrolet sedan on the bumpy Northeast Gaomi Township mountain road, an unwitting decoy who had led eight hundred good men into a trap. His limbs grew ice-cold at the memory of those eight hundred men lined up in a remote gulley outside Jinan City to be mowed down by machine guns. While he was roasting fine-scaled silver carp from Hokkaido’s shallow rivers, he agonised over the eight hundred deaths….

After making a pile of broken bricks, Granddad climbed over the high wall around the Jinan police station in the small hours of the morning, then slid down the other side into clumps of scrap paper and weeds, frightening off a couple of stray cats. He slipped into a house, changed from his black wool military uniform into some tattered clothes, then went out and merged with the crowds on the street to watch his fellow villagers and his men being loaded onto boxcars. Sentries stood around the station with dark, murderous looks on their faces. Black smoke poured out of the locomotive, steam hissed from the exhaust pipes…. Granddad walked south on the rusty tracks.

At dawn, after walking all day and night, he reached a dry riverbed that reeked of blood. The bodies of hundreds of Northeast Gaomi Township bandits were piled up in layers, filling half the riverbed. He felt remorseful, horrified, vengeful. He was fed up with a life that was little more than an unending cycle of kill-or-be-killed, eat-or-be-eaten. He thought of the chimney smoke curling in the air above his quiet village; of the creaking pulley as a bucket of clear water was brought out of the well to water a fuzzy young donkey; of a fiery red rooster standing on a wall covered with date branches to crow at the radiant rays of dawn. He decided to go home.

After spending his whole life in the confines of Northeast Gaomi Township, this was the first time he’d ever travelled so far, and home seemed to be on the other side of the world. Recalling that the train to Jinan had travelled west the entire trip, he thought that all he had to do was follow the tracks east and he’d have no trouble getting back to Gaomi County. When one of the trains came down the tracks, he hid in a nearby ditch or amid some crops to watch the red or black wheels rumble past, bending the curved tracks.

Granddad ate when he could beg food in a village and drank when he came upon a river. Always he headed east, day and night. After two weeks, he finally spied the two familiar blockhouses at the Gaomi train station, where the county aristocracy was gathered to see off their onetime magistrate Nine Dreams Cao, who had been promoted to police commissioner for Shandong Province. Granddad crumpled to the ground, not sure why or how, and lay with his face in the black earth for a long time before becoming aware of the pungent taste of blood in the dirt.

He decided not to go home, even though he had often seen Grandma’s snow-white body and Father’s strangely innocent smile in the cold realm of his dreams. He awoke to find his grimy face bathed in hot tears and his heart aching. When he gazed up at the stars, he knew how deeply he missed his wife and son. But now that the decisive moment had arrived, and he could smell the intimate aroma of wine mash permeating the darkness, he wavered.

The slap and a half from Grandma had created a barrier between them, like a cruel river. ‘Ass!’ she’d cursed him. ‘Swine!’ An angry scowl had underscored her outburst as she stood there, hands on hips, back bent, neck thrust forward, a trickle of bright-red blood running down her chin. The awful sight had thrown his heart into confusion.

In all his years, no woman had ever cursed him as viciously as that, and certainly no woman had ever slapped him. It wasn’t that he felt no remorse over his affair with Passion, but the humiliating verbal and physical abuse had driven that remorse out of his heart, and self-recrimination had been supplanted by a powerful drive to avenge himself.

Emboldened by a sense of self-righteousness, he’d gone to live with Passion in Saltwater Gap, some fifteen li distant. After buying a house, he led what even he knew was a troubled life, discovering in Passion’s deficiencies Grandma’s virtues. Now that he’d narrowly escaped death, his legs had carried him back to this spot, and he wanted to rush into that compound and revive the past; but the sound of those curses erected a barrier that cut him off from the road ahead.

Granddad dragged his exhausted body to Saltwater Gap in the middle of the night, where he stood in front of the house he’d bought two years earlier and looked up at the late-night moon high in the southwestern sky. Passion’s vigorous, slender body floated in front of his eyes, and as he thought about the golden flames ringing her body and the blue flames issuing from her eyes, a tormenting nostalgia made him forget his mental and physical anguish. He pulled himself over the wall and jumped into the compound.

Keeping a rein on his feelings, he knocked on the window frame and cried out softly: ‘Passion… Passion…’

Inside, a muffled cry of alarm, followed by the sound of intermittent sobs.

‘Passion, can’t you tell who it is? It’s me, Yu Zhan’ao!’

‘Brother… dear brother! Scare me to death, but I’m not afraid! I want to see you even if you’re a ghost! You’ve come to me, I, I’m deliriously happy…. You didn’t forget me after all…. Come in…. Come in….’

‘Passion, I’m not a ghost. I’m still alive, I escaped!’ He pounded on the window. ‘Did you hear that? Could a ghost make sounds like that on your window?’

Passion began to wail.

‘Don’t cry,’ Granddad said. ‘Somebody will hear you.’

He walked over to the door, but before he got there, the naked Passion was in his arms.

For two months, Granddad didn’t step outside. He lay on the kang, staring blankly at the papered ceiling. Passion reported talk on the street about the bandits of Northeast Gaomi Township. When he could no longer bear his indelible memories of the tragedy, he filled the air with the sound of grinding teeth. All those opportunities to take that old dog Nine Dreams Cao’s life, yet he had spared him. His thoughts turned to my grandma. Her relationship with Nine Dreams Cao had been a major factor in his being duped, so his hatred for Nine Dreams Cao carried over to her as well. Who knows, maybe they had conspired to lead him into a trap. The news Passion brought made this seem likely.

One day, as Passion was massaging his chest, she said, ‘Dear brother, you may not have forgotten her, but it didn’t take her long to forget you. After they took you away on the train, she went with Black Eye, the leader of the Iron Society, and has lived with him in Saltwater Gap for months.’ The sight of Passion’s insatiable dark body gave birth to repugnance, and Granddad’s thoughts returned to that other body, as fair as virgin snow. He remembered, again, that sultry afternoon when he had stretched her out on his straw rain cape in the dense shadows of the sorghum field.

Granddad rolled over. ‘Is my pistol still here?’

Passion wrapped her arms around him. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked fearfully.

‘I’m going to kill those dog bastards!’

‘Zhan’ao! Dear brother, you can’t keep killing people! Think how many you’ve killed already!’

He shoved her away. ‘Shut up!’ he snarled. ‘Give me my gun!’

She began to sob as she ripped open the seam of the pillow and removed his pistol.

With Father in front of him, Granddad followed Five Troubles on the black horse. Even after gazing for a long time at the dull grey surface of the Salty Water River and the vast white alkaline plains stretching from its bank, his excitement from their stirring conversation still hadn’t abated; yet he couldn’t stop thinking about his fight with Black Eye on the bank of the river.

With his pistol under his arm, he rode a huge braying donkey all morning. When he reached Saltwater Gap, he tied his donkey to an elm tree at the village entrance to let it gnaw on the bark, then pulled his tattered felt cap down over his eyebrows and strode into the village. Saltwater Gap was a large village, but Granddad walked straight towards a row of tall buildings without asking directions. Winter was just around the corner, and a dozen chestnut trees with a few stubborn yellow leaves were bent before the wind. Though not strong, it cut like a knife.

He slipped into the compound in front of the tiled buildings, where the Iron Society was meeting. On the wall of a spacious hall with a brick floor hung a large amber-coloured painting of a strange old man riding a ferocious, mottled tiger. A variety of curious objects rested on an altar beneath the painting — a monkey claw, the skull of a chicken, a dried pig gallbladder, a cat’s head, and the hoof of a donkey. Incense smoke curled upward. A man with a ring of moles around one eye was sitting on a thick, circular sheet of iron, rubbing the shaved dome of scalp above his forehead with his left hand and covering the crack in his ass with his right. He was chanting loudly: ‘Amalai amalai iron head iron arm iron spirit altar iron tendon iron bone iron cinnabar altar iron heart iron liver iron lung altar raw rice forged into iron barrier iron knife iron gun no way out iron ancestor riding iron tiger urgent edict amalai amalai amalai…’

Granddad recognised the man as Northeast Gaomi Township’s infamous half-man, half-demon, Black Eye.

His chant finished, Black Eye stood up and kowtowed three times to the iron ancestor seated on his tiger. Then he returned to his sheet of iron, sat down, and raised his fists, all ten fingernails turned in and hidden from view. He nodded towards the Iron society soldiers, who reached up with their left hands to their shaved scalps and covered their asses with their right, closed their eyes, and raised their voices to repeat Black Eye’s chant. Their sonorous shouts filled the hall with demonic airs. Half of Granddad’s anger vanished — his plan had been to murder Black Eye, but his loathing for the man was being weakened by reverence and awe.

After completing their chant, the Iron Society soldiers kowtowed to the old demon on his tiger mount, then formed two tight ranks in front of Black Eye. Granddad had heard that the Iron Society soldiers ate raw rice, and now he watched as each of them took a bowl of it from Black Eye and gobbled it down. Then, one by one, they walked up to the altar and picked up the monkey claw, mule hoof, and chicken skull to rub on their shaved scalps.

The white sun was streaked with red by the time the ceremony was completed, when Granddad fired a shot at the large painting, putting a hole in the face of the old demon on his tiger. The soldiers broke ranks at the sound of gunfire, took a moment to get their bearings, then rushed out and surrounded Granddad.

‘Who are you? You’ve got the nerves of a thief!’ Black Eye thundered.

Granddad lifted his tattered felt cap with the barrel of his smoking gun. ‘Your venerable ancestor, Yu Zhan’ao!’

‘I thought you were dead!’ Black Eye exclaimed.

‘I wanted to see you dead first!’

‘You think you can kill me with that thing? Men, bring me a knife!’

A soldier walked up with a butcher knife. Black Eye held his breath and gave a sign to the man. Granddad watched the blade of the knife hack Black Eye’s exposed abdomen as though it were a chunk of hardwood, but all it left were some pale scratches.

The Iron Society soldiers began to chant in unison: ‘Amalai amalai amalai iron head iron arm iron spirit altar… iron ancestor riding iron tiger urgent edict amalai… amalai… amalai…’

Granddad was stunned. How could anybody be impervious to knives and bullets? He pondered the Iron Society chant. Everything on the body was iron — everything, that is, but the eyes.

‘Can you stop a bullet with your eye?’ Granddad asked.

‘Can you stop a knife with your belly?’ Black Eye asked in return.

Granddad knew he couldn’t stop a knife with his belly; he also knew Black Eye couldn’t stop a bullet with his eye.

The Iron Society soldiers came out of the hall armed to the teeth and formed a ring around Granddad, glaring like tigers eyeing their prey.

Granddad knew he only had nine bullets left in his pistol, and that, once he killed Black Eye, the soldiers would pounce on him like mad dogs and tear him to ribbons.

‘Black Eye,’ Granddad said, ‘since you’re so special, I’ll spare those pisspots of yours. Turn the bitch over and we’re square!’

‘Is she yours?’ Black Eye asked him. ‘Will she answer if you call her? Is she your legal wife? A widow is like a masterless dog — they both belong to whoever raises them. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell out of here! Don’t blame Old Blackie for what happens if you don’t.’

Granddad raised his pistol. The Iron Society soldiers raised their cold, glinting weapons. Seeing their lips twitch, chanting, he mused, A life for a life!

Just then Granddad heard a mocking laugh from Grandma. His arm fell to his side.

Grandma stood on a stone step holding Father in her arms, bathed in the rays of the sun in the western sky. Her hair shone with oil, her face was rosy, her eyes sparkled.

‘Whore!’ Granddad railed, gnashing his teeth.

‘Ass!’ Grandma fired back impertinently. ‘Swine! Scum! Sleeping with a serving girl is all you’re good for!’

Granddad raised his pistol.

‘Go ahead!’ Grandma said. ‘Kill me! And kill my son!’

‘Dad!’ my father yelled.

Granddad’s pistol fell to his side again.

He thought back to that fiery red noon in the kingfisher-green sorghum and pictured her pristine body lying in Black Eye’s arms.

‘Black Eye,’ he said, ‘let’s make it just the two of us, fists only. Either the fish dies or the net breaks — I’ll wait for you on the banks of the river outside the village.’

He thrust his pistol into his belt and walked through the ring of stupefied Iron Society soldiers. With a glance at my father, but not at my Grandma, he strode out of the village.

As soon as he stepped up onto the steamy bank of the Salty Water River, Granddad took off his cotton jacket, threw down his pistol, tightened his belt, and waited. He knew Black Eye would come.

The Salty Water River was as murky as a sheet of frosted glass reflecting the golden sunlight.

Black Eye walked up.

Grandma followed, with Father in her arms. She wore the same look of indifference.

The Iron Society soldiers brought up the rear.

‘A civil fight or a martial fight?’ Black Eye asked.

‘What’s the difference?’

‘A civil fight means you hit me three times and I hit you three times. A martial fight means anything goes.’

Granddad thought it over and said, ‘A civil fight.’

‘Who first?’ Black Eye asked.

‘Let fate decide. We’ll draw straws. The longest goes first.’

‘Who’ll prepare the straws?’ Black Eye asked.

Grandma put Father on the ground. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said.

She plucked two lengths of straw, hid them behind her back, then brought them out in front. ‘Draw!’

She looked at Granddad, who drew a straw. Then she opened her hand to show the remaining one.

‘You drew the long straw, so you go first!’ she said.

Granddad drove his fist into Black Eye’s belly. Black Eye yelped.

Having sustained the first punch, Black Eye straightened up, a blue glint in his eyes, and waited for the next one.

Granddad hit him in the heart.

Black Eye stumbled back a step.

Granddad drove his final punch into Black Eye’s navel with all his might.

This time Black Eye stumbled back two steps. His face was waxen as he pressed his hand over his heart and coughed twice, spitting out a nearly congealed clot of blood. Then he wiped his mouth and nodded to Granddad, who concentrated all his strength in his chest and abdomen.

Black Eye waved his huge fist in the air and swung it hard, stopping inches away from Granddad. ‘I’ll spare you this one, for the sake of heaven!’ he said.

He also wasted his second punch. ‘I’ll spare you this one for the sake of earth.’

Black Eye’s third punch knocked Granddad head over heels, like a mud clod; he hit the hard, alkaline ground with a loud thud.

After struggling to his feet, Granddad picked up his jacket and his pistol, his face dotted with beads of sweat the size of soybeans. ‘I’ll see you in ten years.’

A piece of bark floated in the river. Granddad fired his nine bullets at it, smashing it to smithereens. Then he stuck his pistol into his belt and staggered into the wasteland, his bare shoulders and slightly bent back shining like bronze under the sun’s rays.

As Black Eye looked at the shattered pieces of bark floating in the river, he spat out a mouthful of blood and sat down hard on the ground.

Cradling Father in her arms, Grandma ran unsteadily after Granddad, sobbing as she called his name: ‘Zhan’ao —’

9

MACHINE GUNS BEHIND the tall Black Water River dike barked for three minutes, then fell silent. Throngs of Jiao-Gao soldiers who had been shouting a charge in the sorghum field fell headlong onto the dry roadbed and the scorched earth of the field, while, across the way, Granddad’s Iron Society soldiers, who were about to surrender, were cut down like sorghum; among them were longtime devil worshippers who had followed Black Eye for a decade and young recruits who had joined because of Granddad’s reputation. Neither their shiny shaved scalps, the raw rice steeped in well water, the iron ancestor riding his tiger, nor the mule hoof, monkey claw, and chicken skull shielded their bodies. The insolent machine-gun bullets streaked through the air to shatter their spines and legs and pierce their chests and bellies. The red blood of the Jiao-Gao soldiers and the green blood of the Iron Society soldiers converged to nourish the black earth of the fields. Years later, that soil would be the most fertile anywhere.

Having suffered defeat together at the hands of a common foe, the retreating Jiao-Gao regiment and Granddad’s Iron Society were immediately transformed from sworn enemies into loyal allies. The living and the dead were cast together. Little Foot Jiang, wounded in the leg, and Granddad, wounded in the arm, were cast together. As Granddad lay with his head against Little Foot Jiang’s bandaged leg, he noticed that his feet weren’t all that little, but their stink overwhelmed the stench of blood.

The machine guns opened fire again, their bullets smashing into the roadbed and the sorghum field, where they raised puffs of dust. Jiao-Gao and Iron Society soldiers tried to bore their way under the ground. The topography couldn’t have been worse: nothing but flatland as far as the eye could see — not a blade of grass anywhere — and the blanket of whizzing bullets was like a razor-sharp sword slicing the air; anyone who raised his head was finished.

Another interval between bursts. Little Foot Jiang shouted, ‘Hand grenades!’

The machine guns roared again, then fell silent. The Jiao-Gao soldiers hurled at least a dozen grenades over the dike. A mighty explosion was followed by shrieks and cries, and an arm wrapped in fluttering grey cloth sailed through the air. Granddad shouted, ‘It’s Detachment Leader Leng, that son of a bitch Pocky Leng!’

The Jiao-Gao soldiers lobbed another round of grenades. Shrapnel flew, the water in the river rippled, and a dozen columns of smoke rose from behind the dike. Seven or eight intrepid Jiao-Gao soldiers charged the dike, but they had barely reached the ridge when a burst of fire sent them scrambling back, dead and dying jumbled together, until there was no telling who was who.

‘Retreat!’ Little Foot Jiang ordered.

The Jiao-Gao soldiers lobbed another round of grenades, and at the sound of explosions, the survivors crawled out of the pile of dead and beat a hasty retreat northward, shooting as they ran. Little Foot Jiang, helped to his feet by two of his men, fell in behind them.

Sensing the danger in retreating, Granddad stayed where he was. He wanted to get out of there, but this wasn’t the time. Some of his Iron Society soldiers joined the retreat, and the others were beginning to get the same idea. ‘Don’t move,’ he said in a low voice.

Gunsmoke curled up from behind the dike, carrying with it the pitiful cries of wounded men. Then Granddad heard a familiar voice shout: ‘Fire! Machine guns, machine guns!’

It was Pocky Leng’s voice, all right, and Granddad’s lips curled into a grim smile.

Granddad, with Father beside him, joined the Iron Society. He shaved his forehead and knelt before the ancestor on his tiger mount. When he saw the mended spot where his bullet had made a hole, he smiled to himself. It was as though it had happened only yesterday. Father also had the front of his scalp shaved. The sight of the ebony razor in Black Eye’s hand chilled him, for he still had dim memories of the fight that had occurred more than ten years earlier. But Black Eye shaved his scalp without incident, then rubbed it with each of the freakish fetishes — the mule hoof, the monkey claw, and so on. The ceremony completed, Father’s body truly felt rigid, as though his flesh and blood had turned to iron.

Granddad was welcomed enthusiastically by the Iron Society soldiers, who, urged on by Five Troubles, staged a revolt, demanding that Black Eye acknowledge Granddad as his deputy.

Once the issue of second-in-command was resolved, Five Troubles then worked on their fighting spirit. He said that a thousand days of military training came to fruition in a single moment. Now that the Jap aggressors were wreaking havoc on the nation, he asked how long the men planned to practise their ‘iron’ skills without actually going out to kill the dwarf invaders. Most of the society soldiers were hot-blooded young men whose hatred of the Japanese was in the marrow of their bones, and the silver-tongued Five Troubles spoke like an orator, making them crave action on the battleield, to rage potent as an oil fire. Black Eye had no choice but to agree with him. Granddad took Five Troubles aside. ‘Are you sure your “iron” skills are sufficient to withstand bullets?’ Five Troubles just grinned slyly.

The Iron Society’s first battle was small, a brief skirmish with the Gao battalion, a unit of Zhang Zhuxi’s puppet regiment. The Iron Society soldiers, who were about to stage a raid on the Xia Family Inn blockhouses, met up with the Gao battalion as it was returning from a raid on grain stores. The two armies stopped and sized each other up. The Gao raiding party, made up of sixty or seventy men in apricot-coloured uniforms, was heavily armed. Canvas cartridge belts were slung across the men’s chests. Intermingled with the troops were dozens of donkeys and mules carrying sacks of grain. The black-clad Iron Society soldiers were armed only with spears, swords, and knives, except for a few dozen with pistols tucked in their belts.

‘What unit are you?’ a fat Gao-battalion officer asked from his horse.

Granddad reached into his belt and, as he drew his pistol, shouted, ‘The one that kills traitors!’ He fired.

The fat officer tumbled off his horse, his head a bloody gourd.

‘Amalai amalai amalai,’ the Iron Society soldiers chanted in unison as they launched a fearsome charge. Frightened donkeys and mules broke and ran. The panicky puppet soldiers tried to escape, but the slower ones were hacked to death by the Iron Society soldiers’ knives and swords. Those who managed to get away began coming to their senses when they’d run about the distance of an arrow’s flight. Quickly forming up ranks, they opened fire — pipa papa. But the undaunted Iron Society soldiers, having tasted blood, raised their chant and launched a ferocious charge.

‘Spread out!’ Granddad shouted. ‘Crouch!’

His shouts were drowned out by the sonorous chants of men charging in closed ranks, heads high, chests thrust forward.

The puppet soldiers fired a salvo of bullets, cutting down more then twenty Iron Society soldiers. Fresh blood sprayed the air as the shrill wails of wounded soldiers swirled around the feet of their surviving comrades.

The Iron Society soldiers were stunned. Another salvo, and more of them fell.

‘Spread out!’ Granddad yelled. ‘Flatten out!’

Now the puppet soldiers mounted a countercharge. Granddad rolled onto his side and jammed a clip into his pistol. Black Eye raised himself halfway up and bellowed, ‘Get up! Chant! Iron head iron arm iron wall iron barrier iron heart iron spleen iron sheet keep away bullets don’t dare approach iron ancestor riding tiger urgent edict amalai…’

A bullet whizzed over his head, and he hit the ground like a dog scrounging for shit.

With a sneer, Granddad grabbed the pistol out of Black Eye’s trembling hand and shouted, ‘Douguan!’

Father rolled over next to him. ‘Here I am, Dad!’

Granddad handed him Black Eye’s pistol. ‘Hold your breath, and don’t move. Don’t shoot till they’re closer.’

Then he shouted to his men, ‘If you’ve got a gun, get it ready. Don’t shoot till they’re almost on top of you!’

The puppet soldiers rushed boldly forward.

Fifty yards, forty yards, twenty, ten… Father could see their yellow teeth.

Granddad jumped to his feet, guns blazing right and left. Seven of eight puppet soldiers bowed deeply, all the way to the ground. Father and Five Troubles fired with the same degree of accuracy. The puppet soldiers turned tail and ran, offering up their backs as inviting targets. Finding his pistols inadequate for his purposes, Granddad picked up a rifle abandoned by a fleeing soldier and opened fire.

This minor skirmish established Granddad as the unchallenged leader of the Iron Society. The cruel, unnecessary deaths of so many of its soldiers had laid bare the folly of Black Eye’s sorcery. From then on they shunned the iron-body ceremony that had been forced upon them. Guns? Those were needed. Sorcery and magic couldn’t stop bullets.

Pretending to be recruits, Granddad and Father joined the Jiao-Gao regiment and kidnapped Little Foot Jiang in broad daylight. Next they joined the Leng detachment and kidnapped Pocky Leng.

The exchange of the two hostages for weapons and warhorses fortified Granddad’s leadership of the now-awesome Iron Society. Black Eye became superfluous, a man in the way. Five Troubles wanted to get rid of him, but Granddad always stopped him.

Following the kidnappings, the Iron Society became the most powerful force in all of Northeast Gaomi Township, while the prestige of the Jiao-Gao and Leng regiments was silenced once and for all. Peace having settled upon the land, Granddad’s thoughts turned to the grand funeral for Grandma. From then on it was a process of accumulating wealth by whatever means, including the appropriation of a coffin and the murder of anyone who got in the way; the glory of the Yu family spread like an oil fire. But Granddad forgot the simple dialectic that a bright sun darkens, a full moon wanes, a full cup overflows, and decay follows prosperity. Grandma’s grand funeral would be yet another of his great mistakes.

The machine guns behind the dike roared again. Granddad could tell there were only two of them now, the others obviously taken out by the Jiao-Gao regiment hand grenades.

Granddad’s attention was caught by movement among the dozen or so Jiao-Gao soldiers who had been mowed down by machine-gun fire on the dike. A skinny, blood-covered little man crawled in agony up the slope, slower than a silkworm, slower than a snail. Granddad knew he was watching a hero in action, another of Northeast Gaomi Township’s magnificent seeds. The soldier stopped halfway up the slope, and Granddad watched him strain to roll over and remove a blood-stained hand grenade from his belt. He pulled the pin with his teeth, then ignited the fuse, sending a puff of smoke out from the wooden handle. Holding the armed grenade between his teeth, he dragged himself up to a clump of weeds growing on the dike. The green-tinted machine-gun barrels were dancing above him, sending puffs of smoke into the air.

Regret was what Granddad was feeling. Regret that he’d been so softhearted. When he kidnapped Pocky Leng, all he’d asked as ransom was a hundred rifles, five submachine guns, and fifty horses. He should have demanded these eight machine guns as well, but his years as a bandit had instilled in him a preference for light weapons over heavy ones. If he’d included these machine guns, Pocky Leng wouldn’t have been able to run amok today.

When the soldier reached the clump of weeds, he lobbed his grenade. The crack of an explosion sounded behind the dike, sending the barrels of the machine guns soaring into the air. The grenadier lay face down on the slope, not moving; his blood kept flowing, painfully, agonisingly, and very slowly. Granddad heaved a sigh.

That took care of Pocky Leng’s machine guns. ‘Douguan!’ Granddad yelled.

Pinned down by two heavy corpses, Father was playing dead. Maybe I really am dead, he thought, not knowing if the warm blood covering him was his own or that of the corpses on top of him. When he heard Granddad’s yell, he raised his head, wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve, and said between gasps, ‘I’m here, Dad….’

Pocky Leng’s troops came pouring out from behind the dike, like spring bamboo after a rain, rifles at the ready. A hundred yards away, the Jiao-Gao soldiers, clearheaded once again, opened fire on the charging troops, the submachine guns they’d got from Five Troubles’ mounted troops crackling loudly. The Leng soldiers tucked in their heads like a herd of turtles.

Granddad pulled the corpses off Father and dragged him free.

‘Were you hit?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Father said after checking his arms and legs.

‘Let’s get out of here, men!’ Granddad shouted.

Twenty or more blood-spattered Iron Society soldiers stood up by leaning on their rifles and staggered off towards the north. The Jiao-Gao soldiers didn’t fire at them. And although the Leng detachment fired a few shots, their bullets went straight up in the air.

A shot rang out behind Granddad, and his neck felt as though someone had punched him; all the heat in his body quickly flowed to that spot. He reached up and pulled back a palm covered with blood. When he spun around he spotted Black Eye, whose guts had spilled out onto the ground, his large black eyes blinking heavily — once, twice, three times. Two golden tears hung in the corners of his eyes. Granddad smiled at him, and nodded slightly, then turned and led Father slowly away.

Another shot rang out behind them.

Granddad heaved a long sigh. Father turned and saw a little black hole in Black Eye’s temple.

As night fell, the Leng detachment surrounded the Jiao-Gao and Iron Society soldiers, who had waged a desperate fight from the midst of Grandma’s funeral procession. Their ammunition exhausted, the two detachments were huddled together, clenching their teeth and staring with bloodshot eyes at the relentlessly advancing Leng detachment, recently fortified by a squad from the Seventh Army. The setting sun lit up the evening clouds and dyed the groaning black earth. Scattered across it were countless sons and daughters of Northeast Gaomi who had grown to adulthood on bright-red sorghum, and whose blood now formed streams that converged into a river. Scavenger birds were drawn to the spot by the smell of blood. Most were circling above the horses — like greedy children, they wanted the biggest pieces first.

Grandma’s coffin was pitted with pale bullet holes, having served as cover during the gunfight. The roasted chickens, ducks, pigs, and sheep from the roadside shrines had provided sustenance to the Jiao-Gao soldiers, several of whom now launched a bayonet charge but were mowed down by Leng bullets.

‘Hands up! Surrender!’ the heavily armed Leng troops yelled.

Granddad looked over at Little Foot Jiang, who returned his gaze. Neither said a word as they raised their hands.

The white-gloved commander of the Leng detachment strode out from his bodyguard and said with a sneer, ‘Commander Yu, Commander Jiang. Enemies and lovers are destined to meet. Now what do you have to say?’

‘I’m ashamed!’ Granddad said sadly.

‘I’m going to report you for the monstrous crime of disrupting the war against Japan on the Eastern Jiao battlefront!’ Commander Jiang said.

Pocky Leng lashed him with his whip. ‘Your bones may be soft, but your mouth is plenty hard! Take them into the village!’ he ordered with a wave of the hand.

The Leng detachment bivouacked in our village that night, after putting their Jiao-Gao and Iron Society prisoners in a shed, where they were guarded by a dozen soldiers armed with submachine guns. The moans of the wounded and the weeping of young soldiers who longed for their mothers, wives, and lovers didn’t let up all night long.

Like an injured bird, Father snuggled up in Granddad’s arms, where he could hear the beating of Granddad’s heart, fast one moment, slow the next, like the music of tinkling bells. He fell into a sound sleep, and dreamed of a woman who resembled both Grandma and Beauty. She stroked his injured pecker with hot fingers, sending bolts of lightning up his backbone. He woke with a start, feeling a sense of loss. The plaintive wails of the wounded floated over from the fields. He didn’t dare tell Granddad of his dream. As he sat up slowly, he could see the Milky Way through a hole in the shed roof. Suddenly it hit him: I’m almost sixteen!

At daybreak, the Leng detachment pulled down several tents, from which they removed thick ropes. After tying up their prisoners in groups of five, they dragged them over to the willow trees beside the inlet where the Iron Society had tethered its horses the night before. Little Foot Jiang, Granddad, and Father were tied to the tree nearest the bank. Big Tooth Yu’s grave mound lay beneath a solitary tree alongside the inlet. The white water lilies had risen with the water level, their new leaves floating on the surface. Cracks appeared in the dense layer of duckweed to reveal ribbons of green water disturbed by swimming frogs. On the other side of the bare village wall, Father saw yesterday’s scars on today’s fields; the massacred fragments of the funeral procession lay on the road like a gigantic python. Several Leng-detachment soldiers were chopping up the bodies of dead horses, the stench of dark-red blood permeating the chilly air.

Hearing a sigh from Little Foot Jiang, Father spun his head around and watched as the two commanders exchanged looks of misery, four listless eyes beneath lids heavy with exhaustion. The wound on Granddad’s shoulder had begun to fester, and the putrid smell drew red horseflies that had been feasting on the decaying corpses of donkeys and men; the bandage on Little Foot Jiang’s foot had unravelled and was hanging around his ankle like a strip of sausage casing. Trickles of black blood oozed from the spot where Granddad had shot him.

It seemed to Father that both Granddad and Little Foot Jiang were trying to say something, but not a word was spoken. He sighed and turned to gaze out over the broad black plain, shrouded in a milky-white mist.

More than eighty soldiers from the Jiao-Gao regiment and the Iron Society were tied to trees. One of Granddad’s men was sobbing, and the Jiao-Gao soldier next to him nudged him with his shoulder: ‘Don’t cry, Brother-in-Law. Sooner or later we’ll get our revenge against Zhang Zhuxi!’

The old Iron Society soldier wiped his filthy face on his filthy clothes. ‘I’m not crying over your sister! She’s dead, and all the tears in the world won’t bring her back. I’m crying for us. You and I are kin from neighbouring villages who saw each other every time we looked up, so how did things turn out like this? I’m crying for your nephew, my son, Silver Ingot. He was only eighteen when he followed me into the Iron Society so he could avenge your sister. But before he tasted revenge your men killed him. He was on his knees, but you bayoneted him anyway! You mean, cold-blooded bastards! Don’t you have sons of your own?’

The old Iron Society soldier’s tears were burned dry by flames of anger. He roared at the ragged Jiao-Gao soldiers, ‘Swine! You should have been out there fighting the Japanese. Or their yellow puppets! Why did you turn your weapons on the Iron Society! You lousy traitors! You foreign lackeys…’

‘Don’t go too far, Brother-in-Law,’ the Jiao-Gao soldier cautioned.

‘Who are you calling Brother-in-Law? Did you remember you had a brother-in-law when you were throwing your damned grenades at your own nephew?’

‘All you see is one side, old man!’ yelled one of the Jiao-Gao officers. ‘If your Iron Society hadn’t kidnapped Little Foot Jiang and demanded a ransom of a hundred rifles, we’d have had no reason to fight you. We needed the weapons to attack the Japanese, to give us a chance on the battlefield, to propel us into the vanguard of the resistance!’

Father, whose voice was changing, felt compelled to enter the fray: ‘You started it by stealing the guns we’d hidden in the well,’ he said in a raspy squeak. ‘We kidnapped him because you stole the dog pelts we’d hung on the walls to dry!’

He coughed up a gob of phlegm angrily and tried to spit it in the face of the Jiao-Gao officer, but it missed its mark and landed on the forehead of a tall, slightly hunchbacked Iron Society soldier, who lashed out as though he’d been shot: ‘Douguan, fuck your living mother!’

The prisoners laughed, even though their aching arms were turning numb from the ropes and their future was clouded.

But Granddad just sneered and said, ‘What the hell are you arguing about? We’re all a bunch of whipped soldiers.’

While the sound of Granddad’s words still hung in the air, Little Foot Jiang, his face the colour of ashes, fell to the ground. Blood and pus oozed from his injured foot, which had swollen to the size of a winter melon. The Jiao-Gao soldiers, held back by the ropes around them, could only look helplessly at their unconscious commander.

Just then the dapper Detachment Leader Leng strode out of his tent to join his men in inspecting the hundreds of rifles and two cases of wooden-handled grenades they’d captured from the Iron Society and the Jiao-Gao regiment. Twirling his whip, he walked smugly towards the prisoners. Father heard the sound of heavy breathing behind him, and he could picture the angry look on Granddad’s face. The corners of Detachment Leader Leng’s mouth curled upward, and the fine wrinkles about his cheeks wriggled like little snakes.

‘Have you thought about what I’m going to do with you, Commander Yu?’ he asked with a giggle.

‘That’s up to you!’ Granddad replied.

‘It would be a waste of a good man to kill him. But if I don’t, you might kidnap me again someday!’

‘Killing me won’t close my eyes!’

With a swift kick, Father sent a road apple flying into Detachment Leader Leng’s chest.

Leng raised his whip, then let it drop. ‘I hear this little bastard only has one nut. Somebody come over here and cut off the other one! That’ll keep him from biting and kicking!’

‘He’s just a boy, Old Leng,’ Granddad said. ‘Whatever you want to do you can do to me.’

‘Just a boy? The little bastard’s got more fight in him than a wolf cub!’

Little Foot Jiang, who had regained consciousness, struggled to his feet.

‘Commander Jiang,’ Detachment Leader Leng said, ‘what do you think I should do with you?’

‘Killing me will only bring you trouble, Detachment Leader Leng,’ Commander Jiang said with bold assurance, but with his face bathed in cold sweat. ‘The day will come when the people liquidate you for your monstrous crime of slaughtering noble fighters of the anti-Japanese resistance!’

‘You can pass the time here until I’ve had something to eat. I’ll deal with you then.’

The Leng soldiers sat around eating horsemeat and drinking sorghum wine.

Suddenly the sentry on the northern wall of the village fired a shot and ran into the village. ‘The Japs are coming — the Japs are coming!’

Detachment Leader Leng grabbed the sentry’s sleeve and asked angrily, ‘How many Japs? Are they real Japs or lackeys?’

‘I think they’re lackeys. Their uniforms are yellow. A whole line of yellow, running towards the village at a crouch.’

‘Lackeys? Kill the sons of bitches. Company Commander Qi, take your men up to the wall, and hurry!’ he ordered.

Then he turned to two guards with machine guns. ‘Keep an eye on them,’ he commanded. ‘Pop ’em if they act up!’ Surrounded by his bodyguards, he ran at a crouch towards the northern edge of the village.

Less than a quarter of an hour later, fighting broke out. The opening salvos of rifle fire were followed by machine-gun fire, and before long the air was filled with the shrieks of incoming projectiles that exploded in the village, sending shrapnel slamming into the village wall and the trunks of trees. Amid the din of shouting came the jiligulu of a foreign tongue.

It was real Japs after all, not lackeys. Detachment Leader Leng and his troops put up a stubborn defence, but abandoned their positions after half an hour of fighting and fell back to the cover of toppled walls.

Japanese artillery shells were already falling into the inlet. The anxious Jiao-Gao and Iron Society soldiers stomped their feet and ducked their heads. ‘Untie us!’ they bellowed angrily. ‘Fuck your living mothers! Untie us! If you came out of Chinese pricks, untie us. If you came out of Japanese pricks, then kill us!’

The guards ran to the stack of rifles and picked up two swords, with which they cut their prisoners’ ropes.

Eighty soldiers ran like madmen to the stack of rifles and the pile of hand grenades; then, ignoring the numbness of their arms and the hunger in their bellies, they charged the Japanese, yelling wildly as they ran straight into a hail of lead.

Several dozen columns of smoke rose from the village wall following the explosions of the first salvo of hand grenades thrown by the Jiao-Gao and Iron Society soldiers.